This paper proposes an effective top-down design approach for the mechanical design for assembly of a four degree-offreedom revolute jointed robotic arm. The design process begins by specifying top-level design criteria and passing down these criteria from the top level of the manipulator’s structure to all of the subsequent components. With this proposed approach, the sequential design intents are captured, organized and implemented based on the entire system’s objectives, as opposed to the conventional design process which aims at individual components’ optimization. By considering the mechanical arm’s performance objectives, the design starts with modeling the integration of all the individual links constituting the manipulator. During the design process, modifications are made based on the integrated information of kinematics, dynamics, and structural analyses of the desired robot configurations as a whole. An optimum assembly design is then achieved with workable subdesigns of the manipulator components. As a result, the proposed approach for manipulator design yields substantially less number of iterations, automatic propagation of design changes, and great saving of design efforts. Thus, it is suitable and can be used as a guideline for design automation purposes of complex systems such as robotic arms.

In this paper, we present a passive lower extremity exoskeleton with a simple structure and a light weight. The exoskeleton does not require any external energy source and can achieve energy transfer only by human body’s own gravity. The exoskeleton is self-adaptive to human gait to achieve basic matching therewith. During walking, pulling forces are generated through Bowden cables by pressing plantar power output devices by feet, and the forces are transmitted to the exoskeleton through a crank-slider mechanism to enable the exoskeleton to provide torques for the ankle and knee joints as required by the human body during the stance phase and the swing phase. Our self-developed gait detection system is used to perform experiments on kinematics, dynamics and metabolic cost during walking of the human body wearing the exoskeleton in different states. The experimental results show that the exoskeleton has the greatest influence on motion of the ankle joint and has the least influence on hip joint. With the increase in elastic coefficient of the spring, the torques generated at the joints by the exoskeleton increase. When walking with wearing k3EF exoskeleton at a speed of 0.5 m/s, it can save the most metabolic cost, reaching 13.63%.

Recent advances in early stage failure analysis approaches have introduced behavioral network analysis (BNA), which applies a network-based model of a complex engineered system to detect the system-level effect of ‘local’ failures of design variables and parameters. Previous work has shown that changes in microscale network metrics can signify system-level performance degradation. This article introduces a new insight into the influence of the community structure of the behavioral network on the failure tolerance of the system through the role of bridging nodes. Bridging nodes connect a community of nodes in a system to one or more nodes or communities outside of the community. In a study of forty systems, it is found that bridging nodes, under attack, are associated with significantly larger system-level behavioral degradation than non-bridging nodes. This finding indicates that the modularity of the behavioral network could be key to understanding the failure tolerance of the system and that parameters associated with bridging nodes between modules could play a vital role in system degradation.

In this paper, a development method for smart walker prototypes is proposed. Development of such prototypes is based on technological choices and device evaluations. The method is aimed at guiding technological choices in a modular fashion. First, the method for choosing modules to be integrated in a smart walker is presented. Application-specific modules are then studied. Finally, the issues of evaluation are investigated. In order to work out this method, more than 50 smart walkers and their pros and cons with respect to the different studied applications are reviewed.

Detailed design is often a time-consuming and experience-dependent engineering process, where various detailed design knowledge can be reused. This paper proposes a formal approach for modeling detailed design knowledge for effective reuse. An extended structure–behavior–function model is developed for representing the structural, behavioral, and functional information in various life cycle periods of a detailed design. Based on the extended structure–behavior–function model, an issue- and solution-based approach is then developed to model the detailed knowledge of a mechanical design. The proposed approach is implemented in a detailed design knowledge modeling system, with a fixture design knowledge modeling as a brief example.

Miniaturized surgical devices are promising for the future development of minimally invasive and endoluminal surgery. However, the dexterity and therapeutic functions of these devices are limited. In this paper, a reconfigurable modular robotic system is proposed to perform screening and interventions in the gastrointestinal tract. In the proposed system, millimeter-sized robotic modules are ingested and tasked to assemble into an articulated mechanism in the stomach cavity. The modules are assembled according to the target location to perform precise intervention. Based on this concept, a preliminary report is presented covering the robotic schemes for the endoluminal reconfigurable platform, the design with structural functions, the control strategy, and the interval-based constraint satisfaction algorithm to determine the suitable topologies of the reconfigurable robot for the given task.

This paper presents the design of a new low-cost, easy operation hand having three 1-dof anthropomorphic fingers of a human size. Experimental results on human cylindrical grasping have been used for designing a 1-dof anthropomorphic finger of a human size. The mechanical design of this finger has been mainly focused on a suitable articulated mechanism. This mechanism transmits the power to the phalanxes for a human-like grasping motion and it can be embedded in the body of the finger itself. The design of a three finger hand has been presented as based on the designed finger module. Experimental tests on a built hand prototype have been carried out in order to show the feasibility of the proposed design and validate its operation.

This paper presents a new haptic device based on a parallel structure that can be used as a master interface in a teleoperation or haptic control architecture. The basic idea of a haptic device is to serve force and/or position reflection to the operator; at the same time that is being used by the human operator to input the required commands. The original mechanical structure of the presented system implies important advantages over other existing devices. The mechanism is a modification of the 6-d.o.f. Gough platform where the linear actuators have been replaced by cable-driven pantographs. Avoiding the use of reduction gears by means of cable transmission allows a wide sensing bandwidth. Some experimental indices comparing the performance of the presented device are presented. The paper shows the geometrical model and the kinematic analysis used on the control algorithms of this interface. The hardware and software architectures used on the system, and the control schemes implemented on a multi-axis board, are detailed. This setup provides an open control architecture that allows the implementation and experimentation of several bilateral control schemes. The integration of the haptic device in a teleoperation simulator is shown. This simulator includes virtual robotic slaves and its dynamic interaction with the virtual environment. Finally, the results obtained in the virtual objects manipulation experiments are shown. A classical force-position bilateral control scheme was used for these experiments.