Augmenting user capabilities through an adaptive assistive manipulator

Mención Internacional en el título de doctorAssistive robot manipulators have the potential to increase the independence of disabled persons in activities of daily living. The current designs are mainly limited to pure teleoperation by the user, given the need for keeping the user in the control loop, and the complexity of the tasks and environments in which they operate. This thesis aims to augment the user’s capabilities for performing such tasks by adapting the robot, and its level of assistance, to the user. Methodologies for modeling and benchmarking the complete human-robot system were established, which helped drive the development of different approaches to adaptation. This included a task-oriented optimization of the robot physical structure, approaches for low-level adaptive shared control, and work on interactive learning of, and assistance on completing, simple object manipulation tasks. Three experimental platforms were used: The ASIBOT manipulator of Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M), the AMOR manipulator of Exact Dynamics, and the iCub humanoid robot.Los manipuladores asistenciales tienen el potencial de incrementar la independencia de personas discapacitadas en sus actividades de la vida diaria. Los diseños actuales se limitan principalmente a una pura teleoperación, pues dada la complejidad de las tareas y del entorno, se necesita mantener al usuario en el lazo de control. Esta tesis pretende mejorar las capacidades del usuario para realizar estas tareas, adaptando el robot y su nivel de asistencia a las necesidades del usuario. Se han establecido metodologías para el modelado y evaluación del comportamiento del sistema formado por humano y robot, lo que ha permitido el desarrollo de diferentes aproximaciones a la adaptación. Esto incluye desde la optimización de la estructura del robot atendiendo a las tareas, la evaluación de diversas aproximaciones al control compartido adaptativo a bajo nivel, al aprendizaje interactivo y el desarrollo de asistencias para completar tareas sencillas de manipulación. Se ha hecho uso de tres plataformas experimentales: el manipulador ASIBOT de la Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M), el manipulador AMOR de Exact Dynamics y el humanoide iCub.Programa Oficial de Doctorado en Ingeniería Eléctrica, Electrónica y AutomáticaPresidente: Alberto Sanfeliú.- Secretario: Concepción Alicia Monje Micharet.- Vocal: Yiannis Demiri

Medical robots with potential applications in participatory and opportunistic remote sensing: A review

Among numerous applications of medical robotics, this paper concentrates on the design, optimal use and maintenance of the related technologies in the context of healthcare, rehabilitation and assistive robotics, and provides a comprehensive review of the latest advancements in the foregoing field of science and technology, while extensively dealing with the possible applications of participatory and opportunistic mobile sensing in the aforementioned domains. The main motivation for the latter choice is the variety of such applications in the settings having partial contributions to functionalities such as artery, radiosurgery, neurosurgery and vascular intervention. From a broad perspective, the aforementioned applications can be realized via various strategies and devices benefiting from detachable drives, intelligent robots, human-centric sensing and computing, miniature and micro-robots. Throughout the paper tens of subjects, including sensor-fusion, kinematic, dynamic and 3D tissue models are discussed based on the existing literature on the state-of-the-art technologies. In addition, from a managerial perspective, topics such as safety monitoring, security, privacy and evolutionary optimization of the operational efficiency are reviewed

Remote Programming of Multirobot Systems within the UPC-UJI Telelaboratories: System Architecture and Agent-Based Multirobot Control

One of the areas that needs further improvement within E-Learning environments via Internet (A big effort is required in this area if progress is to be made) is allowing students to access and practice real experiments in a real laboratory, instead of using simulations [1]. Real laboratories allow students to acquire methods, skills and experience related to real equipment, in a manner that is very close to the way they are being used in industry. The purpose of the project is the study, development and implementation of an E-Learning environment to allow undergraduate students to practice subjects related to Robotics and Artificial Intelligence. The system, which is now at a preliminary stage, will allow the remote experimentation with real robotic devices (i.e. robots, cameras, etc.). It will enable the student to learn in a collaborative manner (remote participation with other students) where it will be possible to combine the onsite activities (performed “in-situ” within the real lab during the normal practical sessions), with the “on-line” one (performed remotely from home via the Internet). Moreover, the remote experiments within the E-Laboratory to control the real robots can be performed by both, students and even scientist. This project is under development and it is carried out jointly by two Universities (UPC and UJI). In this article we present the system architecture and the way students and researchers have been able to perform a Remote Programming of Multirobot Systems via web

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

Human-centred design methods : developing scenarios for robot assisted play informed by user panels and field trials

Original article can be found at: http://www.sciencedirect.com/ Copyright ElsevierThis article describes the user-centred development of play scenarios for robot assisted play, as part of the multidisciplinary IROMEC1 project that develops a novel robotic toy for children with special needs. The project investigates how robotic toys can become social mediators, encouraging children with special needs to discover a range of play styles, from solitary to collaborative play (with peers, carers/teachers, parents, etc.). This article explains the developmental process of constructing relevant play scenarios for children with different special needs. Results are presented from consultation with panel of experts (therapists, teachers, parents) who advised on the play needs for the various target user groups and who helped investigate how robotic toys could be used as a play tool to assist in the children’s development. Examples from experimental investigations are provided which have informed the development of scenarios throughout the design process. We conclude by pointing out the potential benefit of this work to a variety of research projects and applications involving human–robot interactions.Peer reviewe

Robot skills and cognitive performance of preschool children

Several studies have demonstrated the potential of robots as assistive tools for play activities. Through the use of robots, children with motor impairments may be able to manipulate objects and engage in play activities as their typically developing peers, thus having the same opportunities to learn cognitive, social, motor and linguistic skills. Robot use can also provide a proxy measure of disabled children's cognitive abilities by comparing their performance with that of typically developing children. This paper reports a study with eighteen typically developing children aged three, four and five years to assess at which ages the cognitive concepts of causality, negation, binary logic, and sequencing are demonstrated during Lego robot use.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Trajectory Tracking Control Design for Dual-Arm Robots Using Dynamic Surface Controller

This paper presents a dynamic surface controller (DSC) for dual-arm robots (DAR) tracking desired trajectories. The DSC algorithm is based on backstepping technique and multiple sliding surface control principle, but with an important addition. In the design of DSC, low-pass filters are included which prevent the complexity in computing due to the “explosion of terms”, i.e. the number of terms in the control law rapidly gets out of hand. Therefore, a controller constructed from this algorithm is simulated on a four degrees of freedom (DOF) dual-arm robot with a complex kinetic dynamic model. Moreover, the stability of the control system is proved by using Lyapunov theory. The simulation results show the effectiveness of the controller which provide precise tracking performance of the manipulator

The implications of embodiment for behavior and cognition: animal and robotic case studies

In this paper, we will argue that if we want to understand the function of the brain (or the control in the case of robots), we must understand how the brain is embedded into the physical system, and how the organism interacts with the real world. While embodiment has often been used in its trivial meaning, i.e. 'intelligence requires a body', the concept has deeper and more important implications, concerned with the relation between physical and information (neural, control) processes. A number of case studies are presented to illustrate the concept. These involve animals and robots and are concentrated around locomotion, grasping, and visual perception. A theoretical scheme that can be used to embed the diverse case studies will be presented. Finally, we will establish a link between the low-level sensory-motor processes and cognition. We will present an embodied view on categorization, and propose the concepts of 'body schema' and 'forward models' as a natural extension of the embodied approach toward first representations.Comment: Book chapter in W. Tschacher & C. Bergomi, ed., 'The Implications of Embodiment: Cognition and Communication', Exeter: Imprint Academic, pp. 31-5