1,448 research outputs found
Cooperative Adaptive Control for Cloud-Based Robotics
This paper studies collaboration through the cloud in the context of
cooperative adaptive control for robot manipulators. We first consider the case
of multiple robots manipulating a common object through synchronous centralized
update laws to identify unknown inertial parameters. Through this development,
we introduce a notion of Collective Sufficient Richness, wherein parameter
convergence can be enabled through teamwork in the group. The introduction of
this property and the analysis of stable adaptive controllers that benefit from
it constitute the main new contributions of this work. Building on this
original example, we then consider decentralized update laws, time-varying
network topologies, and the influence of communication delays on this process.
Perhaps surprisingly, these nonidealized networked conditions inherit the same
benefits of convergence being determined through collective effects for the
group. Simple simulations of a planar manipulator identifying an unknown load
are provided to illustrate the central idea and benefits of Collective
Sufficient Richness.Comment: ICRA 201
Legged Robots for Object Manipulation: A Review
Legged robots can have a unique role in manipulating objects in dynamic,
human-centric, or otherwise inaccessible environments. Although most legged
robotics research to date typically focuses on traversing these challenging
environments, many legged platform demonstrations have also included "moving an
object" as a way of doing tangible work. Legged robots can be designed to
manipulate a particular type of object (e.g., a cardboard box, a soccer ball,
or a larger piece of furniture), by themselves or collaboratively. The
objective of this review is to collect and learn from these examples, to both
organize the work done so far in the community and highlight interesting open
avenues for future work. This review categorizes existing works into four main
manipulation methods: object interactions without grasping, manipulation with
walking legs, dedicated non-locomotive arms, and legged teams. Each method has
different design and autonomy features, which are illustrated by available
examples in the literature. Based on a few simplifying assumptions, we further
provide quantitative comparisons for the range of possible relative sizes of
the manipulated object with respect to the robot. Taken together, these
examples suggest new directions for research in legged robot manipulation, such
as multifunctional limbs, terrain modeling, or learning-based control, to
support a number of new deployments in challenging indoor/outdoor scenarios in
warehouses/construction sites, preserved natural areas, and especially for home
robotics.Comment: Preprint of the paper submitted to Frontiers in Mechanical
Engineerin
A Pilot Study with a Novel Setup for Collaborative Play of the Humanoid Robot KASPAR with children with autism
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits any use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and the source are credited.This article describes a pilot study in which a novel experimental setup, involving an autonomous humanoid robot, KASPAR, participating in a collaborative, dyadic video game, was implemented and tested with children with autism, all of whom had impairments in playing socially and communicating with others. The children alternated between playing the collaborative video game with a neurotypical adult and playing the same game with the humanoid robot, being exposed to each condition twice. The equipment and experimental setup were designed to observe whether the children would engage in more collaborative behaviours while playing the video game and interacting with the adult than performing the same activities with the humanoid robot. The article describes the development of the experimental setup and its first evaluation in a small-scale exploratory pilot study. The purpose of the study was to gain experience with the operational limits of the robot as well as the dyadic video game, to determine what changes should be made to the systems, and to gain experience with analyzing the data from this study in order to conduct a more extensive evaluation in the future. Based on our observations of the childrensâ experiences in playing the cooperative game, we determined that while the children enjoyed both playing the game and interacting with the robot, the game should be made simpler to play as well as more explicitly collaborative in its mechanics. Also, the robot should be more explicit in its speech as well as more structured in its interactions. Results show that the children found the activity to be more entertaining, appeared more engaged in playing, and displayed better collaborative behaviours with their partners (For the purposes of this article, âpartnerâ refers to the human/robotic agent which interacts with the children with autism. We are not using the termâs other meanings that refer to specific relationships or emotional involvement between two individuals.) in the second sessions of playing with human adults than during their first sessions. One way of explaining these findings is that the childrenâs intermediary play session with the humanoid robot impacted their subsequent play session with the human adult. However, another longer and more thorough study would have to be conducted in order to better re-interpret these findings. Furthermore, although the children with autism were more interested in and entertained by the robotic partner, the children showed more examples of collaborative play and cooperation while playing with the human adult.Peer reviewe
FC Portugal 3D Simulation Team: Team Description Paper 2020
The FC Portugal 3D team is developed upon the structure of our previous
Simulation league 2D/3D teams and our standard platform league team. Our
research concerning the robot low-level skills is focused on developing
behaviors that may be applied on real robots with minimal adaptation using
model-based approaches. Our research on high-level soccer coordination
methodologies and team playing is mainly focused on the adaptation of
previously developed methodologies from our 2D soccer teams to the 3D humanoid
environment and on creating new coordination methodologies based on the
previously developed ones. The research-oriented development of our team has
been pushing it to be one of the most competitive over the years (World
champion in 2000 and Coach Champion in 2002, European champion in 2000 and
2001, Coach 2nd place in 2003 and 2004, European champion in Rescue Simulation
and Simulation 3D in 2006, World Champion in Simulation 3D in Bremen 2006 and
European champion in 2007, 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015). This paper describes
some of the main innovations of our 3D simulation league team during the last
years. A new generic framework for reinforcement learning tasks has also been
