Brain-Computer Interface meets ROS: A robotic approach to mentally drive telepresence robots

This paper shows and evaluates a novel approach to integrate a non-invasive Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) with the Robot Operating System (ROS) to mentally drive a telepresence robot. Controlling a mobile device by using human brain signals might improve the quality of life of people suffering from severe physical disabilities or elderly people who cannot move anymore. Thus, the BCI user is able to actively interact with relatives and friends located in different rooms thanks to a video streaming connection to the robot. To facilitate the control of the robot via BCI, we explore new ROS-based algorithms for navigation and obstacle avoidance, making the system safer and more reliable. In this regard, the robot can exploit two maps of the environment, one for localization and one for navigation, and both can be used also by the BCI user to watch the position of the robot while it is moving. As demonstrated by the experimental results, the user's cognitive workload is reduced, decreasing the number of commands necessary to complete the task and helping him/her to keep attention for longer periods of time.Comment: Accepted in the Proceedings of the 2018 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automatio

Computational intelligence approaches to robotics, automation, and control [Volume guest editors]

No abstract available

Overcoming barriers and increasing independence: service robots for elderly and disabled people

This paper discusses the potential for service robots to overcome barriers and increase independence of elderly and disabled people. It includes a brief overview of the existing uses of service robots by disabled and elderly people and advances in technology which will make new uses possible and provides suggestions for some of these new applications. The paper also considers the design and other conditions to be met for user acceptance. It also discusses the complementarity of assistive service robots and personal assistance and considers the types of applications and users for which service robots are and are not suitable

Supervised Autonomous Locomotion and Manipulation for Disaster Response with a Centaur-like Robot

Mobile manipulation tasks are one of the key challenges in the field of search and rescue (SAR) robotics requiring robots with flexible locomotion and manipulation abilities. Since the tasks are mostly unknown in advance, the robot has to adapt to a wide variety of terrains and workspaces during a mission. The centaur-like robot Centauro has a hybrid legged-wheeled base and an anthropomorphic upper body to carry out complex tasks in environments too dangerous for humans. Due to its high number of degrees of freedom, controlling the robot with direct teleoperation approaches is challenging and exhausting. Supervised autonomy approaches are promising to increase quality and speed of control while keeping the flexibility to solve unknown tasks. We developed a set of operator assistance functionalities with different levels of autonomy to control the robot for challenging locomotion and manipulation tasks. The integrated system was evaluated in disaster response scenarios and showed promising performance.Comment: In Proceedings of IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), Madrid, Spain, October 201

Real-time Coordinate Estimation for Self-Localization of the Humanoid Robot Soccer BarelangFC

In implementation, of the humanoid robot soccer consists of more than three robots when played soccer on the field. All the robots needed to be played the soccer as human done such as seeking, chasing, dribbling and kicking the ball. To do all of these commands, it is required a real-time localization system so that each robot will understand not only the robot position itself but also the other robots and even the object on the field’s environment. However, in real-time implementation and due to the limited ability of the robot computation, it is necessary to determine a method which has fast computation and able to save much memory. Therefore, in this paper we presented a real-time localization implementation method using the odometry and Monte Carlo Localization (MCL) method. In order to verify the performance of this method, some experiment has been carried out in real-time application. From the experimental result, the proposed method able to estimate the coordinate of each robot position in X and Y position on the field.Dalam implementasinya, robot humanoid soccer terdiri lebih dari tiga robot di lapangan ketika sedang bermain bola. Semua robot diharapkan dapat memainkan sepak bola seperti manusia seperti mencari, mengejar, menggiring bola dan menendang bola. Untuk melakukan semua perintah tersebut, diperlukan sistem lokalisasi real-time sehingga setiap robot tidak hanya memahami posisi robotnya sendiri tetapi juga robot-robot lain bahkan objek yang berada di sekitar lapangan. Namun dalam implementasi real-time dan karena keterbatasan kemampuan komputasi robot, diperlukan suatu metode komputasi yang cepat dan mampu menghemat banyak memori. Oleh karena itu, dalam makalah ini menyajikan metode implementasi lokalisasi real-time dengan menggunakan metode odometry and Monte Carlo Localization (MCL). Untuk memverifikasi kinerja metode ini, beberapa percobaan telah dilakukan dalam aplikasi real-time. Dari hasil percobaan, metode yang diusulkan mampu mengestimasi koordinat posisi robot pada posisi X dan Y di lapangan ketika sedang bermain bola

On Foveated Gaze Control and Combined Gaze and Locomotion Planning

This chapter presents recent research results of our laboratory in the area of vision an