bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Development of Mine Detection Robot System
Authors: Aoyama Hajime , Ishikawa Kazuyoshi , Seki Junya , Okamura Mitsuo , Ishimura Saori , Satsumi Yuichi
Published: March 2012

The Mine Detection Robot supports the mine removal work in countries where mines are buried, such as Afghanistan. The development started from September, 2003. Considering running on rough terrains, the robot has four crawlers, and hydraulic motors in front and rear were serially connected by piping so that they could rotate synchronously. Two work arms were mounted on the robot, one was a horizontal multi-joint SCARA type with motorized 2-link arm, while the other was a vertical multi-joint manipulator with 6 degrees of freedom. Also, domestic evaluation tests were carried out from February to March, 2005, followed by overseas validation tests in Croatia from February to March, 2006. These tests were conducted with a mine detecting senor mounted on the Robot, and the detection performance was evaluated by its mine detection rate.
Integrated Robotic systems for Humanitarian Demining
Authors: Colon E. , De Cubber G. , Ping H. , Habumuremyi J-C , Sahli H. , Baudoin Y.
Published: March 2012

This paper summarises the main results of 10 years of research and development in Humanitarian Demining. The Hudem project focuses on mine detection systems and aims at provided different solutions to support the mine detection operations. Robots using different kind of locomotion systems have been designed and tested on dummy minefields. In order to control these robots, software interfaces, control algorithms, visual positioning and terrain following systems have also been developed. Typical data acquisition results obtained during trial campaigns with robots and data acquisition systems are reported. Lessons learned during the project and future work conclude this paper.
Sustainable Robots for Humanitarian Demining
Authors: Santana Pedro F. , Barata José , Correia Luís
Published: March 2012

This paper proposes a roadmap for the application of advanced technology (in particular robotics) for the humanitarian demining domain. Based on this roadmap, a portable demining kit to handle urgent situations in remote locations is described. A low-cost four-wheel steering robot with a biologically inspired locomotion control is the base of the kit. On going research on a method for all-terrain piloting, under the morphological computation paradigm is also introduced, along with the behavioural architecture underlying it, the Survival Kit. A multi-agent architecture, the DSAAR architecture, is also proposed as a way of promoting short time-to-market and soft integration of different robots in a given mission. A common denominator for all developments is the quest for sustainability with respect to (re-)engineering and maintainability effort, as well as economical and ecological impact. Failing to cope with these requirements greatly reduces the applicability of a given technology to the humanitarian demining domain. Finally it is concluded that biologically inspired design fits considerably well to support a sustainable demining paradigm.
GPR Signal Processing with Geography Adaptive Scanning using Vector Radar for Antipersonal Landmine Detection
Authors: Fukuda Toshio , Hasegawa Yasuhisa , Kawai Yasuhiro , Sato Shinsuke , Zyada Zakarya , Matsuno Takayuki
Published: March 2012

Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) is a promising sensor for landmine detection, however there are two major problems to overcome. One is the rough ground surface. The other problem is the distance between the antennas of GPR. It remains irremovable clutters on a sub-surface image output from GPR by first problem. Geography adaptive scanning is useful to image objects beneath rough ground surface. Second problem makes larger the nonlinearity of the relationship between the time for propagation and the depth of a buried object, imaging the small objects such as an antipersonnel landmine closer to the antennas. In this paper, we modify Kirchhoff migration so as to account for not only the variation of position of the sensor head, but also the antennas alignment of the vector radar. The validity of this method is discussed through application to the signals acquired in experiments.
A Biologically Based Chemo-Sensing UAV for Humanitarian Demining
Authors: Badia Sergi Bermúdez i , Bernardet Ulysses , Guanella Alexis , Pyk Pawel , Verschure Paul F.M.J.
Published: March 2012

Antipersonnel mines, weapons of cheap manufacture but lethal effect, have a high impact on the population even decades after the conflicts have finished. Here we investigate the use of a chemo-sensing Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (cUAV) for demining tasks. We developed a blimp based UAV that is equipped with a broadly tuned metal-thin oxide chemo-sensor. A number of chemical mapping strategies were investigated including two biologically based localization strategies derived from the moth chemical search that can optimize the efficiency of the detection and localization of explosives and therefore be used in the demining process. Additionally, we developed a control layer that allows for both fully autonomous and manual controlled flight, as well as for the scheduling of a fleet of cUAVs. Our results confirm the feasibility of this technology for demining in real-world scenarios and give further support to a biologically based approach where the understanding of biological systems is used to solve difficult engineering problems.
Multisensor Data Fusion for Spaceborne and Airborne Reduction of Mine Suspected Areas
Authors: Bloch Isabelle , Milisavljević Nada , Acheroy Marc
Published: March 2012

