The research of autonomous obstacle avoidance of mobile robot based on multi-sensor integration

Science.gov (United States)

Zhao, Ming; Han, Baoling

2016-11-01

The object of this study is the bionic quadruped mobile robot. The study has proposed a system design plan for mobile robot obstacle avoidance with the binocular stereo visual sensor and the self-control 3D Lidar integrated with modified ant colony optimization path planning to realize the reconstruction of the environmental map. Because the working condition of a mobile robot is complex, the result of the 3D reconstruction with a single binocular sensor is undesirable when feature points are few and the light condition is poor. Therefore, this system integrates the stereo vision sensor blumblebee2 and the Lidar sensor together to detect the cloud information of 3D points of environmental obstacles. This paper proposes the sensor information fusion technology to rebuild the environment map. Firstly, according to the Lidar data and visual data on obstacle detection respectively, and then consider two methods respectively to detect the distribution of obstacles. Finally fusing the data to get the more complete, more accurate distribution of obstacles in the scene. Then the thesis introduces ant colony algorithm. It has analyzed advantages and disadvantages of the ant colony optimization and its formation cause deeply, and then improved the system with the help of the ant colony optimization to increase the rate of convergence and precision of the algorithm in robot path planning. Such improvements and integrations overcome the shortcomings of the ant colony optimization like involving into the local optimal solution easily, slow search speed and poor search results. This experiment deals with images and programs the motor drive under the compiling environment of Matlab and Visual Studio and establishes the visual 2.5D grid map. Finally it plans a global path for the mobile robot according to the ant colony algorithm. The feasibility and effectiveness of the system are confirmed by ROS and simulation platform of Linux.

Simple Obstacle Avoidance Algorithm for Rehabilitation Robots

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Stuyt, Floran H.A.; Römer, GertWillem R.B.E.; Stuyt, Harry .J.A.

2007-01-01

The efficiency of a rehabilitation robot is improved by offering record-and-replay to operate the robot. While automatically moving to a stored target (replay) collisions of the robot with obstacles in its work space must be avoided. A simple, though effective, generic and deterministic algorithm

Obstacle avoidance handling and mixed integer predictive control for space robots

Science.gov (United States)

Zong, Lijun; Luo, Jianjun; Wang, Mingming; Yuan, Jianping

2018-04-01

This paper presents a novel obstacle avoidance constraint and a mixed integer predictive control (MIPC) method for space robots avoiding obstacles and satisfying physical limits during performing tasks. Firstly, a novel kind of obstacle avoidance constraint of space robots, which needs the assumption that the manipulator links and the obstacles can be represented by convex bodies, is proposed by limiting the relative velocity between two closest points which are on the manipulator and the obstacle, respectively. Furthermore, the logical variables are introduced into the obstacle avoidance constraint, which have realized the constraint form is automatically changed to satisfy different obstacle avoidance requirements in different distance intervals between the space robot and the obstacle. Afterwards, the obstacle avoidance constraint and other system physical limits, such as joint angle ranges, the amplitude boundaries of joint velocities and joint torques, are described as inequality constraints of a quadratic programming (QP) problem by using the model predictive control (MPC) method. To guarantee the feasibility of the obtained multi-constraint QP problem, the constraints are treated as soft constraints and assigned levels of priority based on the propositional logic theory, which can realize that the constraints with lower priorities are always firstly violated to recover the feasibility of the QP problem. Since the logical variables have been introduced, the optimization problem including obstacle avoidance and system physical limits as prioritized inequality constraints is termed as MIPC method of space robots, and its computational complexity as well as possible strategies for reducing calculation amount are analyzed. Simulations of the space robot unfolding its manipulator and tracking the end-effector's desired trajectories with the existence of obstacles and physical limits are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed obstacle avoidance

New Design of Mobile Robot Path Planning with Randomly Moving Obstacles

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

T. A. Salih

2013-05-01

Full Text Available The navigation of a mobile robot in an unknown environment has always been a very challenging task. In order to achieve safe and autonomous navigation, the mobile robot needs to sense the surrounding environment and plans a collision-free path. This paper focuses on designing and implementing a mobile robot which has the ability of navigating smoothly in an unknown environment, avoiding collisions, without having to stop in front of obstacles, detecting leakage of combustible gases and transmitting a message of detection results to the civil defense unit automatically through the Internet to the E-mail. This design uses the implementation of artificial neural network (ANN on a new technology represented by Field Programmable Analog Array (FPAA for controlling the motion of the robot. The robot with the proposed controller is tested and has completed the required objective successfully.

A Neural Network Approach for Building An Obstacle Detection Model by Fusion of Proximity Sensors Data

Science.gov (United States)

Peralta, Emmanuel; Vargas, Héctor; Hermosilla, Gabriel

2018-01-01

Proximity sensors are broadly used in mobile robots for obstacle detection. The traditional calibration process of this kind of sensor could be a time-consuming task because it is usually done by identification in a manual and repetitive way. The resulting obstacles detection models are usually nonlinear functions that can be different for each proximity sensor attached to the robot. In addition, the model is highly dependent on the type of sensor (e.g., ultrasonic or infrared), on changes in light intensity, and on the properties of the obstacle such as shape, colour, and surface texture, among others. That is why in some situations it could be useful to gather all the measurements provided by different kinds of sensor in order to build a unique model that estimates the distances to the obstacles around the robot. This paper presents a novel approach to get an obstacles detection model based on the fusion of sensors data and automatic calibration by using artificial neural networks. PMID:29495338

Using Thermal Radiation in Detection of Negative Obstacles

Science.gov (United States)

Rankin, Arturo L.; Matthies, Larry H.

2009-01-01

A method of automated detection of negative obstacles (potholes, ditches, and the like) ahead of ground vehicles at night involves processing of imagery from thermal-infrared cameras aimed at the terrain ahead of the vehicles. The method is being developed as part of an overall obstacle-avoidance scheme for autonomous and semi-autonomous offroad robotic vehicles. The method could also be applied to help human drivers of cars and trucks avoid negative obstacles -- a development that may entail only modest additional cost inasmuch as some commercially available passenger cars are already equipped with infrared cameras as aids for nighttime operation.

Surrounding Moving Obstacle Detection for Autonomous Driving Using Stereo Vision

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Hao Sun

2013-06-01

Full Text Available Detection and tracking surrounding moving obstacles such as vehicles and pedestrians are crucial for the safety of mobile robotics and autonomous vehicles. This is especially the case in urban driving scenarios. This paper presents a novel framework for surrounding moving obstacles detection using binocular stereo vision. The contributions of our work are threefold. Firstly, a multiview feature matching scheme is presented for simultaneous stereo correspondence and motion correspondence searching. Secondly, the multiview geometry constraint derived from the relative camera positions in pairs of consecutive stereo views is exploited for surrounding moving obstacles detection. Thirdly, an adaptive particle filter is proposed for tracking of multiple moving obstacles in surrounding areas. Experimental results from real-world driving sequences demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed framework.

Unsupervised obstacle detection in driving environments using deep-learning-based stereovision

KAUST Repository

Dairi, Abdelkader; Harrou, Fouzi; Senouci, Mohamed; Sun, Ying

2017-01-01

A vision-based obstacle detection system is a key enabler for the development of autonomous robots and vehicles and intelligent transportation systems. This paper addresses the problem of urban scene monitoring and tracking of obstacles based on unsupervised, deep-learning approaches. Here, we design an innovative hybrid encoder that integrates deep Boltzmann machines (DBM) and auto-encoders (AE). This hybrid auto-encode (HAE) model combines the greedy learning features of DBM with the dimensionality reduction capacity of AE to accurately and reliably detect the presence of obstacles. We combine the proposed hybrid model with the one-class support vector machines (OCSVM) to visually monitor an urban scene. We also propose an efficient approach to estimating obstacles location and track their positions via scene densities. Specifically, we address obstacle detection as an anomaly detection problem. If an obstacle is detected by the OCSVM algorithm, then localization and tracking algorithm is executed. We validated the effectiveness of our approach by using experimental data from two publicly available dataset, the Malaga stereovision urban dataset (MSVUD) and the Daimler urban segmentation dataset (DUSD). Results show the capacity of the proposed approach to reliably detect obstacles.

Unsupervised obstacle detection in driving environments using deep-learning-based stereovision

KAUST Repository

Dairi, Abdelkader

2017-12-06

A vision-based obstacle detection system is a key enabler for the development of autonomous robots and vehicles and intelligent transportation systems. This paper addresses the problem of urban scene monitoring and tracking of obstacles based on unsupervised, deep-learning approaches. Here, we design an innovative hybrid encoder that integrates deep Boltzmann machines (DBM) and auto-encoders (AE). This hybrid auto-encode (HAE) model combines the greedy learning features of DBM with the dimensionality reduction capacity of AE to accurately and reliably detect the presence of obstacles. We combine the proposed hybrid model with the one-class support vector machines (OCSVM) to visually monitor an urban scene. We also propose an efficient approach to estimating obstacles location and track their positions via scene densities. Specifically, we address obstacle detection as an anomaly detection problem. If an obstacle is detected by the OCSVM algorithm, then localization and tracking algorithm is executed. We validated the effectiveness of our approach by using experimental data from two publicly available dataset, the Malaga stereovision urban dataset (MSVUD) and the Daimler urban segmentation dataset (DUSD). Results show the capacity of the proposed approach to reliably detect obstacles.

Obstacle-avoiding robot with IR and PIR motion sensors

Science.gov (United States)

Ismail, R.; Omar, Z.; Suaibun, S.

2016-10-01

Obstacle avoiding robot was designed, constructed and programmed which may be potentially used for educational and research purposes. The developed robot will move in a particular direction once the infrared (IR) and the PIR passive infrared (PIR) sensors sense a signal while avoiding the obstacles in its path. The robot can also perform desired tasks in unstructured environments without continuous human guidance. The hardware was integrated in one application board as embedded system design. The software was developed using C++ and compiled by Arduino IDE 1.6.5. The main objective of this project is to provide simple guidelines to the polytechnic students and beginners who are interested in this type of research. It is hoped that this robot could benefit students who wish to carry out research on IR and PIR sensors.

Obstacle negotiation control for a mobile robot suspended on overhead ground wires by optoelectronic sensors

Science.gov (United States)

Zheng, Li; Yi, Ruan

2009-11-01

Power line inspection and maintenance already benefit from developments in mobile robotics. This paper presents mobile robots capable of crossing obstacles on overhead ground wires. A teleoperated robot realizes inspection and maintenance tasks on power transmission line equipment. The inspection robot is driven by 11 motor with two arms, two wheels and two claws. The inspection robot is designed to realize the function of observation, grasp, walk, rolling, turn, rise, and decline. This paper is oriented toward 100% reliable obstacle detection and identification, and sensor fusion to increase the autonomy level. An embedded computer based on PC/104 bus is chosen as the core of control system. Visible light camera and thermal infrared Camera are both installed in a programmable pan-and-tilt camera (PPTC) unit. High-quality visual feedback rapidly becomes crucial for human-in-the-loop control and effective teleoperation. The communication system between the robot and the ground station is based on Mesh wireless networks by 700 MHz bands. An expert system programmed with Visual C++ is developed to implement the automatic control. Optoelectronic laser sensors and laser range scanner were installed in robot for obstacle-navigation control to grasp the overhead ground wires. A novel prototype with careful considerations on mobility was designed to inspect the 500KV power transmission lines. Results of experiments demonstrate that the robot can be applied to execute the navigation and inspection tasks.

Intuitive Robot Tasks with Augmented Reality and Virtual Obstacles

OpenAIRE

Gaschler, Andre;Springer, Maximilian;Rickert, Markus;Knoll, Alois

2017-01-01

Today's industrial robots require expert knowledge and are not profitable for small and medium sized enterprises with their small lot sizes. It is our strong belief that more intuitive robot programming in an augmented reality robot work cell can dramatically simplify re-programming and leverage robotics technology in short production cycles. In this paper, we present a novel augmented reality system for defining virtual obstacles, specifying tool positions, and specifying robot tasks. We eva...

Obstacle detection by stereo vision of fast correlation matching

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Jeon, Seung Hoon; Kim, Byung Kook

1997-01-01

Mobile robot navigation needs acquiring positions of obstacles in real time. A common method for performing this sensing is through stereo vision. In this paper, indoor images are acquired by binocular vision, which contains various shapes of obstacles. From these stereo image data, in order to obtain distances to obstacles, we must deal with the correspondence problem, or get the region in the other image corresponding to the projection of the same surface region. We present an improved correlation matching method enhancing the speed of arbitrary obstacle detection. The results are faster, simple matching, robustness to noise, and improvement of precision. Experimental results under actual surroundings are presented to reveal the performance. (author)

Implementation of Obstacle-Avoidance Control for an Autonomous Omni-Directional Mobile Robot Based on Extension Theory

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Yi-Chung Lai

2012-10-01

Full Text Available The paper demonstrates a following robot with omni-directional wheels, which is able to take action to avoid obstacles. The robot design is based on both fuzzy and extension theory. Fuzzy theory was applied to tune the PMW signal of the motor revolution, and correct path deviation issues encountered when the robot is moving. Extension theory was used to build a robot obstacle-avoidance model. Various mobile models were developed to handle different types of obstacles. The ultrasonic distance sensors mounted on the robot were used to estimate the distance to obstacles. If an obstacle is encountered, the correlation function is evaluated and the robot avoids the obstacle autonomously using the most appropriate mode. The effectiveness of the proposed approach was verified through several tracking experiments, which demonstrates the feasibility of a fuzzy path tracker as well as the extensible collision avoidance system.

People Detection Based on Spatial Mapping of Friendliness and Floor Boundary Points for a Mobile Navigation Robot

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Tsuyoshi Tasaki

2011-01-01

Full Text Available Navigation robots must single out partners requiring navigation and move in the cluttered environment where people walk around. Developing such robots requires two different people detections: detecting partners and detecting all moving people around the robots. For detecting partners, we design divided spaces based on the spatial relationships and sensing ranges. Mapping the friendliness of each divided space based on the stimulus from the multiple sensors to detect people calling robots positively, robots detect partners on the highest friendliness space. For detecting moving people, we regard objects’ floor boundary points in an omnidirectional image as obstacles. We classify obstacles as moving people by comparing movement of each point with robot movement using odometry data, dynamically changing thresholds to detect. Our robot detected 95.0% of partners while it stands by and interacts with people and detected 85.0% of moving people while robot moves, which was four times higher than previous methods did.

Research on the Obstacle Negotiation Strategy for the Heavy-duty Six-legged Robot based on Force Control

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Li Mantian

2017-01-01

Full Text Available To make heavy-duty six-legged robots without environment reconstruction system negotiate obstacles after the earthquake successfully, an obstacle negotiation strategy is described in this paper. The reflection strategy is generated by the information of plantar force sensors and Bezier Curve is used to plan trajectory. As the heavy-duty six-legged robot has a large inertia, force controller is necessary to ensure the robot not to lose stability while negotiating obstacles. Impedance control is applied to reduce the impact of collision and active force control is applied to adjust the pose of the robot. The robot can walk through zones that are filled with obstacles automatically because of force control. Finally, the algorithm is verified in a simulation environment.

A bio-inspired kinematic controller for obstacle avoidance during reaching tasks with real robots.

Science.gov (United States)

Srinivasa, Narayan; Bhattacharyya, Rajan; Sundareswara, Rashmi; Lee, Craig; Grossberg, Stephen

2012-11-01

This paper describes a redundant robot arm that is capable of learning to reach for targets in space in a self-organized fashion while avoiding obstacles. Self-generated movement commands that activate correlated visual, spatial and motor information are used to learn forward and inverse kinematic control models while moving in obstacle-free space using the Direction-to-Rotation Transform (DIRECT). Unlike prior DIRECT models, the learning process in this work was realized using an online Fuzzy ARTMAP learning algorithm. The DIRECT-based kinematic controller is fault tolerant and can handle a wide range of perturbations such as joint locking and the use of tools despite not having experienced them during learning. The DIRECT model was extended based on a novel reactive obstacle avoidance direction (DIRECT-ROAD) model to enable redundant robots to avoid obstacles in environments with simple obstacle configurations. However, certain configurations of obstacles in the environment prevented the robot from reaching the target with purely reactive obstacle avoidance. To address this complexity, a self-organized process of mental rehearsals of movements was modeled, inspired by human and animal experiments on reaching, to generate plans for movement execution using DIRECT-ROAD in complex environments. These mental rehearsals or plans are self-generated by using the Fuzzy ARTMAP algorithm to retrieve multiple solutions for reaching each target while accounting for all the obstacles in its environment. The key aspects of the proposed novel controller were illustrated first using simple examples. Experiments were then performed on real robot platforms to demonstrate successful obstacle avoidance during reaching tasks in real-world environments. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Obstacle avoidance test using a sensor-based autonomous robotic system

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Fujii, Yoshio; Suzuki, Katsuo

1998-12-01

From a viewpoint of reducing personnel radiation exposure of plant staffs working in the high radiation area of nuclear facilities, it is often said to be necessary to develop remote robotic systems, which have great potential of performing various tasks in nuclear facilities. Hence, we developed an advanced remote robotic system, consisting of redundant manipulator and environment-sensing systems, which can be applied to complicated handling tasks under unstructured environment. In the robotic system, various types of sensors for environment-sensing are mounted on the redundant manipulator and sensor-based autonomous capabilities are incorporated. This report describes the results of autonomous obstacle avoidance test which was carried out as follows: manipulating valves at the rear-side of wall, through a narrow window of the wall, with the redundant manipulator mounted on an x-axis driving mechanism. From this test, it is confirmed that the developed robotic system can autonomously achieve handling tasks in limited space as avoiding obstacles, which is supposed to be difficult by a non-redundant manipulator. (author)

A study on optimal motion for a robot manipulator amid obstacles

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Park, Jong Keun

1997-01-01

Optimal motion for a robot manipulator is obtained by nonlinear programming. The objective of optimal motion is minimizing energy consumption of manipulator arm with fixed traveling time in the presence of obstacles. The geometric path is not predetermined. The total trajectory is described in terms of cubic B-spline polynomials and the coefficients of them are obtained to minimize a specific performance index. Obstacle avoidance is performed by the method that the square sum of penetration growth distances between every obstacles and robot links is included in the performance index with appropriate weighting coefficient. In all examples tested here, the solutions were converged to unique optimal trajectories from different initial ones. The optimal geometric path obtained in this research can be used in minimum time trajectory planning. (author)

Perception-Driven Obstacle-Aided Locomotion for Snake Robots: The State of the Art, Challenges and Possibilities †

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Filippo Sanfilippo

2017-03-01

Full Text Available In nature, snakes can gracefully traverse a wide range of different and complex environments. Snake robots that can mimic this behaviour could be fitted with sensors and transport tools to hazardous or confined areas that other robots and humans are unable to access. In order to carry out such tasks, snake robots must have a high degree of awareness of their surroundings (i.e., perception-driven locomotion and be capable of efficient obstacle exploitation (i.e., obstacle-aided locomotion to gain propulsion. These aspects are pivotal in order to realise the large variety of possible snake robot applications in real-life operations such as fire-fighting, industrial inspection, search-and-rescue, and more. In this paper, we survey and discuss the state of the art, challenges, and possibilities of perception-driven obstacle-aided locomotion for snake robots. To this end, different levels of autonomy are identified for snake robots and categorised into environmental complexity, mission complexity, and external system independence. From this perspective, we present a step-wise approach on how to increment snake robot abilities within guidance, navigation, and control in order to target the different levels of autonomy. Pertinent to snake robots, we focus on current strategies for snake robot locomotion in the presence of obstacles. Moreover, we put obstacle-aided locomotion into the context of perception and mapping. Finally, we present an overview of relevant key technologies and methods within environment perception, mapping, and representation that constitute important aspects of perception-driven obstacle-aided locomotion.

Obstacle avoidance for kinematically redundant robots using an adaptive fuzzy logic algorithm

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Beheshti, M.T.H.; Tehrani, A.K.

1999-05-01

In this paper the Adaptive Fuzzy Logic approach for solving the inverse kinematics of redundant robots in an environment with obstacles is presented. The obstacles are modeled as convex bodies. A fuzzy rule base that is updated via an adaptive law is used to solve the inverse kinematic problem. Additional rules have been introduced to take care of the obstacles avoidance problem. The proposed method has advantages such as high accuracy, simplicity of computations and generality for all redundant robots. Simulation results illustrate much better tracking performance than the dynamic base solution for a given trajectory in cartesian space, while guaranteeing a collision-free trajectory and observation of a mechanical joint limit

Distance Determination Method for Normally Distributed Obstacle Avoidance of Mobile Robots in Stochastic Environments

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Jinhong Noh

2016-04-01

Full Text Available Obstacle avoidance methods require knowledge of the distance between a mobile robot and obstacles in the environment. However, in stochastic environments, distance determination is difficult because objects have position uncertainty. The purpose of this paper is to determine the distance between a robot and obstacles represented by probability distributions. Distance determination for obstacle avoidance should consider position uncertainty, computational cost and collision probability. The proposed method considers all of these conditions, unlike conventional methods. It determines the obstacle region using the collision probability density threshold. Furthermore, it defines a minimum distance function to the boundary of the obstacle region with a Lagrange multiplier method. Finally, it computes the distance numerically. Simulations were executed in order to compare the performance of the distance determination methods. Our method demonstrated a faster and more accurate performance than conventional methods. It may help overcome position uncertainty issues pertaining to obstacle avoidance, such as low accuracy sensors, environments with poor visibility or unpredictable obstacle motion.

Modeling and Analysis of the Obstacle-Avoidance Strategies for a Mobile Robot in a Dynamic Environment

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Rui Wang

2015-01-01

Full Text Available Obstacle avoidance is a key performance of mobile robots. However, its experimental verification is rather difficult, due to the probabilistic behaviors of both the robots and the obstacles. This paper presents the Markov Decision Process based probabilistic formal models for three obstacle-avoidance strategies of a mobile robot in an uncertain dynamic environment. The models are employed to make analyses in PRISM, and the correctness of the analysis results is verified by MATLAB simulations. Finally, the minimum time and the energy consumption are determined by further analyses in PRISM, which prove to be useful in finding the optimal strategy. The present work provides a foundation for the probabilistic formal verification of more complicated obstacle-avoidance strategies.

Real Time Vision System for Obstacle Detection and Localization on FPGA

OpenAIRE

Alhamwi , Ali; Vandeportaele , Bertrand; Piat , Jonathan

2015-01-01

International audience; Obstacle detection is a mandatory function for a robot navigating in an indoor environment especially when interaction with humans is done in a cluttered environment. Commonly used vision-based solutions like SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping) or optical flow tend to be computation intensive and require powerful computation resources to meet low speed real-time constraints. Solutions using LIDAR (Light Detection And Ranging) sensors are more robust but not co...

Design and Implementation of Fire Extinguisher Robot with Robotic Arm

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Memon Abdul Waris

2018-01-01

Full Text Available Robot is a device, which performs human task or behave like a human-being. It needs expertise skills and complex programming to design. For designing a fire fighter robot, many sensors and motors were used. User firstly send robot to an affected area, to get live image of the field with the help of mobile camera via Wi-Fi using IP camera application to laptop. If any signs of fire shown in image, user direct robot in that particular direction for confirmation. Fire sensor and temperature sensor detects and measures the reading, after confirmation robot sprinkle water on affected field. During extinguish process if any obstacle comes in between the prototype and the affected area the ultrasonic sensor detects the obstacle, in response the robotic arm moves to pick and place that obstacle to another location for clearing the path. Meanwhile if any poisonous gas is present, the gas sensor detects and indicates by making alarm.

Robot Navigation Control Based on Monocular Images: An Image Processing Algorithm for Obstacle Avoidance Decisions

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William Benn

2012-01-01

Full Text Available This paper covers the use of monocular vision to control autonomous navigation for a robot in a dynamically changing environment. The solution focused on using colour segmentation against a selected floor plane to distinctly separate obstacles from traversable space: this is then supplemented with canny edge detection to separate similarly coloured boundaries to the floor plane. The resulting binary map (where white identifies an obstacle-free area and black identifies an obstacle could then be processed by fuzzy logic or neural networks to control the robot’s next movements. Findings show that the algorithm performed strongly on solid coloured carpets, wooden, and concrete floors but had difficulty in separating colours in multicoloured floor types such as patterned carpets.

Robust obstacle detection for unmanned surface vehicles

Science.gov (United States)

Qin, Yueming; Zhang, Xiuzhi

2018-03-01

Obstacle detection is of essential importance for Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USV). Although some obstacles (e.g., ships, islands) can be detected by Radar, there are many other obstacles (e.g., floating pieces of woods, swimmers) which are difficult to be detected via Radar because these obstacles have low radar cross section. Therefore, detecting obstacle from images taken onboard is an effective supplement. In this paper, a robust vision-based obstacle detection method for USVs is developed. The proposed method employs the monocular image sequence captured by the camera on the USVs and detects obstacles on the sea surface from the image sequence. The experiment results show that the proposed scheme is efficient to fulfill the obstacle detection task.

Intelligent Surveillance Robot with Obstacle Avoidance Capabilities Using Neural Network

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Widodo Budiharto

2015-01-01

Full Text Available For specific purpose, vision-based surveillance robot that can be run autonomously and able to acquire images from its dynamic environment is very important, for example, in rescuing disaster victims in Indonesia. In this paper, we propose architecture for intelligent surveillance robot that is able to avoid obstacles using 3 ultrasonic distance sensors based on backpropagation neural network and a camera for face recognition. 2.4 GHz transmitter for transmitting video is used by the operator/user to direct the robot to the desired area. Results show the effectiveness of our method and we evaluate the performance of the system.

Modified bug-1 algorithm based strategy for obstacle avoidance in multi robot system

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Kandathil Jom J.

2018-01-01

Full Text Available One of the primary ability of an intelligent mobile robot system is obstacle avoidance. BUG algorithms are classic examples of the algorithms used for achieving obstacle avoidance. Unlike many other planning algorithms based on global knowledge, BUG algorithms assume only local knowledge of the environment and a global goal. Among the variations of the BUG algorithms that prevail, BUG-0, BUG-1 and BUG-2 are the more prominent versions. The exhaustive search algorithm present in BUG-1 makes it more reliable and safer for practical applications. Overall, this provides a more predictable and dependable performance. Hence, the essential focus in this paper is on implementing the BUG-1 algorithm across a group of robots to move them from a start location to a target location. The results are compared with the results from BUG-1 algorithm implemented on a single robot. The strategy developed in this work reduces the time involved in moving the robots from starting location to the target location. Further, the paper shows that the total distance covered by each robot in a multi robot-system is always lesser than or equal to that travelled by a single robot executing the same problem.

Obstacle Avoidance of a Mobile Robot with Hierarchical Structure

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Park, Chan Gyu [Yeungnam College of Science and Technolgy, Taegu (Korea)

2001-06-01

This paper proposed a new hierarchical fuzzy-neural network algorithm for navigation of a mobile robot within unknown dynamic environment. Proposed navigation algorithm used the learning ability of the neural network and the feasibility of control highly nonlinear system of fuzzy theory. The proposed navigation algorithm used fuzzy algorithm for goal approach and fuzzy-network for effective collision avoidance. Some computer simulation results for a mobile robot equipped with ultrasonic range sensors show that the suggested navigation algorithm is very effective to escape in stationary and moving obstacles environment. (author). 11 refs., 14 figs., 2 tabs.

A feature matching and fusion-based positive obstacle detection algorithm for field autonomous land vehicles

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Tao Wu

2017-03-01

Full Text Available Positive obstacles will cause damage to field robotics during traveling in field. Field autonomous land vehicle is a typical field robotic. This article presents a feature matching and fusion-based algorithm to detect obstacles using LiDARs for field autonomous land vehicles. There are three main contributions: (1 A novel setup method of compact LiDAR is introduced. This method improved the LiDAR data density and reduced the blind region of the LiDAR sensor. (2 A mathematical model is deduced under this new setup method. The ideal scan line is generated by using the deduced mathematical model. (3 Based on the proposed mathematical model, a feature matching and fusion (FMAF-based algorithm is presented in this article, which is employed to detect obstacles. Experimental results show that the performance of the proposed algorithm is robust and stable, and the computing time is reduced by an order of two magnitudes by comparing with other exited algorithms. This algorithm has been perfectly applied to our autonomous land vehicle, which has won the champion in the challenge of Chinese “Overcome Danger 2014” ground unmanned vehicle.

A PSO-Optimized Reciprocal Velocity Obstacles Algorithm for Navigation of Multiple Mobile Robots

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Ziyad Allawi

2015-03-01

Full Text Available In this paper, a new optimization method for the Reciprocal Velocity Obstacles (RVO is proposed. It uses the well-known Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO for navigation control of multiple mobile robots with kinematic constraints. The RVO is used for collision avoidance between the robots, while PSO is used to choose the best path for the robot maneuver to avoid colliding with other robots and to get to its goal faster. This method was applied on 24 mobile robots facing each other. Simulation results have shown that this method outperforms the ordinary RVO when the path is heuristically chosen.

VISION BASED OBSTACLE DETECTION IN UAV IMAGING

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S. Badrloo

2017-08-01

Full Text Available Detecting and preventing incidence with obstacles is crucial in UAV navigation and control. Most of the common obstacle detection techniques are currently sensor-based. Small UAVs are not able to carry obstacle detection sensors such as radar; therefore, vision-based methods are considered, which can be divided into stereo-based and mono-based techniques. Mono-based methods are classified into two groups: Foreground-background separation, and brain-inspired methods. Brain-inspired methods are highly efficient in obstacle detection; hence, this research aims to detect obstacles using brain-inspired techniques, which try to enlarge the obstacle by approaching it. A recent research in this field, has concentrated on matching the SIFT points along with, SIFT size-ratio factor and area-ratio of convex hulls in two consecutive frames to detect obstacles. This method is not able to distinguish between near and far obstacles or the obstacles in complex environment, and is sensitive to wrong matched points. In order to solve the above mentioned problems, this research calculates the dist-ratio of matched points. Then, each and every point is investigated for Distinguishing between far and close obstacles. The results demonstrated the high efficiency of the proposed method in complex environments.

Robot vision for nuclear advanced robot

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Nakayama, Ryoichi; Okano, Hideharu; Kuno, Yoshinori; Miyazawa, Tatsuo; Shimada, Hideo; Okada, Satoshi; Kawamura, Astuo

1991-01-01

This paper describes Robot Vision and Operation System for Nuclear Advanced Robot. This Robot Vision consists of robot position detection, obstacle detection and object recognition. With these vision techniques, a mobile robot can make a path and move autonomously along the planned path. The authors implemented the above robot vision system on the 'Advanced Robot for Nuclear Power Plant' and tested in an environment mocked up as nuclear power plant facilities. Since the operation system for this robot consists of operator's console and a large stereo monitor, this system can be easily operated by one person. Experimental tests were made using the Advanced Robot (nuclear robot). Results indicate that the proposed operation system is very useful, and can be operate by only person. (author)

A Method on Dynamic Path Planning for Robotic Manipulator Autonomous Obstacle Avoidance Based on an Improved RRT Algorithm.

Science.gov (United States)

Wei, Kun; Ren, Bingyin

2018-02-13

In a future intelligent factory, a robotic manipulator must work efficiently and safely in a Human-Robot collaborative and dynamic unstructured environment. Autonomous path planning is the most important issue which must be resolved first in the process of improving robotic manipulator intelligence. Among the path-planning methods, the Rapidly Exploring Random Tree (RRT) algorithm based on random sampling has been widely applied in dynamic path planning for a high-dimensional robotic manipulator, especially in a complex environment because of its probability completeness, perfect expansion, and fast exploring speed over other planning methods. However, the existing RRT algorithm has a limitation in path planning for a robotic manipulator in a dynamic unstructured environment. Therefore, an autonomous obstacle avoidance dynamic path-planning method for a robotic manipulator based on an improved RRT algorithm, called Smoothly RRT (S-RRT), is proposed. This method that targets a directional node extends and can increase the sampling speed and efficiency of RRT dramatically. A path optimization strategy based on the maximum curvature constraint is presented to generate a smooth and curved continuous executable path for a robotic manipulator. Finally, the correctness, effectiveness, and practicability of the proposed method are demonstrated and validated via a MATLAB static simulation and a Robot Operating System (ROS) dynamic simulation environment as well as a real autonomous obstacle avoidance experiment in a dynamic unstructured environment for a robotic manipulator. The proposed method not only provides great practical engineering significance for a robotic manipulator's obstacle avoidance in an intelligent factory, but also theoretical reference value for other type of robots' path planning.

Obstacle detection method, obstacle removing method, device and production line for practicing the methods

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Yoneyama, Takao; Ishimatsu, Tsuneo; Komata, Hisashi; Suzuki, Keisaburo.

1997-01-01

The present invention provides techniques for detecting and removing obstacles, which can be applied to pipelines and vessels to be used in structures such as nuclear power structures and electric power generation facilities. Namely, when the pipelines or vessels are in any of the stages, namely, production, installation, before the use after installation and before the reuse after inspection, obstacles remaining in the pipelines and vessels are blown off by using a fluid jetting mechanism (air compressor). Elastic waves generated when the blown off obstacles abut against the pipelines and vessels are detected by using a sensor. As a result, the remaining obstacles can be detected during any one of the stages described above. The blowing is repeated till the absence of the obstacles is confirmed by elastic wave signals detected by the sensor. As a result, the remaining obstacles can be removed. (I.S.)

Motion Detection from Mobile Robots with Fuzzy Threshold Selection in Consecutive 2D Laser Scans

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

María A. Martínez

2015-01-01

Full Text Available Motion detection and tracking is a relevant problem for mobile robots during navigation to avoid collisions in dynamic environments or in applications where service robots interact with humans. This paper presents a simple method to distinguish mobile obstacles from the environment that is based on applying fuzzy threshold selection to consecutive two-dimensional (2D laser scans previously matched with robot odometry. The proposed method has been tested with the Auriga-α mobile robot in indoors to estimate the motion of nearby pedestrians.

An obstacle detection system using binocular stereo fisheye lenses for planetary rover navigation

Science.gov (United States)

Liu, L.; Jia, J.; Li, L.

In this paper we present an implementation of an obstacle detection system using binocular stereo fisheye lenses for planetary rover navigation The fisheye lenses can improve image acquisition efficiency and handle minimal clearance recovery problem because they provide a large field of view However the fisheye lens introduces significant distortion in the image and this will make it much more difficult to find a one-to-one correspondence In addition we have to improve the system accuracy and efficiency for robot navigation To compute dense depth maps accurately in real time the following five key issues are considered 1 using lookup tables for a tradeoff between time and space in fisheye distortion correction and correspondence matching 2 using an improved incremental calculation scheme for algorithmic optimization 3 multimedia instruction set MMX implementation 4 consistency check to remove wrong stereo matching problems suffering from occlusions or mismatches 5 constraints of the recovery space To realize obstacle detection robustly we use the following three steps 1 extracting the ground plane parameters using Randomized Hough Transform 2 filtering the ground and background 3 locating the obstacles by using connected region detection Experimental results show the system can run at 3 2fps in 2 0GHz PC with 640X480 pixels

An optimized field coverage planning approach for navigation of agricultural robots in fields involving obstacle areas

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Hameed, Ibahim; Bochtis, D.; Sørensen, C.A.

2013-01-01

-field obstacle areas, the headland paths generation for the field and each obstacle area, the implementation of a genetic algorithm to optimize the sequence that the field robot vehicle will follow to visit the blocks, and an algorithmically generation of the task sequences derived from the farmer practices......Technological advances combined with the demand of cost efficiency and environmental considerations lead farmers to review their practices towards the adoption of new managerial approaches including enhanced automation. The application of field robots is one of the most promising advances among....... This approach has proven that it is possible to capture the practices of farmers and embed these practices in an algorithmic description providing a complete field area coverage plan in a form prepared for execution by the navigation system of a field robot....

A stereo vision-based obstacle detection system in vehicles

Science.gov (United States)

Huh, Kunsoo; Park, Jaehak; Hwang, Junyeon; Hong, Daegun

2008-02-01

Obstacle detection is a crucial issue for driver assistance systems as well as for autonomous vehicle guidance function and it has to be performed with high reliability to avoid any potential collision with the front vehicle. The vision-based obstacle detection systems are regarded promising for this purpose because they require little infrastructure on a highway. However, the feasibility of these systems in passenger car requires accurate and robust sensing performance. In this paper, an obstacle detection system using stereo vision sensors is developed. This system utilizes feature matching, epipoplar constraint and feature aggregation in order to robustly detect the initial corresponding pairs. After the initial detection, the system executes the tracking algorithm for the obstacles. The proposed system can detect a front obstacle, a leading vehicle and a vehicle cutting into the lane. Then, the position parameters of the obstacles and leading vehicles can be obtained. The proposed obstacle detection system is implemented on a passenger car and its performance is verified experimentally.

Obstacle detection system for underground mining vehicles

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Cohen, P.; Polotski, V.; Piotte, M.; Melamed, F. [Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal, Montreal, PQ (Canada)

1998-01-01

A device for detecting obstacles by autonomous vehicles navigating in mine drifts is described. The device is based upon structured lighting and the extraction of relevant features from images of obstacles. The system uses image profile changes, ground and wall irregularities, disturbances of the vehicle`s trajectory, and impaired visibility to detect obstacles, rather than explicit three-dimensional scene reconstruction. 7 refs., 5 figs.

Obstacle traversal and self-righting of bio-inspired robots reveal the physics of multi-modal locomotion

Science.gov (United States)

Li, Chen; Fearing, Ronald; Full, Robert

Most animals move in nature in a variety of locomotor modes. For example, to traverse obstacles like dense vegetation, cockroaches can climb over, push across, reorient their bodies to maneuver through slits, or even transition among these modes forming diverse locomotor pathways; if flipped over, they can also self-right using wings or legs to generate body pitch or roll. By contrast, most locomotion studies have focused on a single mode such as running, walking, or jumping, and robots are still far from capable of life-like, robust, multi-modal locomotion in the real world. Here, we present two recent studies using bio-inspired robots, together with new locomotion energy landscapes derived from locomotor-environment interaction physics, to begin to understand the physics of multi-modal locomotion. (1) Our experiment of a cockroach-inspired legged robot traversing grass-like beam obstacles reveals that, with a terradynamically ``streamlined'' rounded body like that of the insect, robot traversal becomes more probable by accessing locomotor pathways that overcome lower potential energy barriers. (2) Our experiment of a cockroach-inspired self-righting robot further suggests that body vibrations are crucial for exploring locomotion energy landscapes and reaching lower barrier pathways. Finally, we posit that our new framework of locomotion energy landscapes holds promise to better understand and predict multi-modal biological and robotic movement.

An Aerial-Ground Robotic System for Navigation and Obstacle Mapping in Large Outdoor Areas

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

David Zapata

2013-01-01

Full Text Available There are many outdoor robotic applications where a robot must reach a goal position or explore an area without previous knowledge of the environment around it. Additionally, other applications (like path planning require the use of known maps or previous information of the environment. This work presents a system composed by a terrestrial and an aerial robot that cooperate and share sensor information in order to address those requirements. The ground robot is able to navigate in an unknown large environment aided by visual feedback from a camera on board the aerial robot. At the same time, the obstacles are mapped in real-time by putting together the information from the camera and the positioning system of the ground robot. A set of experiments were carried out with the purpose of verifying the system applicability. The experiments were performed in a simulation environment and outdoor with a medium-sized ground robot and a mini quad-rotor. The proposed robotic system shows outstanding results in simultaneous navigation and mapping applications in large outdoor environments.

Ontology-based indirect interaction of mobile robots for joint task solving: a scenario for obstacle overcoming

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Petrov Mikhail

2017-01-01

Full Text Available This paper describes an ontology-based approach to interaction of users and mobile robots for joint task solving. The use of ontologies allows supporting semantic interoperability between robots. The ontologies store knowledge about the tasks to be performed, knowledge about the functionality of robots and the current situation factors like a robot location or busyness. Ontologies are published in a smart space which allows indirect interaction between participants. On the basis of the knowledge, a robot can define a task that is to be performed and get the current status of other robots. The paper presents a reference model of the approach to indirect interaction between mobile robots for joint task solving, an ontology model for the knowledge organization, and application of the presented approach for the scenario for obstacle overcoming.

AT89S52 microcontroller Based A Fire Extinguisher Robot Using Ultrasonic and Ultraviolet Sensor

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Wahyu Sapto Aji

2009-12-01

Full Text Available The fire often takes many victims. Fire detection system sometime can not prevent this from happening. Therefore, it is essential to develop a robot that can detect the present of fire as well as extinguish it. This research aimed to design a fire extinguisher robot using AT89S52 microcontroller as its controller. A DC fan controlled by a relay is utilized to put out the fire and a fire sensor (UV-Tron is used to detect the presence of fire. The movement of the robot is driven by motor DC. The robot can detect the surrounding obstacles and possess an ultrasound-based navigation system. If the ultrasound system detects an obstacle, the robot will automatically turn without colliding the obstacle or other things around it. The result has shown that this fire extinguisher robot can be built using hardware and software controlled by an AT89S52 microcontroller. It can be concluded from the tests that the robot can detect fire as far as 5 meter distance and able to successfully put out the fire.

Image-guided neurosurgery. Global concept of a surgical tele-assistance using obstacle detection robotics

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Desgeorges, M.; Bellegou, N.; Faillot, Th.; Cordoliani, Y.S.; Dutertre, G.; Blondet, E.; Soultrait, F. de; Boissy, J.M.

2000-01-01

Surgical tele-assistance significantly increases accuracy of surgical gestures, especially in the case of brain tumor neurosurgery. The robotic device is tele-operated through a microscope and the surgeon's gestures are guided by real-time overlaying of the X-ray imagery in the microscope. During the device's progression inside the brain, the focus is ensured by the microscope auto-focus feature. The surgeon can thus constantly check his position on the field workstation. Obstacles to avoid or dangerous areas can be previewed in the operation field. This system is routinely used for 5 years in the neurosurgery division of the Val de Grace hospital. More than 400 brain surgery operations have been done using it. An adaptation is used for rachis surgery. Other military hospitals begin to be equipped with similar systems. It will be possible to link them for data transfer. When it will be operational, such a network it will show what could be, in the future, a medical/surgical remote-assistance system designed to take care of wounded/critical conditions people, including assistance to surgical gestures. (authors)

Mobile robot navigation in unknown static environments using ANFIS controller

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Anish Pandey

2016-09-01

Full Text Available Navigation and obstacle avoidance are the most important task for any mobile robots. This article presents the Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Inference System (ANFIS controller for mobile robot navigation and obstacle avoidance in the unknown static environments. The different sensors such as ultrasonic range finder sensor and sharp infrared range sensor are used to detect the forward obstacles in the environments. The inputs of the ANFIS controller are obstacle distances obtained from the sensors, and the controller output is a robot steering angle. The primary objective of the present work is to use ANFIS controller to guide the mobile robot in the given environments. Computer simulations are conducted through MATLAB software and implemented in real time by using C/C++ language running Arduino microcontroller based mobile robot. Moreover, the successful experimental results on the actual mobile robot demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed controller.

Robotic guarded motion system and method

Science.gov (United States)

Bruemmer, David J.

2010-02-23

A robot platform includes perceptors, locomotors, and a system controller. The system controller executes instructions for repeating, on each iteration through an event timing loop, the acts of defining an event horizon, detecting a range to obstacles around the robot, and testing for an event horizon intrusion. Defining the event horizon includes determining a distance from the robot that is proportional to a current velocity of the robot and testing for the event horizon intrusion includes determining if any range to the obstacles is within the event horizon. Finally, on each iteration through the event timing loop, the method includes reducing the current velocity of the robot in proportion to a loop period of the event timing loop if the event horizon intrusion occurs.

Two Legged Walking Robot

OpenAIRE

Kraus, V.

2015-01-01

The aim of this work is to construct a two-legged wirelessly controlled walking robot. This paper describes the construction of the robot, its control electronics, and the solution of the wireless control. The article also includes a description of the application to control the robot. The control electronics of the walking robot are built using the development kit Arduino Mega, which is enhanced with WiFi module allowing the wireless control, a set of ultrasonic sensors for detecting obstacl...

Obstacle detection and avoiding of quadcopter

Science.gov (United States)

Wang, Dizhong; Lin, Jiajian

2017-10-01

Recent years, the flight control technology over quadcopter has been boosted vigorously and acquired the comprehensive application in a variety of industries. However, it is prominent for there to be problems existed in the stable and secure flight with the development of its autonomous flight. Through comparing with the characteristics of ultrasonic ranging and laser Time-of-Flight(abbreviated to ToF) distance as well as vision measurement and its related sensors, the obstacle detection and identification sensors need to be installed in order to effectively enhance the safety flying for aircraft, which is essential for avoiding the dangers around the surroundings. That the major sensors applied to objects perception at present are distance measuring instruments which based on the principle and application of non-contact detection technology . Prior to acknowledging the general principles of flight and obstacle avoiding, the aerodynamics modeling of the quadcopter and its object detection means has been initially determined on this paper. Based on such premise, this article emphasized on describing and analyzing the research on obstacle avoiding technology and its application status, and making an expectation for the trend of its development after analyzing the primary existing problems concerning its accuracy object avoidance.

Radial polar histogram: obstacle avoidance and path planning for robotic cognition and motion control

Science.gov (United States)

Wang, Po-Jen; Keyawa, Nicholas R.; Euler, Craig

2012-01-01

In order to achieve highly accurate motion control and path planning for a mobile robot, an obstacle avoidance algorithm that provided a desired instantaneous turning radius and velocity was generated. This type of obstacle avoidance algorithm, which has been implemented in California State University Northridge's Intelligent Ground Vehicle (IGV), is known as Radial Polar Histogram (RPH). The RPH algorithm utilizes raw data in the form of a polar histogram that is read from a Laser Range Finder (LRF) and a camera. A desired open block is determined from the raw data utilizing a navigational heading and an elliptical approximation. The left and right most radii are determined from the calculated edges of the open block and provide the range of possible radial paths the IGV can travel through. In addition, the calculated obstacle edge positions allow the IGV to recognize complex obstacle arrangements and to slow down accordingly. A radial path optimization function calculates the best radial path between the left and right most radii and is sent to motion control for speed determination. Overall, the RPH algorithm allows the IGV to autonomously travel at average speeds of 3mph while avoiding all obstacles, with a processing time of approximately 10ms.

