waashk/dblp huggingface dataset:
an affordable modular mobile robotic platform with fuzzy logic control and evolutionary artificial neural networks. autonomous robotics projects encompass the rich nature of integrated systems that includes mechanical, electrical, and computational software components. the availability of smaller and cheaper hardware components has helped make possible a new dimension in operational autonomy. this paper describes a mobile robotic platform consisting of several integrated modules including a laptop computer that serves as the main control module, microcontroller-based motion control module, a vision processing module, a sensor interface module, and a navigation module. the laptop computer module contains the main software development environment with a user interface to access and control all other modules. programming language independence is achieved by using standard input&sol;output computer interfaces including rs-232 serial port, usb, networking, audio input and output, and parallel port devices. however, with the same hardware technology available to all, the distinguishing factor in most cases for intelligent systems becomes the software design. the software for autonomous robots must intelligently control the hardware so that it functions in unstructured, dynamic, and uncertain environments while maintaining an autonomous adaptability. this paper describes how we introduced fuzzy logic control to one robot platform in order to solve the 2003 intelligent ground vehicle competition (igvc) autonomous challenge problem. this paper also describes the introduction of hybrid software design that utilizes fuzzy evolutionary artificial neural network techniques. in this design, rather than using a control program that is directly coded, the robot's artificial neural net is first trained with a training data set using evolutionary optimization techniques to adjust weight values between neurons. the trained neural network with a weight average defuzzification method was able to make correct decisions to unseen vision patterns for the igvc autonomous challenge. a comparison of the lawrence technological university robot designs and the design of the other competing schools shows that our platforms were the most affordable robot systems to use as tools for computer science and engineering education. &copy; 2004 wiley periodicals, inc.
kinematic optimal design of a paramill: a multi-sp device. in this paper, a manipulability analysis of a new parallel-type rolling mill, named &ldquo;paramill,&rdquo; in its conceptual design stage is investigated. the paramill considered uses two stewart platforms (sps) in opposite directions for the generation of 6 degree-of-freedom motions of individual work-rolls. the objective of this new approach is to pursue an integrated control of the strip thickness, strip shape, pair-crossing angle, uniform wear of the rolls, and tension of the strip. the forward&sol;inverse kinematics problems are formulated. two main kinematic parameters, the size of the base and the acute angle made by two neighboring joints for a given size of the work-roll, have been determined in the way that the force and moment transmission from the actuators to the work-rolls is maximized. &copy; 2004 wiley periodicals, inc.
3d cable-based cartesian metrology system. a novel cable-based metrology system is presented wherein six cables are connected in parallel from ground-mounted string pots to the moving object or tool of interest. cartesian pose can be determined for feedback control and other purposes by reading the lengths of the six cables via the string pots and using closed-form forward pose kinematics. this article focuses on a sculpting metrology tool, assisting a human artist in generating a piece from a computer model, but applications exist in manufacturing, rapid prototyping, robotics, and automated construction. we present experimental data to demonstrate the operation of our system, we study the absolute accuracy and also measurement resolution, and we discuss various error sources. the proposed real-time cable-based metrology system is less complex and more economical than existing commercial cartesian metrology technologies. &copy; 2004 wiley periodicals, inc.
an inertial and visual sensing system for a small autonomous helicopter. this paper describes the design and architecture of a low-cost and light-weight inertial and visual sensing system for a small-scale autonomous helicopter. a custom 6-axis imu and a stereo vision system provide vehicle attitude, height, and velocity information. we discuss issues such as robust visual processing, motion resolution, dynamic range, and sensitivity. &copy; 2004 wiley periodicals, inc.
optimal representative blocks for the efficient tracking of a moving object. optimal representative blocks are proposed for an efficient tracking of a moving object and it is verified experimentally by using a mobile robot with a pan-tilt camera. the key idea comes from the fact that when the image size of a moving object is shrunk in an image frame according to the distance between the camera of mobile robot and the moving object, the tracking performance of a moving object can be improved by shrinking the size of representative blocks according to the object image size. motion estimation using edge detection (ed) and block-matching algorithm (bma) are often used in the case of moving object tracking by vision sensors. however, these methods often miss the real-time vision data since these schemes suffer from the heavy computational load. to overcome this problem and to improve the tracking performance, the optimal representative block that can reduce a lot of data to be computed is defined and optimized by changing the size of the representative block according to the size of object in the image frame. the proposed algorithm is verified experimentally by using a mobile robot with a two degree-of-freedom active camera. &copy; 2004 wiley periodicals, inc.