The problem of mined area reduction is addressed in this paper. Pieces of information collected using airborne multispectral scanners and airborne full polarimetric SAR, together with context information, all integrated in a geographical information system, are classified and combined in order to find indicators of mine presence and mine absence and provide image analysts with adequate tools to interpret mined scenes during the area reduction process. The paper contains a broad description of the whole problem and of the developed method and focuses on classification and data fusion tools based on the belief function framework and fuzzy sets theory.
Humanitarian Demining: Reality and the Challenge of Technology – The State of the Arts
Authors: Habib Maki K.
Published: March 2012

In the context of humanitarian demining it is essential to have a reliable and accurate sensor or an integration of heterogeneous/homogeneous sensors with efficient and reliable data fusion and processing techniques. In addition, it is necessary to overcome the constrain on the resources to speed up the demining process in terms of time, cost, and safety enhancement of personnel and operation. A portable handheld mine detection approach to sensor movement is slow and hazardous for individual deminers. Armored vehicles may not thoroughly protect the occupants and may be of only limited usefulness in off-road operations. Robotized solutions with effective sensing capabilities properly sized with suitable modularized mechanized structure and well adapted to local conditions of minefields can greatly improve the safety of personnel as well as work efficiency and flexibility. Such intelligent and flexible machines can speed the clearance and perform verifying processes when used in combination with handheld mine detection tools. Furthermore, the use of many robots working and coordinating their movement will improve the productivity of the overall mine detection process through the use of team cooperation and coordination. This paper evaluates the available mine clearance technologies and disscusses their development efforts and limitations to automate tasks related to demining process. In addition, it introduces technical features and design capabilities of a mobile platform needed to accelerate the demining process and achieve safety with cost effective measures.
Situated Dialogue and Spatial Organization: What, Where… and Why?
Authors: Kruijff Geert-Jan M. , Zender Hendrik , Jensfelt Patric , Christensen Henrik I.
Published: March 2012

The paper presents an HRI architecture for human-augmented mapping, which has been implemented and tested on an autonomous mobile robotic platform. Through interaction with a human, the robot can augment its autonomously acquired metric map with qualitative information about locations and objects in the environment. The system implements various interaction strategies observed in independently performed Wizard-of-Oz studies. The paper discusses an ontology-based approach to multi-layered conceptual spatial mapping that provides a common ground for human-robot dialogue. This is achieved by combining acquired knowledge with innate conceptual commonsense knowledge in order to infer new knowledge. The architecture bridges the gap between the rich semantic representations of the meaning expressed by verbal utterances on the one hand and the robot's internal sensor-based world representation on the other. It is thus possible to establish references to spatial areas in a situated dialogue between a human and a robot about their environment. The resulting conceptual descriptions represent qualitative knowledge about locations in the environment that can serve as a basis for achieving a notion of situational awareness.
Methodology & Themes of Human-Robot Interaction: A Growing Research Field
Authors: Dautenhahn Kerstin
Published: March 2012

This article discusses challenges of Human-Robot Interaction, which is a highly inter- and multidisciplinary area. Themes that are important in current research in this lively and growing field are identified and selected work relevant to these themes is discussed.
Self-Imitation and Environmental Scaffolding for Robot Teaching
Authors: Saunders Joe , Nehaniv Chrystopher L. , Dautenhahn Kerstin , Alissandrakis Aris
Published: March 2012

Imitative learning and learning by observation are social mechanisms that allow a robot to acquire knowledge from a human or another robot. However to be able to obtain skills in this way the robot faces many complex issues, one of which is that of finding solutions to the correspondence problem. Evolutionary predecessors to observational imitation may have been self-imitation where an agent avoids the complexities of the correspondence problem by learning and replicating actions it has experienced through the manipulation of its body. We investigate how a robotic control and teaching system using self-imitation can be constructed with reference to psychological models of motor control and ideas from social scaffolding seen in animals. Within these scaffolded environments sets of competencies can be built by constructing hierarchical state/action memory maps of the robot's interaction within that environment. The scaffolding process provides a mechanism to enable learning to be scaled up. The resulting system allows a human trainer to teach a robot new skills and modify skills that the robot may possess. Additionally the system allows the robot to notify the trainer when it is being taught skills it already has in its repertoire and to direct and focus its attention and sensor resources to relevant parts of the skill being executed. We argue that these mechanisms may be a first step towards the transformation from self-imitation to observational imitation. The system is validated on a physical pioneer robot that is taught using self-imitation to track, follow and point to a patterned object.
A Novel Action Selection Architecture in Soccer Simulation Environment Using Neuro-Fuzzy and Bidirectional Neural Networks
Authors: Zafarani Reza , Yazdchi Mohammad Reza
Published: March 2012