Development of an optimal velocity selection method with velocity obstacle

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Kim, Min Geuk; Oh, Jun Ho [KAIST, Daejeon (Korea, Republic of)

2015-08-15

The Velocity obstacle (VO) method is one of the most well-known methods for local path planning, allowing consideration of dynamic obstacles and unexpected obstacles. Typical VO methods separate a velocity map into a collision area and a collision-free area. A robot can avoid collisions by selecting its velocity from within the collision-free area. However, if there are numerous obstacles near a robot, the robot will have very few velocity candidates. In this paper, a method for choosing optimal velocity components using the concept of pass-time and vertical clearance is proposed for the efficient movement of a robot. The pass-time is the time required for a robot to pass by an obstacle. By generating a latticized available velocity map for a robot, each velocity component can be evaluated using a cost function that considers the pass-time and other aspects. From the output of the cost function, even a velocity component that will cause a collision in the future can be chosen as a final velocity if the pass-time is sufficiently long enough.

Cellular neural networks for motion estimation and obstacle detection

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

D. Feiden

2003-01-01

Full Text Available Obstacle detection is an important part of Video Processing because it is indispensable for a collision prevention of autonomously navigating moving objects. For example, vehicles driving without human guidance need a robust prediction of potential obstacles, like other vehicles or pedestrians. Most of the common approaches of obstacle detection so far use analytical and statistical methods like motion estimation or generation of maps. In the first part of this contribution a statistical algorithm for obstacle detection in monocular video sequences is presented. The proposed procedure is based on a motion estimation and a planar world model which is appropriate to traffic scenes. The different processing steps of the statistical procedure are a feature extraction, a subsequent displacement vector estimation and a robust estimation of the motion parameters. Since the proposed procedure is composed of several processing steps, the error propagation of the successive steps often leads to inaccurate results. In the second part of this contribution it is demonstrated, that the above mentioned problems can be efficiently overcome by using Cellular Neural Networks (CNN. It will be shown, that a direct obstacle detection algorithm can be easily performed, based only on CNN processing of the input images. Beside the enormous computing power of programmable CNN based devices, the proposed method is also very robust in comparison to the statistical method, because is shows much less sensibility to noisy inputs. Using the proposed approach of obstacle detection in planar worlds, a real time processing of large input images has been made possible.

Smart Sensor Based Obstacle Detection for High-Speed Unmanned Surface Vehicle

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Hermann, Dan; Galeazzi, Roberto; Andersen, Jens Christian

2015-01-01

This paper describes an obstacle detection system for a high-speed and agile unmanned surface vehicle (USV), running at speeds up to 30 m/s. The aim is a real-time and high performance obstacle detection system using both radar and vision technologies to detect obstacles within a range of 175 m. ...... performance using sensor fusion of radar and computer vision....

Real Time Mapping and Dynamic Navigation for Mobile Robots

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Maki K. Habib

2008-11-01

Full Text Available This paper discusses the importance, the complexity and the challenges of mapping mobile robot?s unknown and dynamic environment, besides the role of sensors and the problems inherited in map building. These issues remain largely an open research problems in developing dynamic navigation systems for mobile robots. The paper presenst the state of the art in map building and localization for mobile robots navigating within unknown environment, and then introduces a solution for the complex problem of autonomous map building and maintenance method with focus on developing an incremental grid based mapping technique that is suitable for real-time obstacle detection and avoidance. In this case, the navigation of mobile robots can be treated as a problem of tracking geometric features that occur naturally in the environment of the robot. The robot maps its environment incrementally using the concept of occupancy grids and the fusion of multiple ultrasonic sensory information while wandering in it and stay away from all obstacles. To ensure real-time operation with limited resources, as well as to promote extensibility, the mapping and obstacle avoidance modules are deployed in parallel and distributed framework. Simulation based experiments has been conducted and illustrated to show the validity of the developed mapping and obstacle avoidance approach.

A Hybrid Architecture for Vision-Based Obstacle Avoidance

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Mehmet Serdar Güzel

2013-01-01

Full Text Available This paper proposes a new obstacle avoidance method using a single monocular vision camera as the only sensor which is called as Hybrid Architecture. This architecture integrates a high performance appearance-based obstacle detection method into an optical flow-based navigation system. The hybrid architecture was designed and implemented to run both methods simultaneously and is able to combine the results of each method using a novel arbitration mechanism. The proposed strategy successfully fused two different vision-based obstacle avoidance methods using this arbitration mechanism in order to permit a safer obstacle avoidance system. Accordingly, to establish the adequacy of the design of the obstacle avoidance system, a series of experiments were conducted. The results demonstrate the characteristics of the proposed architecture, and the results prove that its performance is somewhat better than the conventional optical flow-based architecture. Especially, the robot employing Hybrid Architecture avoids lateral obstacles in a more smooth and robust manner than when using the conventional optical flow-based technique.

Autonomous Robot Navigation In Public Nature Park

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Andersen, Jens Christian; Andersen, Nils Axel; Ravn, Ole

2005-01-01

This extended abstract describes a project to make a robot travel autonomously across a public nature park. The challenge is to detect and follow the right path across junctions and open squares avoiding people and obstacles. The robot is equipped with a laser scanner, a (low accuracy) GPS, wheel...

Laser Obstacle Detection System Flight Testing

National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

Davis, Timothy

2003-01-01

...). The Aviation Applied Technology Directorate (AATD) was contracted to mount the HELLAS sensor on the nose of a UH-60L Blackhawk helicopter and to conduct flight tests to evaluate the HELLAS obstacle detection sensor...

Application of Optical Flow Sensors for Dead Reckoning, Heading Reference, Obstacle Detection, and Obstacle Avoidance

Science.gov (United States)

2015-09-01

motion tracking and one sensor for object detection in association with an Arduino microcontroller , we built an indoor ground robot capable of...one sensor for motion tracking and one sensor for object detection in association with an Arduino microcontroller , we built an indoor ground robot...the vehicle from the generated data delivered by the optical sensor to an Arduino microcontroller . The microcontroller controls the speed, heading

Robotics Potential Fields

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jordi Lucero

2009-01-01

Full Text Available This problem was to calculate the path a robot would take to navigate an obstacle field and get to its goal. Three obstacles were given as negative potential fields which the robot avoided, and a goal was given a positive potential field that attracted the robot. The robot decided each step based on its distance, angle, and influence from every object. After each step, the robot recalculated and determined its next step until it reached its goal. The robot's calculations and steps were simulated with Microsoft Excel.

Vision Assisted Laser Scanner Navigation for Autonomous Robots

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Andersen, Jens Christian; Andersen, Nils Axel; Ravn, Ole

2008-01-01

This paper describes a navigation method based on road detection using both a laser scanner and a vision sensor. The method is to classify the surface in front of the robot into traversable segments (road) and obstacles using the laser scanner, this classifies the area just in front of the robot ...

Random neural Q-learning for obstacle avoidance of a mobile robot in unknown environments

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jing Yang

2016-07-01

Full Text Available The article presents a random neural Q-learning strategy for the obstacle avoidance problem of an autonomous mobile robot in unknown environments. In the proposed strategy, two independent modules, namely, avoidance without considering the target and goal-seeking without considering obstacles, are first trained using the proposed random neural Q-learning algorithm to obtain their best control policies. Then, the two trained modules are combined based on a switching function to realize the obstacle avoidance in unknown environments. For the proposed random neural Q-learning algorithm, a single-hidden layer feedforward network is used to approximate the Q-function to estimate the Q-value. The parameters of the single-hidden layer feedforward network are modified using the recently proposed neural algorithm named the online sequential version of extreme learning machine, where the parameters of the hidden nodes are assigned randomly and the sample data can come one by one. However, different from the original online sequential version of extreme learning machine algorithm, the initial output weights are estimated subjected to quadratic inequality constraint to improve the convergence speed. Finally, the simulation results demonstrate that the proposed random neural Q-learning strategy can successfully solve the obstacle avoidance problem. Also, the higher learning efficiency and better generalization ability are achieved by the proposed random neural Q-learning algorithm compared with the Q-learning based on the back-propagation method.

Collision recognition and direction changes for small scale fish robots by acceleration sensors

Science.gov (United States)

Na, Seung Y.; Shin, Daejung; Kim, Jin Y.; Lee, Bae-Ho

2005-05-01

Typical obstacles are walls, rocks, water plants and other nearby robots for a group of small scale fish robots and submersibles that have been constructed in our lab. Sonar sensors are not employed to make the robot structure simple enough. All of circuits, sensors and processor cards are contained in a box of 9 x 7 x 4 cm dimension except motors, fins and external covers. Therefore, image processing results are applied to avoid collisions. However, it is useful only when the obstacles are located far enough to give images processing time for detecting them. Otherwise, acceleration sensors are used to detect collision immediately after it happens. Two of 2-axes acceleration sensors are employed to measure the three components of collision angles, collision magnitudes, and the angles of robot propulsion. These data are integrated to calculate the amount of propulsion direction change. The angle of a collision incident upon an obstacle is the fundamental value to obtain a direction change needed to design a following path. But there is a significant amount of noise due to a caudal fin motor. Because caudal fin provides the main propulsion for a fish robot, there is a periodic swinging noise at the head of a robot. This noise provides a random acceleration effect on the measured acceleration data at the collision. We propose an algorithm which shows that the MEMS-type accelerometers are very effective to provide information for direction changes in spite of the intrinsic noise after the small scale fish robots have made obstacle collision.

Controlled Metal Detector Mounted on Mine Detection Robot

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Seiji Masunaga

2007-06-01

Full Text Available Landmine detection capability of metal detectors is very sensitive to the gap between buried landmines and the sensor heads. Therefore, human deminers manually scan ground surface with the metal detectors in such a manner that the sensor heads follow the ground surface. In case of robots assisted landmine detection, this function can be performed accurately and safely by controlling the gap and attitude of the sensor heads. In this investigation, the effectiveness of the gap and attitude control of the sensor head by some mechanical manipulator on the landmine detection performance has been addressed quantitatively. To this end, the paper describes the development of a Controlled Metal Detector (CMD for controlling the gap and attitude of the sensor head. The CMD generates trajectories of the sensor head from the depth information of the ground surface acquired with 3-D stereovision camera in order to avoid any obstacles and possible impact with the ground, and then tracks the trajectories with a trajectory-tracking controller. The effectiveness and the impact related to the gap and attitude control on the landmine detection performance of the CMD have been demonstrated by experimental studies.

Advanced robot vision system for nuclear power plants

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Onoguchi, Kazunori; Kawamura, Atsuro; Nakayama, Ryoichi.

1991-01-01

We have developed a robot vision system for advanced robots used in nuclear power plants, under a contract with the Agency of Industrial Science and Technology of the Ministry of International Trade and Industry. This work is part of the large-scale 'advanced robot technology' project. The robot vision system consists of self-location measurement, obstacle detection, and object recognition subsystems, which are activated by a total control subsystem. This paper presents details of these subsystems and the experimental results obtained. (author)

Navigation Strategy by Contact Sensing Interaction for a Biped Humanoid Robot

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Hanafiah Yussof

2008-11-01

Full Text Available This report presents a basic contact interaction-based navigation strategy for a biped humanoid robot to support current visual-based navigation. The robot's arms were equipped with force sensors to detect physical contact with objects. We proposed a motion algorithm consisting of searching tasks, self-localization tasks, correction of locomotion direction tasks and obstacle avoidance tasks. Priority was given to right-side direction to navigate the robot locomotion. Analysis of trajectory generation, biped gait pattern, and biped walking characteristics was performed to define an efficient navigation strategy in a biped walking humanoid robot. The proposed algorithm is evaluated in an experiment with a 21-dofs humanoid robot operating in a room with walls and obstacles. The experimental results reveal good robot performance when recognizing objects by touching, grasping, and continuously generating suitable trajectories to correct direction and avoid collisions.

A method of real-time detection for distant moving obstacles by monocular vision

Science.gov (United States)

Jia, Bao-zhi; Zhu, Ming

2013-12-01

In this paper, we propose an approach for detection of distant moving obstacles like cars and bicycles by a monocular camera to cooperate with ultrasonic sensors in low-cost condition. We are aiming at detecting distant obstacles that move toward our autonomous navigation car in order to give alarm and keep away from them. Method of frame differencing is applied to find obstacles after compensation of camera's ego-motion. Meanwhile, each obstacle is separated from others in an independent area and given a confidence level to indicate whether it is coming closer. The results on an open dataset and our own autonomous navigation car have proved that the method is effective for detection of distant moving obstacles in real-time.

Kinematic and Dynamic Analysis of a Cable-Climbing Robot

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Xu Fengyu

2015-07-01

Full Text Available To inspect broken cables or a cracked protective layer on cable-stayed bridges, a cable-climbing robot has been proposed and designed. In this paper, the complex 3D obstacles that may be encountered on cables are theoretically described, in order to investigate the obstacle-climbing capability of the cable-climbing robot. A climbing model is then proposed and used to design the robot. In the climbing model, two driven wheels are independently supported with a spring. Kinematics and dynamics models are further derived for the obstacle-climbing capabilities of the driving and driven wheels of the robot. In addition, the robot's obstacle-climbing tracks and its obstacle-climbing performance are simulated. Payload and obstacle-climbing experiments were conducted on the climbing robot in the laboratory. Based on the results of the simulation and the experiments, we obtained the variation of the driving torque in obstacle climbing. The contribution of this paper is intended to provide a basis for the precise motion control of the robot.

Assisting the Visually Impaired: Obstacle Detection and Warning System by Acoustic Feedback

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Andrés Cela

2012-12-01

Full Text Available The aim of this article is focused on the design of an obstacle detection system for assisting visually impaired people. A dense disparity map is computed from the images of a stereo camera carried by the user. By using the dense disparity map, potential obstacles can be detected in 3D in indoor and outdoor scenarios. A ground plane estimation algorithm based on RANSAC plus filtering techniques allows the robust detection of the ground in every frame. A polar grid representation is proposed to account for the potential obstacles in the scene. The design is completed with acoustic feedback to assist visually impaired users while approaching obstacles. Beep sounds with different frequencies and repetitions inform the user about the presence of obstacles. Audio bone conducting technology is employed to play these sounds without interrupting the visually impaired user from hearing other important sounds from its local environment. A user study participated by four visually impaired volunteers supports the proposed system.

Research on robot navigation vision sensor based on grating projection stereo vision

Science.gov (United States)

Zhang, Xiaoling; Luo, Yinsheng; Lin, Yuchi; Zhu, Lei

2016-10-01

A novel visual navigation method based on grating projection stereo vision for mobile robot in dark environment is proposed. This method is combining with grating projection profilometry of plane structured light and stereo vision technology. It can be employed to realize obstacle detection, SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping) and vision odometry for mobile robot navigation in dark environment without the image match in stereo vision technology and without phase unwrapping in the grating projection profilometry. First, we research the new vision sensor theoretical, and build geometric and mathematical model of the grating projection stereo vision system. Second, the computational method of 3D coordinates of space obstacle in the robot's visual field is studied, and then the obstacles in the field is located accurately. The result of simulation experiment and analysis shows that this research is useful to break the current autonomous navigation problem of mobile robot in dark environment, and to provide the theoretical basis and exploration direction for further study on navigation of space exploring robot in the dark and without GPS environment.

Efficient Kinect Sensor-Based Reactive Path Planning Method for Autonomous Mobile Robots in Dynamic Environments

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Tuvshinjargal, Doopalam; Lee, Deok Jin [Kunsan National University, Gunsan (Korea, Republic of)

2015-06-15

In this paper, an efficient dynamic reactive motion planning method for an autonomous vehicle in a dynamic environment is proposed. The purpose of the proposed method is to improve the robustness of autonomous robot motion planning capabilities within dynamic, uncertain environments by integrating a virtual plane-based reactive motion planning technique with a sensor fusion-based obstacle detection approach. The dynamic reactive motion planning method assumes a local observer in the virtual plane, which allows the effective transformation of complex dynamic planning problems into simple stationary ones proving the speed and orientation information between the robot and obstacles. In addition, the sensor fusion-based obstacle detection technique allows the pose estimation of moving obstacles using a Kinect sensor and sonar sensors, thus improving the accuracy and robustness of the reactive motion planning approach. The performance of the proposed method was demonstrated through not only simulation studies but also field experiments using multiple moving obstacles in hostile dynamic environments.

Efficient Kinect Sensor-Based Reactive Path Planning Method for Autonomous Mobile Robots in Dynamic Environments

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Tuvshinjargal, Doopalam; Lee, Deok Jin

2015-01-01

In this paper, an efficient dynamic reactive motion planning method for an autonomous vehicle in a dynamic environment is proposed. The purpose of the proposed method is to improve the robustness of autonomous robot motion planning capabilities within dynamic, uncertain environments by integrating a virtual plane-based reactive motion planning technique with a sensor fusion-based obstacle detection approach. The dynamic reactive motion planning method assumes a local observer in the virtual plane, which allows the effective transformation of complex dynamic planning problems into simple stationary ones proving the speed and orientation information between the robot and obstacles. In addition, the sensor fusion-based obstacle detection technique allows the pose estimation of moving obstacles using a Kinect sensor and sonar sensors, thus improving the accuracy and robustness of the reactive motion planning approach. The performance of the proposed method was demonstrated through not only simulation studies but also field experiments using multiple moving obstacles in hostile dynamic environments

TB case detection in Tajikistan – analysis of existing obstacles

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Alexei Korobitsyn

2013-10-01

Full Text Available Background: Tajikistan National TB Control ProgramObjective: (1 To identify the main obstacles to increasing TB Detection in Tajikistan. (2 To identify interventions that improve TB detection.Methods: Review of the available original research data, health normative base, health systems performance and national economic data, following WHO framework for detection of TB cases, which is based on three scenarios of why incident cases of TB may not be notified.Results: Data analysis revealed that some aspects of TB case detection are more problematic than others and that there are gaps in the knowledge of specific obstacles to TB case detection. The phenomenon of “initial default” in Tajikistan has been documented; however, it needs to be studied further. The laboratory services detect infectious TB cases effectively; however, referrals of appropriate suspects for TB diagnosis may lag behind. The knowledge about TB in the general population has improved. Yet, the problem of TB related stigma persists, thus being an obstacle for effective TB detection. High economic cost of health services driven by under-the-table payments was identified as another barrier for access to health services.Conclusion: Health system strengthening should become a primary intervention to improve case detection in Tajikistan. More research on reasons contributing to the failure to register TB cases, as well as factors underlying stigma is needed.

Terrain Mapping and Obstacle Detection Using Gaussian Processes

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Kjærgaard, Morten; Massaro, Alessandro Salvatore; Bayramoglu, Enis

2011-01-01

In this paper we consider a probabilistic method for extracting terrain maps from a scene and use the information to detect potential navigation obstacles within it. The method uses Gaussian process regression (GPR) to predict an estimate function and its relative uncertainty. To test the new...... show that the estimated maps follow the terrain shape, while protrusions are identified and may be isolated as potential obstacles. Representing the data with a covariance function allows a dramatic reduction of the amount of data to process, while maintaining the statistical properties of the measured...... and interpolated features....

Mechatronics Design of an Autonomous Pipe-Inspection Robot

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Abdellatif Mohamed

2018-01-01

Full Text Available Pipelines require periodical inspection to detect corrosion, deformation and congestion with obstacles in the network. Autonomous mobile robots are good solutions for this task. Visual information from the pipe interior associated with a location stamp is needed for inspection. In this paper, the previous designs of autonomous robots are reviewed and a new robot is developed to ensure simple design and smooth motion. Images are processed online to detect irregularity in pipe and then start capturing high resolution pictures to conserve the limited memory size. The new robot moves in pipes and provides video stream of pipe interior with location stamp. The visual information can later be processed offline to extract more information of pipeline condition to make maintenance decisions.

Characterization of the Hokuyo URG-04LX laser rangefinder for mobile robot obstacle negotiation

Science.gov (United States)

Okubo, Yoichi; Ye, Cang; Borenstein, Johann

2009-05-01

This paper presents a characterization study of the Hokuyo URG-04LX scanning laser rangefinder (LRF). The Hokuyo LRF is similar in function to the Sick LRF, which has been the de-facto standard range sensor for mobile robot obstacle avoidance and mapping applications for the last decade. Problems with the Sick LRF are its relatively large size, weight, and power consumption, allowing its use only on relatively large mobile robots. The Hokuyo LRF is substantially smaller, lighter, and consumes less power, and is therefore more suitable for small mobile robots. The question is whether it performs just as well as the Sick LRF in typical mobile robot applications. In 2002, two of the authors of the present paper published a characterization study of the Sick LRF. For the present paper we used the exact same test apparatus and test procedures as we did in the 2002 paper, but this time to characterize the Hokuyo LRF. As a result, we are in the unique position of being able to provide not only a detailed characterization study of the Hokuyo LRF, but also to compare the Hokuyo LRF with the Sick LRF under identical test conditions. Among the tested characteristics are sensitivity to a variety of target surface properties and incidence angles, which may potentially affect the sensing performance. We also discuss the performance of the Hokuyo LRF with regard to the mixed pixels problem associated with LRFs. Lastly, the present paper provides a calibration model for improving the accuracy of the Hokuyo LRF.

Cyclone: A laser scanner for mobile robot navigation

Science.gov (United States)

Singh, Sanjiv; West, Jay

1991-09-01

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon's Field Robotics Center have designed and implemented a scanning laser rangefinder. The device uses a commercially available time-of-flight ranging instrument that is capable of making up to 7200 measurements per second. The laser beam is reflected by a rotating mirror, producing up to a 360 degree view. Mounted on a robot vehicle, the scanner can be used to detect obstacles in the vehicle's path or to locate the robot on a map. This report discusses the motivation, design, and some applications of the scanner.

Eliminating drift of the head gesture reference to enhance Google Glass-based control of an NAO humanoid robot

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Xiaoqian Mao

2017-03-01

Full Text Available This article presents a strategy for hand-free control of an NAO humanoid robot via head gesture detected by Google Glass-based multi-sensor fusion. First, we introduce a Google Glass-based robot system by integrating the Google Glass and the NAO humanoid robot, which is able to send robot commands through Wi-Fi communications between the Google Glass and the robot. Second, we detect the operator’s head gestures by processing data from multiple sensors including accelerometers, geomagnetic sensors and gyroscopes. Next, we use a complementary filter to eliminate drift of the head gesture reference, which greatly improves the control performance. This is accomplished by the high-pass filter component on the control signal. Finally, we conduct obstacle avoidance experiments while navigating the robot to validate the effectiveness and reliability of this system. The experimental results show that the robot is smoothly navigated from its initial position to its destination with obstacle avoidance via the Google Glass. This hands-free control system can benefit those with paralysed limbs.

Research on the inspection robot for cable tunnel

Science.gov (United States)

Xin, Shihao

2017-03-01

Robot by mechanical obstacle, double end communication, remote control and monitoring software components. The mechanical obstacle part mainly uses the tracked mobile robot mechanism, in order to facilitate the design and installation of the robot, the other auxiliary swing arm; double side communication part used a combination of communication wire communication with wireless communication, great improve the communication range of the robot. When the robot is controlled by far detection range, using wired communication control, on the other hand, using wireless communication; remote control part mainly completes the inspection robot walking, navigation, positioning and identification of cloud platform control. In order to improve the reliability of its operation, the preliminary selection of IPC as the control core the movable body selection program hierarchical structure as a design basis; monitoring software part is the core part of the robot, which has a definite diagnosis Can be instead of manual simple fault judgment, instead the robot as a remote actuators, staff as long as the remote control can be, do not have to body at the scene. Four parts are independent of each other but are related to each other, the realization of the structure of independence and coherence, easy maintenance and coordination work. Robot with real-time positioning function and remote control function, greatly improves the IT operation. Robot remote monitor, to avoid the direct contact with the staff and line, thereby reducing the accident casualties, for the safety of the inspection work has far-reaching significance.

Formation Control and Obstacle Avoidance for Multiple Mobile Robots%多移动机器人避障编队控制

Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

杨甜甜; 刘志远; 陈虹; 裴润

2008-01-01

This paper considers the problem of formation con-trol and obstacle avoidance for a group of nonholonomic mobile robots. On the basis of suboptimal model predictive control, two control algorithms are proposed. Both algorithms are formulated such that they solve as solving the optimal control problems in which the cost functions are coupled with the dynamics of each interacting robot. A potential function is used to define the ter- minal state penalty term, and a corresponding terminal state region is added to the optimization constraints. Moreover, the main issues inclusive of stability and safety are also discussed. Simulation results show the feasibility of the proposed control strategies.

The application of Markov decision process in restaurant delivery robot

Science.gov (United States)

Wang, Yong; Hu, Zhen; Wang, Ying

2017-05-01

As the restaurant delivery robot is often in a dynamic and complex environment, including the chairs inadvertently moved to the channel and customers coming and going. The traditional path planning algorithm is not very ideal. To solve this problem, this paper proposes the Markov dynamic state immediate reward (MDR) path planning algorithm according to the traditional Markov decision process. First of all, it uses MDR to plan a global path, then navigates along this path. When the sensor detects there is no obstructions in front state, increase its immediate state reward value; when the sensor detects there is an obstacle in front, plan a global path that can avoid obstacle with the current position as the new starting point and reduce its state immediate reward value. This continues until the target is reached. When the robot learns for a period of time, it can avoid those places where obstacles are often present when planning the path. By analyzing the simulation experiment, the algorithm has achieved good results in the global path planning under the dynamic environment.

Obstacle Detection for Intelligent Transportation Systems Using Deep Stacked Autoencoder and k-Nearest Neighbor Scheme

KAUST Repository

Dairi, Abdelkader; Harrou, Fouzi; Sun, Ying; Senouci, Mohamed

2018-01-01

Obstacle detection is an essential element for the development of intelligent transportation systems so that accidents can be avoided. In this study, we propose a stereovisionbased method for detecting obstacles in urban environment. The proposed method uses a deep stacked auto-encoders (DSA) model that combines the greedy learning features with the dimensionality reduction capacity and employs an unsupervised k-nearest neighbors algorithm (KNN) to accurately and reliably detect the presence of obstacles. We consider obstacle detection as an anomaly detection problem. We evaluated the proposed method by using practical data from three publicly available datasets, the Malaga stereovision urban dataset (MSVUD), the Daimler urban segmentation dataset (DUSD), and Bahnhof dataset. Also, we compared the efficiency of DSA-KNN approach to the deep belief network (DBN)-based clustering schemes. Results show that the DSA-KNN is suitable to visually monitor urban scenes.

Obstacle Detection for Intelligent Transportation Systems Using Deep Stacked Autoencoder and k-Nearest Neighbor Scheme

KAUST Repository

Dairi, Abdelkader

2018-04-30

Obstacle detection is an essential element for the development of intelligent transportation systems so that accidents can be avoided. In this study, we propose a stereovisionbased method for detecting obstacles in urban environment. The proposed method uses a deep stacked auto-encoders (DSA) model that combines the greedy learning features with the dimensionality reduction capacity and employs an unsupervised k-nearest neighbors algorithm (KNN) to accurately and reliably detect the presence of obstacles. We consider obstacle detection as an anomaly detection problem. We evaluated the proposed method by using practical data from three publicly available datasets, the Malaga stereovision urban dataset (MSVUD), the Daimler urban segmentation dataset (DUSD), and Bahnhof dataset. Also, we compared the efficiency of DSA-KNN approach to the deep belief network (DBN)-based clustering schemes. Results show that the DSA-KNN is suitable to visually monitor urban scenes.

Construction of Fisheye Lens Inverse Perspective Mapping Model and Its Applications of Obstacle Detection

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Chin-Teng Lin

2010-01-01

Full Text Available In this paper, we develop a vision based obstacle detection system by utilizing our proposed fisheye lens inverse perspective mapping (FLIPM method. The new mapping equations are derived to transform the images captured by the fisheye lens camera into the undistorted remapped ones under practical circumstances. In the obstacle detection, we make use of the features of vertical edges on objects from remapped images to indicate the relative positions of obstacles. The static information of remapped images in the current frame is referred to determining the features of source images in the searching stage from either the profile or temporal IPM difference image. The profile image can be acquired by several processes such as sharpening, edge detection, morphological operation, and modified thinning algorithms on the remapped image. The temporal IPM difference image can be obtained by a spatial shift on the remapped image in the previous frame. Moreover, the polar histogram and its post-processing procedures will be used to indicate the position and length of feature vectors and to remove noises as well. Our obstacle detection can give drivers the warning signals within a limited distance from nearby vehicles while the detected obstacles are even with the quasi-vertical edges.

Obstacle Avoidance for Redundant Manipulators Utilizing a Backward Quadratic Search Algorithm

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Tianjian Hu

2016-06-01

Full Text Available Obstacle avoidance can be achieved as a secondary task by appropriate inverse kinematics (IK resolution of redundant manipulators. Most prior literature requires the time-consuming determination of the closest point to the obstacle for every calculation step. Aiming at the relief of computational burden, this paper develops what is termed a backward quadratic search algorithm (BQSA as another option for solving IK problems in obstacle avoidance. The BQSA detects possible collisions based on the root property of a category of quadratic functions, which are derived from ellipse-enveloped obstacles and the positions of each link's end-points. The algorithm executes a backward search for possible obstacle collisions, from the end-effector to the base, and avoids obstacles by utilizing a hybrid IK scheme, incorporating the damped least-squares method, the weighted least-norm method and the gradient projection method. Some details of the hybrid IK scheme, such as values of the damped factor, weights and the clamping velocity, are discussed, along with a comparison of computational load between previous methods and BQSA. Simulations of a planar seven-link manipulator and a PUMA 560 robot verify the effectiveness of BQSA.

Research on the attitude detection technology of the tetrahedron robot

Science.gov (United States)

Gong, Hao; Chen, Keshan; Ren, Wenqiang; Cai, Xin

2017-10-01

The traditional attitude detection technology can't tackle the problem of attitude detection of the polyhedral robot. Thus we propose a novel algorithm of multi-sensor data fusion which is based on Kalman filter. In the algorithm a tetrahedron robot is investigated. We devise an attitude detection system for the polyhedral robot and conduct the verification of data fusion algorithm. It turns out that the minimal attitude detection system we devise could capture attitudes of the tetrahedral robot in different working conditions. Thus the Kinematics model we establish for the tetrahedron robot is correct and the feasibility of the attitude detection system is proven.

Development and human factors analysis of an augmented reality interface for multi-robot tele-operation and control

Science.gov (United States)

Lee, Sam; Lucas, Nathan P.; Ellis, R. Darin; Pandya, Abhilash

2012-06-01

This paper presents a seamlessly controlled human multi-robot system comprised of ground and aerial robots of semiautonomous nature for source localization tasks. The system combines augmented reality interfaces capabilities with human supervisor's ability to control multiple robots. The role of this human multi-robot interface is to allow an operator to control groups of heterogeneous robots in real time in a collaborative manner. It used advanced path planning algorithms to ensure obstacles are avoided and that the operators are free for higher-level tasks. Each robot knows the environment and obstacles and can automatically generate a collision-free path to any user-selected target. It displayed sensor information from each individual robot directly on the robot in the video view. In addition, a sensor data fused AR view is displayed which helped the users pin point source information or help the operator with the goals of the mission. The paper studies a preliminary Human Factors evaluation of this system in which several interface conditions are tested for source detection tasks. Results show that the novel Augmented Reality multi-robot control (Point-and-Go and Path Planning) reduced mission completion times compared to the traditional joystick control for target detection missions. Usability tests and operator workload analysis are also investigated.

Multi-Modal Detection and Mapping of Static and Dynamic Obstacles in Agriculture for Process Evaluation

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Timo Korthals

2018-03-01

Full Text Available Today, agricultural vehicles are available that can automatically perform tasks such as weed detection and spraying, mowing, and sowing while being steered automatically. However, for such systems to be fully autonomous and self-driven, not only their specific agricultural tasks must be automated. An accurate and robust perception system automatically detecting and avoiding all obstacles must also be realized to ensure safety of humans, animals, and other surroundings. In this paper, we present a multi-modal obstacle and environment detection and recognition approach for process evaluation in agricultural fields. The proposed pipeline detects and maps static and dynamic obstacles globally, while providing process-relevant information along the traversed trajectory. Detection algorithms are introduced for a variety of sensor technologies, including range sensors (lidar and radar and cameras (stereo and thermal. Detection information is mapped globally into semantical occupancy grid maps and fused across all sensors with late fusion, resulting in accurate traversability assessment and semantical mapping of process-relevant categories (e.g., crop, ground, and obstacles. Finally, a decoding step uses a Hidden Markov model to extract relevant process-specific parameters along the trajectory of the vehicle, thus informing a potential control system of unexpected structures in the planned path. The method is evaluated on a public dataset for multi-modal obstacle detection in agricultural fields. Results show that a combination of multiple sensor modalities increases detection performance and that different fusion strategies must be applied between algorithms detecting similar and dissimilar classes.

Implementation of a Mobile Robot Platform Navigating in Dynamic Environment

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Belaidi Hadjira

2017-01-01

Full Text Available Currently, problems of autonomous wheeled mobile robots in unknown environments are great challenge. Obstacle avoidance and path planning are the back bone of autonomous control as it makes robot able to reach its destination without collision. Dodging obstacles in dynamic and uncertain environment is the most complex part of obstacle avoidance and path planning tasks. This work deals with the implementation of an easy approach of static and dynamic obstacles avoidance. The robot starts by executing a free optimal path loaded into its controller; then, it uses its sensors to avoid the unexpected obstacles which may occur in that path during navigation.

Robotic Oncological Surgery: Technology That's Here to Stay?

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

HRH Patel

2009-09-01

Full Text Available A robot functioning in an environment may exhibit various forms of behavior emerge from the interaction with its environment through sense, control and plan activities. Hence, this paper introduces a behaviour selection based navigation and obstacle avoidance algorithm with effective method for adapting robotic behavior according to the environment conditions and the navigated terrain. The developed algorithm enable the robot to select the suitable behavior in real-time to avoid obstacles based on sensory information through visual and ultrasonic sensors utilizing the robot's ability to step over obstacles, and move between surfaces of different heights. In addition, it allows the robot to react in appropriate manner to the changing conditions either by fine-tuning of behaviors or by selecting different set of behaviors to increase the efficiency of the robot over time. The presented approach has been demonstrated on quadruped robot in several different experimental environments and the paper provides an analysis of its performance.

Neural Networks in Mobile Robot Motion

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Danica Janglová

2004-03-01

Full Text Available This paper deals with a path planning and intelligent control of an autonomous robot which should move safely in partially structured environment. This environment may involve any number of obstacles of arbitrary shape and size; some of them are allowed to move. We describe our approach to solving the motion-planning problem in mobile robot control using neural networks-based technique. Our method of the construction of a collision-free path for moving robot among obstacles is based on two neural networks. The first neural network is used to determine the “free” space using ultrasound range finder data. The second neural network “finds” a safe direction for the next robot section of the path in the workspace while avoiding the nearest obstacles. Simulation examples of generated path with proposed techniques will be presented.

A Modular Approach to Redundant Robot Control

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Anderson, R.J.

1997-12-01

This paper describes a modular approach for computing redundant robot kinematics. First some conventional redundant control methods are presented and shown to be 'passive control laws', i.e. they can be represented by a network consisting of passive elements. These networks are then put into modular form by applying scattering operator techniques. Additional subnetwork modules can then be added to further shape the motion. Modules for obstacle detection, joint limit avoidance, proximity sensing, and for imposing nonlinear velocity constraints are presented. The resulting redundant robot control system is modular, flexible and robust

Advanced robot locomotion.

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Neely, Jason C.; Sturgis, Beverly Rainwater; Byrne, Raymond Harry; Feddema, John Todd; Spletzer, Barry Louis; Rose, Scott E.; Novick, David Keith; Wilson, David Gerald; Buerger, Stephen P.

2007-01-01

This report contains the results of a research effort on advanced robot locomotion. The majority of this work focuses on walking robots. Walking robot applications include delivery of special payloads to unique locations that require human locomotion to exo-skeleton human assistance applications. A walking robot could step over obstacles and move through narrow openings that a wheeled or tracked vehicle could not overcome. It could pick up and manipulate objects in ways that a standard robot gripper could not. Most importantly, a walking robot would be able to rapidly perform these tasks through an intuitive user interface that mimics natural human motion. The largest obstacle arises in emulating stability and balance control naturally present in humans but needed for bipedal locomotion in a robot. A tracked robot is bulky and limited, but a wide wheel base assures passive stability. Human bipedal motion is so common that it is taken for granted, but bipedal motion requires active balance and stability control for which the analysis is non-trivial. This report contains an extensive literature study on the state-of-the-art of legged robotics, and it additionally provides the analysis, simulation, and hardware verification of two variants of a proto-type leg design.

Teleautonomous Control on Rescue Robot Prototype

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Son Kuswadi

2012-12-01

Full Text Available Robot application in disaster area can help responder team to save victims. In order to finish task, robot must have flexible movement mechanism so it can pass through uncluttered area. Passive linkage can be used on robot chassis so it can give robot flexibility. On physical experiments, robot is succeeded to move through gravels and 5 cm obstacle. Rescue robot also has specialized control needs. Robot must able to be controlled remotely. It also must have ability to move autonomously. Teleautonomous control method is combination between those methods. It can be concluded from experiments that on teleoperation mode, operator must get used to see environment through robot’s camera. While on autonomous mode, robot is succeeded to avoid obstacle and search target based on sensor reading and controller program. On teleautonomous mode, robot can change control mode by using bluetooth communication for data transfer, so robot control will be more flexible.

CANINE: a robotic mine dog

Science.gov (United States)

Stancil, Brian A.; Hyams, Jeffrey; Shelley, Jordan; Babu, Kartik; Badino, Hernán.; Bansal, Aayush; Huber, Daniel; Batavia, Parag

2013-01-01

Neya Systems, LLC competed in the CANINE program sponsored by the U.S. Army Tank Automotive Research Development and Engineering Center (TARDEC) which culminated in a competition held at Fort Benning as part of the 2012 Robotics Rodeo. As part of this program, we developed a robot with the capability to learn and recognize the appearance of target objects, conduct an area search amid distractor objects and obstacles, and relocate the target object in the same way that Mine dogs and Sentry dogs are used within military contexts for exploration and threat detection. Neya teamed with the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University to develop vision-based solutions for probabilistic target learning and recognition. In addition, we used a Mission Planning and Management System (MPMS) to orchestrate complex search and retrieval tasks using a general set of modular autonomous services relating to robot mobility, perception and grasping.

StereoBox: A Robust and Efficient Solution for Automotive Short-Range Obstacle Detection

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Alberto Broggi

2007-07-01

Full Text Available This paper presents a robust method for close-range obstacle detection with arbitrarily aligned stereo cameras. System calibration is performed by means of a dense grid to remove perspective and lens distortion after a direct mapping between image pixels and world points. Obstacle detection is based on the differences between left and right images after transformation phase and with a polar histogram, it is possible to detect vertical structures and to reject noise and small objects. Found objects' world coordinates are transmitted via CAN bus; the driver can also be warned through an audio interface. The proposed algorithm can be useful in different automotive applications, requiring real-time segmentation without any assumption on background. Experimental results proved the system to be robust in several envitonmental conditions. In particular, the system has been tested to investigate presence of obstacles in blind spot areas around heavy goods vehicles (HGVs and has been mounted on three different prototypes at different heights.

StereoBox: A Robust and Efficient Solution for Automotive Short-Range Obstacle Detection

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Broggi Alberto

2007-01-01

Full Text Available This paper presents a robust method for close-range obstacle detection with arbitrarily aligned stereo cameras. System calibration is performed by means of a dense grid to remove perspective and lens distortion after a direct mapping between image pixels and world points. Obstacle detection is based on the differences between left and right images after transformation phase and with a polar histogram, it is possible to detect vertical structures and to reject noise and small objects. Found objects' world coordinates are transmitted via CAN bus; the driver can also be warned through an audio interface. The proposed algorithm can be useful in different automotive applications, requiring real-time segmentation without any assumption on background. Experimental results proved the system to be robust in several envitonmental conditions. In particular, the system has been tested to investigate presence of obstacles in blind spot areas around heavy goods vehicles (HGVs and has been mounted on three different prototypes at different heights.

Range Sensor-Based Efficient Obstacle Avoidance through Selective Decision-Making.

Science.gov (United States)

Shim, Youngbo; Kim, Gon-Woo

2018-03-29

In this paper, we address a collision avoidance method for mobile robots. Many conventional obstacle avoidance methods have been focused solely on avoiding obstacles. However, this can cause instability when passing through a narrow passage, and can also generate zig-zag motions. We define two strategies for obstacle avoidance, known as Entry mode and Bypass mode. Entry mode is a pattern for passing through the gap between obstacles, while Bypass mode is a pattern for making a detour around obstacles safely. With these two modes, we propose an efficient obstacle avoidance method based on the Expanded Guide Circle (EGC) method with selective decision-making. The simulation and experiment results show the validity of the proposed method.

Range Sensor-Based Efficient Obstacle Avoidance through Selective Decision-Making

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Youngbo Shim

2018-03-01

Full Text Available In this paper, we address a collision avoidance method for mobile robots. Many conventional obstacle avoidance methods have been focused solely on avoiding obstacles. However, this can cause instability when passing through a narrow passage, and can also generate zig-zag motions. We define two strategies for obstacle avoidance, known as Entry mode and Bypass mode. Entry mode is a pattern for passing through the gap between obstacles, while Bypass mode is a pattern for making a detour around obstacles safely. With these two modes, we propose an efficient obstacle avoidance method based on the Expanded Guide Circle (EGC method with selective decision-making. The simulation and experiment results show the validity of the proposed method.

Optimal path planning for a mobile robot using cuckoo search algorithm

Science.gov (United States)

Mohanty, Prases K.; Parhi, Dayal R.

2016-03-01

The shortest/optimal path planning is essential for efficient operation of autonomous vehicles. In this article, a new nature-inspired meta-heuristic algorithm has been applied for mobile robot path planning in an unknown or partially known environment populated by a variety of static obstacles. This meta-heuristic algorithm is based on the levy flight behaviour and brood parasitic behaviour of cuckoos. A new objective function has been formulated between the robots and the target and obstacles, which satisfied the conditions of obstacle avoidance and target-seeking behaviour of robots present in the terrain. Depending upon the objective function value of each nest (cuckoo) in the swarm, the robot avoids obstacles and proceeds towards the target. The smooth optimal trajectory is framed with this algorithm when the robot reaches its goal. Some simulation and experimental results are presented at the end of the paper to show the effectiveness of the proposed navigational controller.

Reactive, Safe Navigation for Lunar and Planetary Robots

Science.gov (United States)

Utz, Hans; Ruland, Thomas

2008-01-01

When humans return to the moon, Astronauts will be accompanied by robotic helpers. Enabling robots to safely operate near astronauts on the lunar surface has the potential to significantly improve the efficiency of crew surface operations. Safely operating robots in close proximity to astronauts on the lunar surface requires reactive obstacle avoidance capabilities not available on existing planetary robots. In this paper we present work on safe, reactive navigation using a stereo based high-speed terrain analysis and obstacle avoidance system. Advances in the design of the algorithms allow it to run terrain analysis and obstacle avoidance algorithms at full frame rate (30Hz) on off the shelf hardware. The results of this analysis are fed into a fast, reactive path selection module, enforcing the safety of the chosen actions. The key components of the system are discussed and test results are presented.

A Multimodal Emotion Detection System during Human-Robot Interaction

Science.gov (United States)

Alonso-Martín, Fernando; Malfaz, María; Sequeira, João; Gorostiza, Javier F.; Salichs, Miguel A.

2013-01-01

In this paper, a multimodal user-emotion detection system for social robots is presented. This system is intended to be used during human–robot interaction, and it is integrated as part of the overall interaction system of the robot: the Robotics Dialog System (RDS). Two modes are used to detect emotions: the voice and face expression analysis. In order to analyze the voice of the user, a new component has been developed: Gender and Emotion Voice Analysis (GEVA), which is written using the Chuck language. For emotion detection in facial expressions, the system, Gender and Emotion Facial Analysis (GEFA), has been also developed. This last system integrates two third-party solutions: Sophisticated High-speed Object Recognition Engine (SHORE) and Computer Expression Recognition Toolbox (CERT). Once these new components (GEVA and GEFA) give their results, a decision rule is applied in order to combine the information given by both of them. The result of this rule, the detected emotion, is integrated into the dialog system through communicative acts. Hence, each communicative act gives, among other things, the detected emotion of the user to the RDS so it can adapt its strategy in order to get a greater satisfaction degree during the human–robot dialog. Each of the new components, GEVA and GEFA, can also be used individually. Moreover, they are integrated with the robotic control platform ROS (Robot Operating System). Several experiments with real users were performed to determine the accuracy of each component and to set the final decision rule. The results obtained from applying this decision rule in these experiments show a high success rate in automatic user emotion recognition, improving the results given by the two information channels (audio and visual) separately. PMID:24240598

Electromagnetic obstacle detection in close distance

Science.gov (United States)

Kurzela, Michał; Burd, Aleksander

2016-09-01

The main topic is the electronic system, designed and built to help car drivers during parking. It uses electromagnetism phenomena for making an estimation of arrangement of obstacles. The device works with close distance (about 5-15cm), depending on the material from which the obstacle is made.

Motion planning for multiple robots

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Aronov, B.; Berg, de M.; van der Stappen, A.F.; Svestka, P.; Vleugels, J.M.

