4,733 research outputs found
Analysis and Observations from the First Amazon Picking Challenge
This paper presents a overview of the inaugural Amazon Picking Challenge
along with a summary of a survey conducted among the 26 participating teams.
The challenge goal was to design an autonomous robot to pick items from a
warehouse shelf. This task is currently performed by human workers, and there
is hope that robots can someday help increase efficiency and throughput while
lowering cost. We report on a 28-question survey posed to the teams to learn
about each team's background, mechanism design, perception apparatus, planning
and control approach. We identify trends in this data, correlate it with each
team's success in the competition, and discuss observations and lessons learned
based on survey results and the authors' personal experiences during the
challenge
Organizational alternatives for flexible manufacturing systems
There is an increasing importance of different productive architectures related to worker involvement in the decision making, where is given due attention to the intuitive capabilities and the human knowledge in the optimization and flexibilization of manufacturing processes. Thus having reference point architecture of a flexible manufacturing and assembling system existent at UNINOVA-CRI, we will present some exploratory hypothesis about applicability of the concept of hybridization and its repercussions on the definition of jobs, in those organizations and in the formation of working teams.flexibility; robotics; work organization; manufacturing industry
Tahap penguasaan, sikap dan minat pelajar Kolej Kemahiran Tinggi MARA terhadap mata pelajaran Bahasa Inggeris
Kajian ini dilakukan untuk mengenal pasti tahap penguasaan, sikap dan minat pelajar
Kolej Kemahiran Tinggi Mara Sri Gading terhadap Bahasa Inggeris. Kajian yang
dijalankan ini berbentuk deskriptif atau lebih dikenali sebagai kaedah tinjauan. Seramai
325 orang pelajar Diploma in Construction Technology dari Kolej Kemahiran Tinggi
Mara di daerah Batu Pahat telah dipilih sebagai sampel dalam kajian ini. Data yang
diperoleh melalui instrument soal selidik telah dianalisis untuk mendapatkan
pengukuran min, sisihan piawai, dan Pekali Korelasi Pearson untuk melihat hubungan
hasil dapatan data. Manakala, frekuensi dan peratusan digunakan bagi mengukur
penguasaan pelajar. Hasil dapatan kajian menunjukkan bahawa tahap penguasaan
Bahasa Inggeris pelajar adalah berada pada tahap sederhana manakala faktor utama yang
mempengaruhi penguasaan Bahasa Inggeris tersebut adalah minat diikuti oleh sikap.
Hasil dapatan menggunakan pekali Korelasi Pearson juga menunjukkan bahawa terdapat
hubungan yang signifikan antara sikap dengan penguasaan Bahasa Inggeris dan antara
minat dengan penguasaan Bahasa Inggeris. Kajian menunjukkan bahawa semakin positif
sikap dan minat pelajar terhadap pengajaran dan pembelajaran Bahasa Inggeris semakin
tinggi pencapaian mereka. Hasil daripada kajian ini diharapkan dapat membantu pelajar
dalam meningkatkan penguasaan Bahasa Inggeris dengan memupuk sikap positif dalam
diri serta meningkatkan minat mereka terhadap Bahasa Inggeris dengan lebih baik. Oleh
itu, diharap kajian ini dapat memberi panduan kepada pihak-pihak yang terlibat dalam
membuat kajian yang akan datang
A robot swarm assisting a human fire-fighter
Emergencies in industrial warehouses are a major concern for fire-fighters. The large dimensions, together with the development of dense smoke that drastically reduces visibility, represent major challenges. The GUARDIANS robot swarm is designed to assist fire-fighters in searching a large warehouse. In this paper we discuss the technology developed for a swarm of robots assisting fire-fighters. We explain the swarming algorithms that provide the functionality by which the robots react to and follow humans while no communication is required. Next we discuss the wireless communication system, which is a so-called mobile ad-hoc network. The communication network provides also the means to locate the robots and humans. Thus, the robot swarm is able to provide guidance information to the humans. Together with the fire-fighters we explored how the robot swarm should feed information back to the human fire-fighter. We have designed and experimented with interfaces for presenting swarm-based information to human beings
Multi-robot team formation control in the GUARDIANS project
Purpose
The GUARDIANS multi-robot team is to be deployed in a large warehouse in smoke. The team is to assist firefighters search the warehouse in the event or danger of a fire. The large dimensions of the environment together with development of smoke which drastically reduces visibility, represent major challenges for search and rescue operations. The GUARDIANS robots guide and accompany
the firefighters on site whilst indicating possible obstacles and the locations of danger and maintaining communications links.