Multi-Agent systems have generated lots of excitement in recent years because of its promise as a new paradigm for conceptualizing, designing, and implementing software systems. One of the most important aspects of agent design in AI is the way agent acts or responds to the environment that the agent is acting upon. An effective action selection and behavioral method gives a powerful advantage in overall agent performance. We define a new method of action selection based on probability/priority models, we thereby introduce two efficient ways to determine probabilities using neuro-fuzzy systems and bidirectional neural networks and a new priority based system which maps the human knowledge to the action selection method. Furthermore, a behavior model is introduced to make the model more flexible.
Environmental-Interaction Robotic Systems: Compliant Actuation Approach
Authors: Ghorbani Reza , Wu Qiong
Published: March 2012

Many successful designs of compliant actuators have been recently proposed. However, the challenge of providing passive and active motion in one actuator has remained. In this paper, a novel mechanism for changing the stiffness of the series elastic actuator over a wide range is presented. An accurate force source is provided by introducing the force control using velocity control of the DC motor. Performance and behaviour of the system and controller is investigated through simulation.
Simulation of Intelligent Single Wheel Mobile Robot
Authors: Rashid Maki K.
Published: March 2012

Stabilization of a single wheel mobile robot attracted researcher attentions in robotic area. However, the budget requirements for building experimental setups capable in investigating isolated parameters and implementing others encouraged the development of new simulation methods and techniques that beat such limitations. In this work we have developed a simulation platform for testing different control tactics to stabilize a single wheel mobile robot. The graphic representation of the robot, the dynamic solution, and, the control scheme are all integrated on common computer platform using Visual Basic. Simulation indicates that we can control such robot without knowing the detail of it's internal structure or dynamics behaviour just by looking at it and using manual operation tactics. Twenty five rules are extracted and implemented using Takagi-Sugeno's fuzzy controller with significant achievement in controlling robot motion during the dynamic simulation. The resulted data from the successful implementation of the fuzzy model are used to utilize and train a neurofuzzy controller using ANFIS scheme to produce further improvement in robot performance
Segmentation and Location Computation of Bin Objects
Authors: Hema C.R. , Paulraj M.P. , Nagarajan R. , Sazali Yaacob
Published: March 2012

In this paper we present a stereo vision based system for segmentation and location computation of partially occluded objects in bin picking environments. Algorithms to segment partially occluded objects and to find the object location [midpoint,x, y and z co-ordinates] with respect to the bin area are proposed. The z co-ordinate is computed using stereo images and neural networks. The proposed algorithms is tested using two neural network architectures namely the Radial Basis Function nets and Simple Feedforward nets. The training results fo feedforward nets are found to be more suitable for the current application. The proposed stereo vision system is interfaced with an Adept SCARA Robot to perform bin picking operations. The vision system is found to be effective for partially occluded objects, in the absence of albedo effects. The results are validated through real time bin picking experiments on the Adept Robot.
New Jacobian Matrix and Equations of Motion for a 6 d.o.f Cable-Driven Robot
Authors: Afshari Ali , Meghdari Ali
Published: March 2012

In this paper, we introduce a new method and new motion variables to study kinematics and dynamics of a 6 d.o.f cable-driven robot. Using these new variables and Lagrange equations, we achieve new equations of motion which are different in appearance and several aspects from conventional equations usually used to study 6 d.o.f cable robots. Then, we introduce a new Jacobian matrix which expresses kinematical relations of the robot via a new approach and is basically different from the conventional Jacobian matrix. One of the important characteristics of the new method is computational efficiency in comparison with the conventional method. It is demonstrated that using the new method instead of the conventional one, significantly reduces the computation time required to determine workspace of the robot as well as the time required to solve the equations of motion.
Development and Control of Compliant Hybrid Joints for Human-Symbiotic Mobile Manipulators
Authors: Li Zhijun , Luo Jun , Xi Ning , Ming Aiguo
Published: March 2012

In this paper, we develop a robot with the ability to secure human safety in human-robot collisions arising in our living and working environments. The human-symbiotic service robot using compliant hybrid joints realizes human safety, absorbs impact force, and fulfills task. In unexpected or expected collisions with human, the arising impulse force is attenuated effectively by the proposed physical model. Owing to the displacement of the links, several recovery controls have been developed for the end-effector to maintain its desired task position after the collision. The force attenuation property has been verified through collision simulations and experiments in that the capability of the proposed passive arm in overcoming the limitations of active compliance control has been demonstrated.
Gain Scheduling for Hybrid Force/Velocity Control in Contour Tracking Task
Authors: Ziliani Giacomo , Visioli Antonio , Legnani Giovanni
Published: March 2012

