Supervised Autonomous Locomotion and Manipulation for Disaster Response with a Centaur-like Robot

Mobile manipulation tasks are one of the key challenges in the field of search and rescue (SAR) robotics requiring robots with flexible locomotion and manipulation abilities. Since the tasks are mostly unknown in advance, the robot has to adapt to a wide variety of terrains and workspaces during a mission. The centaur-like robot Centauro has a hybrid legged-wheeled base and an anthropomorphic upper body to carry out complex tasks in environments too dangerous for humans. Due to its high number of degrees of freedom, controlling the robot with direct teleoperation approaches is challenging and exhausting. Supervised autonomy approaches are promising to increase quality and speed of control while keeping the flexibility to solve unknown tasks. We developed a set of operator assistance functionalities with different levels of autonomy to control the robot for challenging locomotion and manipulation tasks. The integrated system was evaluated in disaster response scenarios and showed promising performance.Comment: In Proceedings of IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), Madrid, Spain, October 201

Climbing and Walking Robots

With the advancement of technology, new exciting approaches enable us to render mobile robotic systems more versatile, robust and cost-efficient. Some researchers combine climbing and walking techniques with a modular approach, a reconfigurable approach, or a swarm approach to realize novel prototypes as flexible mobile robotic platforms featuring all necessary locomotion capabilities. The purpose of this book is to provide an overview of the latest wide-range achievements in climbing and walking robotic technology to researchers, scientists, and engineers throughout the world. Different aspects including control simulation, locomotion realization, methodology, and system integration are presented from the scientific and from the technical point of view. This book consists of two main parts, one dealing with walking robots, the second with climbing robots. The content is also grouped by theoretical research and applicative realization. Every chapter offers a considerable amount of interesting and useful information

Locomotion system for ground mobile robots in uneven and unstructured environments

One of the technology domains with the greatest growth rates nowadays is service robots. The extensive use of ground mobile robots in environments that are unstructured or structured for humans is a promising challenge for the coming years, even though Automated Guided Vehicles (AGV) moving on flat and compact grounds are already commercially available and widely utilized to move components and products inside indoor industrial buildings. Agriculture, planetary exploration, military operations, demining, intervention in case of terrorist attacks, surveillance, and reconnaissance in hazardous conditions are important application domains. Due to the fact that it integrates the disciplines of locomotion, vision, cognition, and navigation, the design of a ground mobile robot is extremely interdisciplinary. In terms of mechanics, ground mobile robots, with the exception of those designed for particular surroundings and surfaces (such as slithering or sticky robots), can move on wheels (W), legs (L), tracks (T), or hybrids of these concepts (LW, LT, WT, LWT). In terms of maximum speed, obstacle crossing ability, step/stair climbing ability, slope climbing ability, walking capability on soft terrain, walking capability on uneven terrain, energy efficiency, mechanical complexity, control complexity, and technology readiness, a systematic comparison of these locomotion systems is provided in [1]. Based on the above-mentioned classification, in this thesis, we first introduce a small-scale hybrid locomotion robot for surveillance and inspection, WheTLHLoc, with two tracks, two revolving legs, two active wheels, and two passive omni wheels. The robot can move in several different ways, including using wheels on the flat, compact ground,[1] tracks on soft, yielding terrain, and a combination of tracks, legs, and wheels to navigate obstacles. In particular, static stability and non-slipping characteristics are considered while analyzing the process of climbing steps and stairs. The experimental test on the first prototype has proven the planned climbing maneuver’s efficacy and the WheTLHLoc robot's operational flexibility. Later we present another development of WheTLHLoc and introduce WheTLHLoc 2.0 with newly designed legs, enabling the robot to deal with bigger obstacles. Subsequently, a single-track bio-inspired ground mobile robot's conceptual and embodiment designs are presented. This robot is called SnakeTrack. It is designed for surveillance and inspection activities in unstructured environments with constrained areas. The vertebral column has two end modules and a variable number of vertebrae linked by compliant joints, and the surrounding track is its essential component. Four motors drive the robot: two control the track motion and two regulate the lateral flexion of the vertebral column for steering. The compliant joints enable limited passive torsion and retroflection of the vertebral column, which the robot can use to adapt to uneven terrain and increase traction. Eventually, the new version of SnakeTrack, called 'Porcospino', is introduced with the aim of allowing the robot to move in a wider variety of terrains. The novelty of this thesis lies in the development and presentation of three novel designs of small-scale mobile robots for surveillance and inspection in unstructured environments, and they employ hybrid locomotion systems that allow them to traverse a variety of terrains, including soft, yielding terrain and high obstacles. This thesis contributes to the field of mobile robotics by introducing new design concepts for hybrid locomotion systems that enable robots to navigate challenging environments. The robots presented in this thesis employ modular designs that allow their lengths to be adapted to suit specific tasks, and they are capable of restoring their correct position after falling over, making them highly adaptable and versatile. Furthermore, this thesis presents a detailed analysis of the robots' capabilities, including their step-climbing and motion planning abilities. In this thesis we also discuss possible refinements for the robots' designs to improve their performance and reliability. Overall, this thesis's contributions lie in the design and development of innovative mobile robots that address the challenges of surveillance and inspection in unstructured environments, and the analysis and evaluation of these robots' capabilities. The research presented in this thesis provides a foundation for further work in this field, and it may be of interest to researchers and practitioners in the areas of robotics, automation, and inspection. As a general note, the first robot, WheTLHLoc, is a hybrid locomotion robot capable of combining tracked locomotion on soft terrains, wheeled locomotion on flat and compact grounds, and high obstacle crossing capability. The second robot, SnakeTrack, is a small-size mono-track robot with a modular structure composed of a vertebral column and a single peripherical track revolving around it. The third robot, Porcospino, is an evolution of SnakeTrack and includes flexible spines on the track modules for improved traction on uneven but firm terrains, and refinements of the shape of the track guidance system. This thesis provides detailed descriptions of the design and prototyping of these robots and presents analytical and experimental results to verify their capabilities

