A method for controlling vibration of flexible mechanical arms based on cooperative tracking is disclosed, including: building a dynamic model of the flexible mechanical arm, according to a dynamic characteristic, constructing a flexible mechanical arm group made up of a plurality of flexible mechanical arms, assigning one of the plurality of flexible mechanical arms as a leader and the rest ones as followers which are required to track the leader's motion trajectory so as to realize cooperative work; designing cooperative control-based boundary controllers in combination with a Lyapunov method to realize cooperative work and suppress vibration of the flexible mechanical arms; and constructing a Lyapunov function using Lyapunov direct method to validate stability of the flexible mechanical arms under the control.

A method and system for determining geometric properties of a manipulator (2). The manipulator (2) is controlled to perform constrained motions exhibiting force interaction with the environment, or between different links of the manipulator (2), such that a kinematic chain is formed mechanically. The chain may include peripherals and external axes of motion. A constraining device, enables motions that facilitate the determination of geometric properties. A unified model of joint and link compliances facilitates determination of stiffness parameters. The force interaction is controlled with awareness of friction such that non-geometric properties are possible to identify, thereby enabling separation of non-geometric effects from the geometric ones, which improves accuracy.

Systems and a method for teaching a robot in reaching a given target location. The system and method include receiving inputs on a representation of a given target location to be reached by the robot. A check is made whether the given target location is singular. If the given target location is non-singular, the teaching of the robot is effected by associating with the given target location a selected configuration. If the given target is singular, the teaching of the robot is effected by associating with the given target location an assigned joint-values solution.

A flexible manipulator apparatus includes an elongate flexible manipulator having a sensor, a user output device configured to provide sensory outputs to the user, and processing circuitry. The flexible manipulator may be movable to form a curve in the flexible manipulator. The processing circuitry may be configured to receive captured sensor data from the sensor during movement of the flexible manipulator, and determine a collision likelihood score based on application of the captured sensor data to a collision detection model used for position estimation. The collision detection model may be based on an empirical data training for the flexible manipulator that includes training sensor data from the sensor and training image data of positions of the flexible manipulator. The processing circuitry may be configured to control the user output device based on the collision likelihood score to provide a collision alert sensory output to the user.

The present disclosure generally relates to the field of robotics and computer animation, more particularly, method and apparatus to solve the inverse kinematics problem to control a kinematic chain such as a robot arm or an animation character's skeleton to reach a target position. The new method simulates a kinematic chain whose links and joints are elastic and can be distorted. The method distorts the kinematic chain to move its end to the target position, calculates distortions, and iteratively adjusts link and joint configurations of the kinematic chain to reduce distortions while keeping its end at the target position until a solution with near zero distortions is found. The resulting link and joint configurations of the simulated kinematic chain then can be used for the actual kinematic chain to reach the same target position.

A system includes a tool, an input device, a shape sensor system, and a processing unit. The processing unit is configured to determine a state estimate of the input device based on shape information from the shape sensor system, and control the tool based on the state estimate.

The present disclosure generally relates to the field of robotics and computer animation, more particularly, method and apparatus to solve the inverse kinematics problem to control a kinematic chain such as a robot arm or an animation character's skeleton to reach a target position. The new method simulates a kinematic chain whose links and joints are elastic and can be distorted. The method distorts the kinematic chain to move its end to the target position, calculates distortions, and iteratively adjusts link and joint configurations of the kinematic chain to reduce distortions while keeping its end at the target position until a solution with near zero distortions is found. The resulting link and joint configurations of the simulated kinematic chain then can be used for the actual kinematic chain to reach the same target position.

Described is a system for controlling autonomous platform. Based on an input image, the system generates a motor control command decision for the autonomous platform. A probability of the input image belonging to a set of training images is determined, and a reliability measure for the motor control command decision is generated using the determined probability. An exploratory action is performed when the reliability measure is above a predetermined threshold. Otherwise, an exploitation action corresponding with the motor control command decision is performed when the reliability measure is below a predetermined threshold.

A continuum robot includes: a first wire; a second wire; a distal guide configured to hold the first wire and the second wire; a proximal guide slidable relative to the first wire and the second wire; a plurality of wire guides provided between the distal guide and the proximal guide; a driving unit configured to drive the first wire and the second wire; and a control unit configured to control the driving unit. The first wire is fixed to the plurality of wire guides, the second wire is slidable relative to the plurality of wire guides, and the control unit controls the driving unit so as to keep a distance between the proximal guide and a wire guide among the plurality of wire guides provided nearest to the proximal guide constant.

A vibration control device moves an object by controlling an actuator. The vibration control device controls a position and speed of the actuator, generates a model by modeling the object; and calculates an inverse system output based on the model and the control to provide positive feedback of a position of the object based on the inverse system output.