The new stage of the industrial revolution, called industry 4.0, involves the use of Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence, process automation and cyber-physical systems to achieve smart factories; these technologies are part of the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) and are devoted to increase levels of industrial intelligence. Within Industry 4.0, drones appear as intelligent devices that have been changing the rules of the game in the industrial sector, providing benefits with innovative applications. However, the required knowledge, skills and attitudes to manage these technological devices are not being developed in most of the Universities. This paper presents an instructional design for teaching UAV flight dynamics based on the Educational Mechatronics Conceptual Framework (EMCF) with the aim to develop the mechatronic concept. This EMCF includes the macro-process levels: concrete, graphic and abstract, and the processes involved to promote learning construction. Moreover, it takes into account the perspective entities: flight Dynamics (Process), Aerial Robotics (Application) and Drone (Artifact). The designed manual is focused on developing knowledge, skills and attitudes in the new jobs generated in Industry 4.0. We consider it key to disseminate educational mechatronics to help Countries in its transformation to become a relevant actor in the fourth industrial revolution.

The diverse and rapidly growing number of low-cost systems dedicated to the surveying of land, oceans and agricultural ecosystems, require affordable sensors and processing units. Typical applications of these systems rely on the estimation of their trajectories while sensing, where conventionally low-cost global positioning system (GPS) receivers are used. Consequently, there is a direct relation between the accuracy of the position determination of the system and the quality of the generated surveying products. In this paper, we propose a methodology for the estimation of the navigation trajectory, based exclusively on one on-board low-cost GPS receiver combined with aerial images, employing a discrete Kalman filter. A full-state formulation of the filter is implemented over a reference trajectory to assess its performance. Additionally, error-state corrections are applied to the filter based on landmarks in aerial images.

Controlling walking biped robots is a challenging problem due to its complex and uncertain dynamics. In order to tackle this, we propose a sliding mode controller based on a dynamic model which was obtained using the conformal geometric algebra approach (CGA). The CGA framework permits us to use lines, points, and other geometric entities, to obtain the Lagrange equations of the system. The references for the joints of the robot were bio-inspired in the kinematics of a walking human body. The first and second derivatives of the reference signal were obtained through an exact robust differentiator based on high order sliding modes. The performance of the proposed control scheme is illustrated through simulation.

The kinematics of a robotic manipulator defines the geometric relationships between its elements. The synthesis of the kinematical model for this type of robots is presented in this work using the Conformal Geometric Algebra approach. Moreover, two error feedback controllers, one for the position tracking problem and another for the orientation tracking problem, are developed using the same framework. The stability analysis is obtained for both controllers, and their application to a robotic system, composed of a serial manipulator of 5 DOF and a robotic head of 2 DOF, is presented via simulation.

A controller, based on nested sliding modes and super-twisting algorithm, is proposed for n-link robotic manipulator tracking problem. This controller has the robustness of nested sliding modes against matched and no matched perturbations and the softness of control signals of super-twisting algorithm (STA). The Nested Super-Twisting Algorithm (NSTA) allows obtaining a control law without knowing the exact model of the robotic manipulator. The application of the proposed controller in a two-link planar robot manipulator and a comparison with the Nested Sliding Mode Control (NSMC) are presented via simulation.

A controller, based on integral nested sliding modes and super-twisting algorithm, is proposed for n-link robotic manipulator tracking problem. This controller has the robustness of nested sliding modes against matched and no matched perturbations, the capability of integral sliding modes to reduce the sliding functions gains, and the softness of control signals of super-twisting algorithm. The performance of the proposed algorithm is compared with integral nested sliding mode control via simulation. For this purpose, the application of both controllers in a two-link planar robot manipulator is presented.