8,768 research outputs found
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 âdevicesâ, 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 âcognitive devicesâ 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
Overcoming barriers and increasing independence: service robots for elderly and disabled people
This paper discusses the potential for service robots to overcome barriers and increase independence of
elderly and disabled people. It includes a brief overview of the existing uses of service robots by disabled and elderly
people and advances in technology which will make new uses possible and provides suggestions for some of these new
applications. The paper also considers the design and other conditions to be met for user acceptance. It also discusses
the complementarity of assistive service robots and personal assistance and considers the types of applications and
users for which service robots are and are not suitable
Formal verification of an autonomous personal robotic assistant
Humanârobot teams are likely to be used in a variety of situations wherever humans require the assistance of robotic systems. Obvious examples include healthcare and manufacturing, in which people need the assistance of machines to perform key tasks. It is essential for robots working in close proximity to people to be both safe and trustworthy. In this paper we examine formal verification of a high-level planner/scheduler for autonomous personal robotic assistants such as Care-O-bot âą . We describe how a model of Care-O-bot and its environment was developed using Brahms, a multiagent workflow language. Formal verification was then carried out by translating this to the input language of an existing model checker. Finally we present some formal verification results and describe how these could be complemented by simulation-based testing and realworld end-user validation in order to increase the practical and perceived safety and trustworthiness of robotic assistants
A comparison of processing techniques for producing prototype injection moulding inserts.
This project involves the investigation of processing techniques for producing low-cost moulding inserts used in the particulate injection moulding (PIM) process. Prototype moulds were made from both additive and subtractive processes as well as a combination of the two. The general motivation for this was to reduce the entry cost of users when considering PIM.
PIM cavity inserts were first made by conventional machining from a polymer block using the pocket NC desktop mill. PIM cavity inserts were also made by fused filament deposition modelling using the Tiertime UP plus 3D printer.
The injection moulding trials manifested in surface finish and part removal defects. The feedstock was a titanium metal blend which is brittle in comparison to commodity polymers. That in combination with the mesoscale features, small cross-sections and complex geometries were considered the main problems. For both processing methods, fixes were identified and made to test the theory. These consisted of a blended approach that saw a combination of both the additive and subtractive processes being used.
The parts produced from the three processing methods are investigated and their respective merits and issues are
discussed
Reducing risk in pre-production investigations through undergraduate engineering projects.
This poster is the culmination of final year Bachelor of Engineering Technology (B.Eng.Tech) student projects
in 2017 and 2018. The B.Eng.Tech is a level seven qualification that aligns with the Sydney accord for a three-year engineering degree and hence is internationally benchmarked. The enabling mechanism of these projects is the industry connectivity that creates real-world projects and highlights the benefits of the investigation of process at the technologist level.
The methodologies we use are basic and transparent, with enough depth of technical knowledge to ensure the industry partners gain from the collaboration process. The process we use minimizes the disconnect between the student and the industry supervisor while maintaining the academic freedom of the student and the commercial sensitivities of the supervisor.
The general motivation for this approach is the reduction of the entry cost of the industry to enable consideration of new technologies and thereby reducing risk to core business and shareholder profits.
The poster presents several images and interpretive dialogue to explain the positive and negative aspects of the student process
Robotic ubiquitous cognitive ecology for smart homes
Robotic ecologies are networks of heterogeneous robotic devices pervasively embedded in everyday environments, where they cooperate to perform complex tasks. While their potential makes them increasingly popular, one fundamental problem is how to make them both autonomous and adaptive, so as to reduce the amount of preparation, pre-programming and human supervision that they require in real world applications. The project RUBICON develops learning solutions which yield cheaper, adaptive and efficient coordination of robotic ecologies. The approach we pursue builds upon a unique combination of methods from cognitive robotics, machine learning, planning and agent- based control, and wireless sensor networks. This paper illustrates the innovations advanced by RUBICON in each of these fronts before describing how the resulting techniques have been integrated and applied to a smart home scenario. The resulting system is able to provide useful services and pro-actively assist the users in their activities. RUBICON learns through an incremental and progressive approach driven by the feed- back received from its own activities and from the user, while also self-organizing the manner in which it uses available sensors, actuators and other functional components in the process. This paper summarises some of the lessons learned by adopting such an approach and outlines promising directions for future work
Future bathroom: A study of user-centred design principles affecting usability, safety and satisfaction in bathrooms for people living with disabilities
Research and development work relating to assistive technology
2010-11 (Department of Health)
Presented to Parliament pursuant to Section 22 of the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act 197
A non-holonomic, highly human-in-the-loop compatible, assistive mobile robotic platform guidance navigation and control strategy
The provision of assistive mobile robotics for empowering and providing independence to the infirm, disabled and elderly in society has been the subject of much research. The issue of providing navigation and control assistance to users, enabling them to drive their powered wheelchairs effectively, can be complex and wide-ranging; some users fatigue quickly and can find that they are unable to operate the controls safely, others may have brain injury re-sulting in periodic hand tremors, quadriplegics may use a straw-like switch in their mouth to provide a digital control signal.
Advances in autonomous robotics have led to the development of smart wheelchair systems which have attempted to address these issues; however the autonomous approach has, ac-cording to research, not been successful; users reporting that they want to be active drivers and not passengers. Recent methodologies have been to use collaborative or shared control which aims to predict or anticipate the need for the system to take over control when some pre-decided threshold has been met, yet these approaches still take away control from the us-er. This removal of human supervision and control by an autonomous system makes the re-sponsibility for accidents seriously problematic.
This thesis introduces a new human-in-the-loop control structure with real-time assistive lev-els. One of these levels offers improved dynamic modelling and three of these levels offer unique and novel real-time solutions for: collision avoidance, localisation and waypoint iden-tification, and assistive trajectory generation. This architecture and these assistive functions always allow the user to remain fully in control of any motion of the powered wheelchair, shown in a series of experiments
- âŠ