17,015 research outputs found

    Robotic ubiquitous cognitive ecology for smart homes

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    Robotic ecologies are networks of heterogeneous robotic devices pervasively embedded in everyday environments, where they cooperate to perform complex tasks. While their potential makes them increasingly popular, one fundamental problem is how to make them both autonomous and adaptive, so as to reduce the amount of preparation, pre-programming and human supervision that they require in real world applications. The project RUBICON develops learning solutions which yield cheaper, adaptive and efficient coordination of robotic ecologies. The approach we pursue builds upon a unique combination of methods from cognitive robotics, machine learning, planning and agent- based control, and wireless sensor networks. This paper illustrates the innovations advanced by RUBICON in each of these fronts before describing how the resulting techniques have been integrated and applied to a smart home scenario. The resulting system is able to provide useful services and pro-actively assist the users in their activities. RUBICON learns through an incremental and progressive approach driven by the feed- back received from its own activities and from the user, while also self-organizing the manner in which it uses available sensors, actuators and other functional components in the process. This paper summarises some of the lessons learned by adopting such an approach and outlines promising directions for future work

    Public entities driven robotic innovation in urban areas

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    Cities present new challenges and needs to satisfy and improve lifestyle for their citizens under the concept “Smart City”. In order to achieve this goal in a global manner, new technologies are required as the robotic one. But Public entities unknown the possibilities offered by this technology to get solutions to their needs. In this paper the development of the Innovative Public Procurement instruments is explained, specifically the process PDTI (Public end Users Driven Technological Innovation) as a driving force of robotic research and development and offering a list of robotic urban challenges proposed by European cities that have participated in such a process. In the next phases of the procedure, this fact will provide novel robotic solutions addressed to public demand that are an example to be followed by other Smart Cities.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

    Soft Pneumatic Gelatin Actuator for Edible Robotics

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    We present a fully edible pneumatic actuator based on gelatin-glycerol composite. The actuator is monolithic, fabricated via a molding process, and measures 90 mm in length, 20 mm in width, and 17 mm in thickness. Thanks to the composite mechanical characteristics similar to those of silicone elastomers, the actuator exhibits a bending angle of 170.3 {\deg} and a blocked force of 0.34 N at the applied pressure of 25 kPa. These values are comparable to elastomer based pneumatic actuators. As a validation example, two actuators are integrated to form a gripper capable of handling various objects, highlighting the high performance and applicability of the edible actuator. These edible actuators, combined with other recent edible materials and electronics, could lay the foundation for a new type of edible robots.Comment: Submitted to IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems 201

    Specification Patterns for Robotic Missions

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    Mobile and general-purpose robots increasingly support our everyday life, requiring dependable robotics control software. Creating such software mainly amounts to implementing their complex behaviors known as missions. Recognizing the need, a large number of domain-specific specification languages has been proposed. These, in addition to traditional logical languages, allow the use of formally specified missions for synthesis, verification, simulation, or guiding the implementation. For instance, the logical language LTL is commonly used by experts to specify missions, as an input for planners, which synthesize the behavior a robot should have. Unfortunately, domain-specific languages are usually tied to specific robot models, while logical languages such as LTL are difficult to use by non-experts. We present a catalog of 22 mission specification patterns for mobile robots, together with tooling for instantiating, composing, and compiling the patterns to create mission specifications. The patterns provide solutions for recurrent specification problems, each of which detailing the usage intent, known uses, relationships to other patterns, and---most importantly---a template mission specification in temporal logic. Our tooling produces specifications expressed in the LTL and CTL temporal logics to be used by planners, simulators, or model checkers. The patterns originate from 245 realistic textual mission requirements extracted from the robotics literature, and they are evaluated upon a total of 441 real-world mission requirements and 1251 mission specifications. Five of these reflect scenarios we defined with two well-known industrial partners developing human-size robots. We validated our patterns' correctness with simulators and two real robots

    User Needs, Benefits, and Integration of Robotic Systems in a Space Station Laboratory

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    The methodology, results and conclusions of all tasks of the User Needs, Benefits, and Integration Study (UNBIS) of Robotic Systems in a Space Station Laboratory are summarized. Study goals included the determination of user requirements for robotics within the Space Station, United States Laboratory. In Task 1, three experiments were selected to determine user needs and to allow detailed investigation of microgravity requirements. In Task 2, a NASTRAN analysis of Space Station response to robotic disturbances, and acceleration measurement of a standard industrial robot (Intelledex Model 660) resulted in selection of two ranges of microgravity manipulation: Level 1 (10-3 to 10-5 G at greater than 1 Hz) and Level 2 (less than equal 10-6 G at 0.1 Hz). This task included an evaluation of microstepping methods for controlling stepper motors and concluded that an industrial robot actuator can perform milli-G motion without modification. Relative merits of end-effectors and manipulators were studied in Task 3 in order to determine their ability to perform a range of tasks related to the three microgravity experiments. An Effectivity Rating was established for evaluating these robotic system capabilities. Preliminary interface requirements for an orbital flight demonstration were determined in Task 4. Task 5 assessed the impact of robotics
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