Movement based controls in games hold great promise for public health, player enjoyment and intuitive controls. A system employing the web camera for motion control of games or other software might be a way to bring motion control to the consumers en masse. But does motion based controls offer an advantage in usability compared to the conventional keyboard? This study attempts to compare the usability of game controlled by such a system with the usability of the same game being controlled with the keyboard. To that end Snail Quest was developed. Snail Quest is a small 2D platformer puzzle game developed for the motion controller. A user study was performed to measure the usability of the game while used with each controller, the motion controller and the keyboard. Assuming the validity of the questionaire used, the results are largely inconclusive. The motion controller scored on par with the keyboard for the first of the two levels evaluated by the studies participants, but in the second level the keyboard received a uneqivocally higher score. Even so, statement nr 2 of the questionaire: “It was easy to use the game” consistently recieved higher scores when the game was played using the keyboard regardless of level, suggesting the game and/or the MBC may need improvement to compete with traditional controls in usability.

Le projet SIMUSURF consiste en l’utilisation d’un robot hexapode de mouvement pour l’analyse de la réponse biomécanique d’un sujet positionné sur un plateau mobile et soumis à des mouvements de translation et/ou de rotation. Ce robot permet l’apprentissage d’activités sportives nécessitant des conditions particulières d’équilibre. Les sports de glisse tels que le surf, le ski ou le snowboard sont des activités qui nécessitent la conduite de trajectoire du support (planche de surf, skis ou snowboard) et l’équilibre du sportif. Pour un simulateur de surf, l’hexapode équipé de plates-formes de forces permettra alors d’établir des relations entre figures et réponse biomécanique du surfeur, d’étudier la variabilité interindividuelle pour exécuter un mouvement donné et d’optimiser le geste sportif dans un but d’aide à la performance.L’étude concernant le développement de ce simulateur à partir de l’hexapode a été abordée sous deux aspects.- D’un point de vue instrumentation et acquisition, la simulation des trajectoires correspondant aux mouvements de l’ensemble {surfeur + planche} sur l’eau a nécessité la constitution d’une base de données expérimentales permettant notamment d’identifier un modèle dynamique de comportement d’interactions entre le surfeur, sa planche et la vague. Pour ces mesures in situ, l’instrumentation d’une planche a été nécessaire. La conception d’une planche instrumentée et la mise en place d’un protocole d’acquisition dans les conditions extrêmes que représente l’environnement marin ont été un des verrous technologiques associés à ce projet.- D’un point de vue mécanique et robotique, il a été indispensable d’optimiser le pilotage de cette machine (au total 6 vérins avec des vitesses potentielles de 5 m/s) pour atteindre les trajectoires désirées ou les efforts multiaxiaux à imposer dans le cas particulier d’un pilotage complexe en effort.Afin d’être réaliste, un simulateur de surf réalisé autour d’un hexapode devait être capable de reproduire les mouvements complexes et de dynamiques élevées d’une planche de surf sur une vague et soumis aux efforts du surfeur. Ces performances ont été atteintes en tenant compte des phénomènes de couplage dynamiques existants entre ses actionneurs et en mettant en œuvre une approche de commande multivariable efficace : une approche CRONE permettant de synthétiser des lois de commande à la fois performantes et robustes, c’est-à-dire résistant à une connaissance imparfaite du système commandé. / The project SIMUSURF consists in using an hexapod to analyze the biomechanical response of a human subject positioned on the moving platform of the hexapod and submitted to a translation and/or rotation movement. This robot allows practice of sport activities where balanced specific conditions are required. Riding sports such as surf, ski or snowboard are sports for which special skills to steer the support (surfboard, snowboard or ski for instance) are needed. The development of a surf simulator, using the hexapod equipped with multi-axis force plates, will allow to study the relations between figure and biomechanical response of the surfer, the interindividual variability to execute a given movement and to optimise the actions of the person aiming at better performances.The development of this simulator from the hexapod has been approached from two aspects.- From an instrumentation and acquisition point of view, simulation of the trajectories corresponding to the movements of the set {surfer + board} on the ocean required the constitution of an experimental database to identify such a behavioral dynamic model of the interactions between the surfer, his board and the wave. For these in situ experimentations, instrumentation of a surfboard was required. The design of an instrumented board and the implementation of an acquisition protocol in the extreme conditions due to the marine environment have been one of the technological hurdles associated.- From a mechanical and robotics point of view, it was essential to optimize the control of the hexapode (a total of 6 actuators with the potential speed of 5 m/s) to reach the desired trajectory or multiaxial efforts to impose in the special case of a force complex command.To be realistic, a surfing simulator designed with an hexapod had to be able to reproduce the complex movements and high dynamic of a surfboard on a wave and submitted to the efforts of surfer. These specifications were reached by taking account of existing dynamic coupling phenomena between actuators and implementing effective multivariable control approach: CRONE approach synthesizing control laws both powerful and robust, that is resistant to imperfect knowledge of the controlled system.

