Robots assembling machines: learning from the World Robot Summit 2018 Assembly Challenge

ABSTRACT

The Industrial Assembly Challenge at the World Robot Summit was held in 2018 to showcase the state-of-the-art of autonomous manufacturing systems. The challenge included various tasks, such as bin picking, kitting, and assembly of standard industrial parts into 2D and 3D assemblies. Some of the tasks were only revealed at the competition itself, representing the challenge of ‘level 5’ automation, i.e. programming and setting up an autonomous assembly system in less than one day. We conducted a survey among the teams that participated in the challenge and investigated aspects such as team composition, development costs, system setups as well as the teams' strategies and approaches. An analysis of the survey results reveals that the competitors have been in two camps: those constructing conventional robotic work cells with off-the-shelf tools, and teams who mostly relied on custom-made end effectors and novel software approaches in combination with collaborative robots. While both camps performed reasonably well, the winning team chose a middle ground in between, combining the efficiency of established play-back programming with the autonomy gained by CAD-based object detection and force control for assembly operations.     

Perpetual Robot Swarm: Long-Term Autonomy of Mobile Robots Using On-the-fly Inductive Charging

Swarm robotics studies the intelligent collective behaviour emerging from long-term interactions of large number of simple robots. However, maintaining a large number of robots operational for long time periods requires significant battery capacity, which is an issue for small robots. Therefore, re-charging systems such as automated battery-swapping stations have been implemented. These systems require that the robots interrupt, albeit shortly, their activity, which influences the swarm behaviour. In this paper, a low-cost on-the-fly wireless charging system, composed of several charging cells, is proposed for use in swarm robotic research studies. To determine the system’s ability to support perpetual swarm operation, a probabilistic model that takes into account the swarm size, robot behaviour and charging area configuration, is outlined. Based on the model, a prototype system with 12 charging cells and a small mobile robot, Mona, was developed. A series of long-term experiments with different arenas and behavioural configurations indicated the model’s accuracy and demonstrated the system’s ability to support perpetual operation of multi-robotic system.     

Robot Navigation Based on Discrimination of Artificial Fields: Application to Single Robots

The paper introduces a method for local navigation of mobile robots based on the discrimination of multiple artificial fields, which correspond to targets, obstacles, robots and, if this is the case, robot collectives. Instead of just adding up all potentials, the robot discerns the pertinent potentials at its location and applies a set of motion decisions at each moment. Satisfactory results are obtained. This is the first paper of a more extensive work dealing with individual robots, unorganized groups of robot and robot formations. Here, the method is introduced, with examples for a single robot and for several independent robots.     

A Flexible Control Architecture for Mobile Robots: An Application for a Walking Robot

To get the best features of both deliberative and reactive controllers, present mobile robot control architectures are designed to accommodate both types of controller. However, these architectures are still very rigidly structured thus deliberative modules are always assigned to the same role as a high-level planner or sequencer while low-level reactive modules are still the ones directly interacting with the robot environment. Furthermore, within these architectures communication and interface between modules are if not strongly established, they are very complex thus making them unsuitable for simple robotic systems. Our idea in this paper is to present a control architecture that is flexible in the sense that it can easily integrate both reactive and deliberative modules but not necessarily restricting the role of each type of controller. Communication between modules is through simple arbitration schemes while interface is by connecting a common communication line between modules and simple read and/or write access of data objects. On top of these features, the proposed control architecture is scalable and exhibits graceful degradation when some of the modules fail, similar to the present mobile robot architectures. Our idea has enabled our four-legged robot to walk autonomously in a structured uneven terrain.     

Evaluating the Robot Personality and Verbal Behavior of Domestic Robots Using Video-Based Studies

Robots are increasingly being used in domestic environments and should be able to interact with inexperienced users. Human–human interaction and human–computer interaction research findings are relevant, but often limited because robots are different from both humans and computers. Therefore, new human–robot interaction (HRI) research methods can inform the design of robots suitable for inexperienced users. A video-based HRI (VHRI) methodology was here used to carry out a multi-national HRI user study for the prototype domestic robot BIRON (BIelefeld RObot companioN). Previously, the VHRI methodology was used in constrained HRI situations, while in this study HRIs involved a series of events as part of a 'hometour' scenario. Thus, the present work is the first study of this methodology in extended HRI contexts with a multi-national approach. Participants watched videos of the robot interacting with a human actor and rated two robot behaviors (Extrovert and Introvert). Participants' perceptions and ratings of the robot's behaviors differed with regard to both verbal interactions and person following by the robot. The study also confirms that the VHRI methodology provides a valuable means to obtain early user feedback, even before fully working prototypes are available. This can usefully guide the future design work on robots, and associated verbal and non-verbal behaviors.     