1999-01-01

We study the motion-planning problem for pairs and triples of robots operating in a shared workspace containing n obstacles. A standard way to solve such problems is to view the collection of robots as one composite robot, whose number of degrees of freedom is d , the sum of the numbers of degrees

Dynamic Mobile RobotNavigation Using Potential Field Based Immune Network

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Guan-Chun Luh

2007-04-01

Full Text Available This paper proposes a potential filed immune network (PFIN for dynamic navigation of mobile robots in an unknown environment with moving obstacles and fixed/moving targets. The Velocity Obstacle method is utilized to determine imminent obstacle collision of a robot moving in the time-varying environment. The response of the overall immune network is derived by the aid of fuzzy system. Simulation results are presented to verify the effectiveness of the proposed methodology in unknown environments with single and multiple moving obstacles

DeepAnomaly: Combining Background Subtraction and Deep Learning for Detecting Obstacles and Anomalies in an Agricultural Field

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Peter Christiansen

2016-11-01

Full Text Available Convolutional neural network (CNN-based systems are increasingly used in autonomous vehicles for detecting obstacles. CNN-based object detection and per-pixel classification (semantic segmentation algorithms are trained for detecting and classifying a predefined set of object types. These algorithms have difficulties in detecting distant and heavily occluded objects and are, by definition, not capable of detecting unknown object types or unusual scenarios. The visual characteristics of an agriculture field is homogeneous, and obstacles, like people, animals and other obstacles, occur rarely and are of distinct appearance compared to the field. This paper introduces DeepAnomaly, an algorithm combining deep learning and anomaly detection to exploit the homogenous characteristics of a field to perform anomaly detection. We demonstrate DeepAnomaly as a fast state-of-the-art detector for obstacles that are distant, heavily occluded and unknown. DeepAnomaly is compared to state-of-the-art obstacle detectors including “Faster R-CNN: Towards Real-Time Object Detection with Region Proposal Networks” (RCNN. In a human detector test case, we demonstrate that DeepAnomaly detects humans at longer ranges (45–90 m than RCNN. RCNN has a similar performance at a short range (0–30 m. However, DeepAnomaly has much fewer model parameters and (182 ms/25 ms = a 7.28-times faster processing time per image. Unlike most CNN-based methods, the high accuracy, the low computation time and the low memory footprint make it suitable for a real-time system running on a embedded GPU (Graphics Processing Unit.

HYBRID COMMUNICATION NETWORK OF MOBILE ROBOT AND QUAD-COPTER

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Moustafa M. Kurdi

2017-01-01

Full Text Available This paper introduces the design and development of QMRS (Quadcopter Mobile Robotic System. QMRS is a real-time obstacle avoidance capability in Belarus-132N mobile robot with the cooperation of quadcopter Phantom-4. The function of QMRS consists of GPS used by Mobile Robot and image vision and image processing system from both robot and quad-copter and by using effective searching algorithm embedded inside the robot. Having the capacity to navigate accurately is one of the major abilities of a mobile robot to effectively execute a variety of jobs including manipulation, docking, and transportation. To achieve the desired navigation accuracy, mobile robots are typically equipped with on-board sensors to observe persistent features in the environment, to estimate their pose from these observations, and to adjust their motion accordingly. Quadcopter takes off from Mobile Robot, surveys the terrain and transmits the processed Image terrestrial robot. The main objective of research paper is to focus on the full coordination between robot and quadcopter by designing an efficient wireless communication using WIFI. In addition, it identify the method involving the use of vision and image processing system from both robot and quadcopter; analyzing path in real-time and avoiding obstacles based-on the computational algorithm embedded inside the robot. QMRS increases the efficiency and reliability of the whole system especially in robot navigation, image processing and obstacle avoidance due to the help and connection among the different parts of the system.

Evolutionary programming-based univector field navigation method for past mobile robots.

Science.gov (United States)

Kim, Y J; Kim, J H; Kwon, D S

2001-01-01

Most of navigation techniques with obstacle avoidance do not consider the robot orientation at the target position. These techniques deal with the robot position only and are independent of its orientation and velocity. To solve these problems this paper proposes a novel univector field method for fast mobile robot navigation which introduces a normalized two dimensional vector field. The method provides fast moving robots with the desired posture at the target position and obstacle avoidance. To obtain the sub-optimal vector field, a function approximator is used and trained by evolutionary programming. Two kinds of vector fields are trained, one for the final posture acquisition and the other for obstacle avoidance. Computer simulations and real experiments are carried out for a fast moving mobile robot to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.

Conceptual design for transmission line inspection robot

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Jalal, M F Abdul; Sahari, K S Mohamed; Anuar, A; Arshad, A D Mohd; Idris, M S

2013-01-01

Power transmission line is used for power distribution purposes due to their cost effective measure compared to underlying cable. However, prolonged exposure to natural weather may cause fatigue stress to the lines as well as induce material failure. Therefore, periodical line inspection is considered uttermost important as a preventive measure to avoid power outage. However, transmission line inspection has always been a high risk and expensive work. Hazardous works that may harm operator as well as routine that requires precise handling can be performed by robots. Various types of robots have been designed and developed for line inspection but only perform well on a straight and continuous line. As these robots encounter an obstacle during the inspection, then the real problem in terms of robot stability and smooth operation arises. In this paper, conceptual design and evaluation for transmission line inspection robot is presented. The inspection robot mobile robot must be able to bypass or avoid obstacles as it travels along the power transmission line.

An inspection of pipe by snake robot

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

František Trebuňa

2016-10-01

Full Text Available The article deals with development and application of snake robot for inspection pipes. The first step involves the introduction of a design of mechanical and electrical parts of the snake robot. Next, the analysis of the robot locomotion is introduced. For the curved pipe, potential field method is used. By this method, the system is able to generate path for the head and rear robot, linking the environment with obstacles, which are represented by the walls of the pipe. Subsequently, the solution of potential field method is used in inverse kinematic model, which respects tasks as obstacle avoidance, joint limit avoidance, and singularity avoidance. Mentioned approach is then tested on snake robot in provisional pipe with rectangular cross section. For this research, software Matlab (2013b is used as the control system in cooperation with the control system of robot, which is based on microcontrollers. By experiments, it is shown that designed robot is able to pass through straight and also curved pipe.

Developing operation algorithms for vision subsystems in autonomous mobile robots

Science.gov (United States)

Shikhman, M. V.; Shidlovskiy, S. V.

2018-05-01

The paper analyzes algorithms for selecting keypoints on the image for the subsequent automatic detection of people and obstacles. The algorithm is based on the histogram of oriented gradients and the support vector method. The combination of these methods allows successful selection of dynamic and static objects. The algorithm can be applied in various autonomous mobile robots.

Detection of Subtle Context-Dependent Model Inaccuracies in High-Dimensional Robot Domains.

Science.gov (United States)

Mendoza, Juan Pablo; Simmons, Reid; Veloso, Manuela

2016-12-01

Autonomous robots often rely on models of their sensing and actions for intelligent decision making. However, when operating in unconstrained environments, the complexity of the world makes it infeasible to create models that are accurate in every situation. This article addresses the problem of using potentially large and high-dimensional sets of robot execution data to detect situations in which a robot model is inaccurate-that is, detecting context-dependent model inaccuracies in a high-dimensional context space. To find inaccuracies tractably, the robot conducts an informed search through low-dimensional projections of execution data to find parametric Regions of Inaccurate Modeling (RIMs). Empirical evidence from two robot domains shows that this approach significantly enhances the detection power of existing RIM-detection algorithms in high-dimensional spaces.

A measurement-based fault detection approach applied to monitor robots swarm

KAUST Repository

Khaldi, Belkacem

2017-07-10

Swarm robotics requires continuous monitoring to detect abnormal events and to sustain normal operations. Indeed, swarm robotics with one or more faulty robots leads to degradation of performances complying with the target requirements. This paper present an innovative data-driven fault detection method for monitoring robots swarm. The method combines the flexibility of principal component analysis (PCA) models and the greater sensitivity of the exponentially-weighted moving average control chart to incipient changes. We illustrate through simulated data collected from the ARGoS simulator that a significant improvement in fault detection can be obtained by using the proposed methods as compared to the use of the conventional PCA-based methods.

Early Obstacle Detection and Avoidance for All to All Traffic Pattern in Wireless Sensor Networks

Science.gov (United States)

Huc, Florian; Jarry, Aubin; Leone, Pierre; Moraru, Luminita; Nikoletseas, Sotiris; Rolim, Jose

This paper deals with early obstacles recognition in wireless sensor networks under various traffic patterns. In the presence of obstacles, the efficiency of routing algorithms is increased by voluntarily avoiding some regions in the vicinity of obstacles, areas which we call dead-ends. In this paper, we first propose a fast convergent routing algorithm with proactive dead-end detection together with a formal definition and description of dead-ends. Secondly, we present a generalization of this algorithm which improves performances in all to many and all to all traffic patterns. In a third part we prove that this algorithm produces paths that are optimal up to a constant factor of 2π + 1. In a fourth part we consider the reactive version of the algorithm which is an extension of a previously known early obstacle detection algorithm. Finally we give experimental results to illustrate the efficiency of our algorithms in different scenarios.

Design and Analysis of Planetary Gear and Track Hybrid Mobile Robot

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

LEI Ning

2014-10-01

Full Text Available In order to improve the ability of obstacle negotiation and stability of mobile robot under unstructured environment, a new type of planetary gear and track hybrid mobile robot has been designed. This robot can surmount lower obstacles by its gravity and inertia of epicyclic gear train, otherwise, higher obstacles can be negotiated by the track arms. The two-part body connected by universal coupling can adjust to different terrain. Also, key parts of the robot were analyzed by ANSYS. According to the analysis results, an optimization design has been put forward .The analysis results can be concluded that the total deformation of the track arm can be reduced from 289 mm to 41.9 mm and the stiffness was improved.

Efficient Reactive Navigation with Exact Collision Determination for 3D Robot Shapes

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Mariano Jaimez

2015-05-01

Full Text Available This paper presents a reactive navigator for wheeled mobile robots moving on a flat surface which takes into account both the actual 3D shape of the robot and the 3D surrounding obstacles. The robot volume is modelled by a number of prisms consecutive in height, and the detected obstacles, which can be provided by different kinds of range sensor, are segmented into these heights. Then, the reactive navigation problem is tackled by a number of concurrent 2D navigators, one for each prism, which are consistently and efficiently combined to yield an overall solution. Our proposal for each 2D navigator is based on the concept of the “Parameterized Trajectory Generator” which models the robot shape as a polygon and embeds its kinematic constraints into different motion models. Extensive testing has been conducted in office-like and real house environments, covering a total distance of 18.5 km, to demonstrate the reliability and effectiveness of the proposed method. Moreover, additional experiments are performed to highlight the advantages of a 3D-aware reactive navigator. The implemented code is available under an open-source licence.

SMART STICK DESIGN WITH OBSTACLE DETECTION AND NAVIGATION AS THE HELPING TOOL FOR BLIND PEOPLE

OpenAIRE

Sumar Hadi*, Susilo Adi Widyanto, Paryanto, Kurnia Chamid, Rachmat Muhamad Andika

2018-01-01

Smart stick designed for the blind people, this appliance can help detect obstacles with the use of infrared sensor, ultrasonic and water. The obstacles in a distance of about 3 m can be detected assistance from this sensor. In addition, we use GPS (Global Positioning System) to give the position and navigation on the stick. Using GPS (Global Positioning System) help the blind people reaches its destination. GPS (Global Positioning System) recipients to get the location of the latest and the ...

Obstacle detection contribution for automotive applications; Contribution a la detection d'obstacles pour la voiture intelligente

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Wahl, M.

1997-12-05

On the one hand, this Ph-D Thesis deals with a new architectural approach for automotive applications implementing heterogeneous sensor data fusion, and on the other hand, it explains the data pre-processing algorithm of a microwave radar. Firstly, the analysis of both PROCHIP2 and PROLAB2 obstacle detection demonstrators (cf. the European PROMETHEUS research program about smart cars) has led us to propose a new functional architecture. Our approach introduces a sensor data pre-processing level. Data are then running at the local sensor before being transferred to data fusion architectures (that classically receives data whose meaning has also been noised by the application distribution). Secondly, an elementary simulator has been designed in order to complement our database composed of experimental microwave radar data. It is able to generate radar data for basic highway traffic scenarios. With both experimental and simulated data, a deterministic radar data pre-processing algorithm has been designed. It reduces the amount of data to be transferred by converting the local radar data into a higher semantic information: it gives more pertinent data (for example: velocities...) to the data fusion level; in particular, it predicts the obstacle path. Finally, some perspectives have been set out. Firstly, an H {infinity} estimation approach is used to reduce the data disruption effect that alters the radar data and, secondly, a controller has been proposed with the goal of decreasing the effect of car pitching. (author)

Intelligent control system for nuclear power plant mobile robot

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Koenig, A.; Lecoeur-Taibi, I.; Crochon, E.; Vacherand, F.

1991-01-01

In order to fully optimize the efficiency of the perception and navigation components available on a mobile robot, the upper level of a mobile robot control requires intelligence support to unload the work of the teleoperator. This knowledge-based system has to manage a priori data such as the map of the workspace, the mission, the characteristics of sensors and robot, but also, the current environment state and the running mission. It has to issue a plan to drive the sensors to focus on relevant objects or to scan the environment and to select the best algorithms depending on the current situation. The environment workspace is a nuclear power plant building. The teleoperated robot is a mobile wheeled or legged vehicle that moves inside the different floors of the building. There are three types of mission: radio-activity survey, inspection and intervention. To perform these goals the robot must avoid obstacles, pass through doors, possibly climb stairs and recognize valves and pipes. The perception control system has to provide the operator with a synthetic view of the surroundings. It manages background tasks such as obstacle detection and free space map building, and specific tasks such as beacon recognition for odometry relocalization and valve detection for maintenance. To do this, the system solves perception resources conflicts, taking into account the current states of the sensors and the current conditions such as lightness or darkness, cluttered scenes, sensor failure. A perception plan is issued from the mission goals, planned path, relocalization requirements and available perception resources. Basically, the knowledge-based system is implemented on a blackboard architecture which includes two parts: a top-down planning part and a bottom-up perception part. The results of the perception are continuously sent to the operator who can trigger new perception actions. (author)

Tracked Robot with Blade Arms to Enhance Crawling Capability

OpenAIRE

Jhu-Wei Ji; Fa-Shian Chang; Lih-Tyng Hwang; Chih-Feng Liu; Jeng-Nan Lee; Shun-Min Wang; Kai-Yi Cho

2016-01-01

This paper presents a tracked robot with blade arms powered to assist movement in difficult environments. As a result, the tracked robot is able to pass a ramp or climb stairs. The main feature is a pair of blade arms on both sides of the vehicle body working in collaboration with previously validated transformable track system. When the robot encounters an obstacle in a terrain, it enlists the blade arms with power to overcome the obstacle. In disaster areas, there usually will be terrains t...

Path Planning Method in Multi-obstacle Marine Environment

Science.gov (United States)

Zhang, Jinpeng; Sun, Hanxv

2017-12-01

In this paper, an improved algorithm for particle swarm optimization is proposed for the application of underwater robot in the complex marine environment. Not only did consider to avoid obstacles when path planning, but also considered the current direction and the size effect on the performance of the robot dynamics. The algorithm uses the trunk binary tree structure to construct the path search space and A * heuristic search method is used in the search space to find a evaluation standard path. Then the particle swarm algorithm to optimize the path by adjusting evaluation function, which makes the underwater robot in the current navigation easier to control, and consume less energy.

Novelty Detection for Interactive Pose Recognition by a Social Robot

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Victor Gonzalez-Pacheco

2015-04-01

Full Text Available Active robot learners take an active role in their own learning by making queries to their human teachers when they receive new data. However, not every received input is useful for the robot, and asking for non-informative inputs or asking too many questions might worsen the user's perception of the robot. We present a novelty detection system that enables a robot to ask labels for new stimuli only when they seem both novel and interesting. Our system separates the decision process into two steps: first, it discriminates novel from known stimuli, and second, it estimates if these stimuli are likely to happen again. Our approach uses the notion of curiosity, which controls the eagerness with which the robot asks questions to the user. We evaluate our approach in the domain of pose learning by training our robot with a set of pointing poses able to detect up to 84%, 79%, and 78% of the observed novelties in three different experiments. Our approach enables robots to keep learning continuously, even after training is finished. The introduction of the curiosity parameter allows tuning, for the conditions in which the robot should want to learn more.

Human Robot Interaction for Hybrid Collision Avoidance System for Indoor Mobile Robots

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Mazen Ghandour

2017-06-01

Full Text Available In this paper, a novel approach for collision avoidance for indoor mobile robots based on human-robot interaction is realized. The main contribution of this work is a new technique for collision avoidance by engaging the human and the robot in generating new collision-free paths. In mobile robotics, collision avoidance is critical for the success of the robots in implementing their tasks, especially when the robots navigate in crowded and dynamic environments, which include humans. Traditional collision avoidance methods deal with the human as a dynamic obstacle, without taking into consideration that the human will also try to avoid the robot, and this causes the people and the robot to get confused, especially in crowded social places such as restaurants, hospitals, and laboratories. To avoid such scenarios, a reactive-supervised collision avoidance system for mobile robots based on human-robot interaction is implemented. In this method, both the robot and the human will collaborate in generating the collision avoidance via interaction. The person will notify the robot about the avoidance direction via interaction, and the robot will search for the optimal collision-free path on the selected direction. In case that no people interacted with the robot, it will select the navigation path autonomously and select the path that is closest to the goal location. The humans will interact with the robot using gesture recognition and Kinect sensor. To build the gesture recognition system, two models were used to classify these gestures, the first model is Back-Propagation Neural Network (BPNN, and the second model is Support Vector Machine (SVM. Furthermore, a novel collision avoidance system for avoiding the obstacles is implemented and integrated with the HRI system. The system is tested on H20 robot from DrRobot Company (Canada and a set of experiments were implemented to report the performance of the system in interacting with the human and avoiding

Sensor-based whole-arm obstacle avoidance for unstructured environments

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Wintenberg, A.L.; Butler, P.L.; Babcock, S.M.; Ericson, M.N.; Armstrong, G.A.; Britton, C.L. Jr.; Hamel, W.R.

1992-01-01

Whole-arm obstacle avoidance is needed for a variety of robotic applications in the Environmental Restoration and Waste Management (ER ampersand WM) Program. Typical industrial applications of robotics involve well-defined workspaces, allowing a predetermined knowledge of collision-free paths for manipulator motion. However, many hazardous environments are unstructured or poorly defined, providing a significant potential for collisions between manipulators and the environment. In order to allow applications of robotics in such situations, a sensing system is under development which will provide protection against collisions. Specifics of this system including system architecture and projected implementation are described

Monitoring a robot swarm using a data-driven fault detection approach

KAUST Repository

Khaldi, Belkacem; Harrou, Fouzi; Cherif, Foudil; Sun, Ying

2017-01-01

Using swarm robotics system, with one or more faulty robots, to accomplish specific tasks may lead to degradation in performances complying with the target requirements. In such circumstances, robot swarms require continuous monitoring to detect

A Fuzzy Obstacle Avoidance Controller Using a Lookup-Table Sharing Method and Its Applications for Mobile Robots

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jinwook Kim

2011-11-01

Full Text Available A Lookup-Table (LUT based design enhances the processing speed of a fuzzy obstacle avoidance controller by reducing the operation time. Also, a LUT sharing method provides efficient ways of reducing the LUT memory size. In order to share the LUT which is used for a fuzzy obstacle avoidance controller, an idea of using a basis function is developed. As applications of the shared LUT-based fuzzy controller, a laser-sensor-based fuzzy controller and an ultrasonic-sensor-based fuzzy controller are introduced in this paper. This paper suggests a LUT sharing method that reduces the LUT buffer size without a significant degradation of the performance. The LUT sharing method makes the buffer size independent of the fuzzy system's complexity. A simulation using MSRDS (Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio is used to evaluate the proposed method. To investigate the performance of the controller, experiments are carried out using a Pioneer P3-DX with LabVIEW as an integration tool. Although the simulation and experiments show little difference between the fully valued LUT-based method and the LUT sharing method in terms of the operation time, the LUT sharing method reduces almost 95% of the full-valued LUT-based buffer size.

Cooperative fusion for multi-obstacles detection with use of stereovision and laser scanner

OpenAIRE

LABAYRADE, R; ROYERE, C; GRUYER, D; AUBERT, D

2003-01-01

The authors propose in this paper a new cooperative fusion approach between stereovision and laser scanner in order to take advantage of the best features of these two sensors to perform robust, accurate and real-time detection of multi-obstacles in the automotive context. The proposed system is able to estimate the position and the height, width and depth of generic obstacles at video frame rate (25 frames per second). The vehicle pitch, estimated by stereovision, is used to filter laser sca...

Cooperative fusion for multi-obstacles detection with use of stereovision and laser scanner

OpenAIRE

LABAYRADE, R; ROYERE, C; GRUYER, D; AUBERT, D

2005-01-01

We propose a new cooperative fusion approach between stereovision and laser scanner in order to take advantage of the best features and cope with the drawbacks of these two sensors to perform robust, accurate and real time-detection of multi-obstacles in the automotive context. The proposed system is able to estimate the position and the height, width and depth of generic obstacles at video frame rate (25 frames per second). The vehicle pitch, estimated by stereovision, is used to filter lase...

Mobile Robot Navigation and Obstacle Avoidance in Unstructured Outdoor Environments

Science.gov (United States)

2017-12-01

to pull information from the network, it subscribes to a specific topic and is able to receive the messages that are published to that topic. In order...total artificial potential field is characterized “as the sum of an attractive potential pulling the robot toward the goal…and a repulsive potential...of robot laser_max = 20; % robot laser view horizon goaldist = 0.5; % distance metric for reaching goal goali = 1

Trajectory Planning of Mobile robot in Unstructured Environment for Multiple Objects

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Muhammad Arshad

2012-01-01

Full Text Available In this paper we have presented a novel technique for the navigation and path formulation of wheeled mobile robot. In a given environment having obstacles, a path is generated from the given initial and final position of the robot. Based on the global knowledge of the environment a global path is formulated initially. This global path considers all the known obstacles in the environment and must avoid collision with these obstacles, i.e. the formulated path must be safe (collision free. For global path formulation strategic schemes have been employed using the a priori knowledge of the environment. The global path is fed to the robot. When unknown obstacles come in the path of the robot, it must deviate from the given global path and should generate a local path to avoid collision with the new unknown obstacle. By using sensors data the reactive schemes have been implemented for local path formulation. For local path formulation the path has been subdivided into intermediate steps known as sub goals. In the existing approaches known and unknown objects are considered separately. But in some of the practical applications known and unknown objects need to be considered simultaneously. This paper considers the problem of robot motion formulation in an environment having already known obstacles and unknown new moving objects. A Novel algorithm has been developed which incorporates local path planner, optimization and navigation modules. As unknown objects can appear in the environment randomly therefore uncertainty in the environment has been considered.

Monitoring a robot swarm using a data-driven fault detection approach

KAUST Repository

Khaldi, Belkacem

2017-06-30

Using swarm robotics system, with one or more faulty robots, to accomplish specific tasks may lead to degradation in performances complying with the target requirements. In such circumstances, robot swarms require continuous monitoring to detect abnormal events and to sustain normal operations. In this paper, an innovative exogenous fault detection method for monitoring robots swarm is presented. The method merges the flexibility of principal component analysis (PCA) models and the greater sensitivity of the exponentially-weighted moving average (EWMA) and cumulative sum (CUSUM) control charts to insidious changes. The method is tested and evaluated on a swarm of simulated foot-bot robots performing a circle formation task, via the viscoelastic control model. We illustrate through simulated data collected from the ARGoS simulator that a significant improvement in fault detection can be obtained by using the proposed method where compared to the conventional PCA-based methods (i.e., T2 and Q).

Optimal Path Planner for Mobile Robot in 2D Environment

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Valeri Kroumov

2004-06-01

Full Text Available The problem of path planning for the case of a mobile robot moving in an environment filled with obstacles with known shapes and positions is studied. A path planner based on the genetic algorithm approach, which generates optimal in length path is proposed. The population member paths are generated by another algorithm, which uses for description of the obstacles an artificial annealing neural network and is based on potential field approach. The resulting path is piecewise linear with changing directions at the corners of the obstacles. Because of this feature, the inverse kinematics problems in controlling differential drive robots are simply solved: to drive the robot to some goal pose (x, y, theta, the robot can be spun in place until it is aimed at (x, y, then driven forward until it is at (x, y, and then spun in place until the required goal orientation

Kontrol Kecepatan Robot Hexapod Pemadam Api menggunakan Metoda Logika Fuzzy

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Darwison

2015-09-01

Full Text Available This study aims to create a hexapod robot speed control fire extinguisher using fuzzy logic method . By applying the method of fuzzy logic will make the robot move smoother and comparable to the distance . The input of the fuzzy logic method is obtained from three ultrasonic sensors as detection distance to the wall / barrier . Hexapod robot using a servomotor with torgue large enough to perform the movement . Robot speed will be faster if the purpose of the movement of the robot is still far from the wall / barrier and vice versa . Microcontroller with fuzzy logic -based program of its use as a controller movement . The results showed that more refined movement based on the distance read by the sensor , where the sensor is experiencing an error distance measurement is influenced by the material wall / barrier . For the wall material / to obstacle of the board experienced a reading error of 0.18 % , amounting to 0.5 % of books and dolls of 1.58 %.

Reactive Path Planning Approach for Docking Robots in Unknown Environment

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Peng Cui

2017-01-01

Full Text Available Autonomous robots need to be recharged and exchange information with the host through docking in the long-distance tasks. Therefore, feasible path is required in the docking process to guide the robot and adjust its pose. However, when there are unknown obstacles in the work area, it becomes difficult to determine the feasible path for docking. This paper presents a reactive path planning approach named Dubins-APF (DAPF to solve the path planning problem for docking in unknown environment with obstacles. In this proposed approach the Dubins curves are combined with the designed obstacle avoidance potential field to plan the feasible path. Firstly, an initial path is planned and followed according to the configurations of the robot and the docking station. Then when the followed path is evaluated to be infeasible, the intermediate configuration is calculated as well as the replanned path based on the obstacle avoidance potential field. The robot will be navigated to the docking station with proper pose eventually via the DAPF approach. The proposed DAPF approach is efficient and does not require the prior knowledge about the environment. Simulation results are given to validate the effectiveness and feasibility of the proposed approach.

Speaker detection for conversational robots using synchrony between audio and video

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Noulas, A.; Englebienne, G.; Terwijn, B.; Kröse, B.; Hanheide, M.; Zender, H.

2010-01-01

This paper compares different methods for detecting the speaking person when multiple persons are interacting with a robot. We evaluate the state-of-the-art speaker detection methods on the iCat robot. These methods use the synchrony between audio and video to locate the most probable speaker. We

Nonholonomic feedback control among moving obstacles

Science.gov (United States)

Armstrong, Stephen Gregory

A feedback controller is developed for navigating a nonholonomic vehicle in an area with multiple stationary and possibly moving obstacles. Among other applications the developed algorithms can be used for automatic parking of a passenger car in a parking lot with complex configuration or a ground robot in cluttered environment. Several approaches are explored which combine nonholonomic systems control based on sliding modes and potential field methods.

Robot motion control in mobile environment

Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

Iliya V Miroshnik; HUANG Xian-lin(黄显林); HE Jie(贺杰)

2003-01-01

With the problem of robot motion control in dynamic environment represented by mobile obstacles,working pieces and external mechanisms considered, a relevant control actions design procedure has been pro-posed to provide coordination of robot motions with respect to the moving external objects so that an extension ofrobot spatial motion techniques and active robotic strategies based on approaches of nonlinear control theory canbe achieved.

COLLISION-AVOIDANCE FOR MOBILE ROBOTS USING REGION OF CERTAINTY: A PREDICTIVE APPROACH

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

B. MANUP

2016-01-01

Full Text Available In on-line environment, obstacles may exhibit different trajectory. Trajectory analysis of the obstacle is essential in determining its future location. If this analysis is accurate the futuristic region where robot and obstacle collision is likely to occur can be estimated. This enables the mobile robot to take corrective action prior to collision. In this approach, the motion pattern of the obstacle is analysed by taking into account the past co-ordinates traversed by the obstacle. Then the futuristic region where the obstacle is likely to occupy is predicted. This region is termed as region of certainty. Simulation results shows that the approach gives more reliable prediction as many number of sample points representing the past positions travelled by the obstacles are taken into consideration. The algorithm yielded better performance under higher obstacle velocity conditions and the results were compared with distance time transform method.

A ToF-Camera as a 3D Vision Sensor for Autonomous Mobile Robotics

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Sobers Lourdu Xavier Francis

2015-11-01

Full Text Available The aim of this paper is to deploy a time-of-flight (ToF based photonic mixer device (PMD camera on an Autonomous Ground Vehicle (AGV whose overall target is to traverse from one point to another in hazardous and hostile environments employing obstacle avoidance without human intervention. The hypothesized approach of applying a ToF Camera for an AGV is a suitable approach to autonomous robotics because, as the ToF camera can provide three-dimensional (3D information at a low computational cost, it is utilized to extract information about obstacles after their calibration and ground testing and is mounted and integrated with the Pioneer mobile robot. The workspace is a two-dimensional (2D world map which has been divided into a grid/cells, where the collision-free path defined by the graph search algorithm is a sequence of cells the AGV can traverse to reach the target. PMD depth data is used to populate traversable areas and obstacles by representing a grid/cells of suitable size. These camera data are converted into Cartesian coordinates for entry into a workspace grid map. A more optimal camera mounting angle is needed and adopted by analysing the camera's performance discrepancy, such as pixel detection, the detection rate and the maximum perceived distances, and infrared (IR scattering with respect to the ground surface. This mounting angle is recommended to be half the vertical field-of-view (FoV of the PMD camera. A series of still and moving tests are conducted on the AGV to verify correct sensor operations, which show that the postulated application of the ToF camera in the AGV is not straightforward. Later, to stabilize the moving PMD camera and to detect obstacles, a tracking feature detection algorithm and the scene flow technique are implemented to perform a real-time experiment.

DE L'ABEILLE AU ROBOT : LA RÉGULATION DU FLUX OPTIQUE. Contrôle conjoint de vitesse et d'évitements d'obstacles latéraux pour véhicules totalement actionnés.

OpenAIRE

Serres , Julien

2008-01-01

We developed an autopilot, called LORA (Lateral Optic flow Regulation Autopilot), which is inspired by motion vision in flying insects. It incorporates two interdependent optic flow regulators, each of which controls one translational degree of freedom: a bilateral optic flow regulator controls the robot's speed, while a unilateral optic flow regulator makes the robot avoid lateral obstacles. Simulation experiments show that a fully actuated vehicle, equipped solely with the LORA autopilot, i...

Wheeled hopping robot

Science.gov (United States)

Fischer, Gary J [Albuquerque, NM

2010-08-17

The present invention provides robotic vehicles having wheeled and hopping mobilities that are capable of traversing (e.g. by hopping over) obstacles that are large in size relative to the robot and, are capable of operation in unpredictable terrain over long range. The present invention further provides combustion powered linear actuators, which can include latching mechanisms to facilitate pressurized fueling of the actuators, as can be used to provide wheeled vehicles with a hopping mobility.

Investigation In Two Wheels Mobile Robot Movement: Stability and Motion Paths

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Abdulrahman A.A. Emhemed

2013-01-01

Full Text Available This paper deals with the problem of dynamic modelling of inspection robot two wheels. Fuzzy controller based on robotics techniques for optimize of an inspection stability. The target is to enhancement of robot direction and avoids the obstacles. To find collision free area, distance-sensors such as ultra-sonic sensors and laser scanners or vision systems are usually employed. The distance-sensors offer only distance information between mobile robots and obstacles. Also the target are shown can be reached by different directions. The fuzzy logic controller is effect to avoid the abstacles and get ideal direction to “the target box”.

Design of Wheeled Mobile Robot with Tri-Star Wheel as Rescue Robot

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Rafiuddin Syam

2014-10-01

Full Text Available This study aims to design, and analyze a mobile robot that can handle some of the obstacles, they are uneven surfaces, slopes, can also climb stairs. WMR in this study is Tristar wheel that is containing three wheels for each set. On average surface only two wheels in contact with the surface, if there is an uneven surface or obstacle then the third wheel will rotate with the rotation center of the wheel in contact with the leading obstacle then only one wheel in contact with the surface. This study uses the C language program. Furthermore, the minimum thrust to be generated torque of the motor and transmission is 9.56 kg. The results obtained by calculation and analysis of DC motors used must have a torque greater than 14.67 kg.cm. Minimum thrust to be generated motor torque and the transmission is 9.56 kg. The experimental results give good results for robot to moving forward, backward, turn left, turn right and climbing the stairs.

Visual SLAM and Moving-object Detection for a Small-size Humanoid Robot

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Yin-Tien Wang

2010-09-01

Full Text Available In the paper, a novel moving object detection (MOD algorithm is developed and integrated with robot visual Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (vSLAM. The moving object is assumed to be a rigid body and its coordinate system in space is represented by a position vector and a rotation matrix. The MOD algorithm is composed of detection of image features, initialization of image features, and calculation of object coordinates. Experimentation is implemented on a small-size humanoid robot and the results show that the performance of the proposed algorithm is efficient for robot visual SLAM and moving object detection.

Detection and Localization of Robotic Tools in Robot-Assisted Surgery Videos Using Deep Neural Networks for Region Proposal and Detection.

Science.gov (United States)

Sarikaya, Duygu; Corso, Jason J; Guru, Khurshid A

2017-07-01

Video understanding of robot-assisted surgery (RAS) videos is an active research area. Modeling the gestures and skill level of surgeons presents an interesting problem. The insights drawn may be applied in effective skill acquisition, objective skill assessment, real-time feedback, and human-robot collaborative surgeries. We propose a solution to the tool detection and localization open problem in RAS video understanding, using a strictly computer vision approach and the recent advances of deep learning. We propose an architecture using multimodal convolutional neural networks for fast detection and localization of tools in RAS videos. To the best of our knowledge, this approach will be the first to incorporate deep neural networks for tool detection and localization in RAS videos. Our architecture applies a region proposal network (RPN) and a multimodal two stream convolutional network for object detection to jointly predict objectness and localization on a fusion of image and temporal motion cues. Our results with an average precision of 91% and a mean computation time of 0.1 s per test frame detection indicate that our study is superior to conventionally used methods for medical imaging while also emphasizing the benefits of using RPN for precision and efficiency. We also introduce a new data set, ATLAS Dione, for RAS video understanding. Our data set provides video data of ten surgeons from Roswell Park Cancer Institute, Buffalo, NY, USA, performing six different surgical tasks on the daVinci Surgical System (dVSS) with annotations of robotic tools per frame.

Controlling the autonomy of a reconnaissance robot

Science.gov (United States)

Dalgalarrondo, Andre; Dufourd, Delphine; Filliat, David

2004-09-01

In this paper, we present our research on the control of a mobile robot for indoor reconnaissance missions. Based on previous work concerning our robot control architecture HARPIC, we have developed a man machine interface and software components that allow a human operator to control a robot at different levels of autonomy. This work aims at studying how a robot could be helpful in indoor reconnaissance and surveillance missions in hostile environment. In such missions, since a soldier faces many threats and must protect himself while looking around and holding his weapon, he cannot devote his attention to the teleoperation of the robot. Moreover, robots are not yet able to conduct complex missions in a fully autonomous mode. Thus, in a pragmatic way, we have built a software that allows dynamic swapping between control modes (manual, safeguarded and behavior-based) while automatically performing map building and localization of the robot. It also includes surveillance functions like movement detection and is designed for multirobot extensions. We first describe the design of our agent-based robot control architecture and discuss the various ways to control and interact with a robot. The main modules and functionalities implementing those ideas in our architecture are detailed. More precisely, we show how we combine manual controls, obstacle avoidance, wall and corridor following, way point and planned travelling. Some experiments on a Pioneer robot equipped with various sensors are presented. Finally, we suggest some promising directions for the development of robots and user interfaces for hostile environment and discuss our planned future improvements.

Visual Detection and Tracking System for a Spherical Amphibious Robot.

Science.gov (United States)

Guo, Shuxiang; Pan, Shaowu; Shi, Liwei; Guo, Ping; He, Yanlin; Tang, Kun

2017-04-15

With the goal of supporting close-range observation tasks of a spherical amphibious robot, such as ecological observations and intelligent surveillance, a moving target detection and tracking system was designed and implemented in this study. Given the restrictions presented by the amphibious environment and the small-sized spherical amphibious robot, an industrial camera and vision algorithms using adaptive appearance models were adopted to construct the proposed system. To handle the problem of light scattering and absorption in the underwater environment, the multi-scale retinex with color restoration algorithm was used for image enhancement. Given the environmental disturbances in practical amphibious scenarios, the Gaussian mixture model was used to detect moving targets entering the field of view of the robot. A fast compressive tracker with a Kalman prediction mechanism was used to track the specified target. Considering the limited load space and the unique mechanical structure of the robot, the proposed vision system was fabricated with a low power system-on-chip using an asymmetric and heterogeneous computing architecture. Experimental results confirmed the validity and high efficiency of the proposed system. The design presented in this paper is able to meet future demands of spherical amphibious robots in biological monitoring and multi-robot cooperation.

Visual Detection and Tracking System for a Spherical Amphibious Robot

Science.gov (United States)

Guo, Shuxiang; Pan, Shaowu; Shi, Liwei; Guo, Ping; He, Yanlin; Tang, Kun

2017-01-01

With the goal of supporting close-range observation tasks of a spherical amphibious robot, such as ecological observations and intelligent surveillance, a moving target detection and tracking system was designed and implemented in this study. Given the restrictions presented by the amphibious environment and the small-sized spherical amphibious robot, an industrial camera and vision algorithms using adaptive appearance models were adopted to construct the proposed system. To handle the problem of light scattering and absorption in the underwater environment, the multi-scale retinex with color restoration algorithm was used for image enhancement. Given the environmental disturbances in practical amphibious scenarios, the Gaussian mixture model was used to detect moving targets entering the field of view of the robot. A fast compressive tracker with a Kalman prediction mechanism was used to track the specified target. Considering the limited load space and the unique mechanical structure of the robot, the proposed vision system was fabricated with a low power system-on-chip using an asymmetric and heterogeneous computing architecture. Experimental results confirmed the validity and high efficiency of the proposed system. The design presented in this paper is able to meet future demands of spherical amphibious robots in biological monitoring and multi-robot cooperation. PMID:28420134

Autonomously Implemented Versatile Path Planning for Mobile Robots Based on Cellular Automata and Ant Colony

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Adel Akbarimajd

2012-02-01

Full Text Available A path planning method for mobile robots based on two dimensional cellular automata is proposed. The method can be applied for environments with both concave and convex obstacles. It is also appropriate for multi-robot problems as well as dynamic environments. In order to develop the planning method, environment of the robot is decomposed to a rectangular grid and the automata is defined with four states including Robot cell, Free cell, Goal cell and Obstacle cell. Evolution rules of automata are proposed in order to direct the robot toward its goal. CA based path planner method is afterwards modified by a colony technique to be applicable for concave obstacles. Then a layered architecture is proposed to autonomously implement the planning algorithm. The architecture employs an abstraction approach which makes the complexity manageable. An important feature of the architecture is internal artifacts that have some beliefs about the world. Most actions of the robot are planned and performed with respect to these artifacts.

Sensor-based whole-arm obstacle avoidance for unstructured environments

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Wintenberg, AL.; Butler, P.L.; Babcock, S.M.; Ericson, M.N.; Britton, C.L. Jr.; Hamel, W.R.

1992-01-01

Whole-arm obstacle avoidance is needed for a variety of robotic applications in the Environmental Restoration and Waste Management (ER ampersand WM) Program. Typical industrial applications of robotics involve well-defined work spaces, allowing a predetermined knowledge of collision-free paths for manipulator motion. In the unstructured or poorly defined hazardous environments of the ER ampersand WM program, the potential for significant problems resulting from collisions between manipulators and the environment in which they are utilized is great. A sensing system under development, which will provide protection against such collisions, is described in this paper

Small-scale soft-bodied robot with multimodal locomotion

Science.gov (United States)

Hu, Wenqi; Lum, Guo Zhan; Mastrangeli, Massimo; Sitti, Metin

2018-02-01

Untethered small-scale (from several millimetres down to a few micrometres in all dimensions) robots that can non-invasively access confined, enclosed spaces may enable applications in microfactories such as the construction of tissue scaffolds by robotic assembly, in bioengineering such as single-cell manipulation and biosensing, and in healthcare such as targeted drug delivery and minimally invasive surgery. Existing small-scale robots, however, have very limited mobility because they are unable to negotiate obstacles and changes in texture or material in unstructured environments. Of these small-scale robots, soft robots have greater potential to realize high mobility via multimodal locomotion, because such machines have higher degrees of freedom than their rigid counterparts. Here we demonstrate magneto-elastic soft millimetre-scale robots that can swim inside and on the surface of liquids, climb liquid menisci, roll and walk on solid surfaces, jump over obstacles, and crawl within narrow tunnels. These robots can transit reversibly between different liquid and solid terrains, as well as switch between locomotive modes. They can additionally execute pick-and-place and cargo-release tasks. We also present theoretical models to explain how the robots move. Like the large-scale robots that can be used to study locomotion, these soft small-scale robots could be used to study soft-bodied locomotion produced by small organisms.

Intelligent mobile robots

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Ichikawa, Yoshiaki; Senoo, Makoto

1984-01-01

For the purpose of the application to remote working apparatuses in nuclear power plants and others, the software and moving mechanism of mobile robots that automatically accomplish the movement by only specifying the destination were manufactured for trial. The software has the function of searching a path to determine the quasi-shortest path and the function of controlling execution to control the action of the robots and guide to the destination. By taking heuristics into the method of searching a path and utilizing ultrasonic waves for the function of sight as they can easily detect distance though the information quantity is small, the execution was accelerated. By the simulation examination and the experiment using a mobile apparatus made for trial, it was confirmed that the route plan was able to be made almost in real time, and the appearance of an unknown obstacle was detected before collision and able to be reasonably avoided by the revision of the plan. An environment model, a route planner, the program for controlling execution, the makeup and control of moving function and the experiment on the movement are reported. The shortening of the processing time by dealing with unconfirmed echo and simplifying the writing in a map is a future problem. (Kako, I.)

Control Algorithms for a Shape-shifting Tracked Robotic Vehicle Climbing Obstacles

Science.gov (United States)

2008-12-01

robot be- havioural skills. The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology is developing the shape-shifting robotic platform Octopus [6] (Figure l(b...and traverse steep (a) Lurker (b) Octopus (c) NUGV (d) Chaos (e) STRV Figure 1: Shape-shifting robotic vehicles in different research labs. DRDC...situations. The system is assumed stuck when vv?; + v~ + v’i) < 0.01 mls or Vx < O. Only forward movements are considered in this work, for this reason

A new method for face detection in colour images for emotional bio-robots

Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

HAPESHI; Kevin

2010-01-01

Emotional bio-robots have become a hot research topic in last two decades. Though there have been some progress in research, design and development of various emotional bio-robots, few of them can be used in practical applications. The study of emotional bio-robots demands multi-disciplinary co-operation. It involves computer science, artificial intelligence, 3D computation, engineering system modelling, analysis and simulation, bionics engineering, automatic control, image processing and pattern recognition etc. Among them, face detection belongs to image processing and pattern recognition. An emotional robot must have the ability to recognize various objects, particularly, it is very important for a bio-robot to be able to recognize human faces from an image. In this paper, a face detection method is proposed for identifying any human faces in colour images using human skin model and eye detection method. Firstly, this method can be used to detect skin regions from the input colour image after normalizing its luminance. Then, all face candidates are identified using an eye detection method. Comparing with existing algorithms, this method only relies on the colour and geometrical data of human face rather than using training datasets. From experimental results, it is shown that this method is effective and fast and it can be applied to the development of an emotional bio-robot with further improvements of its speed and accuracy.

Time response for sensor sensed to actuator response for mobile robotic system

Science.gov (United States)

Amir, N. S.; Shafie, A. A.

2017-11-01

Time and performance of a mobile robot are very important in completing the tasks given to achieve its ultimate goal. Tasks may need to be done within a time constraint to ensure smooth operation of a mobile robot and can result in better performance. The main purpose of this research was to improve the performance of a mobile robot so that it can complete the tasks given within time constraint. The problem that is needed to be solved is to minimize the time interval between sensor detection and actuator response. The research objective is to analyse the real time operating system performance of sensors and actuators on one microcontroller and on two microcontroller for a mobile robot. The task for a mobile robot for this research is line following with an obstacle avoidance. Three runs will be carried out for the task and the time between the sensors senses to the actuator responses were recorded. Overall, the results show that two microcontroller system have better response time compared to the one microcontroller system. For this research, the average difference of response time is very important to improve the internal performance between the occurrence of a task, sensors detection, decision making and actuator response of a mobile robot. This research helped to develop a mobile robot with a better performance and can complete task within the time constraint.

Convolutional Neural Network-Based Embarrassing Situation Detection under Camera for Social Robot in Smart Homes.

Science.gov (United States)

Yang, Guanci; Yang, Jing; Sheng, Weihua; Junior, Francisco Erivaldo Fernandes; Li, Shaobo

2018-05-12

Recent research has shown that the ubiquitous use of cameras and voice monitoring equipment in a home environment can raise privacy concerns and affect human mental health. This can be a major obstacle to the deployment of smart home systems for elderly or disabled care. This study uses a social robot to detect embarrassing situations. Firstly, we designed an improved neural network structure based on the You Only Look Once (YOLO) model to obtain feature information. By focusing on reducing area redundancy and computation time, we proposed a bounding-box merging algorithm based on region proposal networks (B-RPN), to merge the areas that have similar features and determine the borders of the bounding box. Thereafter, we designed a feature extraction algorithm based on our improved YOLO and B-RPN, called F-YOLO, for our training datasets, and then proposed a real-time object detection algorithm based on F-YOLO (RODA-FY). We implemented RODA-FY and compared models on our MAT social robot. Secondly, we considered six types of situations in smart homes, and developed training and validation datasets, containing 2580 and 360 images, respectively. Meanwhile, we designed three types of experiments with four types of test datasets composed of 960 sample images. Thirdly, we analyzed how a different number of training iterations affects our prediction estimation, and then we explored the relationship between recognition accuracy and learning rates. Our results show that our proposed privacy detection system can recognize designed situations in the smart home with an acceptable recognition accuracy of 94.48%. Finally, we compared the results among RODA-FY, Inception V3, and YOLO, which indicate that our proposed RODA-FY outperforms the other comparison models in recognition accuracy.

Autonomous mobile robot teams

Science.gov (United States)

Agah, Arvin; Bekey, George A.

