Query: Artificial smell detection for robotic navigation,in: Advanced Robotics

Candidate papers:

abstract: A software and a hardware system for artificial smell detection is described. It has been designed and implemented on a local CPU to detect and follow gradients of odor concentration. It is based on inorganic semiconductor sensors, but the method is also useful for organic sensors. When mounted on an autonomous platform it is used as a guide for robotic navigation.<ETX>
author_names: Rony Rozas

Javier Molina Morales

D Vega
title: Artificial smell detection for robotic navigation
venue: Fifth International Conference on Advanced Robotics 'Robots in Unstructured Environments
year: 1991

abstract: In light of our field/s progress in making programming accessible to novices, we contemplate an even more ambitious goal: make AI accessible to all. The Cozmo robot by Anki is revolutionizing consumer and educational robotics through built in computer vision and artificial intelligence algorithms. Calypso is a scaffolded robot programming environment for Cozmo inspired by Microsoft/s Kodu Game Lab. Calypso allows novices to program with advanced features such as visual recognition of objects and faces, simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) landmark based navigation, and speech input. Like Kodu, Calypso emphasizes rule based programming with high level primitives such as "see" "hear" "move toward" and "grab" and it uses an Xbox game controller as its primary interface. User testing of Calypso has shown that children as young as eight can easily use it to program Cozmo. This demo will show off some of Calypso/s most striking features, including real time graphical display of the robot/s world map, object detection with OpenCV, and speech recognition. We will share a Calypso curriculum that can be adapted to students from primary school through undergraduates. The demo will conclude with a discussion of the changes coming in both K 12 and undergraduate robotics instruction as we move from simple control of servos to true vision guided mobile manipulators. For an advance look at Calypso, please see https:/Calypso.software.
author_names: David S Touretzky

Christina Gardner-McCune
title: Calypso for Cozmo: Robotic AI for Everyone (Abstract Only)
venue: SIGCSE
year: 2018