design and prototype of parallel, wire-actuated robots with a constraining linkage. currently, wire-actuated robots are not used extensively in industry, but they are gaining more attention due to advantages they possess. low weight, cost, and power consumption are features that make wire-controlled robots worth researching. this article investigates the designs of two different, 4 degrees of freedom parallel, wire-actuated robots so that a prototype of one of these can be built. a design methodology is developed and presented. the process will be beneficial to those working on designing and prototyping a new robot or modifying an existing robot. stability of both designs is considered first to ensure that the robots are able to exert and withstand end effector forces in different positions throughout their respective workspaces. the stiffness and strength of the materials used in the designs is also investigated using finite element analysis. &copy; 2004 wiley periodicals, inc.
vasilius: the design of an autonomous ground robotic vehicle. this paper presents the design and provides a partial analysis of the performance of an autonomous ground robotic vehicle called vasilius. applications for vasilius include autonomous navigation on a somewhat marked path with obstacles, leader following, and waypoint navigation. the paper focuses on three aspects of vasilius: the design, the performance, and a technique for filtering, mapping, and learning. the design of vasilius embodies a novel idea of modeling an autonomous vehicle after human senses and the human decision-making process. for instance, vasilius integrates information from seven types of independent sensors, and categorizes them into either short-range reaction sensors and&sol;or long-range planning sensors, analogous to what the human brain does. the paper also analyzes the performance of vasilius, relating theoretical predictions to actual behavior. some of these analyses, especially for the filtering, mapping, and learning, are still in progress. performance measures that have been measured include speed, ramp climbing, turn reaction time, battery life, stop reaction time, object detection, and waypoint accuracy. finally, the paper discusses vasilius' use of a new approach to filtering, mapping, and learning to enhance its performance. &copy; 2004 wiley periodicals, inc.
on the validation of spdm task verification facility. this paper describes a methodology for validating a ground-based, hardware-in-the-loop, space-robot simulation facility. this facility, called &ldquo;spdm task verification facility,&rdquo; is being developed by the canadian space agency for the purpose of verifying the contact dynamics performance of the special purpose dexterous manipulator (spdm) performing various maintenance tasks on the international space station because the real spdm cannot be physically tested for 3d operations on the ground due to the gravity. the facility uses a high-fidelity spdm mathematical model, known as the &ldquo;truth model&rdquo; of the space robot, to drive a hydraulic robot to mimic the space robot performing contact operations. in this research different techniques were studied for practically verifying that the complex simulation facility preserves the dynamics of the truth model of the space robot for space-representative contact robotic tasks. based upon the study and many years of experience in developing and verifying space robotic systems, a practical validation strategy including detailed test cases was developed along with a set of quantitative criteria for judging the validation test results. &copy; 2004 wiley periodicals, inc.
dynamic control of a large scale of pneumatic multichain systems. the aim of this paper is to propose a general principle able to manage the supervision, coordination, and control problems of a large scale of multichain structures in dynamic and interacting tasks. the main originality lays in its modular feature. the number of chains and of joint per chain are indeed not restricted. the only assumption is that all the chains are linked to a principal element from which the dynamic stability will be computed. this is for example the case for multi-finger and multi-legged structures for which respectively the palm and the trunk represent the principal element. the principle consists in controlling the stability of this element and distributing the effort on the other chains to maintain the stability of the whole. to increase the compliant feature, we consider that each joint is pneumatically actuated. each joint is then dynamically controlled to ensure the asymptotic stability of the local chain it belongs to. a global architecture is presented where each part is detailed. an example is then displayed showing the performances of a two-legged robot in the standing posture under external perturbation effects. &copy; 2004 wiley periodicals, inc.
a flexible software architecture for hybrid tracking. fusion of vision-based and inertial pose estimation has many high-potential applications in navigation, robotics, and augmented reality. our research aims at the development of a fully mobile, completely self-contained tracking system, that is able to estimate sensor motion from known 3d scene structure. this requires a highly modular and scalable software architecture for algorithm design and testing. as the main contribution of this paper, we discuss the design of our hybrid tracker and emphasize important features: scalability, code reusability, and testing facilities. in addition, we present a mobile augmented reality application, and several first experiments with a fully mobile vision-inertial sensor head. our hybrid tracking system is not only capable of real-time performance, but can also be used for offline analysis of tracker performance, comparison with ground truth, and evaluation of several pose estimation and information fusion algorithms. &copy; 2004 wiley periodicals, inc.