1994-01-01

This paper describes autonomous mobile robot teams performing tasks in unstructured environments. The behavior and the intelligence of the group is distributed, and the system does not include a central command base or leader. The novel concept of the Tropism-Based Cognitive Architecture is introduced, which is used by the robots in order to produce behavior transforming their sensory information to proper action. The results of a number of simulation experiments are presented. These experiments include worlds where the robot teams must locate, decompose, and gather objects, and defend themselves against hostile predators, while navigating around stationary and mobile obstacles.

Infrared Range Sensor Array for 3D Sensing in Robotic Applications

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Yongtae Do

2013-04-01

Full Text Available This paper presents the design and testing of multiple infrared range detectors arranged in a two-dimensional (2D array. The proposed system can collect the sparse three-dimensional (3D data of objects and surroundings for robotics applications. Three kinds of tasks are considered using the system: detecting obstacles that lie ahead of a mobile robot, sensing the ground profile for the safe navigation of a mobile robot, and sensing the shape and position of an object on a conveyor belt for pickup by a robot manipulator. The developed system is potentially a simple alternative to high-resolution (and expensive 3D sensing systems, such as stereo cameras or laser scanners. In addition, the system can provide shape information about target objects and surroundings that cannot be obtained using simple ultrasonic sensors. Laboratory prototypes of the system were built with nine infrared range sensors arranged in a 3×3 array and test results confirmed the validity of system.

Induced vibrations facilitate traversal of cluttered obstacles

Science.gov (United States)

Thoms, George; Yu, Siyuan; Kang, Yucheng; Li, Chen

When negotiating cluttered terrains such as grass-like beams, cockroaches and legged robots with rounded body shapes most often rolled their bodies to traverse narrow gaps between beams. Recent locomotion energy landscape modeling suggests that this locomotor pathway overcomes the lowest potential energy barriers. Here, we tested the hypothesis that body vibrations induced by intermittent leg-ground contact facilitate obstacle traversal by allowing exploration of locomotion energy landscape to find this lowest barrier pathway. To mimic a cockroach / legged robot pushing against two adjacent blades of grass, we developed an automated robotic system to move an ellipsoidal body into two adjacent beams, and varied body vibrations by controlling an oscillation actuator. A novel gyroscope mechanism allowed the body to freely rotate in response to interaction with the beams, and an IMU and cameras recorded the motion of the body and beams. We discovered that body vibrations facilitated body rolling, significantly increasing traversal probability and reducing traversal time (P locomotor pathways in complex 3-D terrains.

Distributed Fault Detection and Isolation for Flocking in a Multi-robot System with Imperfect Communication

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Shao Shiliang

2014-06-01

Full Text Available In this paper, we focus on distributed fault detection and isolation (FDI for a multi-robot system where multiple robots execute a flocking task. Firstly, we propose a fault detection method based on the local-information-exchange and sensor-measurement technologies to cover cases of both perfect communication and imperfect communication. The two detection technologies can be adaptively selected according to the packet loss rate (PLR. Secondly, we design a fault isolation method, considering a situation in which faulty robots still influence the behaviours of other robots. Finally, a complete FDI scheme, based on the proposed detection and isolation methods, is simulated in various scenarios. The results demonstrate that our FDI scheme is effective.

Motion Planning for Omnidirectional Wheeled Mobile Robot by Potential Field Method

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Weihao Li

2017-01-01

Full Text Available In this paper, potential field method has been used to navigate a three omnidirectional wheels’ mobile robot and to avoid obstacles. The potential field method is used to overcome the local minima problem and the goals nonreachable with obstacles nearby (GNRON problem. For further consideration, model predictive control (MPC has been used to incorporate motion constraints and make the velocity more realistic and flexible. The proposed method is employed based on the kinematic model and dynamics model of the mobile robot in this paper. To show the performance of proposed control scheme, simulation studies have been carried to perform the motion process of mobile robot in specific workplace.

An Underwater Image Enhancement Algorithm for Environment Recognition and Robot Navigation

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Kun Xie

2018-03-01

Full Text Available There are many tasks that require clear and easily recognizable images in the field of underwater robotics and marine science, such as underwater target detection and identification of robot navigation and obstacle avoidance. However, water turbidity makes the underwater image quality too low to recognize. This paper proposes the use of the dark channel prior model for underwater environment recognition, in which underwater reflection models are used to obtain enhanced images. The proposed approach achieves very good performance and multi-scene robustness by combining the dark channel prior model with the underwater diffuse model. The experimental results are given to show the effectiveness of the dark channel prior model in underwater scenarios.

Indoor Navigation from Point Clouds: 3d Modelling and Obstacle Detection

Science.gov (United States)

Díaz-Vilariño, L.; Boguslawski, P.; Khoshelham, K.; Lorenzo, H.; Mahdjoubi, L.

2016-06-01

In the recent years, indoor modelling and navigation has become a research of interest because many stakeholders require navigation assistance in various application scenarios. The navigational assistance for blind or wheelchair people, building crisis management such as fire protection, augmented reality for gaming, tourism or training emergency assistance units are just some of the direct applications of indoor modelling and navigation. Navigational information is traditionally extracted from 2D drawings or layouts. Real state of indoors, including opening position and geometry for both windows and doors, and the presence of obstacles is commonly ignored. In this work, a real indoor-path planning methodology based on 3D point clouds is developed. The value and originality of the approach consist on considering point clouds not only for reconstructing semantically-rich 3D indoor models, but also for detecting potential obstacles in the route planning and using these for readapting the routes according to the real state of the indoor depictured by the laser scanner.

INDOOR NAVIGATION FROM POINT CLOUDS: 3D MODELLING AND OBSTACLE DETECTION

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

L. Díaz-Vilariño

2016-06-01

Full Text Available In the recent years, indoor modelling and navigation has become a research of interest because many stakeholders require navigation assistance in various application scenarios. The navigational assistance for blind or wheelchair people, building crisis management such as fire protection, augmented reality for gaming, tourism or training emergency assistance units are just some of the direct applications of indoor modelling and navigation. Navigational information is traditionally extracted from 2D drawings or layouts. Real state of indoors, including opening position and geometry for both windows and doors, and the presence of obstacles is commonly ignored. In this work, a real indoor-path planning methodology based on 3D point clouds is developed. The value and originality of the approach consist on considering point clouds not only for reconstructing semantically-rich 3D indoor models, but also for detecting potential obstacles in the route planning and using these for readapting the routes according to the real state of the indoor depictured by the laser scanner.

Self-protection Method for Flying Robots to Avoid Collision

OpenAIRE

Guosheng Wu; Luning Wang; Changyuan Fan; Xi Zhu

2008-01-01

This paper provides a new approach to solve the motion planning problems of flying robots in uncertain 3D dynamic environments. The robots controlled by this method can adaptively choose the fast way to avoid collision without information about the shapes and trajectories of obstacles. Based on sphere coordinates the new method accomplishes collision avoidance of flying robots without any other auxiliary positioning systems. The Self-protection System gives robots self-protection abilities to...

The development of advanced robotics for the nuclear industry -The development of advanced robotic technology

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Lee, Jong Min; Lee, Yong Bum; Park, Soon Woong; Cho, Jae Wan; Lee, Nam Ho; Kim, Woong Ki; Moon, Byung Soo; Lee, Young Jae; Kim, Chang Hoi; Kim, Seung Ho; Hwang, Seok Yong; Kim, Byung Soo; Moon, Jae Sun; Lee, Young Kwang; Choi, Kap Joo

1996-07-01

The comparison study of 3 kinds of stereo camera modules done in this final year of 4 year's longterm project shows that regenerating characteristics of stereo image of stereo camera using horizontally moving lens axis method is superior to the other two modules. Base on this comparison result, stereo camera module using horizontally moving lens method is developed. Also, stereo-Boom unit, high definition polarized stereo monitor(KAERI-PSM II) and 10.4sec. auto-stereogram TV using parallax barrier method are developed. These developed systems can be used for people involved in extremely hazardous working area to give vivid reality image of work environment. In the recognition and tracking section, auto-vergencing technology using focus fixation and cepstral filter, stereo camera calibration, range measurement technology using stereo camera module are developed. And active target tracking technology is developed also. In the sensing and intelligent control research part, active radioactivity image monitoring unit is developed. The spatial resolution of monitoring unit is 10cm at 1m distance, FOV is 60x40 deg [HXV], and radioactivity detection limit is 1mR/hr. Also, radiation-resistant inspection camera for nuclear facilities is designed. In the intelligent control section, fuzzy control algorithm for obstacle detouring navigation of mobile robot is developed. The smoothing techniques by fuzzy set is adapted to raise the pliability of obstacle detouring navigation of mobile robot. In order to raise robustness of developed fuzzy algorithm, fuzzy control algorithm is applied to 'Truck Backer Upper' problem and tuned. These advanced critical robot technology and telepresence techniques developed in this project can be applied to nozzle-dam installation/removal robot system, can be used to realize unmanned remotelization of nozzle-dam installation/removal task in steam generator of nuclear power plant, which can be contributed for people involved in extremely hazardous

Tank-automotive robotics

Science.gov (United States)

Lane, Gerald R.

1999-07-01

To provide an overview of Tank-Automotive Robotics. The briefing will contain program overviews & inter-relationships and technology challenges of TARDEC managed unmanned and robotic ground vehicle programs. Specific emphasis will focus on technology developments/approaches to achieve semi- autonomous operation and inherent chassis mobility features. Programs to be discussed include: DemoIII Experimental Unmanned Vehicle (XUV), Tactical Mobile Robotics (TMR), Intelligent Mobility, Commanders Driver Testbed, Collision Avoidance, International Ground Robotics Competition (ICGRC). Specifically, the paper will discuss unique exterior/outdoor challenges facing the IGRC competing teams and the synergy created between the IGRC and ongoing DoD semi-autonomous Unmanned Ground Vehicle and DoT Intelligent Transportation System programs. Sensor and chassis approaches to meet the IGRC challenges and obstacles will be shown and discussed. Shortfalls in performance to meet the IGRC challenges will be identified.

Mobile Robot Designed with Autonomous Navigation System

Science.gov (United States)

An, Feng; Chen, Qiang; Zha, Yanfang; Tao, Wenyin

2017-10-01

With the rapid development of robot technology, robots appear more and more in all aspects of life and social production, people also ask more requirements for the robot, one is that robot capable of autonomous navigation, can recognize the road. Take the common household sweeping robot as an example, which could avoid obstacles, clean the ground and automatically find the charging place; Another example is AGV tracking car, which can following the route and reach the destination successfully. This paper introduces a new type of robot navigation scheme: SLAM, which can build the environment map in a totally strange environment, and at the same time, locate its own position, so as to achieve autonomous navigation function.

Fuzzy Behaviors for Control of Mobile Robots

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Saleh Zein-Sabatto

2003-02-01

Full Text Available In this research work, an RWI B-14 robot has been used as the development platform to embody some basic behaviors that can be combined to build more complex robotics behaviors. Emergency, avoid-obstacle, left wall- following, right wall-following, and move-to-point behaviors have been designed and embodied as basic robot behaviors. The basic behaviors developed in this research are designed based on fuzzy control technique and are integrated and coordinated to from complex robotics system. More behaviors can be added into the system as needed. A robot task can be defined by the user and executed by the intelligent robot control system. Testing results showed that fuzzy behaviors made the robot move intelligently and adapt to changes in its environment.

The Design of Artificial Intelligence Robot Based on Fuzzy Logic Controller Algorithm

Science.gov (United States)

Zuhrie, M. S.; Munoto; Hariadi, E.; Muslim, S.

2018-04-01

Artificial Intelligence Robot is a wheeled robot driven by a DC motor that moves along the wall using an ultrasonic sensor as a detector of obstacles. This study uses ultrasonic sensors HC-SR04 to measure the distance between the robot with the wall based ultrasonic wave. This robot uses Fuzzy Logic Controller to adjust the speed of DC motor. When the ultrasonic sensor detects a certain distance, sensor data is processed on ATmega8 then the data goes to ATmega16. From ATmega16, sensor data is calculated based on Fuzzy rules to drive DC motor speed. The program used to adjust the speed of a DC motor is CVAVR program (Code Vision AVR). The readable distance of ultrasonic sensor is 3 cm to 250 cm with response time 0.5 s. Testing of robots on walls with a setpoint value of 9 cm to 10 cm produce an average error value of -12% on the wall of L, -8% on T walls, -8% on U wall, and -1% in square wall.

Autonomous Inspection Robot for Power Transmission Lines Maintenance While Operating on the Overhead Ground Wires

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Zheng Li

2010-12-01

Full Text Available This paper describes the development of a mobile robot capable of clearing such obstacles as counterweights, anchor clamps, and torsion tower. The mobile robot walks on overhead ground wires in 500KV power tower. Its ultimate purpose is to automate to inspect the defect of power transmission line. The robot with 13 motors is composed of two arms, two wheels, two claws, two wrists, etc. Each arm has 4 degree of freedom. Claws are also mounted on the arms. An embedded computer based on PC/104 is chosen as the core of control system. Visible light and thermal infrared cameras are installed to obtain the video and temperature information, and the communication system is based on wireless LAN TCP/IP protocol. A prototype robot was developed with careful considerations of mobility. The new sensor configuration is used for the claw to grasp the overhead ground wires. The bridge is installed in the torsion tower for the robot easy to cross obstacles. The new posture plan is proposed for obstacles cleaning in the torsion tower. Results of experiments demonstrate that the robot can be applied to execute the navigation and inspection tasks.

Autonomous Inspection Robot for Power Transmission Lines Maintenance While Operating on the Overhead Ground Wires

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Zheng Li

2011-01-01

Full Text Available This paper describes the development of a mobile robot capable of clearing such obstacles as counterweights, anchor clamps, and torsion tower. The mobile robot walks on overhead ground wires in 500KV power tower. Its ultimate purpose is to automate to inspect the defect of power transmission line. The robot with 13 motors is composed of two arms, two wheels, two claws, two wrists, etc. Each arm has 4 degree of freedom. Claws are also mounted on the arms. An embedded computer based on PC/104 is chosen as the core of control system. Visible light and thermal infrared cameras are installed to obtain the video and temperature information, and the communication system is based on wireless LAN TCP/IP protocol. A prototype robot was developed with careful considerations of mobility. The new sensor configuration is used for the claw to grasp the overhead ground wires. The bridge is installed in the torsion tower for the robot easy to cross obstacles. The new posture plan is proposed for obstacles cleaning in the torsion tower. Results of experiments demonstrate that the robot can be applied to execute the navigation and inspection tasks.

Design of railway obstacle detection prototype

CSIR Research Space (South Africa)

Xungu, Sipho A

2017-11-01

Full Text Available Survey Inspection Device (SID) test prototype platform to serve as an early warning system for locomotives and was to travel 2km ahead of a locomotive in order to inspect the railway for possible obstacles such as human beings, livestock and collisions...

Coordinating a Team of Robots for Urban Reconnaisance

Science.gov (United States)

2010-11-01

this local map. This task is performed by the mapping and estimation module using a SLAM solution. This module uses scan matching on LIDAR data to...the map of the world. LIDAR data provides knowledge about the open space, obstacles and unknown regions around each robot. The exploration planner...requires the use of Simultaneous Localization and Mapping ( SLAM ) to robustly compute the relative positions of each robot. Our robots rely on their

Learning robotic eye-arm-hand coordination from human demonstration: a coupled dynamical systems approach.

Science.gov (United States)

Lukic, Luka; Santos-Victor, José; Billard, Aude

2014-04-01

We investigate the role of obstacle avoidance in visually guided reaching and grasping movements. We report on a human study in which subjects performed prehensile motion with obstacle avoidance where the position of the obstacle was systematically varied across trials. These experiments suggest that reaching with obstacle avoidance is organized in a sequential manner, where the obstacle acts as an intermediary target. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the notion of workspace travelled by the hand is embedded explicitly in a forward planning scheme, which is actively involved in detecting obstacles on the way when performing reaching. We find that the gaze proactively coordinates the pattern of eye-arm motion during obstacle avoidance. This study provides also a quantitative assessment of the coupling between the eye-arm-hand motion. We show that the coupling follows regular phase dependencies and is unaltered during obstacle avoidance. These observations provide a basis for the design of a computational model. Our controller extends the coupled dynamical systems framework and provides fast and synchronous control of the eyes, the arm and the hand within a single and compact framework, mimicking similar control system found in humans. We validate our model for visuomotor control of a humanoid robot.

Towards Behavior Control for Evolutionary Robot Based on RL with ENN

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jingan Yang

2012-03-01

Full Text Available This paper proposes a behavior-switching control strategy of anevolutionary robotics based on Artificial NeuralNetwork (ANN and Genetic Algorithms (GA. This method is able not only to construct thereinforcement learning models for autonomous robots and evolutionary robot modules thatcontrol behaviors and reinforcement learning environments, and but also to perform thebehavior-switching control and obstacle avoidance of an evolutionary robotics (ER intime-varying environments with static and moving obstacles by combining ANN and GA.The experimental results on thebasic behaviors and behavior-switching control have demonstrated that ourmethod can perform the decision-making strategy and parameters set opimization ofFNN and GA by learning and can escape successfully from the trap of a localminima and avoid \\emph{"motion deadlock" status} of humanoid soccer robotics agents,and reduce the oscillation of the planned trajectory betweenthe multiple obstacles by crossover and mutation. Some results of the proposed algorithmhave been successfully applied to our simulation humanoid robotics soccer team CIT3Dwhich won \\emph{the 1st prize} of RoboCup Championship and ChinaOpen2010 (July 2010 and \\emph{the $2^{nd}$ place}of the official RoboCup World Championship on 5-11 July, 2011 in Istanbul, Turkey.As compared with the conventional behavior network and the adaptive behavior method,the genetic encoding complexity of our algorithm is simplified, and the networkperformance and the {\\em convergence rate $\\rho$} have been greatlyimproved.

A design of toxic gas detecting security robot car based on wireless path-patrol

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Cheng Ho-Chih

2017-01-01

Full Text Available Because a toxic gas detecting/monitoring system in a chemical plant is not movable, a gas detecting/monitoring system will be passive and the detecting range will also be constrained. This invention is an active multi-functional wireless patrol car that can substitute for humans that inspect a plant's security. In addition, to widen the monitoring vision within the environment, two motors used to rotate a wireless IPCAM with two axes are presented. Also, to control the robot car's movement, two axis motors used to drive the wheel of the robot car are also installed. Additionally, a toxic gas detector is linked to the microcontroller of the patrol car. The detected concentration of the gas will be fed back to the server pc. To enhance the robot car's patrolling duration, a movable electrical power unit in conjunction with a wireless module is also used. Consequently, this paper introduces a wireless path-patrol and toxic gas detecting security robot car that can assure a plant's security and protect workers when toxic gases are emitted.

Training in urological robotic surgery. Future perspectives.

Science.gov (United States)

El Sherbiny, Ahmed; Eissa, Ahmed; Ghaith, Ahmed; Morini, Elena; Marzotta, Lucilla; Sighinolfi, Maria Chiara; Micali, Salvatore; Bianchi, Giampaolo; Rocco, Bernardo

2018-01-01

As robotics are becoming more integrated into the medical field, robotic training is becoming more crucial in order to overcome the lack of experienced robotic surgeons. However, there are several obstacles facing the development of robotic training programs like the high cost of training and the increased operative time during the initial period of the learning curve, which, in turn increase the operative cost. Robotic-assisted laparoscopic prostatectomy is the most commonly performed robotic surgery. Moreover, robotic surgery is becoming more popular among urologic oncologists and pediatric urologists. The need for a standardized and validated robotic training curriculum was growing along with the increased number of urologic centers and institutes adopting the robotic technology. Robotic training includes proctorship, mentorship or fellowship, telementoring, simulators and video training. In this chapter, we are going to discuss the different training methods, how to evaluate robotic skills, the available robotic training curriculum, and the future perspectives.

A Mobile Robot Sonar System with Obstacle Avoidance.

Science.gov (United States)

1994-03-01

WITH OBSTACLE - AVOIDANCE __ by __ Patrick Gerard Byrne March 1994 Thesis Advisor : Yutaka Kanayama Approved for public release; distribution is...point p is on a line L whose normal has an orientation a and whose distance from the origin is r (Figure 5). This method has an advantage in expressing...sonar(FRONTR); Wine(&pl); while(hitl I >’- 100.0 11 hitl 1 - 0.0 ){ hitl I = sonar(FRONTR); I skipO; line(&p3); gat- robO (&posit 1); while(positl.x

Fuzzy Logic Based The Application of Multi-Microcontroller in Mobile Robot Model

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Nuryono Satya Widodo

2009-12-01

Full Text Available This paper proposed a fuzzy logic based mobile robot as implemented in a multimicrocontroller system. Fuzzy logic controller was developed based on a behavior based approach. The Controller inputs were obtained from seven sonar sensor and three tactile switches. Behavior based approach was implemented in different level priority of behaviors. The behaviors were: obstacle avoidance, wall following and escaping as the emergency behavior. The results show that robot was able to navigate autonomously and avoid the entire obstacle.

Robust Robot Grasp Detection in Multimodal Fusion

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Zhang Qiang

2017-01-01

Full Text Available Accurate robot grasp detection for model free objects plays an important role in robotics. With the development of RGB-D sensors, object perception technology has made great progress. Reach feature expression by the colour and the depth data is a critical problem that needs to be addressed in order to accomplish the grasping task. To solve the problem of data fusion, this paper proposes a convolutional neural networks (CNN based approach combined with regression and classification. In the CNN model, the colour and the depth modal data are deeply fused together to achieve accurate feature expression. Additionally, Welsch function is introduced into the approach to enhance robustness of the training process. Experiment results demonstrates the superiority of the proposed method.

A sub-target approach to the kinodynamic motion control of a wheeled mobile robot

Science.gov (United States)

Motonaka, Kimiko; Watanabe, Keigo; Maeyama, Shoichi

2018-02-01

A mobile robot with two independently driven wheels is popular, but it is difficult to stabilize it by a continuous controller with a constant gain, due to its nonholonomic property. It is guaranteed that a nonholonomic controlled object can always be converged to an arbitrary point using a switching control method or a quasi-continuous control method based on an invariant manifold in a chained form. From this, the authors already proposed a kinodynamic controller to converge the states of such a two-wheeled mobile robot to the arbitrary target position while avoiding obstacles, by combining the control based on the invariant manifold and the harmonic potential field (HPF). On the other hand, it was confirmed in the previous research that there is a case that the robot cannot avoid the obstacle because there is no enough space to converge the current state to the target state. In this paper, we propose a method that divides the final target position into some sub-target positions and moves the robot step by step, and it is confirmed by the simulation that the robot can converge to the target position while avoiding obstacles using the proposed method.

Fuzzy Logic Supervised Teleoperation Control for Mobile Robot

Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

无

2008-01-01

The supervised teleoperation control is presented for a mobile robot to implement the tasks by using fuzzy logic. The teleoperation control system includes joystick based user interaction mechanism, the high level instruction set and fuzzy logic behaviors integrated in a supervised autonomy teleoperation control system for indoor navigation. These behaviors include left wall following, right wall following, turn left, turn right, left obstacle avoidance, right obstacle avoidance and corridor following based on ultrasonic range finders data. The robot compares the instructive high level command from the operator and relays back a suggestive signal back to the operator in case of mismatch between environment and instructive command. This strategy relieves the operator's cognitive burden, handle unforeseen situations and uncertainties of environment autonomously. The effectiveness of the proposed method for navigation in an unstructured environment is verified by experiments conducted on a mobile robot equipped with only ultrasonic range finders for environment sensing.

Inverse kinematics research using obstacle avoidance geometry method for EAST Articulated Maintenance Arm (EAMA)

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Wang, Kun; Song, Yuntao; Wu, Huapeng; Wei, Xiaoyang; Khan, Shahab Ud-Din; Cheng, Yong

2017-01-01

Highlights: • An Obstacle Topology Partition Projection (OTPP) method of tokamak-like vessel for collision detection. • Median values preferentially of depth-first search algorithm for solving redundant inverse kinematics based on OTPP. • Application of RIK in grasping target objects. - Abstract: This paper proposed a new method for solving inverse kinematics (IK) of a redundant manipulator called EAST Articulated Maintenance Arm (EAMA), which is applied in the fusion reactor EAST (Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak) and used to complete some maintenance tasks in the complex areas. However, it is difficult to realize remote control due to its redundancy, coupling structure and the complex operational environment. The IK research of the robot played a vital role to the manipulator’s motion control algorithm of remote handling (RH) technology. An Obstacle Topology Partition Projection (OTPP) approach integrated with Modified Inverse Depth First Search (MIDFS) method was presented. This is a kind of new geometric algorithm in order to solve the problem of IK for a high-redundancy manipulator. It can also be used to find a solution satisfying collision avoidance with optimal safety distance between the manipulator and obstacles. Simulations and experiments were conducted to demonstrate the efficiency and accuracy of the proposed method.

Inverse kinematics research using obstacle avoidance geometry method for EAST Articulated Maintenance Arm (EAMA)

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Wang, Kun, E-mail: wangkun@ipp.ac.cn [Institute of Plasma Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hefei (China); Lappeenranta University of Technology, Lappeenranta (Finland); University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei (China); Song, Yuntao [Institute of Plasma Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hefei (China); University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei (China); Wu, Huapeng [Lappeenranta University of Technology, Lappeenranta (Finland); Wei, Xiaoyang; Khan, Shahab Ud-Din; Cheng, Yong [Institute of Plasma Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hefei (China)

2017-06-15

Highlights: • An Obstacle Topology Partition Projection (OTPP) method of tokamak-like vessel for collision detection. • Median values preferentially of depth-first search algorithm for solving redundant inverse kinematics based on OTPP. • Application of RIK in grasping target objects. - Abstract: This paper proposed a new method for solving inverse kinematics (IK) of a redundant manipulator called EAST Articulated Maintenance Arm (EAMA), which is applied in the fusion reactor EAST (Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak) and used to complete some maintenance tasks in the complex areas. However, it is difficult to realize remote control due to its redundancy, coupling structure and the complex operational environment. The IK research of the robot played a vital role to the manipulator’s motion control algorithm of remote handling (RH) technology. An Obstacle Topology Partition Projection (OTPP) approach integrated with Modified Inverse Depth First Search (MIDFS) method was presented. This is a kind of new geometric algorithm in order to solve the problem of IK for a high-redundancy manipulator. It can also be used to find a solution satisfying collision avoidance with optimal safety distance between the manipulator and obstacles. Simulations and experiments were conducted to demonstrate the efficiency and accuracy of the proposed method.

The research on wing sail of a land-yacht robot

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Shaorong Xie

2015-12-01

Full Text Available A wind-driven land-yacht robot which will be applied in polar expedition is presented in this article. As the main power of robot is provided by wing sail, improving the efficiency of wing sail is the key for its motion. Wing sail is composed of airfoil, so airfoil theory is researched first, and then several airfoils and their aerodynamic performance are compared, and a high-efficiency airfoil is selected. After that, overturning torque and start wind speed of robot are analyzed to determine the size of the wing sail. At last, the wing sail is manufactured and checked, and it is tested by start wind speed experiments, running speed experiments, steering motion, and obstacle avoidance experiments. The minimum start wind speed is 6 m/s. When wind speed is 10.3 m/s and angle of attack is 90°, running velocity of robot is 1.285 m/s. A land-yacht robot can run steering motion well and avoid obstacle to the target. The result shows that wing sail satisfies the motion requirement of land-yacht robot.

People detection and tracking using RGB-D cameras for mobile robots

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Hengli Liu

2016-09-01

Full Text Available People detection and tracking is an essential capability for mobile robots in order to achieve natural human–robot interaction. In this article, a human detection and tracking system is designed and validated for mobile robots using color data with depth information RGB-depth (RGB-D cameras. The whole framework is composed of human detection, tracking and re-identification. Firstly, ground points and ceiling planes are removed to reduce computation effort. A prior-knowledge guided random sample consensus fitting algorithm is used to detect the ground plane and ceiling points. All left points are projected onto the ground plane and subclusters are segmented for candidate detection. Meanshift clustering with an Epanechnikov kernel is conducted to partition different points into subclusters. We propose the new idea of spatial region of interest plan view maps which are employed to identify human candidates from point cloud subclusters. Here, a depth-weighted histogram is extracted online to feature a human candidate. Then, a particle filter algorithm is adopted to track the human’s motion. The integration of the depth-weighted histogram and particle filter provides a precise tool to track the motion of human objects. Finally, data association is set up to re-identify humans who are tracked. Extensive experiments are conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of our human detection and tracking system.

A Qualitative Approach to Mobile Robot Navigation Using RFID

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Hossain, M; Rashid, M M; Bhuiyan, M M I; Ahmed, S; Akhtaruzzaman, M

2013-01-01

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) system allows automatic identification of items with RFID tags using radio-waves. As the RFID tag has its unique identification number, it is also possible to detect a specific region where the RFID tag lies in. Recently it is widely been used in mobile robot navigation, localization, and mapping both in indoor and outdoor environment. This paper represents a navigation strategy for autonomous mobile robot using passive RFID system. Conventional approaches, such as landmark or dead-reckoning with excessive number of sensors, have complexities in establishing the navigation and localization process. The proposed method satisfies less complexity in navigation strategy as well as estimation of not only the position but also the orientation of the autonomous robot. In this research, polar coordinate system is adopted on the navigation surface where RFID tags are places in a grid with constant displacements. This paper also presents the performance comparisons among various grid architectures through simulation to establish a better solution of the navigation system. In addition, some stationary obstacles are introduced in the navigation environment to satisfy the viability of the navigation process of the autonomous mobile robot

Learning for intelligent mobile robots

Science.gov (United States)

Hall, Ernest L.; Liao, Xiaoqun; Alhaj Ali, Souma M.

2003-10-01

Unlike intelligent industrial robots which often work in a structured factory setting, intelligent mobile robots must often operate in an unstructured environment cluttered with obstacles and with many possible action paths. However, such machines have many potential applications in medicine, defense, industry and even the home that make their study important. Sensors such as vision are needed. However, in many applications some form of learning is also required. The purpose of this paper is to present a discussion of recent technical advances in learning for intelligent mobile robots. During the past 20 years, the use of intelligent industrial robots that are equipped not only with motion control systems but also with sensors such as cameras, laser scanners, or tactile sensors that permit adaptation to a changing environment has increased dramatically. However, relatively little has been done concerning learning. Adaptive and robust control permits one to achieve point to point and controlled path operation in a changing environment. This problem can be solved with a learning control. In the unstructured environment, the terrain and consequently the load on the robot"s motors are constantly changing. Learning the parameters of a proportional, integral and derivative controller (PID) and artificial neural network provides an adaptive and robust control. Learning may also be used for path following. Simulations that include learning may be conducted to see if a robot can learn its way through a cluttered array of obstacles. If a situation is performed repetitively, then learning can also be used in the actual application. To reach an even higher degree of autonomous operation, a new level of learning is required. Recently learning theories such as the adaptive critic have been proposed. In this type of learning a critic provides a grade to the controller of an action module such as a robot. The creative control process is used that is "beyond the adaptive critic." A

Toward humanoid robots for operations in complex urban environments

Science.gov (United States)

Pratt, Jerry E.; Neuhaus, Peter; Johnson, Matthew; Carff, John; Krupp, Ben

2010-04-01

Many infantry operations in urban environments, such as building clearing, are extremely dangerous and difficult and often result in high casualty rates. Despite the fast pace of technological progress in many other areas, the tactics and technology deployed for many of these dangerous urban operation have not changed much in the last 50 years. While robots have been extremely useful for improvised explosive device (IED) detonation, under-vehicle inspection, surveillance, and cave exploration, there is still no fieldable robot that can operate effectively in cluttered streets and inside buildings. Developing a fieldable robot that can maneuver in complex urban environments is challenging due to narrow corridors, stairs, rubble, doors and cluttered doorways, and other obstacles. Typical wheeled and tracked robots have trouble getting through most of these obstacles. A bipedal humanoid is ideally shaped for many of these obstacles because its legs are long and skinny. Therefore it has the potential to step over large barriers, gaps, rocks, and steps, yet squeeze through narrow passageways, and through narrow doorways. By being able to walk with one foot directly in front of the other, humanoids also have the potential to walk over narrow "balance beam" style objects and can cross a narrow row of stepping stones. We describe some recent advances in humanoid robots, particularly recovery from disturbances, such as pushes and walking over rough terrain. Our disturbance recovery algorithms are based on the concept of Capture Points. An N-Step Capture Point is a point on the ground in which a legged robot can step to in order to stop in N steps. The N-Step Capture Region is the set of all N-Step Capture Points. In order to walk without falling, a legged robot must step somewhere in the intersection between an N-Step Capture Region and the available footholds on the ground. We present results of push recovery using Capture Points on our humanoid robot M2V2.

Mobile Robot Based on the Selection of Fuzzy Behaviours for following Trajectories in Crops

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Claudio Urrea

2016-06-01

Full Text Available This article addresses the problem of trajectory tracking in crops by a weed sprayer mobile robot (WSMR. This problem arises because to fumigate, the robot must follow a predefined path and avoid any obstacles it may encounter. To achieve both trajectory tracking and obstacle avoidance, a control scheme based on different behaviours is proposed, which consists essentially of an adaptive controller with a reference model for trajectory tracking and a fuzzy reactive for obstacle avoidance. Each of these controllers is executed according to the selection of the fuzzy behaviour controller, which uses information delivered by anti-collision sensors located on the robot. As a result of the implementation of this behaviour-based architecture and by means of computer simulations and experimental laboratory tests, the WSMR demonstrates the capability of autonomously following a desired trajectory between the rows of a crop in the presence of obstacles. The results are evaluated by taking into account trajectory tracking curves and the operating requirements of each controller, as well as the application of different errors indices for quantitatively evaluating the proposed control scheme.

Interactive animated displayed of man-controlled and autonomous robots

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Crane, C.D. III; Duffy, J.

1986-01-01

An interactive computer graphics program has been developed which allows an operator to more readily control robot motions in two distinct modes; viz., man-controlled and autonomous. In man-controlled mode, the robot is guided by a joystick or similar device. As the robot moves, actual joint angle information is measured and supplied to a graphics system which accurately duplicates the robot motion. Obstacles are placed in the actual and animated workspace and the operator is warned of imminent collisions by sight and sound via the graphics system. Operation of the system in man-controlled mode is shown. In autonomous mode, a collision-free path between specified points is obtained by previewing robot motions on the graphics system. Once a satisfactory path is selected, the path characteristics are transmitted to the actual robot and the motion is executed. The telepresence system developed at the University of Florida has been successful in demonstrating that the concept of controlling a robot manipulator with the aid of an interactive computer graphics system is feasible and practical. The clarity of images coupled with real-time interaction and real-time determination of imminent collision with obstacles has resulted in improved operator performance. Furthermore, the ability for an operator to preview and supervise autonomous operations is a significant attribute when operating in a hazardous environment

Whole-arm obstacle avoidance system conceptual design

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Wintenberg, A.L.; Butler, P.L.; Babcock, S.M.; Ericson, M.N.; Britton, C.L. Jr.

1993-04-01

Whole-arm obstacle avoidance is needed for a variety of robotic applications in the Environmental Restoration and Waste Management (ER ampersand WM) Program. Typical industrial applications of robotics involve well-defined workspaces, allowing a predetermined knowledge of collision-free paths for manipulator motion. In the unstructured or poorly defined hazardous environments of the ER ampersand WM Program, the potential for significant problems resulting from collisions between manipulators and the environment in which they are utilized is great. The conceptual design for a sensing system that will provide protection against such collisions is described herein. The whole-arm obstacle avoidance system consists of a set of sensor ''bracelets,'' which cover the surface area of the manipulator links to the maximum extent practical, and a host processor. The host processor accepts commands from the robot control system, controls the operation of the sensors, manipulates data received from the bracelets, and makes the data available to the manipulator control system. The bracelets consist of a subset of the sensors, associated sensor interface electronics, and a bracelet interface. Redundant communications links between the host processor and the bracelets are provided, allowing single-point failure protection. The system allows reporting of 8-bit data from up to 1000 sensors at a minimum of 50 Hz. While the initial prototype implementation of the system utilizes capacitance proximity sensor, the system concept allows multiple types of sensors. These sensors are uniquely addressable, allowing remote calibration, thresholding at the bracelet, and correlation of a sensor measurement with the associated sensor and its location on the manipulator. Variable resolution allows high-speed, single-bit sensing as well as lower-speed higher-resolution sensing, which is necessary for sensor calibration and potentially useful in control

Validation of vision-based obstacle detection algorithms for low-altitude helicopter flight

Science.gov (United States)

Suorsa, Raymond; Sridhar, Banavar

1991-01-01

A validation facility being used at the NASA Ames Research Center is described which is aimed at testing vision based obstacle detection and range estimation algorithms suitable for low level helicopter flight. The facility is capable of processing hundreds of frames of calibrated multicamera 6 degree-of-freedom motion image sequencies, generating calibrated multicamera laboratory images using convenient window-based software, and viewing range estimation results from different algorithms along with truth data using powerful window-based visualization software.

3D Sensor-Based Obstacle Detection Comparing Octrees and Point clouds Using CUDA

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

K.B. Kaldestad

2012-10-01

Full Text Available This paper presents adaptable methods for achieving fast collision detection using the GPU and Nvidia CUDA together with Octrees. Earlier related work have focused on serial methods, while this paper presents a parallel solution which shows that there is a great increase in time if the number of operations is large. Two different models of the environment and the industrial robot are presented, the first is Octrees at different resolutions, the second is a point cloud representation. The relative merits of the two different world model representations are shown. In particular, the experimental results show the potential of adapting the resolution of the robot and environment models to the task at hand.

Control of autonomous robot using neural networks

Science.gov (United States)

Barton, Adam; Volna, Eva

2017-07-01

The aim of the article is to design a method of control of an autonomous robot using artificial neural networks. The introductory part describes control issues from the perspective of autonomous robot navigation and the current mobile robots controlled by neural networks. The core of the article is the design of the controlling neural network, and generation and filtration of the training set using ART1 (Adaptive Resonance Theory). The outcome of the practical part is an assembled Lego Mindstorms EV3 robot solving the problem of avoiding obstacles in space. To verify models of an autonomous robot behavior, a set of experiments was created as well as evaluation criteria. The speed of each motor was adjusted by the controlling neural network with respect to the situation in which the robot was found.

A cognitive robotic system based on the Soar cognitive architecture for mobile robot navigation, search, and mapping missions

Science.gov (United States)

Hanford, Scott D.

Most unmanned vehicles used for civilian and military applications are remotely operated or are designed for specific applications. As these vehicles are used to perform more difficult missions or a larger number of missions in remote environments, there will be a great need for these vehicles to behave intelligently and autonomously. Cognitive architectures, computer programs that define mechanisms that are important for modeling and generating domain-independent intelligent behavior, have the potential for generating intelligent and autonomous behavior in unmanned vehicles. The research described in this presentation explored the use of the Soar cognitive architecture for cognitive robotics. The Cognitive Robotic System (CRS) has been developed to integrate software systems for motor control and sensor processing with Soar for unmanned vehicle control. The CRS has been tested using two mobile robot missions: outdoor navigation and search in an indoor environment. The use of the CRS for the outdoor navigation mission demonstrated that a Soar agent could autonomously navigate to a specified location while avoiding obstacles, including cul-de-sacs, with only a minimal amount of knowledge about the environment. While most systems use information from maps or long-range perceptual capabilities to avoid cul-de-sacs, a Soar agent in the CRS was able to recognize when a simple approach to avoiding obstacles was unsuccessful and switch to a different strategy for avoiding complex obstacles. During the indoor search mission, the CRS autonomously and intelligently searches a building for an object of interest and common intersection types. While searching the building, the Soar agent builds a topological map of the environment using information about the intersections the CRS detects. The agent uses this topological model (along with Soar's reasoning, planning, and learning mechanisms) to make intelligent decisions about how to effectively search the building. Once the

The development of advanced robotics for the nuclear industry -The development of advanced robotic technology

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Lee, Jong Min; Lee, Yong Bum; Park, Soon Woong; Cho, Jae Wan; Lee, Nam Ho; Kim, Woong Ki; Moon, Byung Soo; Lee, Young Jae; Kim, Chang Hoi; Kim, Seung Ho; Hwang, Seok Yong; Kim, Byung Soo; Moon, Jae Sun; Lee, Young Kwang; Choi, Kap Joo [Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute, Taejon (Korea, Republic of)

1996-07-01

The comparison study of 3 kinds of stereo camera modules done in this final year of 4 year`s longterm project shows that regenerating characteristics of stereo image of stereo camera using horizontally moving lens axis method is superior to the other two modules. Base on this comparison result, stereo camera module using horizontally moving lens method is developed. Also, stereo-Boom unit, high definition polarized stereo monitor(KAERI-PSM II) and 10.4sec. auto-stereogram TV using parallax barrier method are developed. These developed systems can be used for people involved in extremely hazardous working area to give vivid reality image of work environment. In the recognition and tracking section, auto-vergencing technology using focus fixation and cepstral filter, stereo camera calibration, range measurement technology using stereo camera module are developed. And active target tracking technology is developed also. In the sensing and intelligent control research part, active radioactivity image monitoring unit is developed. The spatial resolution of monitoring unit is 10cm at 1m distance, FOV is 60x40 deg [HXV], and radioactivity detection limit is 1mR/hr. Also, radiation-resistant inspection camera for nuclear facilities is designed. In the intelligent control section, fuzzy control algorithm for obstacle detouring navigation of mobile robot is developed. The smoothing techniques by fuzzy set is adapted to raise the pliability of obstacle detouring navigation of mobile robot. In order to raise robustness of developed fuzzy algorithm, fuzzy control algorithm is applied to `Truck Backer Upper` problem and tuned. (Abstract Truncated)

Affordable mobile robotic platforms for teaching computer science at African universities

OpenAIRE

Gyebi, Ernest; Hanheide, Marc; Cielniak, Grzegorz

2015-01-01

Educational robotics can play a key role in addressing some of the challenges faced by higher education in Africa. One of the major obstacles preventing a wider adoption of initiatives involving educational robotics in this part of the world is lack of robots that would be affordable by African institutions. In this paper, we present a survey and analysis of currently available affordable mobile robots and their suitability for teaching computer science at African universities. To this end, w...

From CAD to Robot: Undergraduate Capstone Design in Engineering Technology

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Kuldeep S. Rawat

2013-06-01

Full Text Available A novel senior project in designing and implementing a wheeled platform-based experimental mobile robot is discussed. This mobile robot design project was used as a platform to learn sensor interfacing, microcontroller programming, motor control, and electronic circuit design and troubleshooting. A specially designed proto board was used so that students could experiment with various types of sensors and supporting electronic circuitry. The modules implemented in this project are, servo motor control, infrared (IR-based obstacle detection and avoidance, temperature sensing, and IR wireless communication. An 8-bit Peripheral Interface Controller (PIC microcontroller, operating at 20MHz, was used as a programmable controller to monitor external environment through sensors and make appropriate decisions. PIC microcontroller was programmed using PICBasic PRO, a BASIC like high-level language. The implementation was divided into separate experiments, through which the students progressively completed the mobile robot. This progressive experimentation helped students develop their knowledge of interfacing, microcontroller programming, electronic control, circuit design, and troubleshooting in an incremental manner. The robot design experiments, sensor interfacing, electronic control, supporting circuitry, problems faced and troubleshooting during implementation are discussed in the paper.

Automatic Detection of Compensation During Robotic Stroke Rehabilitation Therapy.

Science.gov (United States)

Zhi, Ying Xuan; Lukasik, Michelle; Li, Michael H; Dolatabadi, Elham; Wang, Rosalie H; Taati, Babak

2018-01-01

Robotic stroke rehabilitation therapy can greatly increase the efficiency of therapy delivery. However, when left unsupervised, users often compensate for limitations in affected muscles and joints by recruiting unaffected muscles and joints, leading to undesirable rehabilitation outcomes. This paper aims to develop a computer vision system that augments robotic stroke rehabilitation therapy by automatically detecting such compensatory motions. Nine stroke survivors and ten healthy adults participated in this study. All participants completed scripted motions using a table-top rehabilitation robot. The healthy participants also simulated three types of compensatory motions. The 3-D trajectories of upper body joint positions tracked over time were used for multiclass classification of postures. A support vector machine (SVM) classifier detected lean-forward compensation from healthy participants with excellent accuracy (AUC = 0.98, F1 = 0.82), followed by trunk-rotation compensation (AUC = 0.77, F1 = 0.57). Shoulder-elevation compensation was not well detected (AUC = 0.66, F1 = 0.07). A recurrent neural network (RNN) classifier, which encodes the temporal dependency of video frames, obtained similar results. In contrast, F1-scores in stroke survivors were low for all three compensations while using RNN: lean-forward compensation (AUC = 0.77, F1 = 0.17), trunk-rotation compensation (AUC = 0.81, F1 = 0.27), and shoulder-elevation compensation (AUC = 0.27, F1 = 0.07). The result was similar while using SVM. To improve detection accuracy for stroke survivors, future work should focus on predefining the range of motion, direct camera placement, delivering exercise intensity tantamount to that of real stroke therapies, adjusting seat height, and recording full therapy sessions.

Self-Tuning Method for Increased Obstacle Detection Reliability Based on Internet of Things LiDAR Sensor Models.

Science.gov (United States)

Castaño, Fernando; Beruvides, Gerardo; Villalonga, Alberto; Haber, Rodolfo E

2018-05-10

On-chip LiDAR sensors for vehicle collision avoidance are a rapidly expanding area of research and development. The assessment of reliable obstacle detection using data collected by LiDAR sensors has become a key issue that the scientific community is actively exploring. The design of a self-tuning methodology and its implementation are presented in this paper, to maximize the reliability of LiDAR sensors network for obstacle detection in the 'Internet of Things' (IoT) mobility scenarios. The Webots Automobile 3D simulation tool for emulating sensor interaction in complex driving environments is selected in order to achieve that objective. Furthermore, a model-based framework is defined that employs a point-cloud clustering technique, and an error-based prediction model library that is composed of a multilayer perceptron neural network, and k-nearest neighbors and linear regression models. Finally, a reinforcement learning technique, specifically a Q-learning method, is implemented to determine the number of LiDAR sensors that are required to increase sensor reliability for obstacle localization tasks. In addition, a IoT driving assistance user scenario, connecting a five LiDAR sensor network is designed and implemented to validate the accuracy of the computational intelligence-based framework. The results demonstrated that the self-tuning method is an appropriate strategy to increase the reliability of the sensor network while minimizing detection thresholds.