In this paper a gain scheduling approach is proposed for the hybrid force/velocity control of an industrial manipulator employed for the contour tracking of objects of unknown shape. The methodology allows to cope with the configuration dependent dynamics of the manipulator during a constrained motion and therefore a significant improvement of the performance results. Experimental results obtained with an industrial SCARA manipulator demonstrate the effectiveness of the technique.
Kinematic Analysis and Optimization of a New Compliant Parallel Micromanipulator
Authors: Xu Qingsong , Li Yangmin
Published: March 2012

In this paper, a new three translational degrees of freedom (DOF) compliant parallel micromanipulator (CPM) is proposed, which has an excellent accuracy of parallel mechanisms with flexure hinges. The system is established by a proper selection of hardware and analyzed via the derived pseudo-rigid-body model. In view of the physical constraints imposed by both the piezoelectric actuators and flexure hinges, the CPM's reachable workspace is determined analytically, where a maximum cylinder defined as an usable workspace can be inscribed. Moreover, the optimal design of the CPM with the consideration of the usable workspace size and global dexterity index simultaneously is carried out by utilizing the approaches of direct search method, genetic algorithm (GA), and particle swarm optimization (PSO), respectively. The simulation results show that the PSO is the best method for the optimization, and the results are valuable in the design of a new micromanipulator.
Online Self-Tuning Precompensation for a PID Heading Control of a Flying Robot
Authors: Puntunan Sukon , Parnichkun Manukid
Published: March 2012

In this paper, an online self-tuning precompensation for a Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) controller is proposed to control heading direction of a flying robot. The flying robot is a highly nonlinear plant, it is a modified X-Cell 60 radio-controlled helicopter. Heading direction is controlled to evaluate efficiency of the proposed precompensation algorithm. The heading control is based on the conventional PID control combined with an online self-tuning precompensation so that both the desired transient and steady state responses can be achieved. The precompensation is applied to compensate unsatisfied performances of the conventional PID controller by adjusting reference command. The precompensator is based on Takagi-Sugeno's type fuzzy model, which learns to tune itself online. The main contribution of the proposed controller is to enhance the controlled performance of the conventional PID controller by adding a self-tuning precompensator on the existing conventional PID controller. The results show that the conventional PID controller with an online self-tuning precompensation has a superior performance than the conventional PID controller. In addition, the online self-tuning precompensation algorithm is implemented simply by adding the precompensator to the existing conventional PID controller and letting the self-tuning mechanism tune itself online.
Kalman Based Finite State Controller for Partially Observable Domains
Authors: Sardag Alp , Akin H. Levent
Published: March 2012

A real world environment is often partially observable by the agents either because of noisy sensors or incomplete perception. Moreover, it has continuous state space in nature, and agents must decide on an action for each point in internal continuous belief space. Consequently, it is convenient to model this type of decision-making problems as Partially Observable Markov Decision Processes (POMDPs) with continuous observation and state space. Most of the POMDP methods whether approximate or exact assume that the underlying world dynamics or POMDP parameters such as transition and observation probabilities are known. However, for many real world environments it is very difficult if not impossible to obtain such information. We assume that only the internal dynamics of the agent, such as the actuator noise, interpretation of the sensor suite, are known. Using these internal dynamics, our algorithm, namely Kalman Based Finite State Controller (KBFSC), constructs an internal world model over the continuous belief space, represented by a finite state automaton. Constructed automaton nodes are points of the continuous belief space sharing a common best action and a common uncertainty level. KBFSC deals with continuous Gaussian-based POMDPs. It makes use of Kalman Filter for belief state estimation, which also is an efficient method to prune unvisited segments of the belief space and can foresee the reachable belief points approximately calculating the horizon N policy. KBFSC does not use an “explore and update” approach in the value calculation as TD-learning. Therefore KBFSC does not have an extensive exploration-exploitation phase. Using the MDP case reward and the internal dynamics of the agent, KBFSC can automatically construct the finite state automaton (FSA) representing the approximate optimal policy without the need for discretization of the state and observation space. Moreover, the policy always converges for POMDP problems.
Sociable Robots Through Self-Maintained Energy
Authors: Ngo Trung Dung , Schioler Henrik
Published: March 2012

Research of autonomous mobile robots has mostly emphasized interaction and coordination that are natually inspired from biological behavior of birds, insects, and fish: flocking, foraging, collecting, and sharing. However, most research has been only focused on autonomous behaviors in order to perform robots like animals, whereas it is lacked of determinant to those behaviours: energy. Approaching to clusted amimal and the higher, collective and sharing food among individuals are major activity to keep society being. This paper issues an approach to sociable robots using self-maintained energy in cooperative mobile robots, which is dominantly inspired from swarm behavior of collecting and sharing food of honey-bee and ant. Autonomous mobile robots are usually equipped with a finite energy, thus they can operate in a finite time. To overcome the finitude, we describe practical deployment of mobile robots that are capable of carrying and exchanging fuel to other robots. Mechanism implementation including modular hardware and control architecture to demonstrate the capabicities of the approach is presented. Subsequently, the battery exchange algorithm basically based on probabilistic modeling of total energy on each robot located in its local vicinity is described. The paper is concluded with challenging works of chain of mobile robots, rescue, repair, and relation of heterogeneous robots.
Comparison of Localization Methods for a Robot Soccer Team
Authors: Kose Hatice , Celik Buluc , Akin H. Levent
Published: March 2012

