3,866 research outputs found
Viewfinder: final activity report
The VIEW-FINDER project (2006-2009) is an 'Advanced Robotics' project that seeks to apply a semi-autonomous robotic system to inspect ground safety in the event of a fire. Its primary aim is to gather data (visual and chemical) in order to assist rescue personnel. A base station combines the gathered information with information retrieved from off-site sources.
The project addresses key issues related to map building and reconstruction, interfacing local command information with external sources, human-robot interfaces and semi-autonomous robot navigation.
The VIEW-FINDER system is a semi-autonomous; the individual robot-sensors operate autonomously within the limits of the task assigned to them, that is, they will autonomously navigate through and inspect an area. Human operators monitor their operations and send high level task requests as well as low level commands through the interface to any nodes in the entire system. The human interface has to ensure the human supervisor and human interveners are provided a reduced but good and relevant overview of the ground and the robots and human rescue workers therein
Collected notes from the Benchmarks and Metrics Workshop
In recent years there has been a proliferation of proposals in the artificial intelligence (AI) literature for integrated agent architectures. Each architecture offers an approach to the general problem of constructing an integrated agent. Unfortunately, the ways in which one architecture might be considered better than another are not always clear. There has been a growing realization that many of the positive and negative aspects of an architecture become apparent only when experimental evaluation is performed and that to progress as a discipline, we must develop rigorous experimental methods. In addition to the intrinsic intellectual interest of experimentation, rigorous performance evaluation of systems is also a crucial practical concern to our research sponsors. DARPA, NASA, and AFOSR (among others) are actively searching for better ways of experimentally evaluating alternative approaches to building intelligent agents. One tool for experimental evaluation involves testing systems on benchmark tasks in order to assess their relative performance. As part of a joint DARPA and NASA funded project, NASA-Ames and Teleos Research are carrying out a research effort to establish a set of benchmark tasks and evaluation metrics by which the performance of agent architectures may be determined. As part of this project, we held a workshop on Benchmarks and Metrics at the NASA Ames Research Center on June 25, 1990. The objective of the workshop was to foster early discussion on this important topic. We did not achieve a consensus, nor did we expect to. Collected here is some of the information that was exchanged at the workshop. Given here is an outline of the workshop, a list of the participants, notes taken on the white-board during open discussions, position papers/notes from some participants, and copies of slides used in the presentations
Service-Oriented Architecture for Space Exploration Robotic Rover Systems
Currently, industrial sectors are transforming their business processes into
e-services and component-based architectures to build flexible, robust, and
scalable systems, and reduce integration-related maintenance and development
costs. Robotics is yet another promising and fast-growing industry that deals
with the creation of machines that operate in an autonomous fashion and serve
for various applications including space exploration, weaponry, laboratory
research, and manufacturing. It is in space exploration that the most common
type of robots is the planetary rover which moves across the surface of a
planet and conducts a thorough geological study of the celestial surface. This
type of rover system is still ad-hoc in that it incorporates its software into
its core hardware making the whole system cohesive, tightly-coupled, more
susceptible to shortcomings, less flexible, hard to be scaled and maintained,
and impossible to be adapted to other purposes. This paper proposes a
service-oriented architecture for space exploration robotic rover systems made
out of loosely-coupled and distributed web services. The proposed architecture
consists of three elementary tiers: the client tier that corresponds to the
actual rover; the server tier that corresponds to the web services; and the
middleware tier that corresponds to an Enterprise Service Bus which promotes
interoperability between the interconnected entities. The niche of this
architecture is that rover's software components are decoupled and isolated
from the rover's body and possibly deployed at a distant location. A
service-oriented architecture promotes integrate-ability, scalability,
reusability, maintainability, and interoperability for client-to-server
communication.Comment: LACSC - Lebanese Association for Computational Sciences,
http://www.lacsc.org/; International Journal of Science & Emerging
Technologies (IJSET), Vol. 3, No. 2, February 201
Robotic Wireless Sensor Networks
In this chapter, we present a literature survey of an emerging, cutting-edge,
and multi-disciplinary field of research at the intersection of Robotics and
Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) which we refer to as Robotic Wireless Sensor
Networks (RWSN). We define a RWSN as an autonomous networked multi-robot system
that aims to achieve certain sensing goals while meeting and maintaining
certain communication performance requirements, through cooperative control,
learning and adaptation. While both of the component areas, i.e., Robotics and
WSN, are very well-known and well-explored, there exist a whole set of new
opportunities and research directions at the intersection of these two fields
which are relatively or even completely unexplored. One such example would be
the use of a set of robotic routers to set up a temporary communication path
between a sender and a receiver that uses the controlled mobility to the
advantage of packet routing. We find that there exist only a limited number of
articles to be directly categorized as RWSN related works whereas there exist a
range of articles in the robotics and the WSN literature that are also relevant
to this new field of research. To connect the dots, we first identify the core
problems and research trends related to RWSN such as connectivity,
localization, routing, and robust flow of information. Next, we classify the
existing research on RWSN as well as the relevant state-of-the-arts from
robotics and WSN community according to the problems and trends identified in
the first step. Lastly, we analyze what is missing in the existing literature,
and identify topics that require more research attention in the future
Externalising moods and psychological states in a cloud based system to enhance a pet-robot and child’s interaction
Background:This PATRICIA research project is about using pet robots to reduce pain
and anxiety in hospitalized children. The study began 2 years ago and it is believed that
the advances made in this project are significant. Patients, parents, nurses, psycholo-
gists, and engineers have adopted the Pleo robot, a baby dinosaur robotic pet, which
works in different ways to assist children during hospitalization.