abstract: In the present scenario, a blind person is compelled to rely on another person and cannot travel independently to any place without the help of others. This project aims to develop a smart stick for the visually impaired people. The smart stick will include a GPS/GSM system and obstacle detection mechanism. The GPS system is used by the user to know the current location and also to notify his friend or relative about the current location. This could result in a better movement of the user. A voice module will be attached so that the stick can alert the user about the obstacles and the current location name whenever necessary. GSM is used to send the message about the current location to his friend or relative and the current location announcement which involves text to speech conversion is given to the user by the system. INTRODUCTION Visual impairment can limit people's ability to perform everyday tasks and can affect their quality of life and ability to interact with the surrounding world. Blindness, the most severe form of visual impairment, can reduce people's ability to perform daily tasks, and move about unaided. Good quality rehabilitation allows people with different degrees of visual impairment to fully profit from life, achieve their goals and be active and productive in today's society. Ample efforts have been made to aid the blind by innovating and improving technologies. According to [23] "The emerging ethics of human centric GPS tracking and monitoring" the main factors focused while tracking a person are privacy, accuracy and accessibility. By the introduction of a basic sensor, the provisions to the aid of blind people have remarkably increased. Many universities and companies like IBM have given a part of their focus to the development of aids for the blind people. Some of the popular ones are smart canes and obstacle sensors. Recent development includes self driving cars and smart glasses. In the last 30 years, various other strides that have been developed are the text or speech softwares and smartphone apps. Moreover the systems that are being developed on robotics and artificial intelligence will be very advantageous to them as well. One of the major factors in developing these technical aids is the compatibility with the user. He should not have trouble getting acquainted with the product. The features of the product should not be too difficult to use. Even the notification systems used to alert the blind should be comfortable and reliable. Another major factor is the cost of such products. Since they are already paying for treatments or other nursing cares, the price of the product should be in the range that is reasonable. Other feature of these products should be the durability. The users might not be able to charge the system. So, appropriate measure should be taken for it. To aid visually impaired and to provide a compact and complete solution, a smart stick can be developed which will include a GPS system, obstacle detection mechanism and an audio module, so that the stick can instruct the directions to the user. The obstacle detection mechanism is combined with navigation and location detection using GPS GSM and an audio module with Bluetooth transceiver to provide a better solution than the already existing solutions. The technologies we plan to use are sonar technology, GPS navigation, GSM network, voice recognition and notification. Sonar technology is used for obstacle detection. The principle of the system works in the way that the detector sends and receives a signal. Upon the reception of the signal, the distance is calculated using the time it took for the signal to reflect back. It is a simple procedure which works with the properties of electromagnetic waves. This is mainly used to find distances in various fields. [Thumma* 4(6) June, 2017] ISSN 2349 4506 Impact Factor: 2.785 Global Journal of Engineering Science and Research Management http: www.gjesrm.com (c) Global Journal of Engineering Science and Research Management [20] Obstacle detection is done by ultrasonic sensors attached to the stick. The sensors are selected to satisfy their criteria of sensor angle, distance and other parameters. When the sensors come across some obstacle, it sets off a voice announcement from the set of announcements already recorded, according to their semantics and alerts the person about the obstacle in the path. In order to reduce the noise and sound dissipation, an earpiece is attached to give the audio announcements. The GPS system is used to detect the current location and helps the user to reach the destination by announcing the current location name whenever required by the user and also in case of an emergency, the location of the blind person can be sent to a relative or friend via SMS. LITERATURE REVIEW Existing paper works and solutions related to GPS GSM, and Obstacle detection reveal that, so far, all these technologies have been implemented individually but not integrated for the cause of the blind. Obstacle Detection: In sonar technology, sound propagations is used to navigate communicate with or detect objects on or under the surface of the water, such as other vessels. This technology can be mainly divided into two typespassive and active. In passive sonar, when the vessels make sound, they listen to it. Active sonar is emitting pulses of sounds and listening for echoes. This is the mechanism we will be working with. This is primarily used for acoustic location tracking. Ultrasonic technology is always in research very deeply because of the vast different ideas it can harbor. Moreover, due to its technological breakthroughs in various applications, the sensor is incorporated more and more widely. Some of the applications of ultrasonic sensor are parking sensors, robot avoid obstacle, level detections and its applications in the toxic, harmful and corrosive environments. Ultrasonic sensors are very well used for sensing applications in the areas of engineering, physics and medicine. Smart walking stick for visually impaired [1] incorporates artificial vision and object detection integrated with GPS to enable the user to know about the environment for efficient navigation. Although it is an advanced technology, lack of voice recognition to input the destination is a disadvantage to this system. Obstacle Detection in Unfamiliar Indoor Environments [2] comprises of a Kinect unit, a Tablet PC, a microcontrol ler, IMU sensors, and vibration actuators. These vibrators minimize the reliance on audio instructions for avoiding obstacles. It can also guide the blind to reach a de sired destination (office/room/elevator) within an unfamiliar building with the help of RGB camera of Kinect unit,2 D printed codes, a compass sensor for orienting the user towards the next direction of movement, and synthesized audio instructions. The system is heavily equipped and needs complex and heavy computations and processing which lead to rise in costs and energy consumption. Enhancement of smart cane [3] talks about a method which uses a smart cane to detect and notify obstacles. The notification is done to the user with the help of his smart phone. The sensors in the cane detect the distance between both the user and the obstacle. It also uses a gsm module in the system to track his location. It also uses a trivial accelerometer to detect uneven topologies. This helps a great lot to avoid accidents. Only limitation is that every user should be equipped with a smartphone because the data from the sensors are collected by the phone. These data is then transferred to the user by the help of an earphone. Design and development of secure navigation system for visually impaired people [4] is an infrared based detecting system and it announces obstacles in the user's path. This system also gives the necessary guidelines for the user to avoid the obstacles. This notification is done by vitro tactile or sound feedback. In this system, a light weight sensor is attached to a head cap so that the user is informed about the obstacles near to the head area. This provides an advantage over the simple walking stick. Obstacle detection gadget for visually impaired people [5] obstacle detection system proposed is based on infrared and the output is provided by buzzers and vibrators. This system is used for indoor obstacle detection. [Thumma* 4(6) June, 2017] ISSN 2349 4506 Impact Factor: 2.785 Global Journal of Engineering Science and Research Management http: www.gjesrm.com (c) Global Journal of Engineering Science and Research Management [21] Enhanced independence free path detector to blind people using gsm has been proposed in [6] Infrared technology is used for shoulder width field view from knee to head level. This significantly increases the field of view, but the infrared rays are easily shielded which reduces the efficiency and effectiveness of the system. Blind Aid using Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) and Ultrasonic sensors [7] uses RFID technology and ultrasonic sensors to help in improved navigation, but RFID has its own constraints like interference and complexity due to RFID tagging of every object in the vicinity. GPS Navigation: Global positioning system is defined to be a network of satellites that are orbiting around the earth. These satellites send accurate details of their position in space back to earth. These signals are received by the GPS receivers. Some of the GPS receivers include navigation devices. This gps technology was first introduced by the US for its military purposes in the global intelligence efforts for the Cold War. But after 1980s, GPs has been made available to everyone who owned a GPS receiver. Since then it has been mainly used for location tracking. Application of GPS is categorized as location, navigation, timing, mapping, and tracking. Each category contains its single or combined uses in the fields of military, recreation, transportation and science. T
author_names: Chandni Asvitha Thumma