In this work, several localization algorithms that are designed and implemented for Cerberus'05 Robot Soccer Team are analyzed and compared. These algorithms are used for global localization of autonomous mobile agents in the robotic soccer domain, to overcome the uncertainty in the sensors, environment and the motion model. The algorithms are Reverse Monte Carlo Localization (R-MCL), Simple Localization (S-Loc) and Sensor Resetting Localization (SRL). R-MCL is a hybrid method based on both Markov Localization (ML) and Monte Carlo Localization (MCL) where the ML module finds the region where the robot should be and MCL predicts the geometrical location with high precision by selecting samples in this region. S-Loc is another localization method where just one sample per percept is drawn, for global localization. Within this method another novel method My Environment (ME) is designed to hold the history and overcome the lack of information due to the drastically decrease in the number of samples in S-Loc. ME together with S-Loc is used in the Technical Challenges in Robocup 2005 and play an important role in ranking the First Place in the Challenges. In this work, these methods together with SRL, which is a widely used successful localization algorithm, are tested with both offline and real-time tests. First they are tested on a challenging data set that is used by many researches and compared in terms of error rate against different levels of noise, and sparsity. Besides time required recovering from kidnapping and speed of the methods are tested and compared. Then their performances are tested with real-time tests with scenarios like the ones in the Technical Challenges in ROBOCUP. The main aim is to find the best method which is very robust and fast and requires less computational power and memory compared to similar approaches and is accurate enough for high level decision making which is vital for robot soccer.
Use of Colour and Shape Constraints in Vision-based Valve Operation by Robot
Authors: Xu De , Tan Min , Jiang Zemin , Hu Huosheng
Published: March 2012

This paper proposes a new strategy for a humanoid robot to approach and operate a valve based on colour and shape constraints. It consists of four stages, namely rough base approaching, fine base approaching, rough hand approaching and fine hand approaching and grasping. The robot estimates the object's position using its stereo-vision at the first stage. A new visual positioning method is used to determine the valve's position and pose in the robot's frame in the second stage. When its hands are near the valve, a visual servoing method is employed to catch the handle of the valve via cameras in end-effectors. The advantages of both eye-in-head and eye-to-hand systems are exploited. Experimental results are presented to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method.
Fluid Model of Sliding Suction Cup of Wall-climbing Robots
Authors: Zhi-yuan Qian , Yan-zheng Zhao , Zhuang Fu , Yan Wang
Published: March 2012

The adhering capability, one of the most important performance indexes of wall-climbing robots(WCRs), should be taken into account when a WCR is designed. This paper proposes a novel approach for investigating the adhering characteristics of the sliding suction cup (SSCs) using fluid network theory to enhance the adhering capability of WCRs. The fluid models of the SSCs of two WCRs are developed and equivalent circuits in three cases are presented. The dynamic responses of negative pressure in SSCs are obtained and validated by a set of experiments. It indicated that the theoretical analysis is reasonable and can give some valuable design criteria on the structure parameters of SSCs and control strategies of suction force of SSCs.
A Parallel Randomized Path Planner for Robot Navigation
Authors: Sengupta S.
Published: March 2012

Computation of a collision-free path for a movable object among obstacles is an important problem in the fields of robotics, CIM and AI. Various automatic task level programming systems can be build for robot guidance, teleoperation, assembly and disassembly among others, if a suitable method for motion planning is available. In the basic variation of motion planning, the task is to generate a collision-free path for a movable object among known and static obstacles. Classically the problem was defined for a rigid 6 degrees-of-freedom body as ‘the piano mover's problem’. However, the majority of the research has been conducted in the field of robotics, often under the title of path planning. Rapidly-Exploring Random Trees (RRTs) are a recently developed representation on which fast continuous domain path planners can be based. In this work, we have built a parallel path planning system based on RRTs that interleaves planning and execution, first evaluating it in simulation and then applying it to physical robots. Our distributed algorithm, PRRT (parallel RRT), introduces a parallel extension of previous RRT work, the process splitting and parallel cost penalty search with a comment on Real Time Stagnancy reduction, which improves re-planning efficiency, decreases latency involved in finding feasible paths and the quality of generated paths. PRRT is successfully applied to a real-time multi-robot system. In this paper we illustrate how it is possible to implement a parallel version of RRT based motion planner which yields optimal speed up.
An Omnidirectional Mobile Millimeters Size Micro-Robot with Novel Duel-Wheels
Authors: Li Zhenbo , Chen Jiapin , Tang Xiaoning , Zhang Chen
Published: March 2012

