DLR - Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics

Robotic Systems

Mobile Humanoid "Rollin' Justin"

The mobile robotic system Justin with its compliant controlled light weight arms and its two four finger hands is an ideal experimental platform for dual handed mobil manipulation. The newly developed mobile platform allows the long range autonomous operation of the system. The individually movable, spring born wheels match the special requirements of “Justin's” upper body during manipulation tasks. Various sensors allow the 3D reconstruction of the robot's environment and therefore enable Justin to perform given tasks autonomously.

Hand Arm System

The DLR Hand Arm System is an anthropomorphic robot developed at DLR using variable stiffness actuators (VSA). It is intended to approach its human archetype in size, weight, and performance. The focus of the development is on robustness, high dynamics, and dexterity.

Light-Weight Robot

Hands need arms... and vice versa. We have long experience with the development of light-weight robot arms, which exhibit a 1:1 force:weight ratio, are accurate yet so fast you can catch balls with them.

DLR's Hands

One of our major mechatronic developments concerns that of highly integrated, multi-sensory hands. These hands are more dextrous than other mechatronic hands, while maintaining excellent force-to-weight ratios.

Legged Robots

Legged locomotion seems to be a promising, versatile approach for robot mobility in various environments. In order to investigate the capabilities of walking robots, two prototypes have been built at the institute - the DLR Biped and the hexapedal DLR Crawler. Both robots are used as testbeds for the development and evaluation of advanced control and gait algorithms.

3D Modeller

The DLR 3D Modeller is a hand-held multi sensory Device, consisting of a laser range scanner, a laser stripe Profiler and Stereo cameras. It can be used to obtain accurate 3D data of any object.

Medical Robotics

In the last decades robotics and mechatronics have found their way into many medical applications. Especially surgery has shown large potential for the use of robotic systems. The goal in medical robotics is thereby not to replace the surgeon by a robot, but to provide the surgeon with new treatment options to the benefit of the patient. Although this technology is still in its early stages, it will significantly change future surgery.

Mechatronics devices

Apart from the above mechatronic systems, the research path followed by the institute has lead to various other mechatronic devices, including new sensor and drive concepts.

Bionics

Efficiency and flexibility of biological systems is still unreached in current robotic systems. Biological evolution formed highly specialized systems, perfectly designed with respect to material, force-to-weight ratio and energy turnover. We study human systems in order to improve our robotics.

Telerobotics & VR

In telepresence, a human operator immerses him/herself into a remote environment and controls a tele-operated device on motion and force level. By means of a multimodal human machine interface (HMI) the human perceives and acts as in the real world. Our research group places special emphasis on the haptic feedback.

Vision

Today in robotics, computer vision in a broad sense can be regarded as the key technology for realizing systems with an enhanced level of autonomy. In this domain, we tackle problems from a wide methodological range, from image-based tracking to scene understanding and world modeling.

Space Robotics

In DLR`s programmatic structure space robotics is a so-called core topic within the program theme “technology for space systems”. This core topic is basically subdivided into the following areas and “internal projects”

Demonstrators

We use many of our research results in larger integrated platforms. Although mostly not at production status, these platforms clearly demonstrate the real-world applicability of our research.

System Dynamics and Control

Aeronautics

Dynamics and control in aeronautics is a key area of research and application within the department Control Design Engineering. We are specialists in multi-disciplinary design of flight control laws, as well as in development of multi-disciplinary models for aircraft flight dynamics and aircraft on-board systems.

Automotive

Activities in the automotive field are mainly embedded in the DLR research area “Drivers Assistance Systems”. In the associated project “Mechatronic Chassis” we coordinate joint research with DLR-Institute of Transportation Systems (TS) and DLR-Institute of Flight Systems (FT). ....

Railway Systems

The present-day research activities in railway vehicles are focussed on 2 areas, namely on vehicle dynamics and on energy systems, and are embedded in the DLR-Project “Next Generation Train” (NGT). In particular we are concerned with modelling and simulation of the wheel-rail-interface in order to improve the dynamical, acoustical and wear related properties of vehicle systems that interact with the intrastructure. Braking and brake control, crosswind stability and mechatronic runnings gears are additional working fields. The object-oriented multi-domain language Modelica is applied in order to model, analyse and optimise energy systems in trains.

Industrial Robot Control

We cooperate with the robot manufacturer KUKA. The main issues are to improve the dynamic performance of industrial robots by optimizing feedforward and feedback control laws. Based on non-linear dynamic robot models, feedforward control is used to maximize robot speed of the reference trajectory, and feedback control is used to improve contour following by vibration attenuation.

Control Methods & Tools

Advanced control design processes are model-based and the control law design problems are also often multi-disciplinary in their nature where many different, often conflicting design requirements have to be fulfilled simultaneously. Tackling control design problems for critical processes in aerospace and robotics demands for efficient and reliable computer-aided methods and tools.