5,241 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
Particle Swarm Optimization Based Source Seeking
Signal source seeking using autonomous vehicles is a complex problem. The
complexity increases manifold when signal intensities captured by physical
sensors onboard are noisy and unreliable. Added to the fact that signal
strength decays with distance, noisy environments make it extremely difficult
to describe and model a decay function. This paper addresses our work with
seeking maximum signal strength in a continuous electromagnetic signal source
with mobile robots, using Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO). A one to one
correspondence with swarm members in a PSO and physical Mobile robots is
established and the positions of the robots are iteratively updated as the PSO
algorithm proceeds forward. Since physical robots are responsive to swarm
position updates, modifications were required to implement the interaction
between real robots and the PSO algorithm. The development of modifications
necessary to implement PSO on mobile robots, and strategies to adapt to real
life environments such as obstacles and collision objects are presented in this
paper. Our findings are also validated using experimental testbeds.Comment: 13 pages, 12 figure
Autonomous space processor for orbital debris
The development of an Autonomous Space Processor for Orbital Debris (ASPOD) was the goal. The nature of this craft, which will process, in situ, orbital debris using resources available in low Earth orbit (LEO) is explained. The serious problem of orbital debris is briefly described and the nature of the large debris population is outlined. The focus was on the development of a versatile robotic manipulator to augment an existing robotic arm, the incorporation of remote operation of the robotic arms, and the formulation of optimal (time and energy) trajectory planning algorithms for coordinated robotic arms. The mechanical design of the new arm is described in detail. The work envelope is explained showing the flexibility of the new design. Several telemetry communication systems are described which will enable the remote operation of the robotic arms. The trajectory planning algorithms are fully developed for both the time optimal and energy optimal problems. The time optimal problem is solved using phase plane techniques while the energy optimal problem is solved using dynamic programming
Automated sequence and motion planning for robotic spatial extrusion of 3D trusses
While robotic spatial extrusion has demonstrated a new and efficient means to
fabricate 3D truss structures in architectural scale, a major challenge remains
in automatically planning extrusion sequence and robotic motion for trusses
with unconstrained topologies. This paper presents the first attempt in the
field to rigorously formulate the extrusion sequence and motion planning (SAMP)
problem, using a CSP encoding. Furthermore, this research proposes a new
hierarchical planning framework to solve the extrusion SAMP problems that
usually have a long planning horizon and 3D configuration complexity. By
decoupling sequence and motion planning, the planning framework is able to
efficiently solve the extrusion sequence, end-effector poses, joint
configurations, and transition trajectories for spatial trusses with
nonstandard topologies. This paper also presents the first detailed computation
data to reveal the runtime bottleneck on solving SAMP problems, which provides
insight and comparing baseline for future algorithmic development. Together
with the algorithmic results, this paper also presents an open-source and
modularized software implementation called Choreo that is machine-agnostic. To
demonstrate the power of this algorithmic framework, three case studies,
including real fabrication and simulation results, are presented.Comment: 24 pages, 16 figure
On-line path planning by heuristic hierarchical search
In this paper, the problem of path planning for robot manipulators with six degrees of freedom in an on-line provided three-dimensional environment is investigated. As a basic approach, the best-first algorithm is used to search in the implicit descrete configuration space. Collisions are detected in the Cartesian workspace by hierarchical distance computation based on the given CAD model. The basic approach is extended by three simple mechanisms and results in a heuristic hierarchical search. This is done by adjusting the stepsize of the search to the distance between the robot and the obstacles. As a first step, we show encouraging experimental results with two degrees of freedom for five typical benchmark problems
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