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This paper proposes a methodology to improve the robot localization accuracy with only range measurement data for wireless sensors, e.g. Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, mobile network base station, ultra-wide band (UWB) tag, or even cameras and lidar with landmark range data. Accordingly, we modeled the robot localization as an optimization problem by using only the range data. Intuitively, this is a nonconvex problem which arises the difficulty of getting the optimal solution. Therefore we further reformulate it as a convex problem and the global optimal solution is guaranteed. Furthermore, the comparison experiments of a robot implementing a traditional Kalman filter using smoothing data as well as our proposed method have been done with the motion capture system benchmark. Both the simulation and field experiments validate the robustness and accuracy of our proposed method. The quantitative evaluation of the localization accuracy increases by 61.29% in simulation and 39.03% in field experiment to the best within a workspace of 4m ×4m in the scenarios.

Obstacle avoidance is crucial for autonomous surface vehicles (ASVs) in the sea because rescue is extremely difficult there. OceanVoy, a sailboat toward long range energy-saving voyage, has to overcome the dual challenges, i.e. from the environmental interference and its low mobility preventing from precise obstacle avoidance. We propose a control scheme based on real-time collision risk assessment and a hybrid propulsion system to enhance safety of OceanVoy. A novel sailboat safety zone (SSZ) has been designed to warn the potential collision during its sailing. Both intrinsic characteristics of OceanVoy and environmental factors have been considered in SSZ. We use lateral and axial thrusters to provide emergency propulsion. A collision avoidance algorithm is executed to coordinate motors in rudder, sail and thrusters based on SSZ. Both simulation and experiments have been conducted and the results have validated our system and collision avoidance scheme.

Self-assembly has attracted growing interests in modular robotics during past decades. Recent work accelerates the assembly process by parallelizing the docking actions among robots. However, these methods can only apply to ideal environments without obstacles. Otherwise, robots will get trapped during the assembly process, due to the complex scenes with obstacles. This paper presents an efficient parallel assembly planning algorithm for modular robots by taking the surrounding obstacles into consideration. By this algorithm, the docking actions are able to avoid immovable obstacles, and therefore parallel self-assembly of robots can adapt to complex environments. To validate the efficacy and generality, the authors have implemented this algorithm in a grid-world simulation environment with 25 distinct maps. The simulation results show a much higher success rate (more than 80%) of our proposed algorithm compared with the existing parallel self-assembly planning algorithms. Finally, the feasibility of the algorithm is affirmed by a self-assembly experiment on the automated guided vehicles (AGVs).

This paper proposes a novel modular selfreconfigurable robot (MSRR) "FreeBOT", which can be connected freely at any point on other robots. FreeBOT is mainly composed of two parts: a spherical ferromagnetic shell and an internal magnet. The connection between the modules is genderless and instant, since the internal magnet can freely attract other FreeBOT spherical ferromagnetic shells, and not need to be precisely aligned with the specified connector. This connection method has fewer physical constraints, so the FreeBOT system can be extended to more configurations to meet more functional requirements. FreeBOT can accomplish multiple tasks although it only has two motors: module independent movement, connector management and system reconfiguration. FreeBOT can move independently on the plane, and even climb on ferromagnetic walls; a group of FreeBOTs can traverse complex terrain. Numerous experiments have been conducted to test its function, which shows that the FreeBOT system has great potential to realize a freeform robotic system.

This paper introduces an obstacle-crossing strategy, and the self-reconfiguration algorithm for a new class of modular robots called the rolling sphere, which can fit obstacles represented by cubes of different sizes due to the chain connection of multiple spheres. For the self-reconfiguration of the rolling spheres, a large gradient is obtained by classifying its action types and hierarchically minimizing the distance between the initial configuration and the final configuration. The most direct use of this large gradient is the fast crossing of various obstacles, by jointing multiple self-reconfigurations according to the OctoMap of the obstacles. It is verified in simulation that the self-reconfiguration takes full advantage of the parallel movement of multiple modules to reduce the total time steps, and the obstacle-crossing strategy can adapt to a variety of obstacles.

