Challenges and Solutions for Autonomous Robotic Mobile Manipulation for Outdoor Sample Collection

In refinery, petrochemical, and chemical plants, process technicians collect uncontaminated samples to be analyzed in the quality control laboratory all time and all weather. This traditionally manual operation not only exposes the process technicians to hazardous chemicals, but also imposes an economical burden on the management. The recent development in mobile manipulation provides an opportunity to fully automate the operation of sample collection. This paper reviewed the various challenges in sample collection in terms of navigation of the mobile platform and manipulation of the robotic arm from four aspects, namely mobile robot positioning/attitude using global navigation satellite system (GNSS), vision-based navigation and visual servoing, robotic manipulation, mobile robot path planning and control. This paper further proposed solutions to these challenges and pointed the main direction of development in mobile manipulation

Research on a semiautonomous mobile robot for loosely structured environments focused on transporting mail trolleys

In this thesis is presented a novel approach to model, control, and planning the motion of a nonholonomic wheeled mobile robot that applies stable pushes and pulls to a nonholonomic cart (York mail trolley) in a loosely structured environment. The method is based on grasping and ungrasping the nonholonomic cart, as a result, the robot changes its kinematics properties. In consequence, two robot configurations are produced by the task of grasping and ungrasping the load, they are: the single-robot configuration and the robot-trolley configuration. Furthermore, in order to comply with the general planar motion law of rigid bodies and the kinematic constraints imposed by the robot wheels for each configuration, the robot has been provided with two motorized steerable wheels in order to have a flexible platform able to adapt to these restrictions. [Continues.

Task-Space Control of Articulated Mobile Robots With a Soft Gripper for Operations

A task-space method is presented for the control of a head-raising articulated mobile robot, allowing the trajectory tracking of a tip of a gripper located on the head of the robot in various operations, e.g., picking up an object and rotating a valve. If the robot cannot continue moving because it reaches a joint angle limit, the robot moves away from the joint limit and changes posture by switching the allocation of lifted/grounded wheels. An articulated mobile robot with a gripper that can grasp objects using jamming transition was developed, and experiments were conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed controller in operations

The State of Lifelong Learning in Service Robots: Current Bottlenecks in Object Perception and Manipulation

Service robots are appearing more and more in our daily life. The development of service robots combines multiple fields of research, from object perception to object manipulation. The state-of-the-art continues to improve to make a proper coupling between object perception and manipulation. This coupling is necessary for service robots not only to perform various tasks in a reasonable amount of time but also to continually adapt to new environments and safely interact with non-expert human users. Nowadays, robots are able to recognize various objects, and quickly plan a collision-free trajectory to grasp a target object in predefined settings. Besides, in most of the cases, there is a reliance on large amounts of training data. Therefore, the knowledge of such robots is fixed after the training phase, and any changes in the environment require complicated, time-consuming, and expensive robot re-programming by human experts. Therefore, these approaches are still too rigid for real-life applications in unstructured environments, where a significant portion of the environment is unknown and cannot be directly sensed or controlled. In such environments, no matter how extensive the training data used for batch learning, a robot will always face new objects. Therefore, apart from batch learning, the robot should be able to continually learn about new object categories and grasp affordances from very few training examples on-site. Moreover, apart from robot self-learning, non-expert users could interactively guide the process of experience acquisition by teaching new concepts, or by correcting insufficient or erroneous concepts. In this way, the robot will constantly learn how to help humans in everyday tasks by gaining more and more experiences without the need for re-programming

