Human-Safe Robots for Industrial and Domestic Robotic Applications

几十年来，人类已经设想了一个机器人渗透到我们日常生活中的未来，帮助和促进我们的活动。然而，尽管进步不断，但到目前为止，无处不在的机器人世界仍然局限于科幻小说。一种新型的驱动机制，现在可以实现这一梦想，利用独特的性能磁流变（MR）流体。MR流体是一类智能材料，其可以在施加外部磁场的情况下瞬时且可逆地改变其流变特性。凭借其轻便性和顺应性，用这种流体开发的致动器提供了具有实现安全性所需的固有特性的替代致动解决方案。与主要用于机器人的传统基于电动机的致动器不同，基于MR的致动器提供类似于人类致动机制的特性。同时，这些致动器可以通过改变MR流体的流变特性来提供高性能任务所需的大致动扭矩。换句话说，基于MR的致动器可以提供安全和性能的致动，因此，在这种致动范例下开发的机器人可以保证是人类安全的。 拟议的研究旨在增强基础技术，包括下一代人类安全机器人的设计和操作所需的基于MR的致动器和控制策略。这些机器人预计将对当前的工业机器人自动化产生重大影响，同时为家庭护理，医疗保健，食品和娱乐等各个领域的机器人系统的家庭使用带来许多新的可能性。

For decades now, humankind has envisioned a future where robots permeate our daily lives, assisting and facilitating our activities. However, despite incremental advances, a world of ubiquitous robotics remains, to date, confined to science fiction. A novel actuation mechanism can now realize this dream by utilizing unique properties of magneto-rheological (MR) fluids. MR fluids are a class of smart materials that can instantaneously, and reversibly, alter their rheological properties under the application of an external magnetic field. By virtue of their lightness and compliance, actuators developed with such fluids provide an alternative actuation solution with inherent properties necessary to fulfill safety. Unlike traditional electromotor-based actuators that are predominantly used in robotics, MR-based actuators offer characteristics that are similar to human actuation mechanism. At the same time, these actuators can deliver large actuation torque required in high performance tasks by altering the rheological properties of the MR fluids. In other words, MR-based actuators can provide both safe and perfromant actuation, and ergo, the robots developed under this actuation paradigm can be guaranteed to be human-safe. The proposed research is to enhance underlying technologies including MR-based actuator and control strategies required for the design and operation of next generation of human-safe robots. These robots are expected to have significant impacts on current industrial robotic automation while introducing many new possibilities in domestic use of robotic systems in various fields such as homecare, healthcare, food, and entertainment.