Luiza Labazanova

Evgeny Tsykunov, Aleksey Fedoseev, Ekaterina Dorzhieva et al.

DroneStick is a novel hands-free method for smooth interaction between a human and a robotic system via one of its agents, without training and any additional handheld or wearable device or infrastructure. A flying joystick (DroneStick), being a part of a multi-robot system, is composed of a flying drone and coiled wire with a vibration motor. By pulling on the coiled wire, the operator commands certain motions of the follower robotic system. The DroneStick system does not require the user to carry any equipment before or after performing the required interaction. DroneStick provides useful feedback to the operator in the form of force transferred through the wire, translation/rotation of the flying joystick, and motor vibrations at the fingertips. Feedback allows users to interact with different forms of robotic systems intuitively. A potential application can enhance an automated `last mile' delivery when a recipient needs to guide a delivery drone/robot gently to a spot where a parcel has to be dropped.

David Navarro-Alarcon, Luiza Labazanova, Man Kiu Chow et al.

This paper introduces a new type of nonmagnetic actuator for MRI interventions. Ultrasonic and piezoelectric motors are one the most commonly used actuators in MRI applications. However, most of these actuators are only MRI-safe, which means they cannot be operated while imaging as they cause significant visual artifacts. To cope with this issue, we developed a new pneumatic rotary servo-motor (based on the Tesla turbine) that can be effectively used during continuous MR imaging. We thoroughly tested the performance and magnetic properties of our MRI-compatible actuator with several experiments, both inside and outside an MRI scanner. The reported results confirm the feasibility to use this motor for MRI-guided robotic interventions.

Zeyu Wu, Luiza Labazanova, Peng Zhou et al.

In this paper, we present a novel kinematic model of the human phalanges based on the elliptical motion of their joints. The presence of the soft elastic tissues and the general anatomical structure of the hand joints highly affect the relative movement of the bones. Commonly used assumption of circular trajectories simplifies the designing process but leads to divergence with the actual hand behavior. The advantages of the proposed model are demonstrated through the comparison with the conventional revolute joint model. Conducted simulations and experiments validate designed forward and inverse kinematic algorithms. Obtained results show a high performance of the model in mimicking the human fingertip motion trajectory.

Luiza Labazanova, Zeyu Wu, Zhengping Gu et al.

Biological muscles have always attracted robotics researchers due to their efficient capabilities in compliance, force generation, and mechanical work. Many groups are working on the development of artificial muscles, however, state-of-the-art methods still fall short in performance when compared with their biological counterpart. Muscles with high force output are mostly rigid, whereas traditional soft actuators take much space and are limited in strength and producing displacement. In this work, we aim to find a reasonable trade-off between these features by mimicking the striated structure of skeletal muscles. For that, we designed an artificial pneumatic myofibril composed of multiple contraction units that combine stretchable and inextensible materials. Varying the geometric parameters and the number of units in series provides flexible adjustment of the desired muscle operation. We derived a mathematical model that predicts the relationship between the input pneumatic pressure and the generated output force. A detailed experimental study is conducted to validate the performance of the proposed bio-inspired muscle.

Evgeny Tsykunov, Ruslan Agishev, Roman Ibrahimov et al.

For the human operator, it is often easier and faster to catch a small size quadrotor right in the midair instead of landing it on a surface. However, interaction strategies for such cases have not yet been considered properly, especially when more than one drone has to be landed at the same time. In this paper, we propose a novel interaction strategy to land multiple robots on the human hands using vibrotactile feedback. We developed a wearable tactile display that is activated by the intensity of light emitted from an LED ring on the bottom of the quadcopter. We conducted experiments, where participants were asked to adjust the position of the palm to land one or two vertically-descending drones with different landing speeds, by having only visual feedback, only tactile feedback or visual-tactile feedback. We conducted statistical analysis of the drone landing positions, landing pad and human head trajectories. Two-way ANOVA showed a statistically significant difference between the feedback conditions. Experimental analysis proved that with an increasing number of drones, tactile feedback plays a more important role in accurate hand positioning and operator's convenience. The most precise landing of one and two drones was achieved with the combination of tactile and visual feedback.