The paper presents a meta-study of the kinematic, dynamic and electrical parameters for the PUMA 560 robot. Parameter values which have been reported in the literature are transformed into a single system of units and coordinates, and differences in the data and measurement techniques are discussed. New data have been gathered and are presented where the record was incomplete.

Path planning of the end effector motion is here treated from the viewpoint of the path invariance under the transformations of its parametrical representation. Thus, a new method for path planning of the robot arm motion is being developed. Both the problems of finding the end effector time optimal motion and the end effector motion with a prescribed velocity profile along a preplanned path are being solved by the employment of this method. Simulation results are presented and some aspects of implementation are also discussed.

This paper focuses on the implementation of a dual-mode controller for the maneuver of a single link flexible robotic arm. The joint angle trajectory tracking is accomplished by a proportional and derivative PD and a feedforward controller. Based on the pole placement technique, a linear stabilizer is designed for elastic mode stabilization. The stabilizer is switched on when the trajectory reaches the vicinity of the terminal state, and the effect of switching time on arm vibration is investigated. An optical deflection sensor is used for on-line measurements of elastic deflections, and also used for the prediction of the static deflection of the arm in the target position. The robustness of the linear stabilizer at varying pay loads is presented.

This paper presents a parametric study of automated vehicles using the sensitivity theory. A sixth order dynamic model of an axisymmetric vehicle is developed in the state space format to represent its 3 degrees-of-freedom motion in the lateral, yaw and roll modes. Variations of the important parameters of the vehicle are grouped into three separate vectors: with the elements consisting of inertia, stiffness and damping, and geometric-kinematic parameters respectively. The effect of every element of these vectors on the state variables is studied carefully, a comparison being made among the state variables to reveal the relative influence of the parameter-induced variations. This helps better understanding which mode of the system is more affected by changes in particular parameters and the severity in the transient response and in the steady-state response. Then the effects of a particular vector on the performance of the system is studied.

This paper presents an absolute position estimation system for a mobile robot moving on a flat surface. In this system, a 3-D landmark with four coplanar points and a non-coplanar point is utilized to improve the accuracy of position estimation and to guide the robot during navigation. Applying theoretical analysis, we investigate the image sensitivity of the proposed 3-D landmark compared with the conventional 2-D landmark. In the camera calibration stage of the experiments, we employ a neural network as a computational tool. The neural network is trained from a set of learning data collected at various points around the mark so that the extrinsic and intrinsic parameters of the camera system can be resolved. The overall estimation algorithm from the mark identification to the position determination is implemented in a 32-bit personal computer with an image digitizer and an arithmetic accelerator. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed 3-D landmark and the neural network-based calibration scheme, a series of navigation experiments were performed on a wheeled mobile robot (LCAR) in an indoor environment. The results show the feasibility of the position estimation system applicable to mobile robot's real-time navigation.

This paper describes the first prototype of the robot system ‘MASTER’ for helping disabled people. The results of evaluations after one year of experiments in French rehabilitation centres are reported. Following comments and criticisms by staff and users, many improvements were made to the first version and have been taken into account in the design of a new version which will be evaluated in 1992–93 in French and European projects.

Considering the fact that Flexible Manufacturing Systems (FMS) should be able to accommodate a variety of different parts in random order, tool management at cell level and tool transportation, tool data management, tooling data collection, tool maintenance, and manual and/or robotized tool assembly at FMS system level are very important. Tooling information in FMS is used by several subsystems, including: production planning, process control, dynamic scheduling, part programming, tool preset and maintenance, robotized and/or manual tool assembly, stock control and materials storage.

The paper summarizes the major tasks to be solved when designing tool management systems for FMS, as well as gives a solution for describing the data structure of a tool data base integrated with a generic tool description method, and shows a sample transaction of the way the FMS real-time control system can access and use this data base.

In this study, highly practical and reliable methods are proposed to determine arm solutions for a six-link robot manipulator. Based on a typical mathematical structure of minimizing an objective function, the optimization theory is applied to solve a reduced system of kinematic equations. The performance tests show that three different approaches are superior to a conventional method and of sufficiently practical use. Especially, the use of an algorithm presented in a linear search is promising.