Climbing robot serves many critical applications for large and high-rise structures, including safe-maintenance, inspection and cleaning. It becomes unsafe for human operator to perform such operation, which could result in catastrophic... more
Climbing robot serves many critical applications for large and high-rise structures, including safe-maintenance, inspection and cleaning. It becomes unsafe for human operator to perform such operation, which could result in catastrophic damage to the property and/or it could harm human lives. Climbing robots can also be used for reaching dangerous places with limited possible access, such as mines, wells and nuclear reactor. This paper proposes a new design for climbing robot with adjustable maintenance-arm mechanism connected to it. The robot is able to climb tubular structures, which can be part of high-rise buildings to perform service and/or maintenance operations. The robot integrates sensors that can detect obstacles. Moreover, the article describes and shows photographs of a prototype built and tested as verification for the proposed approach.
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In this paper, a muscle gesture computer Interface (MGCI) system for robot navigation Control employing a commercial wearable MYO gesture Control armband is proposed. the motion and gesture control device from Thalamic Labs. The software... more
In this paper, a muscle gesture computer Interface (MGCI) system for robot navigation Control employing a commercial wearable MYO gesture Control armband is proposed. the motion and gesture control device from Thalamic Labs. The software interface is developed using LabVIEW and Visual Studio C++. The hardware Interface between the Thalamic lab’s MYO armband and the robotic arm has been implemented using a National Instruments My RIO, which provides real time EMG data needed. This system allows the user to control a three Degrees of freedom robotic arm remotely by his/her Intuitive motion by Combining the real time Electromyography (EMG) signal and inertial measurement unit (IMU) signals. Computer simulations and experiments are developed to evaluate the feasibility of the proposed System. This system will allow a person to wear this/her armband and move his/her hand and the robotic arm will imitate the motion of his/her hand. The armband can pick up the EMG signals of the person’s h...
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One of the most important safety features of an automobile is its braking system. The ability of a braking system to provide safe and repeatable stopping is the key to safe motoring. Mechatronics subsystems are more and more developed in... more
One of the most important safety features of an automobile is its braking system. The ability of a braking system to provide safe and repeatable stopping is the key to safe motoring. Mechatronics subsystems are more and more developed in automotive industries and in the recent years modern control techniques have been applied to a wide range of many electronic control systems in the automotive industry such as Anti-Lock Brake Systems (ABS). This article proposed an intelligent adaptive control for anti-lock braking system (ABS), to control the desired slip ratio that prevents wheels from locking. A Fuzzy controller having Gaussian memberships is developed to calculate the amount of reduction of the applied torque based on the error signal (the difference between the measured slip ratio and the desired slip ratio). Results of the proposed controller are compared with the results of a PID controller. The scheme is implemented using a quarter car model and simulation tests were carried...
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This paper presents the design and implementation of a low-cost and reliable wireless motion control system for conventional electric wheelchairs. The presented work aims to enhance the mobility of handicapped and elderly wheelchair users... more
This paper presents the design and implementation of a low-cost and reliable wireless motion control system for conventional electric wheelchairs. The presented work aims to enhance the mobility of handicapped and elderly wheelchair users by utilizing a mobile application to control the motion of their unattained wheelchairs. The designed system takes into consideration cost, weight, a range of operation, ease of use, and implementation. The conventional electric wheelchair is equipped with a motorized front wheel steering mechanism. In addition, it is equipped with a Wi-Fi module to support remote motion control via a specially designed Android mobile application called “Android Application For NavigAtioN”; AAFNAN for short. Experimental testing of the prototype showed successful remote motion control and ease of use.
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Given the increase use of modern technology in today’s life, many facility appliances provide efficient ways to protect human from hazardous work areas, such as explosives, and nuclear plants. This paper proposes a four... more
Given the increase use of modern technology in today’s life, many facility appliances provide efficient ways to protect human from hazardous work areas, such as explosives, and nuclear plants. This paper proposes a four omnidirectional-wheels mobile robot based on a Mecanum wheel that can navigate smoothly taking into consideration the kinematic constraint. In this research, Genetic Algorithm (GA) is used for two purposes. First, GA-PID controller is used, where a PID controller is tuned using GA. Second, the kinematic constraint of the motor’s speed is taken into consideration using GA controller. GA finds the appropriate robot velocity that requires about 90% of the rated maximum motor’s speed. In order to evaluate the performance of the developed robot and its controller, MATLAB is used to verify the robustness of the optimized GA-PID controller taking into consideration the motors’ speeds. The error and the robot motors’ speeds are calculated utilizing MATLAB simulation on diffe...
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The paper aims at optimizing the heat sink dimensions by maximizing the heat dissipation and minimizing thermal resistance and pressure drop. In this paper, a Neural network model is built for a parallel-plain fin heat sink. The model is... more
The paper aims at optimizing the heat sink dimensions by maximizing the heat dissipation and minimizing thermal resistance and pressure drop. In this paper, a Neural network model is built for a parallel-plain fin heat sink. The model is developed using an experimental data from the literature. In addition, a quadratic model equation of the affecting parameters is constructed and analyzed using Response Surface Methodology for determining the important factors affecting the performance of the heat sink, and the quadratic effect of every factor by using design of experiment, analysis of variance and regression analysis. The results of the neural network model are compared with the experiment and it is shown that the error does not exceed 13.54%. This value is considered small and acceptable for such system.