developed. The current research is focused on improving the above-mentioned
framework by developing new learning algorithms to optimize low-level skills,
such as running and sprinting. We are also trying to increase student contact
by providing reinforcement learning assignments to be completed using our new
framework, which exposes a simple interface without sharing low-level
implementation details
Adoption of vehicular ad hoc networking protocols by networked robots
This paper focuses on the utilization of wireless networking in the robotics domain. Many researchers have already equipped their robots with wireless communication capabilities, stimulated by the observation that multi-robot systems tend to have several advantages over their single-robot counterparts. Typically, this integration of wireless communication is tackled in a quite pragmatic manner, only a few authors presented novel Robotic Ad Hoc Network (RANET) protocols that were designed specifically with robotic use cases in mind. This is in sharp contrast with the domain of vehicular ad hoc networks (VANET). This observation is the starting point of this paper. If the results of previous efforts focusing on VANET protocols could be reused in the RANET domain, this could lead to rapid progress in the field of networked robots. To investigate this possibility, this paper provides a thorough overview of the related work in the domain of robotic and vehicular ad hoc networks. Based on this information, an exhaustive list of requirements is defined for both types. It is concluded that the most significant difference lies in the fact that VANET protocols are oriented towards low throughput messaging, while RANET protocols have to support high throughput media streaming as well. Although not always with equal importance, all other defined requirements are valid for both protocols. This leads to the conclusion that cross-fertilization between them is an appealing approach for future RANET research. To support such developments, this paper concludes with the definition of an appropriate working plan
FC Portugal - High-Level Skills Within A Multi-Agent Environment
Ao longo dos anos a RoboCup, uma competição internacional de robĂłtica e da inteligĂȘncia artificia, foi palco de muitos desenvolvimentos e melhorias nestes duas ĂĄreas cientĂficas. Esta competição tem diferentes desafios, incluindo uma liga de simulação 3D (Simulation 3D League). Anualmente, ocorre um torneio de jogos de futebol simulados entre as vĂĄrias equipas participantes na Simulation 3D League, todas estas equipas deveram ser compostas por 11 robĂŽs humanoides. Esta simulação obedece Ă s leis da fĂsica de modo a se aproximar das circunstĂąncias dos jogos reais. AlĂ©m disso, as regras da competição sĂŁo semelhantes Ă s regras originais do futebol com algumas alteraçÔes e adaptaçÔes. A equipa portuguesa, o FC Portugal 3D Ă© um participante assĂduo nos torneios desta liga e chegou atĂ© a ser vitoriosa vĂĄrias vezes nos Ășltimos anos, no entanto, para participar nesta competição Ă© necessĂĄrio que as equipas tenham os seus agentes capazes de executar skills (ou habilidades) de baixo nĂvel como andar, chutar e levantar-se. O bom registo
da equipa FC Portugal 3D advĂ©m do facto de os mĂ©todos utilizados para treinar os seus jogadores serem continuamente melhorados resultando em melhores habilidades. De facto, considera-se que estes comportamentos de baixo nĂvel estĂŁo num ponto em que Ă© possĂvel mudar o foco das implementaçÔes para competĂȘncias de alto nĂvel que deveram ser baseadas nestas competĂȘncias fundamentais de baixo nĂvel.
O futebol pode ser visto como um jogo cooperativo onde jogadores da mesma equipa tĂȘm de trabalhar em conjunto para vencer os seus adversĂĄrios, consequentemente, este jogo Ă© considerado como um bom ambiente para desenvolver, testar e aplicar implementaçÔes relativas a cooperaçÔes multi-agente. Com isto em mente, o objetivo desta dissertação Ă© construir uma setplay multi-agente baseada nas skills de baixo nĂvel previamente implementadas pela FC Portugal para serem usadas em situaçÔes de jogo especĂficas em que a intenção principal Ă© marcar um golo. Recentemente, muitos participantes da 3D League (incluindo a equipa portuguesa) tĂȘm desenvolvido competĂȘncias utilizando mĂ©todos de Deep Reinforcement Learning obtendo resultados satisfatĂłrios num tempo razoĂĄvel. A abordagem adotada neste projeto foi a de utilizar o algoritmo de Reinforcement Learning, PPO, para treinar todos os ambientes criados com o intuito de desenvolver a setplay pretendida, os resultados dos treinos estĂŁo presentes no penĂșltimo capĂtulo deste documento seguidos de sugestĂ”es para implementaçÔes futuras.Throughout the years the RoboCup, an international competition of robotics and artificial intelligence, saw many developments and improvements in these scientific fields. This competition has different types of challenges including a 3D Simulation League that has an annual tournament of simulated soccer games played between several teams each composed of 11 simulated humanoid robots. The simulation obeys the laws of physics in order to approximate the games as much as possible to real circumstances, in addition, the rules are similar to the original soccer rules with
a few alterations and adaptations. The Portuguese team, FC Portugal 3D has been an assiduous participant in this league tournaments and was even victorious several times in the past years, nonetheless, to participate in this competition is necessary for teams to have their agents able to execute low-level skills such as walk, kick and get up. The good record of the FC Portugal 3D team comes from the fact that the methods used to train the robots keep being improved, resulting in better skills. As a manner of fact, it is considered that these low-level behaviors are at a point that is possible to shift the implementations' focus to high-level skills based on these fundamental low-level skills.
Soccer can be seen as a cooperative game where players from the same team have to work together to beat their opponents, consequently, this game is considered to be a good environment to develop, test, and apply cooperative multi-agent implementations. With this in mind, the objective of this dissertation is to construct a multi-agent setplay based on FC Portugal's low-level skills to be used in certain game situations where the main intent is to score a goal. Recently, many 3D League participants (including the Portuguese team) have been developing skills using Deep
Learning methods and obtaining successful results in a reasonable time. The approach taken on this project was to use the Reinforcement Learning algorithm PPO to train all the environments that were created to develop the intended setplay, the results of the training are present in the second-to-last chapter of this document followed by suggestions for future implementations
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