Methods: Focus is spent on creating a wireless communication system with the Pleo
in order to help the coordinator, who conducts therapy with the child, monitor, under-
stand, and control Pleo’s behavior at any moment. This article reports how this techno-
logical function is being developed and tested.
Results: Wireless communication between the Pleo and an Android device is
achieved. The developed Android app allows the user to obtain any state of the robot
without stopping its interaction with the patient. Moreover, information is sent to a
cloud, so that robot moods, states and interactions can be shared among different
robots.
Conclusions: Pleo attachment was successful for more than 1 month, working with
children in therapy, which makes the investment capable of positive therapeutic
possibilities. This technical improvement in the Pleo addresses two key issues in social
robotics: needing an enhanced response to maintain the attention and engagement of
the child, and using the system as a platform to collect the states of the child’s progress
for clinical purposes.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version
Flora robotica -- An Architectural System Combining Living Natural Plants and Distributed Robots
Key to our project flora robotica is the idea of creating a bio-hybrid system
of tightly coupled natural plants and distributed robots to grow architectural
artifacts and spaces. Our motivation with this ground research project is to
lay a principled foundation towards the design and implementation of living
architectural systems that provide functionalities beyond those of orthodox
building practice, such as self-repair, material accumulation and
self-organization. Plants and robots work together to create a living organism
that is inhabited by human beings. User-defined design objectives help to steer
the directional growth of the plants, but also the system's interactions with
its inhabitants determine locations where growth is prohibited or desired
(e.g., partitions, windows, occupiable space). We report our plant species
selection process and aspects of living architecture. A leitmotif of our
project is the rich concept of braiding: braids are produced by robots from
continuous material and serve as both scaffolds and initial architectural
artifacts before plants take over and grow the desired architecture. We use
light and hormones as attraction stimuli and far-red light as repelling
stimulus to influence the plants. Applied sensors range from simple proximity
sensing to detect the presence of plants to sophisticated sensing technology,
such as electrophysiology and measurements of sap flow. We conclude by
discussing our anticipated final demonstrator that integrates key features of
flora robotica, such as the continuous growth process of architectural
artifacts and self-repair of living architecture.Comment: 16 pages, 12 figure
Push recovery with stepping strategy based on time-projection control
In this paper, we present a simple control framework for on-line push
recovery with dynamic stepping properties. Due to relatively heavy legs in our
robot, we need to take swing dynamics into account and thus use a linear model
called 3LP which is composed of three pendulums to simulate swing and torso
dynamics. Based on 3LP equations, we formulate discrete LQR controllers and use
a particular time-projection method to adjust the next footstep location
on-line during the motion continuously. This adjustment, which is found based
on both pelvis and swing foot tracking errors, naturally takes the swing
dynamics into account. Suggested adjustments are added to the Cartesian 3LP
gaits and converted to joint-space trajectories through inverse kinematics.
