• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.1-7
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• 2024

This paper presents an under-actuated robotic hand inspired by the ligamentous structure of the human hand for a prosthetic application. The joint mechanisms are based on the concept of a tensegrity structure formed by elastic strings. These rigid bodies and elastic strings in the mechanism emulate the phalanx bones and primary ligaments found in human finger joints. As a result, the proposed hand inherently possesses compliant characteristics, ensuring robust adaptability during grasping and when interacting with physical environments. For the practical implementation of the tensegrity-based joint mechanism, we detail the installation of the strings and the routing of the driving tendon, which are related to extension and flexion, respectively. Additionally, we have designed the palm structure of the proposed hand to facilitate opposition and tripod grips between the fingers and thumb, taking into account the transverse arch of the human palm. In conclusion, we tested a prototype of the proposed hand to evaluate its motion and grasping capabilities.

• Investigative Magnetic Resonance Imaging
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.87-106
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• 2014

Purpose : To describe how a robust implementation of a radial 3D gradient-echo sequence with stack-of-stars sampling can be achieved, to review the imaging properties of radial acquisitions, and to share the experience from more than 5000 clinical patient scans. Materials and Methods: A radial stack-of-stars sequence was implemented and installed on 9 clinical MR systems operating at 1.5 and 3 Tesla. Protocols were designed for various applications in which motion artifacts frequently pose a problem with conventional Cartesian techniques. Radial scans were added to routine examinations without selection of specific patient cohorts. Results: Radial acquisitions show significantly lower sensitivity to motion and allow examinations during free breathing. Elimination of breath-holding reduces failure rates for non-compliant patients and enables imaging at higher resolution. Residual artifacts appear as streaks, which are easy to identify and rarely obscure diagnostic information. The improved robustness comes at the expense of longer scan durations, the requirement for fat suppression, and the nonexistence of a time-to-center value. Care needs to be taken during the configuration of receive coils. Conclusion: Routine clinical use of radial stack-of-stars sequences is feasible with current MR systems and may serve as substitute for conventional fat-suppressed T1-weighted protocols in applications where motion is likely to degrade the image quality.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.9 no.5
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• pp.398-406
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• 2003

In modular fixturing systems, a given part or a subassembly is fixed by placing fixture elements such as locators and clamps adequately on a plate with a lattice of holes. It is known that the minimal number of point contacts to restrict translational and rotational motions on a plane is four and the type of three locators and a clamp(3L/1C) is the minimal future. Brost and Goldberg developed the complete algorithm to automatically synthesize 3L/1C types of fixtures which satisfy the condition of form closure. Due to the nature of the fixture, the clearance between the fixture and the part is extremely small. It is hard to load the part repeatedly and accurately for human as well as for robot. However the condition of loadability has not been taken into account in the B&G algorithm. In this paper, a new method to decide a given fixture to be loadable by using configuration space is proposed. A method to plan for a part to be loaded by using compliance safely even in the presence of control and sensing uncertainty is proposed is well.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2004.08a
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• pp.1786-1790
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• 2004

The main objective of this paper is to analyze the performance of various force control algorithms in improving and adjusting the compliance of industrial robots in contact with their environment. Some of fundamental force control algorithms such as sensorless control, impedance control and hybrid position/force control are theoretically analyzed and simulated for various situations of an environment, and then a series of experiments using them were performed. In this paper, a control scheme to use position control in implementing the impedance control was investigated in order to nullify the effect of joint friction. The new reference trajectory is generated using contact force feedback and original desired trajectory. And an inner position control loop is designed to provide accurate position tracking for the new reference trajectory and good disturbance rejection. Experiments to insert a peg in a hole (so-called the peg-in-a-hole task) were performed with HILS (hardware-in-theloop simulation) system based on the results of the analyses and simulations on the characteristics of each control algorithm. The experiments showed that various force control methods improved the performance of robots in close contact with the environment by adjusting their compliance with respect to an arbitrary set of coordinates.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.21 no.6
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• pp.524-530
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• 2015

Early wearable robotic devices were big, powerful and manipulator-like. Recently, various applications of wearable robotics have shown a greater demand for lower weight and compliancy. One approach to achieve these objectives is the use of novel actuators such as twisted string actuators. These actuator are very light, quiet, mechanically simple and compliant. Therefore, they can drastically decrease the weight and size of robotic systems such as exoskeletons. However, one drawback of this actuator is its nonlinear transmission ratio, which is established as a ratio between the angle of twisting of the strings and their resulting contraction. In this paper, we propose a transmission mechanism with rotational motion as the output incorporating a twisted string actuator (TSA). The designed mechanism allows the linearization of the relationships between the input and output displacements and forces of a TSA. The proposed design has been validated theoretically and through a set of computer simulations. A detailed analysis of the performance of the proposed mechanism is presented in this paper along with a design guideline.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.26 no.7
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• pp.127-133
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• 2009