On the development a pneumatic four-legged mechanism autonomous vertical wall climbing robot

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Mohamad Shukri Zainal Abidin; Shamsudin H.M. Amin . shukri@suria.fke.utm.my

1999-01-01

The paper describes the design of a prototype legged mechanism together with suction mechanism, the mechanical design, on-board controller and an initial performance test. The design is implemented in the form of a pneumatically powered multi-legged robot equipped with suction pads at the sole of the feet for wall climbing purpose. The whole mechanism and suction system is controlled by controller which is housed on-board the robot. The gait of the motion depended on the logic control patterns as dictated by the controller. The robot is equipped with sensors both at the front and rear ends that function as an obstacle avoidance facility. Once objects are detected, signals are sent to the controller to start an evasive action that is to move in the opposite direction. The mechanism has been tested and initial results have shown promising potential for an autonomous mobile. (Author)

Event detection and localization for small mobile robots using reservoir computing.

Science.gov (United States)

Antonelo, E A; Schrauwen, B; Stroobandt, D

2008-08-01

Reservoir Computing (RC) techniques use a fixed (usually randomly created) recurrent neural network, or more generally any dynamic system, which operates at the edge of stability, where only a linear static readout output layer is trained by standard linear regression methods. In this work, RC is used for detecting complex events in autonomous robot navigation. This can be extended to robot localization tasks which are solely based on a few low-range, high-noise sensory data. The robot thus builds an implicit map of the environment (after learning) that is used for efficient localization by simply processing the input stream of distance sensors. These techniques are demonstrated in both a simple simulation environment and in the physically realistic Webots simulation of the commercially available e-puck robot, using several complex and even dynamic environments.

Multiprocessor development for robot control

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Lee, John Min; Kim, Seung Ho; Kim, Chang Hoi; Kim, Byung Soo; Hwang, Suk Yeong; Lee, Young Bum; Sohn, Suk Won; Kim, Woon Gi

1990-01-01

The project of this study is to develop a real time controller applying autonomous robotic systems operated in hostile environment. Developed control system is designed with a multiprocessor to get independency and reliability as well as to extend the system easily. The control system is designed in three distinct subsystems (supervisory control part, functional control part, and remote control part). To review the functional performance of developed controller, a prototype mobile robot, which was installed 4 DOF mainpulator, was designed and manufactured. Initial tests showed that the robot could turn with a radius of 38 cm and a maximum speed of 1.26 km/hr and go over obstacle of 18 cm in height. (author)

Embedded mobile farm robot for identification of diseased plants

Science.gov (United States)

Sadistap, S. S.; Botre, B. A.; Pandit, Harshavardhan; Chandrasekhar; Rao, Adesh

2013-07-01

This paper presents the development of a mobile robot used in farms for identification of diseased plants. It puts forth two of the major aspects of robotics namely automated navigation and image processing. The robot navigates on the basis of the GPS (Global Positioning System) location and data obtained from IR (Infrared) sensors to avoid any obstacles in its path. It uses an image processing algorithm to differentiate between diseased and non-diseased plants. A robotic platform consisting of an ARM9 processor, motor drivers, robot mechanical assembly, camera and infrared sensors has been used. Mini2440 microcontroller has been used wherein Embedded linux OS (Operating System) is implemented.

Remote-controlled vision-guided mobile robot system

Science.gov (United States)

Ande, Raymond; Samu, Tayib; Hall, Ernest L.

1997-09-01

Automated guided vehicles (AGVs) have many potential applications in manufacturing, medicine, space and defense. The purpose of this paper is to describe exploratory research on the design of the remote controlled emergency stop and vision systems for an autonomous mobile robot. The remote control provides human supervision and emergency stop capabilities for the autonomous vehicle. The vision guidance provides automatic operation. A mobile robot test-bed has been constructed using a golf cart base. The mobile robot (Bearcat) was built for the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems (AUVS) 1997 competition. The mobile robot has full speed control with guidance provided by a vision system and an obstacle avoidance system using ultrasonic sensors systems. Vision guidance is accomplished using two CCD cameras with zoom lenses. The vision data is processed by a high speed tracking device, communicating with the computer the X, Y coordinates of blobs along the lane markers. The system also has three emergency stop switches and a remote controlled emergency stop switch that can disable the traction motor and set the brake. Testing of these systems has been done in the lab as well as on an outside test track with positive results that show that at five mph the vehicle can follow a line and at the same time avoid obstacles.

Human-like robots for space and hazardous environments

Science.gov (United States)

1994-01-01

The three year goal for the Kansas State USRA/NASA Senior Design team is to design and build a walking autonomous robotic rover. The rover should be capable of crossing rough terrain, traversing human made obstacles (such as stairs and doors), and moving through human and robot occupied spaces without collision. The rover is also to evidence considerable decision making ability, navigation, and path planning skills.

A biologically inspired neural net for trajectory formation and obstacle avoidance.

Science.gov (United States)

Glasius, R; Komoda, A; Gielen, S C

1996-06-01

In this paper we present a biologically inspired two-layered neural network for trajectory formation and obstacle avoidance. The two topographically ordered neural maps consist of analog neurons having continuous dynamics. The first layer, the sensory map, receives sensory information and builds up an activity pattern which contains the optimal solution (i.e. shortest path without collisions) for any given set of current position, target positions and obstacle positions. Targets and obstacles are allowed to move, in which case the activity pattern in the sensory map will change accordingly. The time evolution of the neural activity in the second layer, the motor map, results in a moving cluster of activity, which can be interpreted as a population vector. Through the feedforward connections between the two layers, input of the sensory map directs the movement of the cluster along the optimal path from the current position of the cluster to the target position. The smooth trajectory is the result of the intrinsic dynamics of the network only. No supervisor is required. The output of the motor map can be used for direct control of an autonomous system in a cluttered environment or for control of the actuators of a biological limb or robot manipulator. The system is able to reach a target even in the presence of an external perturbation. Computer simulations of a point robot and a multi-joint manipulator illustrate the theory.

Mechanical Implementation and Simulation of MoboLab, A Mobile Robot for Inspection of Power Transmission Lines

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Mahmud Saadat Foumani

2008-11-01

Full Text Available This paper describes the first phase in development of a mobile robot that can navigate aerial power transmission lines completely unattended by human operator. Its ultimate purpose is to automate inspection of power transmission lines and their equipments. The authors have developed a scaled functional model of such a mobile robot with a preliminary simple computer based on-off controller. MoboLab (Mobile Laboratory navigates a power transmission line between two strain towers. It can maneuver over obstructions created by line equipments such as insulators, warning spheres, dampers, and spacer dampers. It can also easily negotiate the towers by its three flexible arms. MoboLab has an internal main screw which enables the robot to move itself or its two front and rear arms independently through changing gripped points. When the front arm gets close to an obstacle, the arm detaches from the line and goes down, the robot moves forward, the arm passes the obstacle and grippes the line again. In a same way another arms pass the obstacle.

Learning to Automatically Detect Features for Mobile Robots Using Second-Order Hidden Markov Models

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Olivier Aycard

2004-12-01

Full Text Available In this paper, we propose a new method based on Hidden Markov Models to interpret temporal sequences of sensor data from mobile robots to automatically detect features. Hidden Markov Models have been used for a long time in pattern recognition, especially in speech recognition. Their main advantages over other methods (such as neural networks are their ability to model noisy temporal signals of variable length. We show in this paper that this approach is well suited for interpretation of temporal sequences of mobile-robot sensor data. We present two distinct experiments and results: the first one in an indoor environment where a mobile robot learns to detect features like open doors or T-intersections, the second one in an outdoor environment where a different mobile robot has to identify situations like climbing a hill or crossing a rock.

Bio-inspired step-climbing in a hexapod robot

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Chou, Ya-Cheng; Yu, Wei-Shun; Huang, Ke-Jung; Lin, Pei-Chun

2012-01-01

Inspired by the observation that the cockroach changes from a tripod gait to a different gait for climbing high steps, we report on the design and implementation of a novel, fully autonomous step-climbing maneuver, which enables a RHex-style hexapod robot to reliably climb a step up to 230% higher than the length of its leg. Similar to the climbing strategy most used by cockroaches, the proposed maneuver is composed of two stages. The first stage is the ‘rearing stage,’ inclining the body so the front side of the body is raised and it is easier for the front legs to catch the top of the step, followed by the ‘rising stage,’ maneuvering the body's center of mass to the top of the step. Two infrared range sensors are installed on the front of the robot to detect the presence of the step and its orientation relative to the robot's heading, so that the robot can perform automatic gait transition, from walking to step-climbing, as well as correct its initial tilt approaching posture. An inclinometer is utilized to measure body inclination and to compute step height, thus enabling the robot to adjust its gait automatically, in real time, and to climb steps of different heights and depths successfully. The algorithm is applicable for the robot to climb various rectangular obstacles, including a narrow bar, a bar and a step (i.e. a bar of infinite width). The performance of the algorithm is evaluated experimentally, and the comparison of climbing strategies and climbing behaviors in biological and robotic systems is discussed. (paper)

Tele-operated search robot for human detection using histogram of oriented objects

Science.gov (United States)

Cruz, Febus Reidj G.; Avendaño, Glenn O.; Manlises, Cyrel O.; Avellanosa, James Jason G.; Abina, Jyacinth Camille F.; Masaquel, Albert M.; Siapno, Michael Lance O.; Chung, Wen-Yaw

2017-02-01

Disasters such as typhoons, tornadoes, and earthquakes are inevitable. Aftermaths of these disasters include the missing people. Using robots with human detection capabilities to locate the missing people, can dramatically reduce the harm and risk to those who work in such circumstances. This study aims to: design and build a tele-operated robot; implement in MATLAB an algorithm for the detection of humans; and create a database of human identification based on various positions, angles, light intensity, as well as distances from which humans will be identified. Different light intensities were made by using Photoshop to simulate smoke, dust and water drops conditions. After processing the image, the system can indicate either a human is detected or not detected. Testing with bodies covered was also conducted to test the algorithm's robustness. Based on the results, the algorithm can detect humans with full body shown. For upright and lying positions, detection can happen from 8 feet to 20 feet. For sitting position, detection can happen from 2 feet to 20 feet with slight variances in results because of different lighting conditions. The distances greater than 20 feet, no humans can be processed or false negatives can occur. For bodies covered, the algorithm can detect humans in cases made under given circumstances. On three positions, humans can be detected from 0 degrees to 180 degrees under normal, with smoke, with dust, and with water droplet conditions. This study was able to design and build a tele-operated robot with MATLAB algorithm that can detect humans with an overall precision of 88.30%, from which a database was created for human identification based on various conditions, where humans will be identified.

Sensor Fusion Based Model for Collision Free Mobile Robot Navigation

Science.gov (United States)

Almasri, Marwah; Elleithy, Khaled; Alajlan, Abrar

2015-01-01

Autonomous mobile robots have become a very popular and interesting topic in the last decade. Each of them are equipped with various types of sensors such as GPS, camera, infrared and ultrasonic sensors. These sensors are used to observe the surrounding environment. However, these sensors sometimes fail and have inaccurate readings. Therefore, the integration of sensor fusion will help to solve this dilemma and enhance the overall performance. This paper presents a collision free mobile robot navigation based on the fuzzy logic fusion model. Eight distance sensors and a range finder camera are used for the collision avoidance approach where three ground sensors are used for the line or path following approach. The fuzzy system is composed of nine inputs which are the eight distance sensors and the camera, two outputs which are the left and right velocities of the mobile robot’s wheels, and 24 fuzzy rules for the robot’s movement. Webots Pro simulator is used for modeling the environment and the robot. The proposed methodology, which includes the collision avoidance based on fuzzy logic fusion model and line following robot, has been implemented and tested through simulation and real time experiments. Various scenarios have been presented with static and dynamic obstacles using one robot and two robots while avoiding obstacles in different shapes and sizes. PMID:26712766

Sensor Fusion Based Model for Collision Free Mobile Robot Navigation

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Marwah Almasri

2015-12-01

Full Text Available Autonomous mobile robots have become a very popular and interesting topic in the last decade. Each of them are equipped with various types of sensors such as GPS, camera, infrared and ultrasonic sensors. These sensors are used to observe the surrounding environment. However, these sensors sometimes fail and have inaccurate readings. Therefore, the integration of sensor fusion will help to solve this dilemma and enhance the overall performance. This paper presents a collision free mobile robot navigation based on the fuzzy logic fusion model. Eight distance sensors and a range finder camera are used for the collision avoidance approach where three ground sensors are used for the line or path following approach. The fuzzy system is composed of nine inputs which are the eight distance sensors and the camera, two outputs which are the left and right velocities of the mobile robot’s wheels, and 24 fuzzy rules for the robot’s movement. Webots Pro simulator is used for modeling the environment and the robot. The proposed methodology, which includes the collision avoidance based on fuzzy logic fusion model and line following robot, has been implemented and tested through simulation and real time experiments. Various scenarios have been presented with static and dynamic obstacles using one robot and two robots while avoiding obstacles in different shapes and sizes.

Multi-robot system using low-cost infrared sensors

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Anubhav Kakkar

2013-03-01

Full Text Available This paper presents a proposed set of the novel technique, methods, and algorithm for simultaneous path planning, area exploration, area retrieval, obstacle avoidance, object detection, and object retrieval   autonomously by a multi-robot system. The proposed methods and algorithms are built considering the use of low cost infrared sensors with the ultimate function of efficiently exploring the given unknown area and simultaneously identifying desired objects by analyzing the physical characteristics of several of the objects that come across during exploration. In this paper, we have explained the scenario by building a coordinative multi-robot system consisting of two autonomously operated robots equipped with low-cost and low-range infrared sensors to perform the assigned task by analyzing some of the sudden changes in their environment. Along with identifying and retrieving the desired object, the proposed methodology also provide an inclusive analysis of the area being explored. The novelties presented in the paper may significantly provide a cost-effective solution to the problem of area exploration and finding a known object in an unknown environment by demonstrating an innovative approach of using the infrared sensors instead of high cost long range sensors and cameras. Additionally, the methodology provides a speedy and uncomplicated method of traversing a complicated arena while performing all the necessary and inter-related tasks of avoiding the obstacles, analyzing the area as well as objects, and reconstructing the area using all these information collected and interpreted for an unknown environment. The methods and algorithms proposed are simulated over a complex arena to depict the operations and manually tested over a physical environment which provided 78% correct results with respect to various complex parameters set randomly.

Robot soccer anywhere: achieving persistent autonomous navigation, mapping, and object vision tracking in dynamic environments

Science.gov (United States)

Dragone, Mauro; O'Donoghue, Ruadhan; Leonard, John J.; O'Hare, Gregory; Duffy, Brian; Patrikalakis, Andrew; Leederkerken, Jacques

2005-06-01

The paper describes an ongoing effort to enable autonomous mobile robots to play soccer in unstructured, everyday environments. Unlike conventional robot soccer competitions that are usually held on purpose-built robot soccer "fields", in our work we seek to develop the capability for robots to demonstrate aspects of soccer-playing in more diverse environments, such as schools, hospitals, or shopping malls, with static obstacles (furniture) and dynamic natural obstacles (people). This problem of "Soccer Anywhere" presents numerous research challenges including: (1) Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) in dynamic, unstructured environments, (2) software control architectures for decentralized, distributed control of mobile agents, (3) integration of vision-based object tracking with dynamic control, and (4) social interaction with human participants. In addition to the intrinsic research merit of these topics, we believe that this capability would prove useful for outreach activities, in demonstrating robotics technology to primary and secondary school students, to motivate them to pursue careers in science and engineering.

A neuroplasticity-inspired neural circuit for acoustic navigation with obstacle avoidance that learns smooth motion paths

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Shaikh, Danish; Manoonpong, Poramate

2018-01-01

steered the robot towards an acoustic target. The architecture mapped sound direction information, extracted by a model of the peripheral auditory system of lizards, to appropriate wheel velocities. An obstacle avoidance behaviour using distance information overrode the wheel velocities during navigation...

Collision avoidance during teleoperation using whole arm proximity sensors coupled to a virtual environment

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Novak, J.L.; Feddema, J.T.; Miner, N.E.; Stansfield, S.A.

1993-01-01

Much of the current robotics effort at the US DOE is directed toward remote handling of hazardous waste. Telerobotic systems are being developed to remotely inspect, characterize, and process waste. This paper describes a collision avoidance system using Whole Arm Proximity (WHAP) sensors on an articulated robot arm. The capacitance-based sensors generate electric fields which completely encompass the robot arm and detect obstacles as they approach from any direction. The robot is moved through the workspace using a velocity command generated either by an operator through a force-sensing input device or a preprogrammed sequence of motions. The directional obstacle information gathered by the WHAP sensors is then used in a matrix column maximization algorithm that automatically selects the sensor closest to an obstacle during each robot controller cycle. The distance from this sensor to the obstacle is used to reduce the component of the command input velocity along the normal axis of the sensor, allowing graceful perturbation of the velocity command to prevent a collision. By scaling only the component of the velocity vector in the direction of the nearest obstacle, the control system restricts motion in the direction of an obstacle while permitting unconstrained motion in other directions. The actual robot joint positions and the WHAP sensor readings are communicated to an operator interface consisting of a graphical model of the Puma robot and its environment. Circles are placed on the graphical robot surface at positions corresponding to the locations of the WHAP sensor. As the individual sensors detect obstacles, the associated circles change color, providing the operator with visual feedback as to the location and relative size of the obstacle. At the same time, the graphical robot position is updated to reflect the actual state of the robot. This information permits the operator to plan alternative paths around unmodeled, but sensed, obstacles

Fiscal 1999 achievement report on regional consortium research and development project. Regional consortium on energy research and development in its 3rd year (Research for development of task oriented multiple transfer robot system TRIPTERS); 1999 nendo task tekigogata gunkosei hanso robot system TRIPTERS no kaihatsu kenkyu seika hokokusho. 3

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

NONE

2000-03-01

Efforts to develop a task oriented multiple transfer robot system which will promptly and flexibly respond to changes in the task of transfer are reported. In the development of a positioning module, a dead-reckoning system (gyro, wheel encoder, etc.) is incorporated into a laser-aided positioning system for improvement in precision, and the result is tested and evaluated. In the development of a platoon transfer and cooperative transfer module, the method of pursuing the tracks of the preceding vehicle is improved for higher precision, and the resultant transfer module is tested and evaluated. A transfer management module is tested and evaluated in a transfer control simulation in which a communication system and a transfer robot are integrated. In the development of environmental state recognition and obstacle avoidance technologies, a real-time visual system is completed in which a wide-angle camera detects color-marked objects and a stereographic camera measures the range, and is subjected to performance evaluation. Studies are also made about an environmental state recognition module, the control of obstacle avoiding run, and the behavior of avoidance. A transfer mode and cooperative transfer in which plural standard robots are combined is also studied. (NEDO)

Automating the Incremental Evolution of Controllers for Physical Robots

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Faina, Andres; Jacobsen, Lars Toft; Risi, Sebastian

2017-01-01

the evolution of digital objects.…” The work presented here investigates how fully autonomous evolution of robot controllers can be realized in hardware, using an industrial robot and a marker-based computer vision system. In particular, this article presents an approach to automate the reconfiguration...... of the test environment and shows that it is possible, for the first time, to incrementally evolve a neural robot controller for different obstacle avoidance tasks with no human intervention. Importantly, the system offers a high level of robustness and precision that could potentially open up the range...

Robot Beroda Perambat Dinding Berbasis Mikrokontroler ATmega 2560 Dilengkapi Kendali Nirkabel dan Penghindar Rintangan

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Eko Didik Widianto

2017-05-01

Full Text Available This research developed a mobile wall climbing robot prototype using 4 DC motors as its driver and a suction tube. It can avoid obstacles. This robot uses Arduino Mega 2560 as its controller board. The robot's weight is 747 grams. The suction tube produces a suction force of 7.815N capable of holding the robot load in a stall vertical position using 12V of voltage. The robot able to crawl down and horizontal, but still can not climb vertically. The robot is able to receive a command of motion manually from a 2.4GHz wireless joystick. In automatic mode, the robot can avoid obstacles using the HC-SR04 proximity sensor. This research also shows the relationship between suction force and the given voltage of DC brushless motor and its throtle value. Penelitian ini mengembangkan sebuah purwarupa robot perambat dinding beroda dengan 4 buah motor DC sebagai penggerak dan sebuah tabung hisap serta dapat menghindari rintangan. Robot ini menggunakan Arduino Mega 2560 sebagai papan kontrolernya. Bobot robot adalah 747 gram. Gaya hisap dari tabung hisap sebesar 7,815N mampu menahan beban robot dalam posisi diam vertikal di tegangan 12V. Robot mampu merambat turun dan mendatar, namun masih tidak bisa naik vertikal. Robot mampu diberikan perintah gerak secara manual dari tombol joystick playstation nirkabel 2,4 GHz. Di mode otomatis, robot dapat bergerak menghindari rintangan menggunakan sensor jarak HC-SR04. Dalam penelitian ini ditunjukkan hubungan antara gaya hisap dengan nilai tegangan motor DC brushless dan nilai throtle-nya.

A salient region detection model combining background distribution measure for indoor robots.

Science.gov (United States)

Li, Na; Xu, Hui; Wang, Zhenhua; Sun, Lining; Chen, Guodong

2017-01-01

Vision system plays an important role in the field of indoor robot. Saliency detection methods, capturing regions that are perceived as important, are used to improve the performance of visual perception system. Most of state-of-the-art methods for saliency detection, performing outstandingly in natural images, cannot work in complicated indoor environment. Therefore, we propose a new method comprised of graph-based RGB-D segmentation, primary saliency measure, background distribution measure, and combination. Besides, region roundness is proposed to describe the compactness of a region to measure background distribution more robustly. To validate the proposed approach, eleven influential methods are compared on the DSD and ECSSD dataset. Moreover, we build a mobile robot platform for application in an actual environment, and design three different kinds of experimental constructions that are different viewpoints, illumination variations and partial occlusions. Experimental results demonstrate that our model outperforms existing methods and is useful for indoor mobile robots.

Design of a Mobile Robot for Air Ducts Exploration

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Moses A. Koledoye

2017-10-01

Full Text Available This work presents the solutions adopted for the design and the implementation of an autonomous wheeled robot developed for the exploration and mapping of air ventilation ducts. The hardware is based on commercial off-the-shelf devices, including sensors, motors, processing devices and interfaces. The mechanical chassis was designed from scratch to meet a trade-off between small size and available volume to host the components. The software stack is based on the Robot Operating System (ROS. Special attention was dedicated to the design of the mobility strategy, which must take into account some constraints and issues that are specific to the considered application, such as the relatively small size of ducts, the need to detect and avoid possible holes on the floor of the duct and other unusual obstacles and the unavailability of external reference frameworks for localization. The main contribution of this paper lies in the design, implementation and experimentation of the overall system.

Symmetric caging formation for convex polygonal object transportation by multiple mobile robots based on fuzzy sliding mode control.

Science.gov (United States)

Dai, Yanyan; Kim, YoonGu; Wee, SungGil; Lee, DongHa; Lee, SukGyu

2016-01-01

In this paper, the problem of object caging and transporting is considered for multiple mobile robots. With the consideration of minimizing the number of robots and decreasing the rotation of the object, the proper points are calculated and assigned to the multiple mobile robots to allow them to form a symmetric caging formation. The caging formation guarantees that all of the Euclidean distances between any two adjacent robots are smaller than the minimal width of the polygonal object so that the object cannot escape. In order to avoid collision among robots, the parameter of the robots radius is utilized to design the caging formation, and the A⁎ algorithm is used so that mobile robots can move to the proper points. In order to avoid obstacles, the robots and the object are regarded as a rigid body to apply artificial potential field method. The fuzzy sliding mode control method is applied for tracking control of the nonholonomic mobile robots. Finally, the simulation and experimental results show that multiple mobile robots are able to cage and transport the polygonal object to the goal position, avoiding obstacles. Copyright © 2015 ISA. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

High precision redundant robotic manipulator

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Young, K.K.D.

1998-01-01

A high precision redundant robotic manipulator for overcoming contents imposed by obstacles or imposed by a highly congested work space is disclosed. One embodiment of the manipulator has four degrees of freedom and another embodiment has seven degrees of freedom. Each of the embodiments utilize a first selective compliant assembly robot arm (SCARA) configuration to provide high stiffness in the vertical plane, a second SCARA configuration to provide high stiffness in the horizontal plane. The seven degree of freedom embodiment also utilizes kinematic redundancy to provide the capability of avoiding obstacles that lie between the base of the manipulator and the end effector or link of the manipulator. These additional three degrees of freedom are added at the wrist link of the manipulator to provide pitch, yaw and roll. The seven degrees of freedom embodiment uses one revolute point per degree of freedom. For each of the revolute joints, a harmonic gear coupled to an electric motor is introduced, and together with properly designed based servo controllers provide an end point repeatability of less than 10 microns. 3 figs

Multi-Modal Obstacle Detection in Unstructured Environments with Conditional Random Fields

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Kragh, Mikkel; Underwood, James

modality. Geometrically, tall grass, fallen leaves, or terrain roughness can mistakenly be perceived as non-traversable or might even obscure actual obstacles. Likewise, traversable grass or dirt roads and obstacles such as trees and bushes might be visually ambiguous. In this paper, we combine appearance...

A 2.5D Map-Based Mobile Robot Localization via Cooperation of Aerial and Ground Robots.

Science.gov (United States)

Nam, Tae Hyeon; Shim, Jae Hong; Cho, Young Im

2017-11-25

Recently, there has been increasing interest in studying the task coordination of aerial and ground robots. When a robot begins navigation in an unknown area, it has no information about the surrounding environment. Accordingly, for robots to perform tasks based on location information, they need a simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) process that uses sensor information to draw a map of the environment, while simultaneously estimating the current location of the robot on the map. This paper aims to present a localization method based in cooperation between aerial and ground robots in an indoor environment. The proposed method allows a ground robot to reach accurate destination by using a 2.5D elevation map built by a low-cost RGB-D (Red Green and Blue-Depth) sensor and 2D Laser sensor attached onto an aerial robot. A 2.5D elevation map is formed by projecting height information of an obstacle using depth information obtained by the RGB-D sensor onto a grid map, which is generated by using the 2D Laser sensor and scan matching. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method for its accuracy in location recognition and computing speed.

A 2.5D Map-Based Mobile Robot Localization via Cooperation of Aerial and Ground Robots

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Tae Hyeon Nam

2017-11-01

Full Text Available Recently, there has been increasing interest in studying the task coordination of aerial and ground robots. When a robot begins navigation in an unknown area, it has no information about the surrounding environment. Accordingly, for robots to perform tasks based on location information, they need a simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM process that uses sensor information to draw a map of the environment, while simultaneously estimating the current location of the robot on the map. This paper aims to present a localization method based in cooperation between aerial and ground robots in an indoor environment. The proposed method allows a ground robot to reach accurate destination by using a 2.5D elevation map built by a low-cost RGB-D (Red Green and Blue-Depth sensor and 2D Laser sensor attached onto an aerial robot. A 2.5D elevation map is formed by projecting height information of an obstacle using depth information obtained by the RGB-D sensor onto a grid map, which is generated by using the 2D Laser sensor and scan matching. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method for its accuracy in location recognition and computing speed.

Design of Wheeled Mobile Robot with Tri-Star Wheel as Rescue Robot

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Rafiuddin Syam

2016-05-01

Full Text Available This study aims to design, and analyze a mobilerobot that can handle some of the obstacles, they are unevensurfaces, slopes, can also climb stairs. WMR in this study is Tristarwheel that is containing three wheels for each set. Onaverage surface only two wheels in contact with the surface, ifthere is an uneven surface or obstacle then the third wheel willrotate with the rotation center of the wheel in contact with theleading obstacle then only one wheel in contact with the surface.This study uses the C language program. Furthermore, theminimum thrust to be generated torque of the motor andtransmission is 9.56 kg. The results obtained by calculation andanalysis of DC motors used must have a torque greater than14.67 kg.cm. Minimum thrust to be generated motor torque andthe transmission is 9.56 kg. The experimental results give goodresults for robot to moving forward, backward, turn left, turnright and climbing the stairs

Improved Deep Belief Networks (IDBN Dynamic Model-Based Detection and Mitigation for Targeted Attacks on Heavy-Duty Robots

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Lianpeng Li

2018-04-01

Full Text Available In recent years, the robots, especially heavy-duty robots, have become the hardest-hit areas for targeted attacks. These attacks come from both the cyber-domain and the physical-domain. In order to improve the security of heavy-duty robots, this paper proposes a detection and mitigation mechanism which based on improved deep belief networks (IDBN and dynamic model. The detection mechanism consists of two parts: (1 IDBN security checks, which can detect targeted attacks from the cyber-domain; (2 Dynamic model and security detection, used to detect the targeted attacks which can possibly lead to a physical-domain damage. The mitigation mechanism was established on the base of the detection mechanism and could mitigate transient and discontinuous attacks. Moreover, a test platform was established to carry out the performance evaluation test for the proposed mechanism. The results show that, the detection accuracy for the attack of the cyber-domain of IDBN reaches 96.2%, and the detection accuracy for the attack of physical-domain control commands reaches 94%. The performance evaluation test has verified the reliability and high efficiency of the proposed detection and mitigation mechanism for heavy-duty robots.

Mobile-robot navigation with complete coverage of unstructured environments

OpenAIRE

García Armada, Elena; González de Santos, Pablo

2004-01-01

There are some mobile-robot applications that require the complete coverage of an unstructured environment. Examples are humanitarian de-mining and floor-cleaning tasks. A complete-coverage algorithm is then used, a path-planning technique that allows the robot to pass over all points in the environment, avoiding unknown obstacles. Different coverage algorithms exist, but they fail working in unstructured environments. This paper details a complete-coverage algorithm for unstructured environm...

A Trajectory Generation Method Based on Edge Detection for Auto-Sealant Cartesian Robot

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Eka Samsul Maarif

2014-07-01

Full Text Available This paper presents algorithm ingenerating trajectory for sealant process using captured image. Cartesian robot as auto-sealant in manufacturing process has increased productivity, reduces human error and saves time. But, different sealant path in many engine models means not only different trajectory but also different program. Therefore robot with detection ability to generate its own trajectory is needed. This paper describes best lighting technique in capturing image and applies edge detection in trajectory generation as the solution. The algorithm comprises image capturing, Canny edge detection, integral projection in localizing outer most edge, scanning coordinates, and generating vector direction codes. The experiment results show that the best technique is diffuse lighting at 10 Cd. The developed method gives connected point to point trajectory which forms sealant path with a point to next point distance is equal to 90° motor rotation. Directional movement for point to point trajectory is controlled by generated codes which are ready to be sent by serial communication to robot controller as instruction for motors which actuate axes X and Y directions.

System safety analysis of an autonomous mobile robot

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Bartos, R.J.

1994-01-01

Analysis of the safety of operating and maintaining the Stored Waste Autonomous Mobile Inspector (SWAMI) II in a hazardous environment at the Fernald Environmental Management Project (FEMP) was completed. The SWAMI II is a version of a commercial robot, the HelpMate trademark robot produced by the Transitions Research Corporation, which is being updated to incorporate the systems required for inspecting mixed toxic chemical and radioactive waste drums at the FEMP. It also has modified obstacle detection and collision avoidance subsystems. The robot will autonomously travel down the aisles in storage warehouses to record images of containers and collect other data which are transmitted to an inspector at a remote computer terminal. A previous study showed the SWAMI II has economic feasibility. The SWAMI II will more accurately locate radioactive contamination than human inspectors. This thesis includes a System Safety Hazard Analysis and a quantitative Fault Tree Analysis (FTA). The objectives of the analyses are to prevent potentially serious events and to derive a comprehensive set of safety requirements from which the safety of the SWAMI II and other autonomous mobile robots can be evaluated. The Computer-Aided Fault Tree Analysis (CAFTA copyright) software is utilized for the FTA. The FTA shows that more than 99% of the safety risk occurs during maintenance, and that when the derived safety requirements are implemented the rate of serious events is reduced to below one event per million operating hours. Training and procedures in SWAMI II operation and maintenance provide an added safety margin. This study will promote the safe use of the SWAMI II and other autonomous mobile robots in the emerging technology of mobile robotic inspection

Novel Selective Detection Method of Tumor Angiogenesis Factors Using Living Nano-Robots.

Science.gov (United States)

Al-Fandi, Mohamed; Alshraiedeh, Nida; Owies, Rami; Alshdaifat, Hala; Al-Mahaseneh, Omamah; Al-Tall, Khadijah; Alawneh, Rawan

2017-07-14

This paper reports a novel self-detection method for tumor cells using living nano-robots. These living robots are a nonpathogenic strain of E. coli bacteria equipped with naturally synthesized bio-nano-sensory systems that have an affinity to VEGF, an angiogenic factor overly-expressed by cancer cells. The VEGF-affinity/chemotaxis was assessed using several assays including the capillary chemotaxis assay, chemotaxis assay on soft agar, and chemotaxis assay on solid agar. In addition, a microfluidic device was developed to possibly discover tumor cells through the overexpressed vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF). Various experiments to study the sensing characteristic of the nano-robots presented a strong response toward the VEGF. Thus, a new paradigm of selective targeting therapies for cancer can be advanced using swimming E. coli as self-navigator miniaturized robots as well as drug-delivery vehicles.

Navigasi Berbasis Behavior dan Fuzzy Logic pada Simulasi Robot Bergerak Otonom

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Rendyansyah

2016-03-01

Full Text Available Mobile robot is the robotic mechanism that is able to moved automatically. The movement of the robot automatically require a navigation system. Navigation is a method for determining the robot motion. In this study, using a method developed robot navigation behavior with fuzzy logic. The behavior of the robot is divided into several modules, such as walking, avoid obstacles, to follow walls, corridors and conditions of u-shape. In this research designed mobile robot simulation in a visual programming. Robot is equipped with seven distance sensor and divided into several groups to test the behavior that is designed, so that the behavior of the robot generate speed and steering control. Based on experiments that have been conducted shows that mobile robot simulation can run smooth on many conditions. This proves that the implementation of the formation of behavior and fuzzy logic techniques on the robot working well

Methodology for using root locus technique for mobile robots path planning

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Mario Ricardo Arbulú Saavedra

2015-11-01

Full Text Available This paper shows the analysis and the implementation methodology of the technique of dynamic systems roots location used in free-obstacle path planning for mobile robots. First of all, the analysis and morphologic behavior identification of the paths depending on roots location in complex plane are performed, where paths type and their attraction and repulsion features in the presence of other roots similarly to the obtained with artificial potential fields are identified. An implementation methodology for this technique of mobile robots path planning is proposed, starting from three different methods of roots location for obstacles in the scene. Those techniques change depending on the obstacle key points selected for roots, such as borders, crossing points with original path, center and vertices. Finally, a behavior analysis of general technique and the effectiveness of each tried method is performed, doing 20 tests for each one, obtaining a value of 65% for the selected method. Modifications and possible improvements to this methodology are also proposed.

Fuzzy Logic Controller Design for Intelligent Robots

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Ching-Han Chen

2017-01-01

Full Text Available This paper presents a fuzzy logic controller by which a robot can imitate biological behaviors such as avoiding obstacles or following walls. The proposed structure is implemented by integrating multiple ultrasonic sensors into a robot to collect data from a real-world environment. The decisions that govern the robot’s behavior and autopilot navigation are driven by a field programmable gate array- (FPGA- based fuzzy logic controller. The validity of the proposed controller was demonstrated by simulating three real-world scenarios to test the bionic behavior of a custom-built robot. The results revealed satisfactorily intelligent performance of the proposed fuzzy logic controller. The controller enabled the robot to demonstrate intelligent behaviors in complex environments. Furthermore, the robot’s bionic functions satisfied its design objectives.

Research on a Micro Flip Robot That Can Climb Stairs

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Jianzhong Wang

2016-03-01

Full Text Available Micro mobile robots (MMRs can operate in rugged, narrow or dangerous regions; thus, they are widely used in numerous areas including surveillance, rescue and exploration. In urban environments, stairs are common obstacles, ones that such robots find difficult to manoeuvre over. The authors analysed the research status of MMRs, particularly in terms of difficulties when performing stair climbing and present a novel type of MMR called the micro flip robot (MFRobot. A support arm subassembly was added to the centre of a wheeled chassis; using this structure, the MFRobot can climb stairs when a flipping mode is utilized. Based on this structure, the authors established a kinematic model of the stair-climbing process and analysed the force conditions for the key status, contributing to the existing knowledge of robot design. An MFRobot prototype was produced and the stair-climbing experiments, as well as experiments on manoeuvring through rubble regions and slope surfaces, were conducted. The results show that the MFRobot can rapidly climb common stairs and can easily manoeuvre through a rubble region. The maximum slope angle the robot can climb was shown to be about 35° for concrete and wooden slope surfaces. In the case where the robot needed to be equipped with sensors, particularly a camera, the camera was equipped on the support arm of robot. The MFRobot prototype weighs 2.5 kg and is easily transportable. This structure can resolve contradictions between portability and performance in terms of overcoming obstacles; in addition, operational effectiveness can be improved using this structure.

Robot for Investigations and Assessments of Nuclear Areas

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Kanaan, Daniel; Dogny, Stephane [AREVA D and S/DT, 30206 Bagnols sur Ceze (France)

2015-07-01

RIANA is a remote controlled Robot dedicated for Investigations and Assessments of Nuclear Areas. The development of RIANA is motivated by the need to have at disposal a proven robot, tested in hot cells; a robot capable of remotely investigate and characterise the inside of nuclear facilities in order to collect efficiently all the required data in the shortest possible time. It is based on a wireless medium sized remote carrier that may carry a wide variety of interchangeable modules, sensors and tools. It is easily customised to match specific requirements and quickly configured depending on the mission and the operator's preferences. RIANA integrates localisation and navigation systems. The robot will be able to generate / update a 2D map of its surrounding and exploring areas. The position of the robot is given accurately on the map. Furthermore, the robot will be able to autonomously calculate, define and follow a trajectory between 2 points taking into account its environment and obstacles. The robot is configurable to manage obstacles and restrict access to forbidden areas. RIANA allows an advanced control of modules, sensors and tools; all collected data (radiological and measured data) are displayed in real time in different format (chart, on the generated map...) and stored in a single place so that may be exported in a convenient format for data processing. This modular design gives RIANA the flexibility to perform multiple investigation missions where humans cannot work such as: visual inspections, dynamic localization and 2D mapping, characterizations and nuclear measurements of floor and walls, non destructive testing, samples collection: solid and liquid. The benefits of using RIANA are: - reducing the personnel exposures by limiting the manual intervention time, - minimizing the time and reducing the cost of investigation operations, - providing critical inputs to set up and optimize cleanup and dismantling operations. (authors)

Robot for Investigations and Assessments of Nuclear Areas

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Kanaan, Daniel; Dogny, Stephane

2015-01-01

RIANA is a remote controlled Robot dedicated for Investigations and Assessments of Nuclear Areas. The development of RIANA is motivated by the need to have at disposal a proven robot, tested in hot cells; a robot capable of remotely investigate and characterise the inside of nuclear facilities in order to collect efficiently all the required data in the shortest possible time. It is based on a wireless medium sized remote carrier that may carry a wide variety of interchangeable modules, sensors and tools. It is easily customised to match specific requirements and quickly configured depending on the mission and the operator's preferences. RIANA integrates localisation and navigation systems. The robot will be able to generate / update a 2D map of its surrounding and exploring areas. The position of the robot is given accurately on the map. Furthermore, the robot will be able to autonomously calculate, define and follow a trajectory between 2 points taking into account its environment and obstacles. The robot is configurable to manage obstacles and restrict access to forbidden areas. RIANA allows an advanced control of modules, sensors and tools; all collected data (radiological and measured data) are displayed in real time in different format (chart, on the generated map...) and stored in a single place so that may be exported in a convenient format for data processing. This modular design gives RIANA the flexibility to perform multiple investigation missions where humans cannot work such as: visual inspections, dynamic localization and 2D mapping, characterizations and nuclear measurements of floor and walls, non destructive testing, samples collection: solid and liquid. The benefits of using RIANA are: - reducing the personnel exposures by limiting the manual intervention time, - minimizing the time and reducing the cost of investigation operations, - providing critical inputs to set up and optimize cleanup and dismantling operations. (authors)

Robotics Laboratory to Enhance the STEM Research Experience

Science.gov (United States)

2015-04-30

Research Platforms Clearpath Robotics 2 $66,118 Open IMU system integrated with Husky SICK LMS Outdoor LIDAR Outdoor PTZ Camera NovAtel...currently focusing our attention and efforts on simultaneous localization and mapping ( SLAM ) algorithms, obstacle avoidance, and communication between

Experimental Fault Detection and Accomodation for an Agricultural Mobile Robot

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Østergaard, Kasper Zinck; Vinther, D.; Bisgaard, Morten

2005-01-01

This paper presents a systematic procedure to achieve fault tolerant capability for a four-wheel driven, four-wheel steered mobile robot moving in outdoor terrain. The procedure is exemplified through the paper by applying on a compass module. Detailed methods for fault detection and fault...

A measurement-based fault detection approach applied to monitor robots swarm

KAUST Repository

Khaldi, Belkacem; Harrou, Fouzi; Sun, Ying; Cherif, Foudil

2017-01-01

present an innovative data-driven fault detection method for monitoring robots swarm. The method combines the flexibility of principal component analysis (PCA) models and the greater sensitivity of the exponentially-weighted moving average control chart

Online Phase Detection Using Wearable Sensors for Walking with a Robotic Prosthesis

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Maja Goršič

2014-02-01

Full Text Available This paper presents a gait phase detection algorithm for providing feedback in walking with a robotic prosthesis. The algorithm utilizes the output signals of a wearable wireless sensory system incorporating sensorized shoe insoles and inertial measurement units attached to body segments. The principle of detecting transitions between gait phases is based on heuristic threshold rules, dividing a steady-state walking stride into four phases. For the evaluation of the algorithm, experiments with three amputees, walking with the robotic prosthesis and wearable sensors, were performed. Results show a high rate of successful detection for all four phases (the average success rate across all subjects >90%. A comparison of the proposed method to an off-line trained algorithm using hidden Markov models reveals a similar performance achieved without the need for learning dataset acquisition and previous model training.

Vision-based mobile robot navigation through deep convolutional neural networks and end-to-end learning

Science.gov (United States)

Zhang, Yachu; Zhao, Yuejin; Liu, Ming; Dong, Liquan; Kong, Lingqin; Liu, Lingling

2017-09-01

In contrast to humans, who use only visual information for navigation, many mobile robots use laser scanners and ultrasonic sensors along with vision cameras to navigate. This work proposes a vision-based robot control algorithm based on deep convolutional neural networks. We create a large 15-layer convolutional neural network learning system and achieve the advanced recognition performance. Our system is trained from end to end to map raw input images to direction in supervised mode. The images of data sets are collected in a wide variety of weather conditions and lighting conditions. Besides, the data sets are augmented by adding Gaussian noise and Salt-and-pepper noise to avoid overfitting. The algorithm is verified by two experiments, which are line tracking and obstacle avoidance. The line tracking experiment is proceeded in order to track the desired path which is composed of straight and curved lines. The goal of obstacle avoidance experiment is to avoid the obstacles indoor. Finally, we get 3.29% error rate on the training set and 5.1% error rate on the test set in the line tracking experiment, 1.8% error rate on the training set and less than 5% error rate on the test set in the obstacle avoidance experiment. During the actual test, the robot can follow the runway centerline outdoor and avoid the obstacle in the room accurately. The result confirms the effectiveness of the algorithm and our improvement in the network structure and train parameters

DEVELOPMENT OF FRANCHISING IN CROATIA OBSTACLES AND POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS

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Mirela Alpeza

2015-11-01

Full Text Available Franchising is very popular growth model but despite the wide application of franchising in the developed countries of the world, its impact on the Croatian economy is still marginal. The purpose of this research is to identify the obstacles and challenges to a wider application of franchising in Croatia and generate policy recommendations for removing the identified obstacles. Obstacles and recommendations are identified on the basis of a conducted longitudinal qualitative research, the first phase of which was conducted in 2006, and second in 2014. The overall results of this research were presented in a form of PEST analysis and compared with the results of the 2006 research aiming to detect changes (improvements/ deterioration in individual areas of the research political, economic, legal and technologic factors of influence on the development of franchising in Croatia. Based on the detected changes, conclusions and policy recommendations were identified.The obstacles can be divided in two categories: franchising specific barriers and general business related obstacles for doing business in Croatia. Without removing most of these obstacles, it is unrealistic to expect high growth of franchising activities in Croatia in near future.

Fuzzy logic controller for stabilization of biped robot gait

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ryadchikov I.V.

2018-01-01

Full Text Available The article centers round the problem of stabilization of biped robot gait through smoothing out the jumps of first and second order derivatives of a biped robot control vector using the fuzzy logic approach. The structure of a composite Takagi-Sugeno fuzzy logic controller developed by the authors is presented. The simulation study of a robot gait with climbing an obstacle is carried out and the results provided in the article showed that the developed controller performed significantly better than the analytical formula model in terms of smoothing out the derivatives of the control vector.

Serendipitous Offline Learning in a Neuromorphic Robot

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Terrence C Stewart

2016-02-01

Full Text Available We demonstrate a hybrid neuromorphic learning paradigm that learns complex sensorimotor mappings based on a small set of hard-coded reflex behaviours. A mobile robot is first controlled by a basic set of reflexive hand-designed behaviours. All sensor data is provided via a spike-based silicon retina camera (eDVS, and all control is implemented via spiking neurons simulated on neuromorphic hardware (SpiNNaker. Given this control system, the robot is capable of simple obstacle avoidance and random exploration. To train the robot to perform more complex tasks, we observe the robot and find instances where he robot accidentally performs the desired action. Data recorded from the robot during these times is then used to update the neural control system, increasing the likelihood of the robot performing that task in the future, given a similar sensor state. As an example application of this general-purpose method of training, we demonstrate the robot learning to respond to novel sensory stimuli (a mirror by turning right if it is present at an intersection, and otherwise turning left. In general, this system can learn arbitrary relations between sensory input and motor behaviour.

