An efficacious method to assemble a modern multi-modal robotic team: dilemmas, challenges, possibilities and solutions

A modern multiagent robotic platform consists of a cooperative team of humans which develop a collaborative team of robots. The multi-modal nature of both the system and the team causes a complex problem which needs to be solved for optimum performance. Both the management and the technical aspect of a modern robotic team are explored in this Chapter in the platform of the RoboCup Competition. RoboCup is an example of such an environment where researchers from different disciplines join to develop a robotic team for completion as an evaluation challenge (Robocup, 2011). RoboCup competitions were first proposed by Mackworth in 1993. The main goal of this scientific competition is to exploit, improve and integrate the methods and techniques from robotics, machine vision and artificial intelligence disciplines to create an autonomous team of soccer playing robots(Kitano, 1997a; Kitano, 1997b; Kitano et al., 1997). Such experiment includes several challenges, from inviting an expert of specific field to the team to choosing bolts and nuts for each part of the robots. Usually each challenge has several possible solutions and choosing the best one is often challenging. We have participated in several world wide RoboCup competitions (Abdollahi, Samani et al. 2002, 2003 & 2004) and share our experience as an extensive instruction for setting up a modern robotic team including management and technical issues.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Artificial Intelligence and Systems Theory: Applied to Cooperative Robots

This paper describes an approach to the design of a population of cooperative robots based on concepts borrowed from Systems Theory and Artificial Intelligence. The research has been developed under the SocRob project, carried out by the Intelligent Systems Laboratory at the Institute for Systems and Robotics - Instituto Superior Tecnico (ISR/IST) in Lisbon. The acronym of the project stands both for "Society of Robots" and "Soccer Robots", the case study where we are testing our population of robots. Designing soccer robots is a very challenging problem, where the robots must act not only to shoot a ball towards the goal, but also to detect and avoid static (walls, stopped robots) and dynamic (moving robots) obstacles. Furthermore, they must cooperate to defeat an opposing team. Our past and current research in soccer robotics includes cooperative sensor fusion for world modeling, object recognition and tracking, robot navigation, multi-robot distributed task planning and coordination, including cooperative reinforcement learning in cooperative and adversarial environments, and behavior-based architectures for real time task execution of cooperating robot teams

Mechanical design of a four wheel omni directional mobile robot

Mestrado em ESTG-IPBOmni directional mobile robots have been popularly employed in several applications, especially in soccer player robots considered in Robocup competitions. Actually, the popular optimized robots are using three wheels in the mechanical structure. This situation brings the idea of omnidirectional robot at manufacturing. To design the omnidirectional wheels mobile robot respecting the requirement specifications of the factory lite competition, it’s recommended to design and optimize the proposed solution using Solidworks tool. To design a mobile robot using four omni wheels, it’s important to implement suspension system for each wheel. The suspension system will help the programmer when implementing the PID parameters and test the robot. Such a robot can respond more quickly and it would be capable of more sophisticated behaviors such as to transport materials and placed on processing machine and outgoing warehouses. This thesis has tried to focus the description of four wheel omnidirectional mobile robot to be applied to the Factory Lite competition

MINHO@home

This paper briefly describes the development of a mobile robot to participate on RoboCup@Home. The focus of this project is to integrate robotic knowledge into home applications and human interaction. The robot has the ability to move in all directions due to its omnidirectional system with 3 Swedish wheels at 120º angle and can handle objects using an articulated arm with six degrees of freedom. It incorporates several vision systems allowing the robot to recognize faces and objects and to move autonomously on a domestic environment. Voice recognition and speech capabilities are also present

