Robot-aided systems to support the physical rehabilitation of individuals with neurological impairment is one of the fields that has been widely developed in the last few decades. However, the adoption of these systems in clinical practice remains limited. In order to better understanding the causes of this limitation, a systematic review of robot-based systems focused on upper extremity rehabilitation is presented in this paper. A systematic search and review of related articles in the literature were conducted. The chosen works were analyzed according to the type of device, the data analysis capability, the therapy method, the human–robot interaction, the safety strategies, and the focus of treatment. As a conclusion, self-adaptation for personalizing the treatments, safeguarding and enhancing of patient–robot interaction towards training essential factors of movement generation into the same paradigm, or the use of lifelike environments in fully-immersive virtual reality for increasing the assimilation of motor gains could be relevant factors to develop more accepted robot-aided systems in clinical practice.

“Hello, I’m the TERMINATOR, and I’ll be your server today”. Diners might soon be feeling this greeting, with Optimus Prime in the kitchen and Wall-E then sending your order to C-3PO. In our daily lives, a version of that future is already showing up. Robotics companies are designing robots to handle tasks, including serving, interacting, collaborating, and helping. These service robots are intended to coexist with humans and engage in relationships that lead them to a better quality of life in our society. Their constant evolution and the arising of new challenges lead to an update of the existing systems. This update provides a generic vision of two questions: the advance of service robots, and more importantly, how these robots are applied in society (professional and personal) based on the market application. In this update, a new category is proposed: catering robotics. This proposal is based on the technological advances that generate new multidisciplinary application fields and challenges. Waiter robots is an example of the catering robotics. These robotic platforms might have social capacities to interact with the consumer and other robots, and at the same time, might have physical skills to perform complex tasks in professional environments such as restaurants. This paper explains the guidelines to develop a waiter robot, considering aspects such as architecture, interaction, planning, and execution.

This work presents an extension of balance control for torque-controlled humanoid robots. Within a non-strict task hierarchy, the controller allows the robot to use the feet endeffectors to balance, while the remaining hand end-effectors can be used to perform Dual-Arm manipulation. The controller generates a passive and compliance behaviour to regulate the location of the centre of mass (CoM), the orientation of the hip and the poses of each end-effector assigned to the task of interaction (in this case bi-manipulation). Then, an appropriate wrench (force and torque) is applied to each of the end-effectors employed for the task to achieve this purpose. Now, in this new controller, the essential requirement focuses on the fact that the desired wrench in the CoM is computed through the sum of the balancing and bi-manipulation wrenches. The bimanipulation wrenches are obtained through a new dynamic model that allows executing tasks of approaching the grip and manipulation of large objects compliantly. On the other hand, the feedback controller has been maintained but in combination with a bi-manipulation-oriented feedforward control to improve the performance in the object trajectory tracking. This controller is tested in different experiments with the robot TORO.

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In the presented analysis, a heterogeneous diffusion is introduced to a magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) Darcy–Forchheimer flow, leading to an extended Darcy–Forchheimer model. The introduction of a generalized diffusion was proposed by Cohen and Murray to study the energy gradients in spatial structures. In addition, Peletier and Troy, on one side, and Rottschäfer and Doelman, on the other side, have introduced a general diffusion (of a fourth-order spatial derivative) to study the oscillatory patterns close the critical points induced by the reaction term. In the presented study, analytical conceptions to a proposed problem with heterogeneous diffusions are introduced. First, the existence and uniqueness of solutions are provided. Afterwards, a stability study is presented aiming to characterize the asymptotic convergent condition for oscillatory patterns. Dedicated solution profiles are explored, making use of a Hamilton–Jacobi type of equation. The existence of oscillatory patterns may induce solutions to be negative, close to the null equilibrium; hence, a precise inner region of positive solutions is obtained.

New applications related to robotic manipulation or transportation tasks, with or without physical grasping, are continuously being developed. To perform these activities, the robot takes advantage of different kinds of perceptions. One of the key perceptions in robotics is vision. However, some problems related to image processing makes the application of visual information within robot control algorithms difficult. Camera-based systems have inherent errors that affect the quality and reliability of the information obtained. The need of correcting image distortion slows down image parameter computing, which decreases performance of control algorithms. In this paper, a new approach to correcting several sources of visual distortions on images in only one computing step is proposed. The goal of this system/algorithm is the computation of the tilt angle of an object transported by a robot, minimizing image inherent errors and increasing computing speed. After capturing the image, the computer system extracts the angle using a Fuzzy filter that corrects at the same time all possible distortions, obtaining the real angle in only one processing step. This filter has been developed by the means of Neuro-Fuzzy learning techniques, using datasets with information obtained from real experiments. In this way, the computing time has been decreased and the performance of the application has been improved. The resulting algorithm has been tried out experimentally in robot transportation tasks in the humanoid robot TEO (Task Environment Operator) from the University Carlos III of Madrid.

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