Robotic D&D: Smart Robots: (Decontamination and Dismantling)

International audienceProject' managers continually seek an ever-greater optimization of time between remote handling operations and those carried out manually; therefore, new technological solutions must be deployed. Robotics offers a great opportunity in this new field of technology to carry out, for example, samplings or remediation in hostile, cluttered surroundings. Teams in charge of dismantling at the CEA have therefore first defined robotizable functions. These functions have been assembled from existing technological blocks to arrive at robots which are operating today [RICAIII, patent: FR 2925702]. Lessons learned, particularly from experience with the RICA robot, have enabled the operating technical specifications to be fine-tuned. A new study phase has been launched applying the same principle of adapting existing, proven means. The growing role of robotics today is unquestioned. Led by research and the academic world; robots such as those equipped with wheels, tracks, feet or even helicopter rotors, are today accessible to the general public, particularly via broadening of the " open source " concept. Added to these we need tools able to manage large component deconstruction systems, like MAESTRO. Industrialization of such high-potential technological solutions has been aided by:-Easy use,-Increasing reliability,-Flexibility of " open source " solutions,-Widening skill networks, and therefore greater technical support-Lower costs. Decontamination and dismantling (D&D) projects must be able to meet a number of special demands, increasing the number of unit designs, their costs and delivery times. The complexity of dismantling works sites mean that each is a special case to be dealt with almost independently. Such a way of approaching these projects is not on the same wavelength as industry, with tool and method standardization. The answer to the challenge of operations in difficult environments is an ecosystem of functions, performed by a set of interconnected robots. The first step towards the construction of such robot teams is devoted to functions where strength is not necessary: investigating and clean-up in hostile environments. With this in mind, the CEA Marcoule teams have been given the objective of merging the strengthening commercial robotic world with the needs of D&D, and thus to improve the transversal use of the systems

Localization and navigation of a mobile robot in an office-like environment

This article focuses on the localization and navigation of a mobile differential robot in an indoor office-like environment. These are fundamental issues to service robotics, which is a branch with a strong market growth. The work implements a vision tracking system, environment mapping, route planning and navigation for an autonomous robot application inside services buildings. One goal of the methodology is its application with low cost equipment. The test bed chosen was a Pioneer P3-DX robot [16] in a service building, with an attached USB webcam, pointed at the ceiling to take advantage of the position of the light fixtures as natural landmarks. The robot location is estimated through two distinct probabilistic methods: a particle filter, when there is no information about the starting location of the robot, and the Kalman filter, given the convergence of the particle filter. Both methods use the detection of light fixtures together with the robot kinematics as information to estimate the pose. The mapping of the environment and its obstacles is obtained from the localization estimates and the information gathered by ultrasound sensors, representing the entire navigation space discretized in the form of an occupation grid. Planning the navigation path is determined by a simple search algorithm, namely the Wavefront algorithm, based on the information contained in the occupancy grid. For a given path, navigation is performed with obstacle avoidance using the virtual forces method. Replanning is used to recover from local minima situations.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

DEVELOPMENT OF A TELEROBOTIC SYSTEM TO ASSIST PERSONS WITH DISABILITIES

ABSTRACT This paper describes the development of intelligent mapping from a haptic user interface to a remote manipulator to assist individuals with disabilities performing manipulation tasks. This mapping, referred to an assistance function, is determined on the basis of environmental model or sensory data to guide the motion of a telerobotic manipulator while performing a given task. Human input is enhanced rather than superseded by the computer

An Adaptive Tool-Based Telerobot Control System

Modern telerobotics concepts seek to improve the work efficiency and quality of remote operations. The unstructured nature of typical remote operational environments makes autonomous operation of telerobotic systems difficult to achieve. Thus, human operators must always remain in the control loop for safety reasons. Remote operations involve tooling interactions with task environment. These interactions can be strong enough to promote unstable operation sometimes leading to system failures. Interestingly, manipulator/tooling dynamic interactions have not been studied in detail. This dissertation introduces a human-machine cooperative telerobotic (HMCTR) system architecture that has the ability to incorporate tooling interaction control and other computer assistance functions into the overall control system. A universal tooling interaction force prediction model has been created and implemented using grey system theory. Finally, a grey prediction force/position parallel fuzzy controller has been developed that compensates for the tooling interaction forces. Detailed experiments using a full-scale telerobotics testbed indicate: (i) the feasibility of the developed methodologies, and (ii) dramatic improvements in the stability of manipulator – based on band saw cutting operations. These results are foundational toward the further enhancement and development of telerobot

