Secure indoor navigation and operation of mobile robots

In future work environments, robots will navigate and work side by side to humans. This raises big challenges related to the safety of these robots. In this Dissertation, three tasks have been realized: 1) implementing a localization and navigation system based on StarGazer sensor and Kalman filter; 2) realizing a human-robot interaction system using Kinect sensor and BPNN and SVM models to define the gestures and 3) a new collision avoidance system is realized. The system works on generating the collision-free paths based on the interaction between the human and the robot.In zukünftigen Arbeitsumgebungen werden Roboter navigieren nebeneinander an Menschen. Das wirft Herausforderungen im Zusammenhang mit der Sicherheit dieser Roboter auf. In dieser Dissertation drei Aufgaben realisiert: 1. Implementierung eines Lokalisierungs und Navigationssystem basierend auf Kalman Filter: 2. Realisierung eines Mensch-Roboter-Interaktionssystem mit Kinect und AI zur Definition der Gesten und 3. ein neues Kollisionsvermeidungssystem wird realisiert. Das System arbeitet an der Erzeugung der kollisionsfreien Pfade, die auf der Wechselwirkung zwischen dem Menschen und dem Roboter basieren

Mobile Robots

The objective of this book is to cover advances of mobile robotics and related technologies applied for multi robot systems' design and development. Design of control system is a complex issue, requiring the application of information technologies to link the robots into a single network. Human robot interface becomes a demanding task, especially when we try to use sophisticated methods for brain signal processing. Generated electrophysiological signals can be used to command different devices, such as cars, wheelchair or even video games. A number of developments in navigation and path planning, including parallel programming, can be observed. Cooperative path planning, formation control of multi robotic agents, communication and distance measurement between agents are shown. Training of the mobile robot operators is very difficult task also because of several factors related to different task execution. The presented improvement is related to environment model generation based on autonomous mobile robot observations

A framework for safe human-humanoid coexistence

This work is focused on the development of a safety framework for Human-Humanoid coexistence, with emphasis on humanoid locomotion. After a brief introduction to the fundamental concepts of humanoid locomotion, the two most common approaches for gait generation are presented, and are extended with the inclusion of a stability condition to guarantee the boundedness of the generated trajectories. Then the safety framework is presented, with the introduction of different safety behaviors. These behaviors are meant to enhance the overall level of safety during any robot operation. Proactive behaviors will enhance or adapt the current robot operations to reduce the risk of danger, while override behaviors will stop the current robot activity in order to take action against a particularly dangerous situation. A state machine is defined to control the transitions between the behaviors. The behaviors that are strictly related to locomotion are subsequently detailed, and an implementation is proposed and validated. A possible implementation of the remaining behaviors is proposed through the review of related works that can be found in literature