A compact stair-climbing wheelchair with two 3-DOF legs and a 1-DOF base

Author(s):  
Chang-Hyuk Lee ◽  
Kyung-min Lee ◽  
Jehong Yoo ◽  
In-su Kim ◽  
Young-bong Bang

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe a compact wheelchair, which has two 3-degrees of freedom (DOF) legs and a 1-DOF base (the total DOF of the leg system is 7) for stair-climbing, and wheels for flat surface driving. Design/methodology/approach – The proposed wheelchair climbs stairs using the two 3-DOF legs with boomerang-shaped feet. The leg mechanisms are folded into the compact wheelchair body when the wheelchair moves over flat surfaces. The authors also propose a simple estimation method of stair shape using laser distance sensors, and a dual motor driving system to increase joint power. Findings – The proposed wheelchair can climb arbitrary height and width stairs by itself, even when they are slightly curved. During climbing, the trajectory of the seat position is linear to guarantee the comfort of rider, and the wheelchair always keeps a stable condition to ensure the stability in an emergency stop. Originality/value – The wheelchair mechanism with foldable legs and driving wheels enables smooth stair climbing, efficient flat surface driving and additional useful motions such as standing and tilting.

Author(s):  
A Selk Ghafari ◽  
A Meghdari ◽  
G Vossoughi

The aim of this study is to employ feedback control loops to provide a stable forward dynamics simulation of human movement under repeated position constraint conditions in the environment, particularly during stair climbing. A ten-degrees-of-freedom skeletal model containing 18 Hill-type musculotendon actuators per leg was employed to simulate the model in the sagittal plane. The postural tracking and obstacle avoidance were provided by the proportional—integral—derivative controller according to the modulation of the time rate change of the joint kinematics. The stability of the model was maintained by controlling the velocity of the body's centre of mass according to the desired centre of pressure during locomotion. The parameters of the proposed controller were determined by employing the iterative feedback tuning approach to minimize tracking errors during forward dynamics simulation. Simultaneously, an inverse-dynamics-based optimization was employed to compute a set of desired musculotendon forces in the closed-loop simulation to resolve muscle redundancy. Quantitative comparisons of the simulation results with the experimental measurements and the reference muscles' activities illustrate the accuracy and efficiency of the proposed method during the stable ascending simulation.


2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 319-341 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana Sauca ◽  
Thomas Gernay ◽  
Fabienne Robert ◽  
Nicola Tondini ◽  
Jean-Marc Franssen

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to propose a method for hybrid fire testing (HFT) which is unconditionally stable, ensures equilibrium and compatibility at the interface and captures the global behavior of the analyzed structure. HFT is a technique that allows assessing experimentally the fire performance of a structural element under real boundary conditions that capture the effect of the surrounding structure. Design/methodology/approach The paper starts with the analysis of the method used in the few previous HFT. Based on the analytical study of a simple one degree-of-freedom elastic system, it is shown that this previous method is fundamentally unstable in certain configurations that cannot be easily predicted in advance. Therefore, a new method is introduced to overcome the stability problem. The method is applied in a virtual hybrid test on a 2D reinforced concrete beam part of a moment-resisting frame. Findings It is shown through analytical developments and applicative examples that the stability of the method used in previous HFT depends on the stiffness ratio between the two substructures. The method is unstable when implemented in force control on a physical substructure that is less stiff than the surrounding structure. Conversely, the method is unstable when implemented in displacement control on a physical substructure stiffer than the remainder. In multi-degrees-of-freedom tests where the temperature will affect the stiffness of the elements, it is generally not possible to ensure continuous stability throughout the test using this former method. Therefore, a new method is proposed where the stability is not dependent on the stiffness ratio between the two substructures. Application of the new method in a virtual HFT proved to be stable, to ensure compatibility and equilibrium at the interface and to reproduce accurately the global structural behavior. Originality/value The paper provides a method to perform hybrid fire tests which overcomes the stability problem lying in the former method. The efficiency of the new method is demonstrated in a virtual HFT with three degrees-of-freedom at the interface, the next step being its implementation in a real (laboratory) hybrid test.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Wenjue Zhu ◽  
Krishna P. Paudel ◽  
Sean Inoue ◽  
Biliang Luo