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak has increased mortality and morbidity world-wide. Oropharyngeal swabbing is a well-known and commonly used sampling technique for COVID-19 diagnose around the world. We developed a robot to assist with COVID-19 oropharyngeal swabbing to prevent frontline clinical staff from being infected. The robot integrates a UR5 manipulator, rigid-flexible coupling (RFC) manipulator, force-sensing and control subsystem, visual subsystem and haptic device. The robot has strength in intrinsically safe and high repeat positioning accuracy. In addition, we also achieve one-dimensional constant force control in the automatic scheme (AS). Compared with the rigid sampling robot, the developed robot can perform the oropharyngeal swabbing procedure more safely and gently, reducing risk. Alternatively, a novel robot control schemes called collaborative manipulation scheme (CMS) which combines a automatic phase and teleoperation phase is proposed. At last, comparative experiments of three schemes were conducted, including CMS, AS, and teleoperation scheme (TS). The experimental results shows that CMS obtained the highest score according to the evaluation equation. CMS has the excellent performance in quality, experience and adaption. Therefore, the proposal of CMS is meaningful which is more suitable for robot-sampling.

This paper presents a novel Cable Climbing Robot CCRobot-III, which is the third version designed for bridge cable inspection tasks, aiming at surpassing previous versions in terms of climbing speed and payload capacity. Benefiting from Split-type Wire-driven design, CCRobot-III can climb along a 90-110mm diameter bridge cable in inchworm-like gait at a speed of up to 12m/min, and carrying more than 40kg payload at the same time. CCRobot-III consists of a climbing precursor and a main-body frame. The two parts are connected and driven by steel wires. The climbing precursor, acting as a mobile anchor, moves quickly on a bridge cable. The mainbody frame, acting as a mobile winch, carries payload and pulls itself to a certain position with steel wires. Both parts have one or two pairs of palm-based gripper, which is the key component for providing strong adhesion to support the robot climbing. Experimental results have shown that CCRobotIII possesses outstanding climbing performance, high payload capacity, and good adaptability to complex conditions of cable surface. Moreover, it has potential engineering applications on the cable-stayed bridge for fieldwork.

Collaborative object transportation has become a popular study trend with its remarkable application foreground. In previous relevant studies, localization of the transported object has always been accomplished by additional devices rather than robot onboard equipments. This paper presents a generalized multi-robot leader-follower system for collaborative object transportation and an onboard object localization algorithm for trajectory tracking of the target object. In this system, the mobile robots can directly push a cubic object without extra gripping devices, when tracking the reference trajectory. During the control process, the object is regarded as an virtual leader, whose localization information is utilized as the feedback, while the mobile robots are considered as the followers. In absence of external localization systems, the proposed onboard localization algorithm provides the real-time position information of the object using scan data from lidars equipped on the robots. A performed measurement accuracy test shows high precision of this algorithm. Finally, a lane-changing experiment of object transportation is conducted, and it verifies this multi-robot leader-follower system.

This paper presents a new model of automatic music generation which is based on simulated annealing and genetic algorithm. Our model uses simulated annealing algorithm to create melody units on different chords, and regards them as the genes in genetic algorithm, which can pick out a fine combination of these genes. This model is efficient for producing massive fair-sounding pieces of double-track music, when provided with a customized metric. Hence, it can be especially useful for massively producing background musics for video games, or providing inspirations for music composers. In this paper, we detailedly state how to transform the prior knowledge about music theory into a reasonable metric, and propose a sample metric for reference. Using this sample metric, we generate a set of music pieces as test cases. The evaluation results show that these pieces fully satisfy the need of quality and creativity.

The ability to maintain balance and stability is a major challenge for quadruped robots in locomotion. For example, when walking in the unstructured environment, the robot not only needs to adjust its gait according to the terrain information, but also needs to tune the body posture based on the real-time body posture acquired from inertial measurement unit (IMU) to maintain stability. In this paper, we present a method that focuses on the design of the posture correction controller based on the IMU feedback for adaptive slope walking for a quadruped robot. To this end, the posture correction controller is integrated into the foot trajectory generator to maintain balance. We experimentally validated our approach both on simulation and real quadruped robot. Compared with the one only with the foot trajectory generator, the quadruped robot can walk more stable with the posture correction controller integrated into the foot trajectory generator and has a better locomotion ability. Our method increases locomotion stability when walking on the slopes.

Trajectory tracking is a decisive factor that affects autonomous driving performance of mobile robots in real-world applications, such as industry, service and other areas. Nowadays, there has been many works about path planning and trajectory tracking. Whereas there are problems to be improved to make mobile robot well applied in practical world. For example, generated trajectory can't be tracked smoothly, and the robot has to stop and rotate itself to adjust pose and pass segments in trajectory because of constrains of path curvature and robot's kinematics model. In this paper, a new trajectory planning algorithm with cubic spline interpolation method was proposed, which fully considered constrains of robot model including velocity and acceleration bounds. And corresponding trajectory was generated. Then a robust controller was built to conduct tracking tests. Experimental results demonstrate that our planning and tracking algorithm could help robot achieve a smooth, accurate and efficient trajectory tracking performance without any stop.