The production of clean water, the generation of nuclear power and the development of chemicals, petro-chemicals and pharmaceuticals all rely on liquid-based processes. They are fundamental to modern society, however the real-time monitoring of such processes is an inherently difficult challenge which has not yet been satisfactorily solved.Current methods of monitoring include on- and off-line spot checks and industrial process tomography. Neither of these methods provides the spatial or temporal resolution required to properly characterise the processes. This research project proposes a new monitoring method for processes which can tolerate foreign objects; a mobile underwater sensor network (MUSN).An MUSN has the potential to increase both the spatial and temporal resolution of measurements and could be used in real-time. The network would be formed by a number of mobile sensor platforms, in the form of micro-autonomous underwater vehicles (uAUVs) which would communicate using acoustics. The demonstrator for the technology is for use in the monitoring of nuclear storage ponds.Current AUV technology is not suitable for use in enclosed environments such as storage ponds due to the size and maneuverability. This thesis presents the research conducted in the development of a new vehicle uAUV. The work presented covers the mechatronic aspects of the vehicle; the design of the hull, propulsion systems, corresponding control circuitry and basic motion control systems. One of the main factors influencing the design of the vehicle has been cost. If a large number of vehicles are used to form a network, the cost of an individual uAUV should be kept as low as possible. This has raised a number of technical challenges as low-cost components are often of low-tolerance. Imbalanced time-varying thrust, low manufacturing tolerances and noisy indirect sensor measurements for the control systems have all been overcome in the design of the vehicle. The outcome of the research is a fully functional prototype uAUV. The vehicle is spherical in shape with a diameter of approximately 15cm, with six thruster units mounted around the equator (increasing the horizontal clearance to 20cm) to provide thrust in four degrees of freedom (surge, sway, heave and yaw). The vehicle has a sensor suite which includes a pressure sensor, digital compass and a gyroscope which provide inputs to the motion control systems. The controllers have been developed and implemented on the vehicle's custom built embedded system. Experiments have been conducted showing that the uAUV is able to move in 3D with closed-loop control in heave and yaw. Motion in surge and sway is open-loop, via a dead-reckoning system.

External beam radiation therapy is often used as a form of treatment for individuals diagnosed with cancer. However, because staying completely still can often be difficult for children, sedation is often used daily to remedy the need for stillness. In this document, we introduce the development, implementation, and testing of a technology designed to teach healthy children to self-monitor and control their movements. This technology monitored a child's body movement and created a continuous feedback loop, playing a preferred movie based on the amount of body movement observed. Study 1 compares the amount of body movement observed when children were instructed to remain still (instructions alone) to access to a movie contingent on maintained low rates of movement (contingent movie). Study 2 compares the amount of body movement observed in the instructions alone condition with two other conditions: non-contingent access to a movie (non-contingent movie) and contingent movie. Study 3 compares the amount of body movement observed in the instructions alone condition to the contingent movie condition over an extended period of time. Lastly, Study 4 compares the amount of body movement observed when children have previously been taught to stay still using the technology described above across various days throughout various conditions. Generally, we found three things: a) instructions alone were insufficient to produce the level of control over motion required; b) some control over motion was established in the non-contingent movie condition relative to the instructions alone condition; and c) the combination of movies and feedback contingent on movement was necessary to gain the level of control over body motion necessary to adhere to the medical protocol.

