482 research outputs found
Synergy-based Hand Pose Sensing: Reconstruction Enhancement
Low-cost sensing gloves for reconstruction posture provide measurements which
are limited under several regards. They are generated through an imperfectly
known model, are subject to noise, and may be less than the number of Degrees
of Freedom (DoFs) of the hand. Under these conditions, direct reconstruction of
the hand posture is an ill-posed problem, and performance can be very poor.
This paper examines the problem of estimating the posture of a human hand
using(low-cost) sensing gloves, and how to improve their performance by
exploiting the knowledge on how humans most frequently use their hands. To
increase the accuracy of pose reconstruction without modifying the glove
hardware - hence basically at no extra cost - we propose to collect, organize,
and exploit information on the probabilistic distribution of human hand poses
in common tasks. We discuss how a database of such an a priori information can
be built, represented in a hierarchy of correlation patterns or postural
synergies, and fused with glove data in a consistent way, so as to provide a
good hand pose reconstruction in spite of insufficient and inaccurate sensing
data. Simulations and experiments on a low-cost glove are reported which
demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed techniques.Comment: Submitted to International Journal of Robotics Research (2012
Consensus Computation in Unreliable Networks: A System Theoretic Approach
This work addresses the problem of ensuring trustworthy computation in a
linear consensus network. A solution to this problem is relevant for several
tasks in multi-agent systems including motion coordination, clock
synchronization, and cooperative estimation. In a linear consensus network, we
allow for the presence of misbehaving agents, whose behavior deviate from the
nominal consensus evolution. We model misbehaviors as unknown and unmeasurable
inputs affecting the network, and we cast the misbehavior detection and
identification problem into an unknown-input system theoretic framework. We
consider two extreme cases of misbehaving agents, namely faulty (non-colluding)
and malicious (Byzantine) agents. First, we characterize the set of inputs that
allow misbehaving agents to affect the consensus network while remaining
undetected and/or unidentified from certain observing agents. Second, we
provide worst-case bounds for the number of concurrent faulty or malicious
agents that can be detected and identified. Precisely, the consensus network
needs to be 2k+1 (resp. k+1) connected for k malicious (resp. faulty) agents to
be generically detectable and identifiable by every well behaving agent. Third,
we quantify the effect of undetectable inputs on the final consensus value.
Fourth, we design three algorithms to detect and identify misbehaving agents.
The first and the second algorithm apply fault detection techniques, and
affords complete detection and identification if global knowledge of the
network is available to each agent, at a high computational cost. The third
algorithm is designed to exploit the presence in the network of weakly
interconnected subparts, and provides local detection and identification of
misbehaving agents whose behavior deviates more than a threshold, which is
quantified in terms of the interconnection structure
Synergy-Based Hand Pose Sensing: Optimal Glove Design
In this paper we study the problem of improving human hand pose sensing
device performance by exploiting the knowledge on how humans most frequently
use their hands in grasping tasks. In a companion paper we studied the problem
of maximizing the reconstruction accuracy of the hand pose from partial and
noisy data provided by any given pose sensing device (a sensorized "glove")
taking into account statistical a priori information. In this paper we consider
the dual problem of how to design pose sensing devices, i.e. how and where to
place sensors on a glove, to get maximum information about the actual hand
posture. We study the continuous case, whereas individual sensing elements in
the glove measure a linear combination of joint angles, the discrete case,
whereas each measure corresponds to a single joint angle, and the most general
hybrid case, whereas both continuous and discrete sensing elements are
available. The objective is to provide, for given a priori information and
fixed number of measurements, the optimal design minimizing in average the
reconstruction error. Solutions relying on the geometrical synergy definition
as well as gradient flow-based techniques are provided. Simulations of
reconstruction performance show the effectiveness of the proposed optimal
design.Comment: Submitted to International Journal of Robotics Research 201
Social Robotics and Societies of Robots
The sustainability of social robotics, like other ambitious research programs, depends on the identification of lines of inquiry that are coherent with its visionary goals while satisfying more stringent constraints of feasibility and near-term payoffs. Within these constraints, this article outlines one line of inquiry that seems especially viable: development of a society of robots operating within the physical environments of everyday human life, developing rich robot–robot social exchanges, and yet, refraining from any physical contact with human beings. To pursue this line of inquiry effectively, sustained interactions between specialized research communities in robotics are needed. Notably, suitable robotic hand design and control principles must be adopted to achieve proper robotic manipulation of objects designed for human hands that one finds in human habitats. The Pisa-IIT SoftHand project promises to meet these manipulation needs by a principled combination of sensorimotor synergies and soft robotics actuation, which aims at capturing how the biomechanical structure and neural control strategies of the human hand interact so as to simplify and solve both control and sensing problems