a voronoi diagram-visibility graph-potential field compound algorithm for robot path planning. numerous methods have been developed to solve the motion planning problem, among which the voronoi diagram, visibility graph, and potential fields are well-known techniques. in this paper, a new path planning algorithm is presented where these three methods are integrated for the first time in a single architecture. after constructing the generalized voronoi diagram of c-space, we introduce a novel procedure for its abstraction, producing a pruned generalized voronoi diagram. a broad freeway net is then developed through a new &agr;-mid (maximal inscribed discs) concept. a potential function is assigned to the net to form an obstacle-free network of valleys. afterwards we take advantage of a bidirectional search, where the visibility graph and potential field modules execute alternately from both start and goal configurations. a steepest descent mildest ascent search technique is used for local planning and avoiding local minima. the algorithm provides a parametric tradeoff between safest and shortest paths and generally yields shorter paths than the voronoi and potential field methods, and faster than the visibility graph. it also performs well in complicated environments. &copy; 2004 wiley periodicals, inc.
on using flexure-hinge five-bar linkages to develop novel walking mechanisms and small-scale grippers for microrobots. this paper presents the micromotion analysis of five-bar linkages and demonstrates the approximate linearity of motion transmission of five-bar mechanisms within a micromotion range. a novel walking mechanism used for a microrobot and a small-scale gripper with a high transmission ratio are introduced, based on the flexure-hinge five-bar mechanism analysis. results of numerical simulation show the validity of design and analysis on the introduced mechanisms and the feasibility of corresponding thoughts. the presented micromotion-based robot mechanisms are devoid of friction and fitting errors, and particularly suitable for microrobot applications. &copy; 2004 wiley periodicals, inc.
multi-objective learning control for robotic manipulator. several types of learning controllers have been proposed in the literature to improve the tracking performance of robot manipulators. in most cases, the learning algorithms emphasize mainly on a single objective of learning a desired motion of the end-effector. in some applications, more than one objective may be specified at the same time. for example, a robot may be required to follow a desired trajectory (primary objective) and at the same time avoid an obstacle (secondary objective). thus, multi-objective learning control can be more effective to realize the collision-free tasks. in this paper, a multi-objective learning control problem is formulated and solved. in the proposed learning control system, the primary objective is to track a desired end-effector's motion and several secondary objectives can be specified for the desired orientation and for obstacles avoidance. to avoid obstacles in the workspace, a new learning concept called &ldquo;region learning control&rdquo; is also proposed in this paper. the proposed learning controllers do not require the exact knowledge of robot kinematics and dynamics. sufficient condition is presented to guarantee the convergence of the learning system. the proposed learning controllers are applied to a four-link planar redundant manipulator and simulation results are presented to illustrate the performance. &copy; 2004 wiley periodicals, inc.
control of teleoperators with communication time delay through state convergence. this paper describes a new control method of teleoperation systems with communication time delay. this method models the teleoperation system in the state space, considering all the possible interactions that could appear in the operator-master-slave-environment set, and it uses the taylor expansion to model the time delay. the control system allows that the slave manipulator follows the master in spite of the time delay in the communication channel. the tracking is achieved by state convergence between the master and the slave. the method is also able to establish the desired dynamics of this convergence and the dynamics of the slave manipulator. furthermore, a simple design procedure is provided to obtain the control system gains. these control gains are calculated solving a set of seven equations. the control method is robust to the uncertainty of the design parameters, so it is not necessary to obtain good estimations of these parameters. simulations and experiments with a one dof teleoperation system are presented to verify the control method. &copy; 2004 wiley periodicals, inc.
a guideline for specifying compliance in multi-fingered operations. in this paper, we present a fundamental compliance analysis for multi-fingered hands and also provide a guideline for specifying compliance characteristics in the three-dimensional operational space of multi-fingered hands. through the analysis of the stiffness relation between the operational space and the fingertip space of multi-fingered hands, it is shown that some of the coupling stiffness elements cannot be planned arbitrarily. also, an independent finger-based compliance control method to achieve the given compliance characteristics is described. conclusively, when we specify the operational stiffness matrix, the contents of the operational stiffness matrix cannot be fully achieved by influence of the grasp geometry of multi-fingered hands. the grasp positions of fingers as well as the rcc point, which are shown important factors, should be chosen to achieve the specified operational stiffness matrix for the given task. the cases of a point contact with friction and soft contact are examined as illustrative examples. it is observed that a five-fingered robotic hand is sufficient for implementation of proper three-dimensional compliance characteristics. &copy; 2004 wiley periodicals, inc.
