A multi-touch interface for multi-robot path planning and control

In the last few years, research in human-robot interaction has moved beyond the issues concerning the design of the interaction between a person and a single robot. Today many researchers have shifted their focus toward the problem of how humans can control a multi-robot team. The rising of multi-touch devices provides a new range of opportunities in this sense. Our research seeks to discover new insights and guidelines for the design of multi-touch interfaces for the control of biologically inspired multi-robot teams. We have developed an iPad touch interface that lets users exert partial control over a set of autonomous robots. The interface also serves as an experimental platform to study how human operators design multi-robot motion in a pursuit-evasion setting

Design of an FPGA-based smart camera and its application towards object tracking : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Engineering in Electronics and Computer Engineering at Massey University, Manawatu, New Zealand

Smart cameras and hardware image processing are not new concepts, yet despite the fact both have existed several decades, not much literature has been presented on the design and development process of hardware based smart cameras. This thesis will examine and demonstrate the principles needed to develop a smart camera on hardware, based on the experiences from developing an FPGA-based smart camera. The smart camera is applied on a Terasic DE0 FPGA development board, using Terasic’s 5 megapixel GPIO camera. The algorithm operates at 120 frames per second at a resolution of 640x480 by utilising a modular streaming approach. Two case studies will be explored in order to demonstrate the development techniques established in this thesis. The first case study will develop the global vision system for a robot soccer implementation. The algorithm will identify and calculate the positions and orientations of each robot and the ball. Like many robot soccer implementations each robot has colour patches on top to identify each robot and aid finding its orientation. The ball is comprised of a single solid colour that is completely distinct from the colour patches. Due to the presence of uneven light levels a YUV-like colour space labelled YC1C2 is used in order to make the colour values more light invariant. The colours are then classified using a connected components algorithm to segment the colour patches. The shapes of the classified patches are then used to identify the individual robots, and a CORDIC function is used to calculate the orientation. The second case study will investigate an improved colour segmentation design. A new HSY colour space is developed by remapping the Cartesian coordinate system from the YC1C2 to a polar coordinate system. This provides improved colour segmentation results by allowing for variations in colour value caused by uneven light patterns and changing light levels

Position control of an industrial robot using an optical measurement system for machining purposes

A series of mechanical properties and disturbances limit the accuracy achievable in robotic applications. External control of the end effector position is commonly known as being an appropriate mean to increase accuracy. This paper presents an approach for position control of industrial robots using the pass-through between an industrial CNC and servomotors. A CNC-controlled robot is used together with an external optical measurement system to close the feedback loop of robot end effector and robot controller in order to improve robot accuracy. For short cycle times and implementation reasons a PLC is used for signal processing and control implementation. The relevance of the approach is outlined in experiments. The robot behaviour in free space motion and in machining application is analysed with the optical measurement system and a CMM