The Formula One Tire Changing Robot (F1-T.C.R.)

Formula One racing is one of the most fascinating sports ever, it is a perfect combination of high speed, technology, pressure and danger. One problem associated with car racing is the time differential between teams during pits stops, which substantially affects the final results. In addition, a high percentage of the accidents in Formula One is due to pit stop problems. Changing the tires of a car while almost in motion, after reaching dangerous pressure and temperature values, is a very risky challenge, no matter how well a team is trained. Approximately 15-25 people are constantly exposed to serious dangers. The risks taken are extreme and any idea of reducing it without affecting the quality of the race should be considered. Our idea is to build a fully robotized system that takes over the tire changing and refueling, process. There will practically be no need for human intervention. The system will demonstrate remarkable time accuracy, precision and low risk implications.© 2012 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.libproxy.bridgeport.edu/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=76999

Ergonomic and Efficient Software Alternatives for High Cost Manipulators - Direct, Wireless and Networked Control Techniques

The process of deciding-on and purchasing the right manipulator(s) for a predetermined task can often turn to be very frustrating, especially when budget and purchase timing are essential factors. The market tends to get larger and variety driven and there is a choice for almost any given price range, however, the price / size ratio seems to remain constant. Larger scale manipulators do not show the price amortization enjoyed by the majority of computerized consumer hardware over the past few years. In addition, the manufacturers for many of these manipulators do not provide adequate pre-sales supporting technical material (whether a result of lack of standardized specifications or pure negligence), nor effective warranties and service. Primarily affected are higher level educational institutions, where manipulators are likely to be exposed to student projects that demand constant diversity and various controlling software and hardware technique. These manipulators are likely to become victims of abusive usage and, in addition, the institutions need to offer some of the highest standards of safety for the students. This paper presents a software simulation and control package applied on a specific manipulator. The package presents a significant tool in solving problems such as the above mentioned ones. In addition, the software offers a variety of implementation examples that can be directly derived from the simulation package

Web Based Virtual Robot Prototyping and Manufacturing

Developing an environment that enables optimal and flexible design of robot manipulators using reconfigurable links, joints, actuators, and sensors is an essential concept towards efficient robot design and prototyping. Such an environment should have a complex set of software and hardware subsystems for designing the physical parts and the controllers, and for the algorithmic control of the robot modules (kinematics, inverse kinematics, dynamics, trajectory planning, analog control and digital computer control). Specifying object-based communications and catalog mechanisms between the software modules, controllers, physical parts, CAD designs, and actuator and sensor components is a necessary step in the prototyping activities. In this project, we propose a web interface based prototyping environment for robot manipulators with the required subsystems and interfaces between the different components of this environment. The goal is to build a system of components that allows potential customers (located anywhere geographically) to input through a web interface a set of request / design parameters and specifications (such as torque, dexterity, repeatability, velocity etc), that could be analyzed, simulated and converted to specific manufacturing information that can be ultimately used by an automated manufacturing plant. The plant would be able to build consumer robots tailored to specific requirements and deliverable to customers flexibly

Remote Learning: A World-Wide-Web Operated Robot Arm

The World-Wide-Web has been used extensively in the past few years of its existence for data exchange, and information gathering. Web online control, on the other hand, is a new emerging field, which has not yet been fully exploited and holds in it a great impact on currently available control systems. This paper discusses an application of online Internet control service - a WWW controlled robotic manipulator arm

SKED: A Course Scheduling and Advising Software

Each year at the beginning of a new academic semester, most advisors face a very common and particularly tedious and time consuming problem: deciding for each student what course schedule would be ideal for the following semester so that the student would graduate in the fastest possible time and also have his / her specific preferences and pre-requisites satisfied. The factors that have to be considered vary from school specific requirements such as course pre-requisites, co-requisites, spring and fall offerings, to student specific ones, such as transferred credits or the subjective desire to choose or not a given choice. While some advisors might be able to derive reasonable solutions in reasonable amount of time, the process takes most of the advising time. The student will have to "trust" the advisor that the given schedule is the best choice, and in many cases the results will later on prove that the student could have actually graduated faster, or that specific school requirements have been violated or imply that the student's load and preference could have been balanced better. This paper presents a software application that can completely solve the presented problem. Once the school specific data and requirements have been set, for any specific student information, the application will search and output the schedules that will allow the student to graduate in the fastest number of semesters / quarters possible. Depending on the factors and data considered, the execution time varies from few seconds to few minutes. Currently, we have successfully tested and implemented the application at the University of Bridgeport, CT, USA

