Mechatronics最新文献

{"title":"A visco-elastic actuator with linear gas spring and variable damping","authors":"Florian C. Loeffl ,&nbsp;Fabian Beck ,&nbsp;Jinoh Lee ,&nbsp;MinJun Kim ,&nbsp;Manuel Keppler","doi":"10.1016/j.mechatronics.2025.103334","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.mechatronics.2025.103334","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Series elastic actuators (SEAs) enhance safety and robustness in robotic joints but sacrifice torque and motion bandwidth compared to rigid actuators. Variable viscoelastic actuators (VVEAs) overcome these limitations by integrating an adjustable damping element with a spring, balancing open-loop torque bandwidth with impact safety and robustness. However, most existing VVEA designs rely on mechanical springs that add significant weight. We introduce a lightweight VVEA based on a pneumatic spring design. This actuator achieves linear, offline-adjustable stiffness using antagonistic gas chambers and provides online-adjustable damping via a hydraulic throttle valve. In our design, the increasing force of one chamber is moderated by the decreasing force of the other, resulting in a measured maximal deviation of 12% from the linear model. Additionally, an elastic silicone cast bladder replaces the conventional ring-shaped piston, significantly reducing breakaway force. To evaluate its benefits over standard actuators, we applied optimal control to periodic rest-to-rest motions typical of pick-and-place tasks. Based on mean tracking error, the VVEA outperforms SEAs in 29.1% of trials and rigid actuators in 89.2% of trials. Although increasing damping improves performance, it compromises safety; our optimization study demonstrates the potential of an online variable damping setpoint to balance these trade-offs. These results suggest that VVEAs hold great promise for applications requiring rapid maneuvers and enhanced impact safety and robustness.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":49842,"journal":{"name":"Mechatronics","volume":"109 ","pages":"Article 103334"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2025-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143941215","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"An iterative algorithm to symbolically derive generalized n-trailer vehicle kinematics","authors":"Yuvraj Singh ,&nbsp;Adithya Jayakumar ,&nbsp;Giorgio Rizzoni","doi":"10.1016/j.mechatronics.2025.103350","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.mechatronics.2025.103350","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Articulated multi-axle vehicles are interesting from a control-theoretic perspective due to their peculiar kinematic offtracking characteristics, instability modes, and singularities. Holonomic and nonholonomic constraints affecting the kinematic behavior is investigated in order to develop control-oriented kinematic models representative of these peculiarities. Then, the structure of these constraints is exploited to develop an iterative algorithm to symbolically derive yaw-plane kinematic models of generalized <span><math><mi>n</mi></math></span>-trailer articulated vehicles with an arbitrary number of multi-axle vehicle units. A formal proof is provided for the maximum number of kinematic controls admissible to a large-scale generalized articulated vehicle system, which leads to a generalized Ackermann steering law for <span><math><mi>n</mi></math></span>-trailer systems. Moreover, kinematic data collected from a test vehicle is used to validate the kinematic models and, to understand the rearward yaw rate amplification behavior of the vehicle pulling multiple simulated trailers.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":49842,"journal":{"name":"Mechatronics","volume":"109 ","pages":"Article 103350"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2025-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144116384","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Smart infrastructure and autonomous vehicles: Ensuring safety and efficiency in urban traffic with Control Barrier Functions","authors":"Filippo Bernabei,&nbsp;Cristian Secchi","doi":"10.1016/j.mechatronics.2025.103332","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.mechatronics.2025.103332","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Autonomous vehicles have the potential to transform urban transportation by improving road safety, efficiency, and accessibility. However, urban environments present unique challenges, such as complex traffic dynamics, uncertain obstacles, and limited visibility, necessitating advanced control strategies. This paper builds on previous work to refine a Control Barrier Function-based framework for autonomous vehicles by integrating Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I) communication. Through pairwise CBFs, the proposed architecture utilizes infrastructure-based sensors to enhance situational awareness and decision-making, addressing limitations of onboard sensors alone.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":49842,"journal":{"name":"Mechatronics","volume":"109 ","pages":"Article 103332"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2025-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143941214","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Real-time visual pose estimation: from BOP objects to custom drone — A journey","authors":"Thomas Rey ,&nbsp;Julien Moras ,&nbsp;Alexandre Eudes ,&nbsp;Antoine Manzanera","doi":"10.1016/j.mechatronics.2025.103339","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.mechatronics.2025.103339","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Pose estimation plays a crucial role in robotics for prehension tasks or in augmented-reality application, yet its application on real-world far-range estimation has not been thoroughly studied. This study aims to evaluate pose estimators on a custom drone at distances from 0.5 m to 10 m, which is beyond the scope of existing datasets, that only contain objects close to less than 2 m. We created synthetic and real databases specific to our drone and compared various RGB pose estimators, evaluating their performance across different distances. PViT-6D, being one of the SoTA methods on the classic [0,2] m interval, also outperforms others estimators at greater distances, and proves robust with respect to detection inaccuracy. The results demonstrate the potential of PViT-6D to be used on a real time application embedded in the drone platform. This work aims to evaluate the potential of pose estimators for mutual perception and communication within a drone swarm.