Managing a Fleet of Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMR) using Cloud Robotics Platform

In this paper, we provide details of implementing a system for managing a fleet of autonomous mobile robots (AMR) operating in a factory or a warehouse premise. While the robots are themselves autonomous in its motion and obstacle avoidance capability, the target destination for each robot is provided by a global planner. The global planner and the ground vehicles (robots) constitute a multi agent system (MAS) which communicate with each other over a wireless network. Three different approaches are explored for implementation. The first two approaches make use of the distributed computing based Networked Robotics architecture and communication framework of Robot Operating System (ROS) itself while the third approach uses Rapyuta Cloud Robotics framework for this implementation. The comparative performance of these approaches are analyzed through simulation as well as real world experiment with actual robots. These analyses provide an in-depth understanding of the inner working of the Cloud Robotics Platform in contrast to the usual ROS framework. The insight gained through this exercise will be valuable for students as well as practicing engineers interested in implementing similar systems else where. In the process, we also identify few critical limitations of the current Rapyuta platform and provide suggestions to overcome them.Comment: 14 pages, 15 figures, journal pape

Domain-Independent Disperse and Pick method for Robotic Grasping

Picking unseen objects from clutter is a difficult problem because of the variability in objects (shape, size, and material) and occlusion due to clutter. As a result, it becomes difficult for grasping methods to segment the objects properly and they fail to singulate the object to be picked. This may result in grasp failure or picking of multiple objects together in a single attempt. A push-to-move action by the robot will be beneficial to disperse the objects in the workspace and thus assist the grasping and vision algorithm. We propose a disperse and pick method for domain-independent robotic grasping in a highly cluttered heap of objects. The novel contribution of our framework is the introduction of a heuristic clutter removal method that does not require deep learning and can work on unseen objects. At each iteration of the algorithm, the robot either performs a push-to-move action or a grasp action based on the estimated clutter profile. For grasp planning, we present an improved and adaptive version of a recent domain-independent grasping method. The efficacy of the integrated system is demonstrated in simulation as well as in the real-world.Comment: Published at 2022 International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN

Resilience of Routing in Parallel Link Networks

International audienceWe revisit in this paper the resilience problem of routing traffic in a parallel link network model with a malicious player using a game theoretic framework. Consider that there are two players in the network: the first player wishes to split its traffic so as to minimize its average delay, which the second player, i.e., the malicious player, tries to maximize. The first player has a demand constraint on the total traffic it routes. The second player controls the link capacities: it can decrease by some amount the capacity of each link under a constraint on the sum of capacity degradation. We first show that the average delay function is convex both in traffic and in capacity degradation over the parallel links and thus does not have a saddle point. We identify best responses strategies of each player and compute both the max-min and the min-max values of the game. We are especially interested in the min max strategy as it guarantees the best performance under worst possible link capacity degradation. It thus allows to obtain routing strategies that are resilient and robust. We compare the results of the min-max to those obtained under the max-min strategies. We provide stable algorithms for computing both max-min and min-max strategies as well as for best responses

Book Reviews and the Consolidation of Genre

Some literary scholars have claimed that predictive models can measure the strength of the boundaries that separate different cultural categories—genres, for instance, or market segments. But interpreting textual models as evidence about the strength of a cultural distinction has seemed a questionable move to many readers. We use book reviews to test this inference. Are the similarities between fictional texts purely verbal phenomena, or do they reflect social categories that are also legible (although expressed differently) in readers' responses to those texts? We find that the subject and genre categories most strongly marked in fictional texts are also the categories most strongly marked in reviews of fiction. The correlation is strong; r > .8

Kinetic modelling of colour degradation in tomato puree (Lycopersicon esculentum L.)

The kinetics of colour (measured as Hunter 'a' value) degradation in tomato puree (Lycopersicon esculentum L.) has been studied over a temperature range of 50-120°C (isothermal condition), and also during normal open pan cooking, pressure cooking and cooking in a newly developed and patented fuel-efficient 'EcoCooker' (non-isothermal condition). The degradation of colour as measured by Hunter 'a' value was found to follow first order kinetics. The temperature dependence of degradation was adequately modelled by Arrhenius equation. A mathematical model has been developed using the isothermal parameters obtained to predict correctly the losses of red colour from the time-temperature data of non-isothermal heating/processing method. The results obtained indicate a colour degradation of similar magnitude in all the three modes of cooking used in the study

Managing a fleet of autonomous mobile robots (AMR) using cloud robotics platform

In this paper, we provide details of implementing a system for managing a fleet of autonomous mobile robots (AMR) operating in a factory or a warehouse premise. While the robots are themselves autonomous in its motion and obstacle avoidance capability, the target destination for each robot is provided by a global planner. The global planner and the ground vehicles (robots) constitute a multi agent system (MAS) which communicate with each other over a wireless network. Three different approaches are explored for implementation. The first two approaches make use of the distributed computing based Networked Robotics architecture and communication framework of Robot Operating System (ROS) itself while the third approach uses Rapyuta Cloud Robotics framework for this implementation. The comparative performance of these approaches are analyzed through simulation as well as real world experiment with actual robots. These analyses provide an in-depth understanding of the inner working of the Cloud Robotics Platform in contrast to the usual ROS framework. The insight gained through this exercise will be valuable for students as well as practicing engineers interested in implementing similar systems else where. In the process, we also identify few critical limitations of the current Rapyuta platform and provide suggestions to overcome them.Comment: 14 pages, 15 figures, journal pape

Book Reviews and the Consolidation of Genre

Several interconnected experiments that use book reviews of fiction to trace the rise and fall of genre concepts