On the Robust Synthesis of Logical Consensus Algorithms for Distributed Intrusion Detection
We introduce a novel consensus mechanism by which the agents of a network can reach an agreement on the value of a shared logical vector function depending on binary input events. Based on results on the convergence of finite-state iteration systems, we provide a technique to design logical consensus systems that minimizing the number of messages to be exchanged and the number of steps before consensus is reached, and tolerating a bounded number of failed or malicious agents. We provide sufficient joint conditions on the input visibility and the communication topology for the method’s applicability. We describe the application of our method to two distributed network intrusion detection problems
Correction of Force Errors for Flexible Manipulators in Quasi-Static Conditions
This paper deals with the problem of controlling the interactions of flexible manipulators with their environment. For executing a force control task, a manipulator with intrinsic (mechanical) compliance has some advantages over the rigid manipulators commonly employed in position control tasks. In particular, stability margins of the force control loop are increased, and robustness to uncertainties in the model of the environment is improved for compliant arms. On the other hand, the deformations of the arm under the applied load give rise to errors, that ultimately reflect in force control errors. This paper addresses the problem of evaluating these errors, and of compensating for them with suitable joint angle corrections. A solution to this problem is proposed in the simplifying assumptions that an accurate model of the arm flexibility is known, and that quasi-static corrections are of interest.MIT Artificial Intelligence Laborator
A Packet-Switching Strategy for Uncertain Nonlinear Networked Control Systems
International audienceThis paper addresses the problem of stabilizing uncertain nonlinear plants over a shared limited-bandwidth packet-switching network for which both the time between consecutive accesses to each node (MATI) and the transmission and processing delays (MAD) for measurements and control packets are bounded. While conventional control loops are designed to work with circuit-switching networks, where dedicated communication channels provide almost constant bit rate and delay, many networks, such as Ethernet, organize data transmission in packets, carrying larger amount of information at less predictable rates. To avoid the bandwidth waste due to the relatively large overhead inherent to packet transmission, we exploit the packet payload to carry longer control sequences. To this aim we adopt a model-based approach to remotely compute a predictive control signal on a suitable time horizon, which leads to effectively reducing the bandwidth required to guarantee stability. Communications are assumed to be ruled by a rather general protocol model, which encompasses many protocols used in practice. As a distinct improvement over the state of the art, our result is shown to be robust with respect to sector-bounded uncertainties in the plant model. Namely, an explicit bound on the combined effects of MATI and MAD is provided as a function of the basin of attraction and the model accuracy
Exploiting Packet Size in Uncertain Nonlinear Networked Control Systems
12International audienceThis paper addresses the problem of stabilizing uncertain nonlinear plants over a shared limited-bandwidth packet-switching network. While conventional control loops are designed to work with circuit-switching networks, where dedicated communication channels provide almost constant bit rate and delay, many networks, such as Ethernet, organize data transmission in packets, carrying larger amount of information at less predictable rates. To avoid the bandwidth waste due to the relatively large overhead inherent to packet transmission, we exploit the packet payload to carry longer control sequences. To this aim we adopt a model-based approach to remotely compute a predictive control signal on a suitable time horizon, which leads to effectively reducing the bandwidth required to guarantee stability. We consider networks for which both the time between consecutive accesses to each node (MATI) and the transmission and processing delays (MAD) for measurements and control packets are bounded. Communications are assumed to be ruled by a rather general protocol model, which encompasses many protocols used in practice. As a distinct improvement over the state of the art, our result is shown to be robust with respect to sector-bounded uncertainties in the plant model. Namely, an explicit bound on the combined effects of MATI and MAD is provided as a function of the basin of attraction and the model accuracy. A case study is presented to appreciate the improvements induced by the packet-based control strategy over existing methods
- …