Mechatronische Produktionsmaschinen werden nicht mehr nur über ihren Leistungsumfang bewertet, sondern auch über die mitgebrachten Tools für Engineeringaufgaben. Wie erste Ansätze zeigen, erweitert die Integration von TCP/IP in die Steuerungsebene die Möglichkeiten zur Unterstützung des Anwenders nicht nur im Fertigungsprozess, sondern nahezu über den gesamten Lebenszyklus. Die Dissertation beschreibt einen E-Service zur Inbetriebnahme von Lagereglern an Bewegungssteuerungen. Im Rahmen der prototypischen Realisierung erfolgt der Aufbau eines Dienstleistungsportals in einem Computernetz. Es übernimmt eine zentrale Rolle in der Kommunikationsstruktur. Aufgaben rund um die Dienstverwaltung, Dienstausführung und Dienstkommunikation von verteilten Programmen bilden hier die Schwerpunkte. Die Einordnung der realisierten und favorisierten Reglerinbetriebnahme erfolgt in die Gruppe der Offline-Verfahren. Auf dem gewählten Zielsystem, der Bewegungssteuerung SIMOTION von Siemens, läuft dabei der Echtzeitteil ab. Die Offline-Komponente mit den Identifikations- und Reglerberechnungsprogrammen wird im Anwender-Browser ausgeführt. Das System bildet zusammen einen internetbasierten, automatischen Service.

This thesis deals with the general problem of robot motion planning and control. It proposes the hypothesis that it should bepossible to create a generic software framework capable of dealing with all robot motion planning and control problems, independent of the robot being used, the task being solved, the workspace obstacles or the algorithms employed. The thesis work then consisted of identifying the requirements and creating a design and implementation of such a framework. This report motivates and documents the entire process. The framework developed was tested on two different robot arms under varying conditions. The testing method and results are also presented.The thesis concludes that the proposed hypothesis is indeed valid.

This report presents the work carried out aiming towardsdistributed control of electric drives through a networkcommunication medium with temporal constraints, i.e, Ethernet.A general analysis on time delayed systems is carried out,using state space representation of systems in the discretetime domain. The effect of input time delays is identified andis used in the preceding controller designs. The main hardwareapplication focused in this study is a Brushless DC servomotor, whose speed control loop is closed via a 10 MbpsSwitched Ethernet network. The speed control loop, which isapproximately a decade slower than the current control loop, isopened and interfaced to the network at the sensor/actuatornode. It is closed at the speed controller end at another nodein the same local area network (LAN) forming a distributedcontrol system (DCS). The Proportional Integral (PI) classical controller designtechnique with ample changes in parameter tuning suitable fortime delayed systems is used. Then the standard Smith Predictoris tested, modified with the algebraic design techniqueCoefficient Diagram Method (CDM), which increases the systemdegrees of freedom. Constant control delay is assumed in thelatter designs despite the slight stochastic nature in thetiming data observations. Hence the poor transient performanceof the system is the price for the robustness inherited to thespeed controllers at the design stage. The controllability andobservability of the DCS may be lost, depending on the range inwhich the control delay is varying. However a state feedbackcontroller deploying on-line delay data, obtained by means ofsynchronizing the sensor node and controller node systemclocks, results in an effective compensation scheme for thenetwork induced delays. Hence the full state feedbackcontroller makes he distributed system transient performanceacceptable for servo applications with the help of poleplacement controller design. Further, speed synchronizing controllers have been designedsuch that a speed fluctuation caused by a mechanical loadtorque disturbance on one motor is followed effectively by anyother specified motor in the distributed control network with aminimum tracking or synchronizing error. This type ofperformance is often demanded in many industrial applicationssuch as printing, paper, bagging, pick and place and materialcutting. <b>Keywords:</b>Brushless DC Motor, Control Delay, DistributedMotion Control Systems, Proportional Integral Controller, SmithPredictor, Speed Synchronization, State Feedback Controller,Stochastic Systems, Switched-Ethernet, Synchronizing Error,Time Delayed Systems, Tracking Error / NR 20140805

