Research line
Kinematics and Robot Design

The KINEMATICS AND ROBOT DESIGN Group carries out research on the design, construction, motion analysis, and control of complex mechanisms and structures. In robotics, these devices are parallel manipulators, multi-fingered hands, reconfigurable mechanisms, or cooperating robots, to name a few, but they appear in other domains too, as mechanistic models of locomotive organisms, molecular compounds or nano-structures.
Head of line: Josep Maria Porta Pleite

Research areas
>> Robot design and construction
>> Position analysis of multibody systems
>> Singularity analysis
>> Motion planning and control

Tech. transfer
Our activity finds applications in several fields through collaboration with our technological partners
Facilities

Research projects
We carry out projects from national and international research programmes.
→ More about our research projects
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Robot design and construction
The group designs and constructs innovative mechatronic devices based mainly on parallel architectures. Our developments include the “Wrenchpad” (a six-axis tactile pad), several tensegrity-based robots, a pentaglide, several variations of the Gough-Stewart platform, different cable-driven robots, and the "Scherbot" robot (a five-bar mechanism to test kinodynamic motion planning and control techniques). The group also works on the development of various reconfigurable robots. These offer the possibility of reducing the number of actuators needed to perform a task, with the consequent decrease in construction costs. Moreover, reconfigurations can also be used to enlarge the robot’s workspace, or to avoid problematic configurations like singularities.

Position analysis of multibody systems
The group also develops techniques for position analysis of multiloop linkages. The problem consists in finding the possible configurations that a linkage can adopt while respecting the kinematic constraints imposed by its joints. The resulting techniques can be applied to robotics (in contexts like direct or inverse kinematics, cooperative manipulation, object grasping, and motion planning), to structural biology (e.g., to the conformational analysis of biomolecules), to multibody dynamics (initial position and finite displacement problems), and to computer-aided design (variational CAD and assembly positioning). The group works essentially on two approaches: one based on relaxation techniques, and the other based on characteristic polynomials using Distance Geometry. Many of the developments are implemented in the CUIK suite, a large toolbox for motion analysis and synthesis of closed-chain multibody systems.

Singularity analysis
Singularities play a prominent role on understanding the configuration space of a robot. Depending on their nature, singularities give rise to overspeeding problems, dexterity losses, or controllability issues. Thus, these configurations are often avoided during the usual operation of a robot, especially in applications that require careful human-robot interactions. Singularities, however, may also give rise to mechanical advantage (e.g., they can be used to transform small motor torques into large end-effector forces) and also provide the boundary of the workspace, which is a crucial information for the robot designer. The group has developed new geometric tools that allow characterizing and computing the various singularity loci of a robot, either for specific classes of parallel manipulators, or for general multi-body systems. New algorithms for controlling the motions across forward singularities are being developed too, which would allow the extension of the reachable workspace in parallel mechanisms.

Motion planning and control
Along this line, the group develops algorithms for the planning and control of motions of general constrained systems. These systems encompass robots subject to holonomic or nonholonomic constraints, like loop-closure, contact, or rolling constraints. The goal is to design feasible motions bringing the robot to a desired state without colliding with obstacles, and to obtain robust controllers to perform such motions. Several techniques have been developed to both ends, which either consider the kinematic constraints of the robot, or also the full dynamic model (including motor saturations and speed limits). In both cases, innovative methods based on higher-dimensional continuation and randomised sampling techniques have been proposed for the planning of motions. The control of motions, in turn, is achieved by means of optimal control and trajectory optimization techniques. The group has also investigated the connections with related problems in biochemistry, contributing with novel algorithms for finding low-energy paths between different molecular conformations.