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":49842,"journal":{"name":"Mechatronics","volume":"109 ","pages":"Article 103339"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2025-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144069761","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Global optimum motion profiles for enhanced energy efficiency in industrial positioning applications","authors":"Robbe De Laet ,&nbsp;Nick Van Oosterwyck ,&nbsp;Annie Cuyt ,&nbsp;Stijn Derammelaere","doi":"10.1016/j.mechatronics.2025.103352","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.mechatronics.2025.103352","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Point-to-point mechanisms are widely used in industry. The electric motors driving these mechanisms are responsible for a significant portion of the global energy consumption. Therefore, it is essential to consider methods and technologies to reduce their energy consumption. Motion profile optimization offers a cost-effective opportunity to reduce energy consumption without the need for additional hardware adaptations or investments. Hence, it is crucial to discover the global optimum, representing the overall best solution across the entire design space, to ensure that the full optimization potential is realized, rather than settling for a local optimum, which may only represent a superior solution within a limited region of the design space. The latter remains a challenge in the current literature. This paper introduces a novel approach that utilizes interval analysis to guarantee the discovery of the global optimum within the design space. It achieves this by dividing the design space into smaller intervals, employing interval arithmetic to evaluate the functions over these intervals, and systematically eliminating and refining the intervals to pinpoint the location of the global optimum. However, to use interval analysis, a bounded design space is required. Therefore, this paper describes the motion profile using polynomials expressed in the Chebyshev basis, offering the advantage of a bounded design space and a minimal number of design parameters compared to polynomials expressed in the classical basis. Additionally, this paper shows that symbolically formulating the motion profile allows linearization of the kinematic constraints, enhancing the computational efficiency and convergence speed of interval analysis. Furthermore, a method for reducing the initial design space is introduced, as the initial bounded design space tends to overestimate the feasible design space. Refining the design space enables interval analysis to require fewer evaluations, facilitating faster optimization. To allow wide industrial adoption of the proposed method, the system properties <span><math><mrow><mi>J</mi><mrow><mo>(</mo><mi>θ</mi><mo>)</mo></mrow></mrow></math></span> and <span><math><mrow><msub><mrow><mi>T</mi></mrow><mrow><mi>l</mi></mrow></msub><mrow><mo>(</mo><mi>θ</mi><mo>)</mo></mrow></mrow></math></span> are extracted from CAD simulations to build the objective function. Finally, measurements indicate a reduction in root-mean-square (rms) torque of a pick-and-place unit by up to 38.4% and a reduction in energy consumption of up to 51.2%, validating the proposed approach’s effectiveness.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":49842,"journal":{"name":"Mechatronics","volume":"109 ","pages":"Article 103352"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2025-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144138635","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A real-time lane change trajectory planning approach for autonomous vehicles utilizing tire force prediction","authors":"Lin Li ,&nbsp;Serdar Coskun ,&nbsp;Youming Fan ,&nbsp;Caiguang Yu ,&nbsp;Fengqi Zhang","doi":"10.1016/j.mechatronics.2025.103351","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.mechatronics.2025.103351","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>For lane change behavior under extreme operating conditions, existing models cannot calculate in real time the tire force of the vehicle lane change over a sufficiently long time frame in the future. In order to address this problem, a novel scheme is presented for real-time trajectory planning of autonomous vehicles, which incorporates personalized vehicle dynamics. We first establish lateral dynamics models for four-wheel-steering and front-wheel-steering vehicles along with a nonlinear tire model. Then, we construct a fuzzy logic mechanism to characterize the relationship between the vehicle lateral/longitudinal acceleration and the future lateral/longitudinal tire force, to quantify whether the vehicle tire force reaches saturation in trajectory planning in real time. A safety assessment model is introduced to measure the risk of side slippage of the vehicle and collision under extreme operating conditions. In addition, lane change behavior is designed as a nonlinear programming model and a gradient descent method is used to obtain optimal lateral and longitudinal accelerations online. The geometric curve fitting method is utilized to generate the lane change trajectory. The simulation results using MATLAB/Simulink demonstrate that the solution time of our method is significantly lower than that of the widely used vehicle dynamics method and the newest Neural Network method, which can realize real-time prediction of the maximum tire force before lane change. Moreover, our method improves the ability to calculate the risk of longitudinal and lateral coupling of a lane change in extreme operating conditions and then realizes trajectory planning in a vehicle-dynamics-specific way.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":49842,"journal":{"name":"Mechatronics","volume":"109 ","pages":"Article 103351"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2025-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144169454","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Data association leveraging extrinsic parameter consistency for multi-object detection in maritime environment","authors":"Jonghwi Kim ,&nbsp;Sol Han ,&nbsp;Jinwhan Kim","doi":"10.1016/j.mechatronics.2025.103318","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.mechatronics.2025.103318","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper presents a novel data association method utilizing extrinsic parameter consistency, designed to improve the detection and tracking of multiple objects by fusing camera and marine radar measurements. The method addresses the challenges in dynamic maritime environments by leveraging the consistency of extrinsic parameters. To mitigate ambiguities in determining these parameters, a new cost function considering the costs associated with all possible pairs in a given combination is introduced. The constraints related to the alignment and sequencing of measured bearings are also integrated, and dynamic programming is employed to enhance computational efficiency. The enhancements in accuracy and computational speed by the proposed method have been validated using datasets obtained from real-sea field experiments.