Advances in Robotics, Automation and Control

The book presents an excellent overview of the recent developments in the different areas of Robotics, Automation and Control. Through its 24 chapters, this book presents topics related to control and robot design; it also introduces new mathematical tools and techniques devoted to improve the system modeling and control. An important point is the use of rational agents and heuristic techniques to cope with the computational complexity required for controlling complex systems. Through this book, we also find navigation and vision algorithms, automatic handwritten comprehension and speech recognition systems that will be included in the next generation of productive systems developed by man

Skill-based reconfiguration of industrial mobile robots

Caused by a rising mass customisation and the high variety of equipment versions, the exibility of manufacturing systems in car productions has to be increased. In addition to a exible handling of production load changes or hardware breakdowns that are established research areas in literature, this thesis presents a skill-based recon guration mechanism for industrial mobile robots to enhance functional recon gurability. The proposed holonic multi-agent system is able to react to functional process changes while missing functionalities are created by self-organisation. Applied to a mobile commissioning system that is provided by AUDI AG, the suggested mechanism is validated in a real-world environment including the on-line veri cation of the recon gured robot functionality in a Validity Check. The present thesis includes an original contribution in three aspects: First, a recon - guration mechanism is presented that reacts in a self-organised way to functional process changes. The application layer of a hardware system converts a semantic description into functional requirements for a new robot skill. The result of this mechanism is the on-line integration of a new functionality into the running process. Second, the proposed system allows maintaining the productivity of the running process and exibly changing the robot hardware through provision of a hardware-abstraction layer. An encapsulated Recon guration Holon dynamically includes the actual con guration each time a recon guration is started. This allows reacting to changed environment settings. As the resulting agent that contains the new functionality, is identical in shape and behaviour to the existing skills, its integration into the running process is conducted without a considerable loss of productivity. Third, the suggested mechanism is composed of a novel agent design that allows implementing self-organisation during the encapsulated recon guration and dependability for standard process executions. The selective assignment of behaviour-based and cognitive agents is the basis for the exibility and e ectiveness of the proposed recon guration mechanism

Development of intelligent multi-sensor surveillance systems with agents

Intelligent multisensor surveillance systems consist of several types of sensors, which are installed on fixed and mobile devices. These components provide a huge quantity of information that has to be contrasted, correlated and integrated in order to recognize and react on special situations. These systems work in highly dynamic environments, with severe security and robustness requirements. All these characteristics imply the need for distributed solutions. In these solutions, scattered components can decide and act with some degree of autonomy (for instance, if they become isolated), or cooperate and coordinate for a complete tracking of special situations. In order to cope with these requirements and to better structure the solution, we have decided to design surveillance system control as a multiagent system. This is done by applying an agent-orientated methodology, which is assessed with concrete scenarios

Industrial Robotics

This book covers a wide range of topics relating to advanced industrial robotics, sensors and automation technologies. Although being highly technical and complex in nature, the papers presented in this book represent some of the latest cutting edge technologies and advancements in industrial robotics technology. This book covers topics such as networking, properties of manipulators, forward and inverse robot arm kinematics, motion path-planning, machine vision and many other practical topics too numerous to list here. The authors and editor of this book wish to inspire people, especially young ones, to get involved with robotic and mechatronic engineering technology and to develop new and exciting practical applications, perhaps using the ideas and concepts presented herein

Multi-Agent Systems

A multi-agent system (MAS) is a system composed of multiple interacting intelligent agents. Multi-agent systems can be used to solve problems which are difficult or impossible for an individual agent or monolithic system to solve. Agent systems are open and extensible systems that allow for the deployment of autonomous and proactive software components. Multi-agent systems have been brought up and used in several application domains

