Advanced Mobile Robotics: Volume 3

Mobile robotics is a challenging field with great potential. It covers disciplines including electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, computer science, cognitive science, and social science. It is essential to the design of automated robots, in combination with artificial intelligence, vision, and sensor technologies. Mobile robots are widely used for surveillance, guidance, transportation and entertainment tasks, as well as medical applications. This Special Issue intends to concentrate on recent developments concerning mobile robots and the research surrounding them to enhance studies on the fundamental problems observed in the robots. Various multidisciplinary approaches and integrative contributions including navigation, learning and adaptation, networked system, biologically inspired robots and cognitive methods are welcome contributions to this Special Issue, both from a research and an application perspective

Mechatronic Systems

Mechatronics, the synergistic blend of mechanics, electronics, and computer science, has evolved over the past twenty five years, leading to a novel stage of engineering design. By integrating the best design practices with the most advanced technologies, mechatronics aims at realizing high-quality products, guaranteeing at the same time a substantial reduction of time and costs of manufacturing. Mechatronic systems are manifold and range from machine components, motion generators, and power producing machines to more complex devices, such as robotic systems and transportation vehicles. With its twenty chapters, which collect contributions from many researchers worldwide, this book provides an excellent survey of recent work in the field of mechatronics with applications in various fields, like robotics, medical and assistive technology, human-machine interaction, unmanned vehicles, manufacturing, and education. We would like to thank all the authors who have invested a great deal of time to write such interesting chapters, which we are sure will be valuable to the readers. Chapters 1 to 6 deal with applications of mechatronics for the development of robotic systems. Medical and assistive technologies and human-machine interaction systems are the topic of chapters 7 to 13.Chapters 14 and 15 concern mechatronic systems for autonomous vehicles. Chapters 16-19 deal with mechatronics in manufacturing contexts. Chapter 20 concludes the book, describing a method for the installation of mechatronics education in schools

Rehabilitation Engineering

Population ageing has major consequences and implications in all areas of our daily life as well as other important aspects, such as economic growth, savings, investment and consumption, labour markets, pensions, property and care from one generation to another. Additionally, health and related care, family composition and life-style, housing and migration are also affected. Given the rapid increase in the aging of the population and the further increase that is expected in the coming years, an important problem that has to be faced is the corresponding increase in chronic illness, disabilities, and loss of functional independence endemic to the elderly (WHO 2008). For this reason, novel methods of rehabilitation and care management are urgently needed. This book covers many rehabilitation support systems and robots developed for upper limbs, lower limbs as well as visually impaired condition. Other than upper limbs, the lower limb research works are also discussed like motorized foot rest for electric powered wheelchair and standing assistance device

Design and validation of decision and control systems in automated driving

xxvi, 148 p.En la última década ha surgido una tendencia creciente hacia la automatización de los vehículos, generando un cambio significativo en la movilidad, que afectará profundamente el modo de vida de las personas, la logística de mercancías y otros sectores dependientes del transporte. En el desarrollo de la conducción automatizada en entornos estructurados, la seguridad y el confort, como parte de las nuevas funcionalidades de la conducción, aún no se describen de forma estandarizada. Dado que los métodos de prueba utilizan cada vez más las técnicas de simulación, los desarrollos existentes deben adaptarse a este proceso. Por ejemplo, dado que las tecnologías de seguimiento de trayectorias son habilitadores esenciales, se deben aplicar verificaciones exhaustivas en aplicaciones relacionadas como el control de movimiento del vehículo y la estimación de parámetros. Además, las tecnologías en el vehículo deben ser lo suficientemente robustas para cumplir con los requisitos de seguridad, mejorando la redundancia y respaldar una operación a prueba de fallos. Considerando las premisas mencionadas, esta Tesis Doctoral tiene como objetivo el diseño y la implementación de un marco para lograr Sistemas de Conducción Automatizados (ADS) considerando aspectos cruciales, como la ejecución en tiempo real, la robustez, el rango operativo y el ajuste sencillo de parámetros. Para desarrollar las aportaciones relacionadas con este trabajo, se lleva a cabo un estudio del estado del arte actual en tecnologías de alta automatización de conducción. Luego, se propone un método de dos pasos que aborda la validación de ambos modelos de vehículos de simulación y ADS. Se introducen nuevas formulaciones predictivas basadas en modelos para mejorar la seguridad y el confort en el proceso de seguimiento de trayectorias. Por último, se evalúan escenarios de mal funcionamiento para mejorar la seguridad en entornos urbanos, proponiendo una estrategia alternativa de estimación de posicionamiento para minimizar las condiciones de riesgo

