Introducing a Scalable and Modular Control Framework for Lowcost Monocular Robots in Hazardous Environments Robotics for hazardous environments is currently an important area of research, with the ambition of reducing human risk in potentially devastating situations. Here, we are presenting a Modular Control Framework (MCF) for a lowcost robot with limited sensory resources to address this issue. As a proof of concept, we emulate 3 scenarios xe2x80x93 (1) adaptive planning for obstruction avoidance (road block), (2) object identification and supportcasebased behaviour adjustment (search and rescue) and (3) autonomous navigation through the environment with reporting of structural status (patrol and monitoring). These were implemented and validated using a Cozmo robot in a smallscale Lego environment. We found that our system can reroute in 90%, can help an injured person 80% and report about failing equipment in 80% of all tested cases, where most of the fails were caused by the object detection used. Our MCF is implemented using ROS, making it easy to use and adjust for other robotic platforms.

Perception System Design for LowCost Commercial Ground Robots: Sensor Configurations, Calibration, Localization and Mapping For commercially successful ground robots, high degree of autonomy, low manufacturing and maintenance cost, as well as minimized deployment limitations in different environments are essential attributes. To deliver an xe2x80x98anywhere deployablexe2x80x99 product, it is impractical to rely on one single sensor or one single piece of algorithm to overcome all related challenges. Instead, the entire robotic system should be dedicated designed, including the choices of sensors, processors, algorithm integration for various functionality, and so on.This paper presents our design of perception system for commercial ground robots, which is able to operate in most common environments. The designed system is equipped with lowcost sensors and processors. The first key contribution of this paper is the design of the robotic sensory system, which includes a monocular camera, a 2D laser range finder (LRF), wheel encoders, and an inertial measurement unit (IMU). Our sensory system can be built at a cost of as low as 100. Furthermore, the selected sensors provide complementary characteristics for perception of both robot egomotion and its surrounding environments, which are the prerequisites for xe2x80x98anywherexe2x80x99 deployment. The second key contribution of this paper is that a complete set of technologies is proposed based on our sensor systems, including sensor calibration (factory calibration and online calibration), localization (environmental exploring and relocalization), as well as mapping. The proposed methodology includes both efficient engineering implementation and theoretical novelty for high performance systems. Experimental results from our robotic testing platform and offtheshelf commercial robots are presented. These results demonstrate that the proposed system can be deployed in various environmental conditions without performance compromise.