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":49842,"journal":{"name":"Mechatronics","volume":"108 ","pages":"Article 103318"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2025-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143850857","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Transcending the acceleration-bandwidth trade-off: Over-actuated precision motion stages with selective compliance and servo stiffness","authors":"Jingjie Wu,&nbsp;Lei Zhou","doi":"10.1016/j.mechatronics.2025.103314","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.mechatronics.2025.103314","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>In today’s precision positioning systems, there exists a fundamental trade-off between control bandwidth and achievable acceleration due to the structural material’s stiffness-to-weight ratio limit and existing control techniques. This trade-off severely limits the throughput of photolithography machines and wafer inspection systems for integrated circuit manufacturing, which directly depends on the acceleration and control performance of the wafer and photomask positioning stages. Aiming to break this trade-off and to enable new lightweight stages with further enhanced acceleration without sacrificing control performances, this paper proposes a novel hardware and control co-design paradigm for over-actuated precision positioning stages that integrates <em>servo-stiffness</em> and <em>selected compliance</em>. The key idea is to (a) stiffen the component’s flexible dynamics through <em>servo-stiffness</em>, i.e., actively control the structure’s flexible dynamics using additional actuators and sensors, and (b) smartly introduce structural compliance in the actively controlled flexible modes to reduce weight and to facilitate controller synthesis. A sequential design optimization framework for the proposed methodology is presented, and an over-actuated magnetically levitated planar motion stage embodying the proposed approach, which we call the <em>FleXstage</em>, is designed and built for performance evaluation. Simulation shows that the proposed design provides 24% reduced weight and 2.4 times control bandwidth improvement compared to a baseline lightweight stage, and experimental results of the FleXstage prototype align well with simulation predictions. These results demonstrate the feasibility and potential of the proposed methodology.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":49842,"journal":{"name":"Mechatronics","volume":"108 ","pages":"Article 103314"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2025-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143822394","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Data-driven frequency-domain iterative learning control with transfer learning","authors":"Yu-Hsiu Lee,&nbsp;Yu-Hsiang Chin,&nbsp;Chun-Yuan Hsueh","doi":"10.1016/j.mechatronics.2025.103327","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.mechatronics.2025.103327","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Data-driven iterative learning control (ILC) can achieve improved tracking performance over model-based ILC by eliminating the fitting error from parametric system representations. Existing data-driven approaches in frequency domain take advantage of the affordability and speed associated with acquiring non-parametric frequency response function data for effective learning. However, the quality of data significantly influences the achievable performance. Additionally, a notable drawback is that learning is reset whenever the tracked trajectory changes, despite having learned similar frequency contents before. Extending these approaches to multivariate systems with non-negligible coupling is also not straightforward. This paper aims to address the aforementioned challenges in data-driven ILC by employing spectral analysis (SA), which improves the learned data-driven inversion by mitigating the measurement noise. Fast and robust convergence is made possible through an iteration-varying learning gain. Also proposed is a transfer learning strategy in the frequency domain, wherein the inversion learned in specific frequency bin(s) will be preserved and utilized to expedite convergence in subsequent tasks. The presented ILC algorithm based on SA naturally extends to the multi-input multi-output (MIMO) framework, and the convergence can be ensured by complex-valued matrix analysis. The methodology is experimentally validated on a galvanometer for the SISO case and an H-type dual-drive gantry system for the MIMO case, demonstrating enhanced performance, transfer learning capabilities, and applicability to MIMO systems.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":49842,"journal":{"name":"Mechatronics","volume":"108 ","pages":"Article 103327"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2025-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143877344","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Lifted frequency-domain identification of closed-loop multirate systems: Applied to dual-stage actuator hard disk drives","authors":"Max van Haren ,&nbsp;Masahiro Mae ,&nbsp;Lennart Blanken ,&nbsp;Tom Oomen","doi":"10.1016/j.mechatronics.2025.103311","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.mechatronics.2025.103311","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Frequency-domain representations are crucial for the design and performance evaluation of controllers in multirate systems, specifically to address intersample performance. The aim of this paper is to develop an effective frequency-domain system identification technique for closed-loop multirate systems using solely slow-rate output measurements. By indirect identification of multivariable time-invariant representations through lifting, in combination with local modeling techniques, the multirate system is effectively identified. The developed method is capable of accurate identification of closed-loop multirate systems within a single identification experiment, using fast-rate excitation and inputs, and slow-rate outputs. Finally, the developed framework is validated using a benchmark problem consisting of a multivariable dual-stage actuator from a hard disk drive, demonstrating its applicability and accuracy.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":49842,"journal":{"name":"Mechatronics","volume":"108 ","pages":"Article 103311"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2025-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143799494","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}