Location of a Mobile Robot using Odometry in the DMF

La Universidad de Ciencias Aplicadas de Viena, cuenta con una fábrica digital en miniatura en la que se puede realizar la investigación, desarrollo e implementación de las diferentes tecnologías de la industria 4.0. Esta fábrica tiene varias estaciones de trabajo y un robot móvil que se mueve entre ellas para hacer llegar al cliente las piezas pedidas correspondientes del mosquetón. El tema principal de este trabajo fin de grado es el desarrollo de un procedimiento por el cual se pueda obtener la localización del robot calculando sus coordenadas y su ángulo; todo ello con el objetivo de integrarlo en la fábrica miniaturizada de la universidad. El método que se usará para conocer la posición y orientación del robot estará basado en la odometría de un robot diferencial. El control del robot se realizará mediante el puerto serie de Arduino o mediante Thing Worx, enviando los comandos necesarios para su movimiento. La pose (posición en coordenadas y orientación) del robot será enviada al servidor central haciendo uso de la comunicación IoT, donde se podrán visualizar y hacer uso para otros trabajos.The University of Applied Sciences Technikum Wien has a digital miniature factory in which it can be done the research, development and implementation of different technologies related with the 4.0 industry. This miniature factory has several working stations and a mobile robot that moves between them in order to deliver the corresponding carabiner parts ordered by the supposed customer. The main subject of this final bachelor project is the development of a procedure by which the localization of the mobile robot can be obtained by calculating its coordinates and angle; all with the aim of integrating it into the miniaturised factory of the university. The method to be used to know the position and orientation of the robot will be based on the wheel odometry of a differential robot. The control of the robot is done through the serial port of the Arduino or through ThingWorx, sending the necessary commands to make it moves. The pose (position in coordinates and orientation) of the robot will be sent to the central server using IoT communication, where it can be visualised and used for other projects.Departamento de Tecnología ElectrónicaGrado en Ingeniería en Electrónica Industrial y Automátic

Collaborative autonomy in heterogeneous multi-robot systems

As autonomous mobile robots become increasingly connected and widely deployed in different domains, managing multiple robots and their interaction is key to the future of ubiquitous autonomous systems. Indeed, robots are not individual entities anymore. Instead, many robots today are deployed as part of larger fleets or in teams. The benefits of multirobot collaboration, specially in heterogeneous groups, are multiple. Significantly higher degrees of situational awareness and understanding of their environment can be achieved when robots with different operational capabilities are deployed together. Examples of this include the Perseverance rover and the Ingenuity helicopter that NASA has deployed in Mars, or the highly heterogeneous robot teams that explored caves and other complex environments during the last DARPA Sub-T competition. This thesis delves into the wide topic of collaborative autonomy in multi-robot systems, encompassing some of the key elements required for achieving robust collaboration: solving collaborative decision-making problems; securing their operation, management and interaction; providing means for autonomous coordination in space and accurate global or relative state estimation; and achieving collaborative situational awareness through distributed perception and cooperative planning. The thesis covers novel formation control algorithms, and new ways to achieve accurate absolute or relative localization within multi-robot systems. It also explores the potential of distributed ledger technologies as an underlying framework to achieve collaborative decision-making in distributed robotic systems. Throughout the thesis, I introduce novel approaches to utilizing cryptographic elements and blockchain technology for securing the operation of autonomous robots, showing that sensor data and mission instructions can be validated in an end-to-end manner. I then shift the focus to localization and coordination, studying ultra-wideband (UWB) radios and their potential. I show how UWB-based ranging and localization can enable aerial robots to operate in GNSS-denied environments, with a study of the constraints and limitations. I also study the potential of UWB-based relative localization between aerial and ground robots for more accurate positioning in areas where GNSS signals degrade. In terms of coordination, I introduce two new algorithms for formation control that require zero to minimal communication, if enough degree of awareness of neighbor robots is available. These algorithms are validated in simulation and real-world experiments. The thesis concludes with the integration of a new approach to cooperative path planning algorithms and UWB-based relative localization for dense scene reconstruction using lidar and vision sensors in ground and aerial robots

Node localization in underwater sensor networks (UWSN)

This dissertation focuses on node localization in underwater wireless sensor networks (UWSNs) where anchor nodes have knowledge of their own locations and communicate with sensor nodes in acoustic or magnetic induction (MI) means. The sensor nodes utilize the communication signals and the locations of anchor nodes to locate themselves and propagate their locations through the network. For UWSN using MI communications, this dissertation proposes two localization methods: rotation matrix (RM)-based method and the distance-based method. Both methods require only two anchor nodes with arbitrarily oriented tri-directional coils to locate one sensor node in the 3-D space, thus having advantages in a sparse network. Simulation studies show that the RM-based method achieves high localization accuracy, while the distance-based method exhibits less computational complexity. For UWSN using acoustic communications, this dissertation proposes a novel multi-hop node localization method in the 2-D and 3-D spaces, respectively. The proposed method estimates Euclidean distances to anchor nodes via multi-hop propagations with the help of angle of arrival (AoA) measurements. Simulation results show that the proposed method achieves better localization accuracy than existing multi-hop methods, with high localization coverage. This dissertation also investigates the hardware implementation of acoustic transmitter and receiver, and conducted field experiments with the hardware to estimate ToA using single pseudo-noise (PN) and dual PN(DPN) sequences. Both simulation and field test results show that the DPN sequences outperform the single PNs in severely dispersive channels and when the carrier frequency offset (CFO) is high --Abstract, page iv