Robotic Search and Rescue through In-Pipe Movement

So far, we have been engaged in the research and development of various kinds of robots that could be applied to in-pipe inspections that existing methods (screw-drive type, parallel multi-modular type, and articulated wheeled type) cannot perform. In this chapter, we categorized each in-pipe inspection robot depending on its configuration and structure, which includes the design of the propulsive mechanism, steering mechanism, stretching mechanism, and the locations of the wheel and joint axes. On the basis of this classification and from a developer’s point of view, we also discussed the various kinds of robots that we have developed, along with their advantages and disadvantages

Unmanned Robotic Systems and Applications

This book presents recent studies of unmanned robotic systems and their applications. With its five chapters, the book brings together important contributions from renowned international researchers. Unmanned autonomous robots are ideal candidates for applications such as rescue missions, especially in areas that are difficult to access. Swarm robotics (multiple robots working together) is another exciting application of the unmanned robotics systems, for example, coordinated search by an interconnected group of moving robots for the purpose of finding a source of hazardous emissions. These robots can behave like individuals working in a group without a centralized control

Mechanical design of a four wheel omni directional mobile robot

Mestrado em ESTG-IPBOmni directional mobile robots have been popularly employed in several applications, especially in soccer player robots considered in Robocup competitions. Actually, the popular optimized robots are using three wheels in the mechanical structure. This situation brings the idea of omnidirectional robot at manufacturing. To design the omnidirectional wheels mobile robot respecting the requirement specifications of the factory lite competition, it’s recommended to design and optimize the proposed solution using Solidworks tool. To design a mobile robot using four omni wheels, it’s important to implement suspension system for each wheel. The suspension system will help the programmer when implementing the PID parameters and test the robot. Such a robot can respond more quickly and it would be capable of more sophisticated behaviors such as to transport materials and placed on processing machine and outgoing warehouses. This thesis has tried to focus the description of four wheel omnidirectional mobile robot to be applied to the Factory Lite competition

Cascaded control for balancing an inverted pendulum on a flying quadrotor

SUMMARYThis paper is focused on the flying inverted pendulum problem, i.e., how to balance a pendulum on a flying quadrotor. After analyzing the system dynamics, a three loop cascade control strategy is proposed based on active disturbance rejection control (ADRC). Both the pendulum balancing and the trajectory tracking of the flying quadrotor are implemented by using the proposed control strategy. A simulation platform of 3D mechanical systems is deployed to verify the control performance and robustness of the proposed strategy, including a comparison with a Linear Quadratic Controller (LQR). Finally, a real quadrotor is flying with a pendulum to demonstrate the proposed method that can keep the system at equilibrium and show strong robustness against disturbances.</jats:p

An overview of waste materials for sustainable road construction

Untreated soil typically has low shear strength, swelling behavior, high compressibility and its characteristics were highly dependent on the environment. In general, such problematic soil will lead to severe damages in road construction industry such as bearing capacity failure, slope instability, and excessive settlement. Agricultural waste, construction waste, and municipal waste have recently gained considerable attention as a sustainable material in road construction application due to its availability, environmental friendly and low-cost materials. Therefore in this review, randomly distributed fiber reinforced soil and oriented distributed fiber reinforced soil will be extensively discussed based on the emerging trend. It further reviewed the feasibility of using waste materials as a reinforcement material for the road construction industry. The review also attempts to evaluate and compare the engineering properties of soil and sustainable materials in order to enhance soil performance as well as help to improve the environment affected by growing waste materials

Contributions to shared control and coordination of single and multiple robots

L’ensemble des travaux présentés dans cette habilitation traite de l'interface entre un d'un opérateur humain avec un ou plusieurs robots semi-autonomes aussi connu comme le problème du « contrôle partagé ».Le premier chapitre traite de la possibilité de fournir des repères visuels / vestibulaires à un opérateur humain pour la commande à distance de robots mobiles.Le second chapitre aborde le problème, plus classique, de la mise à disposition à l’opérateur d’indices visuels ou de retour haptique pour la commande d’un ou plusieurs robots mobiles (en particulier pour les drones quadri-rotors).Le troisième chapitre se concentre sur certains des défis algorithmiques rencontrés lors de l'élaboration de techniques de coordination multi-robots.Le quatrième chapitre introduit une nouvelle conception mécanique pour un drone quadrirotor sur-actionné avec pour objectif de pouvoir, à terme, avoir 6 degrés de liberté sur une plateforme quadrirotor classique (mais sous-actionné).Enfin, le cinquième chapitre présente une cadre général pour la vision active permettant, en optimisant les mouvements de la caméra, l’optimisation en ligne des performances (en terme de vitesse de convergence et de précision finale) de processus d’estimation « basés vision »