This paper concerns the problem of dynamical identification for an industrial robot manipulator and presents an identification procedure based on an improved cuckoo search algorithm. Firstly, a dynamical model of a 6-DOF industrial serial robot has been derived. And a nonlinear friction model is added to describe the friction characteristic at motion reversal. Secondly, we use a cuckoo search algorithm to identify the unknown parameters. To enhance the performance of the original algorithm, both chaotic operator and emotion operator are employed to help the algorithm jump out of local optimum. Then, the proposed algorithm has been implemented on the first three joints of the ER-16 robot manipulator through an identification experiment. The results show that (1) the proposed algorithm has higher identification accuracy over the cuckoo search algorithm or particle swarm optimization algorithm and (2) compared to linear friction model the nonlinear model can describe the friction characteristic of joints better.

A robust flight controller based on linear active disturbance rejection control (LADRC) is proposed for stability control of an aerial robot quadrotor under wind gusts. The nonlinear dynamical model of the quadrotor, considering the wind disturbance, is firstly established through Newton-Euler method. Subsequently, a robust LADRC technique is proposed to design the controllers for the inner loop and outer loop of the aircraft. In this control scheme, the linear extended state observer (LESO) serves as a compensator which can effectively reject the wind gusts. Then, a method of parameter tuning is introduced to obtain the optimized control performance. Finally, the effectiveness and advantages of the proposed controller are demonstrated through series of simulation case.

In this paper, the carbon dioxide (CO₂) plasma-assisted method was firstly developed for the preparation of dopamine coating polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS). The PDMS films were pre-treated by CO₂ plasma at the power of 30–60 W for 5–10 min and then modified by dopamine for 18 h. The results showed that many polar groups such as C-O bonds, C=O bonds, and O-C=O bonds were introduced into the surface of PDMS films, which successfully promoted the formation of poly(dopamine) coating. Finally, the results of contact angle measurements showed that the surface of the plasma-assisted dopamine grafted samples changed from 118° to 64°. The shearing adhesion strength increased from 2.22 N/cm² to 6.02 N/cm², almost three times that of the original sample. This method provides a successful strategy for obtaining good poly(dopamine) coating layers on PDMS with strong hydrophilicity and shearing adhesion, which can be widely applied in the fields of medical and adhesive materials.

In this article, a yaw channel controller with linear active disturbance rejection control is proposed for high-performance attitude tracking of an unmanned helicopter. In this control scheme, the linear extended state observer serves as a compensator, which can effectively reject parametric uncertainties and external disturbances. In this case, the attitude tracking controller is designed according to the input–output relation of yaw model. As a controlled plant, the yaw dynamical model is first obtained through the system identification method. Subsequently, in order to optimize the linear active disturbance rejection control applied to yaw control, an artificial bee colony algorithm is introduced to solve the problem of parameter tuning. Finally, comparative studies are carried out. The results from simulation and flight experiment show that the proposed controller provides better performances than the traditional controller.