Hardware Architecture Review of Swarm Robotics System: Self-Reconfigurability, Self-Reassembly, and Self-Replication

Swarm robotics is one of the most fascinating and new research areas of recent decades, and one of the grand challenges of robotics is the design of swarm robots that are self-sufficient. This can be crucial for robots exposed to environments that are unstructured or not easily accessible for a human operator, such as the inside of a blood vessel, a collapsed building, the deep sea, or the surface of another planet. In this paper, we present a comprehensive study on hardware architecture and several other important aspects of modular swarm robots, such as self-reconfigurability, self-replication, and self-assembly. The key factors in designing and building a group of swarm robots are cost and miniaturization with robustness, flexibility, and scalability. In robotics intelligence, self-assembly and self-reconfigurability are among the most important characteristics as they can add additional capabilities and functionality to swarm robots. Simulation and model design for swarm robotics is highly complex and expensive, especially when attempting to model the behavior of large swarm robot groups.http://dx.doi.org/10.5402/2013/84960

Pemodelan Konsep dan Rancangan Mekanik sebuah Purwarupa Unmanned Ground Vehicle untuk Pergerakan Omnidirectional

Penggunaan UGV sebagai bagian dari otomasi disektor industri pertanian dilakukan secara intensif sebagai solusi dari masalah tenaga kerja dan produksi. Saat ini UGV yang dikembangkan pada sektor industri pertanian masih terbatas pada kemampuan bermanuvernya. UGV dengan kemampuan bermanuver yang tinggi dibutuhkan untuk melakukan beberapa pekertajaan pertanian dalam rangka untuk meningkatkan fisiensi produksi pertanian. Sehingga pada paper ini diusulkan sebuah ide baru berupa rancangan mekanik UGV untuk memperbaiki kemampuan bermanuver UGV. Paper ini menawarkan sebuah konsep perancangan mekanik untuk mendukung pergerakan omnidirectional sebagai kelebihan pergerakan UGV yang dirancang pada permukaan lahan pertanian. Suatu sistem steering independen dirancang pada UGV ini untuk mendukung mekanisme pergerakan omnidirectional. Sebelum proses pembuatan, konsep, rancangan, dan struktur UGV pertanian yang diusulkan dievaluasi menggunakan simulasi untuk memahami mengenai struktur rangka dan mekanisme geraknya. Pada penelitian ini, analisis struktur dan gerak dilakukan dengan menggunakan perangkat lunak computer aided design. Hasilnya menunjukan bahwa sistem steering yang dirancang dapat digunakan sebagai mekanisme kemudi untuk mendukung pergerakan omnidirectional

Slip Modelling, Estimation and Control of Omnidirectional Wheeled Mobile Robots with Powered Caster Wheels

Ph.DDOCTOR OF PHILOSOPH