Soft roboticsSoft robotics is a subfield of robotics that concerns the design, control, and fabrication of robots composed of compliant materials, instead of rigid links. In contrast to rigid-bodied robots built from metals, ceramics and hard plastics, the compliance of soft robots can improve their safety when working in close contact with humans. The goal of soft robotics is the design and construction of robots with physically flexible bodies and electronics. Sometimes softness is limited to part of the machine.
RobotA robot is a machine—especially one programmable by a computer—capable of carrying out a complex series of actions automatically. A robot can be guided by an external control device, or the control may be embedded within. Robots may be constructed to evoke human form, but most robots are task-performing machines, designed with an emphasis on stark functionality, rather than expressive aesthetics.
RoboticsRobotics is an interdisciplinary branch of electronics and communication, computer science and engineering. Robotics involves the design, construction, operation, and use of robots. The goal of robotics is to design machines that can help and assist humans. Robotics integrates fields of mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, information engineering, mechatronics engineering, electronics, biomedical engineering, computer engineering, control systems engineering, software engineering, mathematics, etc.
Human–robot interactionHuman–robot interaction (HRI) is the study of interactions between humans and robots. Human–robot interaction is a multidisciplinary field with contributions from human–computer interaction, artificial intelligence, robotics, natural language processing, design, and psychology. A subfield known as physical human–robot interaction (pHRI) has tended to focus on device design to enable people to safely interact with robotic systems. Human–robot interaction has been a topic of both science fiction and academic speculation even before any robots existed.
Swarm roboticsSwarm robotics is an approach to the coordination of multiple robots as a system which consist of large numbers of mostly simple physical robots. ′′In a robot swarm, the collective behavior of the robots results from local interactions between the robots and between the robots and the environment in which they act.′′ It is supposed that a desired collective behavior emerges from the interactions between the robots and interactions of robots with the environment.
Kinematic chainIn mechanical engineering, a kinematic chain is an assembly of rigid bodies connected by joints to provide constrained motion that is the mathematical model for a mechanical system. As the word chain suggests, the rigid bodies, or links, are constrained by their connections to other links. An example is the simple open chain formed by links connected in series, like the usual chain, which is the kinematic model for a typical robot manipulator. Mathematical models of the connections, or joints, between two links are termed kinematic pairs.
Constant curvatureIn mathematics, constant curvature is a concept from differential geometry. Here, curvature refers to the sectional curvature of a space (more precisely a manifold) and is a single number determining its local geometry. The sectional curvature is said to be constant if it has the same value at every point and for every two-dimensional tangent plane at that point. For example, a sphere is a surface of constant positive curvature.
Robotic sensingRobotic sensing is a subarea of robotics science intended to provide sensing capabilities to robots. Robotic sensing provides robots with the ability to sense their environments and is typically used as feedback to enable robots to adjust their behavior based on sensed input. Robot sensing includes the ability to see, touch, hear and move and associated algorithms to process and make use of environmental feedback and sensory data.
Inverse kinematicsIn computer animation and robotics, inverse kinematics is the mathematical process of calculating the variable joint parameters needed to place the end of a kinematic chain, such as a robot manipulator or animation character's skeleton, in a given position and orientation relative to the start of the chain. Given joint parameters, the position and orientation of the chain's end, e.g. the hand of the character or robot, can typically be calculated directly using multiple applications of trigonometric formulas, a process known as forward kinematics.
Nao (robot)Nao (pronounced now) is an autonomous, programmable humanoid robot formerly developed by Aldebaran Robotics, a French robotics company headquartered in Paris, which was acquired by SoftBank Group in 2015 and rebranded as SoftBank Robotics. The robot's development began with the launch of Project Nao in 2004. On 15 August 2007, Nao replaced Sony's robot dog Aibo as the robot used in the RoboCup Standard Platform League (SPL), an international robot soccer competition.