Design/methodology/approach
In order to fulfill the aforementioned tasks the robots need to exhibit certain behaviours. Among the basic behaviours are capabilities to stay together as a
group, that is, generate a formation and navigate while keeping this formation.
The control model used to generate these behaviours is based on the so-called social potential field framework, which we adapt to the specific tasks required for the GUARDIANS scenario. All tasks can be achieved without central control, and some of the behaviours can be performed without explicit communication between the robots.
Findings
The GUARDIANS environment requires flexible formations of the robot team: the formation has to adapt itself to the circumstances. Thus the application has forced us to redefine the concept of a formation. Using the graph-theoretic terminology, we can say that a formation may be stretched out as a path or be compact as a star or wheel. We have implemented the developed behaviours in simulation environments as well as on real ERA-MOBI robots commonly referred to as Erratics. We discuss advantages and shortcomings of our model, based on the simulations as
well as on the implementation with a team of Erratics.</p
Feasibility of Warehouse Drone Adoption and Implementation
While aerial delivery drones capture headlines, the pace of adoption of drones in warehouses has shown the greatest acceleration. Warehousing constitutes 30% of the cost of logistics in the US. The rise of e-commerce, greater customer service demands of retail stores, and a shortage of skilled labor have intensified competition for efficient warehouse operations. This takes place during an era of shortening technology life cycles. This paper integrates several theoretical perspectives on technology diffusion and adoption to propose a framework to inform supply chain decision-makers on when to invest in new robotics technology
Topomap: Topological Mapping and Navigation Based on Visual SLAM Maps
Visual robot navigation within large-scale, semi-structured environments
deals with various challenges such as computation intensive path planning
algorithms or insufficient knowledge about traversable spaces. Moreover, many
state-of-the-art navigation approaches only operate locally instead of gaining
a more conceptual understanding of the planning objective. This limits the
complexity of tasks a robot can accomplish and makes it harder to deal with
uncertainties that are present in the context of real-time robotics
applications. In this work, we present Topomap, a framework which simplifies
the navigation task by providing a map to the robot which is tailored for path
planning use. This novel approach transforms a sparse feature-based map from a
visual Simultaneous Localization And Mapping (SLAM) system into a
three-dimensional topological map. This is done in two steps. First, we extract
occupancy information directly from the noisy sparse point cloud. Then, we
create a set of convex free-space clusters, which are the vertices of the
topological map. We show that this representation improves the efficiency of
global planning, and we provide a complete derivation of our algorithm.
Planning experiments on real world datasets demonstrate that we achieve similar
performance as RRT* with significantly lower computation times and storage
requirements. Finally, we test our algorithm on a mobile robotic platform to
prove its advantages.Comment: 8 page
Internet of robotic things : converging sensing/actuating, hypoconnectivity, artificial intelligence and IoT Platforms
The Internet of Things (IoT) concept is evolving rapidly and influencing newdevelopments in various application domains, such as the Internet of MobileThings (IoMT), Autonomous Internet of Things (A-IoT), Autonomous Systemof Things (ASoT), Internet of Autonomous Things (IoAT), Internetof Things Clouds (IoT-C) and the Internet of Robotic Things (IoRT) etc.that are progressing/advancing by using IoT technology. The IoT influencerepresents new development and deployment challenges in different areassuch as seamless platform integration, context based cognitive network integration,new mobile sensor/actuator network paradigms, things identification(addressing, naming in IoT) and dynamic things discoverability and manyothers. The IoRT represents new convergence challenges and their need to be addressed, in one side the programmability and the communication ofmultiple heterogeneous mobile/autonomous/robotic things for cooperating,their coordination, configuration, exchange of information, security, safetyand protection. Developments in IoT heterogeneous parallel processing/communication and dynamic systems based on parallelism and concurrencyrequire new ideas for integrating the intelligent âdevicesâ, collaborativerobots (COBOTS), into IoT applications. Dynamic maintainability, selfhealing,self-repair of resources, changing resource state, (re-) configurationand context based IoT systems for service implementation and integrationwith IoT network service composition are of paramount importance whennew âcognitive devicesâ are becoming active participants in IoT applications.This chapter aims to be an overview of the IoRT concept, technologies,architectures and applications and to provide a comprehensive coverage offuture challenges, developments and applications
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