PurposeThe purpose is to understand why contract instability occurs when small landowners lease their land to large landholders.Design/methodology/approachThe authors develop a contract theoretical model to understand the stability problem in the farmland lease contract in China, where most landowners are small landholders.FindingsResults from the doubly robust estimation method used on randomly selected interview data from 552 households in nine provinces of China indicate that contract instability can arise endogenously when large landholders sign a contract. The authors conclude that a suitable rent control regime or contract enforcement may be necessary to promote a large-scale farmland transfer in China.Originality/valueThe authors develop a contract theoretical model and apply it to the land rental market in China. Data used are original and collected from farmers located in nine provinces of China.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhen Wang ◽  
Huanling Wang ◽  
Weiya Xu ◽  
W.C. Xie

Purpose This paper aims to analyze the influence of rotated anisotropy on the stability of slope, the random finite element method is used in this study. Design/methodology/approach The random field is generated by the discrete cosine transform (DCT) method, which can generate random field with different rotated angles conveniently. Findings Two idealized slopes are analyzed; it is observed that the rotated angle significantly affects the slope failure risk. The two examples support the conclusion that when the orientation of the layers is nearly perpendicular to the slip surface, the slope is in a relative stable condition. The results of heterogeneous slope with two clay layers demonstrate that the rotated angle of lower layer mainly controls the failure mechanism of the slope, and the rotated angle of upper layer exhibits a significant influence on the probability of slope failure. Originality/value The method for rotated anisotropy random field generation based on the DCT has a simple expression with few parameters and is convenient for implementation and practical application. The proposed method and the results obtained are useful for analyzing the stability of the heterogeneous slopes in engineering projects.


2019 ◽  
Vol 75 (2) ◽  
pp. I_403-I_408
Author(s):  
Tomoaki NAKAMURA ◽  
Fumito ONUMA ◽  
Yonghwan CHO ◽  
Norimi MIZUTANI ◽  
Mikiko EGUCHI ◽  
...  

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jin Wang ◽  
Qin Zhang ◽  
Guanwen Huang

AbstractThe Fractional Cycle Bias (FCB) product is crucial for the Ambiguity Resolution (AR) in Precise Point Positioning (PPP). Different from the traditional method using the ionospheric-free ambiguity which is formed by the Wide Lane (WL) and Narrow Lane (NL) combinations, the uncombined PPP model is flexible and effective to generate the FCB products. This study presents the FCB estimation method based on the multi-Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) precise satellite orbit and clock corrections from the international GNSS Monitoring and Assessment System (iGMAS) observations using the uncombined PPP model. The dual-frequency raw ambiguities are combined by the integer coefficients (4,− 3) and (1,− 1) to directly estimate the FCBs. The details of FCB estimation are described with the Global Positioning System (GPS), BeiDou-2 Navigation Satellite System (BDS-2) and Galileo Navigation Satellite System (Galileo). For the estimated FCBs, the Root Mean Squares (RMSs) of the posterior residuals are smaller than 0.1 cycles, which indicates a high consistency for the float ambiguities. The stability of the WL FCBs series is better than 0.02 cycles for the three GNSS systems, while the STandard Deviation (STD) of the NL FCBs for BDS-2 is larger than 0.139 cycles. The combined FCBs have better stability than the raw series. With the multi-GNSS FCB products, the PPP AR for GPS/BDS-2/Galileo is demonstrated using the raw observations. For hourly static positioning results, the performance of the PPP AR with the three-system observations is improved by 42.6%, but only 13.1% for kinematic positioning results. The results indicate that precise and reliable positioning can be achieved with the PPP AR of GPS/BDS-2/Galileo, supported by multi-GNSS satellite orbit, clock, and FCB products based on iGMAS.


