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The main purpose of this paper is to enhance the control performance of the robotic arm by the controller of fuzzy neural network (FNN).

The robot system has characters of high order, time delay, time variation and serious nonlinearity. The classical PID controller cannot achieve satisfactory performance in control of such a complex system. This paper combined the fuzzy control with neural networks and established the FNN controller and applied it in control of the robot.

The experimental results showed that the FNN controller had excellent performances in position control of the rehabilitation robotic arm such as fast response, small overshoot and small vibration.

This work is focused on the static FNN algorithm by updating the second and fifth layers of the membership functions. The performance can be improved further if the third layer (reasoning layer) can be updated online.

Based on a hierarchical structure of the FNN controller, this paper designed the FNN controller and applied it in control of the rehabilitation robot driven by pneumatic muscles.

The purpose of this paper is to present the static and dynamic characteristics of the rehabilitation joint.

The rehabilitation joint is driven by pneumatic muscle actuators (PMAs). Rehabilitation robot is normally composed of several rehabilitation joints. The static and dynamic characteristics of the rehabilitation joint are important for control of the rehabilitation robot. Analysis and modeling of the rehabilitation joint is based on experiments.

The static model of the PMA is obtained by the method of curve fitting and achieved better precision compared to the existing representative models. A second‐order model fits the dynamic characteristic of the rehabilitation joint better than a first order one.

The rehabilitation joint and the patient's joint combine to make an independent system, and the unstable factors of the patient's joint make it difficult in precisely modeling the rehabilitation joint.

The characteristics of the rehabilitation joint are all based on the data that were recorded in a series of with experiments, the same with modeling of the rehabilitation joint.

The purpose of this paper is to present the control methods of the exoskeleton robotic arm for stroke rehabilitation.

The robotic arm is driven by the pneumatic muscle actuators. The control system provides independent control for the robot. The joint axes of the robotic arm are arranged to mimic the natural upper limb workspace.

Findings are the classification of training modes and control methods of rehabilitation training, and the characters of both the instant spasm and the sustaining one.

This paper is a preliminary step in the control system and the kinematical characteristics should be analyzed to achieve high precision of movement.

Based on a hierarchical structure, the control system allows the execution of sequence of switching control methods: position, force, force/position and impedance. Patient‐active‐robot‐passive and patient‐passive‐robot‐active (PPRA) training modes are also presented in this paper. In PPRA mode, the robotic arm can provide pre‐specified resistances on the patient's arm. Both instant and sustaining spasms are taken into account for safety.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the interaction between competition and corporate payout policy and more specifically to answer the question that whether competition mitigates the principal–principal agency conflicts and influences firms to distribute dividends to shareholders in Chinese corporations.

This research models measures of competition with scaled measures of dividends and analyzes a sample of 16,730 firm-year observations from Chinese-listed manufacturing firms for the period spanning 2003 to 2016. Further, this research uses the Tobit model (a censored regression) to empirically test the proposed hypotheses.

This research finds that intense competition not only mitigates agency problems and forces firms to disgorge cash but also increases a firm’s likelihood to pay dividends and weakens the negative association between agency conflicts and dividends.

The results show an important policy implication for the industry. As the principal–principal agency conflict restrains the dividends, the regulatory authorities could encourage a competitive environment and a more diverse ownership structure to induce a higher dividend rate and protect the minority shareholders. In addition, this study also has implications for other emerging markets characterized by concentrated ownership and principal–principal agency problems.

This study adds to the literature related to the disciplinary role of competition and identifies competition as a significant determinant of corporate payout policy. Furthermore, this research extends earlier research on corporate payout decisions that besides firm-level corporate governance and country-level legal system, industry-level competition also influences corporate payout decisions, significantly.

This study examines the influence of access to finance and social capital on the improvement of the corporate performance of non-listed firms of Southeast Asian countries. Furthermore, this paper also explores the mediating role of firms' access to finance between the association of social capital and the improvement of corporate performance.

This study utilizes the Bank Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Survey from 2015 to 2017. Specifically, the survey was administered by the World Bank. Data were analyzed using structural modeling in Smart-PLS.

The findings show that firms' access to finance and social capital significantly influences the improvement of corporate performance. Additionally, the study’s analysis further reports the mediating role of firms' access to finance between the association of social capital and the improvement of corporate performance.

This study has implications for governments, regulators and policymakers for enhancing access to finance and social capital, and improving corporate performance.

This paper establishes the importance of firms' access to finance and social capital for improving firms' overall performance in the broader context of Southeast Asia.