Mobile Robot Navigation for Person Following in Indoor Environments

Service robotics is a rapidly growing area of interest in robotics research. Service robots inhabit human-populated environments and carry out specific tasks. The goal of this dissertation is to develop a service robot capable of following a human leader around populated indoor environments. A classification system for person followers is proposed such that it clearly defines the expected interaction between the leader and the robotic follower. In populated environments, the robot needs to be able to detect and identify its leader and track the leader through occlusions, a common characteristic of populated spaces. An appearance-based person descriptor, which augments the Kinect skeletal tracker, is developed and its performance in detecting and overcoming short and long-term leader occlusions is demonstrated. While following its leader, the robot has to ensure that it does not collide with stationary and moving obstacles, including other humans, in the environment. This requirement necessitates the use of a systematic navigation algorithm. A modified version of navigation function path planning, called the predictive fields path planner, is developed. This path planner models the motion of obstacles, uses a simplified representation of practical workspaces, and generates bounded, stable control inputs which guide the robot to its desired position without collisions with obstacles. The predictive fields path planner is experimentally verified on a non-person follower system and then integrated into the robot navigation module of the person follower system. To navigate the robot, it is necessary to localize it within its environment. A mapping approach based on depth data from the Kinect RGB-D sensor is used in generating a local map of the environment. The map is generated by combining inter-frame rotation and translation estimates based on scan generation and dead reckoning respectively. Thus, a complete mobile robot navigation system for person following in indoor environments is presented

Software Development for Mechatronics Systems: Simulation of Multiple UAV Navigation and Device Driver Interface for the Q4 Data Acquisition Card

Mechatronics systems are often a close interleaving of different aspects of hardware, software, control and mechanical design. Two such aspects are delved into in greater detail for this thesis, both related to software development. Simulations are used to know the practical conditions under which a control design is effective. The system simulated in this case was a multiple vehicle system, where the vehicles navigated from source to a destination configuration avoiding two different kinds of obstacles. Post simulation, a system is implemented using hardware and tested using an experimental setup. Data Acquisition Boards such as the Quanser Q4 are used to read the system state. A device driver interface containing a wide variety of functions was developed and extensively tested for the Q4 PCI bus card. Both these projects were software development efforts towards contributing to different aspects of Robotics and Mechatronics projects in the Controls and Robotics Group

Designing lean value streams in the fourth industrial revolution era: proposition of technology-integrated guidelines

Despite the envisioned interrelations, the way Industry 4.0 (I4.0) technologies can influence the design and implementation of lean value streams is still unknown and little empirical evidence is found in the literature. This article aims at proposing guidelines integrated with I4.0 technologies for designing lean value streams. We gathered experts’ opinions regarding the relationship between guidelines for designing a lean value stream and I4.0 technologies. The identification of the most important relationships provided arguments for the proposition of enhanced guidelines for designing lean value streams within the Fourth Industrial Revolution context. The integration of I4.0 technologies into the guidelines for designing a lean value stream raises a distinct approach that benefits from the simplicity and efficiency of Lean Production with ease and agility of the technologies typical of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Such technology-integrated guidelines may allow overcoming existing barriers while lead companies to superior performance results

Robot crowd navigation using predictive position fields in the potential function framework

Abstract — A potential function based path planner for a mobile robot to autonomously navigate an area crowded with people is proposed. Path planners based on potential functions have been essentially static, with very limited representation of the motion of obstacles as part of their navigation model. The static formulations do not take into account the possibility of using predicted workspace configuration to augment the performance of the path planner. The use of an elliptical region signifying the predicted position and direction of motion of an obstacle is proposed in this paper. The repulsive potential caused by an obstacle is defined relative to this elliptical field. An analytic switch is made when the robot enters this predicted elliptical zone of the obstacle. The development of navigation functions makes it possible to design a potential-based planner which is guaranteed to converge to the target. I

EFFLUENT TREATMENT OF ELECTROPLATING UNIT

The Electroplating industry is one of the top polluting industries. The effluents discharged have high concentrations of toxic heavy metal ions. Our project is an effort to reduce the toxicity of the effluent discharged from an electroplating unit. The project aims to reduce heavy metalion concentrations in the effluent discharged by employing a combined effect of precipitation and adsorption. These methods have been successfully applied and tested by us on a laboratory level and can be easily adapted at an industrial level economically. The project suggests other more sophisticated and new methods of treating effluent from an electroplating unit. We have analyzed our method of treatment from all angles and also recommended solutions to rectify its minor short comings. The report includes an adsorption bed prototype which can be used on a bigger or industrial scale. This method of treatment is simple, effective, practical and most importantly cost effective