Ein Beitrag zur Entwicklung kooperierender mobiler Roboter

This work presents the main outcomes of the design of LUKAS, a robot in the RoboCup Small Size League, and of the development of a structure for the coordinating software, XBase. The fact that both compactness and the necessary mass-power ratio of the robot were achieved is mainly due to the configuration: three wheels and an orthogonal axle. The polyamide chassis, the backspin engine integrated into the dribbler, and the energy-efficient goal shooting mechanism, all make use of special ideas for material and structure. It has omni-directional Stanford wheels which guarantee smooth running, traction and stability on a steady basis. The design is basically sandwich construction. This is a means of using the integration of technical functions and a minimal number of components to ensure high reliability, flexibility and robustness. It was possible to develop control architecture for the robot on the basis of kinematic and dynamic mathematical analysis so that omni-directional manoeuvring and precise positioning are permitted because wheel slippage and changes in the centre of gravity are registered. The master software, XBase, has been developed to combine a user-friendly man-machine interface with a toolbox, to enable all the robots’ systems to be coordinated and moving objects in the field to be detected by customised image processing. A look-up table with maximum-likelihood colour classification is one of the means by which stable picture rates and economical computation are achieved. Others are picture segmentation with line coincidence procedure and resource-protective operations. For a group of robots, suitable training exercises have been devised using different formations so that they can be controlled in a coordinated way. This model for the formation permits transition, by individual release of parameters, from a rigid to a flexible network. The flexibility and adaptability of the robot group is demonstrated using three types of formation, bloc, line and rout. The XBase system devised will run either as a multi-robot system managed by a single behaviour control system, or as a multi-agent combination managed by several parallel behaviour controls.In dieser Arbeit werden die wesentlichen Ergebnisse zur Konstruktion des RoboCup-Small-Size-Roboters LUKAS und des Aufbaus der koordinierenden Mastersoftware XBase vorgestellt. Die erreichte Kompaktheit und das notwendige Masse-Leistungs-Verhältnis des Roboters beruhen im Wesentlichen auf der orthogonalen Achskonfiguration. Spezielle Material- und Strukturlösungen für Leichtbau und Bauraumnutzung finden sich im Polyamid-Chassis, im motorintegrierenden Dribbler und im energieeffizienten Schussmechanismus. Im Einsatz sind omnidirektionale Räder mit solider Rundlauf-, Traktions- und Stabilitätseigenschaft. Der dreirädrige Roboter setzt ein hierarchisches Konstruktionskonzept um, welches hohe Zuverlässigkeit, Flexibilität und Robustheit in verstärktem Maße durch technische Funktionsintegration einer minimalen Anzahl von Bauteilen realisiert. Nach Analyse der kinematischen und dynamischen Zusammenhänge konnte für den Roboter eine Reglerarchitektur entwickelt werden, die unter Berücksichtigung von Radschlupf und Schwerpunktverlagerung die omnidirektionale Manövrierbarkeit und Bewegungspräzision gestattet. Die weiterentwickelte Mastersoftware XBase verbindet eine modifizierten Bildverarbeitung zur Detektierung der Roboter und eine anwenderfreundliche Mensch-Maschine-Schnittstelle mit dem Instrument zur Roboterkoordinierung. Stabile Bildraten und geringer Berechnungsaufwand werden durch die Verwendung einer Look-Up-Tabelle zur Maximum-Likelihood-Farbklassifizierung, Bildsegmentierung mit Zeilenkoinzidenzverfahren und ressourcenschonende Operationen garantiert. Ein geeigneter Trainingseinstieg wurde mit verschiedenen Formationsvarianten zur koordinierten Kontrolle einer Robotergruppe gefunden. Das Modell gestattet durch individuelle Freigabe von Freiheitsgraden einen Übergang vom starren zum flexiblen Verband. Anhand der Beispielformationen Block, Reihe und Rotte ist die Flexibilität und Wandlungsfähigkeit dargestellt. Das System XBase kann sowohl als Multi-Roboter-System unter der Kontrolle einer Verhaltenssteuerung, wie auch als verteiltes Multi-Agenten-System mit mehreren parallelen Verhaltenssystemen fungieren

Ein Beispiel zur Entwicklung kooperierender mobiler Roboter: Konstruktives Design und Steuerungsentwurf

In dieser Arbeit werden die wesentlichen Ergebnisse zur Konstruktion des RoboCup-Small-Size-Roboters LUKAS und des Aufbaus der koordinierenden Mastersoftware XBase vorgestellt. Der dreirädrige Roboter setzt ein hierarchisches Konstruktionskonzept um, welches hohe Zuverlässigkeit, Flexibilität und Robustheit durch technische Funktionsintegration einer minimalen Anzahl von Bauteilen realisiert. Spezielle Material- und Strukturlösungen finden sich im Polyamid-Chassis, im motorintegrierenden Dribbler und im energieeffizienten Schussmechanismus. Nach Analyse der kinematischen und dynamischen Zusammenhänge konnte für den Roboter eine Reglerarchitektur entwickelt werden, die unter Berücksichtigung von Radschlupf und Schwerpunktverlagerung die omnidirektionale Manövrierbarkeit und Bewegungspräzision gestattet. Die Mastersoftware XBase kann sowohl als Multi-Roboter-System unter der Kontrolle einer Verhaltenssteuerung, wie auch als verteiltes Multi-Agenten-System mit mehreren parallelen Verhaltenssystemen fungieren. Stabile Bildraten der Bildverarbeitung und geringer Berechnungsaufwand werden durch ressourcenschonende Operationen garantiert. Ein geeigneter Trainingseinstieg wurde mit Formationsvarianten zurDieser Publikation liegt die Arbeit mit dem Titel „Ein Beitrag zur Entwicklung kooperierender mobiler Roboter“ [urn:nbn:de:gbv:ilm1-2009000169] zu Grunde, die der Fakultät für Maschinenbau der Technischen Universität Ilmenau als Dissertation vorgelegen hat

Robot Manipulators

Robot manipulators are developing more in the direction of industrial robots than of human workers. Recently, the applications of robot manipulators are spreading their focus, for example Da Vinci as a medical robot, ASIMO as a humanoid robot and so on. There are many research topics within the field of robot manipulators, e.g. motion planning, cooperation with a human, and fusion with external sensors like vision, haptic and force, etc. Moreover, these include both technical problems in the industry and theoretical problems in the academic fields. This book is a collection of papers presenting the latest research issues from around the world