199 research outputs found
Multi-Objective Iterative Learning Control: An Advanced ILC Approach for Application Diversity.
While ILC has been applied to repetitive applications in manufacturing, chemical processing, and robotics, several key assumptions limit the extension of ILC to various applications. Conventional ILC focuses on improving the performance of a single metric, such as tracking performance through iterative updates of the time domain control input. The application range is limited to systems that satisfy the assumption of iteration invariance of the plant, reference signal, initial conditions, and disturbances.
We aim to relax this assumption to gain significant advantages. More specifically we focus on relaxing the strict reference tracking requirement to address multiple performance metrics and define the stability bounds across temporal and spatial domains. The aim of this research is expanding the application space of ILC towards non-traditional applications.
Chapter III presents an initial framework to provide the foundation for the multi-objective ILC. This framework is validated by simulation and experimental tests with a wheeled mobile robot.
Chapter IV extends the initial framework from the temporal domain to the spatial domain. The initial framework is generalized to address four classifications of performance objectives. Stability and performance analysis for each classification is provided. Simulation results on a high-resolution additive manufacturing system validate the extended framework.
For the generalized framework, we present a distributed approach in which additional objectives are considered separately. Chapter V evaluates the difference between this distributed approach, and a centralized approach in which the objectives are combined into a single matrix depending on the classification.
Chapter VI extends the multi-objective ILC to incorporate a region-based tracking problem in which reference uncertainty is addressed through the development of a bounded region. A multi-objective region-to-region ILC is developed and validated by a simulation of a surveillance problem with an UAV and multiple unattended ground sensors. Comparisons with point-to-point ILC, region-to-region ILC, and multi-objective region-based ILC demonstrate the performance flexibility that can be achieved when leveraging the regions.
This dissertation provides new approaches for relaxing the classical assumption of iteration invariant reference tracking. New stability and convergence analysis is provided, resulting in a design methodology for multi-objective ILC. These approaches are validated by simulation and experimental results.PhDMechanical EngineeringUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/120875/1/ingyulim_1.pd
EVALUATING ENGINEERING LEARNING AND GENDER NEUTRALITY FOR THE PRODUCT DESIGN OF A MODULAR ROBOTIC KIT
The development of a system is informed from design factors in order to success- fully support the intended usability from the perceived affordances [1]. The theory of ‘Human Centered Design’ champions that these factors be derived from the user itself. It is based on exploiting these affordances that the boundary of technology is pushed to sometimes invent new methods or sometimes approach a problem from newer perspectives. This thesis is an example where we inform our design rationales from children in order to develop a gender neutral modular robotic toy kit
A survey on the design space of end-user-oriented languages for specifying robotic missions
Mobile robots are becoming increasingly important in society. Fulfilling complex missions in different contexts and environments,robots are promising instruments to support our everyday live. As such, the task of defining the robot’s missionis moving from professional developers and roboticists to the end-users. However, with the current state-of-the-art, definingmissions is non-trivial and typically requires dedicated programming skills. Since end-users usually lack such skills, manycommercial robots are nowadays equipped with environments and domain-specific languages tailored for end-users. As such,the software support for defining missions is becoming an increasingly relevant criterion when buying or choosing robots.Improving these environments and languages for specifying missions toward simplicity and flexibility is crucial. To this end,we need to improve our empirical understanding of the current state-of-the-art of such languages and their environments. Inthis paper, we contribute in this direction. We present a survey of 30 mission specification environments for mobile robots thatcome with a visual and end-user-oriented language. We explore the design space of these languages and their environments,identify their concepts, and organize them as features in a feature model. We believe that our results are valuable to practitionersand researchers designing the next generation of mission specification languages in the vibrant domain of mobilerobots
Programming Robots for Activities of Everyday Life
Text-based programming remains a challenge to novice programmers in\ua0all programming domains including robotics. The use of robots is gainingconsiderable traction in several domains since robots are capable of assisting\ua0humans in repetitive and hazardous tasks. In the near future, robots willbe used in tasks of everyday life in homes, hotels, airports, museums, etc.\ua0However, robotic missions have been either predefined or programmed usinglow-level APIs, making mission specification task-specific and error-prone.\ua0To harness the full potential of robots, it must be possible to define missionsfor specific applications domains as needed. The specification of missions of\ua0robotic applications should be performed via easy-to-use, accessible ways, and\ua0at the same time, be accurate, and unambiguous. Simplicity and flexibility in\ua0programming such robots are important, since end-users come from diverse\ua0domains, not necessarily with suffcient programming knowledge.The main objective of this licentiate thesis is to empirically understand the\ua0state-of-the-art in languages and tools used for specifying robot missions byend-users. The findings will form the basis for interventions in developing\ua0future languages for end-user robot programming.During the empirical study, DSLs for robot mission specification were\ua0analyzed through published literature, their websites, user manuals, samplemissions and using the languages to specify missions for supported robots.After extracting data from 30 environments, 133 features were identified.\ua0A feature matrix mapping the features to the environments was developedwith a feature model for robotic mission specification DSLs.Our results show that most end-user facing environments exist in the\ua0education domain for teaching novice programmers and STEM subjects. Mostof the visual languages are developed using Blockly and Scratch libraries.\ua0The end-user domain abstraction needs more work since most of the visualenvironments abstract robotic and programming language concepts but not\ua0end-user concepts. In future works, it is important to focus on the development\ua0of reusable libraries for end-user concepts; and further, explore how end-user\ua0facing environments can be adapted for novice programmers to learn\ua0general programming skills and robot programming in low resource settings\ua0in developing countries, like Uganda
- …