SAFER vehicle inspection: a multimodal robotic sensing platform

Science.gov (United States)

Page, David L.; Fougerolle, Yohan; Koschan, Andreas F.; Gribok, Andrei; Abidi, Mongi A.; Gorsich, David J.; Gerhart, Grant R.

2004-09-01

The current threats to U.S. security both military and civilian have led to an increased interest in the development of technologies to safeguard national facilities such as military bases, federal buildings, nuclear power plants, and national laboratories. As a result, the Imaging, Robotics, and Intelligent Systems (IRIS) Laboratory at The University of Tennessee (UT) has established a research consortium, known as SAFER (Security Automation and Future Electromotive Robotics), to develop, test, and deploy sensing and imaging systems for unmanned ground vehicles (UGV). The targeted missions for these UGV systems include -- but are not limited to --under vehicle threat assessment, stand-off check-point inspections, scout surveillance, intruder detection, obstacle-breach situations, and render-safe scenarios. This paper presents a general overview of the SAFER project. Beyond this general overview, we further focus on a specific problem where we collect 3D range scans of under vehicle carriages. These scans require appropriate segmentation and representation algorithms to facilitate the vehicle inspection process. We discuss the theory for these algorithms and present results from applying them to actual vehicle scans.

Behaviour based Mobile Robot Navigation Technique using AI System: Experimental Investigation on Active Media Pioneer Robot

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

S. Parasuraman, V.Ganapathy

2012-10-01

Full Text Available A key issue in the research of an autonomous robot is the design and development of the navigation technique that enables the robot to navigate in a real world environment. In this research, the issues investigated and methodologies established include (a Designing of the individual behavior and behavior rule selection using Alpha level fuzzy logic system  (b Designing of the controller, which maps the sensors input to the motor output through model based Fuzzy Logic Inference System and (c Formulation of the decision-making process by using Alpha-level fuzzy logic system. The proposed method is applied to Active Media Pioneer Robot and the results are discussed and compared with most accepted methods. This approach provides a formal methodology for representing and implementing the human expert heuristic knowledge and perception-based action in mobile robot navigation. In this approach, the operational strategies of the human expert driver are transferred via fuzzy logic to the robot navigation in the form of a set of simple conditional statements composed of linguistic variables.Keywards: Mobile robot, behavior based control, fuzzy logic, alpha level fuzzy logic, obstacle avoidance behavior and goal seek behavior

Effective pathfinding for four-wheeled robot based on combining Theta* and hybrid A* algorithms

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Віталій Геннадійович Михалько

2016-07-01

Full Text Available Effective pathfinding algorithm based on Theta* and Hybrid A* algorithms was developed for four-wheeled robot. Pseudocode for algorithm was showed and explained. Algorithm and simulator for four-wheeled robot were implemented using Java programming language. Algorithm was tested on U-obstacles, complex maps and for parking problem

Remote Control of a Mobile Robot for Indoor Patrol

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Shih-Yao Juang

2016-03-01

Full Text Available This study applies smartphone, Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi wireless network to control a wheeled mobile robot (WMR remotely. The first part of this study demonstrates that the WMR can be controlled manually by a smartphone. The smartphone can remotely control the WMR for forward, backward, left-turn, and right-turn operations. The second part of this article presents object tracking. The WMR can follow a moving object through the use of image processing for object tracking and distance detection. In the third part, infrared sensor and fuzzy system algorithms are integrated into the control scheme. Through wall-following and obstacle-avoidance control, the WMR can successfully perform indoor patrol.

Dynamical Behavior of Multi-Robot Systems Using Lattice Gas Automata

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Cameron, S.M.; Robinett, R.; Stantz, K.M.; Trahan, M.W.; Wagner, J.S.

1999-03-11

Recent attention has been given to the deployment of an adaptable sensor array realized by multi-robotic systems. Our group has been studying the collective behavior of autonomous, multi-agent systems and their applications in the area of remote-sensing and emerging threats. To accomplish such tasks, an interdisciplinary research effort at Sandia National Laboratories are conducting tests in the fields of sensor technology, robotics, and multi-robotic and multi-agents architectures. Our goal is to coordinate a constellation of point sensors that optimizes spatial coverage and multivariate signal analysis using unmanned robotic vehicles (e.g., RATLERs, Robotic All-ten-sin Lunar Exploration Rover-class vehicles). Overall design methodology is to evolve complex collective behaviors realized through simple interaction (kinetic) physics and artificial intelligence to enable real-time operational responses to emerging threats. This paper focuses on our recent work understanding the dynamics of many-body systems using the physics-based hydrodynamic model of lattice gas automata. Three design features are investigated. One, for single-speed robots, a hexagonal nearest-neighbor interaction topology is necessary to preserve standard hydrodynamic flow. Two, adaptability, defined by the swarm's deformation rate, can be controlled through the hydrodynamic viscosity term, which, in turn, is defined by the local robotic interaction rules. Three, due to the inherent non-linearity of the dynamical equations describing large ensembles, development of stability criteria ensuring convergence to equilibrium states is developed by scaling information flow rates relative to a swarm's hydrodynamic flow rate. An initial test case simulates a swarm of twenty-five robots that maneuvers past an obstacle while following a moving target. A genetic algorithm optimizes applied nearest-neighbor forces in each of five spatial regions distributed over the simulation domain. Armed with

Memristive device based learning for navigation in robots.

Science.gov (United States)

Sarim, Mohammad; Kumar, Manish; Jha, Rashmi; Minai, Ali A

2017-11-08

Biomimetic robots have gained attention recently for various applications ranging from resource hunting to search and rescue operations during disasters. Biological species are known to intuitively learn from the environment, gather and process data, and make appropriate decisions. Such sophisticated computing capabilities in robots are difficult to achieve, especially if done in real-time with ultra-low energy consumption. Here, we present a novel memristive device based learning architecture for robots. Two terminal memristive devices with resistive switching of oxide layer are modeled in a crossbar array to develop a neuromorphic platform that can impart active real-time learning capabilities in a robot. This approach is validated by navigating a robot vehicle in an unknown environment with randomly placed obstacles. Further, the proposed scheme is compared with reinforcement learning based algorithms using local and global knowledge of the environment. The simulation as well as experimental results corroborate the validity and potential of the proposed learning scheme for robots. The results also show that our learning scheme approaches an optimal solution for some environment layouts in robot navigation.

Deviation from Trajectory Detection in Vision based Robotic Navigation using SURF and Subsequent Restoration by Dynamic Auto Correction Algorithm

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ray Debraj

2015-01-01

Full Text Available Speeded Up Robust Feature (SURF is used to position a robot with respect to an environment and aid in vision-based robotic navigation. During the course of navigation irregularities in the terrain, especially in an outdoor environment may deviate a robot from the track. Another reason for deviation can be unequal speed of the left and right robot wheels. Hence it is essential to detect such deviations and perform corrective operations to bring the robot back to the track. In this paper we propose a novel algorithm that uses image matching using SURF to detect deviation of a robot from the trajectory and subsequent restoration by corrective operations. This algorithm is executed in parallel to positioning and navigation algorithms by distributing tasks among different CPU cores using Open Multi-Processing (OpenMP API.

Synaptic plasticity in a recurrent neural network for versatile and adaptive behaviors of a walking robot.

Science.gov (United States)

Grinke, Eduard; Tetzlaff, Christian; Wörgötter, Florentin; Manoonpong, Poramate

2015-01-01

Walking animals, like insects, with little neural computing can effectively perform complex behaviors. For example, they can walk around their environment, escape from corners/deadlocks, and avoid or climb over obstacles. While performing all these behaviors, they can also adapt their movements to deal with an unknown situation. As a consequence, they successfully navigate through their complex environment. The versatile and adaptive abilities are the result of an integration of several ingredients embedded in their sensorimotor loop. Biological studies reveal that the ingredients include neural dynamics, plasticity, sensory feedback, and biomechanics. Generating such versatile and adaptive behaviors for a many degrees-of-freedom (DOFs) walking robot is a challenging task. Thus, in this study, we present a bio-inspired approach to solve this task. Specifically, the approach combines neural mechanisms with plasticity, exteroceptive sensory feedback, and biomechanics. The neural mechanisms consist of adaptive neural sensory processing and modular neural locomotion control. The sensory processing is based on a small recurrent neural network consisting of two fully connected neurons. Online correlation-based learning with synaptic scaling is applied to adequately change the connections of the network. By doing so, we can effectively exploit neural dynamics (i.e., hysteresis effects and single attractors) in the network to generate different turning angles with short-term memory for a walking robot. The turning information is transmitted as descending steering signals to the neural locomotion control which translates the signals into motor actions. As a result, the robot can walk around and adapt its turning angle for avoiding obstacles in different situations. The adaptation also enables the robot to effectively escape from sharp corners or deadlocks. Using backbone joint control embedded in the the locomotion control allows the robot to climb over small obstacles

Event-Based Control Strategy for Mobile Robots in Wireless Environments.

Science.gov (United States)

Socas, Rafael; Dormido, Sebastián; Dormido, Raquel; Fabregas, Ernesto

2015-12-02

In this paper, a new event-based control strategy for mobile robots is presented. It has been designed to work in wireless environments where a centralized controller has to interchange information with the robots over an RF (radio frequency) interface. The event-based architectures have been developed for differential wheeled robots, although they can be applied to other kinds of robots in a simple way. The solution has been checked over classical navigation algorithms, like wall following and obstacle avoidance, using scenarios with a unique or multiple robots. A comparison between the proposed architectures and the classical discrete-time strategy is also carried out. The experimental results shows that the proposed solution has a higher efficiency in communication resource usage than the classical discrete-time strategy with the same accuracy.

Control of Multiple Robotic Sentry Vehicles

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Feddema, J.; Klarer, P.; Lewis, C.

1999-04-01

As part of a project for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Sandia National Laboratories is developing and testing the feasibility of using of a cooperative team of robotic sentry vehicles to guard a perimeter and to perform surround and diversion tasks. This paper describes on-going activities in the development of these robotic sentry vehicles. To date, we have developed a robotic perimeter detection system which consists of eight ''Roving All Terrain Lunar Explorer Rover'' (RATLER{trademark}) vehicles, a laptop-based base-station, and several Miniature Intrusion Detection Sensors (MIDS). A radio frequency receiver on each of the RATLER vehicles alerts the sentry vehicles of alarms from the hidden MIDS. When an alarm is received, each vehicle decides whether it should investigate the alarm based on the proximity of itself and the other vehicles to the alarm. As one vehicle attends an alarm, the other vehicles adjust their position around the perimeter to better prepare for another alarm. We have also demonstrated the ability to drive multiple vehicles in formation via tele-operation or by waypoint GPS navigation. This is currently being extended to include mission planning capabilities. At the base-station, the operator can draw on an aerial map the goal regions to be surrounded and the repulsive regions to be avoided. A potential field path planner automatically generates a path from the vehicles' current position to the goal regions while avoiding the repulsive regions and the other vehicles. This path is previewed to the operator before the regions are downloaded to the vehicles. The same potential field path planner resides on the vehicle, except additional repulsive forces from on-board proximity sensors guide the vehicle away from unplanned obstacles.

The conceptual design of the sensing system for patrolling and inspecting a nuclear facility by the intelligent robot

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Ebihara, Ken-ichi

1993-11-01

Supposing that an intelligent robot, instead of a human worker, patrols and inspects nuclear facilities, it is indispensable for such robot to be capable of moving with avoiding obstacles and recognizing various abnormal conditions, carrying out some ordered works based on information from sensors mounted on the robot. The present robots being practically used in nuclear facilities, however, have the limited capability such as identifying a few specific abnormal conditions using data detected by specific sensors on them. Hence, a conceptual design of a sensor-fusion-based system, which is named 'sensing system', has been performed to collect various kinds of information required for patrol and inspection. This sensing system combines a visual sensor, which consists of a monocular camera and a range finder by the active stereopsis method, an olfactory, acoustic and dose sensors. This report describes the hardware configuration and the software function for processing sensed data. An idea of sensor fusion and the preliminary consideration in respect of applying the neural network to image data processing are also described. (author)

Shuttlecock detection system for fully-autonomous badminton robot with two high-speed video cameras

Science.gov (United States)

Masunari, T.; Yamagami, K.; Mizuno, M.; Une, S.; Uotani, M.; Kanematsu, T.; Demachi, K.; Sano, S.; Nakamura, Y.; Suzuki, S.

2017-02-01

Two high-speed video cameras are successfully used to detect the motion of a flying shuttlecock of badminton. The shuttlecock detection system is applied to badminton robots that play badminton fully autonomously. The detection system measures the three dimensional position and velocity of a flying shuttlecock, and predicts the position where the shuttlecock falls to the ground. The badminton robot moves quickly to the position where the shuttle-cock falls to, and hits the shuttlecock back into the opponent's side of the court. In the game of badminton, there is a large audience, and some of them move behind a flying shuttlecock, which are a kind of background noise and makes it difficult to detect the motion of the shuttlecock. The present study demonstrates that such noises can be eliminated by the method of stereo imaging with two high-speed cameras.

Development of RadRob15, A Robot for Detecting Radioactive Contamination in Nuclear Medicine Departments

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Shafe A.

2016-09-01

Full Text Available Accidental or intentional release of radioactive materials into the living or working environment may cause radioactive contamination. In nuclear medicine departments, radioactive contamination is usually due to radionuclides which emit high energy gamma photons and particles. These radionuclides have a broad range of energies and penetration capabilities. Rapid detection of radioactive contamination is very important for efficient removing of the contamination without spreading the radionuclides. A quick scan of the contaminated area helps health physicists locate the contaminated area and assess the level of activity. Studies performed in IR Iran shows that in some nuclear medicine departments, areas with relatively high levels of activity can be found. The highest contamination level was detected in corridors which are usually used by patients. To monitor radioactive contamination in nuclear medicine departments, RadRob15, a contamination detecting robot was developed in the Ionizing and Non-ionizing Radiation Protection Research Center (INIRPRC. The motor vehicle scanner and the gas radiation detector are the main components of this robot. The detection limit of this robot has enabled it to detect low levels of radioactive contamination. Our preliminary tests show that RadRob15 can be easily used in nuclear medicine departments as a device for quick surveys which identifies the presence or absence of radioactive contamination.

Paper-based Pneumatic Locomotive Robot with Sticky Actuator

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Du Xiaohan

2016-01-01

Full Text Available Demands for small-scale and low-cost robots have witnessed a great increase in recent years [1–5]. This paper introduces the design and fabrication of a novel, simple, low-cost and designer-friendly locomotive robot. The materials and tools to build the robot originate from everyday life. The robot is pneumatically powered and manually controlled by simply pumping and vacuuming the syringe repeatedly, which realizes reliable locomotion by folding and opening of the planes. In order to realize this complicated motion, a “3D Sticky Actuator” is developed. The motion and force analysis of actuator are then modelled by the numerical method to develop the relations between design parameters. This suggests a systematic and user interactive way of manufacturing various shapes of the actuator, depending on user-defined road condition (e.g. obstacles and slopes and other constraints. One key advantage of the paper-based robot is suggested by its high feasibility.

Using real-time stereopsis for mobile robot control

Science.gov (United States)

Bonasso, R. P.; Nishihara, H. K.

1991-02-01

This paper describes on-going work in using range and motion data generated at video-frame rates as the basis for long-range perception in a mobile robot. A current approach in the artificial intelligence community to achieve timecritical perception for situated reasoning is to use low-level perception for motor reflex-like activity and higher-level but more computationally intense perception for path planning reconnaissance and retrieval activities. Typically inclinometers and a compass or an infra-red beacon system provide stability and orientation maintenance and ultrasonic or infra-red sensors serve as proximity detectors for obstacle avoidance. For distant ranging and area occupancy determination active imaging systems such as laser scanners can be prohibitivtly expensive and heretofore passive systems typically performed more slowly than the cycle time of the control system causing the robot to halt periodically along its way. However a recent stereo system developed by Nishihara known as PRISM (Practical Real-time Imaging Stereo Matcher) matches stereo pairs using a sign-correlation technique that gives range and motion at video frame rates. We are integrating this technique with constant-time control software for distant ranging and object detection at a speed that is comparable with the cycle-times of the low-level sensors. Possibilities for a variety of uses in a leader-follower mobile robot situation are discussed.

An Intuitive Robot Teleoperation System for Nuclear Power Plant Decommissioning

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Lee, Chang-hyuk; Gu, Taehyeong; Lee, Kyung-min; Ye, Sung-Joon; Bang, Young-bong

2017-01-01

A robot teleoperation system consists of a master device and a slave robot. The master device senses human intention and delivers it to the salve robot. A haptic device and an exoskeletal robot are widely used as the master device. The slave robot carries out operations delivered by the master device. It should guarantee enough degree of freedom (DOF) to perform the instructed operation and mobility in the environment inside the nuclear plant, such as flat surfaces and stairs. A 7-DOF robotic arm is commonly used as the slave device. This paper proposed a robot teleoperation system for nuclear power plant decommissioning. It discussed an experiment that was performed to validate the system's usability. The operator wearing the exoskeletal master device at the master site controlled the slave robot enabling it to move on a flat surface, climb/descend stairs, and move obstacles. The proposed robot teleoperation system can also be used in hazardous working environments where the use of such robots would be beneficial to human health and safety. In the future, research studies on the protection against radiation that damages the slave robot should be conducted.

A Novel Low-Cost Adaptive Scanner Concept for Mobile Robots

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Ivo Stančić

2014-09-01

Full Text Available A fundamental problem in mobile robot applications is the need for accurate knowledge of the position of a vehicle for localizing itself and for avoiding obstacles in its path. In the search for a solution to this problem, researchers and engineers have developed different sensors, systems and techniques. Modern mobile robots relay information obtained from a variety of sensors and sophisticated data fusion algorithms. In this paper, a novel concept for a low-cost adaptive scanner based on a projected light pattern is proposed. The main advantage of the proposed system is its adaptivity, which enables the rapid scanning of the robot’s surroundings in search of obstacles and a more detailed scan of a single object to retrieve its surface configuration and perform some limited analyses. This paper addresses the concept behind such a scanner, where a proof-of-concept is achieved using an office DLP projector. During the measurements, the accuracy of the proposed system was tested on obstacles and objects with known configurations. The obtained results are presented and analyzed, and conclusions about the system’s performance and possible improvements are discussed.

Motion Planning in Multi-robot Systems using Timed Automata

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Andersen, Michael. S.; Jensen, Rune S.; Bak, Thomas

This paper dscribes how interacting timed automata can be used to model, analyze, and verify motion planning problems for systems with multiple mobile robots. The method assumes an infra-structure of simple unicycle type robots, moving om a planar grid. The motion of the robots, including simple...... kinematics, is captured in an automata formalism that allows formal composition and symbolic reasoning. The verification software UppAal is used to verify specification requirements formulated in computational tree logic (CTL), generating all feasible trajectories that satisfy specifications. The results...... of the planning are demonstrateted in a testbed that allows execution of the planned paths and motion primitives by synchronizing the planning results from UppAal with actual robotic vehicles. The planning problem may be modified online by moving obstacles in the physical environment, which causes a re...

Robot dispatching Scenario for Accident Condition Monitoring of NPP

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Kim, Jongseog

2013-01-01

In March of 2011, unanticipated big size of tsunami attacks Fukushima NPP, this accident results in explosion of containment building. Tokyo electric power of Japan couldn't dispatch a robot for monitoring of containment inside. USA Packbot robot used for desert war in Iraq was supplied to Fukushima NPP for monitoring of high radiation area. Packbot also couldn't reach deep inside of Fukushima NPP due to short length of power cable. Japanese robot 'Queens' also failed to complete a mission due to communication problem between robot and operator. I think major reason of these robot failures is absence of robot dispatching scenario. If there was a scenario and a rehearsal for monitoring during or after accident, these unanticipated obstacles could be overcome. Robot dispatching scenario studied for accident of nuclear power plant was described herein. Study on scenario of robot dispatching is performed. Flying robot is regarded as good choice for accident monitoring. Walking robot with arm equipped is good for emergency valve close. Short time work and shift work by several robots can be a solution for high radiation area. Thin and soft cable with rolling reel can be a good solution for long time work and good communication

Directed cell migration in the presence of obstacles

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Grima Ramon

2007-01-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background Chemotactic movement is a common feature of many cells and microscopic organisms. In vivo, chemotactic cells have to follow a chemotactic gradient and simultaneously avoid the numerous obstacles present in their migratory path towards the chemotactic source. It is not clear how cells detect and avoid obstacles, in particular whether they need a specialized biological mechanism to do so. Results We propose that cells can sense the presence of obstacles and avoid them because obstacles interfere with the chemical field. We build a model to test this hypothesis and find that this naturally enables efficient at-a-distance sensing to be achieved with no need for a specific and active obstacle-sensing mechanism. We find that (i the efficiency of obstacle avoidance depends strongly on whether the chemotactic chemical reacts or remains unabsorbed at the obstacle surface. In particular, it is found that chemotactic cells generally avoid absorbing barriers much more easily than non-absorbing ones. (ii The typically low noise in a cell's motion hinders the ability to avoid obstacles. We also derive an expression estimating the typical distance traveled by chemotactic cells in a 3D random distribution of obstacles before capture; this is a measure of the distance over which chemotaxis is viable as a means of directing cells from one point to another in vivo. Conclusion Chemotactic cells, in many cases, can avoid obstacles by simply following the spatially perturbed chemical gradients around obstacles. It is thus unlikely that they have developed specialized mechanisms to cope with environments having low to moderate concentrations of obstacles.

Automatic Quadcopter Control Avoiding Obstacle Using Camera with Integrated Ultrasonic Sensor

Science.gov (United States)

Anis, Hanafi; Haris Indra Fadhillah, Ahmad; Darma, Surya; Soekirno, Santoso

2018-04-01

Automatic navigation on the drone is being developed these days, a wide variety of types of drones and its automatic functions. Drones used in this study was an aircraft with four propellers or quadcopter. In this experiment, image processing used to recognize the position of an object and ultrasonic sensor used to detect obstacle distance. The method used to trace an obsctacle in image processing was the Lucas-Kanade-Tomasi Tracker, which had been widely used due to its high accuracy. Ultrasonic sensor used to complement the image processing success rate to be fully detected object. The obstacle avoidance system was to observe at the program decisions from some obstacle conditions read by the camera and ultrasonic sensors. Visual feedback control based PID controllers are used as a control of drones movement. The conclusion of the obstacle avoidance system was to observe at the program decisions from some obstacle conditions read by the camera and ultrasonic sensors.

On a Hopping-Points SVD and Hough Transform-Based Line Detection Algorithm for Robot Localization and Mapping

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Abhijeet Ravankar

2016-05-01

Full Text Available Line detection is an important problem in computer vision, graphics and autonomous robot navigation. Lines detected using a laser range sensor (LRS mounted on a robot can be used as features to build a map of the environment, and later to localize the robot in the map, in a process known as Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM. We propose an efficient algorithm for line detection from LRS data using a novel hopping-points Singular Value Decomposition (SVD and Hough transform-based algorithm, in which SVD is applied to intermittent LRS points to accelerate the algorithm. A reverse-hop mechanism ensures that the end points of the line segments are accurately extracted. Line segments extracted from the proposed algorithm are used to form a map and, subsequently, LRS data points are matched with the line segments to localize the robot. The proposed algorithm eliminates the drawbacks of point-based matching algorithms like the Iterative Closest Points (ICP algorithm, the performance of which degrades with an increasing number of points. We tested the proposed algorithm for mapping and localization in both simulated and real environments, and found it to detect lines accurately and build maps with good self-localization.

Detection of movement intention using EEG in a human-robot interaction environment

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Ernesto Pablo Lana

Full Text Available Introduction : This paper presents a detection method for upper limb movement intention as part of a brain-machine interface using EEG signals, whose final goal is to assist disabled or vulnerable people with activities of daily living. Methods EEG signals were recorded from six naïve healthy volunteers while performing a motor task. Every volunteer remained in an acoustically isolated recording room. The robot was placed in front of the volunteers such that it seemed to be a mirror of their right arm, emulating a Brain Machine Interface environment. The volunteers were seated in an armchair throughout the experiment, outside the reaching area of the robot to guarantee safety. Three conditions are studied: observation, execution, and imagery of right arm’s flexion and extension movements paced by an anthropomorphic manipulator robot. The detector of movement intention uses the spectral F test for discrimination of conditions and uses as feature the desynchronization patterns found on the volunteers. Using a detector provides an objective method to acknowledge for the occurrence of movement intention. Results When using four realizations of the task, detection rates ranging from 53 to 97% were found in five of the volunteers when the movement was executed, in three of them when the movement was imagined, and in two of them when the movement was observed. Conclusions Detection rates for movement observation raises the question of how the visual feedback may affect the performance of a working brain-machine interface, posing another challenge for the upcoming interface implementation. Future developments will focus on the improvement of feature extraction and detection accuracy for movement intention using EEG data.

Odex III: building on the EPRI walking robot

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Guzowski, S.

1991-01-01

Odetics has delivered a second generation preproduction Odex TM III robot to the French Commissariat a l'Energie Atomique (CEA). The CEA version of the robot is an all electric-actuated six-legged machine that uses an alternating tripod gate as its normal walking mode, keeping three of its six feet on the walking surface at all times. The six legs are normally positioned symmetrically 60 o apart around the torso, allowing for movement in all directions. Each leg subsystem contains three servo motors and a sophisticated arrangements of gear reducers, ball screws and linkage mechanisms to produce three essential leg motions (vertical travel, radial extension and tangential or side-to-side swing). This means that the top of the transporter body can be as compact as 3.5 ft in height when the legs are fully retracted, or as tall as 6.5ft when they are fully extended. Odex III can manoeuvre through doorways or turn tight corners, and the side-to-side swing of the legs allows asymmetric leg positioning for moving in constricted spaces. Odex III's feet contain sensors to determine proper foot placement while walking. One sensor-assembly detects updown vertical loading and checks that the foot is placed on a solid surface. Another set of sensors detects both side loading on the foot and obstacles in a lateral direction. Each leg can exert a 1200lb extension force. Together they are capable of exerting 5500lb of vertical force. The CEA is currently using the system in the SHERPA project which aims to demonstrate the feasibility of a versatile, modular mobile robot system for Pressurized Water Reactor maintenance. (author)

Mobile Robot for Life Science Automation

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Hui Liu

2013-07-01

Full Text Available The paper presents a control system for mobile robots in distributed life science laboratories. The system covers all technical aspects of laboratory mobile robotics. In this system: (a to get an accurate and low-cost robot localization, a method using a StarGazer module with a number of ceiling landmarks is utilized; (b to have an expansible communication network, a standard IEEE 802.11g wireless network is adopted and a XML-based command protocol is designed for the communication between the remote side and the robot board side; (c to realize a function of dynamic obstacle measurement and collision avoidance, an artificial potential field method based on a Microsoft Kinect sensor is used; and (d to determine the shortest paths for transportation tasks, a hybrid planning strategy based on a Floyd algorithm and a Genetic Algorithm (GA is proposed. Additionally, to make the traditional GA method suitable for the laboratory robot's routing, a series of optimized works are also provided in detail. Two experiments show that the proposed system and its control strategy are effective for a complex life science laboratory.

Design, Modeling and Control of a Biped Line-Walking Robot

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Ludan Wang

2010-12-01

Full Text Available The subject of this paper is the design and analysis of a biped line walking robot for inspection of power transmission lines. With a novel mechanism the centroid of the robot can be concentrated on the axis of hip joint to minimize the drive torque of the hip joint. The mechanical structure of the robot is discussed, as well as forward kinematics. Dynamic model is established in this paper to analyze the inverse kinematics for motion planning. The line-walking cycle of the line-walking robot is composed of a single-support phase and a double-support phase. Locomotion of the line-walking robot is discussed in details and the obstacle-navigation process is planed according to the structure of power transmission line. To fulfill the demands of line-walking, a control system and trajectories generation method are designed for the prototype of the line-walking robot. The feasibility of this concept is then confirmed by performing experiments with a simulated line environment.

Detecting and Classifying Human Touches in a Social Robot Through Acoustic Sensing and Machine Learning.

Science.gov (United States)

Alonso-Martín, Fernando; Gamboa-Montero, Juan José; Castillo, José Carlos; Castro-González, Álvaro; Salichs, Miguel Ángel

2017-05-16

An important aspect in Human-Robot Interaction is responding to different kinds of touch stimuli. To date, several technologies have been explored to determine how a touch is perceived by a social robot, usually placing a large number of sensors throughout the robot's shell. In this work, we introduce a novel approach, where the audio acquired from contact microphones located in the robot's shell is processed using machine learning techniques to distinguish between different types of touches. The system is able to determine when the robot is touched (touch detection), and to ascertain the kind of touch performed among a set of possibilities: stroke , tap , slap , and tickle (touch classification). This proposal is cost-effective since just a few microphones are able to cover the whole robot's shell since a single microphone is enough to cover each solid part of the robot. Besides, it is easy to install and configure as it just requires a contact surface to attach the microphone to the robot's shell and plug it into the robot's computer. Results show the high accuracy scores in touch gesture recognition. The testing phase revealed that Logistic Model Trees achieved the best performance, with an F -score of 0.81. The dataset was built with information from 25 participants performing a total of 1981 touch gestures.

A locust-inspired miniature jumping robot.

Science.gov (United States)

Zaitsev, Valentin; Gvirsman, Omer; Ben Hanan, Uri; Weiss, Avi; Ayali, Amir; Kosa, Gabor

2015-11-25

Unmanned ground vehicles are mostly wheeled, tracked, or legged. These locomotion mechanisms have a limited ability to traverse rough terrain and obstacles that are higher than the robot's center of mass. In order to improve the mobility of small robots it is necessary to expand the variety of their motion gaits. Jumping is one of nature's solutions to the challenge of mobility in difficult terrain. The desert locust is the model for the presented bio-inspired design of a jumping mechanism for a small mobile robot. The basic mechanism is similar to that of the semilunar process in the hind legs of the locust, and is based on the cocking of a torsional spring by wrapping a tendon-like wire around the shaft of a miniature motor. In this study we present the jumping mechanism design, and the manufacturing and performance analysis of two demonstrator prototypes. The most advanced jumping robot demonstrator is power autonomous, weighs 23 gr, and is capable of jumping to a height of 3.35 m, covering a distance of 1.37 m.

Robotic vehicle uses acoustic sensors for voice detection and diagnostics

Science.gov (United States)

Young, Stuart H.; Scanlon, Michael V.

2000-07-01

An acoustic sensor array that cues an imaging system on a small tele- operated robotic vehicle was used to detect human voice and activity inside a building. The advantage of acoustic sensors is that it is a non-line of sight (NLOS) sensing technology that can augment traditional LOS sensors such as visible and IR cameras. Acoustic energy emitted from a target, such as from a person, weapon, or radio, will travel through walls and smoke, around corners, and down corridors, whereas these obstructions would cripple an imaging detection system. The hardware developed and tested used an array of eight microphones to detect the loudest direction and automatically setter a camera's pan/tilt toward the noise centroid. This type of system has applicability for counter sniper applications, building clearing, and search/rescue. Data presented will be time-frequency representations showing voice detected within rooms and down hallways at various ranges. Another benefit of acoustics is that it provides the tele-operator some situational awareness clues via low-bandwidth transmission of raw audio data for the operator to interpret with either headphones or through time-frequency analysis. This data can be useful to recognize familiar sounds that might indicate the presence of personnel, such as talking, equipment, movement noise, etc. The same array also detects the sounds of the robot it is mounted on, and can be useful for engine diagnostics and trouble shooting, or for self-noise emanations for stealthy travel. Data presented will characterize vehicle self noise over various surfaces such as tiles, carpets, pavement, sidewalk, and grass. Vehicle diagnostic sounds will indicate a slipping clutch and repeated unexpected application of emergency braking mechanism.

Towards Autonomous Operations of the Robonaut 2 Humanoid Robotic Testbed

Science.gov (United States)

Badger, Julia; Nguyen, Vienny; Mehling, Joshua; Hambuchen, Kimberly; Diftler, Myron; Luna, Ryan; Baker, William; Joyce, Charles

2016-01-01

autonomously as possible. The most important progress in this area has been the work towards efficient path planning for high DOF, highly constrained systems. Other advances include machine vision algorithms for localizing and automatically docking with handrails, the ability of the operator to place obstacles in the robot's virtual environment, autonomous obstacle avoidance techniques, and constraint management.

Modeling and Implementation of Omnidirectional Soccer Robot with Wide Vision Scope Applied in Robocup-MSL

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Mohsen Taheri

2010-04-01

Full Text Available The purpose of this paper is to design and implement a middle size soccer robot to conform RoboCup MSL league. First, according to the rules of RoboCup, we design the middle size soccer robot, The proposed autonomous soccer robot consists of the mechanical platform, motion control module, omni-directional vision module, front vision module, image processing and recognition module, investigated target object positioning and real coordinate reconstruction, robot path planning, competition strategies, and obstacle avoidance. And this soccer robot equips the laptop computer system and interface circuits to make decisions. In fact, the omnidirectional vision sensor of the vision system deals with the image processing and positioning for obstacle avoidance and
target tracking. The boundary-following algorithm (BFA is applied to find the important features of the field. We utilize the sensor data fusion method in the control system parameters, self localization and world modeling. A vision-based self-localization and the conventional odometry
systems are fused for robust selflocalization. The localization algorithm includes filtering, sharing and integration of the data for different types of objects recognized in the environment. In the control strategies, we present three state modes, which include the Attack Strategy, Defense Strategy and Intercept Strategy. The methods have been tested in the many Robocup competition field middle size robots.

An ultrasonic sensor controller for mapping and servo control in robotic systems

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Drotning, W.D.; Garcia, P. Jr.

1993-03-01

An ultrasonic sensor controller has been developed and applied in a variety of robotic systems for operation in hazardous environments. The controller consists of hardware and software that control multiple ultrasonic range sensors and provide workspace information to robot controllers for rapid, safe, and reliable operation in hazardous and remote environments. The hardware consists of a programmable multichannel controller that resides on a VMEbus for high speed communication to a multiprocessor architecture. The sensor controller has been used in a number of applications, which include providing high precision range information for proximity servo control of robots, and performing surface and obstacle mapping functions for safe path planning of robots in unstructured environments

Development and Testing of a Mobile Robot with Hybrid Legged-Wheeled Locomotion

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Petre Barbu

2017-06-01

Full Text Available In this paper the authors present the development and testing process of a mobile robot with hybrid legged-wheeled locomotion, that can be used for exploring dangerous environments. The robot has a high adaptability to rough terrain by being able to modify its ride height, to overpass step or ditch type obstacles and most of all, being able to operate while overturned or to revert itself into the normal operating position.

Robots that can adapt like animals.

Science.gov (United States)

Cully, Antoine; Clune, Jeff; Tarapore, Danesh; Mouret, Jean-Baptiste

2015-05-28

Robots have transformed many industries, most notably manufacturing, and have the power to deliver tremendous benefits to society, such as in search and rescue, disaster response, health care and transportation. They are also invaluable tools for scientific exploration in environments inaccessible to humans, from distant planets to deep oceans. A major obstacle to their widespread adoption in more complex environments outside factories is their fragility. Whereas animals can quickly adapt to injuries, current robots cannot 'think outside the box' to find a compensatory behaviour when they are damaged: they are limited to their pre-specified self-sensing abilities, can diagnose only anticipated failure modes, and require a pre-programmed contingency plan for every type of potential damage, an impracticality for complex robots. A promising approach to reducing robot fragility involves having robots learn appropriate behaviours in response to damage, but current techniques are slow even with small, constrained search spaces. Here we introduce an intelligent trial-and-error algorithm that allows robots to adapt to damage in less than two minutes in large search spaces without requiring self-diagnosis or pre-specified contingency plans. Before the robot is deployed, it uses a novel technique to create a detailed map of the space of high-performing behaviours. This map represents the robot's prior knowledge about what behaviours it can perform and their value. When the robot is damaged, it uses this prior knowledge to guide a trial-and-error learning algorithm that conducts intelligent experiments to rapidly discover a behaviour that compensates for the damage. Experiments reveal successful adaptations for a legged robot injured in five different ways, including damaged, broken, and missing legs, and for a robotic arm with joints broken in 14 different ways. This new algorithm will enable more robust, effective, autonomous robots, and may shed light on the principles

2D Hand Tracking Based on Flocking with Obstacle Avoidance

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Zihong Chen

2014-02-01

Full Text Available Hand gesture-based interaction provides a natural and powerful means for human-computer interaction. It is also a good interface for human-robot interaction. However, most of the existing proposals are likely to fail when they meet some skin-coloured objects, especially the face region. In this paper, we present a novel hand tracking method which can track the features of the hand based on the obstacle avoidance flocking behaviour model to overcome skin-coloured distractions. It allows features to be split into two groups under severe distractions and merge later. The experiment results show that our method can track the hand in a cluttered background or when passing the face, while the Flocking of Features (FoF and the Mean Shift Embedded Particle Filter (MSEPF methods may fail. These results suggest that our method has better performance in comparison with the previous methods. It may therefore be helpful to promote the use of the hand gesture-based human-robot interaction method.

A bio-inspired electrocommunication system for small underwater robots.

Science.gov (United States)

Wang, Wei; Liu, Jindong; Xie, Guangming; Wen, Li; Zhang, Jianwei

2017-03-29

Weakly electric fishes (Gymnotid and Mormyrid) use an electric field to communicate efficiently (termed electrocommunication) in the turbid waters of confined spaces where other communication modalities fail. Inspired by this biological phenomenon, we design an artificial electrocommunication system for small underwater robots and explore the capabilities of such an underwater robotic communication system. An analytical model for electrocommunication is derived to predict the effect of the key parameters such as electrode distance and emitter current of the system on the communication performance. According to this model, a low-dissipation, and small-sized electrocommunication system is proposed and integrated into a small robotic fish. We characterize the communication performance of the robot in still water, flowing water, water with obstacles and natural water conditions. The results show that underwater robots are able to communicate electrically at a speed of around 1 k baud within about 3 m with a low power consumption (less than 1 W). In addition, we demonstrate that two leader-follower robots successfully achieve motion synchronization through electrocommunication in the three-dimensional underwater space, indicating that this bio-inspired electrocommunication system is a promising setup for the interaction of small underwater robots.

Walking Robots Dynamic Control Systems on an Uneven Terrain

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

MUNTEANU, M. S.

2010-05-01

Full Text Available The paper presents ZPM dynamic control of walking robots, developing an open architecture real time control multiprocessor system, in view of obtaining new capabilities for walking robots. The complexity of the movement mechanism of a walking robot was taken into account, being a repetitive tilting process with numerous instable movements and which can lead to its turnover on an uneven terrain. The control system architecture for the dynamic robot walking is presented in correlation with the control strategy which contains three main real time control loops: balance robot control using sensorial feedback, walking diagram control with periodic changes depending on the sensorial information during each walk cycle, predictable movement control based on a quick decision from the previous experimental data. The results obtained through simulation and experiments show an increase in mobility, stability in real conditions and obtaining of high performances related to the possibility of moving walking robots on terrains with a configuration as close as possible to real situations, respectively developing new technological capabilities of the walking robot control systems for slope movement and walking by overtaking or going around obstacles.

Design and construction of tank robot for detection and searching of radiation sources

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Rio Isman; Djiwo Harsono; Adi Abimanyu

2016-01-01

Developments of robotics technology can be implemented for searching the lost radiation source. Radiation source lost case allows the radiation dose exceeding NBD received by radiation worker when security precautions are taken. This research propose a robot tank that can help in detection and searching radiation sources. The robot consists of a micro controller board Arduino Mega 2560, XBee Pro S radio frequency modules, Gaps receiver U-B lox Neo-Mn-0-01, a servo motor and two DC motors. In this research, the amount of radiation is calculated in 0-5 volt analog voltage that is simulated using a potentiometer and then converted to a digital voltage value (0-1023) using ADC 10 bit Arduino Mega 2560. Results of the research show that the robot has a size of 28.7 cm x 24.8 cm x 11 cm, able to move forward with a speed of 0.477 m/s and are capable to rotate in 24 angles. Data transmission can be performed wireless up to 113 m in an open area without any changes of format and length of the data. Robot capable to rotate and move towards the angle which has the largest voltage readings so can predict the location of the radiation source. (author)

Development of an advanced intelligent robot navigation system

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Hai Quan Dai; Dalton, G.R.; Tulenko, J.; Crane, C.C. III

1992-01-01

As part of the US Department of Energy's Robotics for Advanced Reactors Project, the authors are in the process of assembling an advanced intelligent robotic navigation and control system based on previous work performed on this project in the areas of computer control, database access, graphical interfaces, shared data and computations, computer vision for positions determination, and sonar-based computer navigation systems. The system will feature three levels of goals: (1) high-level system for management of lower level functions to achieve specific functional goals; (2) intermediate level of goals such as position determination, obstacle avoidance, and discovering unexpected objects; and (3) other supplementary low-level functions such as reading and recording sonar or video camera data. In its current phase, the Cybermotion K2A mobile robot is not equipped with an onboard computer system, which will be included in the final phase. By that time, the onboard system will play important roles in vision processing and in robotic control communication

Obstacle Avoidance for Unmanned Undersea Vehicle in Unknown Unstructured Environment

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Zheping Yan

2013-01-01

Full Text Available To avoid obstacle in the unknown environment for unmanned undersea vehicle (UUV, an obstacle avoiding system based on improved vector field histogram (VFH is designed. Forward looking sonar is used to detect the environment, and the divisional sonar modal is applied to deal with the measure uncertainty. To adapt to the VFH, rolling occupancy grids are used for the map building, and high accuracy details of local environment are obtained. The threshold is adaptively adjusted by the statistic of obstacles to solve the problem that VFH is sensitive to threshold. To improve the environment adaptability, the hybrid-behaviors strategy is proposed, which selects the optimal avoidance command according to the motion status and environment character. The simulation shows that UUV could avoid the obstacles fast and escape from the U shape obstacles.

Behavior-Based Approach for the Detection of Land Mines Utilizing off the Shelf Low Cost Autonomous Robot

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Abdel Ilah Nour Alshbatat

2013-03-01

Full Text Available Several countries all of the world are affected by landmines. The presence of mines represents a major threat to lives and causes economic problems. Currently, detecting and clearing mines demand specific expertise with special equipment. In this context, this paper offers the design and development of an intelligent controller which can control and enable the robot to detect mines by means of sensors and of processing the fused information to guide soldiers when passing landmines.  This is accomplished by broken down the overall system into two subsystems: sensor technologies and robotic device. Sensors devices include infrared distance sensor, metal detector, ultrasonic range finder, accelerometer sensor, while the structure of the robot in our case consists mainly  of a commercial  off-the-shelf  parts which  are  available  at  low  costs. The proposed controller is mainly based on creating fuzzy rules that reflect the behaviors of soldier beings in controlling a robot in a well known landmine. Simulation and experimental results are presented her to prove the efficiency of the proposed approach. The results show that the system is able to detect landmines and guide soldiers while crossing mines area.

Robotics in hostile environment I. S. I. S. robot - automatic positioning and docking with proximity and force feed back sensors

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Gery, D

1987-01-01

Recent improvements in control command systems and the development of tactile proximity and force feed back sensors make it possible to robotize complex inspection and maintenance operations in hostile environment, which could have not been possible by classical remotely operated manipulators. We describe the I.S.I.S. robot characteristics, the control command system software principles and the tactile and force-torque sensors which have been developed for the different sequences of an hostile environment inspection and repair: access trajectories generation with obstacles shunning, final positioning and docking using parametric algorithms taking into account measurement of the end of arm proximity and force-torque sensors.

A Sensor Based Navigation Algorithm for a Mobile Robot using the DVFF Approach

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

A. OUALID DJEKOUNE

2009-06-01

Full Text Available Often autonomous mobile robots operate in environment for which prior maps are incomplete or inaccurate. They require the safe execution for a collision free motion to a goal position. This paper addresses a complete navigation method for a mobile robot that moves in unknown environment. Thus, a novel method called DVFF combining the Virtual Force Field (VFF obstacle avoidance approach and global path planning based on D* algorithm is proposed. While D* generates global path information towards a goal position, the VFF local controller generates the admissible trajectories that ensure safe robot motion. Results and analysis from a battery of experiments with this new method implemented on a ATRV2 mobile robot are shown.

Simplified Occupancy Grid Indoor Mapping Optimized for Low-Cost Robots

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Javier Garrido

2013-10-01

Full Text Available This paper presents a mapping system that is suitable for small mobile robots. An ad hoc algorithm for mapping based on the Occupancy Grid method has been developed. The algorithm includes some simplifications in order to be used with low-cost hardware resources. The proposed mapping system has been built in order to be completely autonomous and unassisted. The proposal has been tested with a mobile robot that uses infrared sensors to measure distances to obstacles and uses an ultrasonic beacon system for localization, besides wheel encoders. Finally, experimental results are presented.

Autonomous navigation system and method

Science.gov (United States)

Bruemmer, David J [Idaho Falls, ID; Few, Douglas A [Idaho Falls, ID

2009-09-08

A robot platform includes perceptors, locomotors, and a system controller, which executes instructions for autonomously navigating a robot. The instructions repeat, on each iteration through an event timing loop, the acts of defining an event horizon based on the robot's current velocity, detecting a range to obstacles around the robot, testing for an event horizon intrusion by determining if any range to the obstacles is within the event horizon, and adjusting rotational and translational velocity of the robot accordingly. If the event horizon intrusion occurs, rotational velocity is modified by a proportion of the current rotational velocity reduced by a proportion of the range to the nearest obstacle and translational velocity is modified by a proportion of the range to the nearest obstacle. If no event horizon intrusion occurs, translational velocity is set as a ratio of a speed factor relative to a maximum speed.