Sailing robots provide a low-cost solution to conduct the ocean missions such as marine exploration, pollution detection, and border surveillance, etc. However, compared with other propeller-driven surface vessels, sailboat suffers in complex marine wind field due to its low mobility. Especially in tacking, sailboats are required to head upwind, and need to make a zig-zag path. In this trajectory, a series of turnings, which will cross the challenging no-go zone, place significant challenge as it will reduce speed greatly and consequently result in unsuccessful turning. This paper presents a hybrid sailboat design to solve this issue. Electric propellers and control system are added to a model sailboat. We have further designed the control strategy and tuned the parameters (PWM-time) experimentally. Finally, the system and control can complete the tacking maneuver with average speed approximately 10% higher and enhanced success rate, though the sailboat weight is much heavier.

Recent studies have witnessed a significant progress in developing legged robots with rapid and stable locomotion speeds and adaptability to complex roads, but their high energy consumption limited their development and applications. This paper analyzes the energy efficiency of a bionic electric-drive panda robot serving as an emotional companion for robot-enhanced therapy. Unlike other quadruped robots, our bionic robot focuses on emotional interaction rather than capability of dexterous locomotion and operations. This results in the need to change working period. Then we proposed four strategies to reduce energy consumption. The energy efficiency optimization strategy described in this paper is suitable for quadruped robots focusing on none-highly dynamic motions, and can be treated as locomotion optimization strategy based on energy efficiency optimization for quadruped robots to some extent.

Accurate turning is not an easy task for the quadruped robot and previous work mainly addresses the problem with complex control strategy or systems. This paper proposes a design method for the accurate turning motion of a quadruped robot with 12 degrees of freedom (DOF). Unlike others, we have achieved precise turning motion with a relatively simple geometric approach. Once the parameters of desired movement are set, such as the turning radius and angles, the robot can realize corresponding circle locomotion. A design architecture including geometric analysis, 3D foot trajectory design and inverse kinematics is presented to solve the problem systematically. In addition, according to the different conditions, the corresponding compensation coefficient is necessarily considered in order to acquire precise values of leg joints. At last, comparison results by several experiments have identified the feasibility and accuracy of turning along a circle trajectory based on our proposed method.

A vision-based perception system for understanding the outdoor environment has been proposed. This system utilizes and applies the useful information from the binocular cameras of a legged robot for landform — terrain — ground environmental perception. The ground texture recognition can provide information about the material of the ground then a legged robot can choose an appropriate walking pose accordingly. With the terrain perception and obstacle detection, combined with semantic segmentation of the environment, a legged robot can move towards the target with intelligent obstacle avoidance strategy. Based on this vision-based perception system, we propose a vision-based perception framework for outdoor navigation tasks applicable to legged robots. In this framework, environmental modeling and situation assessment will be firstly carried out combined with multi-mode sensor fusion, and then footsteps and local path planning can be generated.

This paper presents the gait design and comparison study of a quadruped robot. The main contributions of this paper are: (i) Explore the modularized system design of an 8 degree-of-freedom quadruped robot with a power management system. (ii) Propose a gait design method based on drive function. (iii) Propose another gait design method based on foot trajectory. (iv) The simulation of the walk and trot gaits with above-mentioned methods are validated in Webots. (v) The walk and trot gait are successfully implemented in the real robot. Experimental results show that the stable locomotion can be achieved with improved elliptical foot trajectory.

Monocular cameras are not generally considered as a 3D measurement tool in the field of intelligent transportations. This belief limits the application of monocular cameras in many applications such as guiding robots or vehicles for autonomous driving. In this paper, we demonstrate that with the reference of a license plate, a monocular camera can be used as a tool to measure 3 dimensional parameters (width, height and length) of a passenger vehicle down to 10 cm accuracy. The proposed measurement method does not reply on any training process, but is designed as a fast and direct approach utilizing a series of fundamental computer vision techniques such as ROI extraction, edge/line detection, space coordinates transformations, etc. A series of validation tests were conducted and the results demonstrated the robustness of this measurement method and implies the possibility to broaden the application scope of monocular cameras in the field of autonomous driving and intelligent transportation systems.

Localization and navigation are fundamental issues to autonomous mobile robotics. In the case of the environmental map has been built, the traditional two-dimensional (2D) lidar localization and navigation system can't be matched to the initial position of the robot in dynamic environment and will be unreliable when kidnapping occurs. Moreover, it relies on high-cost lidar for high accuracy and long range. In view of this, the paper presents a low cost navigation system based on a low cost lidar and a cheap webcam. In this approach, 2D-codes are attached to the ceiling, to provide reference points to aid the indoor robot localization. The mobile robot is equipped with webcam pointing to the ceiling to identify 2D-codes. On the other hand, a low-cost 2D laser scanner is applied to build a map in unknown environment and detect obstacles. Adaptive Monte Carlo Localization (AMCL) is implements for lidar positioning, A* and Dynamic Window Approach (DWA) are applied in path planning based on a 2D grid map. The error analysis and experiments has validated the proposed method.

Space robots are in huge demand due to the rapid growth of their service targets, i.e., spacecraft. There are generally large flexible components on spacecraft, such as antenna reflectors and solar paddles. Due to the vibratility of their structure, it is challenging for a space robot with flexible appendages (the base is then called flexible-base) to capture and repair the large flexible spacecraft. After capturing, the two spacecraft with flexible appendages are connected by a space manipulator, and a compounded system is formed. In this paper, we developed a dynamic model and a closed-loop simulation system, to provide a means to verify path planning and control algorithms. Initially, the dynamic characteristics of different capturing stages (preimpact and post-impact) were analyzed. The topologies of a flexible-base space robot and the compounded system were described based on incidence and channel matrices. Secondly, the recursive dynamics was formulated and resolved by an effective numerical method. The modeling was verified by Adams’ model. Thirdly, we implemented a dynamics calculation block in Matlab/Simulink environment using the S-function package for the C program, and developed a closed-loop simulation system, which was composed of the Planning and Controller, the Multibody Dynamic, and the 3D Display modules. Finally, based on the simulation system, two typical missions—target berthing and on-orbital manipulation of the target along a circle, were simulated and evaluated. Dynamics analysis results presented some useful rules for the path planning and control to suppress the vibration of the flexible structure.

In this paper, a fast charging system (FCS) is designed for service robots. In this design, batteries are used to due to its energy density, whereas supercapacitors (SCs) are used to enhance the power density. DC-DC converter controls the FCS. The main advantage of the design of fast charging system is that, the SCs are charged with a large current fast and then discharge to the batteries with small current slowly. This feature is beneficial for batteries' long-life and store more energy for service robots which have been in great demand for multiple purposes, such as elderly care, child education etc. Some experimental and testing results are presented to validate the design of FCS for service robots.

In this paper, we discuss the problem of how human control strategy can be represented as a parametric model using a support vector machine (SVM) and how an SVM-based controller can be used in controlling dynamically stable systems. The SVM approach has been implemented in the balance control of Gyrover, which is a dynamically stable, statically unstable, single-wheel mobile robot. The experimental results that compare SVM with general artificial neural network approaches clearly demonstrate the superiority of the SVM approach with regard to human control strategy learning.

With the emerging need for household applications, service robotics has become a hot spot attracting researchers globally. Universities, institutes, and industrial companies, either independently or collaboratively, have been focusing on research and development for household service robots, resulting in interesting and well-performing household service robotic systems. In this chapter, we first give a categorization of the various applications, followed by an elaboration of some highlighted cases with their overall system designs.

Mapping, localization, and navigation are functions necessitated by a diverse range of household service robot solutions. This chapter presents a wide variety of mapping, localization, and navigation techniques that suit a wide range of robot platforms and applications. The problem of mapping and localization has been approached in many ways and we review successful results attained by traditional radio tracking, ultra wideband sensing, RFID communication, North-Star infrared sensing, two-dimensional special pattern detection, laser-range surveying, various camera system sensing, time-of-flight camera ranging, and finally low-cost contact and near-field sensing. The problem of navigation, path planning, and obstacle avoidance requires not only sensing described above but adequate robot responses in a dynamic situation. There are many approaches to successful obstacle avoidance and our review of the literature covers the use of structured light as well as linear and planar sensors, along with visual processing techniques such as optic flow, ground plane segmentation, and feature-based obstacle avoidance, in addition to the optimization of path planning, robot interaction, and behavior.

Human–robot interaction (HRI) studies on how humans collaborate and interact with robots in an effective and natural way have received considerable attention in the robot research community, especially with regard to the design and development of household service robots, owing to their highly interactive characteristics in domestic service activities. Many researchers have proposed a variety of principles, algorithms, and systems to achieve an effective and natural HRI in the domestic environment. In this chapter, we first give a brief illustration of the state of the art for HRI, divided into several categories, and then elaborate on some selected cases with regard to the design and implementation of HRI systems.