Fixed and adaptive foot lift strategies also ensure enough ground clearance in
perturbed walking conditions. The proposed structure is robust, yet uses very
simple state estimation and basic position tracking. We rely on the physical
series elastic actuators to absorb impacts while introducing simple laws to
compensate their tracking bias. Extensive experiments demonstrate the
functionality of different control blocks and prove the effectiveness of
time-projection in extreme push recovery scenarios. We also show self-produced
and emergent walking gaits when the robot is subject to continuous dragging
forces. These gaits feature dynamic walking robustness due to relatively soft
springs in the ankles and avoiding any Zero Moment Point (ZMP) control in our
proposed architecture.Comment: 20 pages journal pape
System Architectures for Cooperative Teams of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Interacting Physically with the Environment
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have become quite a useful tool for a wide range of
applications, from inspection & maintenance to search & rescue, among others. The
capabilities of a single UAV can be extended or complemented by the deployment
of more UAVs, so multi-UAV cooperative teams are becoming a trend. In that case,
as di erent autopilots, heterogeneous platforms, and application-dependent software
components have to be integrated, multi-UAV system architectures that are fexible
and can adapt to the team's needs are required.
In this thesis, we develop system architectures for cooperative teams of UAVs,
paying special attention to applications that require physical interaction with the
environment, which is typically unstructured. First, we implement some layers to
abstract the high-level components from the hardware speci cs. Then we propose
increasingly advanced architectures, from a single-UAV hierarchical navigation architecture
to an architecture for a cooperative team of heterogeneous UAVs. All
this work has been thoroughly tested in both simulation and eld experiments in
di erent challenging scenarios through research projects and robotics competitions.
Most of the applications required physical interaction with the environment, mainly
in unstructured outdoors scenarios. All the know-how and lessons learned throughout
the process are shared in this thesis, and all relevant code is publicly available.Los vehículos aéreos no tripulados (UAVs, del inglés Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) se han
convertido en herramientas muy valiosas para un amplio espectro de aplicaciones, como
inspección y mantenimiento, u operaciones de rescate, entre otras. Las capacidades de un
único UAV pueden verse extendidas o complementadas al utilizar varios de estos vehículos
simultáneamente, por lo que la tendencia actual es el uso de equipos cooperativos con
múltiples UAVs. Para ello, es fundamental la integración de diferentes autopilotos,
plataformas heterogéneas, y componentes software -que dependen de la aplicación-, por lo
que se requieren arquitecturas multi-UAV que sean flexibles y adaptables a las necesidades
del equipo.
En esta tesis, se desarrollan arquitecturas para equipos cooperativos de UAVs, prestando
una especial atención a aplicaciones que requieran de interacción física con el entorno,
cuya naturaleza es típicamente no estructurada. Primero se proponen capas para abstraer a
los componentes de alto nivel de las particularidades del hardware. Luego se desarrollan
arquitecturas cada vez más avanzadas, desde una arquitectura de navegación para un
único UAV, hasta una para un equipo cooperativo de UAVs heterogéneos. Todo el trabajo ha
sido minuciosamente probado, tanto en simulación como en experimentos reales, en
diferentes y complejos escenarios motivados por proyectos de investigación y
competiciones de robótica. En la mayoría de las aplicaciones se requería de interacción
física con el entorno, que es normalmente un escenario en exteriores no estructurado. A lo
largo de la tesis, se comparten todo el conocimiento adquirido y las lecciones aprendidas en
el proceso, y el código relevante está publicado como open-source
Mechatronic Systems
Mechatronics, the synergistic blend of mechanics, electronics, and computer science, has evolved over the past twenty five years, leading to a novel stage of engineering design. By integrating the best design practices with the most advanced technologies, mechatronics aims at realizing high-quality products, guaranteeing at the same time a substantial reduction of time and costs of manufacturing. Mechatronic systems are manifold and range from machine components, motion generators, and power producing machines to more complex devices, such as robotic systems and transportation vehicles. With its twenty chapters, which collect contributions from many researchers worldwide, this book provides an excellent survey of recent work in the field of mechatronics with applications in various fields, like robotics, medical and assistive technology, human-machine interaction, unmanned vehicles, manufacturing, and education. We would like to thank all the authors who have invested a great deal of time to write such interesting chapters, which we are sure will be valuable to the readers. Chapters 1 to 6 deal with applications of mechatronics for the development of robotic systems. Medical and assistive technologies and human-machine interaction systems are the topic of chapters 7 to 13.Chapters 14 and 15 concern mechatronic systems for autonomous vehicles. Chapters 16-19 deal with mechatronics in manufacturing contexts. Chapter 20 concludes the book, describing a method for the installation of mechatronics education in schools
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