Selected topics in robotics for space exploration

Papers and abstracts included represent both formal presentations and experimental demonstrations at the Workshop on Selected Topics in Robotics for Space Exploration which took place at NASA Langley Research Center, 17-18 March 1993. The workshop was cosponsored by the Guidance, Navigation, and Control Technical Committee of the NASA Langley Research Center and the Center for Intelligent Robotic Systems for Space Exploration (CIRSSE) at RPI, Troy, NY. Participation was from industry, government, and other universities with close ties to either Langley Research Center or to CIRSSE. The presentations were very broad in scope with attention given to space assembly, space exploration, flexible structure control, and telerobotics

Aerial Robotics for Inspection and Maintenance

Aerial robots with perception, navigation, and manipulation capabilities are extending the range of applications of drones, allowing the integration of different sensor devices and robotic manipulators to perform inspection and maintenance operations on infrastructures such as power lines, bridges, viaducts, or walls, involving typically physical interactions on flight. New research and technological challenges arise from applications demanding the benefits of aerial robots, particularly in outdoor environments. This book collects eleven papers from different research groups from Spain, Croatia, Italy, Japan, the USA, the Netherlands, and Denmark, focused on the design, development, and experimental validation of methods and technologies for inspection and maintenance using aerial robots

High-Speed Obstacle Avoidance at the Dynamic Limits for Autonomous Ground Vehicles

Enabling autonomy of passenger-size and larger vehicles is becoming increasingly important in both military and commercial applications. For large autonomous ground vehicles (AGVs), the vehicle dynamics are critical to consider to ensure vehicle safety during obstacle avoidance maneuvers especially at high speeds. This research is concerned with large-size high-speed AGVs with high center of gravity that operate in unstructured environments. The term `unstructured' in this context denotes that there are no lanes or traffic rules to follow. No map of the environment is available a priori. The environment is perceived through a planar light detection and ranging sensor. The mission of the AGV is to move from its initial position to a given target position safely and as fast as possible. In this dissertation, a model predictive control (MPC)-based obstacle avoidance algorithm is developed to achieve the objectives through an iterative simultaneous optimization of the path and the corresponding control commands. MPC is chosen because it offers a rigorous and systematic approach for taking vehicle dynamics and safety constraints into account. Firstly, this thesis investigates the level of model fidelity needed for an MPC-based obstacle avoidance algorithm to be able to safely and quickly avoid obstacles even when the vehicle is close to its dynamic limits. Five different representations of vehicle dynamics models are considered. It is concluded that the two Degrees-of-Freedom (DoF) representation that accounts for tire nonlinearities and longitudinal load transfer is necessary for the MPC-based obstacle avoidance algorithm to operate the vehicle at its limits within an environment that includes large obstacles. Secondly, existing MPC formulations for passenger vehicles in structured environments do not readily apply to this context. Thus, a novel nonlinear MPC formulation is developed. First, a new cost function formulation is used that aims to find the shortest path to the target position. Second, a region partitioning approach is used in conjunction with a multi-phase optimal control formulation to accommodate the complicated forms of obstacle-free regions from an unstructured environment. Third, the no-wheel-lift-off condition is established offline using a fourteen DoF vehicle dynamics model and is included in the MPC formulation. The formulation can simultaneous optimize both steering angle and reference longitudinal speed commands. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm is capable of safely exploiting the dynamic limits of the vehicle while navigating the vehicle through sensed obstacles of different size and number. Thirdly, in the algorithm, a model of the vehicle is used explicitly to predict and optimize future actions, but in practice, the model parameter values are not exactly known. It is demonstrated that using nominal parameter values in the algorithm leads to safety issues in about one fourth of the evaluated scenarios with the considered parametric uncertainty distributions. To improve the robustness of the algorithm, a novel double-worst-case formulation is developed. Results from simulations with stratified random scenarios and worst-case scenarios show that the double-worst-case formulation considering both the most likely and less likely worst-case scenarios renders the algorithm robust to all uncertainty realizations tested. The trade-off between the robustness and the task completion performance of the algorithm is also quantified. Finally, in addition to simulation-based validation, preliminary experimental validation is also performed. These results demonstrate that the developed algorithm is promising in terms of its capability of avoiding obstacles. Limitations and potential improvements of the algorithm are discussed.PHDMechanical EngineeringUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/135770/1/ljch_1.pd