Robotic grasping and manipulation comprise three subtasks, i.e., target detection, planning, and control. The robot first needs to detect the target. Here “detect” means to find (or recognize) the target and locate it. The target could be the object to be manipulated (e.g., electrical plugs) or the destination of the object (electrical sockets). Then the robot approaches the target in an optimized trajectory. In the process of approaching and grasping, the robot should be controlled to perform the task correctly and smoothly. In this chapter, we review the approaches to accomplish these three subtasks, i.e., target detection, planning, and control.

With the significant development of robotic technologies, the applications of robots have been extended broadly from their traditional industry role to military, medical field, and even daily services. Robotics has gradually become a very large industry with tremendous influence on the sustainable development of the world.

This paper presents a novel Differential Modular Robot Joint (DMRJ), which has high payload capability and low weight. The ratio between the output torque and the reducer's weight is 178.3 Nm/kg, which is the highest value we have known. The DMRJ is designed modularly for high payload tasks and can be attached to robots as arms or legs. Two high power DC brush motors are applied to drive the differential mechanism, which can rotate in two degrees of freedom (DOF) and has a minimal size. A control algorithm for the DMRJ has been devised in accordance with the kinematic and mechanical analysis. A prototype of the DMRJ has been manufactured, and the effectiveness of the control algorithm has been verified by several experiments. Thanks to its excellent performance, the DMRJ can be widely utilized in many robotic applications.

In this paper ceiling affixed ARToolKitPlus 2D code artificial landmarks are evaluated for purposes of robot localization and navigation. Ceiling affixed codes rarely come in contact with people, equipment or robots, and for this reason they are more likely to stay detectable over a longer period of time. Multi threshold averaging, light gradient compensation and neighbourhood search techniques further enhanced AR-ToolKitPlus performance. Multi threshold averaging collects positioning results at each gray scale threshold level. After all of the threshold levels are analyzed, the related results are averaged into a final result. Light gradient compensation eliminates effects of uneven lighting in the neighbourhood of a 2D code. Neighbourhood search for a 2D code requires fewer computational resources than a global search. Further repeatability improvements are achieved by means of averaging localizations. Localization performance is evaluated at varying distances of the 2D code from the camera. Experimental results show substantial improvements in repeatability and reliability over the baseline ARToolKitPlus performance. Improved performance will allow for realtime 2D code based localization for indoor robot navigation.

This paper presented a novel power transmission lines inspecting robot named “Linebot”, which has high maneuverability and keeps in compact size and lightweight. Linebot has 11 degrees of freedom totally. It equips with two open-close wheels and a pair of grippers, which can be driven separately. As a result, there are three main types of motions to overcome the obstacles on the lines more efficiently. Prototype of Linebot has been developed for further research. It is composed of two parts connected by a pitch joint. Each part contains an open-close assembly, friction adjustment mechanism, grippers, pitch control mechanism, which can be controlled separately. The desired motion can be obtained by appropriate control of the drive cells. The prototype of Linebot had been developed and some experiments had been done to validate the robot's motions.

This paper proposed a biologically inpired handrail climbing robot "MonkeyBot" that could provide inspection and maintenance for the space station. Space debris is the biggest hazards for space station from the outer space. When a threat from orbital derbis is idenfitied a bit late, the station will be potentially damaged by the debris. MonkeyBot is designed to meet this challenge, especially for some key components or areas on the space station. MonkeyBot is a redundancy robot with four limbs, which not only has multi climbing strategies and gaits to achieve a full coverage of the space module, but also it has dexterous capability for on-orbit servicing with each limb. This paper will focus on the geometry design, mathematical modeling, workspace and dexterity analysis and climbing strategies and climbing gaits evaluation. The analysis result shows that the maneuverability surpasses the state of art space station exterior robot.

This paper mainly presents the survey of mobility approaches for the Extra Vehicular Robotics (EVR) application in space station. Seven different kinds of mobility approaches are identified, including straight rail mobile approach, inchworm-like movement approach, free flying vehicle/robot with docking approach, handrail climbing approach, mobile base with circular climbing approach and long manipulator transferring approach. The performance and difference of each approach are elaborated carefully, which offers reference for further research.