adaptive tracking control of flexible-joint manipulators without overparametrization. in this paper, an adaptive controller is designed for rigid-link flexible-joint robot manipulators based on link and actuator position measurements only. it is based on the adaptive integrator backstepping method and the link and actuator velocity filters are used to estimate the unknown velocity terms. moreover, the proposed controller exploits the estimate of the joint stiffness matrix inverse to overcome the overparametrization problem, which has been a significant drawback in adaptive partial state feedback controllers. it achieves asymptotic tracking of link positions while keeping all states and signals bounded. the tracking capability of the presented method is shown through simulation results of one- and two-link flexible joint manipulators. &copy; 2004 wiley periodicals, inc.
design of a reconfigurable planar parallel manipulator. this work presents the design of a reconfigurable planar parallel manipulator (rppm). the rppm is designed to act as a testbed manipulator for theories on redundant actuation of parallel manipulators and can reconfigure into three different revolute-jointed mechanism types: a 2-branch 2-dof (degree-of-freedom) 5-bar mechanism; a 2-branch 3-dof 6-bar mechanism; and a 3-branch 3-dof 8-bar mechanism. the design of the rppm allows for any shoulder or elbow joint to be actuated. in this work, the criteria and constraints of the design are presented. the final design of the rppm is shown, followed by a discussion of the final design and how it relates to the initial design criteria and constraints. &copy; 2004 wiley periodicals, inc.
three-dimensional map building for mobile robot navigation environments using a self-organizing neural network. in recent years, mobile robots have been required to become more and more autonomous in such a way that they are able to sense and recognize the three-dimensional space in which they live or work. in this paper, we deal with such an environment map building problem from three-dimensional sensing data for mobile robot navigation. in particular, the problem to be dealt with is how to extract and model obstacles which are not represented on the map but exist in the real environment, so that the map can be newly updated using the modeled obstacle information. to achieve this, we propose a three-dimensional map building method, which is based on a self-organizing neural network technique called &ldquo;growing neural gas network.&rdquo; using the obstacle data acquired from the 3d data acquisition process of an active laser range finder, learning of the neural network is performed to generate a graphical structure that reflects the topology of the input space. for evaluation of the proposed method, a series of simulations and experiments are performed to build 3d maps of some given environments surrounding the robot. the usefulness and robustness of the proposed method are investigated and discussed in detail. &copy; 2004 wiley periodicals, inc.
kinematic modeling of mobile robots by transfer method of augmented generalized coordinates. a kinematic modeling method, which is directly applicable to any type of planar mobile robots, is proposed in this work. since holonomic constraints have the same differential form as nonholonomic constraints, the instantaneous motion of the mobile robot at current configuration can be modeled as that of a parallel manipulator. a pseudo joint model denoting the interface between the wheel and the ground (i.e., the position of base of the mobile robot) enables the derivation of this equivalent kinematic model. the instantaneous kinematic structures of four different wheels are modeled as multiple pseudo joints. then, the transfer method of augmented generalized coordinates, which has been popularly employed in modeling of parallel manipulators, is applied to obtain the instantaneous kinematic models of mobile robots. the kinematic models of six different types of planar mobile robots are derived to show the effectiveness of the proposed modeling method. lastly, for the mobile robot equipped with four conventional wheels, an algorithm estimating a sensed forward solution for the given information of the rotational velocities of the four wheels is discussed. &copy; 2004 wiley periodicals, inc.
design evolution of the trinity college igvc robot alvin. in this paper we discuss the design and evolution of trinity college's alvin robot, an autonomous ground vehicle that has participated in the association for unmanned vehicle systems international intelligent ground vehicle competition (igvc) since 2000. the paper first discusses the trinity robot study team, which has been responsible for developing alvin. we then illustrate the four generations of alvin, focusing on improvements made as the result of performance shortcomings and outright failures. the discussion considers the robot's body design, drive system, sensors, navigation algorithms, and vision systems. we focus especially on the vision and navigation systems developed for trinity's fourth-generation igvc robot, alvin iv. the paper concludes with a plan for future work on alvin and with a discussion of educational outcomes resulting from the alvin project. &copy; 2004 wiley periodicals, inc.
fusion of vision and inertial data for motion and structure estimation. this paper presents a method to fuse measurements from a rigid sensor rig with a stereo vision system and a set of 6 dof inertial sensors for egomotion estimation and external structure estimation. no assumptions about the sampling rate of the two sensors are made. the basic idea is a common state vector and a common dynamic description which is stored together with the time instant of the estimation. every time one of the sensor sends new data, the corresponding filter equation is updated and a new estimation is generated. in this paper the filter equations for an extended kalman filter are derived together with considerations of the tuning. simulations with real sensor data show the successful implementation of this concept. &copy; 2004 wiley periodicals, inc.