This book introduces the latest advances in modular robotics, and presents a unified geometric framework for modeling, analysis, and design of modular robots, including kinematics, dynamics, calibration, and configuration optimization. Supplementing the main content with a wealth of illustrations, the book offers a valuable guide for researchers, engineers and graduate students in the fields of mechatronics, robotics, and automation who wish to learn about the theory and practice of modular robots.

This proceedings volume contains papers that have been selected after review for oral presentation at ROMANSY 2014, the 20th CISM-IFToMM Symposium on Theory and Practice of Robots and Manipulators. These papers cover advances on several aspects of the wide field of Robotics as concerning Theory and Practice of Robots and Manipulators. ROMANSY 2014 is the twentieth event in a series that started in 1973 as one of the first conference activities in the world on Robotics. The first event was held at CISM (International Centre for Mechanical Science) in Udine, Italy on 5-8 September 1973. It was also the first topic conference of IFToMM (International Federation for the Promotion of Mechanism and Machine Science) and it was directed not only to the IFToMM community. Proceedings volumes of ROMANSY have been always published to be available, also after the symposium, to a large public of scholars and designers with the aim to give an overview of new advances and trends in the theory, design and practice of robots. This proceedings volume, like previous ones of the series, contains contributions with achievements covering many fields of Robotics as Theory and Practice of Robots and Manipulators that can be an inspiration for future developments.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Second International Conference, TPNC 2013, held in Cáceres, Spain, in December 2013. The 19 revised full papers presented together with one invited talk were carefully reviewed and selected from 47 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on nature-inspired models of computation; synthesizing nature by means of computation; nature-inspired materials and information processing in nature.

This book introduces the state-of-the-art technologies in mechatronics, robotics, and MEMS devices in order to improve their methodologies. It provides a follow-up to "Advanced Mechatronics and MEMS Devices" (2013) with an exploration of the most up-to-date technologies and their applications, shown through examples that give readers insights and lessons learned from actual projects. Researchers on mechatronics, robotics, and MEMS as well as graduate students in mechanical engineering will find chapters on: Fundamental design and working principles on MEMS accelerometers Innovative mobile technologies Force/tactile sensors development Control schemes for reconfigurable robotic systems Inertial microfluidics Piezoelectric force sensors and dynamic calibration techniques ...And more. Authors explore applications in the areas of agriculture, biomedicine, advanced manufacturing, and space. Micro-assembly for current and future industries is also considered, as well as the design and development of micro and intelligent manufacturing.

SYROM conferences have been organized since 1973 by the Romanian branch of the International Federation for the Promotion of Mechanisms and Machine Science IFToMM, Year by year the event grew in quality. Now in its 10th edition, international visibility and recognition among the researchers active in the mechanisms science field has been achieved. SYROM 2009 brought together researchers and academic staff from the field of mechanisms and machine science from all over the world and served as a forum for presenting the achievements and most recent results in research and education. Topics treated include conceptual design, kinematics and dynamics, modeling and simulation, synthesis and optimization, command and control, current trends in education in this field, applications in high-tech products. The papers presented at this conference were subjected to a peer-review process to ensure the quality of the paper, the engineering significance, the soundness of results and the originality of the paper. The accepted papers fulfill these criteria and make the proceedings unique among the publications of this type.

Advances in Reconfigurable Mechanisms and Robots I provides a selection of key papers presented in The Second ASME/IFToMM International Conference on Reconfigurable Mechanisms and Robots (ReMAR 2012) held on 9th -11th July 2012 in Tianjin, China. This ongoing series of conferences will be covered in this ongoing collection of books. A total of seventy-eight papers are divided into seven parts to cover the topology, kinematics and design of reconfigurable mechanisms with the reconfiguration theory, analysis and synthesis, and present the current research and development in the field of reconfigurable mechanisms including reconfigurable parallel mechanisms. In this aspect, the recent study and development of reconfigurable robots are further presented with the analysis and design and with their control and development. The bio-inspired mechanisms and subsequent reconfiguration are explored in the challenging fields of rehabilitation and minimally invasive surgery. Advances in Reconfigurable Mechanisms and Robots I further extends the study to deployable mechanisms and foldable devices and introduces applications of reconfigurable mechanisms and robots. The rich-content of Advances in Reconfigurable Mechanisms and Robots I brings together new developments in reconfigurable mechanisms and robots and presents a new horizon for future development in the field of reconfigurable mechanisms and robots.