Simultaneously encoding movement and sEMG-based stiffness for robotic skill learning

Transferring human stiffness regulation strategies to robots enables them to effectively and efficiently acquire adaptive impedance control policies to deal with uncertainties during the accomplishment of physical contact tasks in an unstructured environment. In this work, we develop such a physical human-robot interaction (pHRI) system which allows robots to learn variable impedance skills from human demonstrations. Specifically, the biological signals, i.e., surface electromyography (sEMG) are utilized for the extraction of human arm stiffness features during the task demonstration. The estimated human arm stiffness is then mapped into a robot impedance controller. The dynamics of both movement and stiffness are simultaneously modeled by using a model combining the hidden semi-Markov model (HSMM) and the Gaussian mixture regression (GMR). More importantly, the correlation between the movement information and the stiffness information is encoded in a systematic manner. This approach enables capturing uncertainties over time and space and allows the robot to satisfy both position and stiffness requirements in a task with modulation of the impedance controller. The experimental study validated the proposed approach

Mixed reality enhanced user interactive path planning for omnidirectional mobile robot

This paper proposes a novel control system for the path planning of an omnidirectional mobile robot based on mixed reality. Most research on mobile robots is carried out in a completely real environment or a completely virtual environment. However, a real environment containing virtual objects has important actual applications. The proposed system can control the movement of the mobile robot in the real environment, as well as the interaction between the mobile robot’s motion and virtual objects which can be added to a real environment. First, an interactive interface is presented in the mixed reality device HoloLens. The interface can display the map, path, control command, and other information related to the mobile robot, and it can add virtual objects to the real map to realize a real-time interaction between the mobile robot and the virtual objects. Then, the original path planning algorithm, vector field histogram* (VFH*), is modified in the aspects of the threshold, candidate direction selection, and cost function, to make it more suitable for the scene with virtual objects, reduce the number of calculations required, and improve the security. Experimental results demonstrated that this proposed method can generate the motion path of the mobile robot according to the specific requirements of the operator, and achieve a good obstacle avoidance performance

Late 19th-Century Navigational Uncertainties and Their Influence on Sea Surface Temperature Estimates

Accurate estimates of historical changes in sea surface temperatures (SSTs) and their uncertainties are important for documenting and understanding historical changes in climate. A source of uncertainty that has not previously been quantified in historical SST estimates stems from position errors. A Bayesian inference framework is proposed for quantifying errors in reported positions and their implications on SST estimates. The analysis framework is applied to data from the International Comprehensive Ocean-Atmosphere Data Set (ICOADS3.0) in 1885, a time when astronomical and chronometer estimation of position was common, but predating the use of radio signals. Focus is upon a subset of 943 ship tracks from ICOADS3.0 that report their position every two hours to a precision of 0.01{\deg} longitude and latitude. These data are interpreted as positions determined by dead reckoning that are periodically updated by celestial correction techniques. The posterior medians of uncertainties in celestial correction are 33.1 km (0.30{\deg} on the equator) in longitude and 24.4 km (0.22{\deg}) in latitude, respectively. The posterior medians of two-hourly dead reckoning uncertainties are 19.2% for ship speed and 13.2{\deg} for ship heading, leading to random position uncertainties with median 0.18{\deg} (20 km on the equator) in longitude and 0.15{\deg} (17 km) in latitude. Reported ship tracks also contain systematic position uncertainties relating to precursor dead-reckoning positions not being updated after obtaining celestial position estimates, indicating that more accurate positions can be provided for SST observations. Finally, we translate position errors into SST uncertainties by sampling an ensemble of SSTs from the Multi-scale Ultra-high resolution Sea Surface Temperature (MURSST) data set

Deterministic learning enhanced neutral network control of unmanned helicopter

In this article, a neural network-based tracking controller is developed for an unmanned helicopter system with guaranteed global stability in the presence of uncertain system dynamics. Due to the coupling and modeling uncertainties of the helicopter systems, neutral networks approximation techniques are employed to compensate the unknown dynamics of each subsystem. In order to extend the semiglobal stability achieved by conventional neural control to global stability, a switching mechanism is also integrated into the control design, such that the resulted neural controller is always valid without any concern on either initial conditions or range of state variables. In addition, deterministic learning is applied to the neutral network learning control, such that the adaptive neutral networks are able to store the learned knowledge that could be reused to construct neutral network controller with improved control performance. Simulation studies are carried out on a helicopter model to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed control design

An invitation to sequential Monte Carlo samplers

Sequential Monte Carlo samplers provide consistent approximations of sequences of probability distributions and of their normalizing constants, via particles obtained with a combination of importance weights and Markov transitions. This article presents this class of methods and a number of recent advances, with the goal of helping statisticians assess the applicability and usefulness of these methods for their purposes. Our presentation emphasizes the role of bridging distributions for computational and statistical purposes. Numerical experiments are provided on simple settings such as multivariate Normals, logistic regression and a basic susceptible-infected-recovered model, illustrating the impact of the dimension, the ability to perform inference sequentially and the estimation of normalizing constants.Comment: review article, 34 pages, 10 figure

Disturbance observer enhanced variable gain controller for robot teleoperation with motion capture using wearable armbands

Disturbance observer (DOB) based controller performs well in estimating and compensating for perturbation when the external or internal unknown disturbance is slowly time varying. However, to some extent, robot manipulators usually work in complex environment with high-frequency disturbance. Thereby, to enhance tracking performance in a teleoperation system, only traditional DOB technique is insufficient. In this paper, for the purpose of constructing a feasible teleoperation scheme, we develop a novel controller that contains a variable gain scheme to deal with fast-time varying perturbation, whose gain is adjusted linearly according to human surface electromyographic signals collected from Myo wearable armband. In addition, for tracking the motion of operator’s arm, we derive five-joint-angle data of a moving human arm through two groups of quaternions generated from the armbands. Besides, the radial basis function neural networks and the disturbance observer-based control (DOBC) approaches are fused together into the proposed controller to compensate the unknown dynamics uncertainties of the slave robot as well as environmental perturbation. Experiments and simulations are conducted to demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed strategy

A sEMG-based shared control system with no-target obstacle avoidance for omnidirectional mobile robots

We propose a novel shared control strategy for mobile robots in a human-robot interaction manner based on surface eletromyography (sEMG) signals. For security reasons, an obstacle avoidance scheme is introduced to the shared control system as collision avoidance guidance. The motion of the mobile robot is a resultant of compliant motion control and obstacle avoidance. In the mode of compliant motion, the sEMG signals obtained from the operator's forearms are transformed into human commands to control the moving direction and linear velocity of the mobile robot, respectively. When the mobile robot is blocked by obstacles, the motion mode is converted into obstacle avoidance. Aimed at the obstacle avoidance problem without a specific target, we develop a no-target Bug (NT-Bug) algorithm to guide the mobile robot to avoid obstacles and return to the command line. Besides, the command moving direction given by the operator is taken into consideration in the obstacle avoidance process to plan a smoother and safer path for the mobile robot. A model predictive controller is exploited to minimize the tracking errors. Experiments have been implemented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed shared control strategy and the NT-Bug algorithm