Torsion tensorIn differential geometry, the notion of torsion is a manner of characterizing a twist or screw of a moving frame around a curve. The torsion of a curve, as it appears in the Frenet–Serret formulas, for instance, quantifies the twist of a curve about its tangent vector as the curve evolves (or rather the rotation of the Frenet–Serret frame about the tangent vector). In the geometry of surfaces, the geodesic torsion describes how a surface twists about a curve on the surface.
KinematicsKinematics is a subfield of physics, developed in classical mechanics, that describes the motion of points, bodies (objects), and systems of bodies (groups of objects) without considering the forces that cause them to move. Kinematics, as a field of study, is often referred to as the "geometry of motion" and is occasionally seen as a branch of mathematics. A kinematics problem begins by describing the geometry of the system and declaring the initial conditions of any known values of position, velocity and/or acceleration of points within the system.
Gaussian curvatureIn differential geometry, the Gaussian curvature or Gauss curvature Κ of a smooth surface in three-dimensional space at a point is the product of the principal curvatures, κ1 and κ2, at the given point: The Gaussian radius of curvature is the reciprocal of Κ. For example, a sphere of radius r has Gaussian curvature 1/r2 everywhere, and a flat plane and a cylinder have Gaussian curvature zero everywhere. The Gaussian curvature can also be negative, as in the case of a hyperboloid or the inside of a torus.
Autonomous robotAn autonomous robot is a robot that acts without recourse to human control. The first autonomous robots environment were known as Elmer and Elsie, which were constructed in the late 1940s by W. Grey Walter. They were the first robots in history that were programmed to "think" the way biological brains do and meant to have free will. Elmer and Elsie were often labeled as tortoises because of how they were shaped and the manner in which they moved. They were capable of phototaxis which is the movement that occurs in response to light stimulus.
Forward kinematicsIn robot kinematics, forward kinematics refers to the use of the kinematic equations of a robot to compute the position of the end-effector from specified values for the joint parameters. The kinematics equations of the robot are used in robotics, computer games, and animation. The reverse process, that computes the joint parameters that achieve a specified position of the end-effector, is known as inverse kinematics.
CurvatureIn mathematics, curvature is any of several strongly related concepts in geometry. Intuitively, the curvature is the amount by which a curve deviates from being a straight line, or a surface deviates from being a plane. For curves, the canonical example is that of a circle, which has a curvature equal to the reciprocal of its radius. Smaller circles bend more sharply, and hence have higher curvature. The curvature at a point of a differentiable curve is the curvature of its osculating circle, that is the circle that best approximates the curve near this point.
Robot kinematicsIn robotics, robot kinematics applies geometry to the study of the movement of multi-degree of freedom kinematic chains that form the structure of robotic systems. The emphasis on geometry means that the links of the robot are modeled as rigid bodies and its joints are assumed to provide pure rotation or translation. Robot kinematics studies the relationship between the dimensions and connectivity of kinematic chains and the position, velocity and acceleration of each of the links in the robotic system, in order to plan and control movement and to compute actuator forces and torques.
Scalar curvatureIn the mathematical field of Riemannian geometry, the scalar curvature (or the Ricci scalar) is a measure of the curvature of a Riemannian manifold. To each point on a Riemannian manifold, it assigns a single real number determined by the geometry of the metric near that point. It is defined by a complicated explicit formula in terms of partial derivatives of the metric components, although it is also characterized by the volume of infinitesimally small geodesic balls.
Robot end effectorIn robotics, an end effector is the device at the end of a robotic arm, designed to interact with the environment. The exact nature of this device depends on the application of the robot. In the strict definition, which originates from serial robotic manipulators, the end effector means the last link (or end) of the robot. At this endpoint, the tools are attached. In a wider sense, an end effector can be seen as the part of a robot that interacts with the work environment.
Ricci curvatureIn differential geometry, the Ricci curvature tensor, named after Gregorio Ricci-Curbastro, is a geometric object which is determined by a choice of Riemannian or pseudo-Riemannian metric on a manifold. It can be considered, broadly, as a measure of the degree to which the geometry of a given metric tensor differs locally from that of ordinary Euclidean space or pseudo-Euclidean space. The Ricci tensor can be characterized by measurement of how a shape is deformed as one moves along geodesics in the space.
