Special Issue on Novel Robotics and Control

This special issue focuses on the following topic areas: i Biomimetics and locomotion, ii mobile vehicles, iii human-robot systems and haptic interfaces, and iv novel systems modeling and analysis. We believe that this special issue provides a compilation of the most recent developments in the field of robotics and will be an important source of information for current and future researchers. Biomimetic Robotic Locomotion Systems: The performance benefits, in terms of robustness, stability, and energy efficiency, seen in biological locomotion systems have inspired four of the selected papers. Two papers address issues pertaining to biomimetic locomotion in liquid environments. In “Design of Machines With Compliant Bodies for Biomimetic Locomotion in Liquid Environments,” Valdivia and Youcef-Toumi discuss the realization and performance evaluation of carangiform locomotion realized by a fish robot with an inherently compliant structural body design. The other paper by Behkam and Sitti evaluates the viability of a radically different flagellar motility scheme, typically seen in cellular-scale microorganisms, for realizing energy-efficient locomotion in swimming microrobots. Two other papers—“The Berkeley Lower Extremity Exoskeleton” by Kazerooni, and “The Effect of Leg Specialization in a Biomimetic Hexapedal Running Robot” by Clark and Cutkosky—explore biomimesis for enhanced legged locomotion. Clark and Cutkosky investigate the effects of heterogeneity and configuration selection of various compliant leg designs. Kazerooni examines the design and realization of a functional energy-autonomous leg-exoskeleton to enhance payload-carrying capacity of walking humans. Mobile Vehicles: Key issues pertaining to design, modeling, and control of individual and groups of wheeled mobile locomotion systems are addressed in this set of four papers. Two of these papers address enhancing the capabilities for irregular terrain locomotion by wheeled vehicle either by careful design and parameter selection or by developing approaches for online terrain characterization. In “Kinetostatic Design Considerations for an Articulated Leg-Wheel Locomotion System,” Jun et al. present methods for systematically designing candidate leg-wheel subsystems of actively-articulated wheeled vehicles. In “Visual and Tactile-based Terrain Analysis Using a Cylindrical Shaped Mobile Robot,” Reina et al. propose and validate a novel terrain deformation-characterization method based on multiple internal sensor measurements. The other two papers address controller limitations directly at the modeling stage for real world applications. In “Control of Platoons of Nonholonomic Vehicles Using Redundant Manipulator Analogs,” Bishop presents an adaptation of redundancy resolution techniques to facilitate coordination of platoons of mobile robots. In “Band-limited Trajectory Planning and Tracking for Certain Dynamically Stabilized Mobile Systems,” Pathak and Agrawal provide explicit guarantees on trajectory-tracking performance for dynamically-stabilized robots by developing a formulation for trajectory planning that takes into account the band-limitations on control inputs. Human-Robot Systems and Haptic Interfaces: The selected pa-