25 accepted papers
Lower limb exoskeletons have shown great promise for enhancing mobility. Existing systems are limited by either excessive weight or insufficient torque output. In this study, we present a cable-driven hip extension exoskeleton featuring lightweight, compact, and compliant end-effectors with high-tor
Cable-driven exoskeletons face control challenges such as transmission latency and complex kinematics. In gait assistance, torque–position switching strategy can provide transparency and near-zero impedance, but its mode switching introduces discontinuities. Iterative-learning methods enhance tracki
Flexible needles provide enhanced adaptability for navigating puncture pathways and avoiding obstacles when compared to conventional rigid needles. However, developing a three dimensional (3D) curved path for flexible needle is challenging, particularly in achieving both effective obstacle avoidance…
End-to-end deep learning methods for autonomous aerial vehicles like multirotors have been successfully applied to high-agility flight. However, existing end-to-end navigation methods for multirotors typically rely solely on the robot's current observation and state, neglecting explicit modeling of
Needle puncture is a fundamental technique in minimally invasive surgical procedures. However, the limited flexibility of flexible needles and their complex interactions with tissues make it challenging to avoid critical organs along the puncture path. Preoperative path planning, which generates fea
Increasing evidence highlights the role of proprio-ceptive deficits in falls, emphasizing the need for targeted rehabilitation in populations with functional movement disorders. Despite advances in rehabilitation robots, movement constraints still hinder active engagement of the lower limb muscles,
The integration of origami structures into soft robotics has enriched the adaptability and functionality of the soft robots. Our research group has developed a cable-driven origami robot attached to an arc frame, which enables its deployment in an MR bore and manipulation of medical tools. However,
The unique tilt-servo mechanism of the tilt-rotor unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) facilitates seamless transitions between multi-rotor and fixed-wing modes, enhancing both flexibility and maneuverability. However, traditional modeling methods, which treat each flight mode independently, fail to provid
Hand exoskeletons can recognize user’s intent and provide active resistance training to enhance finger strength in stroke patients. However, achieving fine human-robot interaction (HRI) while maintaining system simplicity for lightweight design remains a key challenge. In this work, we present an im
Flexible needles provide enhanced adaptability for navigating puncture pathways and avoiding obstacles when compared to conventional rigid needles. However, developing a three dimensional (3D) curved path for flexible needle is challenging, particularly in achieving both effective obstacle avoidance
Aerial robots have demonstrated significant potential in suspended cargo transportation, especially in industries such as logistics and food delivery. Due to the underactuated and nonlinear dynamics of the cable-suspended system, directly tracking a given trajectory with a multicopter without modify
Hysteresis has posed significant challenges to the modeling and control of flexible endoscopic robots, which impedes the advancement of automated endoscopic operation. Despite numerous hysteresis modeling approaches aimed at improving accuracy, there are still several unresolved issues, such as inap…
Lower-limb exoskeletons can improve human mobility and endurance, especially for people with leg impairments. To minimize metabolic penalty and maximize assistance capacity, the design of the mobile exoskeleton needs to compromise between the system weight and actuation power. In the paper, we devel
With proper assistance, knee exoskeletons can benefit humans with impaired leg function. Prior studies found that misalignment between the knee and the exoskeleton may cause harm and undermine assistance performance. Self-aligning mechanisms can reduce misalignment but implementing them with a simpl
This paper studies a novel application of an aerial manipulator (AM)-the contact-based landing on a mobile platform. An AM is inherently unstable, under-actuated, and usually loses some DOFs while contacting environments. Meanwhile, the AM's flight state is susceptible to uncertain movements of the…
This letter proposes an anti-interference targeted therapeutic delivery microrobot, where the targeted therapeutic delivery to the lesion site in human intestine can be operated by the external magnetic field. The robot is composed of a shell and a targeted delivery mechanism. Under the actuation of
The robotic flexible endoscope is developed rapidly in the field of surgery robots due to its high flexibility and safety. However, some inherent features, e.g., high nonlinearity, material creep, complex dynamic hysteresis behaviors, and the unknown coupling effects between bending and twisting mot…
Glass curtain walls have been widely used in modern architecture. This makes it urgent to inspect and clean these glasses at regular intervals. Up to now, most of these work is performed by workers, which is expensive and inefficient. Therefore, a novel robot-the contact aerial manipulator system-is…
Contact-based operation in moving process is a challenging problem for aerial manipulators. It requires the whole system to maintain steady contact with external environment, to track some predefined trajectories on surfaces, and simultaneously to present some fixed contact force. Aiming at this pro…
The dangerous work situation in industrial leakage accidents urgently needs a flexible and small robot to help workers perform operations and to protect them from being injured. An aerial manipulator system consisting of a hexa-rotor UAV and a one-DOF manipulator is developed, and is used to press a…
Grasping a moving target has been investigated extensively for fixed-base manipulator. However, such a task becomes much more challenging when the manipulator is free flying in the air with an UAV. Towards moving target grasping, this paper presents an aerial manipulator system composed of a hex-rot…
Reliable mapping and hazard detection are prerequisites for autonomous navigation for unmanned ground vehicles. Because of the uncertainty and vibration induced by high-speed navigation and rugged terrain, the problem of mapping for high-speed off-road autonomous navigation has not been completely s…
sEMG recognition has been used extensively in prosthetic device control, human-assisting manipulators and sign language recognition, etc. However, the sEMG recognition model, trained with one subject's sEMG data, is not applicable to the other subjects, which hinders the practical application of myo…
In the 2nd International Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) Innovation Grand Prix (UAVGP) sponsored by Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC), an autonomous barrel transportation mission was proposed for Rotary-wing UAV (RUAV) which aims at validating the feasibility of marine vertical replenishme…
This paper considers the problem of generating dynamically feasible and collision free trajectory for unmanned aerial vehicles(UAVs) in cluttered environments. General random-based searching algorithms output piecewise linear paths, which cause big discrepancy when used as navigation reference for U…