In this paper, a robust formulation for the structurecontrol design of mechatronic systems is developed. The proposed robust approach aims at minimization of the sensitivity of the nominal design objectives with respect to uncertain parameters. The robust integrated design problem is established as a nonlinear multiobjective dynamic optimization one, which in order to consider synergetic interactions uses mechanical and control nominal design objectives. A planar parallel robot and its controller are simultaneously designed with the proposed approach when the nominal design objectives are the tracking error and the manipulability measure. The payload at the end-effector is considered as the uncertain parameter. Experimental results show that a robustly designed parallel robot presents lower sensitivity of the nominal design objectives under the effects of changes at the payload than a nonrobustly designed one.Index Terms-Differential evolution algorithm, mechatronic design, robust structure-control design.

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

This paper presents two-swim operators to be added to the chemotaxis process of the modified bacterial foraging optimization algorithm to solve three instances of the synthesis of four-bar planar mechanisms. One swim favors exploration while the second one promotes fine movements in the neighborhood of each bacterium. The combined effect of the new operators looks to increase the production of better solutions during the search. As a consequence, the ability of the algorithm to escape from local optimum solutions is enhanced. The algorithm is tested through four experiments and its results are compared against two BFOA-based algorithms and also against a differential evolution algorithm designed for mechanical design problems. The overall results indicate that the proposed algorithm outperforms other BFOA-based approaches and finds highly competitive mechanisms, with a single set of parameter values and with less evaluations in the first synthesis problem, with respect to those mechanisms obtained by the differential evolution algorithm, which needed a parameter fine-tuning process for each optimization problem.

This paper describes an electro-mechanical and software architecture for the development of an anthropomorphic 6 DOF robotic jaw. The architecture comprises the aggregate of motion components needed to position a prosthetic jaw in 3D space. This architecture frees the jaw kinematics from the dependency of constraints in the mechanical assembly allowing for the fabrication of mechanical systems that can simulate jaw motions beyond human capabilities. The orthogonal and concurrent nature of the structural design makes systems based on this idea potentially the easiest to control. To illustrate our concept two distinct prototypes are produced. Construction of these models resulted in the first two modular anthropomorphic robotic jaws to be built with 6-DOF. Areas of application for this mechanical design include dentistry, speech research, and facial gesture affect research.