920 research outputs found
10081 Abstracts Collection -- Cognitive Robotics
From 21.02. to 26.02.2010, the Dagstuhl Seminar 10081 ``Cognitive Robotics \u27\u27 was held in Schloss Dagstuhl~--~Leibniz Center for Informatics.
During the seminar, several participants presented their current
research, and ongoing work and open problems were discussed. Abstracts of
the presentations given during the seminar as well as abstracts of
seminar results and ideas are put together in this paper. The first section
describes the seminar topics and goals in general.
Links to extended abstracts or full papers are provided, if available
Motion learning in variable environments using probabilistic flow tubes
Commanding an autonomous system through complex motions at a low level can be tedious or impractical for systems with many degrees of freedom. Allowing an operator to demonstrate the desired motions directly can often enable more intuitive and efficient interaction. Two challenges in the field of learning from demonstration include (1) how to best represent learned motions to accurately reflect a human's intentions, and (2) how to enable learned motions to be easily applicable in new situations. This paper introduces a novel representation of continuous actions called probabilistic flow tubes that can provide flexibility during execution while robustly encoding a human's intended motions. Our approach also automatically determines certain qualitative characteristics of a motion so that these characteristics can be preserved when autonomously executing the motion in a new situation. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our motion learning approach both in a simulated two-dimensional environment and on the All Terrain Hex-Limbed Extra-Terrestrial Explorer (ATHLETE) robot performing object manipulation tasks.United States. Dept. of Defense (National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship 32 CFR 168a)United States. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (JPL Strategic University Research Partnership
Exploiting Spatial and Temporal Flexibility for Exploiting Spatial and Temporal Flexibility for Plan Execution of Hybrid, Under-actuated Systems
Robotic devices, such as rovers and autonomous
spacecraft, have been successfully controlled by plan
execution systems that use plans with temporal flexibility to
dynamically adapt to temporal disturbances. To date these
execution systems apply to discrete systems that abstract
away the detailed dynamic constraints of the controlled
device. To control dynamic, under-actuated devices, such
as agile bipedal walking machines, we extend this execution
paradigm to incorporate detailed dynamic constraints.
Building upon prior work on dispatchable plan execution,
we introduce a novel approach to flexible plan execution of
hybrid under-actuated systems that achieves robustness by
exploiting spatial as well as temporal plan flexibility. To
accomplish this, we first transform the high-dimensional
system into a set of low dimensional, weakly coupled
systems. Second, to coordinate these systems such that they
achieve the plan in real-time, we compile a plan into a
concurrent timed flow tube description. This description
represents all feasible control trajectories and their temporal
coordination constraints, such that each trajectory satisfies
all plan and dynamic constraints. Finally, the problem of
runtime plan dispatching is reduced to maintaining state
trajectories in their associated flow tubes, while satisfying
the coordination constraints. This is accomplished through
an efficient local search algorithm that adjusts a small
number of control parameters in real-time. The first step
has been published previously; this paper focuses on the last
two steps. The approach is validated on the execution of a
set of bipedal walking plans, using a high fidelity simulation
of a biped
Active haptic perception in robots: a review
In the past few years a new scenario for robot-based applications has emerged. Service
and mobile robots have opened new market niches. Also, new frameworks for shop-floor
robot applications have been developed. In all these contexts, robots are requested to
perform tasks within open-ended conditions, possibly dynamically varying. These new
requirements ask also for a change of paradigm in the design of robots: on-line and safe
feedback motion control becomes the core of modern robot systems. Future robots will
learn autonomously, interact safely and possess qualities like self-maintenance. Attaining
these features would have been relatively easy if a complete model of the environment
was available, and if the robot actuators could execute motion commands perfectly
relative to this model. Unfortunately, a complete world model is not available and robots
have to plan and execute the tasks in the presence of environmental uncertainties which
makes sensing an important component of new generation robots. For this reason,
today\u2019s new generation robots are equipped with more and more sensing components,
and consequently they are ready to actively deal with the high complexity of the real
world. Complex sensorimotor tasks such as exploration require coordination between the
motor system and the sensory feedback. For robot control purposes, sensory feedback
should be adequately organized in terms of relevant features and the associated data
representation. In this paper, we propose an overall functional picture linking sensing
to action in closed-loop sensorimotor control of robots for touch (hands, fingers). Basic
qualities of haptic perception in humans inspire the models and categories comprising the
proposed classification. The objective is to provide a reasoned, principled perspective on
the connections between different taxonomies used in the Robotics and human haptic
literature. The specific case of active exploration is chosen to ground interesting use
cases. Two reasons motivate this choice. First, in the literature on haptics, exploration has
been treated only to a limited extent compared to grasping and manipulation. Second,
exploration involves specific robot behaviors that exploit distributed and heterogeneous
sensory data
Development of advanced control strategies for Adaptive Optics systems