Hierarchical Self Organizing Map for Novelty Detection using Mobile Robot with Robust Sensor

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Sha'abani, M N A H; Miskon, M F; Sakidin, H

2013-01-01

This paper presents a novelty detection method based on Self Organizing Map neural network using a mobile robot. Based on hierarchical neural network, the network is divided into three networks; position, orientation and sensor measurement network. A simulation was done to demonstrate and validate the proposed method using MobileSim. Three cases of abnormal events; new, missing and shifted objects are employed for performance evaluation. The result of detection was then filtered for false positive detection. The result shows that the inspection produced less than 2% false positive detection at high sensitivity settings

New spatial clustering-based models for optimal urban facility location considering geographical obstacles

Science.gov (United States)

Javadi, Maryam; Shahrabi, Jamal

2014-03-01

The problems of facility location and the allocation of demand points to facilities are crucial research issues in spatial data analysis and urban planning. It is very important for an organization or governments to best locate its resources and facilities and efficiently manage resources to ensure that all demand points are covered and all the needs are met. Most of the recent studies, which focused on solving facility location problems by performing spatial clustering, have used the Euclidean distance between two points as the dissimilarity function. Natural obstacles, such as mountains and rivers, can have drastic impacts on the distance that needs to be traveled between two geographical locations. While calculating the distance between various supply chain entities (including facilities and demand points), it is necessary to take such obstacles into account to obtain better and more realistic results regarding location-allocation. In this article, new models were presented for location of urban facilities while considering geographical obstacles at the same time. In these models, three new distance functions were proposed. The first function was based on the analysis of shortest path in linear network, which was called SPD function. The other two functions, namely PD and P2D, were based on the algorithms that deal with robot geometry and route-based robot navigation in the presence of obstacles. The models were implemented in ArcGIS Desktop 9.2 software using the visual basic programming language. These models were evaluated using synthetic and real data sets. The overall performance was evaluated based on the sum of distance from demand points to their corresponding facilities. Because of the distance between the demand points and facilities becoming more realistic in the proposed functions, results indicated desired quality of the proposed models in terms of quality of allocating points to centers and logistic cost. Obtained results show promising

Biologically-Inspired Microrobots. Volume 3. Micro-Robot Based on Abstracted Biological Principles

National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

Quinn, Roger D; Ritzmann, Roy E; Morrey, Jeremy; Horchler, Andrew

2006-01-01

.... Mini-Whegs use four wheel-legs to run in an alternating diagonal gait. These approximately 3-inch-long robots can move at sustained speeds of over 10 body lengths per second and can run over obstacles that are taller than their leg length...

Hyperspectral Imaging and Obstacle Detection for Robotics Navigation

Science.gov (United States)

2005-09-01

anatomy and diffraction process. 17 3.3 Technical Specifications of the System A. Brimrose AOTF Video Adaptor Specifications: Material TeO2 Active...sampled from glass case on person 2’s belt 530 pixels 20 pick-up white sampled from body panels of pick-up 600 pixels 21 pick-up blue sampled from

Autonomous Navigation and Obstacle Avoidance of a Micro-Bus

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Carlos Fernández

2013-04-01

Full Text Available At present, the topic of automated vehicles is one of the most promising research areas in the field of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS. The use of automated vehicles for public transportation also contributes to reductions in congestion levels and to improvements in traffic flow. Moreover, electrical public autonomous vehicles are environmentally friendly, provide better air quality and contribute to energy conservation. The driverless public transportation systems, which are at present operating in some airports and train stations, are restricted to dedicated roads and exhibit serious trouble dynamically avoiding obstacles in the trajectory. In this paper, an electric autonomous mini-bus is presented. All datasets used in this article were collected during the experiments carried out in the demonstration event of the 2012 IEEE Intelligent Vehicles Symposium that took place in Alcalá de Henares (Spain. The demonstration consisted of a route 725 metres long containing a list of latitude-longitude points (waypoints. The mini-bus was capable of driving autonomously from one waypoint to another using a GPS sensor. Furthermore, the vehicle is provided with a multi-beam Laser Imaging Detection and Ranging (LIDAR sensor for surrounding reconstruction and obstacle detection. When an obstacle is detected in the planned path, the planned route is modified in order to avoid the obstacle and continue its way to the end of the mission. On the demonstration day, a total of 196 attendees had the opportunity to get a ride on the vehicles. A total of 28 laps were successfully completed in full autonomous mode in a private circuit located in the National Institute for Aerospace Research (INTA, Spain. In other words, the system completed 20.3 km of driverless navigation and obstacle avoidance.

Exploration and Navigation for Mobile Robots With Perceptual Limitations

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Leonardo Romero

2006-09-01

Full Text Available 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.

Exploration and Navigation for Mobile Robots With Perceptual Limitations

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Eduardo F. Morales

2008-11-01

Full Text Available 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.

Obstacle detectors for automated transit vehicles: A technoeconomic and market analysis

Science.gov (United States)

Lockerby, C. E.

1979-01-01

A search was conducted to identify the technical and economic characteristics of both NASA and nonNASA obstacle detectors. The findings, along with market information were compiled and analyzed for consideration by DOT and NASA in decisions about any future automated transit vehicle obstacle detector research, development, or applications project. Currently available obstacle detectors and systems under development are identified by type (sonic, capacitance, infrared/optical, guided radar, and probe contact) and compared with the three NASA devices selected as possible improvements or solutions to the problems in existing obstacle detection systems. Cost analyses and market forecasts individually for the AGT and AMTV markets are included.

Human-Like Room Segmentation for Domestic Cleaning Robots

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

David Fleer

2017-11-01

Full Text Available Autonomous mobile robots have recently become a popular solution for automating cleaning tasks. In one application, the robot cleans a floor space by traversing and covering it completely. While fulfilling its task, such a robot may create a map of its surroundings. For domestic indoor environments, these maps often consist of rooms connected by passageways. Segmenting the map into these rooms has several uses, such as hierarchical planning of cleaning runs by the robot, or the definition of cleaning plans by the user. Especially in the latter application, the robot-generated room segmentation should match the human understanding of rooms. Here, we present a novel method that solves this problem for the graph of a topo-metric map: first, a classifier identifies those graph edges that cross a border between rooms. This classifier utilizes data from multiple robot sensors, such as obstacle measurements and camera images. Next, we attempt to segment the map at these room–border edges using graph clustering. By training the classifier on user-annotated data, this produces a human-like room segmentation. We optimize and test our method on numerous realistic maps generated by our cleaning-robot prototype and its simulated version. Overall, we find that our method produces more human-like room segmentations compared to mere graph clustering. However, unusual room borders that differ from the training data remain a challenge.

A New Classification Technique in Mobile Robot Navigation

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Bambang Tutuko

2011-12-01

Full Text Available This paper presents a novel pattern recognition algorithm that use weightless neural network (WNNs technique.This technique plays a role of situation classifier to judge the situation around the mobile robot environment and makes control decision in mobile robot navigation. The WNNs technique is choosen due to significant advantages over conventional neural network, such as they can be easily implemented in hardware using standard RAM, faster in training phase and work with small resources. Using a simple classification algorithm, the similar data will be grouped with each other and it will be possible to attach similar data classes to specific local areas in the mobile robot environment. This strategy is demonstrated in simple mobile robot powered by low cost microcontrollers with 512 bytes of RAM and low cost sensors. Experimental result shows, when number of neuron increases the average environmental recognition ratehas risen from 87.6% to 98.5%.The WNNs technique allows the mobile robot to recognize many and different environmental patterns and avoid obstacles in real time. Moreover, by using proposed WNNstechnique mobile robot has successfully reached the goal in dynamic environment compare to fuzzy logic technique and logic function, capable of dealing with uncertainty in sensor reading, achieving good performance in performing control actions with 0.56% error rate in mobile robot speed.

Human-robot collaborative navigation for autonomous maintenance management of nuclear installation

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Nugroho, Djoko Hari

2002-01-01

Development of human and robot collaborative navigation for autonomous maintenance management of nuclear installation has been conducted. The human-robot collaborative system is performed using a switching command between autonomous navigation and manual navigation that incorporate a human intervention. The autonomous navigation path is conducted using a novel algorithm of MLG method based on Lozano-Perez s visibility graph. The MLG optimizes the shortest distance and safe constraints. While the manual navigation is performed using manual robot tele operation tools. Experiment in the MLG autonomous navigation system is conducted for six times with 3-D starting point and destination point coordinate variation. The experiment shows a good performance of autonomous robot maneuver to avoid collision with obstacle. The switching navigation is well interpreted using open or close command to RS-232C constructed using LabVIEW

FPGA-based High-Performance Collision Detection: An Enabling Technique for Image-Guided Robotic Surgery

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Zhaorui Zhang

2016-08-01

Full Text Available Collision detection, which refers to the computational problem of finding the relative placement or con-figuration of two or more objects, is an essential component of many applications in computer graphics and robotics. In image-guided robotic surgery, real-time collision detection is critical for preserving healthy anatomical structures during the surgical procedure. However, the computational complexity of the problem usually results in algorithms that operate at low speed. In this paper, we present a fast and accurate algorithm for collision detection between Oriented-Bounding-Boxes (OBBs that is suitable for real-time implementation. Our proposed Sweep and Prune algorithm can perform a preliminary filtering to reduce the number of objects that need to be tested by the classical Separating Axis Test algorithm, while the OBB pairs of interest are preserved. These OBB pairs are re-checked by the Separating Axis Test algorithm to obtain accurate overlapping status between them. To accelerate the execution, our Sweep and Prune algorithm is tailor-made for the proposed method. Meanwhile, a high performance scalable hardware architecture is proposed by analyzing the intrinsic parallelism of our algorithm, and is implemented on FPGA platform. Results show that our hardware design on the FPGA platform can achieve around 8X higher running speed than the software design on a CPU platform. As a result, the proposed algorithm can achieve a collision frame rate of 1 KHz, and fulfill the requirement for the medical surgery scenario of Robot Assisted Laparoscopy.

3D Printed Wearable Sensors with Liquid Metals for the Pose Detection of Snakelike Soft Robots.

Science.gov (United States)

Zhou, Luyu; Gao, Qing; Zhan, Jun-Fu; Xie, Chao-Qi; Fu, Jianzhong; He, Yong

2018-06-18

Liquid metal-based flexible sensors, which utilize advanced liquid conductive material to serve as sensitive element, is emerging as a promising solution to measure large deformations. Nowadays, one of the biggest challenges for precise control of soft robots is the detection of their real time positions. Existing fabrication methods are unable to fabricate flexible sensors that match the shape of soft robots. In this report, we firstly described a novel 3D printed multi-function inductance flexible and stretchable sensor with liquid metals (LMs), which is capable of measuring both axial tension and curvature. This sensor is fabricated with a developed coaxial liquid metal 3D printer by co-printing of silicone rubber and LMs. Due to the solenoid shape, this sensor can be easily installed on snakelike soft robots and can accurately distinguish different degrees of tensile and bending deformation. We determined the structural parameters of the sensor and proved its excellent stability and reliability. As a demonstration, we used this sensor to measure the curvature of a finger and feedback the position of endoscope, a typical snakelike structure. Because of its bending deformation form consistent with the actual working status of the soft robot and unique shape, this sensor has better practical application prospects in the pose detection.

Robots in P.W.R. nuclear powerplants

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Dubourg, M.

1987-01-01

The satisfactory operation of 37 900-MWe PWR powerplants in France, Belgium and South-Africa and the start-up of 1300 MWe powerplants allowed the development of a wide range of automatic units and robots for the periodic maintenance of nuclear plants, reducing the risk of ionizing radiation for the personnel. A large number of automated tools have been built. Among them: - inspection and maintenance systems for the tube bundle of steam generators, - robotized arms ROTETA and ROMEO for the heavy maintenance and delicate operations such as tube extraction or shot peening of tubes to improve their resistance to corrosion; - the versatile manipulator T.A.M. with electrically controlled articulations. The development of functionally versatile tools and robots and the integration of new technologies such as 3-D vision allowed the construction of the self-guided vehicle FRASTAR capable of moving within a nuclear building and in a cluttered environment. This vehicle includes means for avoiding isolated obstacles and can move on stairs [fr

Vision Sensor-Based Road Detection for Field Robot Navigation

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Keyu Lu

2015-11-01

Full Text Available Road detection is an essential component of field robot navigation systems. Vision sensors play an important role in road detection for their great potential in environmental perception. In this paper, we propose a hierarchical vision sensor-based method for robust road detection in challenging road scenes. More specifically, for a given road image captured by an on-board vision sensor, we introduce a multiple population genetic algorithm (MPGA-based approach for efficient road vanishing point detection. Superpixel-level seeds are then selected in an unsupervised way using a clustering strategy. Then, according to the GrowCut framework, the seeds proliferate and iteratively try to occupy their neighbors. After convergence, the initial road segment is obtained. Finally, in order to achieve a globally-consistent road segment, the initial road segment is refined using the conditional random field (CRF framework, which integrates high-level information into road detection. We perform several experiments to evaluate the common performance, scale sensitivity and noise sensitivity of the proposed method. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method exhibits high robustness compared to the state of the art.

Localization of small obstacles in Stokes flow

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Caubet, Fabien; Dambrine, Marc

2012-01-01

We want to detect small obstacles immersed in a fluid flowing in a larger bounded domain Ω in the three-dimensional case. We assume that the fluid motion is governed by the steady-state Stokes equations. We make a measurement on a part of the exterior boundary ∂Ω and then take a Kohn–Vogelius approach to locate these obstacles. We use here the notion of the topological derivative in order to determine the number of objects and their rough locations. Thus we first establish an asymptotic expansion of the solution of the Stokes equations in Ω when we add small obstacles inside. Then, we use it to find a topological asymptotic expansion of the considered Kohn–Vogelius functional which gives us the formula of its topological gradient. Finally, we make some numerical simulations exploring the efficiency and the limits of this method. (paper)

Generating human-like movements on an anthropomorphic robot using an interior point method

Science.gov (United States)

Costa e Silva, E.; Araújo, J. P.; Machado, D.; Costa, M. F.; Erlhagen, W.; Bicho, E.

2013-10-01

In previous work we have presented a model for generating human-like arm and hand movements on an anthropomorphic robot involved in human-robot collaboration tasks. This model was inspired by the Posture-Based Motion-Planning Model of human movements. Numerical results and simulations for reach-to-grasp movements with two different grip types have been presented previously. In this paper we extend our model in order to address the generation of more complex movement sequences which are challenged by scenarios cluttered with obstacles. The numerical results were obtained using the IPOPT solver, which was integrated in our MATLAB simulator of an anthropomorphic robot.

Force control of a robot for surface contamination detection

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Petterson, B.J.; Jones, J.F.

1987-01-01

A system is under development at Sandia National Laboratories for use in understanding the issues relating to automated robotic handling of spent nuclear fuel shipping casks. The goal of robotic handling is reduction of personnel radiation exposure at the proposed geologic repositories. One of the major technology development areas has been the integration of sensors into the control of the robot system to allow operation in semi-structured environments. In particular, a multiaxis force sensor is used to make robot trajectory corrections based on the contact force between the robot and workpiece. This force feedback system allows contact swipes (smears) to be made on the cask surface in a repeatable manner. 8 refs., 3 figs

Path Planning and Replanning for Mobile Robot Navigation on 3D Terrain: An Approach Based on Geodesic

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Kun-Lin Wu

2016-01-01

Full Text Available In this paper, mobile robot navigation on a 3D terrain with a single obstacle is addressed. The terrain is modelled as a smooth, complete manifold with well-defined tangent planes and the hazardous region is modelled as an enclosing circle with a hazard grade tuned radius representing the obstacle projected onto the terrain to allow efficient path-obstacle intersection checking. To resolve the intersections along the initial geodesic, by resorting to the geodesic ideas from differential geometry on surfaces and manifolds, we present a geodesic-based planning and replanning algorithm as a new method for obstacle avoidance on a 3D terrain without using boundary following on the obstacle surface. The replanning algorithm generates two new paths, each a composition of two geodesics, connected via critical points whose locations are found to be heavily relying on the exploration of the terrain via directional scanning on the tangent plane at the first intersection point of the initial geodesic with the circle. An advantage of this geodesic path replanning procedure is that traversability of terrain on which the detour path traverses could be explored based on the local Gauss-Bonnet Theorem of the geodesic triangle at the planning stage. A simulation demonstrates the practicality of the analytical geodesic replanning procedure for navigating a constant speed point robot on a 3D hill-like terrain.

Hydraulic bilateral construction robot; Yuatsushiki bilateral kensetsu robot

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Maehata, K.; Mori, N. [Kayaba Industry Co. Ltd., Tokyo (Japan)

1999-05-15

Concerning a hydraulic bilateral construction robot, its system constitution, structures and functions of important components, and the results of some tests are explained, and the researches conducted at Gifu University are described. The construction robot in this report is a servo controlled system of a version developed from the mini-shovel now available in the market. It is equipped, in addition to an electrohydraulic servo control system, with various sensors for detecting the robot attitude, vibration, and load state, and with a camera for visualizing the surrounding landscape. It is also provided with a bilateral joy stick which is a remote control actuator capable of working sensation feedback and with a rocking unit that creates robot movements of rolling, pitching, and heaving. The construction robot discussed here, with output increased and response faster thanks to the employment of a hydraulic driving system for the aim of building a robot system superior in performance to the conventional model designed primarily for heavy duty, proves after tests to be a highly sophisticated remotely controlled robot control system. (NEDO)

A Real-Time Reaction Obstacle Avoidance Algorithm for Autonomous Underwater Vehicles in Unknown Environments.

Science.gov (United States)

Yan, Zheping; Li, Jiyun; Zhang, Gengshi; Wu, Yi

2018-02-02

A novel real-time reaction obstacle avoidance algorithm (RRA) is proposed for autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) that must adapt to unknown complex terrains, based on forward looking sonar (FLS). To accomplish this algorithm, obstacle avoidance rules are planned, and the RRA processes are split into five steps Introduction only lists 4 so AUVs can rapidly respond to various environment obstacles. The largest polar angle algorithm (LPAA) is designed to change detected obstacle's irregular outline into a convex polygon, which simplifies the obstacle avoidance process. A solution is designed to solve the trapping problem existing in U-shape obstacle avoidance by an outline memory algorithm. Finally, simulations in three unknown obstacle scenes are carried out to demonstrate the performance of this algorithm, where the obtained obstacle avoidance trajectories are safety, smooth and near-optimal.

Robotic Technology Efforts at the NASA/Johnson Space Center

Science.gov (United States)

Diftler, Ron

2017-01-01

The NASA/Johnson Space Center has been developing robotic systems in support of space exploration for more than two decades. The goal of the Center’s Robotic Systems Technology Branch is to design and build hardware and software to assist astronauts in performing their mission. These systems include: rovers, humanoid robots, inspection devices and wearable robotics. Inspection systems provide external views of space vehicles to search for surface damage and also maneuver inside restricted areas to verify proper connections. New concepts in human and robotic rovers offer solutions for navigating difficult terrain expected in future planetary missions. An important objective for humanoid robots is to relieve the crew of “dull, dirty or dangerous” tasks allowing them more time to perform their important science and exploration missions. Wearable robotics one of the Center’s newest development areas can provide crew with low mass exercise capability and also augment an astronaut’s strength while wearing a space suit.This presentation will describe the robotic technology and prototypes developed at the Johnson Space Center that are the basis for future flight systems. An overview of inspection robots will show their operation on the ground and in-orbit. Rovers with independent wheel modules, crab steering, and active suspension are able to climb over large obstacles, and nimbly maneuver around others. Humanoid robots, including the First Humanoid Robot in Space: Robonaut 2, demonstrate capabilities that will lead to robotic caretakers for human habitats in space, and on Mars. The Center’s Wearable Robotics Lab supports work in assistive and sensing devices, including exoskeletons, force measuring shoes, and grasp assist gloves.

Automated visual fruit detection for harvest estimation and robotic harvesting

OpenAIRE

Puttemans, Steven; Vanbrabant, Yasmin; Tits, Laurent; Goedemé, Toon

2016-01-01

Fully automated detection and localisation of fruit in orchards is a key component in creating automated robotic harvesting systems, a dream of many farmers around the world to cope with large production and personnel costs. In recent years a lot of research on this topic has been performed, using basic computer vision techniques, like colour based segmentation, as a suggested solution. When not using standard RGB cameras, research tends to resort to other sensors, like hyper spectral or 3D. ...

Development of a platform to combine sensor networks and home robots to improve fall detection in the home environment.

Science.gov (United States)

Della Toffola, Luca; Patel, Shyamal; Chen, Bor-rong; Ozsecen, Yalgin M; Puiatti, Alessandro; Bonato, Paolo

2011-01-01

Over the last decade, significant progress has been made in the development of wearable sensor systems for continuous health monitoring in the home and community settings. One of the main areas of application for these wearable sensor systems is in detecting emergency events such as falls. Wearable sensors like accelerometers are increasingly being used to monitor daily activities of individuals at a risk of falls, detect emergency events and send alerts to caregivers. However, such systems tend to have a high rate of false alarms, which leads to low compliance levels. Home robots can enable caregivers with the ability to quickly make an assessment and intervene if an emergency event is detected. This can provide an additional layer for detecting false positives, which can lead to improve compliance. In this paper, we present preliminary work on the development of a fall detection system based on a combination sensor networks and home robots. The sensor network architecture comprises of body worn sensors and ambient sensors distributed in the environment. We present the software architecture and conceptual design home robotic platform. We also perform preliminary characterization of the sensor network in terms of latencies and battery lifetime.

IntelliTable: Inclusively-Designed Furniture with Robotic Capabilities.

Science.gov (United States)

Prescott, Tony J; Conran, Sebastian; Mitchinson, Ben; Cudd, Peter

2017-01-01

IntelliTable is a new proof-of-principle assistive technology system with robotic capabilities in the form of an elegant universal cantilever table able to move around by itself, or under user control. We describe the design and current capabilities of the table and the human-centered design methodology used in its development and initial evaluation. The IntelliTable study has delivered robotic platform programmed by a smartphone that can navigate around a typical home or care environment, avoiding obstacles, and positioning itself at the user's command. It can also be configured to navigate itself to pre-ordained places positions within an environment using ceiling tracking, responsive optical guidance and object-based sonar navigation.

Colour based off-road environment and terrain type classification

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Jansen, P.; Mark, W. van der; Heuvel, J.C. van den; Groen, F.C.A.

2005-01-01

Terrain classification is an important problem that still remains to be solved for off-road autonomous robot vehicle guidance. Often, obstacle detection systems are used which cannot distinguish between solid obstacles such as rocks or soft obstacles such as tall patches of grass. Terrain

A novel traveling wave piezoelectric actuated tracked mobile robot utilizing friction effect

Science.gov (United States)

Wang, Liang; Shu, Chengyou; Jin, Jiamei; Zhang, Jianhui

2017-03-01

A novel traveling wave piezoelectric-actuated tracked mobile robot with potential application to robotic rovers was proposed and investigated in this study. The proposed tracked mobile robot is composed of a parallelogram-frame-structure piezoelectric transducer with four rings and a metal track. Utilizing the converse piezoelectric and friction effects, traveling waves were propagated in the rings and then the metal track was actuated by the piezoelectric transducer. Compared with traditional tracked mechanisms, the proposed tracked mobile robot has a simpler and more compact structure without lubricant, which eliminates the problem of lubricant volatilization and deflation, thus, it could be operated in the vacuum environment. Dynamic characteristics were simulated and measured to reveal the mechanism of actuating track of the piezoelectric transducer. Experimental investigations of the traveling wave piezoelectric-actuated tracked mobile robot were then carried out, and the results indicated that the robot prototype with a pair of exciting voltages of 460 Vpp is able to achieve a maximum velocity of 57 mm s-1 moving on the foam plate and possesses the obstacle crossing capability with a maximum height of 27 mm. The proposed tracked mobile robot exhibits potential to be the driving system of robotic rovers.

Ultrasonic detection technology based on joint robot on composite component with complex surface

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Hao, Juan; Xu, Chunguang; Zhang, Lan [School of Mechanical Engineering, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing (China)

2014-02-18

Some components have complex surface, such as the airplane wing and the shell of a pressure vessel etc. The quality of these components determines the reliability and safety of related equipment. Ultrasonic nondestructive detection is one of the main methods used for testing material defects at present. In order to improve the testing precision, the acoustic axis of the ultrasonic transducer should be consistent with the normal direction of the measured points. When we use joint robots, automatic ultrasonic scan along the component surface normal direction can be realized by motion trajectory planning and coordinate transformation etc. In order to express the defects accurately and truly, the robot position and the signal of the ultrasonic transducer should be synchronized.

HUMAN FOLLOWING ON ROS FRAMEWORK A MOBILE ROBOT

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Gigih Priyandoko

2018-06-01

Full Text Available Service mobile robot is playing a more critical role in today's society as more people such as a disabled person or the elderly are in need of mobile robot assistance. An autonomous person following ability shows great importance to the overall role of service mobile robot in assisting human. The objective of this paper focuses on developing a robot follow a person. The robot is equipped with the necessary sensors such as a Microsoft Kinect sensor and a Hokuyo laser sensor. Four suitable tracking methods are introduced in this project which is implemented and tested on the person following algorithm. The tracking methods implemented are face detection, leg detection, color detection and person blob detection. All of the algorithms implementations in this project is performed using Robot Operating System (ROS. The result showed that the mobile robot could track and follow the target person based on the person movement.

Landmark navigation and autonomous landing approach with obstacle detection for aircraft

Science.gov (United States)

Fuerst, Simon; Werner, Stefan; Dickmanns, Dirk; Dickmanns, Ernst D.

1997-06-01

A machine perception system for aircraft and helicopters using multiple sensor data for state estimation is presented. By combining conventional aircraft sensor like gyros, accelerometers, artificial horizon, aerodynamic measuring devices and GPS with vision data taken by conventional CCD-cameras mounted on a pan and tilt platform, the position of the craft can be determined as well as the relative position to runways and natural landmarks. The vision data of natural landmarks are used to improve position estimates during autonomous missions. A built-in landmark management module decides which landmark should be focused on by the vision system, depending on the distance to the landmark and the aspect conditions. More complex landmarks like runways are modeled with different levels of detail that are activated dependent on range. A supervisor process compares vision data and GPS data to detect mistracking of the vision system e.g. due to poor visibility and tries to reinitialize the vision system or to set focus on another landmark available. During landing approach obstacles like trucks and airplanes can be detected on the runway. The system has been tested in real-time within a hardware-in-the-loop simulation. Simulated aircraft measurements corrupted by noise and other characteristic sensor errors have been fed into the machine perception system; the image processing module for relative state estimation was driven by computer generated imagery. Results from real-time simulation runs are given.

Passive appendages improve the maneuverability of fish-like robots

Science.gov (United States)

Pollard, Beau; Tallapragada, Phanindra

2017-11-01

It is known that the passive mechanics of fish appendages play a role in the high efficiency of their swimming. A well known example of this is the experimental demonstration that a dead fish could swim upstream. However little is known about the role if any of passive deformations of a fish-like body that could aid in its maneuverability. Part of the difficulty investigating this lies in clearly separating the role of actuated body deformations and passive deformations in response to the fluid structure interaction. In this paper we compare the maneuverability of several fish shaped robotic models that possess varying numbers of passive appendages with a fish shaped robot that has no appendages. All the robots are propelled by the oscillations of an internal momentum wheel thereby eliminating any active deformations of the body. Our experiments clearly reveal the significant improvement in maneuverability of robots with passive appendages. In the broader context of swimming robots our experiments show that passive mechanisms could be useful to provide mechanical feedback that can help maneuverability and obstacle avoidance along with propulsive efficiency. This work was partly supported by a Grant from the NSF CMMI 1563315.

Automating the Incremental Evolution of Controllers for Physical Robots.

Science.gov (United States)

Faíña, Andrés; Jacobsen, Lars Toft; Risi, Sebastian

2017-01-01

Evolutionary robotics is challenged with some key problems that must be solved, or at least mitigated extensively, before it can fulfill some of its promises to deliver highly autonomous and adaptive robots. The reality gap and the ability to transfer phenotypes from simulation to reality constitute one such problem. Another lies in the embodiment of the evolutionary processes, which links to the first, but focuses on how evolution can act on real agents and occur independently from simulation, that is, going from being, as Eiben, Kernbach, & Haasdijk [2012, p. 261] put it, "the evolution of things, rather than just the evolution of digital objects.…" The work presented here investigates how fully autonomous evolution of robot controllers can be realized in hardware, using an industrial robot and a marker-based computer vision system. In particular, this article presents an approach to automate the reconfiguration of the test environment and shows that it is possible, for the first time, to incrementally evolve a neural robot controller for different obstacle avoidance tasks with no human intervention. Importantly, the system offers a high level of robustness and precision that could potentially open up the range of problems amenable to embodied evolution.

A Fast Vision System for Soccer Robot

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Tianwu Yang

2012-01-01

Full Text Available This paper proposes a fast colour-based object recognition and localization for soccer robots. The traditional HSL colour model is modified for better colour segmentation and edge detection in a colour coded environment. The object recognition is based on only the edge pixels to speed up the computation. The edge pixels are detected by intelligently scanning a small part of whole image pixels which is distributed over the image. A fast method for line and circle centre detection is also discussed. For object localization, 26 key points are defined on the soccer field. While two or more key points can be seen from the robot camera view, the three rotation angles are adjusted to achieve a precise localization of robots and other objects. If no key point is detected, the robot position is estimated according to the history of robot movement and the feedback from the motors and sensors. The experiments on NAO and RoboErectus teen-size humanoid robots show that the proposed vision system is robust and accurate under different lighting conditions and can effectively and precisely locate robots and other objects.

Detection of Water Hazards for Autonomous Robotic Vehicles

Science.gov (United States)

Matthes, Larry; Belluta, Paolo; McHenry, Michael

2006-01-01

Four methods of detection of bodies of water are under development as means to enable autonomous robotic ground vehicles to avoid water hazards when traversing off-road terrain. The methods involve processing of digitized outputs of optoelectronic sensors aboard the vehicles. It is planned to implement these methods in hardware and software that would operate in conjunction with the hardware and software for navigation and for avoidance of solid terrain obstacles and hazards. The first method, intended for use during the day, is based on the observation that, under most off-road conditions, reflections of sky from water are easily discriminated from the adjacent terrain by their color and brightness, regardless of the weather and of the state of surface waves on the water. Accordingly, this method involves collection of color imagery by a video camera and processing of the image data by an algorithm that classifies each pixel as soil, water, or vegetation according to its color and brightness values (see figure). Among the issues that arise is the fact that in the presence of reflections of objects on the opposite shore, it is difficult to distinguish water by color and brightness alone. Another issue is that once a body of water has been identified by means of color and brightness, its boundary must be mapped for use in navigation. Techniques for addressing these issues are under investigation. The second method, which is not limited by time of day, is based on the observation that ladar returns from bodies of water are usually too weak to be detected. In this method, ladar scans of the terrain are analyzed for returns and the absence thereof. In appropriate regions, the presence of water can be inferred from the absence of returns. Under some conditions in which reflections from the bottom are detectable, ladar returns could, in principle, be used to determine depth. The third method involves the recognition of bodies of water as dark areas in short

Avoiding obstacles by using a proximity infrared sensor skin

Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

Cao Zhengcai; Fu Yili; Wu Qidi; Wang Shuguo; Wang Guangguo

2007-01-01

Placement and wiring of vast amount of sensor elements on the 3-dimensionally configured robot surface to form soft sensor skin is very difficult with the traditional technology, hi this paper we propose a new method to realize such a skin. By implanting infrared sensors array in an elastic body, we obtain an elastic and tough sensor skin that can be shaped freely. The developed sensor skin is a large-area, flexible array of infrared sensors with data processing capabilities. Depending on the skin electronics, it endows its carrier with an ability to sense its surroundings. The structure, the method of infrared sensor signal processing, and basic experiments of sensor skin are presented. The validity of the infrared sensor skin is investigated by preliminary obstacle avoidance trial.

Design of a mobile mechanism for missing miner search robots in underground mines

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Wang, T.; Sun, J.; Chen, Y.; Jia, R. [China University of Mining and Technology, Beijing (China). School of Mechanical, Electronic and Information Engineering

2006-06-15

A mobile mechanism with four tracked-units for a missing miner search robot (MMSR) is presented, with a design based on the terrain features and atrocious environment of an underground mine. Its structure and working principle is discussed. The four tracked-units are controlled independently and driven cooperatively. By means of two DC motors being controlled respectively, one tracked-unit can accomplish two types of driving mode: tracked travel and integral unit legged rotation (IULR), forming a track-legged compound function mechanisms. Its capabilities of surmounting obstacles and its toppling stability in underground mines have also been analyzed. The results show that the mobile mechanism can directly surmount an obstacle of the height less than the length of one tracked-unit and get across a raceway with a span less than the length of one tracked-unit by using tracked travel and IULR. Its unstable slope angle is 51.3{sup o}. Toppling stability is determined by its structural size, moving direction and slope angle. IULR of four tracked-units can adjust the robot's posture and then enhance toppling stability or assist in surmounting obstacles. Its track-legged compound function mechanism makes it suitable for working in underground mines. 15 refs., 5 figs.

Experience with the Surveyor mobile robot in radioactive work environments

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Kniazewycz, B.G.; Darvish, A.R.; Irving, T.L.

1986-01-01

This paper summarizes the development and implementation history of the Surveyor mobile robotic device from November 1985 through August 1986. This two-tracked remotely controlled tetherless device is used to conduct surveillance and inspection and light maintenance missions in nuclear power plants. Surveyor's relatively light weight (<400 lb) can easily be transported manually from location to location. The total maximum payload of the device, which is able to climb 40-deg stairs, is up to 300 lb when transported on a level floor. Surveyor can traverse through 14 in. of water and over 9-in.-high obstacles. Standard accessories include radiation detector, humidity monitor, temperature measurement, sound detection and position/ranging, and a standard video or CCD camera having a wide angle and telephoto lens. These devices are mounted on a 3 degree-of-freedom articulated arm with halogen lights

REPORT ON FIRST INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP ON ROBOTIC SURGERY IN THORACIC ONCOLOGY

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Giulia Veronesi

2016-10-01

Full Text Available A workshop of experts from France, Germany, Italy and the United States took place at Humanitas Research Hospital Milan, Italy, on 10-11 February 2016, to examine techniques for and applications of robotic surgery to thoracic oncology. The main topics of presentation and discussion were: robotic surgery for lung resection; robot-assisted thymectomy; minimally invasive surgery for esophageal cancer; new developments in computer-assisted surgery and medical applications of robots; the challenge of costs; and future clinical research in robotic thoracic surgery. The following article summarizes the main contributions to the workshop. The Workshop consensus was that, since video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery (VATS is becoming the mainstream approach to resectable lung cancer in North America and Europe, robotic surgery for thoracic oncology is likely to be embraced by an increasing numbers of thoracic surgeons, since it has technical advantages over VATS, including intuitive movements, tremor filtration, more degrees of manipulative freedom, motion scaling, and high definition stereoscopic vision. These advantages may make robotic surgery more accessible than VATS to trainees and experienced surgeons, and also lead to expanded indications. However the high costs of robotic surgery and absence of tactile feedback remain obstacles to widespread dissemination. A prospective multicentric randomized trial (NCT02804893 to compare robotic and VATS approaches to stage I and II lung cancer will start shortly.

Report on First International Workshop on Robotic Surgery in Thoracic Oncology.

Science.gov (United States)

Veronesi, Giulia; Cerfolio, Robert; Cingolani, Roberto; Rueckert, Jens C; Soler, Luc; Toker, Alper; Cariboni, Umberto; Bottoni, Edoardo; Fumagalli, Uberto; Melfi, Franca; Milli, Carlo; Novellis, Pierluigi; Voulaz, Emanuele; Alloisio, Marco

2016-01-01

A workshop of experts from France, Germany, Italy, and the United States took place at Humanitas Research Hospital Milan, Italy, on February 10 and 11, 2016, to examine techniques for and applications of robotic surgery to thoracic oncology. The main topics of presentation and discussion were robotic surgery for lung resection; robot-assisted thymectomy; minimally invasive surgery for esophageal cancer; new developments in computer-assisted surgery and medical applications of robots; the challenge of costs; and future clinical research in robotic thoracic surgery. The following article summarizes the main contributions to the workshop. The Workshop consensus was that since video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery (VATS) is becoming the mainstream approach to resectable lung cancer in North America and Europe, robotic surgery for thoracic oncology is likely to be embraced by an increasing numbers of thoracic surgeons, since it has technical advantages over VATS, including intuitive movements, tremor filtration, more degrees of manipulative freedom, motion scaling, and high-definition stereoscopic vision. These advantages may make robotic surgery more accessible than VATS to trainees and experienced surgeons and also lead to expanded indications. However, the high costs of robotic surgery and absence of tactile feedback remain obstacles to widespread dissemination. A prospective multicentric randomized trial (NCT02804893) to compare robotic and VATS approaches to stages I and II lung cancer will start shortly.

A study on an autonomous pipeline maintenance robot, 5

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Fukuda, Toshio; Hosokai, Hidemi; Otsuka, Masashi.

1989-01-01

The path planning is very important for the pipeline maintenance robot because there are many obstacles on pipeline such as flanges and T-joints and others, and because pipelines are constructed as a connected network in a very complicated way. Furthermore the maintenance robot Mark III previously reported has the ability to transit from one pipe to another the path planner should consider. The expert system especially aimed for path planning, named PPES (Path Planning Expert System), is described in this paper. A human-operator has only to give some tasks to this system. This system automatically replies with the optimal path, which is based on the calculation of the task levels and list of some control commands. Task level is a criterion to determine one optimal path. It consists of the difference of potential energies, the static joint torques, velocity of the robot, step numbers of the grippers' or body's movement, which the robot requires. This system also has graphic illustrations, so that the operator can easily check and understand the plant map and the result of the path planning. (author)

Sensor-based whole-arm obstacle avoidance utilizing ASIC technology

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Wintenberg, A.L.; Ericson, M.N.; Babcock, S.M.; Armstrong, G.A.; Britton, C.L. Jr.; Butler, P.L.; Hamel, W.R.; Newport, D.F.

1993-01-01

Operation of manipulator systems in poorly defined work environments often presents a significant hazard to both the robotic assembly and the environment. In applications relating to the Environmental Restoration and Waste Management (ER ampersand WM) Program, many of the environments are considered hazardous, both, in the structure and composition of the environment Use of a sensing system that provides information to the manipulator control unit regarding obstacles in close proximity will provide protection against collisions. In this paper, a hierarchical design and implementation of a whole-arm obstacle avoidance system is presented. The system is based on capacitive sensors configured as bracelets for proximity sensing. Each bracelet contains a number of sensor nodes and a processor for sensor node control and readout, and communications with a higher level host, common to all bracelets. The host controls the entire sensing network and communicates proximity information to the manipulator controller. The overall architecture of this system is discussed with detail on the individual system modules. Details of an application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) designed to implement the sensor node electronics are presented. Justifications for the general measurement methods and associated implementation are discussed. Additionally, the current state of development including measured dam is presented

A Hybrid Robotic Control System Using Neuroblastoma Cultures

Science.gov (United States)

Ferrández, J. M.; Lorente, V.; Cuadra, J. M.; Delapaz, F.; Álvarez-Sánchez, José Ramón; Fernández, E.

The main objective of this work is to analyze the computing capabilities of human neuroblastoma cultured cells and to define connection schemes for controlling a robot behavior. Multielectrode Array (MEA) setups have been designed for direct culturing neural cells over silicon or glass substrates, providing the capability to stimulate and record simultaneously populations of neural cells. This paper describes the process of growing human neuroblastoma cells over MEA substrates and tries to modulate the natural physiologic responses of these cells by tetanic stimulation of the culture. We show that the large neuroblastoma networks developed in cultured MEAs are capable of learning: establishing numerous and dynamic connections, with modifiability induced by external stimuli and we propose an hybrid system for controlling a robot to avoid obstacles.

Robot learning and error correction

Science.gov (United States)

Friedman, L.

1977-01-01

A model of robot learning is described that associates previously unknown perceptions with the sensed known consequences of robot actions. For these actions, both the categories of outcomes and the corresponding sensory patterns are incorporated in a knowledge base by the system designer. Thus the robot is able to predict the outcome of an action and compare the expectation with the experience. New knowledge about what to expect in the world may then be incorporated by the robot in a pre-existing structure whether it detects accordance or discrepancy between a predicted consequence and experience. Errors committed during plan execution are detected by the same type of comparison process and learning may be applied to avoiding the errors.

Smooth transition for CPG-based body shape control of a snake-like robot

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Nor, Norzalilah Mohamad; Ma, Shugen

2014-01-01

This paper presents a locomotion control based on central pattern generator (CPG) of a snake-like robot. The main point addressed in this paper is a method that produces a smooth transition of the body shape of a snake-like robot. Body shape transition is important for snake-like robot locomotion to adapt to different space widths and also for obstacle avoidance. By manipulating the phase difference of the CPG outputs instantly, it will results in a sharp point or discontinuity which lead to an unstable movement of the snake-like robot. To tackle the problem, we propose a way of controlling the body shape: by incorporating activation function in the phase oscillator CPG model. The simplicity of the method promises an easy implementation and simple control. Simulation results and torque analysis confirm the effectiveness of the proposed control method and thus, can be used as a locomotion control in various potential applications of a snake-like robot. (paper)

Development Of A Mobile Robot As A Test Bed For Tele-Presentation

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Diogenes Armando D. Pascua

2016-01-01

Full Text Available In this paper a human-sized tracked wheel robot with a large payload capacity for tele-presentation is presented. The robot is equipped with different sensors for obstacle avoidance and localization. A high definition web camera installed atop a pan and tilt assembly was in place as a remote environment feedback for users. An LCD monitor provides the visual display of the operator in the remote environment using the standard Skype teleconferencing software. Remote control was done via the internet through the free Teamviewer VNC remote desktop software. Moreover, this paper presents the design details, fabrication and evaluation of individual components. Core mobile robot movement and navigational controls were developed and tested. The effectiveness of the mobile robot as a test bed for tele-presentation were evaluated and analyzed by way of its real time response and time delay effects of the network.

Development of a Mobile Robot as a Test Bed for Tele-Presentation

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Diogenes Armando D. Pascua

2016-05-01

Full Text Available In this paper a human-sized tracked wheel robot with a large payload capacity for tele-presentation is presented. The robot is equipped with different sensors for obstacle avoidance and localization. A high definition web camera installed atop a pan and tilt assembly was in place as a remote environment feedback for users. An LCD monitor provides the visual display of the operator in the remote environment using the standard Skype teleconferencing software. Remote control was done via the internet through the free Teamviewer VNC remote desktop software. Moreover, this paper presents the design details, fabrication and evaluation of individual components. Core mobile robot movement and navigational controls were developed and tested. The effectiveness of the mobile robot as a test bed for tele-presentation were evaluated and analyzed by way of its real time response and time delay effects of the network

Mobility potential of a robotic six-wheeled omnidirectional drive vehicle (ODV) with z-axis and tire inflation control

Science.gov (United States)

Witus, Gary

2000-07-01

Robot vehicle mobility is the product of the physical configuration, mechatronics (sensors, actuators, and control) and the motion programs for different obstacles, terrain conditions, and maneuver objectives. This paper examines the mobility potential of a robotic 6-by-6 wheeled omni-directional drive vehicle (ODV) with z-axis and tire inflation control. Ad ODV can steer and drive all wheels independently. The direction of motion is independent of the orientation of the body. Z- axis control refers to independent control of the suspension elevation at each wheel. Pneumatic tire inflation control provides the ability to inflate and deflate individual tires. The paper describes motion programs for various discrete obstacles and challenging terrain conditions. The paper illustrates how ODV control, z-axis control and tire inflation control interact to provide high mobility with respect to cornering, maneuvering on slopes, negotiating vertical step and horizontal gap obstacles, and braking/acceleration on soft soil and slick surfaces. The paper derives guidelines for the physical dimensions of the vehicle needed to achieve these capabilities.

Smart mobile robot system for rubbish collection

Science.gov (United States)

Ali, Mohammed A. H.; Sien Siang, Tan

2018-03-01

This paper records the research and procedures of developing a smart mobility robot with detection system to collect rubbish. The objective of this paper is to design a mobile robot that can detect and recognize medium-size rubbish such as drinking cans. Besides that, the objective is also to design a mobile robot with the ability to estimate the position of rubbish from the robot. In addition, the mobile robot is also able to approach the rubbish based on position of rubbish. This paper explained about the types of image processing, detection and recognition methods and image filters. This project implements RGB subtraction method as the prior system. Other than that, algorithm for distance measurement based on image plane is implemented in this project. This project is limited to use computer webcam as the sensor. Secondly, the robot is only able to approach the nearest rubbish in the same views of camera vision and any rubbish that contain RGB colour components on its body.

Synaptic plasticity in a recurrent neural network for versatile and adaptive behaviors of a walking robot

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Eduard eGrinke

2015-10-01

Full Text Available Walking animals, like insects, with little neural computing can effectively perform complex behaviors. They can walk around their environment, escape from corners/deadlocks, and avoid or climb over obstacles. While performing all these behaviors, they can also adapt their movements to deal with an unknown situation. As a consequence, they successfully navigate through their complex environment. The versatile and adaptive abilities are the result of an integration of several ingredients embedded in their sensorimotor loop. Biological studies reveal that the ingredients include neural dynamics, plasticity, sensory feedback, and biomechanics. Generating such versatile and adaptive behaviors for a walking robot is a challenging task. In this study, we present a bio-inspired approach to solve this task. Specifically, the approach combines neural mechanisms with plasticity, sensory feedback, and biomechanics. The neural mechanisms consist of adaptive neural sensory processing and modular neural locomotion control. The sensory processing is based on a small recurrent network consisting of two fully connected neurons. Online correlation-based learning with synaptic scaling is applied to adequately change the connections of the network. By doing so, we can effectively exploit neural dynamics (i.e., hysteresis effects and single attractors in the network to generate different turning angles with short-term memory for a biomechanical walking robot. The turning information is transmitted as descending steering signals to the locomotion control which translates the signals into motor actions. As a result, the robot can walk around and adapt its turning angle for avoiding obstacles in different situations as well as escaping from sharp corners or deadlocks. Using backbone joint control embedded in the locomotion control allows the robot to climb over small obstacles. Consequently, it can successfully explore and navigate in complex environments.

Robustly stable adaptive control of a tandem of master-slave robotic manipulators with force reflection by using a multiestimation scheme.