Introduction The article presents a model for investigating the diagnosis of a rotating beam (blade). Numerous cases of mechanical failures caused by fatigue crack are presented in the literature. In 1970, metallurgical examination... more
Introduction The article presents a model for investigating the diagnosis of a rotating beam (blade). Numerous cases of mechanical failures caused by fatigue crack are presented in the literature. In 1970, metallurgical examination revealed that a fatigue crack found in a rotating turbine blade in an electric power generator was the major cause of failures [1]. In the literature, little existing work about crack assessment of rotating beams. In [2], the author developed a theory on vibration of cracked shafts and included an extension to cracked beams and turbine blades. Lee [3] used a microphone as a noncontact sensor and established the utility of chirp-z transform as a signal processing tool to estimate the vibration modal frequencies. Moreover, the author built a neural network empirical model relating the estimated vibration mode frequencies and the crack size. A significant limitation of this model is that it does not have much generality due to its dependence on run-to-fail d...
Wheelchairs have been an active-research problem in the maneuverability of mobile robots over the past decade. This study aims to develop the transportability of disabled people by controlling the motion of their smart wheelchairs. It... more
Wheelchairs have been an active-research problem in the maneuverability of mobile robots over the past decade. This study aims to develop the transportability of disabled people by controlling the motion of their smart wheelchairs. It presents a design of omnidirectional mobile robot where its wheels can be equipped to replace a conventional electric wheelchair in order to achieve flexible and reliable maneuverability. The decentralized algorithm is used for motion control of the omnidirectional robot, which deals with the three independent components of robot’s motion in the body coordinate frame: rotational moving, horizontal moving and vertical moving, which can be controlled separately with separated and different sub-controllers. The simulation analysis of the proposed study has been tested in authors’ previous work and two approaches of artificial intelligent-based controllers (PD-Fuzzy-P and GA-PID controllers) have been built in order to control optimally the maneuverability of such system. The results have showed that the PD-fuzzy-P controller has converged faster than the GA-PID controller and the robot has been able to track successfully the sharp curves’ maneuverability, such as a 90° corner in the squared shape and a U-turn in the rose shape with an error approaching zero. In this paper, the experimental tests of the PD-fuzzy-P controller are carried out on a real robot developed using EV3 Lego kit parts and Vicon motion capturing system is used to capture the robot’s motion in various trajectory scenarios in order to test the effectiveness of the proposed control design.
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Suspension system plays a major role in both comfort and stability of a vehicle. This paper presents modeling and controlling for a 3 Degree of Freedom (DOF) active suspension system. Four controllers are designed to control the response... more
Suspension system plays a major role in both comfort and stability of a vehicle. This paper presents modeling and controlling for a 3 Degree of Freedom (DOF) active suspension system. Four controllers are designed to control the response of the active suspension system, namely PID, LQR, Fuzzy Logic Controller (FLC) and Artificial Neural Network (ANN). The response for both the active suspension system and the passive suspension system is compared. For passive suspension system, it has been found out that it is hard to improve both passenger comfort and road handling at the same time, because of the fixed parameters that cannot be changed during the work. On the other hand, in active suspension system, both ride comfort and road handling can be improved. This work has showed that ANN, FLC, LQR, and PID controllers can be used with an active suspension system in order to improve the performance, the stability, and the ride comfortability compared to the passive suspension system. All these controllers are simulated using MATLAB and Simulink. Different road profiles are used to test the active suspension system response, such as a step input of 0.1 m, and a sinewave of amplitude of 0.3m and a frequency of 0.318Hz. All the controllers show better response compared to passive suspension system. A compromise can be done to choose the controller depending on the desired states.
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Mobile robots and their motion control are two of the challenging and active research areas nowadays. Wheeled robots can be very fast and stable when moving on smooth terrain. On the other hand, legged robots are far superior when it... more
Mobile robots and their motion control are two of the challenging and active research areas nowadays. Wheeled robots can be very fast and stable when moving on smooth terrain. On the other hand, legged robots are far superior when it comes to rough terrains and environments that contain many obstacles, which is the case of many real-life situations. In this article, and the design and the implementation of a hexapod robot with 18 DOF is presented. This robot contains six legs attached to a main body known as the trunk. Each leg will have three links known as the coxa, the femur and the tibia, resulting in 3 joints and consequently 3 DOF for each leg powered by 3 DC servo motors. The amount of rotation for each servo motor is controlled by an Arduino microcontroller boards. Inverse and forward kinematics are studied to produce a mathematical model for the motion of the legs based on a predefined trajectory for the end effector of each leg. The robot is designed using CAD software and a simulation is carried out in order to validate the inverse and forward kinematics results. In addition, an experimental prototype setup is built and tested. Experimental results for the robot motion show smooth motion for the robot. It is tested on different types of terrains, namely, smooth and rough terrains, and the results are promising in each case. Video for the motion will be provided.
