Proceedings of the NASA Conference on Space Telerobotics, volume 5

Papers presented at the NASA Conference on Space Telerobotics are compiled. The theme of the conference was man-machine collaboration in space. The conference provided a forum for researchers and engineers to exchange ideas on the research and development required for the application of telerobotics technology to the space systems planned for the 1990's and beyond. Volume 5 contains papers related to the following subject areas: robot arm modeling and control, special topics in telerobotics, telerobotic space operations, manipulator control, flight experiment concepts, manipulator coordination, issues in artificial intelligence systems, and research activities at the Johnson Space Center

Roadmap for teleoperation and automation of forwarding

Annually, about two billion m3 of industrial roundwood is harvested worldwide. For a mature forest industry like the Swedish, the next technological development leaps regarding harvest operations are likely to involve increased level of tele-operation and automation. The overall aim of this thesis was to simulate and evaluate combinations of teleoperation and automation of forwarding within the cut-to-length (CTL) harvesting method, and to discuss their potential application internationally. The economic potential of different configurations of a novel concept called semiautomated tele-extraction or just tele-extraction was investigated. To evaluate the potential application of such a concept in other countries, a worldwide mapping of harvesting methods and reasons behind differences, as well as a global analysis of the slope of forest land was done. The overall result showed that there is potential for between 6% and 19% cost reduction in Swedish CTL forwarding if teleextraction is applied. Automation of more time consuming work elements, such as loading, gave larger potential than automation of driving since more operator time was deliberated. The worldwide share of fully mechanized CTL harvesting was estimated to 37% and some of its drivers include high diesel price, gross domestic product and low share of steep terrain. About 80% of global forest land had slope less than 15°, with Africa, Russia, and the Amazon rainforest especially flat. Furthermore, there is potential for implementation of tele-extraction in at least ten countries with a high share of mechanized CTL harvesting, the potential annual volume is roughly between 100 and 150 million m3

Modeling, Sensorization and Control of Concentric-Tube Robots

Since the concept of the Concentric-Tube Robot (CTR) was proposed in 2006, CTRs have been a popular research topic in the field of surgical robotics. The unique mechanical design of this robot allows it to navigate through narrow channels in the human anatomy and operate in highly constrained environments. It is therefore likely to become the next generation of surgical robots to overcome the challenges that cannot be addressed by current technologies. In CSTAR, we have had ongoing work over the past several years aimed at developing novel techniques and technologies for CTRs. This thesis describes the contributions made in this context, focusing primarily on topics such as modeling, sensorization, and control of CTRs. Prior to this work, one of the main challenges in CTRs was to develop a kinematic model that achieves a balance between the numerical accuracy and computational efficiency for surgical applications. In this thesis, a fast kinematic model of CTRs is proposed, which can be solved at a comparatively fast rate (0.2 ms) with minimal loss of accuracy (0.1 mm) for a 3-tube CTR. A Jacobian matrix is derived based on this model, leading to the development of a real-time trajectory tracking controller for CTRs. For tissue-robot interactions, a force-rejection controller is proposed for position control of CTRs under time-varying force disturbances. In contrast to rigid-link robots, instability of position control could be caused by non-unique solutions to the forward kinematics of CTRs. This phenomenon is modeled and analyzed, resulting in design criteria that can ensure kinematic stability of a CTR in its entire workspace. Force sensing is another major difficulty for CTRs. To address this issue, commercial force/torque sensors (Nano43, ATI Industrial Automation, United States) are integrated into one of our CTR prototypes. These force/torque sensors are replaced by Fiber-Bragg Grating (FBG) sensors that are helically-wrapped and embedded in CTRs. A strain-force calculation algorithm is proposed, to convert the reflected wavelength of FBGs into force measurements with 0.1 N force resolution at 100 Hz sampling rate. In addition, this thesis reports on our innovations in prototyping drive units for CTRs. Three designs of CTR prototypes are proposed, the latest one being significantly more compact and cost efficient in comparison with most designs in the literature. All of these contributions have brought this technology a few steps closer to being used in operating rooms. Some of the techniques and technologies mentioned above are not merely limited to CTRs, but are also suitable for problems arising in other types of surgical robots, for example, for sensorizing da Vinci surgical instruments for force sensing (see Appendix A)

Aerospace medicine and biology: A continuing bibliography with indexes (supplement 324)

This bibliography lists 200 reports, articles and other documents introduced into the NASA Scientific and Technical Information System during May, 1989. Subject coverage includes: aerospace medicine and psychology, life support systems and controlled environments, safety equipment, exobiology and extraterrestrial life, and flight crew behavior and performance

Use of Automatic Chinese Character Decomposition and Human Gestures for Chinese Calligraphy Robots

Conventional Chinese calligraphy robots often suffer from the limited sizes of predefined font databases, which prevent the robots from writing new characters. This paper presents a robotic handwriting system to address such limitations, which extracts Chinese characters from textbooks and uses a robot’s manipulator to write the characters in a different style. The key technologies of the proposed approach include the following: (1) automatically decomposing Chinese characters into strokes using Harris corner detection technology and (2) matching the decomposed strokes to robotic writing trajectories learned from human gestures. Briefly, the system first decomposes a given Chinese character into a set of strokes and obtains the stroke trajectory writing ability by following the gestures performed by a human demonstrator. Then, it applies a stroke classification method that recognizes the decomposed strokes as robotic writing trajectories. Finally, the robot arm is driven to follow the trajectories and thus write the Chinese character. Seven common Chinese characters have been used in an experiment for system validation and evaluation. The experimental results demonstrate the power of the proposed system, given that the robot successfully wrote all the testing characters in the given Chinese calligraphic style

Advanced automation for space missions: Technical summary

Several representative missions which would require extensive applications of machine intelligence were identified and analyzed. The technologies which must be developed to accomplish these types of missions are discussed. These technologies include man-machine communication, space manufacturing, teleoperators, and robot systems

Proceedings of the NASA Conference on Space Telerobotics, volume 3

The theme of the Conference was man-machine collaboration in space. The Conference provided a forum for researchers and engineers to exchange ideas on the research and development required for application of telerobotics technology to the space systems planned for the 1990s and beyond. The Conference: (1) provided a view of current NASA telerobotic research and development; (2) stimulated technical exchange on man-machine systems, manipulator control, machine sensing, machine intelligence, concurrent computation, and system architectures; and (3) identified important unsolved problems of current interest which can be dealt with by future research

Human Machine Interfaces for Teleoperators and Virtual Environments

In Mar. 1990, a meeting organized around the general theme of teleoperation research into virtual environment display technology was conducted. This is a collection of conference-related fragments that will give a glimpse of the potential of the following fields and how they interplay: sensorimotor performance; human-machine interfaces; teleoperation; virtual environments; performance measurement and evaluation methods; and design principles and predictive models

Human Machine Interaction

In this book, the reader will find a set of papers divided into two sections. The first section presents different proposals focused on the human-machine interaction development process. The second section is devoted to different aspects of interaction, with a special emphasis on the physical interaction

Aerospace medicine and biology: A continuing bibliography with indexes (supplement 325)

This bibliography lists 192 reports, articles and other documents introduced into the NASA Scientific and Technical Information System during June, 1989. Subject coverage includes: aerospace medicine and psychology, life support systems and controlled environments, safety equipment, exobiology and extraterrestrial life, and flight crew behavior and performance