Robotica ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Hongkai Li ◽  
Xianfei Sun ◽  
Zishuo Chen ◽  
Lei Zhang ◽  
Hongchao Wang ◽  
...  

Abstract Inspired by gecko’s adhesive feet, a wheeled wall climbing robot is designed in this paper with the synchronized gears and belt system acting as the wheels by considering both motion efficiency and adhesive capability. Adhesion of wheels is obtained by the bio-inspired adhesive material wrapping on the outer surface of wheels. A ducted fan mounted on the back of the robot supplies thrust force for the adhesive material to generate normal and shear adhesion force whilemoving on vertical surfaces. Experimental verification of robot climbing on vertical flat surface was carried out. The stability and the effect of structure design parameters were analyzed.


Meccanica ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dóra Patkó ◽  
Ambrus Zelei

AbstractFor both non-redundant and redundant systems, the inverse kinematics (IK) calculation is a fundamental step in the control algorithm of fully actuated serial manipulators. The tool-center-point (TCP) position is given and the joint coordinates are determined by the IK. Depending on the task, robotic manipulators can be kinematically redundant. That is when the desired task possesses lower dimensions than the degrees-of-freedom of a redundant manipulator. The IK calculation can be implemented numerically in several alternative ways not only in case of the redundant but also in the non-redundant case. We study the stability properties and the feasibility of a tracking error feedback and a direct tracking error elimination approach of the numerical implementation of IK calculation both on velocity and acceleration levels. The feedback approach expresses the joint position increment stepwise based on the local velocity or acceleration of the desired TCP trajectory and linear feedback terms. In the direct error elimination concept, the increment of the joint position is directly given by the approximate error between the desired and the realized TCP position, by assuming constant TCP velocity or acceleration. We investigate the possibility of the implementation of the direct method on acceleration level. The investigated IK methods are unified in a framework that utilizes the idea of the auxiliary input. Our closed form results and numerical case study examples show the stability properties, benefits and disadvantages of the assessed IK implementations.


2017 ◽  
Vol 139 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Samuel F. Asokanthan ◽  
Soroush Arghavan ◽  
Mohamed Bognash

Effect of stochastic fluctuations in angular velocity on the stability of two degrees-of-freedom ring-type microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) gyroscopes is investigated. The governing stochastic differential equations (SDEs) are discretized using the higher-order Milstein scheme in order to numerically predict the system response assuming the fluctuations to be white noise. Simulations via Euler scheme as well as a measure of largest Lyapunov exponents (LLEs) are employed for validation purposes due to lack of similar analytical or experimental data. The response of the gyroscope under different noise fluctuation magnitudes has been computed to ascertain the stability behavior of the system. External noise that affect the gyroscope dynamic behavior typically results from environment factors and the nature of the system operation can be exerted on the system at any frequency range depending on the source. Hence, a parametric study is performed to assess the noise intensity stability threshold for a number of damping ratio values. The stability investigation predicts the form of threshold fluctuation intensity dependence on damping ratio. Under typical gyroscope operating conditions, nominal input angular velocity magnitude and mass mismatch appear to have minimal influence on system stability.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Xiaohui Liu ◽  
Ming Zou ◽  
Chuan Wu ◽  
Mengqi Cai ◽  
Guangyun Min ◽  
...  

A new quad bundle conductor galloping model considering wake effect is proposed to solve the problem of different aerodynamic coefficients of each subconductor of iced quad bundle conductor. Based on the quasistatic theory, a new 3-DOF (three degrees of freedom) galloping model of iced quad bundle conductors is established, which can accurately reflect the energy transfer and galloping of quad bundle conductor in three directions. After a series of formula derivations, the conductor stability judgment formula is obtained. In the wind tunnel test, according to the actual engineering situation, different variables are set up to accurately simulate the galloping of iced quad bundle conductor under the wind, and the aerodynamic coefficient is obtained. Finally, according to the stability judgment formula of this paper, calculate the critical wind speed of conductor galloping through programming. The dates of wind tunnel test and calculation in this paper can be used in the antigalloping design of transmission lines.


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