10,450 research outputs found

    DEVELOPMENT OF AN AUTONOMOUS NAVIGATION SYSTEM FOR THE SHUTTLE CAR IN UNDERGROUND ROOM & PILLAR COAL MINES

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    In recent years, autonomous solutions in the multi-disciplinary field of the mining engineering have been an extremely popular applied research topic. The growing demand for mineral supplies combined with the steady decline in the available surface reserves has driven the mining industry to mine deeper underground deposits. These deposits are difficult to access, and the environment may be hazardous to mine personnel (e.g., increased heat, difficult ventilation conditions, etc.). Moreover, current mining methods expose the miners to numerous occupational hazards such as working in the proximity of heavy mining equipment, possible roof falls, as well as noise and dust. As a result, the mining industry, in its efforts to modernize and advance its methods and techniques, is one of the many industries that has turned to autonomous systems. Vehicle automation in such complex working environments can play a critical role in improving worker safety and mine productivity. One of the most time-consuming tasks of the mining cycle is the transportation of the extracted ore from the face to the main haulage facility or to surface processing facilities. Although conveyor belts have long been the autonomous transportation means of choice, there are still many cases where a discrete transportation system is needed to transport materials from the face to the main haulage system. The current dissertation presents the development of a navigation system for an autonomous shuttle car (ASC) in underground room and pillar coal mines. By introducing autonomous shuttle cars, the operator can be relocated from the dusty, noisy, and potentially dangerous environment of the underground mine to the safer location of a control room. This dissertation focuses on the development and testing of an autonomous navigation system for an underground room and pillar coal mine. A simplified relative localization system which determines the location of the vehicle relatively to salient features derived from on-board 2D LiDAR scans was developed for a semi-autonomous laboratory-scale shuttle car prototype. This simplified relative localization system is heavily dependent on and at the same time leverages the room and pillar geometry. Instead of keeping track of a global position of the vehicle relatively to a fixed coordinates frame, the proposed custom localization technique requires information regarding only the immediate surroundings. The followed approach enables the prototype to navigate around the pillars in real-time using a deterministic Finite-State Machine which models the behavior of the vehicle in the room and pillar mine with only a few states. Also, a user centered GUI has been developed that allows for a human user to control and monitor the autonomous vehicle by implementing the proposed navigation system. Experimental tests have been conducted in a mock mine in order to evaluate the performance of the developed system. A number of different scenarios simulating common missions that a shuttle car needs to undertake in a room and pillar mine. The results show a minimum success ratio of 70%

    Advancing automation and robotics technology for the Space Station Freedom and for the US economy

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    The progress made by levels 1, 2, and 3 of the Office of Space Station in developing and applying advanced automation and robotics technology is described. Emphasis is placed upon the Space Station Freedom Program responses to specific recommendations made in the Advanced Technology Advisory Committee (ATAC) progress report 10, the flight telerobotic servicer, and the Advanced Development Program. Assessments are presented for these and other areas as they apply to the advancement of automation and robotics technology for the Space Station Freedom

    Using remote vision: The effects of video image frame rate on visual object recognition performance

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    This is the author's accepted manuscript. The final published article is available from the link below. Copyright @ 2010 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other users, including reprinting/ republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted components of this work in other works.The process of using remote vision was simulated in order to determine the effects of video image frame rate on the performance in visual recognition of stationary environmental hazards in the dynamic video footage of the pedestrian travel environment. The recognition performance was assessed against two different video image frame rate variations: 25 and 2 fps. The assessment included a range of objective and subjective criteria. The obtained results show that the effects of the frame rate variations on the performance are statistically insignificant. This paper belongs to the process of development of a novel system for navigation of visually impaired pedestrians. The navigation system includes a remote vision facility, and the visual recognition of the environmental hazards by the sighted human guide is a basic activity in aiding the visually impaired user of the system in mobility

