17,056 research outputs found
Avoiding space robot collisions utilizing the NASA/GSFC tri-mode skin sensor
Sensor based robot motion planning research has primarily focused on mobile robots. Consider, however, the case of a robot manipulator expected to operate autonomously in a dynamic environment where unexpected collisions can occur with many parts of the robot. Only a sensor based system capable of generating collision free paths would be acceptable in such situations. Recently, work in this area has been reported in which a deterministic solution for 2DOF systems has been generated. The arm was sensitized with 'skin' of infra-red sensors. We have proposed a heuristic (potential field based) methodology for redundant robots with large DOF's. The key concepts are solving the path planning problem by cooperating global and local planning modules, the use of complete information from the sensors and partial (but appropriate) information from a world model, representation of objects with hyper-ellipsoids in the world model, and the use of variational planning. We intend to sensitize the robot arm with a 'skin' of capacitive proximity sensors. These sensors were developed at NASA, and are exceptionally suited for the space application. In the first part of the report, we discuss the development and modeling of the capacitive proximity sensor. In the second part we discuss the motion planning algorithm
Extrinisic Calibration of a Camera-Arm System Through Rotation Identification
Determining extrinsic calibration parameters is a necessity in any robotic
system composed of actuators and cameras. Once a system is outside the lab
environment, parameters must be determined without relying on outside artifacts
such as calibration targets. We propose a method that relies on structured
motion of an observed arm to recover extrinsic calibration parameters. Our
method combines known arm kinematics with observations of conics in the image
plane to calculate maximum-likelihood estimates for calibration extrinsics.
This method is validated in simulation and tested against a real-world model,
yielding results consistent with ruler-based estimates. Our method shows
promise for estimating the pose of a camera relative to an articulated arm's
end effector without requiring tedious measurements or external artifacts.
Index Terms: robotics, hand-eye problem, self-calibration, structure from
motio
Technology assessment of advanced automation for space missions
Six general classes of technology requirements derived during the mission definition phase of the study were identified as having maximum importance and urgency, including autonomous world model based information systems, learning and hypothesis formation, natural language and other man-machine communication, space manufacturing, teleoperators and robot systems, and computer science and technology
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