Feasibility Investigation of Obstacle-Avoiding Sensors Unit without Image Processing

Feasibility of a simple method to detect step height, slope angle, and trench width using four infrared-light-source PSD range sensors is examined, and the reproducibility and accuracy of characteristic parameter detection are also examined. Detection error of upward slope angle is within 2.5 degrees, while it is shown that the detection error of downward slope angle exceeding 20 degrees is very large. In order to reduce such errors, a method to improve range-voltage performance of a range sensor is proposed, and its availability is demonstrated. We also show that increase in trial frequency is a better way, although so as not to increase the detection delay. Step height is identified with an error of ±1.5 mm. It is shown that trench width cannot be reliably measured at this time. It is suggested that an additional method is needed if we have to advance the field of obstacle detection

Real-Time Simulation For Control Of Soft Robots With Self-Collisions Using Model Order Reduction For Contact Forces

International audienceIn rigid robotics, self-collision are usually avoided since it leads to a failure in the robot control and can also cause damage. In soft robotics, the situation is very different, and self-collisions may even be a desirable property, for example to gain artificial stiffness or to provide a natural limitation to the workspace. However, the modeling and simulation of self-collision is very costly as it requires first a collision detection algorithm to detect where collisions occur, and most importantly, it requires solving a constrained problem to avoid interpenetrations. When the number of contact points is large, this computation slows down the simulation dramatically. In this paper, we apply a numerical method to alleviate the contact response computation by reducing the contact space in a lowdimensional positive space obtained from experiments. We show good accuracy while speeding up dramatically the simulation. We apply the method in simulation on a cable-actuated finger and on a continuum manipulator performing exploration. We also show that the reduced contact method proposed can be used for inverse modeling. The method can therefore be used for control or design

Active Collision Avoidance for Human-Robot Interaction With UKF, Expert System, and Artificial Potential Field Method

With the development of Industry 4.0, the cooperation between robots and people is increasing. Therefore, man—machine security is the first problem that must be solved. In this paper, we proposed a novel methodology of active collision avoidance to safeguard the human who enters the robot's workspace. In the conventional approaches of obstacle avoidance, it is not easy for robots and humans to work safely in the common unstructured environment due to the lack of the intelligence. In this system, one Kinect is employed to monitor the workspace of the robot and detect anyone who enters the workspace of the robot. Once someone enters the working space, the human will be detected, and the skeleton of the human can be calculated in real time by the Kinect. The measurement errors increase over time, owing to the tracking error and the noise of the device. Therefore we use an Unscented Kalman Filter (UKF) to estimate the positions of the skeleton points. We employ an expert system to estimate the behavior of the human. Then let the robot avoid the human by taking different measures, such as stopping, bypassing the human or getting away. Finally, when the robot needs to execute bypassing the human in real time, to achieve this, we adopt a method called artificial potential field method to generate a new path for the robot. By using this active collision avoidance, the system can achieve the purpose that the robot is unable to touch on the human. This proposed system highlights the advantage that during the process, it can first detect the human, then analyze the motion of the human and finally safeguard the human. We experimentally tested the active collision avoidance system in real-world applications. The results of the test indicate that it can effectively ensure human security

Integration of Reactive, Torque-Based Self-Collision Avoidance Into a Task Hierarchy

Reactively dealing with self-collisions is an important requirement on multi-DOF robots in unstructured and dynamic environments. Classical methods to integrate respective algorithms into task hierarchies cause substantial problems: Either these unilateral safety constraints are permanently active, unnecessarily locking DOF for other tasks, or they get activated online and result in a discontinuous control law. We propose a new, reactive self-collision avoidance algorithm for highly complex robotic systems with a large number of DOF. In particular, configuration dependent damping is imposed to dissipate undesired kinetic energy in a well-directed manner. Moreover, we merge the algorithm with a novel method to incorporate these unilateral constraints into a dynamic task hierarchy. Our approach both allows to specifically limit the force/torque derivative to comply with physical constraints of the real robot and to prevent discontinuities in the control law while activating/deactivating the constraints. No redundancy is wasted. No comparable algorithms have been developed and implemented on a torque controlled robot with such a level of complexity so far. The implementation of our generic solution on the multi-DOF humanoid Justin clearly validates the performance and demonstrates the real-time applicability of our synthetic approach. The proposed method can be used to contribute to whole-body controllers

안전한 재구성 로봇 시스템: 설계, 프로그래밍 및 반응형 경로계획

학위논문 (박사) -- 서울대학교 대학원 : 공과대학 기계항공공학부, 2020. 8. 박종우.The next generation of robots are being asked to work in close proximity to humans. At the same time, the robot should have the ability to change its topology to flexibly cope with various tasks. To satisfy these two requirements, we propose a novel modular reconfi gurable robot and accompanying software architecture, together with real-time motion planning algorithms to allow for safe operation in unstructured dynamic environments with humans. Two of the key innovations behind our modular manipulator design are a genderless connector and multi-dof modules. By making the modules connectable regardless of the input/output directions, a genderless connector increases the number of possible connections. The developed genderless connector can transmit as much load as necessary to an industrial robot. In designing two-dof modules, an offset between two joints is imposed to improve the overall integration and the safety of the modules. To cope with the complexity in modeling due to the genderless connector and multi-dof modules, a programming architecture for modular robots is proposed. The key feature of the proposed architecture is that it efficiently represents connections of multi-dof modules only with connections between modules, while existing architectures should explicitly represent all connections between links and joints. The data structure of the proposed architecture contains properties of tree-structured multi-dof modules with intra-module relations. Using the data structure and connection relations between modules, kinematic/dynamic parameters of connected modules can be obtained through forward recursion. For safe operation of modular robots, real-time robust collision avoidance algorithms for kinematic singularities are proposed. The main idea behind the algorithms is generating control inputs that increase the directional manipulability of the robot to the object direction by reducing directional safety measures. While existing directional safety measures show undesirable behaviors in the vicinity of the kinematic singularities, the proposed geometric safety measure generates stable control inputs in the entire joint space. By adding the preparatory input from the geometric safety measure to the repulsive input, a hierarchical collision avoidance algorithm that is robust to kinematic singularity is implemented. To mathematically guarantee the safety of the robot, another collision avoidance algorithm using the invariance control framework with velocity-dependent safety constraints is proposed. When the object approached the robot from a singular direction, the safety constraints are not satis ed in the initial state of the robot and the safety cannot be guaranteed using the invariance control. By proposing a control algorithm that quickly decreases the preparatory constraints below thresholds, the robot re-enters the constraint set and avoids collisions using the invariance control framework. The modularity and safety of the developed reconfi gurable robot is validated using a set of simulations and hardware experiments. The kinematic/dynamic model of the assembled robot is obtained in real-time and used to accurately control the robot. Due to the safe design of modules with o sets and the high-level safety functions with collision avoidance algorithms, the developed recon figurable robot has a broader safe workspace and wider ranger of safe operation speed than those of cooperative robots.다음 세대의 로봇은 사람과 가까이에서 협업할 수 있는 기능을 가져야한다. 그와 동시에, 로봇은 다양하게 변하는 작업에 대해 유연하게 대처할 수 있도록 자신의 구조를 바꾸는 기능을 가져야 한다. 