A Cartesian Space Approach to Teleoperate a Slave Robot with a Kinematically Dissimilar Redundant Manipulator

Due to the inability of humans to interact with certain unstructured environments,telemanipulation of robots have gained immense importance. One of the primary tasks in telemanipulating robots remotely, is the effective manipulation of the slave robot using the master manipulator. Ideally a kinematic replica of the slave manipulator is used as the master to provide a joint-to-joint control to the slave. This research uses the 7-DOF Whole Arm Manipulator© (WAM) as the master manipulator and a 6-DOF Titan as the slave manipulator. Due to the kinematic dissimilarity between the two, a Cartesian space position mapping technique is adapted in which the slave is made to follow the same trajectory as the end effector of the master with respect to its reference frame. The main criterion in undertaking this mapping approach is to provide a convenient region of operation to the human operator. Various methods like pseudo inverse, Jacobian transpose and Damped least squares have been used to perform the inverse kinematics for the Titan. Joint limit avoidance and obstacle avoidance constraints were used to perform the inverse kinematics for the WAM and thereby remove the redundancy. Finally a joint volume limitation constraint (JVLC) was adopted which aims at providing the operator, a comfortable operational space in union with the master manipulator. Each inverse methodfor the Titan was experimentally tested and the best method identified from thesimulation results and the error analysis. Various experiments were also performed for the constrained inverse kinematics for the WAM and results were simulated. RoboWorks© was used for simulation purposes

Underwater Robots Part I: Current Systems and Problem Pose

International audienceThis paper constitutes the first part of a general overview of underwater robotics. The second part is titled: Underwater Robots Part II: existing solutions and open issues

Shape based stereovision assistance in rehabilitation robotics

A graphical user interface program was created along with shape models, which allow persons with disabilities to set up a stereovision system with off-the-shelf hardware and detect objects of interest, which can be picked up using a sensor assisted telerobotic manipulator. A Hitachi KP-D50 CCD camera and an Imaging Source CCD camera were used along with two Imaging Source DFG/LC1 frame grabbers to set up a stereovision system. In order to use the stereovision system, the two main problems of correspondence and reconstruction are solved using subroutines of the program created for this work.The user interface allows the user to easily perform the intrinsic and extrinsic camera calibration required for stereovision, by following a few basic steps incorporated into the user interface program, which are described in this thesis. A calibration table required for these tasks can also be easily created using the program. In order to detect the object of interest, shape models, created by the user interface program, are used to solve the correspondence problem of stereovision. The correspondence problem is that of locating corresponding points in the left eye and the right eye, which are necessary to perform the calculations to obtain the location of the object of interest with respect to the end-effector. The shape models created for some commonly available items such as a doorknob and a door handle are included in the program and used to test the stereovision system. As expected, the error of detection decreases as the stereo system is moved closer to the object of interest in the x-, y- and z-position

Kinesthetic Haptics Sensing and Discovery with Bilateral Teleoperation Systems

In the mechanical engineering field of robotics, bilateral teleoperation is a classic but still increasing research topic. In bilateral teleoperation, a human operator moves the master manipulator, and a slave manipulator is controlled to follow the motion of the master in a remote, potentially hostile environment. This dissertation focuses on kinesthetic perception analysis in teleoperation systems. Design of the controllers of the systems is studied as the influential factor of this issue. The controllers that can provide different force tracking capability are compared using the same experimental protocol. A 6 DOF teleoperation system is configured as the system testbed. An innovative master manipulator is developed and a 7 DOF redundant manipulator is used as the slave robot. A singularity avoidance inverse kinematics algorithm is developed to resolve the redundancy of the slave manipulator. An experimental protocol is addressed and three dynamics attributes related to kineshtetic feedback are investigated: weight, center of gravity and inertia. The results support our hypothesis: the controller that can bring a better force feedback can improve the performance in the experiments