Perceção e arquitectura de software para robótica móvel

Doutoramento em Ciências da ComputaçãoWhen developing software for autonomous mobile robots, one has to inevitably tackle some kind of perception. Moreover, when dealing with agents that possess some level of reasoning for executing their actions, there is the need to model the environment and the robot internal state in a way that it represents the scenario in which the robot operates. Inserted in the ATRI group, part of the IEETA research unit at Aveiro University, this work uses two of the projects of the group as test bed, particularly in the scenario of robotic soccer with real robots. With the main objective of developing algorithms for sensor and information fusion that could be used e ectively on these teams, several state of the art approaches were studied, implemented and adapted to each of the robot types. Within the MSL RoboCup team CAMBADA, the main focus was the perception of ball and obstacles, with the creation of models capable of providing extended information so that the reasoning of the robot can be ever more e ective. To achieve it, several methodologies were analyzed, implemented, compared and improved. Concerning the ball, an analysis of ltering methodologies for stabilization of its position and estimation of its velocity was performed. Also, with the goal keeper in mind, work has been done to provide it with information of aerial balls. As for obstacles, a new de nition of the way they are perceived by the vision and the type of information provided was created, as well as a methodology for identifying which of the obstacles are team mates. Also, a tracking algorithm was developed, which ultimately assigned each of the obstacles a unique identi er. Associated with the improvement of the obstacles perception, a new algorithm of estimating reactive obstacle avoidance was created. In the context of the SPL RoboCup team Portuguese Team, besides the inevitable adaptation of many of the algorithms already developed for sensor and information fusion and considering that it was recently created, the objective was to create a sustainable software architecture that could be the base for future modular development. The software architecture created is based on a series of di erent processes and the means of communication among them. All processes were created or adapted for the new architecture and a base set of roles and behaviors was de ned during this work to achieve a base functional framework. In terms of perception, the main focus was to de ne a projection model and camera pose extraction that could provide information in metric coordinates. The second main objective was to adapt the CAMBADA localization algorithm to work on the NAO robots, considering all the limitations it presents when comparing to the MSL team, especially in terms of computational resources. A set of support tools were developed or improved in order to support the test and development in both teams. In general, the work developed during this thesis improved the performance of the teams during play and also the e ectiveness of the developers team when in development and test phases.Durante o desenvolvimento de software para robôs autónomos móveis, e inevitavelmente necessário lidar com algum tipo de perceção. Al em disso, ao lidar com agentes que possuem algum tipo de raciocínio para executar as suas ações, há a necessidade de modelar o ambiente e o estado interno do robô de forma a representar o cenário onde o robô opera. Inserido no grupo ATRI, integrado na unidade de investigação IEETA da Universidade de Aveiro, este trabalho usa dois dos projetos do grupo como plataformas de teste, particularmente no cenário de futebol robótico com robôs reais. Com o principal objetivo de desenvolver algoritmos para fusão sensorial e de informação que possam ser usados eficazmente nestas equipas, v arias abordagens de estado da arte foram estudadas, implementadas e adaptadas para cada tipo de robôs. No âmbito da equipa de RoboCup MSL, CAMBADA, o principal foco foi a perceção da bola e obstáculos, com a criação de modelos capazes de providenciar informação estendida para que o raciocino do robô possa ser cada vez mais eficaz. Para o alcançar, v arias metodologias foram analisadas, implementadas, comparadas e melhoradas. Em relação a bola, foi efetuada uma análise de metodologias de filtragem para estabilização da sua posição e estimação da sua velocidade. Tendo o guarda-redes em mente, foi também realizado trabalho para providenciar informação de bolas no ar. Quanto aos obstáculos, foi criada uma nova definição para a forma como são detetados pela visão e para o tipo de informação fornecida, bem como uma metodologia para identificar quais dos obstáculos são colegas de equipa. Além disso foi desenvolvido um algoritmo de rastreamento que, no final, atribui um identicador único a cada obstáculo. Associado a melhoria na perceção dos obstáculos foi criado um novo algoritmo para realizar desvio reativo de obstáculos. No contexto da equipa de RoboCup SPL, Portuguese Team, al em da inevitável adaptação de vários dos algoritmos j a desenvolvidos para fusão sensorial e de informação, tendo em conta que foi recentemente criada, o objetivo foi criar uma arquitetura sustentável de software que possa ser a base para futuro desenvolvimento modular. A arquitetura de software criada e baseada numa série de processos diferentes e métodos de comunicação entre eles. Todos os processos foram criados ou adaptados para a nova arquitetura e um conjunto base de papeis e comportamentos foi definido para obter uma framework funcional base. Em termos de perceção, o principal foco foi a definição de um modelo de projeção e extração de pose da câmara que consiga providenciar informação em coordenadas métricas. O segundo objetivo principal era adaptar o algoritmo de localização da CAMBADA para funcionar nos robôs NAO, considerando todas as limitações apresentadas quando comparando com a equipa MSL, principalmente em termos de recursos computacionais. Um conjunto de ferramentas de suporte foram desenvolvidas ou melhoradas para auxiliar o teste e desenvolvimento em ambas as equipas. Em geral, o trabalho desenvolvido durante esta tese melhorou o desempenho da equipas durante os jogos e também a eficácia da equipa de programação durante as fases de desenvolvimento e teste

Motion control of mobile autonomous robots using non-linear dynamical systems approach

This paper presents a solution to the problem of motion control of an autonomous robot, moving in a dynamical and unstable environment. It is based on non-linear dynamical systems, modelling the state variables that define the motion of a robot under an omnidirectional platform, like its direction of navigation and velocity. The approach used, is based on a set of non-linear differential equations that model the evolution of state variables along time, based on the concept of attractors and repellers. In the official RoboCup Middle Size League field, a target is used to attract the robot to a certain position (could be the ball or a desired position to receive the ball), while a repeller could move the robot away from its original path (given by obstacles in the surrounding environment). The research was firstly carried out in a computational simulation environment and later on with robots in a real environmentThis work was developed at the Automation and Robotics Laboratory by MINHO R&D TEAM, University of Minho, under the supervision of Professor A. Fernando Ribeiro and A. Gil Lopes. The knowledge exchanging between the RoboCup’s MSL teams and community contributed greatly for the development of this work. This work has been supported by COMPETE: POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007043 and FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia within the Project Scope: UID/CEC/00319/2013.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio