A Constraint-Based Robotic Soccer Team

It is a challenging task for a team of multiple fast-moving robots to cooperate with each other and to compete with another team in a dynamic, real-time environment. For a robot team to play soccer successfully, various technologies have to be incorporated including robotic architecture, multi-agent collaboration and real-time reasoning. A robot is an integrated system, with a controller embedded in its plant. A robotic system is the coupling of a robot to its environment. Robotic systems are, in general, hybrid dynamic systems, consisting of continuous, discrete and event-driven components. Constraint Nets (CN) provide a semantic model for modeling hybrid dynamic systems. Controllers are embedded constraint solvers that solve constraints in real-time. A controller for our robot soccer team, UBC Dynamo98, has been modeled in CN, and implemented in Java, using the Java Beans architecture. A coach program using an evolutionary algorithm has also been designed and implemented to adjust the weights of the constraints and other parameters in the controller. The results demonstrate that the formal CN approach is a practical tool for designing and implementing controllers for robots in multi-agent real-time environments. They also demonstrate the effectiveness of applying the evolutionary algorithm to the CN-modeled controllers.     

Robust Adaptive Control of Robots Using Neural Network: Global Stability

A desired compensation adaptive law‐based neural network (DCAL‐NN) controller is proposed for the robust position control of rigid‐link robots. The NN is used to approximate a highly nonlinear function. The controller can guarantee the global asymptotic stability of tracking errors and boundedness of NN weights. In addition, the NN weights here are tuned on‐line, with no offline learning phase required. When compared with standard adaptive robot controllers, we do not require linearity in the parameters, or lengthy and tedious preliminary analysis to determine a regression matrix. The controller can be regarded as a universal reusable controller because the same controller can be applied to any type of rigid robots without any modifications. A comparative simulation study with different robust and adaptive controllers is included.     

Fuzzy logic techniques for navigation of several mobile robots

In this paper, navigation techniques for several mobile robots as many as one thousand robots using fuzzy logic are investigated in a totally unknown environment. Fuzzy logic controllers (FLC) using different membership functions are developed and used to navigate mobile robots. First a fuzzy controller has been used with four types of input members, two types of output members and three parameters each. Next two types of fuzzy controllers have been developed having same input members and output members with five parameters each. Each robot has an array of ultrasonic sensors for measuring the distances of obstacles around it and an infrared sensor for detecting the bearing of the target. These techniques have been demonstrated in various exercises, which depicts that the robots are able to avoid obstacles as well as negotiate the dead ends and reach the targets efficiently. Amongst the techniques developed, FLC having Gaussian membership function is found to be most efficient for mobile robots navigation.     

Online Learning and Adaptation of Autonomous Mobile Robots for Sustainable Agriculture

In this paper we will introduce the application of our newly patented double hierarchical Fuzzy-Genetic system (British patent 99-10539.7) to produce an intelligent autonomous outdoor agricultural mobile robot capable of learning and calibrating its controller online in a short time interval and implementing a life long learning strategy. The online and life long learning strategy allow the outdoor robots to increase their experience and adapt their controllers in the face of the changing and dynamic unstructured outdoor agricultural environments. Such characteristics permit prolonged periods of operation within dynamic agricultural environments, which is an essential feature for the realization of a platform vehicle for use in sustainable agriculture and organic farming.     

Using direct competition to select for competent controllers in evolutionary robotics

Evolutionary robotics (ER) is a field of research that applies artificial evolution toward the automatic design and synthesis of intelligent robot controllers. The preceding decade saw numerous advances in evolutionary robotics hardware and software systems. However, the sophistication of resulting robot controllers has remained nearly static over this period of time. Here, we make the case that current methods of controller fitness evaluation are primary factors limiting the further development of ER. To address this, we define a form of fitness evaluation that relies on intra-population competition. In this research, complex neural networks were trained to control robots playing a competitive team game. To limit the amount of human bias or know-how injected into the evolving controllers, selection was based on whether controllers won or lost games. The robots relied on video sensing of their environment, and the neural networks required on the order of 150 inputs. This represents an order of magnitude increase in sensor complexity compared to other research in this field. Evolved controllers were tested extensively in real fully-autonomous robots and in simulation. Results and experiments are presented to characterize the training process and the acquisition of controller competency under different evolutionary conditions.     

Emergent behaviors of a fuzzy sensory-motor controller evolved bygenetic algorithm

Recently, there has been extensive work on the construction of fuzzy controllers for mobile robots by a genetic algorithm (GA); therefore, we can realize evolutionary optimization as a promising method for developing fuzzy controllers. However, much investigation on the evolutionary fuzzy controller remains because most of the previous works have not seriously attempted to analyze the fuzzy controller obtained by evolution. This paper develops a fuzzy logic controller for a mobile robot with a GA in simulation environments and analyzes the behaviors of the controller with a state transition diagram of the internal model. Experimental results show that appropriate control mechanisms of the fuzzy controller are obtained by evolution. The controller has evolved wen enough to smoothly drive the robot in different environments. The robot produces emergent behaviors by the interaction of several fuzzy rules obtained.     

Adaptive Control for Simultaneous Stabilization and Tracking of Unicycle Mobile Robots

A novel time‐varying adaptive controller at the torque level is proposed to simultaneously solve the stabilization and the tracking problem of unicycle mobile robots with unknown dynamic parameters. The idea underlying the controller is intuitively simple: rather than switching between two different types of controllers according to the a priori knowledge of the reference velocities being persistently exciting or not, a new time‐varying signal is introduced to make the single controller capable of adaptively, smoothly, and gradually converting between stabilizer and tracker depending on the instantaneous and past information of the reference velocities. Our control development is based on Lyapunov's direct method and the backstepping technique. Adaptive control techniques are used to deal with parametric uncertainties. The outstanding feature of our controller is computationally simple due to its full use of the existing results on stabilization and tracking control for unicycle robots. With our approach, robots can globally follow a large class of paths including a straight line, a circle, a path approaching a set‐point, or just a set‐point using a single controller. Simulation results for a unicycle‐type mobile robot are provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed controller.     

神经网络PID 控制的机器人视觉反馈跟踪

探讨针对视觉空间的非完整移动机器人的跟踪控制问题。在不校准摄像机视觉参数的情况下,利用视觉反馈得到的信息,设计出非完整移动机器人轨迹跟踪的神经网络控制器。将BP网络与PID控制相结合,避免复杂的公式推导,解决参数不校准下的控制问题,并很好的实现跟踪。仿真结果证明了文中方法的有效性。     

Experimental Study on Advanced Underwater Robot Control

The control issue of underwater robots is very challenging due to the nonlinearity, time variance, unpredictable external disturbances, such as the sea current fluctuation, and the difficulty in accurately modeling the hydrodynamic effect. Conventional linear controllers may fail in satisfying performance requirements, especially when changes in the system and environment occur during the operation since it is almost impossible to manually retune the control parameters in water. Therefore, it is highly desirable to have an underwater robot controller capable of self-adjusting control parameters when the overall performance degrades. This paper presents the theory and experimental work of the adaptive plus disturbance observer (ADOB) controller for underwater robots, which is robust with respect to external disturbance and uncertainties in the system. This control scheme consists of disturbance observer (DOB) as the inner-loop controller and a nonregressor based adaptive controller as the outer-loop controller. The effectiveness of the ADOB was experimentally investigated by implementing three controllers: PID, PID plus DOB, and ADOB on an autonomous underwater robot, ODIN III.     

Coupled Oscillator Control of Autonomous Mobile Robots

This paper introduces a nonlinear oscillator scheme to control autonomous mobile robots. The method is based on observations of a successful control mechanism used in nature, the Central Pattern Generator. Simulations were used to assess the performance of oscillator controller when used to implement several behaviors in an autonomous robot operating in a closed arena. A sequence of basic behaviors (random wandering, obstacle avoidance and light following) was coordinated in the robot to produce the higher behavior of foraging for light. The controller is explored in simulations and tests on physical robots. It is shown that the oscillator—based controller outperforms a reactive controller in the tasks of exploring an arena with irregular walls and in searching for light.     

Evolutionary robotics: the Sussex approach

We give an overview of evolutionary robotics research at Sussex over the last five years. We explain and justify our distinctive approaches to (artificial) evolution, and to the nature of robot control systems that are evolved. Results are presented from research with evolved controllers for autonomous mobile robots, simulated robots, co-evolved animats, real robots with software controllers, and a real robot with a controller directly evolved in hardware.     