모션 프리머티브를 이용한 복잡한 로봇 임무 학습 및 일반화 기법

학위논문 (박사) -- 서울대학교 대학원 : 공과대학 항공우주공학과, 2020. 8. 김현진.Learning from demonstrations (LfD) is a promising approach that enables robots to perform a specific movement. As robotic manipulations are substituting a variety of tasks, LfD algorithms are widely used and studied for specifying the robot configurations for the various types of movements. This dissertation presents an approach based on parametric dynamic movement primitives (PDMP) as a motion representation algorithm which is one of relevant LfD techniques. Unlike existing motion representation algorithms, this work not only represents a prescribed motion but also computes the new behavior through a generalization of multiple demonstrations in the actual environment. The generalization process uses Gaussian process regression (GPR) by representing the nonlinear relationship between the PDMP parameters that determine motion and the corresponding environmental variables. The proposed algorithm shows that it serves as a powerful optimal and real-time motion planner among the existing planning algorithms when optimal demonstrations are provided as dataset. In this dissertation, the safety of motion is also considered. Here, safety refers to keeping the system away from certain configurations that are unsafe. The safety criterion of the PDMP internal parameters are computed to check the safety. This safety criterion reflects the new behavior computed through the generalization process, as well as the individual motion safety of the demonstration set. The demonstrations causing unsafe movement are identified and removed. Also, the demolished demonstrations are replaced by proven demonstrations upon this criterion. This work also presents an extension approach reducing the number of required demonstrations for the PDMP framework. This approach is effective where a single mission consists of multiple sub-tasks and requires numerous demonstrations in generalizing them. The whole trajectories in provided demonstrations are segmented into multiple sub-tasks representing unit motions. Then, multiple PDMPs are formed independently for correlated-segments. The phase-decision process determines which sub-task and associated PDMPs to be executed online, allowing multiple PDMPs to be autonomously configured within an integrated framework. GPR formulations are applied to obtain execution time and regional goal configuration for each sub-task. Finally, the proposed approach and its extension are validated with the actual experiments of mobile manipulators. The first two scenarios regarding cooperative aerial transportation demonstrate the excellence of the proposed technique in terms of quick computation, generation of efficient movement, and safety assurance. The last scenario deals with two mobile manipulations using ground vehicles and shows the effectiveness of the proposed extension in executing complex missions.시연 학습 기법(Learning from demonstrations, LfD)은 로봇이 특정 동작을 수행할 수 있도록 하는 유망한 동작 생성 기법이다. 로봇 조작기가 인간 사회에서 다양한 업무를 대체해 감에 따라, 다양한 임무를 수행하는 로봇의 동작을 생성하기 위해 LfD 알고리즘들은 널리 연구되고, 사용되고 있다. 본 논문은 LfD 기법 중 모션 프리머티브 기반의 동작 재생성 알고리즘인 Parametric dynamic movement primitives(PDMP)에 기초한 알고리즘을 제시하며, 이를 통해 다양한 임무를 수행하는 모바일 조작기의 궤적을 생성한다. 