El texto completo de este trabajo no está disponible en el Repositorio Académico UPC por restricciones de la casa editorial donde ha sido publicado. / This work proposes a low-cost hybrid hardware and software system that, through a set of methods and nested while loop fitting algorithms, allows to automatically identify the electrical and mechanical parameters of a brushed direct current motor. The aim is to facilitate a tool that contributes to the development of motion control projects in which this type of actuator is used, automating and speeding up the identification process of the motor system aiming to reach 98% accuracy, in order to guarantee a good electrical and mechanical parameter estimates for the brushed direct current motor. To achieve the objective, a platform was developed consisting of a main interface programmed in Matlab and a data acquisition hardware based on a single-phase incremental optical encoder, an H-bridge, an optocoupler circuit, and a C language-programmed DSPIC30F2010. Both parts of the platform are interconnected through the authors' own serial communication protocol.

Observing and studying how life forms behave, i.e., their movement, adaptability, and so on, have enabled human beings to develop new technologies or optimize existing ones. One of the more noticeable phenomena in Nature is morphogenesis. Morphogenetic processes exist in different stages of biological development, from cellular division to tissue and organ formation. It is easy to observe shape development during mophogenesis due to emerging imaging techniques. However, it is hard to understand this process due to its complex organization, and the morphogenetic responses can be induced by a variety of chemicals or mechanical stresses and are subject to the stochastic fluctuation of the environment, making it even more difficult to acquire a fundamental understanding. It is natural to think of mimicking the complex biological process using simplified synthetic approaches. Endowing synthetic protocells with the ability to control their shape and motion autonomously would enable them to perform more like a biological system, but with less complexity. Creating synthetic morphogenesis would potentially further our understanding in biological morphogenetic processes. Moreover, we can borrow some of the morphogenetic functions in engineered materials to achieve a variety of applications, including artificial tissues, self-healing materials, controlled drug delivery, manipulation of soft robots, among others. In this dissertation, we used a synthetic cellular system controlled by a reaction regulated network that imitates the genetic control as a minimal model to understand the potential mechanisms of morphogenesis. Different simulation methods were used depending on the length scales of interest in each problem. We studied the following aspects of the minimal model system: (a) catalytic reaction induced local morphological control of amphiphilic diblock copolymer vesicles; (b) non-equilibrium control over the self-assembled structures of amphiphilic surfactants; and (c) diffusiophoretic/self-diffusiophoretic motion of colloidal particles in response to the concentration gradient field. The results obtained in this thesis work will provide a valuable road-map to guide future experiments.

The Pier Portal marine monitoring system is an internet controlled underwater camera that will enable students, researchers, and the general public the ability to monitor underwater marine life and ocean conditions. Installed at Cal Poly’s Center for Coastal Marine Science pier at Avila Beach, California, the camera can be commanded in real-time to raise or lower to any position between the top of the pier and the bottom of the ocean floor, while providing a live-stream video to the operator and general public. This thesis effort focused on the integration of the various subsystem components through software, and the development of an online interface to allow the remote control of the system and the ability to view the live-stream video from the camera. Missing or damaged mechanical and electrical components were successfully redesigned and replaced, and a more compact and serviceable winch and sheave system was designed and partially manufactured. A software set was written in Python, JavaScript, HTML, and IEC 61131-6 successfully connecting the system’s control server, the winch’s industrial PLC, the cameras inside the underwater pod, and the front-facing webserver. The system’s internal network has been designed to allow internal components to communicate, and to allow external users the ability to securely control the system and view the video feed. Due to campus closure in early 2020, the final system was unable to be installed and tested, however, this document contains the entire system design and the next steps required to fully implement the system.