INTELLIGENT MOTION CONTROL FOR OMNIDIRECTIONAL MOBILE ROBOTS USING ANT COLONY OPTIMIZATION

This article presents an intelligent system-on-a-programmable-chip-based (SoPC) ant colony optimization (ACO) motion controller for embedded omnidirectional mobile robots with three independent driving wheels equally spaced at 120 degrees from one another. Both ACO parameter autotuner and kinematic motion controller are integrated in one field-programmable gate array (FPGA) chip to efficiently construct an experimental mobile robot. The optimal parameters of the motion controller are obtained by minimizing the performance index using the proposed SoPC-based ACO computing method. These optimal parameters are then employed in the ACO-based embedded kinematic controller in order to obtain better performance for omnidirectional mobile robots to achieve trajectory tracking and stabilization. Experimental results are conducted to show the effectiveness and merit of the proposed intelligent ACO-based embedded controller for omnidirectional mobile robots. These results indicate that the proposed ACO-based embedded optimal controller outperforms the nonoptimal controllers and the conventional genetic algorithm (GA) optimal controllers.     

Learning fuzzy controllers in mobile robotics with embedded preprocessing

The automatic design of controllers for mobile robots usually requires two stages. In the first stage, sensorial data are preprocessed or transformed into high level and meaningful values of variables which are usually defined from expert knowledge. In the second stage, a machine learning technique is applied to obtain a controller that maps these high level variables to the control commands that are actually sent to the robot. This paper describes an algorithm that is able to embed the preprocessing stage into the learning stage in order to get controllers directly starting from sensorial raw data with no expert knowledge involved. Due to the high dimensionality of the sensorial data, this approach uses Quantified Fuzzy Rules (QFRs), that are able to transform low-level input variables into high-level input variables, reducing the dimensionality through summarization. The proposed learning algorithm, called Iterative Quantified Fuzzy Rule Learning (IQFRL), is based on genetic programming. IQFRL is able to learn rules with different structures, and can manage linguistic variables with multiple granularities. The algorithm has been tested with the implementation of the wall-following behavior both in several realistic simulated environments with different complexity and on a Pioneer 3-AT robot in two real environments. Results have been compared with several well-known learning algorithms combined with different data preprocessing techniques, showing that IQFRL exhibits a better and statistically significant performance. Moreover, three real world applications for which IQFRL plays a central role are also presented: path and object tracking with static and moving obstacles avoidance.     

Recurrent neural robot controllers: feedback mechanisms for identifying environmental motion dynamics

In this paper a series of recurrent controllers for mobile robots have been developed. The system combines the iterative learning capability of neural controllers and the optimisation ability of particle swarms. In particular, three controllers have been developed: an Exo-sensing, an Ego-sensing and a Composite controller which is the hybrid of the latter two. The task for each controller is to learn to follow a moving target and identify its trajectory using only local information. We show how the learned behaviours of each architecture rely on different sensory representations, although good results are obtained in all cases.     

An information-theoretic landscape analysis of neuro-controlled embodied organisms

Recently, there has been a lot of interest in evolving controllers for both physically simulated creatures as well as for real physical robots. However, a range of different ANN architectures are used for controller evolution, and, in the majority of the work conducted, the choice of the architecture used is made arbitrarily. No fitness landscape analysis was provided for the underlying fitness landscape of the controllers search space. As such, the literature remains largely inconclusive as to which ANN architecture provides the most efficient and effective space for searching the range of possible controllers through evolutionary methods. This represents the motivation for this paper where we compare the search space for four different types of ANN architecture for controller evolution through an information-theoretic analysis of the fitness landscape associated with each type of architecture.     

作业型飞行机器人抓取后重心偏移的轨迹跟踪控制

作业型飞行机器人是指能够对环境施加主动影响的飞行机器人, 它通常由旋翼飞行器与机械臂组合而成. 本文针对作业型飞行机器人在动态飞行抓取后, 重心位置变化产生的系统控制难题, 设计了有效的跟踪控制策略. 首先, 在系统建模时引入重心偏移系统参数和重心偏移控制参数, 并考虑惯性张量不为常数, 提高了系统建模的精度. 然后, 在姿态解算时, 考虑重心偏移对系统性能的影响, 构建包含重心偏移系统参数的解算方法, 得到更高精度的期望翻滚角和期望俯仰角. 接着, 设计了基于滑模控制的重心偏移补偿位置控制器, 实现了有效的位置跟踪控制. 同时, 在姿态反演控制器的基础上, 加入自适应律估计重心偏移控制参数和变化的惯性张量, 再通过小脑神经网络逼近惯性张量的真实值, 提高姿态控制器的精度. 最后, 给出了所设计控制器的稳定性证明, 并在仿真环境下验证了所提出的方法的有效性和优越性.     