Shravya Amarnath

Hanna Philipose
title: LOCATION BASED NAVIGATION AND OBSTACLE DETECTION SYSTEM WITH VOICE ALERTS FOR BLIND
year: 2017

abstract: In this work, an implementation of a monimalist autonomous robotic agent with advanced navigation abilities was done. These abilities rely on specialised architectures based on artificial neural networks. It is intended to show that a comparatively simples robot platform with cheap components, is able to perform complex navigation tasks such as dead reckoning (navigation through spatial intuition) landmark circumvention and corresponding discrimination/ recognition, and efficient map construction and use for future navigation with shortcuts/ detours. Shaft encoders are used for the implementation of a coarse internal compass, whereas infra red sensors are used for ladmark detection and circumvention. The involved neural networks incorporate space as well as time information. Before doing the final implemnetation, an initial bibliographic research allowed to know the state of art in this field of navigation in autonomous agents.
author_names: Pedro Kulzer
title: NAVBOT: Autonomous Robotic Agent with Neural Learning of Autonomous Mapping and Navigation Strategies
year: 1997

abstract: The aim of the work presented in this article is to develop a navigation system that allows a mobile robot to move autonomously in an indoor environment using perceptions of multiple events. A topological navigation system based on events that imitates human navigation using sensorimotor abilities and sensorial events is presented. The increasing interest in building autonomous mobile systems makes the detection and recognition of perceptions a crucial task. The system proposed can be considered a perceptive navigation system as the navigation process is based on perception and recognition of natural and artificial landmarks, among others. The innovation of this work resides in the use of an integration interface to handle multiple events concurrently, leading to a more complete and advanced navigation system. The developed architecture enhances the integration of new elements due to its modularity and the decoupling between modules. Finally, experiments have been carried out in several mobile robots, and their results show the feasibility of the navigation system proposed and the effectiveness of the sensorial data integration managed as events.
author_names: Clara Gomez

Alejandra Carolina Hernandez

Jonathan Crespo

Ramon Barber
title: A topological navigation system for indoor environments based on perception events
year: 2016