Atmospheric turbulence is a fast disturbance that requires high control frequency. At the same time, celestial objects are faint sources of light and thus WFSs often work in a low photon count regime. These two conditions require a trade-off between high closed-loop control frequency to improve the disturbance rejection performance, and large WFS exposure time to gather enough photons for the integrated signal to increase the Signal-to-Noise ratio (SNR), making the control a delicate yet fundamental aspect for AO systems. The AO plant and atmospheric turbulence were formalized as state-space linear time-invariant systems. The full AO system model is the ground upon which a model-based control can be designed. A Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor was used to measure the horizontal atmospheric turbulence. The experimental measurements yielded to the Cn2 atmospheric structure parameter, which is key to describe the turbulence statistics, and the Zernike terms time-series. Experimental validation shows that the centroid extraction algorithm implemented on the Jetson GPU outperforms (i.e. is faster) than the CPU implementation on the same hardware. In fact, due to the construction of the Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor, the intensity image captured from its camera is partitioned into several sub-images, each related to a point of the incoming wavefront. Such sub-images are independent each-other and can be computed concurrently. The AO model is exploited to automatically design an advanced linear-quadratic Gaussian controller with integral action. Experimental evidence shows that the system augmentation approach outperforms the simple integrator and the integrator filtered with the Kalman predictor, and that it requires less parameters to tune
Robots learn to behave: improving human-robot collaboration in flexible manufacturing applications
L'abstract è presente nell'allegato / the abstract is in the attachmen
Ono: an open platform for social robotics
In recent times, the focal point of research in robotics has shifted from industrial ro- bots toward robots that interact with humans in an intuitive and safe manner. This evolution has resulted in the subfield of social robotics, which pertains to robots that function in a human environment and that can communicate with humans in an int- uitive way, e.g. with facial expressions. Social robots have the potential to impact many different aspects of our lives, but one particularly promising application is the use of robots in therapy, such as the treatment of children with autism. Unfortunately, many of the existing social robots are neither suited for practical use in therapy nor for large scale studies, mainly because they are expensive, one-of-a-kind robots that are hard to modify to suit a specific need. We created Ono, a social robotics platform, to tackle these issues. Ono is composed entirely from off-the-shelf components and cheap materials, and can be built at a local FabLab at the fraction of the cost of other robots. Ono is also entirely open source and the modular design further encourages modification and reuse of parts of the platform
A Longitudinal study of organizational capability development process : rendering project portfolio management capability (PPMC)
This dissertation analyzes the heterogeneous development paths of project portfolio management capability (PPMC). Earlier, modern literature has prioritized its focus on the performance-based classification of organizational capabilities, while their development process remained obscure. Consequently, scholarship advocating high performance organizational capabilities (such as a dynamic capability) are in abundance. However, the evidence of development path-affected performance dissimilarities is rather sparse or otherwise remained implicit due to the increasing conceptual differences among the prominent scholarship.
Along with the longitudinal process research design of this research, a critical realism-based retroduction approach has enabled the discovery of the capability investigation framework. This capability dimensions, routines, and performance outcome based framework has been further extended to investigate project portfolio management capability (PPMC). This retroductive framework is operationalized to evidence the nine years of capability development path heterogeneity at three entities of a case company.
The research case findings explain the effect of underlying mechanisms, which due to their context dependent outcomes, either positively reinforce the existing development paths or lead to an alternative path selection. The case findings also confirm that higher performance is not universally attributable to any specific organizational capability known in the literature. Instead, the actuation of all three identified learning mechanisms (of a learning organization) can develop high performing organizational capabilities. This research concludes that a capability development process endures through an extemporized mixture of refinement, reconfiguration, and transformation activities. As a result, an organizational capability always remains idiosyncratic in its details and, hence, produce diverse performance outcomes. Finally, this PhD research has created a critical realist model to extend the emergent theory of capability path dependence to the other organizational contexts.Tämä tutkimus analysoi projektiportfolion hallintaa koskevan kyvykkyyden moninaisia kehittämisvaihtoehtoja. Aiempi tutkimus on keskittynyt organisaation toimintaa tukevien kyvykkyyksien luokitteluun, mutta kyvykkyyksien kehittymistä on tutkittu vähemmän. Kyvykkyyden kehittymiseen (kuten dynaamiseen kyvykkyyteen) tähtäävä tutkimus keskittyy enimmäkseen organisaation näkökulmaan. Lisäksi kyvykkyyden kehittymistutkimusta vaikeuttaa se, että alan keskeiset tutkijat käyttävät keskenään erilaista terminologiaa.
Tämä tutkimus on pitkittäinen ja siinä rakennettiin kriittisen realismin lähestymistavan avulla kyvykkyyden kehittymisen tutkimista varten viitekehys. Kyvykkyyden osatekijöitä, rutiineja ja toiminnan tuloksia kuvaavaa viitekehystä kehitettiin edelleen niin, että sitä voidaan käyttää organisaation projektisalkun hallinnan kyvyn selvittämiseen. Tämän viitekehyksen avulla osoitettiin tapausyrityksen kolmen yksikön kyvykkyyden kehittymispolku yhdeksän vuoden ajalta.
Tapaustutkimuksen tulokset selittävät kyvykkyyden kehittymisen mekanismeja, jotka joko vahvistavat organisaation vallitsevia kehittymispolkuja tai johtavat uuden kehittymispolun valintaan. Tapaustutkimukset myös osoittavat, että tehokas toiminta ei ole kirjallisuudessa mainitun yksittäisen organisaation kyvykkyysosatekijän seurausta. Sen sijaan kaikki tunnistetut oppivan organisaation oppimiskeinot kehittävät tehokkaasti toimivan organisaation kyvykkyyksiä. Tämän tutkimuksen johtopäätös on, että kyvykkyyden kehittymisprosessi muodostuu improvisoiduista hienosäätö-, uudelleenkonfigurointi- ja muokkausvaiheista. Niiden tuloksena organisaation kyvykkyys säilyy aina yksityiskohdissaan omaperäisenä ja siten voi tuottaa vaihtelevia tuloksia. Tämä väitöskirja on luonut kriittiseen realismiin perustuvan mallin, jolla laajennetaan uutta kyvykkyyden kehittymispolkuriippuvuuden teoriaa muihin organisaatiokonteksteihin.fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed
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