A millimeters size omni-directional mobile micro-robot is presented in this paper. A unique duel-wheel structure is designed for no-slip motion during the steering, by turning the slip friction between the wheel and ground into rolling friction. The robot was driven by four electromagnetic micromotors with 2.1mm×2.1mm×1.3mm size. Three of them are for translation and the other one is for rotation. Kinematics model is analyzed to prove the omni-directional mobility. Virtual-Winding Approach (VWA) and PWM-Based Vector-Synthesize Approach(PBVSA) current control methods are presented to satisfy a requirement of higher positioning accuracy. Experimental results demonstrate the feasibility of this concept.
Novel Mobile Robot Simultaneous Loclization and Mapping Using Rao-Blackwellised Particle Filter
Authors: Maohai Li , Bingrong Hong , Ronghua Luo
Published: March 2012

This paper presents the novel method of mobile robot simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM), which is implemented by using the Rao-Blackwellised particle filter (RBPF) for monocular vision-based autonomous robot in unknown indoor environment. The particle filter is combined with unscented Kalman filter (UKF) to extending the path posterior by sampling new poses that integrate the current observation. The landmark position estimation and update is implemented through the unscented transform (UT). Furthermore, the number of resampling steps is determined adaptively, which seriously reduces the particle depletion problem. Monocular CCD camera mounted on the robot tracks the 3D natural point landmarks, which are structured with matching image feature pairs extracted through Scale Invariant Feature Transform (SIFT). The matching for multi-dimension SIFT features which are highly distinctive due to a special descriptor is implemented with a KD-Tree in the time cost of O(log2N). Experiments on the robot Pioneer3 in our real indoor environment show that our method is of high precision and stability.
Robust Control of Welding Robot for Tracking a Rectangular Welding Line
Authors: Ngo Manh Dung , Duy Vo Hoang , Phuong Nguyen Thanh , Kim Sang Bong
Published: March 2012

This paper highlights a welding robot (WR) for its end effector to track a rectangular welding line (RWL). The WR includes five actuators which use a DC motor as a power source. Two controllers are proposed to control the WR's end effector: a main controller and a servo controller. Firstly, based on WR's kinematic equations and its feedback errors using backstepping method the main controller is proposed to design the reference-inputs for the WR's actuators in order that the WR's end effector tracks the RWL. Secondly, based on the dynamic equation of WR's actuator, the servo controller is designed using an active disturbance rejection control method. Finally, a control system incorporated with the main controller and the servo controllers make the WR's end effector robustly track a RWL in the presence of the modeling uncertainty and disturbances during the welding process. In experiment, the main controller which has a function as a master of the control system links to the five servo controllers which have a function as a slave via I2C communication. The effectiveness of the proposed control system is proven through the simulation and experimental results.
Exploration and Navigation for Mobile Robots With Perceptual Limitations
Authors: Romero Leonardo , Morales Eduardo F. , Sucar L. Enrique
Published: March 2012

To learn a map of an environment a mobile robot has to explore its workspace using its sensors. Sensors are noisy and have perceptual limitations that must be considered while learning a map. This paper considers a mobile robot with sensor perceptual limitations and introduces a new method for exploring and navigating autonomously in indoor environments. To minimize the risk of collisions as well as to not exceed the range of sensors, we introduce the concept of a travel space as a way to associate costs to grid cells of the map, based on distances to obstacles. During exploration the mobile robot minimizes its movements, including rotations, to reach the nearest unexplored region of the environment, using a dynamic programming algorithm. Once the exploration ends, the travel space is used to form a roadmap, a net of safe roads that the mobile robot can use for navigation. These exploration and navigation method are tested using a simulated and a real mobile robot with promising results.
Tracking Trajectory Planning of Space Manipulator for Capturing Operation
Authors: Huang Panfeng , Xu Yangsheng , Liang Bin
Published: March 2012

On-orbit rescuing uncontrolled spinning satellite (USS) using space robot is a great challenge for future space service. This paper mainly present a trajectory planning method of space manipulator that can track, approach and catch the USS in free-floating situation. According to the motion characteristics of USS, we plan a spiral ascending trajectory for space manipulator to approach towards USS in Cartesian space. However, it is difficult to map this trajectory into the joint space and realize feasible motion in joint space because of dynamics singularities and dynamics couple of space robot system. Therefore, we utilize interval algorithm to handle these difficulties. The simulation study verifies that the spiral ascending trajectory can been realized. Moreover, the motion of manipulator is smooth and stable, the disturbance to the base is so limited that the attitude control can compensate it.
Developing a Psychologically Inspired Cognitive Architecture for Robotic Control: The Symbolic and Subsymbolic Robotic Intelligence Control System (SS-RICS)
Authors: Kelley Troy Dale
Published: March 2012