These are the latest research projects of the Kinematics and Robot Design research line:
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RobCab: Control strategies for cable-driven robot for low-gravity simulation
National Project
Start Date: 01/01/2015
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CUIK++: An Extension of Branch-and-Prune Techniques for Motion Analysis and Synthesis of Complex Robotic Systems
National Project
Start Date: 01/01/2011
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CUIK+: Analysis and motion planning of complex robotic systems
National Project
Start Date: 01/10/2007
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CUIK: Planificador de trayectorias para sistemas robotizados de arquitectura arbitraria
National Project
Start Date: 13/12/2005
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TenSeBot: Estudio de estructuras tensegrity para el desarrollo de sensores manipuladores y robots móviles
National Project
Start Date: 01/10/2006
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SIRVENT: Sistema reconfigurable para la navegación basada en visión de robots caminantes y rodantes en entornos naturales.
National Project
Start Date: 01/12/2003
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DIST: Design and implementation of efficient parallelizable algorithms with applications to robotics and proteomics
National Project
Start Date: 01/12/2003
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ARGOS: Navegación autónoma de robots guiados por objetivos visuales
National Project
Start Date: 28/12/2000
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RESOL: Resolución de sistemas de ecuaciones cinemáticas para la simulación de mecanismos, posicionado interactivo de objetos y conformación de moléculas
National Project
Start Date: 28/12/2000
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NAVEGA: Navegación basada en visión de robots autónomos en entornos no estructurados.
National Project
Start Date: 01/08/1997
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CUIK-IT: Un sistema modular para el análisis cinemático y la construcción de manipuladores planares
CSIC Project
Start Date: 01/01/2012
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WRENCHPAD: Plataforma torsométrica basada en estructuras de tensigridad
CSIC Project
Start Date: 01/07/2006
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AMOBIO: Reconstrucció i anàlisi del moviment de grans estructures robòtiques i bioquímiques.
Regional Project
Start Date: 01/01/2007
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COL-VI: Automatic diagnosis of collagen VI-related muscular dystrophies
Technology Transfer Contract
Start Date: 01/09/2020
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SICOSOL: Sistemas de Seguimiento y Concentración de Energía Solar
Technology Transfer Contract
Start Date: 20/06/2014
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IDAHO: Kinematic synthesis for scalable finger/thumb exoskeleton robot
Technology Transfer Contract
Start Date: 12/03/2010
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MANIPTENS: Estudio y diseño de manipulador mecánico sobreactuado basado en estructuras tensigrity
National Project
Start Date: 13/07/2007
These are the most recent publications (2021 - 2020) of the Kinematics and Robot Design
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S. Sarabandi, A. Shabani, J.M. Porta and F. Thomas. On closed-form formulas for the 3-D nearest rotation matrix problem. IEEE Transactions on Robotics, 36(4): 1333-1339, 2020.
Abstract
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T. Marchi, G. Mottola, J.M. Porta, F. Thomas and M. Carricato. Position analysis of a class of n-RRR planar parallel robots, 3rd International Conference of the IFToMM Italy, 2020, Online, in Advances in Italian Mechanism Science, Vol 91 of Mechanisms and Machine Science Series, pp. 353-361, Springer.
Abstract
Info
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F. Thomas and J.M. Porta. Clifford’s identity and generalized Cayley-Menger determinants, 17th International Symposium on Advances in Robot Kinematics, 2020, Ljubljana, Slovenia, in Advances in Robot Kinematics 2020, Vol 15 of Springer Proceedings in Advanced Robotics, pp. 285-292, Springer.
Abstract
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Kinematic and Robot Design Laboratory
The Kinematics and Robot Design Laboratory was created thanks to the financial support of the VALTEC program, co-financed with FEDER funds, of the Autonomous Goverment of Catalonia. It was initially created to validate the practical interest of our parallel robot designs, but it has rapidly derived into an active lab where the prototypes designed by the researchers of the Group of Kinematics and Robot Design are implemented as proofs of concept.


Researchers
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Celaya Llover, Enric
celaya (at) iri.upc.edu
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Porta Pleite, Josep Maria
porta (at) iri.upc.edu
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Ros Giralt, Lluís
ros (at) iri.upc.edu
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Ruiz de Angulo García, Vicente
ruiz (at) iri.upc.edu
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Thomas Arroyo, Federico
thomas (at) iri.upc.edu
PhD Students
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Bordalba Llaberia, Ricard
rbordalba (at) iri.upc.edu
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Moreno Martín, Siro
smorenom (at) iri.upc.edu
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Sarabandi, Soheil
ssarabandi (at) iri.upc.edu
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Shabani, Arya
ashabani (at) iri.upc.edu
Master Students
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Gautier, Maxime
mgautier (at) iri.upc.edu
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Giró Pérez, Pere
pgiro (at) iri.upc.edu
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