Industrial Robot: Volume 46 Issue 3

Guest editorial

Huaping Liu, Yuan Yuan

Strong prospects for robots in retail

Robert Bogue

This paper aims to illustrate the rapidly growing use of robots in the retail sector by considering a range of products and applications.

The Pransky interview: Dr Maja Matarić, Professor, University of Southern California; Pioneer, field of socially assistive robotics; co-founder of Embodied

Joanne Pransky

The following paper is a “Q&A interview” conducted by Joanne Pransky of Industrial Robot Journal as a method to impart the combined technological, business and personal experience…

A cross-modal tactile sensor design for measuring robotic grasping forces

Bin Fang, Hongxiang Xue, Fuchun Sun, Yiyong Yang, Renxiang Zhu

The purpose of the paper is to present a novel cross-modal sensor whose tactile is computed by the visual information. The proposed sensor can measure the forces of robotic…

The perceptually-inspired model of tactile texture sensor based on the inverse-magnetostrictive effect

Lili Wan, Bowen Wang, Xiaodong Wang, Wenmei Huang, Ling Weng

The purpose of this study is to develop an output model to extract surface microstructure characteristics of different objects, so as to predict the response of the output voltage…

An investigation of stimuli-current thresholds on the non-steady contact condition

Huiling Chen, Liguo Shuai, Weihang Zhu, Mei Miao

This paper aims to investigate the perception threshold (PT) of electrotactile stimulation under non-steady contact condition (NSCC) which is rarely considered in previous reports…

Incorporating artificial skin signals in the constraint-based reactive control of human–robot collaborative manipulation tasks

Cristian Alejandro Vergara, Gianni Borghesan, Erwin Aertbeliën, Joris De Schutter

The purpose of this paper is to develop a control strategy for human–robot collaborative manipulation tasks that can deal with proximity signals from 373 interconnected cells of…

An effective multifocus image fusion method using guided filter

Peng Geng, Jianhua Liu

The more precise decision map is important to generate better-fused image. Guided filter can preserve edge information effectively. The purpose of his study is to use guided…

Multifocus image fusion based on coefficient significance of redundant discrete wavelet transform

Jianhua Liu, Peng Geng, Hongtao Ma

This study aims to obtain the more precise decision map to fuse the source images by Coefficient significance method. In the area of multifocus image fusion, the better decision…

Road segmentation of cross-modal remote sensing images using deep segmentation network and transfer learning

Hao He, Dongfang Yang, Shicheng Wang, Shuyang Wang, Xing Liu

The purpose of this paper is to study the road segmentation problem of cross-modal remote sensing images.

Radar and vision fusion for the real-time obstacle detection and identification

Xinyu Zhang, Mo Zhou, Peng Qiu, Yi Huang, Jun Li

The purpose of this paper is the presentation and research of a novel sensor fusion-based system for obstacle detection and identification, which uses the millimeter-wave radar to…

Online weakly paired similarity learning for surface material retrieval

Wendong Zheng, Huaping Liu, Bowen Wang, Fuchun Sun

For robots to more actively interact with the surrounding environment in object manipulation tasks or walking, they must understand the physical attributes of objects and surface…

Natural teaching for humanoid robot via human-in-the-loop scene-motion cross-modal perception

Wenbin Xu, Xudong Li, Liang Gong, Yixiang Huang, Zeyuan Zheng, Zelin Zhao, Lujie Zhao, Binhao Chen, Haozhe Yang, Li Cao, Chengliang Liu

This paper aims to present a human-in-the-loop natural teaching paradigm based on scene-motion cross-modal perception, which facilitates the manipulation intelligence and robot…

Model-based deep reinforcement learning with heuristic search for satellite attitude control

Ke Xu, Fengge Wu, Junsuo Zhao

Recently, deep reinforcement learning is developing rapidly and shows its power to solve difficult problems such as robotics and game of GO. Meanwhile, satellite attitude control…

Learning and planning of stair ascent for lower-limb exoskeleton systems

Qiming Chen, Hong Cheng, Rui Huang, Jing Qiu, Xinhua Chen

Lower-limb exoskeleton systems enable people with spinal cord injury to regain some degree of locomotion ability, as the expected motion curve needs to adapt with changing…

Dynamic obstacle-surmounting analysis of a bilateral-wheeled cable-climbing robot for cable-stayed bridges

Fengyu Xu, Quansheng Jiang

Field robots can surmount or avoid some obstacles when operating on rough ground. However, cable-climbing robots can only surmount obstacles because their moving path is…

Research on decision-making of autonomous vehicle following based on reinforcement learning method

Hongbo Gao, Guanya Shi, Kelong Wang, Guotao Xie, Yuchao Liu

Over the past decades, there has been significant research effort dedicated to the development of autonomous vehicles. The decision-making system, which is responsible for driving…

A welding seam identification method based on cross-modal perception

Xinde Li, Pei Li, Mohammad Omar Khyam, Xiangheng He, Shuzhi Sam Ge

As an automatic welding process may experience some disturbances caused by, for example, splashes and/or welding fumes, misalignments/poor positioning, thermally induced…