State of the Art Review on Mobile Robots and Manipulators for Humanitarian Demining

Robotics solutions properly sized with suitable modularized structure and well adapted to local conditions of dangerous unstructured areas can greatly improve the safety of personnel as well as the work efficiency, productivity and flexibility. In this sense, mobile systems equipped with manipulators for detecting and locating antipersonnel landmines are considered of most importance towards autonomous/semi-autonomous mine location in a proficient, reliable, safer and effective way. This paper reviews the most relevant literature and previous research activity regarding mobile robots and manipulators for humanitarian demining.Robotics solutions properly sized with suitable modularized structure and well adapted to local conditions of dangerous unstructured areas can greatly improve the safety of personnel as well as the work efficiency, productivity and flexibility. In this sense, mobile systems equipped with manipulators for detecting and locating antipersonnel landmines are considered of most importance towards autonomous/semi-autonomous mine location in a proficient, reliable, safer and effective way. This paper reviews the most relevant literature and previous research activity regarding mobile robots and manipulators for humanitarian demining

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The Journal of ERW and Mine Action Issue 10.1 (2006)

Feature: Explosive Remnants of War | Focus: Africa | Profiles | Making it Personal | Notes from the Field | Research and Developmen

Solving Multi-agent planning tasks by using automated planning

This dissertation consists on developing a control system for an autonomous multiagent system using Automated Planning and Computer Vision to solve warehouse organization tasks. This work presents an heterogeneous multi-agent system where each robot has different capabilities. In order to complete the proposed task, the robots will need to collaborate. On one hand, there are coordinator robots that collect information about the boxes to get their destination storage position using Computer Vision. On the other hand, there are cargo robots that push the boxes more easily than the coordinators but they have no camera devices to identify the boxes. Then, both robots must collaborate in order to solve the warehouse problem due to the different sensors and actuators that they have available. This work has been developed in Java. It uses JNAOqi to communicate with the NAO robots (coordinators) and rosjava to communicate with the P3DX robots (cargos). The control modules are deployed in the PELEA architecuture. The empirical evaluation has been conducted in a real environment using two robots: one NAO8 Robot and one P3DX robot.Este trabajo presenta el desarrollo de un sistema de control para un sistema autónomo multi-agente con Planificación Automática y Visión Artificial para resolver tareas de ordenación de almacenes. En el proyecto se presenta un sistema multi-agente heterogéneo donde cada agente tiene diferentes habilidades. Para poder completar la tarea propuesta, los agentes, en este caso robots, deben colaborar. Por un lado, hay robots coordinadores que recogen información de las cajas medinte Visión Artificial para conocer la posición de almacenaje de la caja. Por otro lado, hay robots de carga que empujan las cajas hasta su destino con mayor facilidad que los coordinadores pero que no tienen cámaras de video para identificar las cajas. Por ello, ambos robots tienen que colaborar para resolver el problema de ordenación debido a los diferentes sensores y actuadores que tienen disponibles. El proyecto se ha desarrollado en Java. Se ha utilizado JNAOqi para comunicarse con los robots NAO (coordinadores) y rosjava para comunicarse con los robots P3DX (carga). La evaluación empírica se ha realizado en un entorno real utilizando dos robots: un robot NAO y un robot P3DX.Ingeniería Informátic

Laboratory-directed research and development: FY 1996 progress report

This report summarizes the FY 1996 goals and accomplishments of Laboratory-Directed Research and Development (LDRD) projects. It gives an overview of the LDRD program, summarizes work done on individual research projects, and provides an index to the projects` principal investigators. Projects are grouped by their LDRD component: Individual Projects, Competency Development, and Program Development. Within each component, they are further divided into nine technical disciplines: (1) materials science, (2) engineering and base technologies, (3) plasmas, fluids, and particle beams, (4) chemistry, (5) mathematics and computational sciences, (6) atomic and molecular physics, (7) geoscience, space science, and astrophysics, (8) nuclear and particle physics, and (9) biosciences

Proceedings of the 6th Annual Summer Conference: NASA/USRA University Advanced Design Program

The NASA/USRA University Advanced Design Program is a unique program that brings together NASA engineers, students, and faculty from United States engineering schools by integrating current and future NASA space/aeronautics engineering design projects into the university curriculum. The Program was conceived in the fall of 1984 as a pilot project to foster engineering design education in the universities and to supplement NASA's in-house efforts in advanced planning for space and aeronautics design. Nine universities and five NASA centers participated in the first year of the pilot project. The study topics cover a broad range of potential space and aeronautics projects that could be undertaken during a 20 to 30 year period beginning with the deployment of the Space Station Freedom scheduled for the mid-1990s. Both manned and unmanned endeavors are embraced, and the systems approach to the design problem is emphasized