기존의 동작 재생성 알고리즘과 달리, 이 연구는 제공된 시연에서 표현된 동작을 단순히 재생성하는 것에 그치지 않고, 새로운 환경에 맞게 일반화 하는 과정을 포함한다. 이 논문에서 제시하는 일반화 과정은 PDMPs의 내부 파라미터 값인 스타일 파라미터와 환경 변수 사이의 비선형 관계를 가우스 회귀 기법 (Gaussian process regression, GPR)을 이용하여 수식적으로 표현한다. 제안된 기법은 또한 최적 시연를 학습하는 방식을 통해 강력한 최적 실시간 경로 계획 기법으로도 응용될 수 있다. 본 논문에서는 또한 로봇의 구동 안전성도 고려한다. 기존 연구들에서 다루어진 시연 관리 기술이 로봇의 구동 효율성을 개선하는 방향으로 제시된 것과 달리, 이 연구는 강한 구속조건으로 로봇의 구동 안전성을 확보하는 시연 관리 기술을 통해 안정성을 고려하는 새로운 방식을 제시한다. 제안된 방식은 스타일 파라미터 값 상에서 안전성 기준을 계산하며, 이 안전 기준을 통해 시연을 제거하는 일련의 작업을 수행한다. 또한, 제거된 시위를 안전 기준에 따라 입증된 시위로 대체하여 일반화 성능을 저하시키지 않도록 시위를 관리한다. 이를 통해 다수의 시연 각각 개별 동작 안전성 뿐 아니라 온라인 동작의 안전성까지 고려할 수 있으며, 실시간 로봇 조작기 운용시 안전성이 확보될 수 있다. 제안된 안정성을 고려한 시연 관리 기술은 또한 환경의 정적 설정이 변경되어 모든 시연을 교체해야 할 수 있는 상황에서 사용할 수 있는 시연들을 판별하고, 효율적으로 재사용하는 데 응용할 수 있다. 또한 본 논문은 복잡한 임무에서 적용될 수 있는 PDMPs의 확장 기법인 seg-PDMPs를 제시한다. 이 접근방식은 복잡한 임무가 일반적으로 복수개의 간단한 하위 작업으로 구성된다고 가정한다. 기존 PDMPs와 달리 seg-PDMPs는 전체 궤적을 하위 작업을 나타내는 여러 개의 단위 동작으로 분할하고, 각 단위동작에 대해 여러개의 PDMPs를 구성한다. 각 단위 동작 별로 생성된 PDMPs는 통합된 프레임워크내에서 단계 결정 프로세스를 통해 자동적으로 호출된다. 각 단계 별로 단위 동작을 수행하기 위한 시간 및 하위 목표점은 가우스 공정 회귀(GPR)를 이용한 환경변수와의의 관계식을 통해 얻는다. 결과적으로, 이 연구는 전체적으로 요구되는 시연의 수를 효과적으로 줄일 뿐 아니라, 각 단위동작의 표현 성능을 개선한다. 제안된 알고리즘은 협동 모바일 로봇 조작기 실험을 통하여 검증된다. 세 가지의 시나리오가 본 논문에서 다루어지며, 항공 운송과 관련된 첫 두 가지 시나리오는 PDMPs 기법이 로봇 조작기에서 빠른 적응성, 임무 효율성과 안전성 모두 만족하는 것을 입증한다. 마지막 시나리오는 지상 차량을 이용한 두 개의 로봇 조작기에 대한 실험으로 복잡한 임무 수행을 하기 위해 확장된 기법인 seg-PDMPs가 효과적으로 변화하는 환경에서 일반화된 동작을 생성함을 검증한다.1 Introduction 1 1.1 Motivations 1 1.2 Literature Survey 3 1.2.1 Conventional Motion Planning in Mobile Manipulations 3 1.2.2 Motion Representation Algorithms 5 1.2.3 Safety-guaranteed Motion Representation Algorithms 7 1.3 Research Objectives and Contributions 7 1.3.1 Motion Generalization in Motion Representation Algorithm 9 1.3.2 Motion Generalization with Safety Guarantee 9 1.3.3 Motion Generalization for Complex Missions 10 1.4 Thesis Organization 11 2 Background 12 2.1 DMPs 12 2.2 Mobile Manipulation Systems 13 2.2.1 Single Mobile Manipulation 14 2.2.2 Cooperative Mobile Manipulations 14 2.3 Experimental Setup 17 2.3.1 Test-beds for Aerial Manipulators 17 2.3.2 Test-beds for Robot Manipulators with Ground Vehicles 17 3 Motion Generalization in Motion Representation Algorithm 22 3.1 Parametric Dynamic Movement Primitives 22 3.2 Generalization Process in PDMPs 26 3.2.1 Environmental Parameters 26 3.2.2 Mapping Function 26 3.3 Simulation Results 29 3.3.1 Two-dimensional Hurdling Motion 29 3.3.2 Cooperative Aerial Transportation 30 4 Motion Generalization with Safety Guarantee 36 4.1 Safety Criterion in Style Parameter 36 4.2 Demonstration Management 39 4.3 Simulation Validation 42 4.3.1 Two-dimensional Hurdling Motion 46 4.3.2 Cooperative Aerial Transportation 47 5 Motion Generalization for Complex Missions 51 5.1 Overall Structure of Seg-PDMPs 51 5.2 Motion Segments 53 5.3 Phase-decision Process 54 5.4 Seg-PDMPs for Single Phase 54 5.5 Simulation Results 55 5.5.1 Initial/terminal Offsets 56 5.5.2 Style Generalization 59 5.5.3 Recombination 61 6 Experimental Validation and Results 63 6.1 Cooperative Aerial Transportation 63 6.2 Cooperative Mobile Hang-dry Mission 70 6.2.1 Demonstrations 70 6.2.2 Simulation Validation 72 6.2.3 Experimental Results 78 7 Conclusions 82 Abstract (in Korean) 93Docto