    Adaptive Airborne Separation to Enable UAM Autonomy in Mixed Airspace

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    The excitement and promise generated by Urban Air Mobility (UAM) concepts have inspired both new entrants and large aerospace companies throughout the world to invest hundreds of millions in research and development of air vehicles, both piloted and unpiloted, to fulfill these dreams. The management and separation of all these new aircraft have received much less attention, however, and even though NASAs lead is advancing some promising concepts for Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Traffic Management (UTM), most operations today are limited to line of sight with the vehicle, airspace reservation and geofencing of individual flights. Various schemes have been proposed to control this new traffic, some modeled after conventional air traffic control and some proposing fully automatic management, either from a ground-based entity or carried out on board among the vehicles themselves. Previous work has examined vehicle-based traffic management in the very low altitude airspace within a metroplex called UTM airspace in which piloted traffic is rare. A management scheme was proposed in that work that takes advantage of the homogeneous nature of the traffic operating in UTM airspace. This paper expands that concept to include a traffic management plan usable at all altitudes desired for electric Vertical Takeoff and Landing urban and short-distance, inter-city transportation. The interactions with piloted aircraft operating under both visual and instrument flight rules are analyzed, and the role of Air Traffic Control services in the postulated mixed traffic environment is covered. Separation values that adapt to each type of traffic encounter are proposed, and the relationship between required airborne surveillance range and closure speed is given. Finally, realistic scenarios are presented illustrating how this concept can reliably handle the density and traffic mix that fully implemented and successful UAM operations would entail

    Earthmoving construction automation with military applications: Past, present and future

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    © ISARC 2018 - 35th International Symposium on Automation and Robotics in Construction and International AEC/FM Hackathon: The Future of Building Things. All rights reserved. Amongst increasing innovations in frontier engineering sciences, the advancements in Robotic and Autonomous Systems (RAS) has brought about a new horizon in construction applications. There is evidence of the increasing interest in RAS technologies in the civil construction sector being reflected in construction efforts of many military forces. In particular, Army or ground-based forces are frequently called upon to conduct construction tasks as part of military operations, tasks which could be partially or fully aided by the employment of RAS technologies. Along with recent advances in the Internet of Things (IoT) and cyber-physical system infrastructure, it is essential to examine the current maturity, technical feasibility, and affordability, as well as the challenges and future directions of the adoption and application of RAS to military construction. This paper presents a comprehensive survey and provides a contemporary and industry-independent overview on the state-of-the-art of earthmoving construction automation used in defence, spanning current world’s best practice through to that which is predicted over the coming years

    Safe, Remote-Access Swarm Robotics Research on the Robotarium

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    This paper describes the development of the Robotarium -- a remotely accessible, multi-robot research facility. The impetus behind the Robotarium is that multi-robot testbeds constitute an integral and essential part of the multi-agent research cycle, yet they are expensive, complex, and time-consuming to develop, operate, and maintain. These resource constraints, in turn, limit access for large groups of researchers and students, which is what the Robotarium is remedying by providing users with remote access to a state-of-the-art multi-robot test facility. This paper details the design and operation of the Robotarium as well as connects these to the particular considerations one must take when making complex hardware remotely accessible. In particular, safety must be built in already at the design phase without overly constraining which coordinated control programs the users can upload and execute, which calls for minimally invasive safety routines with provable performance guarantees.Comment: 13 pages, 7 figures, 3 code samples, 72 reference

    NASA Automated Rendezvous and Capture Review. Executive summary

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    In support of the Cargo Transfer Vehicle (CTV) Definition Studies in FY-92, the Advanced Program Development division of the Office of Space Flight at NASA Headquarters conducted an evaluation and review of the United States capabilities and state-of-the-art in Automated Rendezvous and Capture (AR&C). This review was held in Williamsburg, Virginia on 19-21 Nov. 1991 and included over 120 attendees from U.S. government organizations, industries, and universities. One hundred abstracts were submitted to the organizing committee for consideration. Forty-two were selected for presentation. The review was structured to include five technical sessions. Forty-two papers addressed topics in the five categories below: (1) hardware systems and components; (2) software systems; (3) integrated systems; (4) operations; and (5) supporting infrastructure

    Unmanned Ground Vehicles for Smart Farms

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    Forecasts of world population increases in the coming decades demand new production processes that are more efficient, safer, and less destructive to the environment. Industries are working to fulfill this mission by developing the smart factory concept. The agriculture world should follow industry leadership and develop approaches to implement the smart farm concept. One of the most vital elements that must be configured to meet the requirements of the new smart farms is the unmanned ground vehicles (UGV). Thus, this chapter focuses on the characteristics that the UGVs must have to function efficiently in this type of future farm. Two main approaches are discussed: automating conventional vehicles and developing specifically designed mobile platforms. The latter includes both wheeled and wheel-legged robots and an analysis of their adaptability to terrain and crops
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