이러한 두 가지 요구조건을 만족시키기 위해, 본 논문에서는 새로운 모듈라 로봇 시스템과 프로그래밍 아키텍쳐를 제시하고, 사람이 존재하는 동적 환경에서 안전한 로봇의 운용을 위한 실시한 경로 계획 알고리즘을 제시한다. 개발된 모듈라 로봇의 두 가지 핵심적인 혁신성은 무성별 커넥터와 다자유도 모듈에서 찾을 수 있다. 입력/출력 방향에 상관 없이 모듈이 연결될 수 있도록 함으로써, 무성별 커넥터는 결합 가능한 경우의 수를 늘릴 수 있다. 개발된 무성별 커넥터는 산업용 로봇에서 요구되는 충분한 부하를 견딜 수 있도록 설계되었다. 2 자유도 모듈의 설계에서 두 축 사이에 오프셋을 가지도록 함으로써 전체적인 완성도 및 안전도를 증가시켰다. 무성별 커넥터와 다자유도 모듈로 인한 모델링의 복잡성에 대응하기 위해, 일반적인 모듈라 로봇을 위한 소프트웨어 아키텍쳐를 제안하였다. 기존 모듈라 로봇의 연결을 나타내는 방법이 모든 링크와 조인트 사이의 연결 관계를 별도로 나타내야하는 것과 다르게, 제안된 아키텍쳐는 모듈들 사이의 연결관계만을 나타냄으로써 효율적인 다자유도 모듈의 연결관계를 나타낼 수 있다는 것을 특징으로 한다. 이를 위해 트리 구조를 가지는 일반적인 다자유도 모듈의 성질을 나타내는 데이터 구조를 정의하였다. 모듈들 사이의 연결관계 및 데이터 구조를 이용하여, 정확한 기구학/동역학 모델 파라미터를 얻어내는 순방향 재귀 알고리즘을 구현하였다. 모듈라 로봇의 안전한 운용을 위해, 기구학적 특이점에 강건한 실시간 충돌회피 알고리즘을 제안하였다. 방향성 안전도를 줄이는 방향의 제어 입력을 생성하여 물체 방향으로의 로봇 방향성 매니퓰러빌리티를 증가시키는 것이 제안한 알고리즘의 핵심이다. 기존의 방향성 안전도가 기구학적 특이점 근처에서 원하지 않는 성질을 가지는 것과는 반대로, 제안한 기하학적 안전도는 전체 조인트 공간에서 안정적인 제어 입력을 생성한다. 이 기하학적 안전도를 이용하여, 기구학적 특이점에 강건한 계층적 충돌회피 알고리즘을 구현하였다. 수학적으로 로봇의 안전도를 보장하기 위해, 상대속도에 종속적인 안전 제약조건을 가지는 불변 제어 프레임워크을 이용하여 또 하나의 충돌 회피 알고리즘을 제안하였다. 물체가 특이점 방향으로부터 로봇에 접근할 때, 로봇의 초기 상태에서 안전 제약조건을 만족시키지 못하게 되어 불변제어를 적용할 수 없게 된다. 준비 제약조건을 빠르게 임계점 아래로 감소시키는 알고리즘을 적용함으로써, 로봇은 제약조건 집합에 다시 들어가고 불변 제어 방법을 이용하여 충돌을 회피할 수 있게 된다. 개발된 재구성 로봇의 모듈라리티와 안전도는 일련의 시뮬레이션과 하드웨어 실험을 통해 검증되었다. 실시간으로 조립된 로봇의 기구학/동역학 모델을 얻어내 정밀 제어에 사용하였다. 안전한 모듈 디자인과 충돌 회피 등의 고차원 안전 기능을 통하여, 개발된 재구성 로봇은 기존 협동로봇보다 넓은 안전한 작업공간과 작업속도를 가진다.1 Introduction 1 1.1 Modularity and Recon gurability 1 1.2 Safe Interaction 4 1.3 Contributions of This Thesis 9 1.3.1 A Recon gurable Modular Robot System with Bidirectional Modules 9 1.3.2 A Modular Robot Software Programming Architecture 10 1.3.3 Anticipatory Collision Avoidance Planning 11 1.4 Organization of This Thesis 14 2 Design and Prototyping of the ModMan 17 2.1 Genderless Connector 18 2.2 Modules for ModMan 21 2.2.1 Joint Modules 21 2.2.2 Link and Gripper Modules 25 2.3 Experiments 26 2.3.1 System Setup 26 2.3.2 Repeatability Comparison with Non-recon gurable Robot Manipulators 28 2.3.3 E ect of the O set in Two-dof Modules 30 2.4 Conclusion 32 3 A Programming Architecture for Modular Recon gurable Robots 33 3.1 Data Structure for Multi-dof Joint Modules 34 3.2 Automatic Kinematic Modeling 37 3.3 Automatic Dynamic Modeling 40 3.4 Flexibility in Manipulator 42 3.5 Experiments 45 3.5.1 System Setup 46 3.5.2 Recon gurability 46 3.5.3 Pick-and-Place with Vision Sensors 48 3.6 Conclusion 49 4 A Preparatory Safety Measure for Robust Collision Avoidance 51 4.1 Preliminaries on Manipulability and Safety 52 4.2 Analysis on Reected Mass 56 4.3 Manipulability Control on S+(1;m) 60 4.3.1 Geometry of the Group of Positive Semi-de nite Matrices 60 4.3.2 Rank-One Manipulability Control 63 4.4 Collision Avoidance with Preparatory Action 65 4.4.1 Repulsive and Preparatory Potential Functions 65 4.4.2 Hierarchical Control and Task Relaxation 67 4.5 Experiments 70 4.5.1 Manipulability Control 71 4.5.2 Collision Avoidance 75 4.6 Conclusion 82 5 Collision Avoidance with Velocity-Dependent Constraints 85 5.1 Input-Output Linearization 87 5.2 Invariance Control 89 5.3 Velocity-Dependent Constraints for Robot Safety 90 5.3.1 Velocity-Dependent Repulsive Constraints 90 5.3.2 Preparatory Constraints 92 5.3.3 Corrective Control for Dangerous Initial State 93 5.4 Experiment 95 5.5 Conclusion 98 6 Conclusion 101 6.1 Overview of This Thesis 101 6.2 Future Work 104 Appendix A Appendix 107 A.1 Preliminaries on Graph Theory 107 A.2 Lie-Theoretic Formulations of Robot Kinematics and Dynamics 108 A.3 Derivatives of Eigenvectors and Eigenvalues 110 A.4 Proof of Proposition Proposition 4.1 111 A.5 Proof of Triangle Inequality When p = 1 114 A.6 Detailed Conditions for a Danger Field 115 Bibliography 117 Abstract 127Docto