Analysis of self-adaptive robotic mechanisms

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The research program proposed in this application aims at developing new architectures of self-adaptive robotic systems for novel applications as well as exploring intriguing properties in the kinematics of these systems. In particular, the research program will focus on 1) the design of self-adaptive mechanisms using linkage-driven transmissions for two novel applications and 2) the development of haptic exploration models. Over the past decades, mechatronic systems have been proposed taking advantage of self-adaptive mechanisms. These mechanisms are characterized by the property of having a part of the control tasks delegated to the mechanical layout of the system rather than to an electronic board. The most well-known application of self-adaptive mechanisms is underactuated grasping where the closing motion of an actuator is mechanically distributed to the several degrees of freedom (DOF) of a robotic hand. This results in a robotic hand which adapts mechanically to the shape of the seized objects without any sensors or dedicated control laws. Self-adaptive mechanisms have only recently been considered in robotics since the still most common trend has been to expect that the growing power of computational devices would allow to easily control all systems with great efficiency despite their inherent complexity. However, this prediction has only been partially fulfilled as the increase of the computation capabilities of modern digital systems has not always been able to overcome all these drawbacks. Underactuated robotic hands have been intensively studied by the applicant during the last decade and the results of this research effort lead to the discovery of hundreds of new mechanical architectures and a methodology to synthesize them based of the analysis of the driven linkage kinematics.