A Method for Autonomous Robotic Manipulation through Exploratory Interactions with Uncertain Environments

Expanding robot autonomy can deliver functional flexibility and enable fast deployment of robots in challenging and unstructured environments. In this direction, significant advances have been recently made in visual-perception driven autonomy, which is mainly due to the availability of rich sensory data-sets. However, current robots’ physical interaction autonomy levels still remain at a basic level. Towards providing a systematic approach to this problem, this paper presents a new context-aware and adaptive method that allows a robotic platform to interact with unknown environments. In particular, a multi-axes self-tuning impedance controller is introduced to regulate quasi-static parameters of the robot based on previous experience in interacting with similar environments and the real-time sensory data. The proposed method is also capable of differentiating internal and external disruptions, and responding to them accordingly and appropriately. An agricultural experiment with different deformable material is presented to validate robot interaction autonomy improvements, and the capability of the proposed methodology in detecting and responding to unexpected events (e.g., faults)

Garbage Collection and Sorting with a Mobile Manipulator using Deep Learning and Whole-Body Control

Domestic garbage management is an important aspect of a sustainable environment. This paper presents a novel garbage classification and localization system for grasping and placement in the correct recycling bin, integrated on a mobile manipulator. In particular, we first introduce and train a deep neural network (namely, GarbageNet) to detect different recyclable types of garbage. Secondly, we use a grasp localization method to identify a suitable grasp pose to pick the garbage from the ground. Finally, we perform grasping and sorting of the objects by the mobile robot through a whole-body control framework. We experimentally validate the method, both on visual RGB-D data and indoors on a real full-size mobile manipulator for collection and recycling of garbage items placed on the ground

Aircraft turbulence and gust identification using simulated in-flight data

Gust and turbulence events are of primary importance for the analysis of flight incidents, for the design of gust load alleviation systems and for the calculation of loads in the airframe. Gust and turbulence events cannot be measured directly but they can be obtained through direct or optimisation-based methods. In the direct method the discretisation of the Fredholm Integral equation is associated with an ill conditioned matrix. In this work the effects of regularisation methods including Tikhonov regularisation, Truncated Single Value Decomposition (TSVD), Damped Single Value Decomposition (DSVD) and a recently proposed method using cubic B-spline functions are evaluated for aeroelastic gust identification using in flight measured data. The gust identification methods are tested in the detailed aeroelastic model of FFAST and an equivalent low-fidelity aeroelastic model developed by the authors. In addition, the accuracy required in the model for a reliable identification is discussed. Finally, the identification method based on B-spline functions is tested by simultaneously using both low-fidelity and FFAST aeroelastic models so that the response from the FFAST model is used as measurement data and the equivalent low-fidelity model is used in the identification process

Improving Wind Tunnel "1-cos" Gust Profiles

A vane-type gust generator has been designed and characterized in the Swansea University wind tunnel to enable the validation of the response of aircraft models to gust loads. The experimental results reveal the complexity of the flow between the gust vanes and the aircraft model location. Previous studies have shown that generating a predetermined gust profile at the desired location in the wind tunnel is a challenging problem. In this work, two techniques to improve the “1-cos” gust have been considered. In the first case, the transfer functions between the vane rotation and the gust produced at the aircraft model location have been identified, and its inverse has been used to calculate the vane rotation. The strong aerodynamics nonlinearity limits the improvements of this method. A parametric study on vane rotation has shown that a more complicated vane rotation function made it possible to obtain “1-cos” gusts at the aircraft model location with a mean square error two orders of magnitude smaller than the initial case. Creating “1-cos” gusts with similar frequency content as the regulations require will help design more efficient gust load alleviation systems

Nodulation capacity of Argentinean soybean (Glycine max L. Merr) cultivars inoculated with commercial strains of Bradyrhizobium japonicum.

The purpose of this research was to evaluate the nodulation potential of 31 Argentinean soybean commercial cultivars. Those with the highest nodulation capacity developed twice the amount of nodules than the low nodulating ones, which is the variation contained in soybean genotypes. Furthermore, this was not due to bacterial promiscuity, since the re-sponse was independent of the bradyrhizobia strain inoculated. The ability of cultivars to develop a larger number and biomass of nodules was unrelated with the maturity group they belong to and also was not a response to quorum sensing effects. Our results suggest that breeding programs can be aimed at improving the nodulation capacity of soybean and that cultivars from different maturity groups can be a source of nodulation QTLs

The effect of folding wingtips on the worst-case gust loads of a simplified aircraft model

In recent years, the development of lighter and more efficient transport aircraft has led to an increased focus on gust load alleviation. A recent strategy is based on the use of folding wingtip devices that increase the aspect ratio and therefore improve the aircraft performance. Moreover, numerical studies have suggested such a folding wingtip solution may incorporate spring devices in order to provide additional gust load alleviation ability in flight. It has been shown that wingtip mass, stiffness connection and hinge orientation are key parameters to avoid flutter and achieve load alleviation during gusts. The objective of this work is to show the effects of aeroelastic hinged wingtip on the problem of worst-case gust prediction and the parameterization and optimization of such a model for this particular problem, that is, worst-case gust load prediction. In this article, a simplified aeroelastic model of full symmetric aircraft with rigid movable wingtips is developed. The effects of hinge position, orientation and spring stiffness are considered in order to evaluate the performance of this technique for gust load alleviation. In addition, the longitudinal flight dynamics of a rigid aircraft with an elastic wing and folding wingtips is studied. Multi-objective optimizations are performed using a genetic algorithm to exploit the optimal combinations of the wingtip parameters that minimize the gust response for the whole flight envelope while keeping flutter speed within the safety margin. Two strategies to increase flutter speed based on the modification of the wingtip parameters are presented

La renovación de la palabra en el bicentenario de la Argentina : los colores de la mirada lingüística

El libro reúne trabajos en los que se exponen resultados de investigaciones presentadas por investigadores de Argentina, Chile, Brasil, España, Italia y Alemania en el XII Congreso de la Sociedad Argentina de Lingüística (SAL), Bicentenario: la renovación de la palabra, realizado en Mendoza, Argentina, entre el 6 y el 9 de abril de 2010. Las temáticas abordadas en los 167 capítulos muestran las grandes líneas de investigación que se desarrollan fundamentalmente en nuestro país, pero también en los otros países mencionados arriba, y señalan además las áreas que recién se inician, con poca tradición en nuestro país y que deberían fomentarse. Los trabajos aquí publicados se enmarcan dentro de las siguientes disciplinas y/o campos de investigación: Fonología, Sintaxis, Semántica y Pragmática, Lingüística Cognitiva, Análisis del Discurso, Psicolingüística, Adquisición de la Lengua, Sociolingüística y Dialectología, Didáctica de la lengua, Lingüística Aplicada, Lingüística Computacional, Historia de la Lengua y la Lingüística, Lenguas Aborígenes, Filosofía del Lenguaje, Lexicología y Terminología