Design of a PID optimized neural networks and PD fuzzy logic controllers for a two‐wheeled mobile robot

In this paper, two intelligent techniques for a two‐wheeled differential mobile robot are designed and presented: A smart PID optimized neural networks based controller (SNNPIDC) and a PD fuzzy logic controller (PDFLC). Basically, mobile robots are required to work and navigate under exigent circumstances where the environment is hostile, full of disturbances such as holes and stones. The robot navigation leads to an autonomous decision making to overcome an obstacle and/or to stop the engine to protect it. In fact, the actuators that drive the robot should in no way be damaged and should stop to change direction in case of insurmountable disturbances. In this context, two controllers are implemented and a comparative study is carried out to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approaches. For the first one, neural networks are used to optimize the parameters of a PID controller and for the second a fuzzy inference system type Mamdani based controller is adopted. The goal is to implement control algorithms for safe robot navigation while avoiding damage to the motors. In these two control cases, the smart robot has to quickly perform tasks and adapt to changing environment conditions while ensuring stability and accuracy and must be autonomous with regards to decision making. Simulations results aren't done in real environments, but are obtained with the Matlab/Simulink environment in which holes and stones are modeled by different load torques and are applied as disturbances on the mobile robot environment. These simulation results and the robot performances are satisfactory and are compared to a PID controller in which parameters are tuned by the Ziegler–Nichols tuning method. The applied methods have proven to be highly robust.     

全向移动机器人编队分布式控制研究

简单介绍了NuBot机器人的两个主要组成部分：全向视觉和全向运动系统，并给出了运动学分析．基于该机器人平台，提出了D-A和D-D控制两种跟踪算法．通过机器人之间的相对定位和局部通信，实现了多机器人编队的分布式控制，同时，该算法可对机器人朝向进行独立控制．针对不同情况下的编队避障问题，提出了编队变形和编队变换两种方法．仿真和实际机器人实验表明，D-A控制方法能够实现平滑的编队变换；编队变形方法能够在尽量保持原始队形的情况下保证编队顺利避障．     

Coordination of Multiple Control Schemes for Mobile Robot Navigation on the Basis of the Generalized Stochastic Petri-Nets

There have been two major streams of research for the motion control of mobile robots: model-based deliberate control and sensor-based reactive control. Since the two schemes have complementary advantages and disadvantages, each cannot completely replace the other. There are a variety of environmental conditions that affect the performance of navigation. The motivation of this study is that multiple motion control schemes are required to survive in dynamic real environments. In this paper, we exploit two discrete motion controllers for mobile robots. One is the deliberate trajectory tracking controller and the other is the reactive dynamic window approach. We propose the selective coordination of two controllers on the basis of the generalized stochastic Petri net (GSPN) framework. The major scope of this paper is to clarify the advantage of the proposed controller based on the coordination of multiple controllers from the results of quantitative performance comparison among motion controllers. For quantitative comparison, both simulations and experiments in dynamic environments were carried out. In addition, it is shown that navigation experiences are accumulated in the GSPN formalism. The performance of navigation service can be significantly improved owing to the automatically stored experiences.     

Controlling Ensembles of Robots via a Supervisory Aerial Robot

We consider the task of controlling a large team of non-holonomic ground robots with an unmanned aerial vehicle in a decentralized manner that is invariant to the number of ground robots. The central idea is the development of an abstraction for the team of ground robots that allows the aerial platform to control the team without any knowledge of the specificity of individual vehicles. This happens in much the same way as a human operator can control a single robot vehicle by simply commanding the forward and turning velocities without a detailed knowledge of the specifics of the robot. The abstraction includes a gross model of the shape of the formation of the team, and information about the position and orientation of the team in the plane. We derive controllers that allow the team of robots to move in formation while avoiding collisions and respecting the abstraction commanded by the aerial platform. We propose strategies for controlling the physical spread of the ensemble of robots by splitting and merging the team based on distributed techniques. We provide simulation and experimental results using a team of indoor mobile robots and a three-dimensional, cable-controlled, parallel robot which serves as our indoor unmanned aerial platform.