As one of the most unique types of art in Chinese culture, nowadays Chinese calligraphy is attracting increasing interests from researchers. It will be a big step if we have a robot to write Chinese calligraphy, especially in various styles, and it will form a bridge to combine science with art directly. However, there are so many different types and styles in Chinese calligraphy, and to distinguish them is the most basic quality to a green hand, but it is a big challenge for a robot to do so. For the lack of exploration about this, we conduct a lot of experiments to help the robot to accomplish it automatically. We first propose a parametric representation of calligraphic characters, and then adopt the Mahalanobis distance for similarity measurement and classification. The average accuracies of classifying types and styles of the Chinese calligraphy are 96.36% and 95.61% respectively. During the experiments, some interesting phenomena are discovered through similarity measure. Meanwhile, the parametric representation also has some potential applications, such as defining aesthetic grading standards of calligraphy and synthesizing calligraphy. Based on our research, the calligraphy robot can tell which style of calligraphy it sees for mimicking.

In this paper, a simple redundant space robot is proposed to assist astronauts and execute extra-vehicular activities (EVA) on a space station. Different from conventional space station robots, proposed robot has good mobility and high coverage in space station modules. The improvement is mainly contributed by a novel rail and robot base. The rail is designed with a circular shape so it can cover most exterior of the space station modules. Robot arm is designed in high accuracy, 6 meter long and 7 degree of freedom with redundant and modular joints. It is also designed in symmetrical configuration to have walking capability among the space station modules. This paper discusses the robot design and tasks simulation.

This paper proposed a novel Tri-star wheeled robot called “Tribot”, which targets on high obstacle performance in unstructured environments, especially at the performance for climbing vertical obstacles. Tribot equips with six Tri-star wheels and each wheel can be driven independently. The chassis of the Tribot is divided into two parts which are connected by an articulated mechanism, making the Tribot has a remarkable obstacle performance to adapt changing environments mechanically, without any interpolate complex control. Numerous experiments have been conducted for vertical obstacle performance tests. Although the diameter of the wheel of the Tribot is only 220 mm, the robot can climb over vertical obstacle of 450 mm high, twice more of the wheel diameter. All results show that Tribot has excellent vertical climbing performance in unstructured environments.

Collision avoidance of industrial robot arms in varying environment is a challenging task which has been a tough problem for decades. It often requires a large number of sensors and high computational power. Moreover, since the sensors are often mounted on the surface of robot arms, they may affect the appearance of the robot arms and may be vulnerable to damage. This video presents a cost-effective invisible sensitive skin that can cover a large area without utilizing a large number of sensors and it is built inside the robot arm. By using only 5 contactless capacitive sensors and specially designed antennas, collision avoidance of a 6-DOF industrial robot arm is attained.

This paper presents a novel climbing robot called Clothbot which has high maneuverability on flexible clothes. It has a novel gripper consisting of two parallel wheels that can grip continuously and stably on various kinds of clothes. Clothbot also has an omni-directional tail of two DOFs so that it can change its center of gravity to control the moving direction on complex and undeterminate clothes. Consequently, Clothbot is able to access most positions of the clothes by moving straight and turning around with only four motors. It is compact, small and light-weighted but has a load capacity six times its own weight. A series of experiments validate its high performance on flexible clothes.

In this paper, a new Cartesian gas cutting robot was designed, which had five servo motors and six stepped motors. Also, we developed a three-torch model and studied algorithm and boundary conditions that were pretty available for three-torch device and experiment verified this theory. A laser height control system was also developed in this robot. And the experiments certified that the model was effective and could be satisfy with the actual industrial needs. Meanwhile, the laser height control system could realize height tracking when the surface of the steel was not flat.

Vehicle parking in crowded parking lots has become an un-ignorable problem in urban areas. Traditional manmaneuvering parking structures has low space efficiency, and in contrary, the current fully automatic parking frame system has high cost and difficulty in processing the vehicles in parallel. Inspired by the wheeled mobile robot, the paper investigates the relationship between the space efficiency (the ratio of space for parking over the total space for parking and traveling) and the structures of four-wheel robots, both the classical car-like robot and the omni-directional robot, which can be the platforms for vehicle carriers for parking in parallel to reduce the total time requirement and increase the flexibility of parking systems. An omni-directional driving and 4 wheel independent steering (4WIS) platform is designed and developed to demonstrates its advantage of parking in narrow space. For the type of carlike robot, space efficiency is optimized with respect to the rear overhang and the capacity of the parking lot. Omni-directional structure, in contrary, still has a higher space efficiency, and thus is more ideal for the parking platform.