A Design Pattern for Model Based Software Development for Automatic Machinery

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Toward Future Automatic Warehouses: An Autonomous Depalletizing System Based on Mobile Manipulation and 3D Perception

This paper presents a mobile manipulation platform designed for autonomous depalletizing tasks. The proposed solution integrates machine vision, control and mechanical components to increase flexibility and ease of deployment in industrial environments such as warehouses. A collaborative robot mounted on a mobile base is proposed, equipped with a simple manipulation tool and a 3D in-hand vision system that detects parcel boxes on a pallet, and that pulls them one by one on the mobile base for transportation. The robot setup allows to avoid the cumbersome implementation of pick-and-place operations, since it does not require lifting the boxes. The 3D vision system is used to provide an initial estimation of the pose of the boxes on the top layer of the pallet, and to accurately detect the separation between the boxes for manipulation. Force measurement provided by the robot together with admittance control are exploited to verify the correct execution of the manipulation task. The proposed system was implemented and tested in a simplified laboratory scenario and the results of experimental trials are reported

Design patterns for model-based automation software design and implementation

The paper presents the application of object-oriented modeling techniques to control software development for complex manufacturing systems, with particular focus on case studies taken from the packaging industry and design patterns that can be abstracted from such case studies. The proposed methodology for control software modeling and implementation is based on a practical approach refined on the basis of on-the-field experience and interactions with control engineers involved in the development projects.The final objective of the paper is to review and analyze patterns for the solution of design and implementation issues that typically arise in the considered application domain. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd

Augmented Reality and Robotic Systems for Assistance in Percutaneous Nephrolithotomy Procedures: Recent Advances and Future Perspectives

Percutaneous nephrolithotomy is the gold standard for the treatment of renal stones larger than 20 mm in diameter. The treatment outcomes of PCNL are highly dependent on the accuracy of the puncture step, in order to achieve a suitable renal access and reach the stone with a precise and direct path. Thus, performing the puncturing to get the renal access is the most crucial and challenging step of the procedure with the steepest learning curve. Many simulation methods and systems have been developed to help trainees achieve the requested competency level to achieve a suitable renal access. Simulators include human cadavers, animal tissues and virtual reality simulators to simulate human patients. On the other hand, the availability of pre-operative information (e.g., computed tomography or magnetic resonance imaging) and of intra-operative images (e.g., ultrasound images) has allowed the development of solutions involving augmented reality and robotic systems to assist the surgeon during the operation and to help a novel surgeon in strongly reducing the learning curve. In this context, the real-time awareness of the 3D position and orientation of the considered anatomical structures with reference to a common frame is fundamental. Such information must be accurately estimated by means of specific tracking systems that allow the reconstruction of the motion of the probe and of the tool. This review paper presents a survey on the leading literature on augmented reality and robotic assistance for PCNL, with a focus on existing methods for tracking the motion of the ultrasound probe and of the surgical needle

A low-cost high-fidelity ultrasound simulator with the inertial tracking of the probe pose

The authors developed a versatile ultrasound simulator. The proposed system achieves the main features of a high-fidelity device exploiting low-cost rapid prototyping hardware. The hand-guided ultrasound simulator probe includes a RFID reader, a 9-DOF inertial sensor unit, consisting of an accelerometer, a magnetometer and a gyroscope, and a microcontroller that performs the real-time data acquisition, the processing and the transmission of the estimated pose information to the visualization system, so that the proper ultrasound view can be generated. Since the probe orientation is the main information involved in the pose reconstruction, this work presents and investigates several tracking methods for the probe orientation, exploiting a sensor fusion technique to filter the noisy measurements coming from inertial sensors. The performances of a Kalman filter, a nonlinear complementary filter and a quaternion-based filter as inertial trackers have been tested by means of a robot manipulator, in terms of readiness, accuracy and stability of the estimated orientation signal. The results show that the nonlinear complementary filter and the quaternion-based filter match all the application requirements (RMSE <3deg, variance <1deg2, and settling time <0.3s), and they involve a lower computational time with respect to the Kalman filter

Augmented Reality and Robotic Systems for Assistance in Percutaneous Nephrolithotomy Procedures: Recent Advances and Future Perspectives

Percutaneous nephrolithotomy is the gold standard for the treatment of renal stones larger than 20 mm in diameter. The treatment outcomes of PCNL are highly dependent on the accuracy of the puncture step, in order to achieve a suitable renal access and reach the stone with a precise and direct path. Thus, performing the puncturing to get the renal access is the most crucial and challenging step of the procedure with the steepest learning curve. Many simulation methods and systems have been developed to help trainees achieve the requested competency level to achieve a suitable renal access. Simulators include human cadavers, animal tissues and virtual reality simulators to simulate human patients. On the other hand, the availability of pre-operative information (e.g., computed tomography or magnetic resonance imaging) and of intra-operative images (e.g., ultrasound images) has allowed the development of solutions involving augmented reality and robotic systems to assist the surgeon during the operation and to help a novel surgeon in strongly reducing the learning curve. In this context, the real-time awareness of the 3D position and orientation of the considered anatomical structures with reference to a common frame is fundamental. Such information must be accurately estimated by means of specific tracking systems that allow the reconstruction of the motion of the probe and of the tool. This review paper presents a survey on the leading literature on augmented reality and robotic assistance for PCNL, with a focus on existing methods for tracking the motion of the ultrasound probe and of the surgical needle

A design pattern for model based software development for automatic machinery

The paper presents the results of the application of object-oriented modeling techniques to the control software design of complex manufacturing systems, with particular focus on automatic machineries for production and packaging of food stuff, as milk, snacks, etc. In this application fields there are some peculiar problems to tackle in order to develop effective software control solutions, as for example the exception handling caused by product or packaging material jam, the Human Machine Interface, the recipe production management etc. The goal of this paper is to introduce design patterns developed in the framework of UML applied to the development of automatic machineries software, aiming to define a set of predefined modeling solutions to some class of recurrent design problems. © 2009 IFAC

Dynamic motion planning for autonomous assistive surgical robots

The paper addresses the problem of the generation of collision-free trajectories for a robotic manipulator, operating in a scenario in which obstacles may be moving at non-negligible velocities. In particular, the paper aims to present a trajectory generation solution that is fully executable in real-time and that can reactively adapt to both dynamic changes of the environment and fast reconfiguration of the robotic task. The proposed motion planner extends the method based on a dynamical system to cope with the peculiar kinematics of surgical robots for laparoscopic operations, the mechanical constraint being enforced by the fixed point of insertion into the abdomen of the patient the most challenging aspect. The paper includes a validation of the trajectory generator in both simulated and experimental scenarios