1,453 research outputs found
Environmental Hazard Analysis - a Variant of Preliminary Hazard Analysis for Autonomous Mobile Robots
© 2014, Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht. Robot manufacturers will be required to demonstrate objectively that all reasonably foreseeable hazards have been identified in any robotic product design that is to be marketed commercially. This is problematic for autonomous mobile robots because conventional methods, which have been developed for automatic systems do not assist safety analysts in identifying non-mission interactions with environmental features that are not directly associated with the robot’s design mission, and which may comprise the majority of the required tasks of autonomous robots. In this paper we develop a new variant of preliminary hazard analysis that is explicitly aimed at identifying non-mission interactions by means of new sets of guidewords not normally found in existing variants. We develop the required features of the method and describe its application to several small trials conducted at Bristol Robotics Laboratory in the 2011–2012 period
Novel approaches for the safety of human-robot interaction
In recent years there has been a concerted effort to address many of the safety issues associated with physical human-robot interaction (pHRI). However, a number of challenges remain. For personal robots, and those intended to operate in unstructured environments, the problem of safety is compounded. We believe that the safety issue is a primary factor in wide scale adoption of personal robots, and until these issues are addressed, commercial enterprises will be unlikely to invest heavily in their development.In this thesis we argue that traditional system design techniques fail to capture the complexities associated with dynamic environments. This is based on a careful analysis of current design processes, which looks at how effectively they identify hazards that may arise in typical environments that a personal robot may be required to operate in. Based on this investigation, we show how the adoption of a hazard check list that highlights particular hazardous areas, can be used to improve current hazard analysis techniques.A novel safety-driven control system architecture is presented, which attempts to address many of the weaknesses identified with the present designs found in the literature. The new architecture design centres around safety, and the concept of a `safety policy' is introduced. These safety policies are shown to be an effective way of describing safety systems as a set of rules that dictate how the system should behave in potentially hazardous situations.A safety analysis methodology is introduced, which integrates both our hazard analysis technique and the implementation of the safety layer of our control system. This methodology builds on traditional functional hazard analysis, with the addition of processes aimed to improve the safety of personal robots. This is achieved with the use of a safety system, developed during the hazard analysis stage. This safety system, called the safety protection system, is initially used to verify that safety constraints, identified during hazard analysis, have been implemented appropriately. Subsequently it serves as a high-level safety enforcer, by governing the actions of the robot and preventing the control layer from performing unsafe operations.To demonstrate the effectiveness of the design, a series of experiments have been conducted using both simulation environments and physical hardware. These experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of the safety-driven control system for performing tasks safely, while maintaining a high level of availability
Robotic mobile servicing platform for space station
The semi-autonomous inspection and servicing of the Space Station's major thermal, electrical, mechanical subsystems are critical needs for the safe and reliable operation of the station. A conceptual design is presented of a self-intelligent, small and highly mobile robotic platform. Equipped with suitable inspection sensors (cameras, ammonia detectors, etc.), this system's primary mission is to perform routine, autonomous inspection of the Station's primary subsystems. Typical tasks include detection of leaks from thermal fluid or refueling lines, as well as detection of micro-meteroid damage to the primary structure. Equipped with stereo cameras and a dexterous manipulator, simple teleoperator repairs and small On-orbit Replacement Unit (ORU) changeout can also be accomplished. More difficult robotic repairs would be left to the larger, more sophisticated Mobile Remote Manipulator System (MRMS). An ancillary function is to ferry crew members and equipment around the station. The primary design objectives were to provide a flexible, but uncomplicated robotic platform, one which caused minimal impact to the design of the Station's primary structure but could accept more advanced telerobotic technology as it evolves
Drones and Sensors Ecosystem to Maximise the “Storm Effects” in Case of CBRNe Dispersion in Large Geographic Areas
The advancements in the field of robotics, specifically in the aerial robotics, combined with technological improvements of the capability of drones, have increased dramatically the use of these devices as a valuable tool in a wide range of applications. From civil to commercial and military area, the requirements in the emerging application for monitoring complex scenarios that are potentially dangerous for operators give rise to the need of a more powerful and sophisticated approach. This work aims at proposing the use of swarm drones to increase plume detection, tracking and source declaration for chemical releases. The several advantages which this technology may lead to this research and application fields are investigated, as well as the research and technological activities to be performed to make swarm drones efficient, reliable, and accurate
Mobile Robots
The objective of this book is to cover advances of mobile robotics and related technologies applied for multi robot systems' design and development. Design of control system is a complex issue, requiring the application of information technologies to link the robots into a single network. Human robot interface becomes a demanding task, especially when we try to use sophisticated methods for brain signal processing. Generated electrophysiological signals can be used to command different devices, such as cars, wheelchair or even video games. A number of developments in navigation and path planning, including parallel programming, can be observed. Cooperative path planning, formation control of multi robotic agents, communication and distance measurement between agents are shown. Training of the mobile robot operators is very difficult task also because of several factors related to different task execution. The presented improvement is related to environment model generation based on autonomous mobile robot observations
Situation Coverage Testing for a Simulated Autonomous Car -- an Initial Case Study
It is hard to test autonomous robot (AR) software because of the range and
diversity of external situations (terrain, obstacles, humans, peer robots) that
AR must deal with. Common measures of testing adequacy may not address this
diversity. Explicit situation coverage has been proposed as a solution, but
there has been little empirical study of its effectiveness. In this paper, we
describe an implementation of situation coverage for testing a simple simulated
autonomous road vehicle, and evaluate its ability to find seeded faults
compared to a random test generation approach. In our experiments, the
performance of the two methods is similar, with situation coverage having a
very slight advantage. We conclude that situation coverage probably does not
have a significant benefit over random generation for the type of simple,
research-grade AR software used here. It will likely be valuable when applied
to more complex and mature software
Autonomous Systems, Robotics, and Computing Systems Capability Roadmap: NRC Dialogue
Contents include the following: Introduction. Process, Mission Drivers, Deliverables, and Interfaces. Autonomy. Crew-Centered and Remote Operations. Integrated Systems Health Management. Autonomous Vehicle Control. Autonomous Process Control. Robotics. Robotics for Solar System Exploration. Robotics for Lunar and Planetary Habitation. Robotics for In-Space Operations. Computing Systems. Conclusion
Risk-Based Triggering of Bio-inspired Self-preservation to Protect Robots from Threats
Safety in autonomous systems has been mostly studied from a human-centered
perspective. Besides the loads they may carry, autonomous systems are also
valuable property, and self-preservation mechanisms are needed to protect them
in the presence of external threats, including malicious robots and
antagonistic humans. We present a biologically inspired risk-based triggering
mechanism to initiate self-preservation strategies. This mechanism considers
environmental and internal system factors to measure the overall risk at any
moment in time, to decide whether behaviours such as fleeing or hiding are
necessary, or whether the system should continue on its task. We integrated our
risk-based triggering mechanism into a delivery rover that is being attacked by
a drone and evaluated its effectiveness through systematic testing in a
simulated environment in Robot Operating System (ROS) and Gazebo, with a
variety of different randomly generated conditions. We compared the use of the
triggering mechanism and different configurations of self-preservation
behaviours to not having any of these. Our results show that triggering
self-preservation increases the distance between the drone and the rover for
many of these configurations, and, in some instances, the drone does not catch
up with the rover. Our study demonstrates the benefits of embedding risk
awareness and self-preservation into autonomous systems to increase their
robustness, and the value of using bio-inspired engineering to find solutions
in this area
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