The design of a self-propelling mechanism for an endoluminal robot

Current endoscopic devices cause great discomfort to the patient because they need to be pushed from outside the patient to manoeuvre through the intestine. Self-propelling endo- scopic concepts have been proposed, but these cause unnecessary trauma to the patient or are unable to travel to the end of the large intestine and back. This study...

Learning to walk using minimum prior knowledge: And a small hexapod robot

Future robotic systems are expected to be so complex, that the required information -- or prior knowledge -- to program them is not always available and has thus to be discovered in an alternative way. This can be done using Reinforcement Learning (RL) algorithms, that learn from experience. This way of programming can also be beneficial for...

Step location prediction for bipedal robots: Evaluating and improving Capture Point theory

There are many good reason for the development of a robust bipedal walking robot. However, until recently this development was hampered by the lack of a disturbance rejecting locomotion algorithms. With the introduction of Capture Point theory by Pratt et al. [2006] this problem has been largely solved. Capture Point theory describes the point...

Design of an MR-safe haptic wrist manipulator for movement disorder diagnostics

Tremor, characterized by involuntary and rhythmical movements, is the most common movement disorder. Tremors can have peripheral and central oscillatory components which properly assessed and separated may improve diagnostics. An MR-safe haptic wrist manipulator enables simultaneous measurement of proprioceptive reflexes (peripheral components)...