5,991 research outputs found

    Importance and applications of robotic and autonomous systems (RAS) in railway maintenance sector: a review

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    Maintenance, which is critical for safe, reliable, quality, and cost-effective service, plays a dominant role in the railway industry. Therefore, this paper examines the importance and applications of Robotic and Autonomous Systems (RAS) in railway maintenance. More than 70 research publications, which are either in practice or under investigation describing RAS developments in the railway maintenance, are analysed. It has been found that the majority of RAS developed are for rolling-stock maintenance, followed by railway track maintenance. Further, it has been found that there is growing interest and demand for robotics and autonomous systems in the railway maintenance sector, which is largely due to the increased competition, rapid expansion and ever-increasing expense

    Reflexive obstacle avoidance for kinematically-redundant manipulators

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    Dexterous telerobots incorporating 17 or more degrees of freedom operating under coordinated, sensor-driven computer control will play important roles in future space operations. They will also be used on Earth in assignments like fire fighting, construction and battlefield support. A real time, reflexive obstacle avoidance system, seen as a functional requirement for such massively redundant manipulators, was developed using arm-mounted proximity sensors to control manipulator pose. The project involved a review and analysis of alternative proximity sensor technologies for space applications, the development of a general-purpose algorithm for synthesizing sensor inputs, and the implementation of a prototypical system for demonstration and testing. A 7 degree of freedom Robotics Research K-2107HR manipulator was outfitted with ultrasonic proximity sensors as a testbed, and Robotics Research's standard redundant motion control algorithm was modified such that an object detected by sensor arrays located at the elbow effectively applies a force to the manipulator elbow, normal to the axis. The arm is repelled by objects detected by the sensors, causing the robot to steer around objects in the workspace automatically while continuing to move its tool along the commanded path without interruption. The mathematical approach formulated for synthesizing sensor inputs can be employed for redundant robots of any kinematic configuration

    Design and construction of a configurable full-field range imaging system for mobile robotic applications

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    Mobile robotic devices rely critically on extrospection sensors to determine the range to objects in the robot’s operating environment. This provides the robot with the ability both to navigate safely around obstacles and to map its environment and hence facilitate path planning and navigation. There is a requirement for a full-field range imaging system that can determine the range to any obstacle in a camera lens’ field of view accurately and in real-time. This paper details the development of a portable full-field ranging system whose bench-top version has demonstrated sub-millimetre precision. However, this precision required non-real-time acquisition rates and expensive hardware. By iterative replacement of components, a portable, modular and inexpensive version of this full-field ranger has been constructed, capable of real-time operation with some (user-defined) trade-off with precision

    Radar-on-Lidar: metric radar localization on prior lidar maps

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    Radar and lidar, provided by two different range sensors, each has pros and cons of various perception tasks on mobile robots or autonomous driving. In this paper, a Monte Carlo system is used to localize the robot with a rotating radar sensor on 2D lidar maps. We first train a conditional generative adversarial network to transfer raw radar data to lidar data, and achieve reliable radar points from generator. Then an efficient radar odometry is included in the Monte Carlo system. Combining the initial guess from odometry, a measurement model is proposed to match the radar data and prior lidar maps for final 2D positioning. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed localization framework on the public multi-session dataset. The experimental results show that our system can achieve high accuracy for long-term localization in outdoor scenes

    A high resolution full-field range imaging system for robotic devices

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    There has been considerable effort by many researchers to develop a high resolution full-field range imaging system. Traditionally these systems rely on a homodyne technique that modulates the illumination source and shutter speed at some high frequency. These systems tend to suffer from the need to be calibrated to account for changing ambient light conditions and generally cannot provide better than single centimeter range resolution, and even then over a range of only a few meters. We present a system, tested to proof-of-concept stage that is being developed for use on a range of mobile robots. The system has the potential for real-time, sub millimeter range resolution, with minimal power and space requirements

    Implementation of explosion safety regulations in design of a mobile robot for coal mines

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    The article focuses on specific challenges of the design of a reconnaissance mobile robotic system aimed for inspection in underground coal mine areas after a catastrophic event. Systems that are designated for these conditions must meet specific standards and regulations. In this paper is discussed primarily the main conception of meeting explosion safety regulations of European Union 2014/34/EU (also called ATEX-from French "Appareils destines a etre utilises en ATmospheres Explosives") for Group I (equipment intended for use in underground mines) and Category M1 (equipment designed for operation in the presence of an explosive atmosphere). An example of a practical solution is described on main subsystems of the mobile robot TeleRescuera teleoperated robot with autonomy functions, a sensory subsystem with multiple cameras, three-dimensional (3D) mapping and sensors for measurement of gas concentration, airflow, relative humidity, and temperatures. Explosion safety is ensured according to the Technical Report CLC/TR 60079-33 "s" by two main independent protections-mechanical protection (flameproof enclosure) and electrical protection (automatic methane detector that disconnects power when methane breaches the enclosure and gets inside the robot body).Web of Science811art. no. 230

    3D measurement systems for robot manipulators

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    Machine Vision: Approaches and Limitations

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    Robot guidance using machine vision techniques in industrial environments: A comparative review

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    In the factory of the future, most of the operations will be done by autonomous robots that need visual feedback to move around the working space avoiding obstacles, to work collaboratively with humans, to identify and locate the working parts, to complete the information provided by other sensors to improve their positioning accuracy, etc. Different vision techniques, such as photogrammetry, stereo vision, structured light, time of flight and laser triangulation, among others, are widely used for inspection and quality control processes in the industry and now for robot guidance. Choosing which type of vision system to use is highly dependent on the parts that need to be located or measured. Thus, in this paper a comparative review of different machine vision techniques for robot guidance is presented. This work analyzes accuracy, range and weight of the sensors, safety, processing time and environmental influences. Researchers and developers can take it as a background information for their future works

    Small business innovation research. Abstracts of completed 1987 phase 1 projects

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    Non-proprietary summaries of Phase 1 Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) projects supported by NASA in the 1987 program year are given. Work in the areas of aeronautical propulsion, aerodynamics, acoustics, aircraft systems, materials and structures, teleoperators and robotics, computer sciences, information systems, spacecraft systems, spacecraft power supplies, spacecraft propulsion, bioastronautics, satellite communication, and space processing are covered
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