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The last decade observed a significant research effort directed towards maneuverability and safety of mobile robots such as smart wheelchairs. The conventional electric wheelchair can be equipped with motorized omnidirectional wheels and... more
The last decade observed a significant research effort directed towards maneuverability and safety of mobile robots such as smart wheelchairs. The conventional electric wheelchair can be equipped with motorized omnidirectional wheels and several sensors serving as inputs for the controller to achieve smooth, safe, and reliable maneuverability. This work uses the decentralized algorithm to control the motion of omnidirectional wheelchairs. In the body frame of the omnidirectional wheeled wheelchair there are three separated independent components of motion including rotational motion, horizontal motion, and vertical motion, which can be controlled separately. So, each component can have its different sub-controller with a minimum tracking error. The present work aims to enhance the mobility of wheelchair users by utilizing an application to control the motion of their attained/unattained smart wheelchairs, especially in narrow places and at hard detours such as 90˚ corners and U-turn...
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The interaction between the human body motion and the robotic motion has gained much interest nowadays. Enhancing the accuracy of such a system requires the use of more complex systems in order to maintain the safety of the user,... more
The interaction between the human body motion and the robotic motion has gained much interest nowadays. Enhancing the accuracy of such a system requires the use of more complex systems in order to maintain the safety of the user, especially in critical systems such as disabled assistant systems. In this work, an investigation of motion control using Surface electromyography (sEMG) signals, which are obtained from the user’s arm, is studied. This system can help disabled drivers who can use their arms and cannot use their feet for speed or braking pedals. The sEMG signal can be obtained by fixing a gesture with multi sEMG sensors on the user’s arm between the elbow and the wrist. The controller receives the sEMG signal and the proper signal is sent to the motors responsible for accelerating or decelerating the vehicle through speed or braking pedal, respectively. The sEMG signal is usually time-varying noisy signal; hence, a proper filter is needed to attenuate the unwanted noisy signal. In addition, an intelligent controller is developed to control vehicles speeding and braking safely. In this paper a Fuzzy logic controller is chosen due to the high nonlinearity of such a system. The system can be improved to cover different activities and actions based on the user’s needs.
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ABSTRACT
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ABSTRACT The paper presents a fuzzy logic approach that aims to control the indoor air quality to provide a safe and comfortable environment. The proposed approach evaluates the current situation based on installed sensors and... more
ABSTRACT The paper presents a fuzzy logic approach that aims to control the indoor air quality to provide a safe and comfortable environment. The proposed approach evaluates the current situation based on installed sensors and consequently provides the proper action(s) to keep the indoor environment safe and comfortable for living. Inputs for the fuzzy controller include measurements from temperature and humidity sensors to boost comfort, and that from toxic odors sensors to enhance safety. Controller's outputs include signals to the air conditioning unit (AC), ventilation system, and humidifier/de-humidifier, in addition to visual/audio warning alerts in case of dangerous situations. To validate the usability of the controller, various combinations of buildups of heat, humidity, and odors are investigated. Results obtained from the simulation studies illustrate the robustness of the proposed controller at the different input scenarios.
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Legs are the most important elements for accomplishing human physical work including transportation or displacement. The article presents a mechanical reproduction of the human walking apparatus. Using design rules, a final mechanism... more
Legs are the most important elements for accomplishing human physical work including transportation or displacement. The article presents a mechanical reproduction of the human walking apparatus. Using design rules, a final mechanism configuration is achieved such that the crank is a binary link connected to a binary ground link. The resulting linkage is a single degree-of-freedom (DOF) eight-bar mechanism. The mechanism exemplifies the shape and movement of a human leg. The mechanism is simulated and ...
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The paper presents a Fuzzy-based adaptive cruise control system with collision avoidance and collision warning (ACC/CA/CW). The proposed control scheme aims to improve driver's comfort while keeping him/her safe by avoiding possible... more
The paper presents a Fuzzy-based adaptive cruise control system with collision avoidance and collision warning (ACC/CA/CW). The proposed control scheme aims to improve driver's comfort while keeping him/her safe by avoiding possible collisions. Depending on inputs from both the driver and the installed sensors, the controller accelerates/decelerates the vehicle to keep its speed at the desired limit. In case of a possible collision, the controller decelerates (accelerates) the vehicle to prevent possible crash with the vehicle ahead (behind). Moreover, the controller issues visual and/or audio alerts for the driver in order to warn him/her in case of the need for applying an uncomfortable deceleration level and/or to warn the driver for risky situations where he/she might need to change the lane. Simulation results illustrate the robustness of the proposed system over various ranges of inputs.
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This paper proposes an optimization-based model for production planning, and physical programming as an effective method to optimize the production planning process within this model's framework. This model seeks to minimize cost and... more
This paper proposes an optimization-based model for production planning, and physical programming as an effective method to optimize the production planning process within this model's framework. This model seeks to minimize cost and manufacturing time, while ...