Overview of Battery Monitoring and Recharging of Autonomous Mobile Robot

Mobile robots should be capable of operating with a great degree of autonomy to operate in real social environments. Mobile robotic systems draw power from batteries which have a limited power life. This poses a greater challenge for an autonomous robot. Monitoring the status of the battery power in the robot is therefore important for autonomous robotic systems. Docking and recharging are crucial abilities of autonomous mobile robot to ensure its performance. In this paper, the focus of attention is on the significance of power monitoring for long-term operation of autonomous robots and power estimation and auto-recharging. This paper attempts to brief about a literature review of complete solution for docking methods and recharging the battery of a mobile robot. Major progress is being done on both technology and exploitation of docking mechanism and recharging without any human intervention. This review paper gives the overview of related work in terms of immediate challenges for true energy autonomy in mobile robots with respect to battery technology, power estimation and auto recharging

Design of a Wireless Drone Recharging Station and a Special Robot End Effector for Installation on a Power Line

Drone autonomous operations near power lines are growing steadily and require innovative techniques to keep them on air. This paper presents a novel electromechanical recharging station that can be mounted on energized AC power line to charge the drone battery wirelessly without a need to modify the electrical infrastructure. The work shows a thorough analysis of the electrical and mechanical core components to build a flexible, lightweight and efficient recharging station that can be attached to a robotic arm. The work also discusses the recharging station design and its special robot end effector that mechanically couples the station with an aerial manipulator. Finally, the recharging station has been tested in the lab and in a real power line setup to validate its design and efficiency. The total achieved mass is 2300 grams with a harvesting efficiency of 77% at 250 A primary current

An investigation of service degradation in long-term human-robot interaction with a particular reference to recharge behaviour

Autonomous long-term operation of social robots has always been a challenge in Human robot-interaction. Social mobile robots acting as companions or assistants will need to operate over a long-term period of time (days, weeks or even months) to perform daily tasks and interact with users. Therefore they should be capable of operating with a great degree of autonomy and will require sustainable social intelligence. Social robots are fallible and have their own limitations with the service they provide. One of the most important limitations of mobile robots is power constraints and the need for frequent recharging. Social mobile robots generally draw power from batteries carried on the robot in order to operate various sensors, actuators and perform tasks. However, batteries have a limited power life and take a long time to recharge via a power source. While the recharge behaviour is active, which may impede human-robot interaction and lead to service degradation. This thesis raises some important issues related to recharge behaviour of social mobile robots which appear to have been overlooked in social robotics research. This work investigated service degradation in long-term interaction due to recharge behaviour of autonomous social mobile robots and proposes an approach to manage service degradation due to recharge. First we performed a long-term study to investigate the service degradation caused by the recharging behaviour of a social robot. Second we conducted a more focused social study which helped to understand user’s attitudes towards a mobile robot with respect to recharge activity. We explored a social strategy by modifying the robot’s verbal behaviour to manage service degradation during recharge. The results obtained from our social study indicates the use of verbal strategies (transparency, apology, politeness) made the robot more acceptable to the users during recharge. We believe that social mobile robots should behave in a socially intelligent manner while managing service degradation. We also provide some recommendations for social mobile robots to manage their recharge behaviour in this thesis

Unmanned Ground Vehicles for Smart Farms

Forecasts of world population increases in the coming decades demand new production processes that are more efficient, safer, and less destructive to the environment. Industries are working to fulfill this mission by developing the smart factory concept. The agriculture world should follow industry leadership and develop approaches to implement the smart farm concept. One of the most vital elements that must be configured to meet the requirements of the new smart farms is the unmanned ground vehicles (UGV). Thus, this chapter focuses on the characteristics that the UGVs must have to function efficiently in this type of future farm. Two main approaches are discussed: automating conventional vehicles and developing specifically designed mobile platforms. The latter includes both wheeled and wheel-legged robots and an analysis of their adaptability to terrain and crops

Index to 1981 NASA Tech Briefs, volume 6, numbers 1-4

Short announcements of new technology derived from the R&D activities of NASA are presented. These briefs emphasize information considered likely to be transferrable across industrial, regional, or disciplinary lines and are issued to encourage commercial application. This index for 1981 Tech Briefs contains abstracts and four indexes: subject, personal author, originating center, and Tech Brief Number. The following areas are covered: electronic components and circuits, electronic systems, physical sciences, materials, life sciences, mechanics, machinery, fabrication technology, and mathematics and information sciences

Intelligent strategies for mobile robotics in laboratory automation

In this thesis a new intelligent framework is presented for the mobile robots in laboratory automation, which includes: a new multi-floor indoor navigation method is presented and an intelligent multi-floor path planning is proposed; a new signal filtering method is presented for the robots to forecast their indoor coordinates; a new human feature based strategy is proposed for the robot-human smart collision avoidance; a new robot power forecasting method is proposed to decide a distributed transportation task; a new blind approach is presented for the arm manipulations for the robots

Towards Developing Efficient Area Coverage Approach in Domestic Robots

東京電機大学201

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