This paper describes the ongoing development of a robotic control architecture that was inspired by computational cognitive architectures from the discipline of cognitive psychology. The robotic control architecture combines symbolic and subsymbolic representations of knowledge into a unified control structure. The architecture is organized as a goal driven, serially executing, production system at the highest symbolic level; and a multiple algorithm, parallel executing, simple collection of algorithms at the lowest subsymbolic level. The goal is to create a system that will progress through the same cognitive developmental milestones as do human infants. Common robotics problems of localization, object recognition, and object permanence are addressed within the specified framework.
A New Solution to Map Dynamic Indoor Environments
Authors: Huang G. Q. , Rad A. B. , Wong Y. K.
Published: March 2012

In this paper, we propose a new algorithm of mapping dynamic indoor environments. Instead of accurate but expensive laser, we employ sonar and camera to map dynamic structured indoor environments. Based on fuzzy-tuned grid-based map (FTGBM), we use two methods: sonar temporal difference (STD) and statistical background subtraction (SBS), to detect and track moving objects when mapping dynamic environments. The former is a consistency-based method realized by monitoring a sequence of temporal lattice maps for a certain number of measurement periods to detect moving objects by using sonars; and the latter is a background subtraction technique which adopts an expectation maximization (EM) learned 3-class mixture of Gaussians to model the nonstationary background relied on sufficient update during mapping process. After finding the moving objects, we propose a fuzzy-tuned integration (FTI) method to incorporate the results of motion detection into the mapping process. The simulation and experiment demonstrate the capabilities of our approach.
Internet Remote Control Interface for a Multipurpose Robotic Arm
Authors: Wronka Cyprian M. , Dunnigan Matthew W.
Published: March 2012

This paper presents an Internet remote control interface for a MITSUBISHI PA10-6CE manipulator established for the purpose of the ROBOT museum exhibition during spring and summer 2004. The robotic manipulator is a part of the Intelligent Robotic Systems Laboratory at Heriot – Watt University, which has been established to work on dynamic and kinematic aspects of manipulator control in the presence of environmental disturbances. The laboratory has been enriched by a simple vision system consisting of three web-cameras to broadcast the live images of the robots over the Internet. The Interface comprises of the TCP/IP server providing command parsing and execution using the open controller architecture of the manipulator and a client Java applet web-site providing a simple robot control interface.
Toward Optic Flow Regulation for Wall-Following and Centring Behaviours
Authors: Serres Julien , Ruffier Franck , Viollet Stephane , Franceschini Nicolas
Published: March 2012

In our ongoing project on the autonomous guidance of Micro-Air Vehicles (MAVs) in confined indoor and outdoor environments, we have developed a bio-inspired optic flow based autopilot enabling a hovercraft to travel safely, and avoid the walls of a corridor. The hovercraft is an air vehicle endowed with natural roll and pitch stabilization characteristics, in which planar flight control can be developed conveniently. It travels at a constant ground height (∼2mm) and senses the environment by means of two lateral eyes that measure the right and left optic flows (OFs). The visuomotor feedback loop, which is called LORA(1) (Lateral Optic flow Regulation Autopilot, Mark 1), consists of a lateral OF regulator that adjusts the hovercraft's yaw velocity and keeps the lateral OF constant on one wall equal to an OF set-point. Simulations have shown that the hovercraft manages to navigate in a corridor at a “preset” groundspeed (1m/s) without requiring a supervisor to make it switch abruptly between the control-laws corresponding to behaviours such as automatic wall-following, automatic centring, and automatically reacting to an opening encountered on a wall. The passive visual sensors and the simple control system used here are suitable for use on MAVs with an avionic payload of only a few grams.
Air Muscle Actuated Low Cost Humanoid Hand
Authors: Scarfe Peter , Lindsay Euan
Published: March 2012

The control of humanoid robot hands has historically been expensive due to the cost of precision actuators. This paper presents the design and implementation of a low-cost air muscle actuated humanoid hand developed at Curtin University of Technology. This hand offers 10 individually controllable degrees of freedom ranging from the elbow to the fingers, with overall control handled through a computer GUI. The hand is actuated through 20 McKibben-style air muscles, each supplied by a pneumatic pressure-balancing valve that allows for proportional control to be achieved with simple and inexpensive components. The hand was successfully able to perform a number of human-equivalent tasks, such as grasping and relocating objects.
Device Server for a Miniature Mobile Robot
Authors: Ozkan Metin , Parlaktuna Osman
Published: March 2012