An Application of Robotic Optimization: Design for a Tire Changing Robot

The final publication is available at link.springer.com.Robotics experiences tremendous evolutions every year. Once a topic is mainly approached at research centers, read through highly specialized books and viewed distantly on scientific channels, nowadays it is a common and very approachable subject among undergraduate students of many universities. More and more robots are being designed every day, demanding technological implementation and production. This progress does not come without its glitches, however. A common and increasing problem that appears is the insufficient testing, simulation and optimization steps that a robotic construction needs to pass in order to achieve an efficient design. These steps prove to be difficult and sometimes discouraging, resulting in laborious work, due to lack of tools. This paper presents an example of a robotic optimization and testing, using a generic software package, applied on a custom manipulator, a tire-changing robot. Although the manipulator is designed with its own simulation and control package, it may lack optimality or validity. We implemented a different software package, focused on optimization and control of simple generic robots (XXX.RRR types) and apply the package on the tire-changer manipulator. The results provide improvements for the primary controlling software and confirm its correctness.http://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A%3A100812123054

A PC-Based Simulator/Controller/Monitor Software for a Manipulators and Electromechanical Systems

Pre-print of "A PC-Based Simulator/Controller/Monitor Software for a Generic 6-DOF Manipulator". The final publication is available at link.springer.comGeneral form application is a very important issue in industrial design. Prototyping a design helps in determining system parameters, ranges and in structuring better systems. Robotics is one of the industrial design fields in which prototyping is crucial for improved functionality. Developing an environment that enables optimal and flexible design using reconfigurable links, joints, actuators and sensors is essential for using robots in the education and industrial fields [4] [6]. We propose a PC-Based software package to control, monitor and simulate a generic 6-DOF (six degrees of freedom) robot including a spherical wrist. This package may be used as a black box for the design implementations or as white (detailed) box for learning about the basics of robotics and simulation technology.http://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A%3A101203541183

A Computational Approach for Constructing the Reachable Workspaces for Redundant Manipulators

An efficient computation of 3D workspaces for redundant manipulators is based on a “hybrid” algorithm between direct kinematics and screw theory. Direct kinematics enjoys low computational cost, but needs edge detection algorithms when workspace boundaries are needed. Screw theory has exponential computational cost per workspace point, but does not need edge detection. Screw theory allows computing workspace points in prespecified directions, while direct kinematics does not. Applications of the algorithm are discussed

Logical Control for Mobile Robots

In this work we present a distributed sensor-based control strategy for mobile robot navigation. We investigate a server-client model, where the clients are executing their tasks in parallel. The logical sensor approach is used as a hybrid framework to model and implement the sensory system for control of the mobile robot. The framework allows for a hierarchical data representation scheme, where sensory data and uncertainty is modeled and used at different levels, depending on the nature of the requested control command

A Hybrid System For Computing Reachable Workspaces For Redundant Manipulators

Copyright 1991 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers. One print or electronic copy may be made for personal use only. Systematic reproduction and distribution, duplication of any material in this paper for a fee or for commercial purposes, or modification of the content of the paper are prohibited.An efficient computation of 3D workspaces for redundant manipulators is based on a "hybrid" algorithm between direct kinematics and screw theory. Direct kinematics enjoys low computational cost, but needs edge detection algorithms when workspace boundaries are needed. Screw theory has exponential computational cost per workspace point, but does not need edge detection. Screw theory allows computing workspaces points in prespecfic directions, while direct kinematics does not. Applications of the algorithm are discussed.http://dx.doi.org/10.1117/12.2538