CAREER: New Research Directions for Parallel Manipulators -- Investigation of Redundant Actuation, Redundant Sensing and Static Balancing

Ime Ebert-Uphoff，佐治亚理工学院，9984279 CAREER：并联机器人的新研究方向-冗余驱动、冗余传感和静态平衡的研究当今制造业在生产线的精度、生产能力和灵活性方面面临许多挑战。虽然制造环境中的机器人传统上是串联结构，但由于并联机器人在精度、速度、刚性和有效载荷能力方面表现出色，因此在许多应用中出现了新的应用。这份职业提案采用了一种综合研究和教育策略，以促进并联机器人在精度、可用工作空间大小、易用性和能源效率方面的进步。研究部分研究(1)使用冗余驱动和柔顺控制方案来消除奇异构形，从而扩大工作空间的可用区域；(2)使用冗余传感来简化控制算法中的实时计算，并通过连续的重新校准来提高机器的智能性；(3)使用静态平衡来提高并联机器人的效率。教育部分主要集中在(A)开发基于网络的“虚拟并联机械手”课程，即对并联机械手进行交互式图形模拟；(B)通过开发两门新课程，将并联机械手整合到本科生和研究生的机器人学课程中。拟议的研究和教育策略的意义和影响有三个方面：(1)教育计划有望促进并行机械手在工业中的更高接受度，从而更好地利用并联机械手的巨大潜力。(2)通过创造比现有机器人具有更高性能特征的机器人操作器，预计制造业将立即受益。(3)促进了对并联机器人的认识和理论框架，为并联机器人的长远发展做出了贡献。

Imme Ebert-Uphoff, Georgia Institute of Technology, 9984279CAREER: New Research Directions for Parallel Manipulators -Investigation of Redundant Actuation, Redundant Sensing andStatic BalancingToday's manufacturing industry faces many challenges in terms of accuracy, throughput and flexibility of the production line. While robots in a manufacturing environment are traditionally of a serial structure, parallel manipulators are emerging in many applications because they excel in the areas of accuracy, speed, rigidity and payload capacity.This CAREER proposal adopts an integrated research and education strategy centered on the advancement of parallel manipulators in the areas of accuracy, size of usable workspace, ease of use and energy efficiency. The research component investigates (1) the use of redundant actuation and compliant control schemes to eliminate singular configurations and thus to enlarge the usable region of the workspace, (2) the use of redundant sensing to simplify the real-time computations in the control algorithms and to increase the machine intelligence through continuous re-calibration, (3) the use of static balancing to make parallel manipulators more efficient. The educational component concentrates on (A) the development of web-based course-ware in form of "Virtual Parallel Manipulators", i.e. interactive graphical simulations of parallel manipulators;(B) the integration of parallel manipulators in the robotics curriculum at the undergraduate and graduate level through development of two new courses.The significance and impact of the proposed research and education strategy is three-fold: (1) The educational program is expected to facilitate a higher acceptance of parallel manipulators in industry, leading to better utilization of the high potential of parallel manipulators. (2) Immediate benefits for the manufacturing industry are expected through creation of robotic manipulators with higher performance characteristics than existing ones. (3) The research contributes to the long-term development of parallel manipulators by advancing the understanding of and theoretical framework for parallel manipulators.