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

© 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

Unmanned Ground Robots for Rescue Tasks

This chapter describes two unmanned ground vehicles that can help search and rescue teams in their difficult, but life-saving tasks. These robotic assets have been developed within the framework of the European project ICARUS. The large unmanned ground vehicle is intended to be a mobile base station. It is equipped with a powerful manipulator arm and can be used for debris removal, shoring operations, and remote structural operations (cutting, welding, hammering, etc.) on very rough terrain. The smaller unmanned ground vehicle is also equipped with an array of sensors, enabling it to search for victims inside semi-destroyed buildings. Working together with each other and the human search and rescue workers, these robotic assets form a powerful team, increasing the effectiveness of search and rescue operations, as proven by operational validation tests in collaboration with end users

Force-Sensor-Less Bilateral Teleoperation Control of Dissimilar Master-Slave System With Arbitrary Scaling

This study designs a high-precision bilateral teleoperation control for a dissimilar master-slave system. The proposed nonlinear control design takes advantage of a novel subsystem-dynamics-based control method that allows designing of individual (decentralized) model-based controllers for the manipulators locally at the subsystem level. Very importantly, a dynamic model of the human operator is incorporated into the control of the master manipulator. The individual controllers for the dissimilar master and slave manipulators are connected in a specific communication channel for the bilateral teleoperation to function. Stability of the overall control design is rigorously guaranteed with arbitrary time delays. Novel features of this study include the completely force-sensor-less design for the teleoperation system with a solution for a uniquely introduced computational algebraic loop, a method of estimating the exogenous operating force of an operator and the use of a commercial haptic manipulator. Most importantly, we conduct experiments on a dissimilar system in two degrees of freedom (DOFs). As an illustration of the performance of the proposed system, a force scaling factor of up to 800 and position scaling factor of up to 4 was used in the experiments. The experimental results show an exceptional tracking performance, verifying the real-world performance of the proposed concept.publishedVersionPeer reviewe

Joining teleoperation with robotics for advanced manipulation in hostile environments

Manipulators have been used for many years to perform remote handling tasks in hazardous environments. The development history of teleoperators is reviewed, and applications around the world are summarized. The effect of computer supervisory control is discussed, and similarities between robots and teleoperator research activities are delineated. With improved control strategies and system designs, combination of positive attributes of robots with teleoperators will lead to advanced machines capable of autonomy in unstructured environments. This concept of a telerobot is introduced as a goal for future activities

Development of a twisted-string actuator for a cable-driven haptic interface

Il seguente lavoro di tesi ha avuto lo scopo di analizzare dal punto di vista della progettazione software le procedure ed i protocolli di scambio di informazioni tra i vari componenti di una nuova concezione di Interfaccia Aptica guidata da 4 tendini che muovono un braccialetto centrale collegato al braccio di un operatore così da fornirgli un feedback di forza. In particolare ci si è focalizzati sullo sviluppo di un firmware applicabile ai 4 motori che muovono la struttura centrale della interfaccia. Il firmware deve essere in grado di ricevere da una piattaforma Ros, usata da un operatore, pacchetti di dati contenenti i set point per i vari motori e il tipo di controllo , posizione o forza, che gli attuatori devono effettuare grazie ad uno schema PID. Inoltre l'invio di feedback all'operatore è stato previsto in modo da permettere una maggiore supervisione dell'intero funzionamento. La realizzazione di un Ros Bridge tra l'utente e il sistema da comandare è stato implementato con la formula della programmazione ad oggetti in cui varie classi sono dedicate a compiti differenti come l'impacchettamento di dati da mandare ai motori e la contemporanea ricezione dei feedback. Per completare tutta l'architettura si è anche sviluppato un sistema di trasformazione dei set point provenienti dall'operatore espressi nello spazio di lavoro Cartesiano in riferimenti per i singoli motori e ciò è stato possibile sfruttando la matrice Jacobiana. Una particolare attenzione è stata data all'aspetto di comunicazione dei dati e per fare ciò si è dovuta usare una architettura di codice a multithread e un protocollo UDP

CAD-Integrated Real-Time Control for Robotic Excavation and Pipe-Laying: Development and Testing

DTFH6194-R-00143Trenching excavation and pipe-laying are, without a doubt, some of the most dangerous operations in construction. More than 200 people a year, in the United States alone, are killed during these operations. Machines that can reduce or eliminate the exposure of humans to these risks have the highest potentials to change the present situation. This research project was initiated under the contract between the Federal Highway Administration and North Carolina State University in order to develop and evaluate the concept of spatially integrated excavation. The research team had access to three important hardware components: 1) a robotic excavator in the laboratory; 2) a John Deere 690C backhoe excavator equipped with electronic transducers for measuring joint angles; and 3) the ODYSSEY, a laser based spatial positioning system that was integrated with the excavator. The overall goal of this project was to prove the technical feasibility and effectiveness of laser-based spatial position control under real-world conditions. In addition, innovative technologies for the detection of buried metal obstacles and the laying of large pipes without the need for humans in the trench were successfully tested. It is believed that the results of this research project lay the foundation for a dramatic reduction in the number of casualties caused by collapsing trenches, ruptured gas pipes, etc. Additionally, a variety of other benefits can be gained. For example, the automatic establishment of as built drawings, reduction of damaged utilities, increase of productivity due to the quantity of materials to be excavated (to meet Occupational Safety and Health Administration requirements), and finally, the reduction of errors

Path Following and Motion Control for Articulated Frame Steering Mobile Working Machine Using ROS2

Autonomous vehicles (AVs) have been studied and researched at least since the middle of 19s century, and the interest in these vehicles has grown in the last decade. There are many vehicle types with different steering techniques. Each is designed and manufactured depending on the need to perform specific tasks (for example, transporting passengers, transporting goods, and doing heavy duties like cutting trees, digging earth, and harvesting crops). This thesis highlights the autonomous articulated frame steering (AFS) heavy-duty mobile working machines and aims to address the problems of autonomizing the AFS machine with basic autonomy requirements, which makes the machine move without the need for human direct and indirect control. The working environment (like mines, forests, and construction sites), where heavy-duty machines are used to perform some tasks, requires an expert machine operator to drive it and control its manipulator, which increases the operator’s workload. However, due to the working environment’s limited area, the machine mostly has repetitive tasks that include following the same paths; therefore, we proposed implementing a path-following control system that could be used to help the operator by reducing the work amount. The proposed path following is based on controlling the vehicle’s position and orientation to match the desired positions and orientation on a specified path where the position’s lateral error and orientation error are minimized to zero while the vehicle follows the given path. The implemented control system is divided into many subsystems; each is responsible for a specific task, and to communicate between them we used the Robot Operating System ROS2. In this thesis, we are focusing on two of these subsystems. The first subsystem, called path following that, generates linear and angular velocities needed to make the machine follow the path. The other subsystem, called motion control, is responsible for converting the linear and angular velocities to machine commands (gear, steering, gas) and controls the machine’s acceleration and steering angle. The implemented path-following control system required understanding the machine’s kinematics and modeling the steering system. The implemented system is tested first using an AFS robot in a simulation environment, then tested on a real AFS heavy-duty machine owned by Tampere university. Moreover, the tests repeated for another path following based on the modified pure pursuit technique provided by ROS2 navigation for compression and evaluation purposes