323 research outputs found
Autonomous Electric Vacuum Robot
Autonomous Electric Vacuum Robot is a cleaning robot specifically vacuuming. The robot's sole purpose is to replace the conventional method of vacuuming a floor which is time-consuming for the users whom have more important commitments to attend to. It consists of two systems working together to achieve the cleaning task
Autonomous Electric Vacuum Robot
Autonomous Electric Vacuum Robot is a cleaning robot specifically vacuuming. The robot's sole purpose is to replace the conventional method of vacuuming a floor which is time-consuming for the users whom have more important commitments to attend to. It consists of two systems working together to achieve the cleaning task
Unlimited-wokspace teleoperation
Thesis (Master)--Izmir Institute of Technology, Mechanical Engineering, Izmir, 2012Includes bibliographical references (leaves: 100-105)Text in English; Abstract: Turkish and Englishxiv, 109 leavesTeleoperation is, in its brief description, operating a vehicle or a manipulator from a distance. Teleoperation is used to reduce mission cost, protect humans from accidents that can be occurred during the mission, and perform complex missions for tasks that take place in areas which are difficult to reach or dangerous for humans. Teleoperation is divided into two main categories as unilateral and bilateral teleoperation according to information flow. This flow can be configured to be in either one direction (only from master to slave) or two directions (from master to slave and from slave to master). In unlimited-workspace teleoperation, one of the types of bilateral teleoperation, mobile robots are controlled by the operator and environmental information is transferred from the mobile robot to the operator. Teleoperated vehicles can be used in a variety of missions in air, on ground and in water. Therefore, different constructional types of robots can be designed for the different types of missions. This thesis aims to design and develop an unlimited-workspace teleoperation which includes an omnidirectional mobile robot as the slave system to be used in further researches. Initially, an omnidirectional mobile robot was manufactured and robot-operator interaction and efficient data transfer was provided with the established communication line. Wheel velocities were measured in real-time by Hall-effect sensors mounted on robot chassis to be integrated in controllers. A dynamic obstacle detection system, which is suitable for omnidirectional mobility, was developed and two obstacle avoidance algorithms (semi-autonomous and force reflecting) were created and tested. Distance information between the robot and the obstacles was collected by an array of sensors mounted on the robot. In the semi-autonomous teleoperation scenario, distance information is used to avoid obstacles autonomously and in the force-reflecting teleoperation scenario obstacles are informed to the user by sending back the artificially created forces acting on the slave robot. The test results indicate that obstacle avoidance performance of the developed vehicle with two algorithms is acceptable in all test scenarios. In addition, two control models were developed (kinematic and dynamic control) for the local controller of the slave robot. Also, kinematic controller was supported by gyroscope
A Survey of Technologies and Applications for Climbing Robots Locomotion and Adhesion
The interest in the development of climbing robots has grown rapidly in the last years. Climbing
robots are useful devices that can be adopted in a variety of applications, such as maintenance
and inspection in the process and construction industries. These systems are mainly
adopted in places where direct access by a human operator is very expensive, because of the
need for scaffolding, or very dangerous, due to the presence of an hostile environment. The
main motivations are to increase the operation efficiency, by eliminating the costly assembly
of scaffolding, or to protect human health and safety in hazardous tasks. Several climbing
robots have already been developed, and other are under development, for applications ranging
from cleaning to inspection of difficult to reach constructions.
A wall climbing robot should not only be light, but also have large payload, so that it may
reduce excessive adhesion forces and carry instrumentations during navigation. These machines
should be capable of travelling over different types of surfaces, with different inclinations,
such as floors, walls, or ceilings, and to walk between such surfaces (Elliot et al. (2006);
Sattar et al. (2002)). Furthermore, they should be able of adapting and reconfiguring for various
environment conditions and to be self-contained.
Up to now, considerable research was devoted to these machines and various types of experimental
models were already proposed (according to Chen et al. (2006), over 200 prototypes
aimed at such applications had been developed in the world by the year 2006). However,
we have to notice that the application of climbing robots is still limited. Apart from a couple
successful industrialized products, most are only prototypes and few of them can be found
in common use due to unsatisfactory performance in on-site tests (regarding aspects such as
their speed, cost and reliability). Chen et al. (2006) present the main design problems affecting
the system performance of climbing robots and also suggest solutions to these problems.
The major two issues in the design of wall climbing robots are their locomotion and adhesion
methods.
With respect to the locomotion type, four types are often considered: the crawler, the wheeled,
the legged and the propulsion robots. Although the crawler type is able to move relatively
faster, it is not adequate to be applied in rough environments. On the other hand, the legged
type easily copes with obstacles found in the environment, whereas generally its speed is
lower and requires complex control systems.
Regarding the adhesion to the surface, the robots should be able to produce a secure gripping
force using a light-weight mechanism. The adhesion method is generally classified into four groups: suction force, magnetic, gripping to the surface and thrust force type. Nevertheless,
recently new methods for assuring the adhesion, based in biological findings, were proposed.
The vacuum type principle is light and easy to control though it presents the problem of
supplying compressed air. An alternative, with costs in terms of weight, is the adoption of
a vacuum pump. The magnetic type principle implies heavy actuators and is used only for
ferromagnetic surfaces. The thrust force type robots make use of the forces developed by
thrusters to adhere to the surfaces, but are used in very restricted and specific applications.
Bearing these facts in mind, this chapter presents a survey of different applications and technologies
adopted for the implementation of climbing robots locomotion and adhesion to surfaces,
focusing on the new technologies that are recently being developed to fulfill these objectives.
The chapter is organized as follows. Section two presents several applications of
climbing robots. Sections three and four present the main locomotion principles, and the
main "conventional" technologies for adhering to surfaces, respectively. Section five describes
recent biological inspired technologies for robot adhesion to surfaces. Section six introduces
several new architectures for climbing robots. Finally, section seven outlines the main conclusions
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