We present a $3-{\underline{P}}RS$ compliant parallel manipulator actuated by PZTs. The motion ranges are $400-{\mu}m$ translation to the z-direction and 5.7-mrad rotation about any axis on the x-y plane. A mechanical amplifier whose advantage is approximately 5.5 is designed and integrated with flexure revolute and spherical joints in a monolithic way. We evaluated the performance of the system: kinematic and dynamic characteristics. In kinematic point of view, the flexures play the roles of conventional mechanism but any nonlinearity such as dead-zone and backlash, which make it possible to achieve the steady-state resolution less than $0.1{\mu}m$. The system shows resonance near 86 Hz with high magnitude and, therefore, poor transient response. But the settling is faster when the flexures are strained higher.

• Journal of Broadcast Engineering
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.36-43
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• 2009

Recently, the structural similarity (SSIM) index metric is proposed. In the present paper, a new framework, which is called visual SSIM (VSSIM), is proposed by incorporating crucial human factors into the SSIM. The human factors are foveation, luminance, frequency and motion information. The performance of VSSIM is evaluated by subjective quality test compliant with the Video Quality Expert Group (VQEG) multimedia group test plan. It shows that the visual SSIM is more correlated with the subjective quality result than the conventional SSIM.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.18 no.10
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• pp.964-969
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• 2012

Robot hands capable of grasping or handling various objects are important for service robots to effectively aid humans. In particular, controlling a contact force and providing a compliant motion are essential when the hand is in contact with objects. Many dexterous robot hands equipped with force/torque sensors have been developed to perform force control, but they suffer from the complexity of control and high cost. In this paper, a low-cost robot hand based on SEA (Series Elastic Actuator), which is composed of compression spring, stretch sensor, and wire, is proposed. The grasping force can be estimated by measuring the compression length of spring, which would allow the hand to perform force control. A series of experimentations are carried out to verify the performance of force control of the proposed robot hand, and it is shown that it can successfully control the contact force without any additional force/torque sensors.

• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
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• v.27 no.6
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• pp.7-15
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• 2013

Eco-friendly and sustainable seaweed biomass energy have been under the spotlight as the future of renewable energy. However, seaweed culture is primarily conducted inshore, with the research on offshore culture still in an early stage. For massive biomass production, a systematic engineering approach is required to devise offshore seaweed culture facilities rather than the conventional empirical ones. To establish the fundamental behavior of seaweed culture facilities, the dynamic characteristics of a seaweed culture facility were analyzed in the study. For this purpose, numerical analyses of the seaweed culture facility (a frame type) were carried out by using the hydrodynamic simulation program ANSYS-AQWA. For the analysis, environmental loads were considered using the wave spectra and co-linear current; mooring variables were selected as parameters; and time domain analyses were carried out to acquire the time series responses and eventually the dynamic characteristics. Finally, the mooring performance was evaluated. It was found that the motion could be controlled by adjusting the buoyancy and mooring slope.

• Ocean Systems Engineering
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.115-135
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• 2012

The very low natural frequencies of tension leg platforms (TLP's) have raised the concern about the significance of the action of hydrodynamic wave forces on the response of such platforms. In this paper, a numerical study using modified Morison equation was carried out in the time domain to investigate the influence of nonlinearities due to hydrodynamic forces and the coupling effect between surge, sway, heave, roll, pitch and yaw degrees of freedom on the dynamic behavior of TLP's. The stiffness of the TLP was derived from a combination of hydrostatic restoring forces and restoring forces due to cables and the nonlinear equations of motion were solved utilizing Newmark's beta integration scheme. The effect of wave characteristics such as wave period and wave height on the response of TLP's was evaluated. Only uni-directional waves in the surge direction was considered in the analysis. It was found that coupling between various degrees of freedom has insignificant effect on the displacement responses. Moreover, for short wave periods (i.e., less than 10 sec.), the surge response consisted of small amplitude oscillations about a displaced position that is significantly dependent on the wave height; whereas for longer wave periods, the surge response showed high amplitude oscillations about its original position. Also, for short wave periods, a higher mode contribution to the pitch response accompanied by period doubling appeared to take place. For long wave periods, (12.5 and 15 sec.), this higher mode contribution vanished after very few cycles.