This paper describes a device server for a miniature mobile robot. Generally, miniature robots have low-size memory and relatively slow microcontroller to realize complicated tasks. Therefore, a device server for small sized mobile robots is proposed with the intention of increasing their capabilities. The proposed software system runs on the microcontroller of the robot, and serves a collection of sensors and actuators over serial rf transceiver to authorized clients. The system has modularity and multi-tasking capability. The proposed system is implemented on a Z-80 microprocessor-controlled mobile robot. It is shown that proposed system is capable of serving one client and two processes.
Localisation and World Modelling: An Architectural Perspective
Authors: Micucci Daniela , Sorrenti Domenico G. , Tisato Francesco , Marchese Fabio M.
Published: March 2012

Autonomous robot world modelling is a “chicken-and-egg” problem: position estimation needs a model of the world, whereas world modelling needs the robot position. Most of the works dealing with this issue propose holistic solutions under an algorithmic perspective by neglecting software architecture issues. This results in huge and monolithic pieces of software where implementation details reify strategic decisions. An architectural approach founded on separation of concerns may help to break the loop. Localisation and modelling, acting on different time scales, are mostly independent of each other. Sometimes synchronisation is required. Whenever needed, an external strategy tunes the relative rates of the two activities. The paper introduces rationale, design, and implementation of such a system which relies on Real-Time Performers, a software architecture providing suitable architectural abstractions to observe and control the system's temporal behaviour.
Robotic Software Integration Using MARIE
Authors: Côté Carle , Brosseau Yannick , Létourneau Dominic , Raïevsky Clément , Michaud François
Published: March 2012

This paper presents MARIE, a middleware framework oriented towards developing and integrating new and existing software for robotic systems. By using a generic communication framework, MARIE aims to create a flexible distributed component system that allows robotics developers to share software programs and algorithms, and design prototypes rapidly based on their own integration needs. The use of MARIE is illustrated with the design of a socially interactive autonomous mobile robot platform capable of map building, localization, navigation, tasks scheduling, sound source localization, tracking and separation, speech recognition and generation, visual tracking, message reading and graphical interaction using a touch screen interface.
Design and Implementation of Modular Software for Programming Mobile Robots
Authors: Farinelli Alessandro , Grisetti Giorgio , Iocchi Luca
Published: March 2012

This article describes a software development toolkit for programming mobile robots, that has been used on different platforms and for different robotic applications. We address design choices, implementation issues and results in the realization of our robot programming environment, that has been devised and built from many people since 1998. We believe that the proposed framework is extremely useful not only for experienced robotic software developers, but also for students approaching robotic research projects.
YARP: Yet Another Robot Platform
Authors: Metta Giorgio , Fitzpatrick Paul , Natale Lorenzo
Published: March 2012

We describe YARP, Yet Another Robot Platform, an open-source project that encapsulates lessons from our experience in building humanoid robots. The goal of YARP is to minimize the effort devoted to infrastructure-level software development by facilitating code reuse, modularity and so maximize research-level development and collaboration. Humanoid robotics is a “bleeding edge” field of research, with constant flux in sensors, actuators, and processors. Code reuse and maintenance is therefore a significant challenge. We describe the main problems we faced and the solutions we adopted. In short, the main features of YARP include support for inter-process communication, image processing as well as a class hierarchy to ease code reuse across different hardware platforms. YARP is currently used and tested on Windows, Linux and QNX6 which are common operating systems used in robotics.
Open Modular Robot Control Architecture for Assembly Using the Task Frame Formalism
Authors: Maaß Jochen , Kohn Nnamdi , Hesselbach Jürgen
Published: March 2012

The task frame formalism allows the programmer to overcome the drawbacks of the traditional robot oriented assembly programming, moving the programmer's focus on the robot task. Additionally skill primitives contribute to a more natural programming paradigm. In this paper a robot control architecture is presented that implements both of these concepts providing a framework to easily implement new control features. Focus is put on a novel modular trajectory generator and the applied three-layered scheduling design. This architecture is based on the communication middleware MIRPA-X and has been experimentally validated on the HEXA parallel manipulator. The future use of distributed computing and runtime scheduling optimization are discussed.
Discussion of Exemplary Metrics for Multi-Robot Systems for Formation Navigation
Authors: Schneider Frank E. , Wildermuth Dennis , Kräußling Andreas
Published: March 2012

This work addresses the problem of metrics for multi-robot systems. It is often desirable to compare different strategies or algorithms for similar problems, e.g. mapping or localization. Since these are often real time applications, classical criterions like time or space complexity are not very helpful. Several other metrics have been suggested. In this paperformation navigation is used as an example application. Possible metrics are presented and discussed, and two of them are used to exemplarily evaluate the results of several formation experiments. Problems and drawbacks of these metrics are discussed and preconditions for a general metricfor the formation problem are adumbrated. Finally, first steps towards a generic and generally applicable metric are presented by means of simulation experiments.