2 research outputs found
Development of Extrospective Systems for Mobile Robotic Vehicles.
Extrospection is the process of receiving knowledge of the outside world through the senses.
On robotic platforms this is primarily focussed on determining distances to objects of interest
and is achieved through the use of ranging sensors. Any hardware implemented on mobile
robotic platforms, including sensors, must ideally be small in size and weight, have good
power efficiency, be self-contained and interface easily with the existing platform hardware.
The development of stable, expandable and interchangeable mobile robot based sensing
systems is crucial to the establishment of platforms on which complex robotic research can be
conducted and evaluated in real world situations.
This thesis details the design and development of two extrospective systems for incorporation
in the Victoria University of Wellington's fleet of mobile robotic platforms. The first system
is a generic intelligent sensor network. Fundamental to this system has been the development
of network architecture and protocols that provide a stable scheme for connecting a large
number of sensors to a mobile robotic platform with little or no dependence on the existing
hardware configuration of the platform. A prototype sensor network comprising fourteen
infrared position sensitive detectors providing a short to medium distance ranging system
(0.2 - 3 m) with a 360' field of view has been successfully developed and tested.
The second system is a redesign of an existing prototype full-field image ranger system. The
redesign has yielded a smaller, mobile version of the prototype system capable of ranging
medium to long distances (0 - 15 m) with a 22.2' - 16.5' field-of-view. This ranger system
can now be incorporated onto mobile robotic platforms for further research into the
capabilities of full-field image ranging as a form of extrospection on a mobile platform
Development of Extrospective Systems for Mobile Robotic Vehicles.
Extrospection is the process of receiving knowledge of the outside world through the senses.
On robotic platforms this is primarily focussed on determining distances to objects of interest
and is achieved through the use of ranging sensors. Any hardware implemented on mobile
robotic platforms, including sensors, must ideally be small in size and weight, have good
power efficiency, be self-contained and interface easily with the existing platform hardware.
The development of stable, expandable and interchangeable mobile robot based sensing
systems is crucial to the establishment of platforms on which complex robotic research can be
conducted and evaluated in real world situations.
This thesis details the design and development of two extrospective systems for incorporation
in the Victoria University of Wellington's fleet of mobile robotic platforms. The first system
is a generic intelligent sensor network. Fundamental to this system has been the development
of network architecture and protocols that provide a stable scheme for connecting a large
number of sensors to a mobile robotic platform with little or no dependence on the existing
hardware configuration of the platform. A prototype sensor network comprising fourteen
infrared position sensitive detectors providing a short to medium distance ranging system
(0.2 - 3 m) with a 360' field of view has been successfully developed and tested.
The second system is a redesign of an existing prototype full-field image ranger system. The
redesign has yielded a smaller, mobile version of the prototype system capable of ranging
medium to long distances (0 - 15 m) with a 22.2' - 16.5' field-of-view. This ranger system
can now be incorporated onto mobile robotic platforms for further research into the
capabilities of full-field image ranging as a form of extrospection on a mobile platform