abstract: Scene Understanding has been a major aspiration of computer vision from its early days. Its root lies in enabling the computer/robot/machine to understand, interpret and manipulate visual data, in similarity to what an average human eye does in front of a natural/artificial localized location/scene. This ennoblement of the machine have a widespread impact ranging from Surveillance, Aerial Imaging, Autonomous Navigation, Smart Cities and thus scene understanding have remained as an active area of research in the last decade. In the last decade, the scope of problems in the scene understanding community has broadened from Image Annotation, Image Captioning, Image Segmentation to Object Detection, Dense Image Captioning, Instance Segmentation etc. Advanced problems like Autonomous Navigation, Panoptic Segmentation, Video Summarization, Multi Person Tracking in Crowded Scenes have also surfaced in this arena and are being vigorously attempted. Deep Learning has played a major role in this advancement/development. The performance metrics in some of these tasks have more than tripled in the last decade itself but these tasks remain far from solved. Success originating from deep learning can be attributed to the learned features. In simple words, features learned from a Convolutional Neural Network trained for annotation are in general far more suited for captioning then a non deep learning method trained for captioning. Taking cue from this particular deep learning trend, we dived into the domain of scene understanding with the focus on utilization of prelearned features from other similar domains. We focus on two tasks in particular: Automatic (multi label)Image Annotation and (Road)Intersection Recognition. Automatic image annotation is one of the earliest problems in scene understanding and refers to the task of assigning (multiple) labels to an image based on its content. Whereas intersection recognition is the outcome of the new era of problems in scene understanding and it refers to the task of identifying an intersection from varied viewpoints in varied weather and lighting conditions. We focused on this significantly varied task approach to broaden the scope and generalizing capability of the results we compute. Both image annotation and intersection recognition pose some common challenges such as occlusion, perspective variations, distortions etc. While focusing on the image annotation task we further narrowed our domain by focusing on graph based methods. We again chose two different paradigms: a multiple kernel learning based non deep learning approach and a deep learning based approach, with a focus on bringing out contrast again. Through quantitative and qualitative results we show slightly boosted performance from the above mentioned paradigms. The intersection recognition task is relatively new in the field. Most of the work in field focuses on Places Recognition which utilized only single images. We focus on temporal information i.e. the traversal of the intersection/places as seen from a camera mounted on a vehicle.
author_names: Abhijeet Kumar

Avinash Sharma
title: DEEP LEARNING FEATURES, GRAPHS AND SCENE UNDERSTANDING
year: 2020

abstract: Last years have seen a worldwide lengthening of life expectancy [1] and, as a consequence, an increment of advanced assistive solutions for integrated care models. In this context, ICT can enhance home assistance services for elderly people and thus, the economical burden for health care institutions. Indeed, recent studies report that 89% wish to stay at home for sentimental reasons or because they cannot afford nursing homes [2] In addition, the shortage of professional caregivers is a well known issue and relatives or friends must face with emotional distress negatively impacting also their productivity at work [3] In this perspective, home robots will play a crucial role. Not only they will keep their house safe by monitoring and detecting anomalies or sources of hazards but they can also be companions able to enhance their social life, e.g. by better connecting them with their relatives and friends. Examples of recent projects that have tried to develop such a kind of systems are Hobbit [4, 5] Astro [6, 7] and Giraffplus [8] The difficulties in creating a robust and reliable prototype and the encountered challenges in computer vision and autonomous robotics have been well explained in [5] This work aims at presenting an open source and practical solution for an autonomous robotic platform for home care. The final goal is to develop a set of artificial intelligence services for indoor autonomous and safe navigation, fall detection, people recognition, speech interaction and telepresence. In Section 2 and 3 respectively, the prototype and the tasks currently implemented are described. We have developed these functions in ROS: Robot Operating System [9] which provides many algorithms and a standard communication framework. The need for standards and open solutions have been already pointed out in [10] Future works are reported in Section 4: this project enables research in many fields like scene understanding, human robot interaction, socially assistive/intelligent robotics and sensor integration.
author_names: Marco Carraro

Morris Antonello

Luca Tonin

Emanuele Menegatti
title: An Open Source Robotic Platform for Ambient Assisted Living
venue: AIRO@AI*IA
year: 2015

