Papers for
robotics integrators
Papers whose findings have a practical use for this group, as judged from the abstract. Open a paper to read what it means in practice.
Frame coordinates robot arms and laser sensing for flexible inspection
Task-Specified Active Metrological Inspection with Measurement-Steered VLA Manipulation and Deterministic Evidence Gating
Abstract: High-mix low-volume (HMLV) manufacturing requires inspection systems to adapt to changing parts, specifications, and work orders without repeated task-specific programming. Existing inspection automation typically assumes predefined sensing sequences, while general purpose robot agents optimize task completion rather than the completeness and validity of metrological evidence. We formulate task-specified active metrological inspection and propose From Requirements to Admissible Metrological Evidence (FRAME), a hierarchical dual-arm framework that converts an inspection instruction and structured specification into traceable conformance evidence. FRAME coordinates learned manipulation with calibrated laser profilometry: a task manager grounds and schedules requirements, active surface correspondence verifies physical-to-specification localization, and evidence memory tracks measurement provenance, admissibility, and coverage. Learned components may propose inspection targets and physical access actions, but deterministic datum-grounded measurement, admissibility checks, coverage auditing, and conformance evaluation prevent incomplete or unverified evidence from authorizing PASS. A series of physical experiments shows that FRAME achieves higher end-to-end inspection reliability, fewer false accepts, and shorter task completion time.
Robotic system adjusts 3D bioprinting in real time for muscle repair
A Physics-Based Closed-Loop Robotic Bioprinting Framework Towards Volumetric Muscle Loss Treatment
Abstract: Robotic bioprinting and Direct Ink Writing (DIW) are being explored towards the treatment of Volumetric Muscle Loss (VML). While previous studies have shown the importance of proper parameter selection on the print outcome, existing approaches often rely on time- and material-intensive design of experiments methods, or require large, well-curated datasets for training machine learning models. In this paper, we propose a physics-based closed-loop robotic bioprinting system capable of near real-time parameter adaptation. The system integrates a 3D point cloud camera and fully autonomous vision-based algorithms to provide quantitative evaluation of printed constructs. This evaluation is fed into a controller that adjusts printing parameters to achieve a desired bead thickness. To assess the framework's performance, four experimental configurations were tested, each repeated three times. In these tests, printing began from an arbitrary initial parameter value, and the controller was tasked with adjusting the parameters to reach the desired thickness. The system converged in all trials, achieving a tracking error below 0.5 mm within an average of 5.2 seconds from the start of printing. The low standard deviation of the converged pressure over different tests (0.04 bar on average) demonstrates robustness and repeatability. Additional experiments were conducted with the controller turned off, enabling direct comparison with open-loop DIW bioprinting, further confirming the effectiveness of the proposed closed-loop framework in achieving the desired bead geometry.