Science.gov (United States)

Ibeas, Asier; de la Sen, Manuel

2006-10-01

The problem of controlling a tandem of robotic manipulators composing a teleoperation system with force reflection is addressed in this paper. The final objective of this paper is twofold: 1) to design a robust control law capable of ensuring closed-loop stability for robots with uncertainties and 2) to use the so-obtained control law to improve the tracking of each robot to its corresponding reference model in comparison with previously existing controllers when the slave is interacting with the obstacle. In this way, a multiestimation-based adaptive controller is proposed. Thus, the master robot is able to follow more accurately the constrained motion defined by the slave when interacting with an obstacle than when a single-estimation-based controller is used, improving the transparency property of the teleoperation scheme. The closed-loop stability is guaranteed if a minimum residence time, which might be updated online when unknown, between different controller parameterizations is respected. Furthermore, the analysis of the teleoperation and stability capabilities of the overall scheme is carried out. Finally, some simulation examples showing the working of the multiestimation scheme complete this paper.

Design and Optimal Research of a Non-Contact Adjustable Magnetic Adhesion Mechanism for a Wall-Climbing Welding Robot

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Minghui Wu

2013-01-01

Full Text Available Wall-climbing welding robots (WCWRs can replace workers in manufacturing and maintaining large unstructured equipment, such as ships. The adhesion mechanism is the key component of WCWRs. As it is directly related to the robot's ability in relation to adsorbing, moving flexibly and obstacle-passing. In this paper, a novel non-contact adjustably magnetic adhesion mechanism is proposed. The magnet suckers are mounted under the robot's axils and the sucker and wall are in non-contact. In order to pass obstacles, the sucker and the wheel unit can be pulled up and pushed down by a lifting mechanism. The magnetic adhesion force can be adjusted by changing the height of the gap between the sucker and the wall by the lifting mechanism. In order to increase the adhesion force, the value of the sucker's magnetic energy density (MED is maximized by optimizing the magnet sucker's structure parameters with a finite element method. Experiments prove that the magnetic adhesion mechanism has enough adhesion force and that the WCWR can complete wall-climbing work within a large unstructured environment.

Applications of artificial intelligence to space station and automated software techniques: High level robot command language

Science.gov (United States)

Mckee, James W.

1989-01-01

The objective is to develop a system that will allow a person not necessarily skilled in the art of programming robots to quickly and naturally create the necessary data and commands to enable a robot to perform a desired task. The system will use a menu driven graphical user interface. This interface will allow the user to input data to select objects to be moved. There will be an imbedded expert system to process the knowledge about objects and the robot to determine how they are to be moved. There will be automatic path planning to avoid obstacles in the work space and to create a near optimum path. The system will contain the software to generate the required robot instructions.

Dynamic whole-body robotic manipulation

Science.gov (United States)

Abe, Yeuhi; Stephens, Benjamin; Murphy, Michael P.; Rizzi, Alfred A.

2013-05-01

The creation of dynamic manipulation behaviors for high degree of freedom, mobile robots will allow them to accomplish increasingly difficult tasks in the field. We are investigating how the coordinated use of the body, legs, and integrated manipulator, on a mobile robot, can improve the strength, velocity, and workspace when handling heavy objects. We envision that such a capability would aid in a search and rescue scenario when clearing obstacles from a path or searching a rubble pile quickly. Manipulating heavy objects is especially challenging because the dynamic forces are high and a legged system must coordinate all its degrees of freedom to accomplish tasks while maintaining balance. To accomplish these types of manipulation tasks, we use trajectory optimization techniques to generate feasible open-loop behaviors for our 28 dof quadruped robot (BigDog) by planning trajectories in a 13 dimensional space. We apply the Covariance Matrix Adaptation (CMA) algorithm to solve for trajectories that optimize task performance while also obeying important constraints such as torque and velocity limits, kinematic limits, and center of pressure location. These open-loop behaviors are then used to generate desired feed-forward body forces and foot step locations, which enable tracking on the robot. Some hardware results for cinderblock throwing are demonstrated on the BigDog quadruped platform augmented with a human-arm-like manipulator. The results are analogous to how a human athlete maximizes distance in the discus event by performing a precise sequence of choreographed steps.

Textile Pressure Mapping Sensor for Emotional Touch Detection in Human-Robot Interaction

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Bo Zhou

2017-11-01

Full Text Available In this paper, we developed a fully textile sensing fabric for tactile touch sensing as the robot skin to detect human-robot interactions. The sensor covers a 20-by-20 cm 2 area with 400 sensitive points and samples at 50 Hz per point. We defined seven gestures which are inspired by the social and emotional interactions of typical people to people or pet scenarios. We conducted two groups of mutually blinded experiments, involving 29 participants in total. The data processing algorithm first reduces the spatial complexity to frame descriptors, and temporal features are calculated through basic statistical representations and wavelet analysis. Various classifiers are evaluated and the feature calculation algorithms are analyzed in details to determine each stage and segments’ contribution. The best performing feature-classifier combination can recognize the gestures with a 93 . 3 % accuracy from a known group of participants, and 89 . 1 % from strangers.

Textile Pressure Mapping Sensor for Emotional Touch Detection in Human-Robot Interaction.

Science.gov (United States)

Zhou, Bo; Altamirano, Carlos Andres Velez; Zurian, Heber Cruz; Atefi, Seyed Reza; Billing, Erik; Martinez, Fernando Seoane; Lukowicz, Paul

2017-11-09

In this paper, we developed a fully textile sensing fabric for tactile touch sensing as the robot skin to detect human-robot interactions. The sensor covers a 20-by-20 cm 2 area with 400 sensitive points and samples at 50 Hz per point. We defined seven gestures which are inspired by the social and emotional interactions of typical people to people or pet scenarios. We conducted two groups of mutually blinded experiments, involving 29 participants in total. The data processing algorithm first reduces the spatial complexity to frame descriptors, and temporal features are calculated through basic statistical representations and wavelet analysis. Various classifiers are evaluated and the feature calculation algorithms are analyzed in details to determine each stage and segments' contribution. The best performing feature-classifier combination can recognize the gestures with a 93 . 3 % accuracy from a known group of participants, and 89 . 1 % from strangers.

Virtual Reality Simulator Systems in Robotic Surgical Training.

Science.gov (United States)

Mangano, Alberto; Gheza, Federico; Giulianotti, Pier Cristoforo

2018-06-01

The number of robotic surgical procedures has been increasing worldwide. It is important to maximize the cost-effectiveness of robotic surgical training and safely reduce the time needed for trainees to reach proficiency. The use of preliminary lab training in robotic skills is a good strategy for the rapid acquisition of further, standardized robotic skills. Such training can be done either by using a simulator or by exercises in a dry or wet lab. While the use of an actual robotic surgical system for training may be problematic (high cost, lack of availability), virtual reality (VR) simulators can overcome many of these obstacles. However, there is still a lack of standardization. Although VR training systems have improved, they cannot yet replace experience in a wet lab. In particular, simulated scenarios are not yet close enough to a real operative experience. Indeed, there is a difference between technical skills (i.e., mechanical ability to perform a simulated task) and surgical competence (i.e., ability to perform a real surgical operation). Thus, while a VR simulator can replace a dry lab, it cannot yet replace training in a wet lab or operative training in actual patients. However, in the near future, it is expected that VR surgical simulators will be able to provide total reality simulation and replace training in a wet lab. More research is needed to produce more wide-ranging, trans-specialty robotic curricula.

Wide-Baseline Stereo-Based Obstacle Mapping for Unmanned Surface Vehicles

Science.gov (United States)

Mou, Xiaozheng; Wang, Han

2018-01-01

This paper proposes a wide-baseline stereo-based static obstacle mapping approach for unmanned surface vehicles (USVs). The proposed approach eliminates the complicated calibration work and the bulky rig in our previous binocular stereo system, and raises the ranging ability from 500 to 1000 m with a even larger baseline obtained from the motion of USVs. Integrating a monocular camera with GPS and compass information in this proposed system, the world locations of the detected static obstacles are reconstructed while the USV is traveling, and an obstacle map is then built. To achieve more accurate and robust performance, multiple pairs of frames are leveraged to synthesize the final reconstruction results in a weighting model. Experimental results based on our own dataset demonstrate the high efficiency of our system. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to address the task of wide-baseline stereo-based obstacle mapping in a maritime environment. PMID:29617293

Physics-based approach to chemical source localization using mobile robotic swarms

Science.gov (United States)

Zarzhitsky, Dimitri

2008-07-01

Recently, distributed computation has assumed a dominant role in the fields of artificial intelligence and robotics. To improve system performance, engineers are combining multiple cooperating robots into cohesive collectives called swarms. This thesis illustrates the application of basic principles of physicomimetics, or physics-based design, to swarm robotic systems. Such principles include decentralized control, short-range sensing and low power consumption. We show how the application of these principles to robotic swarms results in highly scalable, robust, and adaptive multi-robot systems. The emergence of these valuable properties can be predicted with the help of well-developed theoretical methods. In this research effort, we have designed and constructed a distributed physicomimetics system for locating sources of airborne chemical plumes. This task, called chemical plume tracing (CPT), is receiving a great deal of attention due to persistent homeland security threats. For this thesis, we have created a novel CPT algorithm called fluxotaxis that is based on theoretical principles of fluid dynamics. Analytically, we show that fluxotaxis combines the essence, as well as the strengths, of the two most popular biologically-inspired CPT methods-- chemotaxis and anemotaxis. The chemotaxis strategy consists of navigating in the direction of the chemical density gradient within the plume, while the anemotaxis approach is based on an upwind traversal of the chemical cloud. Rigorous and extensive experimental evaluations have been performed in simulated chemical plume environments. Using a suite of performance metrics that capture the salient aspects of swarm-specific behavior, we have been able to evaluate and compare the three CPT algorithms. We demonstrate the improved performance of our fluxotaxis approach over both chemotaxis and anemotaxis in these realistic simulation environments, which include obstacles. To test our understanding of CPT on actual hardware

Plataforma autónoma inteligente para fútbol robot

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Cesar Hernán Rodríguez Garavito

2008-01-01

Full Text Available This article presents the design, implementation, virtual simulation and test results for a hardware-software platform for robot soccer. The platform consists of a soccer field, a software-controlled mobile agent (AMC, a user-controlled mobile agent (MCU, a golf ball, an image sensor system and a path-planning controller. The problem for agent AMC is to sense the environment and move to a kicking position to score while avoiding opponents in its way. The soccer field is a bounded area of 1.5m x 2m in which mobile agents move following differential robot kinematics at 25.7cm/s speed; each robot has a kicking system which can speed up a golf ball at 1.43m/s velocity. A position sensor was implemented and optimised in three stages: capturing the soccer field image, converting to HSI format and applying digital filters and calculating the Cartesian components from colour patterns for identifying the mobile robots and the golf ball. Image sensor system processing speed is 30 frames per second. Robot path planning is controlled by a hybrid strategy based on two linearly combined fuzzy logic controllers; one takes agent AMC to the goal position and the other avoids obstacles while it moves to the goal position.

2D navigation and pilotage of an autonomous mobile robot

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Favre, Patrick

1989-01-01

The contribution of this thesis deals with the navigation and the piloting of an autonomous robot, in a known or weakly known environment of dimension two without constraints. This leads to generate an optimal path to a given goal and then to compute the commands to follow this path. Several constraints are taken into account (obstacles, geometry and kinematic of the robot, dynamic effects). The first part defines the problem and presents the state of the art. The three following parts present a set of complementary solutions according to the knowledge level of the environment and to the space constraints: - Case of a known environment: generation and following of a trajectory with respect to given path points. - Case of a weakly known environment: coupling of a command module interacting with the environment perception, and a path planner. This allows a fast motion of the robot. - Case of a constrained environment: planner enabling the taking into account of many constraints as the robot's shape, turning radius limitation, backward motion and orientation. (author) [fr

An optimal control strategy for collision avoidance of mobile robots in non-stationary environments

Science.gov (United States)

Kyriakopoulos, K. J.; Saridis, G. N.

1991-01-01

An optimal control formulation of the problem of collision avoidance of mobile robots in environments containing moving obstacles is presented. Collision avoidance is guaranteed if the minimum distance between the robot and the objects is nonzero. A nominal trajectory is assumed to be known from off-line planning. The main idea is to change the velocity along the nominal trajectory so that collisions are avoided. Furthermore, time consistency with the nominal plan is desirable. A numerical solution of the optimization problem is obtained. Simulation results verify the value of the proposed strategy.

Mobile Surveillance and Monitoring Robots

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Kimberly, Howard R.; Shipers, Larry R.

1999-01-01

Long-term nuclear material storage will require in-vault data verification, sensor testing, error and alarm response, inventory, and maintenance operations. System concept development efforts for a comprehensive nuclear material management system have identified the use of a small flexible mobile automation platform to perform these surveillance and maintenance operations. In order to have near-term wide-range application in the Complex, a mobile surveillance system must be small, flexible, and adaptable enough to allow retrofit into existing special nuclear material facilities. The objective of the Mobile Surveillance and Monitoring Robot project is to satisfy these needs by development of a human scale mobile robot to monitor the state of health, physical security and safety of items in storage and process; recognize and respond to alarms, threats, and off-normal operating conditions; and perform material handling and maintenance operations. The system will integrate a tool kit of onboard sensors and monitors, maintenance equipment and capability, and SNL developed non-lethal threat response technology with the intelligence to identify threats and develop and implement first response strategies for abnormal signals and alarm conditions. System versatility will be enhanced by incorporating a robot arm, vision and force sensing, robust obstacle avoidance, and appropriate monitoring and sensing equipment

A decision-tree model to detect post-calving diseases based on rumination, activity, milk yield, BW and voluntary visits to the milking robot.

Science.gov (United States)

Steensels, M; Antler, A; Bahr, C; Berckmans, D; Maltz, E; Halachmi, I

2016-09-01

Early detection of post-calving health problems is critical for dairy operations. Separating sick cows from the herd is important, especially in robotic-milking dairy farms, where searching for a sick cow can disturb the other cows' routine. The objectives of this study were to develop and apply a behaviour- and performance-based health-detection model to post-calving cows in a robotic-milking dairy farm, with the aim of detecting sick cows based on available commercial sensors. The study was conducted in an Israeli robotic-milking dairy farm with 250 Israeli-Holstein cows. All cows were equipped with rumination- and neck-activity sensors. Milk yield, visits to the milking robot and BW were recorded in the milking robot. A decision-tree model was developed on a calibration data set (historical data of the 10 months before the study) and was validated on the new data set. The decision model generated a probability of being sick for each cow. The model was applied once a week just before the veterinarian performed the weekly routine post-calving health check. The veterinarian's diagnosis served as a binary reference for the model (healthy-sick). The overall accuracy of the model was 78%, with a specificity of 87% and a sensitivity of 69%, suggesting its practical value.

Kinematic Modelling and Simulation of a 2-R Robot Using SolidWorks and Verification by MATLAB/Simulink

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Mahmoud Gouasmi

2012-12-01

Full Text Available The simulation of robot systems is becoming very popular, especially with the lowering of the cost of computers, and it can be used for layout evaluation, feasibility studies, presentations with animation and off-line programming. The trajectory planning of redundant manipulators is a very active area since many tasks require special characteristics to be satisfied. The importance of redundant manipulators has increased over the last two decades because of the possibility of avoiding singularities as well as obstacles within the course of motion. The angle that the last link of a 2 DOF manipulator makes with the x-axis is required in order to find the solution for the inverse kinematics problem. This angle could be optimized with respect to a given specified key factor (time, velocity, torques while the end-effector performs a chosen trajectory (i.e., avoiding an obstacle in the task space. Modeling and simulation of robots could be achieved using either of the following models: the geometrical model (positions, postures, the kinematic model and the dynamic model. To do so, the modelization of a 2-R robot type is implemented. Our main tasks are comparing two robot postures with the same trajectory (path and for the same length of time, and establishing a computing code to obtain the kinematic and dynamic parameters. SolidWorks and MATLAB/Simulink softwares are used to check the theory and the robot motion simulation. This could be easily generalized to a 3-R robot and possibly therefore to any serial robot (Scara, Puma, etc.. The verification of the obtained results by both softwares allows us to qualitatively evaluate and underline the validityof the chosen model and obtain the right conclusions. The results of the simulations are discussed and an agreement between the two softwares is certainly obtained.

A microcontroller-based compensated optical proximity detector employing the switching-mode synchronous detection technique

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Rakshit, Anjan; Chatterjee, Amitava

2012-01-01

This paper describes the development of a microcontroller-based optical proximity detector that can provide a low-cost yet powerful obstacle-sensing mechanism for mobile robots. The system is developed with the switching-mode synchronous detection technique to provide satisfactory performance over a wide range of operating conditions and is developed with the facility of externally setting a threshold, for reliable operation. The system is dynamically compensated against ambient illumination variations. Experimental studies demonstrate how the minimum distance of activation can be varied with different choices of thresholds. (paper)

Mobile robot prototype detector of gamma radiation; Prototipo de robot movil detector de radiacion gamma

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Vazquez C, R.M. [ININ, Carretera Mexico-Toluca s/n, 52750 Ocoyoacac, Estado de Mexico (Mexico); Duran V, M. D.; Jardon M, C. I., E-mail: raulmario.vazquez@inin.gob.mx [Tecnologico de Estudios Superiores de Villa Guerrero, Carretera Federal Toluca-Ixtapan de la Sal Km. 64.5, La Finca Villa Guerrero, Estado de Mexico (Mexico)

2014-10-15

In this paper the technological development of a mobile robot prototype detector of gamma radiation is shown. This prototype has been developed for the purpose of algorithms implementation for the applications of terrestrial radiation monitoring of exposed sources, search for missing radioactive sources, identification and delineation of radioactive contamination areas and distribution maps generating of radioactive exposure. Mobile robot detector of radiation is an experimental technology development platform to operate in laboratory environment or flat floor facilities. The prototype integrates a driving section of differential configuration robot on wheels, a support mechanism and rotation of shielded detector, actuator controller cards, acquisition and processing of sensor data, detection algorithms programming and control actuators, data recording (Data Logger) and data transmission in wireless way. The robot in this first phase is remotely operated in wireless way with a range of approximately 150 m line of sight and can extend that range to 300 m or more with the use of signal repeaters. The gamma radiation detection is performed using a Geiger detector shielded. Scan detection is performed at various time sampling periods and diverse positions of discrete or continuous angular orientation on the horizon. The captured data are geographical coordinates of robot GPS (latitude and longitude), orientation angle of shield, counting by sampling time, date, hours, minutes and seconds. The data is saved in a file in the Micro Sd memory on the robot. They are also sent in wireless way by an X Bee card to a remote station that receives for their online monitoring on a laptop through an acquisition program by serial port on Mat Lab. Additionally a voice synthesizing card with a horn, both in the robot, periodically pronounced in Spanish, data length, latitude, orientation angle of shield and detected accounts. (Author)

An assessment of auditory-guided locomotion in an obstacle circumvention task.

Science.gov (United States)

Kolarik, Andrew J; Scarfe, Amy C; Moore, Brian C J; Pardhan, Shahina

2016-06-01

This study investigated how effectively audition can be used to guide navigation around an obstacle. Ten blindfolded normally sighted participants navigated around a 0.6 × 2 m obstacle while producing self-generated mouth click sounds. Objective movement performance was measured using a Vicon motion capture system. Performance with full vision without generating sound was used as a baseline for comparison. The obstacle's location was varied randomly from trial to trial: it was either straight ahead or 25 cm to the left or right relative to the participant. Although audition provided sufficient information to detect the obstacle and guide participants around it without collision in the majority of trials, buffer space (clearance between the shoulder and obstacle), overall movement times, and number of velocity corrections were significantly (p < 0.05) greater with auditory guidance than visual guidance. Collisions sometime occurred under auditory guidance, suggesting that audition did not always provide an accurate estimate of the space between the participant and obstacle. Unlike visual guidance, participants did not always walk around the side that afforded the most space during auditory guidance. Mean buffer space was 1.8 times higher under auditory than under visual guidance. Results suggest that sound can be used to generate buffer space when vision is unavailable, allowing navigation around an obstacle without collision in the majority of trials.

On detection and automatic tracking of butt weld line in thin wall pipe welding by a mobile robot with visual sensor

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Suga, Yasuo; Ishii, Hideaki; Muto, Akifumi

1992-01-01

An automatic pipe welding mobile robot system with visual sensor was constructed. The robot can move along a pipe, and detect the weld line to be welded by visual sensor. Moreover, in order to make an automatic welding, the welding torch can track the butt weld line of the pipes at a constant speed by rotating the robot head. Main results obtained are summarized as follows: 1) Using a proper lighting fixed in front of the CCD camera, the butt weld line of thin wall pipes can be recongnized stably. In this case, the root gap should be approximately 0.5 mm. 2) In order to detect the weld line stably during moving along the pipe, a brightness distribution measured by the CCD camera should be subjected to smoothing and differentiating and then the weld line is judged by the maximum and minimum values of the differentials. 3) By means of the basic robot system with a visual sensor controlled by a personal computer, the detection and in-process automatic tracking of a weld line are possible. The average tracking error was approximately 0.2 mm and maximum error 0.5 mm and the welding speed was held at a constant value with error of about 0.1 cm/min. (author)

A remote lab for experiments with a team of mobile robots.

Science.gov (United States)

Casini, Marco; Garulli, Andrea; Giannitrapani, Antonio; Vicino, Antonio

2014-09-04

In this paper, a remote lab for experimenting with a team of mobile robots is presented. Robots are built with the LEGO Mindstorms technology and user-defined control laws can be directly coded in the Matlab programming language and validated on the real system. The lab is versatile enough to be used for both teaching and research purposes. Students can easily go through a number of predefined mobile robotics experiences without having to worry about robot hardware or low-level programming languages. More advanced experiments can also be carried out by uploading custom controllers. The capability to have full control of the vehicles, together with the possibility to define arbitrarily complex environments through the definition of virtual obstacles, makes the proposed facility well suited to quickly test and compare different control laws in a real-world scenario. Moreover, the user can simulate the presence of different types of exteroceptive sensors on board of the robots or a specific communication architecture among the agents, so that decentralized control strategies and motion coordination algorithms can be easily implemented and tested. A number of possible applications and real experiments are presented in order to illustrate the main features of the proposed mobile robotics remote lab.

A Remote Lab for Experiments with a Team of Mobile Robots

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Marco Casini

2014-09-01

Full Text Available In this paper, a remote lab for experimenting with a team of mobile robots is presented. Robots are built with the LEGO Mindstorms technology and user-defined control laws can be directly coded in the Matlab programming language and validated on the real system. The lab is versatile enough to be used for both teaching and research purposes. Students can easily go through a number of predefined mobile robotics experiences without having to worry about robot hardware or low-level programming languages. More advanced experiments can also be carried out by uploading custom controllers. The capability to have full control of the vehicles, together with the possibility to define arbitrarily complex environments through the definition of virtual obstacles, makes the proposed facility well suited to quickly test and compare different control laws in a real-world scenario. Moreover, the user can simulate the presence of different types of exteroceptive sensors on board of the robots or a specific communication architecture among the agents, so that decentralized control strategies and motion coordination algorithms can be easily implemented and tested. A number of possible applications and real experiments are presented in order to illustrate the main features of the proposed mobile robotics remote lab.

Construction of the Control System of Cleaning Robots with Vision Guidance

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Tian-Syung Lan

2013-01-01

Full Text Available The study uses Kinect, modern and depth detectable photography equipment to detect objects on the ground and above the ground. The data collected is used to construct a model on ground level, that is, used lead automatic guiding vehicle. The core of the vehicle uses a PIC18F4520 microchip. Bluetooth wireless communication is adopted for remote connection to a computer, which is used to control the vehicles remotely. Operators send movement command to automatic guiding vehicle through computer. Once the destination point is identified, the vehicle lead is forward. The guiding process will map out a path that directs the vehicle to the destination and void any obstacles. The study is based on existing cleaning robots that are available. Aside from fixed point movement, through data analysis, the system is also capable of identifying objects that are not supposed to appear on the ground, such as aluminum cans. By configuring the destination to aluminum cans, the automatic guiding vehicle will lead to a can and pick it up. Such action is the realization of cleaning function.

STDP-based behavior learning on the TriBot robot

Science.gov (United States)

Arena, P.; De Fiore, S.; Patané, L.; Pollino, M.; Ventura, C.

2009-05-01

This paper describes a correlation-based navigation algorithm, based on an unsupervised learning paradigm for spiking neural networks, called Spike Timing Dependent Plasticity (STDP). This algorithm was implemented on a new bio-inspired hybrid mini-robot called TriBot to learn and increase its behavioral capabilities. In fact correlation based algorithms have been found to explain many basic behaviors in simple animals. The main interesting consequence of STDP is that the system is able to learn high-level sensor features, based on a set of basic reflexes, depending on some low-level sensor inputs. TriBot is composed of 3 modules, the first two being identical and inspired by the Whegs hybrid robot. The peculiar characteristics of the robot consists in the innovative shape of the three-spoke appendages that allow to increase stability of the structure. The last module is composed of two standard legs with 3 degrees of freedom each. Thanks to the cooperation among these modules, TriBot is able to face with irregular terrains overcoming potential deadlock situations, to climb high obstacles compared to its size and to manipulate objects. Robot experiments will be reported to demonstrate the potentiality and the effectiveness of the approach.

Dynamic Obstacle Avoidance for Unmanned Underwater Vehicles Based on an Improved Velocity Obstacle Method

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Wei Zhang

2017-11-01

Full Text Available In view of a dynamic obstacle environment with motion uncertainty, we present a dynamic collision avoidance method based on the collision risk assessment and improved velocity obstacle method. First, through the fusion optimization of forward-looking sonar data, the redundancy of the data is reduced and the position, size and velocity information of the obstacles are obtained, which can provide an accurate decision-making basis for next-step collision avoidance. Second, according to minimum meeting time and the minimum distance between the obstacle and unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV, this paper establishes the collision risk assessment model, and screens key obstacles to avoid collision. Finally, the optimization objective function is established based on the improved velocity obstacle method, and a UUV motion characteristic is used to calculate the reachable velocity sets. The optimal collision speed of UUV is searched in velocity space. The corresponding heading and speed commands are calculated, and outputted to the motion control module. The above is the complete dynamic obstacle avoidance process. The simulation results show that the proposed method can obtain a better collision avoidance effect in the dynamic environment, and has good adaptability to the unknown dynamic environment.

Automated Trajectory Planner of Industrial Robot for Pick-and-Place Task

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

S. Saravana Perumaal

2013-02-01

Full Text Available Industrial robots, due to their great speed, precision and cost-effectiveness in repetitive tasks, now tend to be used in place of human workers in automated manufacturing systems. In particular, they perform the pick-and-place operation, a non-value-added activity which at the same time cannot be eliminated. Hence, minimum time is an important consideration for economic reasons in the trajectory planning system of the manipulator. The trajectory should also be smooth to handle parts precisely in applications such as semiconductor manufacturing, processing and handling of chemicals and medicines, and fluid and aerosol deposition. In this paper, an automated trajectory planner is proposed to determine a smooth, minimum-time and collision-free trajectory for the pick-and-place operations of a 6-DOF robotic manipulator in the presence of an obstacle. Subsequently, it also proposes an algorithm for the jerk-bounded Synchronized Trigonometric S-curve Trajectory (STST and the ‘forbidden-sphere’ technique to avoid the obstacle. The proposed planner is demonstrated with suitable examples and comparisons. The experiments show that the proposed planner is capable of providing a smoother trajectory than the cubic spline based trajectory.

Prototype Robot Pemadam Api Beroda Menggunakan Teknik Navigasi Wall Follower

OpenAIRE

Safrianti, Ery; Amri, Rahyul; Budiman, Septian

2012-01-01

Fire Robot serves to detect and extinguish the fire. The robot is controlled by the microcontroller ATMEGA8535 automatically. This robot contains of several sensors, such as 5 sets of ping parallax as a robot navigator, a set UVTron equipped with fire-detecting driver, DC motor driver L298 with two DC servo motors. The robot was developed from a prototype that has been studied previously with the addition on the hardware side of the sound activation and two sets of line detector. The robot wi...

Variable geometry truss manipulators: A new type of robot for site inspection and remediation

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Naccarato, F.

1996-01-01

A new type of robotic manipulator has been developed that offers many potential advantages over conventional robot arms for site inspection and remediation. This new robot is based on the variable geometry truss manipulator (VGTM) concept which combines the structural properties of a truss with the dexterous capabilities of a manipulator. By substituting linear actuators for some of the fixed-length members within a truss, the structure can be made to change its overall shape. By coordinating the motion of these actuators appropriately, a VGTM can perform tasks that are relevant to hazardous waste clean-up, including deployment through curved ducts, probing into crevices and obstacle avoidance. Trussarm trademark, a prototype VGTM with twelve degrees-of-freedom, has been constructed by Dynacon Enterprises Limited

Image-guided neurosurgery. Global concept of a surgical tele-assistance using obstacle detection robotics; Neurochirurgie guidee par l'image. Concept global d'une tele-assistance chirurgicale a l'aide d'une robotique d'empechement

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Desgeorges, M.; Bellegou, N.; Faillot, Th.; Cordoliani, Y.S.; Dutertre, G.; Blondet, E.; Soultrait, F. de; Boissy, J.M. [Hopital d' Instruction des Armees du Val-de-Grace, 75 - Paris (France)

2000-12-01

Surgical tele-assistance significantly increases accuracy of surgical gestures, especially in the case of brain tumor neurosurgery. The robotic device is tele-operated through a microscope and the surgeon's gestures are guided by real-time overlaying of the X-ray imagery in the microscope. During the device's progression inside the brain, the focus is ensured by the microscope auto-focus feature. The surgeon can thus constantly check his position on the field workstation. Obstacles to avoid or dangerous areas can be previewed in the operation field. This system is routinely used for 5 years in the neurosurgery division of the Val de Grace hospital. More than 400 brain surgery operations have been done using it. An adaptation is used for rachis surgery. Other military hospitals begin to be equipped with similar systems. It will be possible to link them for data transfer. When it will be operational, such a network it will show what could be, in the future, a medical/surgical remote-assistance system designed to take care of wounded/critical conditions people, including assistance to surgical gestures. (authors)

Obstacle Detection Display for Visually Impaired: Coding of Direction, Distance, and Height on a Vibrotactile Waist Band

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jan B. F. van Erp

2017-10-01

Full Text Available Electronic travel aids (ETAs can potentially increase the safety and comfort of blind users by detecting and displaying obstacles outside the range of the white cane. In a series of experiments, we aim to balance the amount of information displayed and the comprehensibility of the information taking into account the risk of information overload. In Experiment 1, we investigate perception of compound signals displayed on a tactile vest while walking. The results confirm that the threat of information overload is clear and present. Tactile coding parameters that are sufficiently discriminable in isolation may not be so in compound signals and while walking and using the white cane. Horizontal tactor location is a strong coding parameter, and temporal pattern is the preferred secondary coding parameter. Vertical location is also possible as coding parameter but it requires additional tactors and makes the display hardware more complex and expensive and less user friendly. In Experiment 2, we investigate how we can off-load the tactile modality by mitigating part of the information to an auditory display. Off-loading the tactile modality through auditory presentation is possible, but this off-loading is limited and may result in a new threat of auditory overload. In addition, taxing the auditory channel may in turn interfere with other auditory cues from the environment. In Experiment 3, we off-load the tactile sense by reducing the amount of displayed information using several filter rules. The resulting design was evaluated in Experiment 4 with visually impaired users. Although they acknowledge the potential of the display, the added of the ETA as a whole also depends on its sensor and object recognition capabilities. We recommend to use not more than two coding parameters in a tactile compound message and apply filter rules to reduce the amount of obstacles to be displayed in an obstacle avoidance ETA.

Robust online belief space planning in changing environments: Application to physical mobile robots

KAUST Repository

Agha-mohammadi, Ali-akbar

2014-05-01

© 2014 IEEE. Motion planning in belief space (under motion and sensing uncertainty) is a challenging problem due to the computational intractability of its exact solution. The Feedback-based Information RoadMap (FIRM) framework made an important theoretical step toward enabling roadmap-based planning in belief space and provided a computationally tractable version of belief space planning. However, there are still challenges in applying belief space planners to physical systems, such as the discrepancy between computational models and real physical models. In this paper, we propose a dynamic replanning scheme in belief space to address such challenges. Moreover, we present techniques to cope with changes in the environment (e.g., changes in the obstacle map), as well as unforeseen large deviations in the robot\\'s location (e.g., the kidnapped robot problem). We then utilize these techniques to implement the first online replanning scheme in belief space on a physical mobile robot that is robust to changes in the environment and large disturbances. This method demonstrates that belief space planning is a practical tool for robot motion planning.

Emergence of leadership in a robotic fish group under diverging individual personality traits.

Science.gov (United States)

Wang, Chen; Chen, Xiaojie; Xie, Guangming; Cao, Ming

2017-05-01

Variations of individual's personality traits have been identified before as one of the possible mechanisms for the emergence of leadership in an interactive collective, which may lead to benefits for the group as a whole. Complementing the large number of existing literatures on using simulation models to study leadership, we use biomimetic robotic fish to gain insight into how the fish's behaviours evolve under the influence of the physical hydrodynamics. In particular, we focus in this paper on understanding how robotic fish's personality traits affect the emergence of an effective leading fish in repeated robotic foraging tasks when the robotic fish's strategies, to push or not to push the obstacle in its foraging path, are updated over time following an evolutionary game set-up. We further show that the robotic fish's personality traits diverge when the group carries out difficult foraging tasks in our experiments, and self-organization takes place to help the group to adapt to the level of difficulties of the tasks without inter-individual communication.

Real-Time Autonomous Obstacle Avoidance for Low-Altitude Fixed-Wing Aircraft

Science.gov (United States)

Owlia, Shahboddin

The GeoSurv II is an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) being developed by Carleton University and Sander Geophysics. This thesis is in support of the GeoSurv II project. The objective of the GeoSurv II project is to create a fully autonomous UAV capable of performing geophysical surveys. In order to achieve this level of autonomy, the UAV, which due to the nature of its surveys flies at low altitude, must be able to avoid potential obstacles such as trees, powerlines, telecommunication towers, etc. Developing a method to avoid these obstacles is the objective of this thesis. The literature is rich in methods for trajectory planning and mid-air collision avoidance with other aircraft. In contrast, in this thesis, a method for avoiding static obstacles that are not known a priori is developed. The potential flow theory and panel method are borrowed from fluid mechanics and are employed to generate evasive maneuvers when obstacles are encountered. By means of appropriate modelling of obstacles, the aircraft's constraints are taken into account such that the evasive maneuvers are feasible for the UAV. Moreover, the method is developed with consideration of the limitations of obstacle detection in GeoSurv II. Due to the unavailability of the GeoSurv II aircraft, and the lack of a complete model for GeoSurv II, the method developed is implemented on the non-linear model of the Aerosonde UAV. The Aerosonde model is then subjected to various obstacle scenarios and it is seen that the UAV successfully avoids the obstacles.

The application of Markov decision process with penalty function in restaurant delivery robot

Science.gov (United States)

Wang, Yong; Hu, Zhen; Wang, Ying

2017-05-01

As the restaurant delivery robot is often in a dynamic and complex environment, including the chairs inadvertently moved to the channel and customers coming and going. The traditional Markov decision process path planning algorithm is not save, the robot is very close to the table and chairs. To solve this problem, this paper proposes the Markov Decision Process with a penalty term called MDPPT path planning algorithm according to the traditional Markov decision process (MDP). For MDP, if the restaurant delivery robot bumps into an obstacle, the reward it receives is part of the current status reward. For the MDPPT, the reward it receives not only the part of the current status but also a negative constant term. Simulation results show that the MDPPT algorithm can plan a more secure path.

Design of an Action Selection Mechanism for Cooperative Soccer Robots Based on Fuzzy Decision Making Algorithm

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

S. Alireza Mohades Kasaei

2010-04-01

Full Text Available Robocup is an international competition for multi agent research and related subject like: Artificial intelligence, Image processing, machine learning, robot path planning, control, and
obstacle avoidance. In a soccer robot game, the environment is highly competitive and dynamic. In order to work in the dynamically changing environment, the decision-making system of a soccer robot system should have the features of flexibility and real-time adaptation. In this paper we will
focus on the Middle Size Soccer Robot league (MSL and new hierarchical hybrid fuzzy methods for decision making and action selection of a robot in Middle Size Soccer Robot league (MSL are presented. First, the behaviors of an agent are introduced, implemented and classified in two layers,
the Low_Level_Behaviors and the High_Level_Behaviors. In the second layer, a two phase mechanism for decision making is introduced. In phase one, some useful methods are implemented which check the robot’s situation for performing required behaviors. In the next phase, the team strategy, team formation, robot’s role and the robot’s positioning system are introduced. A fuzzy logical approach is employed to recognize the team strategy and further more to tell the player the
best position to move. We believe that a Dynamic role engine is necessary for a successful team. Dynamic role engine and formation control during offensive or defensive play, help us to prevent collision avoidance among own players when attacking the ball and obstacle avoidance of the opponents. At last, we comprised our implemented algorithm in the Robocup 2007 and 2008 and results showed the efficiency of the introduced methodology. The results are satisfactory which has already been successfully implemented in ADRO RoboCup team. This project is still in progress and some new interesting methods are described in the current report.

Robot navigation in unknown terrains: Introductory survey of non-heuristic algorithms

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Rao, N.S.V. [Oak Ridge National Lab., TN (US); Kareti, S.; Shi, Weimin [Old Dominion Univ., Norfolk, VA (US). Dept. of Computer Science; Iyengar, S.S. [Louisiana State Univ., Baton Rouge, LA (US). Dept. of Computer Science

1993-07-01

A formal framework for navigating a robot in a geometric terrain by an unknown set of obstacles is considered. Here the terrain model is not a priori known, but the robot is equipped with a sensor system (vision or touch) employed for the purpose of navigation. The focus is restricted to the non-heuristic algorithms which can be theoretically shown to be correct within a given framework of models for the robot, terrain and sensor system. These formulations, although abstract and simplified compared to real-life scenarios, provide foundations for practical systems by highlighting the underlying critical issues. First, the authors consider the algorithms that are shown to navigate correctly without much consideration given to the performance parameters such as distance traversed, etc. Second, they consider non-heuristic algorithms that guarantee bounds on the distance traversed or the ratio of the distance traversed to the shortest path length (computed if the terrain model is known). Then they consider the navigation of robots with very limited computational capabilities such as finite automata, etc.

The comparison of spatial accessibility measures between non-obstacle and obstacle oriented based on gravity model

Science.gov (United States)

Han, Zhi-Gang; Cui, Cai-Hui

2009-10-01

Spatial accessibility denotes the ease with which activities may be reached from a given location using a particular transportation system. There are a number of accessibility measures methods and models, such as time of access to city centre, mean travel costs and opportunity accessibility. But these methods or models ignore the existence of obstacles. In fact, there are many kinds of obstacles in the world, such as rivers, railways, etc. The paper reviews the progress of accessibility measures, and introduces the obstacle to the accessibility measures. Meanwhile, through the analysis of A* algorithm, the advantage of A* algorithm that could avoid obstacles is put forward. Based on the above mentioned, the obstacle oriented accessibility measures based on simple gravity model is discussed in details. Finally, a case study is fulfilled by comparison between the obstacle oriented and non-obstacle accessibility measures.

Aquaponics business in Europe : some legal obstacles and solutions

OpenAIRE

Joly, Agnes; Junge, Ranka; Bardocz, Tamas

2015-01-01

The authors gathered information on perceived impact of current legislation on entrepreneurial possibilities in developing commercial aquaponics in Europe. The paper highlights the detected obstacles, and the solutions developed to address the legislative issues. Three main issues outlined are: administration, environment, and safety.

Architectures of soft robotic locomotion enabled by simple mechanical principles.

Science.gov (United States)

Zhu, Liangliang; Cao, Yunteng; Liu, Yilun; Yang, Zhe; Chen, Xi

2017-06-28

In nature, a variety of limbless locomotion patterns flourish, from the small or basic life forms (Escherichia coli, amoebae, etc.) to the large or intelligent creatures (e.g., slugs, starfishes, earthworms, octopuses, jellyfishes, and snakes). Many bioinspired soft robots based on locomotion have been developed in the past few decades. In this work, based on the kinematics and dynamics of two representative locomotion modes (i.e., worm-like crawling and snake-like slithering), we propose a broad set of innovative designs for soft mobile robots through simple mechanical principles. Inspired by and going beyond the existing biological systems, these designs include 1-D (dimensional), 2-D, and 3-D robotic locomotion patterns enabled by the simple actuation of continuous beams. We report herein over 20 locomotion modes achieving various locomotion functions, including crawling, rising, running, creeping, squirming, slithering, swimming, jumping, turning, turning over, helix rolling, wheeling, etc. Some are able to reach high speed, high efficiency, and overcome obstacles. All these locomotion strategies and functions can be integrated into a simple beam model. The proposed simple and robust models are adaptive for severe and complex environments. These elegant designs for diverse robotic locomotion patterns are expected to underpin future deployments of soft robots and to inspire a series of advanced designs.

Lighter than Air Robots Guidance and Control of Autonomous Airships

CERN Document Server

Bestaoui Sebbane, Yasmina

2012-01-01

An aerial robot is a system capable of sustained flight with no direct human control and able to perform a specific task. A lighter than air robot is an aerial robot that relies on the static lift to balance its own weight. It can also be defined as a lighter than air unmanned aerial vehicle or an unmanned airship with sufficient autonomy. Lighter than air systems are particularly appealing since the energy to keep them airborne is small. They are increasingly considered for various tasks such as monitoring, surveillance, advertising, freight carrier, transportation. This book familiarizes readers with a hierarchical decoupled planning and control strategy that has been proven efficient through research. It is made up of a hierarchy of modules with well defined functions operating at a variety of rates, linked together from top to bottom. The outer loop, closed periodically, consists of a discrete search that produces a set of waypoints leading to the goal while avoiding obstacles and weighed regions. The sec...

Fast intersection detection algorithm for PC-based robot off-line programming

Science.gov (United States)

Fedrowitz, Christian H.

1994-11-01

This paper presents a method for fast and reliable collision detection in complex production cells. The algorithm is part of the PC-based robot off-line programming system of the University of Siegen (Ropsus). The method is based on a solid model which is managed by a simplified constructive solid geometry model (CSG-model). The collision detection problem is divided in two steps. In the first step the complexity of the problem is reduced in linear time. In the second step the remaining solids are tested for intersection. For this the Simplex algorithm, which is known from linear optimization, is used. It computes a point which is common to two convex polyhedra. The polyhedra intersect, if such a point exists. Regarding the simplified geometrical model of Ropsus the algorithm runs also in linear time. In conjunction with the first step a resultant collision detection algorithm is found which requires linear time in all. Moreover it computes the resultant intersection polyhedron using the dual transformation.

An Algorithm for Pedestrian Detection in Multispectral Image Sequences

Science.gov (United States)

Kniaz, V. V.; Fedorenko, V. V.

2017-05-01

The growing interest for self-driving cars provides a demand for scene understanding and obstacle detection algorithms. One of the most challenging problems in this field is the problem of pedestrian detection. Main difficulties arise from a diverse appearances of pedestrians. Poor visibility conditions such as fog and low light conditions also significantly decrease the quality of pedestrian detection. This paper presents a new optical flow based algorithm BipedDetet that provides robust pedestrian detection on a single-borad computer. The algorithm is based on the idea of simplified Kalman filtering suitable for realization on modern single-board computers. To detect a pedestrian a synthetic optical flow of the scene without pedestrians is generated using slanted-plane model. The estimate of a real optical flow is generated using a multispectral image sequence. The difference of the synthetic optical flow and the real optical flow provides the optical flow induced by pedestrians. The final detection of pedestrians is done by the segmentation of the difference of optical flows. To evaluate the BipedDetect algorithm a multispectral dataset was collected using a mobile robot.

Detecting Biological Motion for Human–Robot Interaction: A Link between Perception and Action

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Alessia Vignolo

2017-06-01

Full Text Available One of the fundamental skills supporting safe and comfortable interaction between humans is their capability to understand intuitively each other’s actions and intentions. At the basis of this ability is a special-purpose visual processing that human brain has developed to comprehend human motion. Among the first “building blocks” enabling the bootstrapping of such visual processing is the ability to detect movements performed by biological agents in the scene, a skill mastered by human babies in the first days of their life. In this paper, we present a computational model based on the assumption that such visual ability must be based on local low-level visual motion features, which are independent of shape, such as the configuration of the body and perspective. Moreover, we implement it on the humanoid robot iCub, embedding it into a software architecture that leverages the regularities of biological motion also to control robot attention and oculomotor behaviors. In essence, we put forth a model in which the regularities of biological motion link perception and action enabling a robotic agent to follow a human-inspired sensory-motor behavior. We posit that this choice facilitates mutual understanding and goal prediction during collaboration, increasing the pleasantness and safety of the interaction.

Reinforcement function design and bias for efficient learning in mobile robots

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Touzet, C.; Santos, J.M.

1998-01-01

The main paradigm in sub-symbolic learning robot domain is the reinforcement learning method. Various techniques have been developed to deal with the memorization/generalization problem, demonstrating the superior ability of artificial neural network implementations. In this paper, the authors address the issue of designing the reinforcement so as to optimize the exploration part of the learning. They also present and summarize works relative to the use of bias intended to achieve the effective synthesis of the desired behavior. Demonstrative experiments involving a self-organizing map implementation of the Q-learning and real mobile robots (Nomad 200 and Khepera) in a task of obstacle avoidance behavior synthesis are described. 3 figs., 5 tabs

Prototype Robot Pemadam Api Beroda Menggunakan Teknik Navigasi Wall Follower

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ery Safrianti

2012-10-01

Full Text Available Fire Robot serves to detect and extinguish the fire. The robot is controlled by the microcontroller ATMEGA8535 automatically. This robot contains of several sensors, such as 5 sets of ping parallax as a robot navigator, a set UVTron equipped with fire-detecting driver, DC motor driver L298 with two DC servo motors. The robot was developed from a prototype that has been studied previously with the addition on the hardware side of the sound activation and two sets of line detector. The robot will active if it receives input from the sound activation unit and will start to find the fire with “search the wall” navigation techniques. The line sensor was used as a door and home detector and circle the fire area.To extinguish the fire, this robot uses a fan driven by a BD139 transistor circuit. The overall test results show that the robot can detect the presence of the fire in each room. The robot also can find the fire and extinguish it within 1 minute.