abstract: This special issue of the journal features selected works presented at the 15th International Conference on Advanced Robotics (ICAR 2011) held in Tallinn, Estonia, in June 2011. The ICAR conference series is the oldest robotics conference and it celebrated its 30th anniversary in Tallinn. The theme of the ICAR 2011 conference, new boundaries for robotics, emphasized the forwardlooking spirit of its founders and the transformative nature of robotics research over time. Robotics is a synergistic technology, absorbing discoveries and inventions from various fields of science and technology. Taking inspiration from other disciplines we are able to build new kinds of robots that are better able to serve humans in novel ways. The selection of eight papers in this special issue illustrates the synergistic and transformative nature of robotics research by bringing to you the best examples from different sub fields of robotics presented at ICAR 2011. The subjects of these papers span advances in sensors, actuators, computer vision, and robot navigation and control. A brief introduction to these papers follows. Chanthasopeephan, Jarakorn, Polchankajorn, and Maneewarn present a novel solution for the mechanical design of a mobile robot in their paper, 'An impact reduction mobile robot and the design of compliant legs' Motivated by the need to for the robot to survive under impact conditions in practical applications such as search and rescue, the authors investigated an impact reduction mechanism based on the design of compliant legs. In addition, their robot is able to transform between different configurations depending on the terrain conditions; specifically, the legs are extended into awalkingmechanism on uneven terrainwhile being retracted to allow rolling on uneven terrain. Such a design makes it possible to design more reliable and robust robots for traversing difficult outdoor environments. The next three papers dealwith advanced sensors and actuators that are of great relevance to dexterousmanipulation, among other applications. In their paper, 'Detection and prevention of slip using sensorswith different properties embedded in elastic artificial skin on the basis of previous experience' Shirafuji andHosoda describe an approach to safe object grasping using an elastic artificial skin embedded with two kinds of embedded sensors: polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) thin films and strain gages. The PVDF sensors are used to detect slip on the basis of measured pressure changes while the strain gages provide the input to a neural network that controls the grasping force. The authors demonstrate that an anthropomorphic human scale hand equipped with these sensors is able to adapt the grasp to securely hold an object without an excessive force.
author_names: Maarja Kruusmaa

Xiaobo Tan

Cecilia Laschi

Paolo Fiorini

Raj Madhavan
title: Guest editorial: New boundaries for robotics
venue: Robotics Auton. Syst.
year: 2014

abstract: ourproject encompasses a study on the development of a walking gait for fault tolerant locomotion in unstructured environments.Quadra pod is a four legged walking robot. It should be a micro robot and designed with manual control. It consists of hardware and software. Thus the parts contain arduino Nano (ATMEGA 328) servomotor, ultrasonic sensor, PIR sensor and wireless module. An algorithm is developed for focusing mainly on efficient navigation method for locomotion, which will make it faster and at the same time energy efficient to navigate. The duplex communication included in the quadrapod helps in human interface with the bot for finding current position and to control. The scanning area of the robot is controlled by the matrix environment software and the path of the walking quadrapod robot is as shown in MATLAB GUI interface. This robot is used to detect the human in the disaster environment and also for detecting obstacles. Human motion detection and tracking is one of the main problems in computer vision field. It includes many advanced technology in different fields such as pattern recognition, automatic control, artificial intelligence, computer technology. At the same time this robot is used for life detection and obstacle detection. KeywordsArduino Nano(ATMEGA328) Ultrasonic Sensors, PIR (pyro electric Infrared Sensor) MATLAB GUI (Graphical User Infrared)
author_names: Vijay Mahadevan

J Josephine Dhivya

T R Monisha

J Geetha

R Divya
title: OBJECT DETECTION AND PATH TRACKING USING QUADRAPOD ROBOT IN UNKNOWN ENVIRONMENT
year: 2016

abstract: Intelligent transportation systems, accessible data, wireless communications, mobile computing, robotics, artificial intelligence, and object detection navigation offer many possibilities for increasing mobility and independence. This article describes how Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) researchers are working on a suite of new technologies that have the potential to improve the lives of people with disabilities, senior citizens, and other members of the traveling public. Designing wayfinding, orientation, and guidance technologies into personal vehicles, public transport systems, ticketing and travel information mechanisms, terminals, intersections, and pedestrian infrastructure can enhance the experience of traveling for everyone including those with special needs. The FHWA's Exploratory Advanced Research Program, which focuses on long term, high risk research with a high payoff potential, is soliciting research and innovations to develop futuristic concepts and prototypes that use new technologies such as robotics, artificial intelligence, and sensors to improve event horizons related to wayfinding and navigation guidance. The hope is that the research will eventually generate a transportation system that is well connected, versatile, and accessible to everyone.
author_names: Mohammed Yousuf

Mark Fitzgerald
title: The New Frontier in Accessible Transportation
year: 2012