4,387 research outputs found
Artificial Intelligence and Systems Theory: Applied to Cooperative Robots
This paper describes an approach to the design of a population of cooperative
robots based on concepts borrowed from Systems Theory and Artificial
Intelligence. The research has been developed under the SocRob project, carried
out by the Intelligent Systems Laboratory at the Institute for Systems and
Robotics - Instituto Superior Tecnico (ISR/IST) in Lisbon. The acronym of the
project stands both for "Society of Robots" and "Soccer Robots", the case study
where we are testing our population of robots. Designing soccer robots is a
very challenging problem, where the robots must act not only to shoot a ball
towards the goal, but also to detect and avoid static (walls, stopped robots)
and dynamic (moving robots) obstacles. Furthermore, they must cooperate to
defeat an opposing team. Our past and current research in soccer robotics
includes cooperative sensor fusion for world modeling, object recognition and
tracking, robot navigation, multi-robot distributed task planning and
coordination, including cooperative reinforcement learning in cooperative and
adversarial environments, and behavior-based architectures for real time task
execution of cooperating robot teams
Robot swarming applications
This paper discusses the different modes of operation of a swarm of robots: (i) non-communicative swarming, (ii) communicative swarming, (iii) networking, (iv) olfactory-based navigation and (v) assistive swarming. I briefly present the state of the art in swarming and outline the major techniques applied for each mode of operation and discuss the related problems and expected results
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 “devices”, 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 “cognitive devices” 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
Towards formal models and languages for verifiable Multi-Robot Systems
Incorrect operations of a Multi-Robot System (MRS) may not only lead to
unsatisfactory results, but can also cause economic losses and threats to
safety. These threats may not always be apparent, since they may arise as
unforeseen consequences of the interactions between elements of the system.
This call for tools and techniques that can help in providing guarantees about
MRSs behaviour. We think that, whenever possible, these guarantees should be
backed up by formal proofs to complement traditional approaches based on
testing and simulation.
We believe that tailored linguistic support to specify MRSs is a major step
towards this goal. In particular, reducing the gap between typical features of
an MRS and the level of abstraction of the linguistic primitives would simplify
both the specification of these systems and the verification of their
properties. In this work, we review different agent-oriented languages and
their features; we then consider a selection of case studies of interest and
implement them useing the surveyed languages. We also evaluate and compare
effectiveness of the proposed solution, considering, in particular, easiness of
expressing non-trivial behaviour.Comment: Changed formattin
A Generic Multi-Layer Architecture Based on ROS-JADE Integration for Autonomous Transport Vehicles
The design and operation of manufacturing systems is evolving to adapt to different challenges. One of the most important is the reconfiguration of the manufacturing process in response to context changes (e.g., faulty equipment or urgent orders, among others). In this sense, the Autonomous Transport Vehicle (ATV) plays a key role in building more flexible and decentralized manufacturing systems. Nowadays, robotic frameworks (RFs) are used for developing robotic systems such as ATVs, but they focus on the control of the robotic system itself. However, social abilities are required for performing intelligent interaction (peer-to-peer negotiation and decision-making) among the different and heterogeneous Cyber Physical Production Systems (such as machines, transport systems and other equipment present in the factory) to achieve manufacturing reconfiguration. This work contributes a generic multi-layer architecture that integrates a RF with a Multi-Agent System (MAS) to provide social abilities to ATVs. This architecture has been implemented on ROS and JADE, the most widespread RF and MAS framework, respectively. We believe this to be the first work that addresses the intelligent interaction of transportation systems for flexible manufacturing environments in a holistic form.This work was financed by MINECO/FEDER, UE (grant number DPI2015-68602-R) and by UPV/EHU (grant number PPG17/56)
Safe, Remote-Access Swarm Robotics Research on the Robotarium
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
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