A Modularized Personal Robot DRP I: Design and Implementation

In this paper, we investigate comprehensive issues of modularized robot systems and present architecture for effective development of personal robots. The proposed architecture includes the interface and interaction methodology of the hardware modules and the software among the modules. Based on the architecture, we present a fully modularized personal robot dynamically reconfigurable personal robot I. Its hardware modules are easily added to or removed from the original system, and also the distributed software functions of the modules are rearrangeable accordingly. We focus on how to effectively build up the robot, and discuss the dynamically reconfigurable features of it for evaluating the proposed idea and approach.     

有信心就有机会——访美国易腾迈公司总裁兼首席执行官Patrick J.Byme

3月11-13日,Patrick J.Byme到任美国易腾迈(Intermec)公司侣个月后,首次作为Intermec公司CEO来到中国,时值金融危机席卷全球半年后.     

Robots in Japan: present and future

The would-wide slackening of business activities appears to have also slowed the pace of the industrial robot business. It is often said that we are now entering an epoch where the industrial robot is to be succeeded by the "service robot". The designation "service robot," however still remains to be clearly defined. As yet, the image evoked by this term varies very widely from person to person, in both the external appearance and the technological elements that constitute such a robot. The author considers the term service robot to be a generic term covering all robots that are not for industrial use. The author looks at the development of service robots in Japan     

Robots in industry: an overview

Although the introduction of robots into manufacturing technology is a relatively recent phenomenon, there are indications that a rapid increase in the numbers of robots employed in industry is already taking place. Robots may be found in a wide variety of settings, performing a wide range of functions. These functions may be characterised in terms of whether the robot manipulates a tool or handles a workpiece. The human tasks associated with all robot installations are programming and maintenance. Other tasks vary depending on the particular robot application but are likely to fall into one of four categories. The use of robots has implications for safety and it is apparent that greater emphasis than hitherto must be laid on the design and implementation of procedures to ensure safety.     

A Human–Robot Cooperative Learning System for Easy Installation of Assistant Robots in New Working Environments

One of the applications of service robots with a greater social impact is the assistance to elderly or disabled people. In these applications, assistant robots must robustly navigate in structured indoor environments such as hospitals, nursing homes or houses, heading from room to room to carry out different nursing or service tasks. Among the main requirements of these robotic aids, one that will determine its future commercial feasibility, is the easy installation of the robot in new working domains without long, tedious or complex configuration steps. This paper describes the navigation system of the assistant robot called SIRA, developed in the Electronics Department of the University of Alcalá, focusing on the learning module, specially designed to make the installation of the robot easier and faster in new environments. To cope with robustness and reliability requirements, the navigation system uses probabilistic reasoning (POMDPs) to globally localize the robot and to direct its goal-oriented actions. The proposed learning module fast learns the Markov model of a new environment by means of an exploration stage that takes advantage of human–robot interfaces (basically speech) and user–robot cooperation to accelerate model acquisition. The proposed learning method, based on a modification of the EM algorithm, is able to robustly explore new environments with a low number of corridor traversals, as shown in some experiments carried out with SIRA.     

网络环境下虚拟机器人——“SoftMan”系统平台总体设计

基于网络环境虚拟机器人的计算模式融合分布式人工智能、并行分布式系统、移动智体和人工生命的技术,是计算机网络时代的一项崭新而关键技术,不仅会实现更灵活的分布式异步计算,而且将把网络计算带入一个全新的智能化时代。这种计算方式在如何充分利用网络资源,如何给移动用户提供高效的服务等诸多问题上提供了新的思路,目前主要研究领域集中在动态信息获取、智能网络、电子商务、主动网络和移动智能通信网络等。本文系统阐述“SoftMan”系统平台的设计方法、开发策略、总体架构和软件实现,同时对其相关支撑技术进行了剖析;最后就“Soft—Man”系统开发的思路和未来研究趋势进行了展望。     

Friction and Stick-Slip in Robots: Simulation and Experimentation

This paper proposes an algorithm for joint friction in robotmanipulator simulations. The model includes an appropriaterepresentation of the behaviour at low speed and, especially, thestick-slip process. The concept of the model is introduced through twosimple examples. The method is then extended to more complex multibodysystems and, in particular, to robot manipulators. It is furthersynthesized into a numerical algorithm for computer simulations. Thealgorithm is experimentally validated using a two-degrees-of-freedomplanar robot moving in the vertical plane. Free motions resulting fromknown initial conditions were successfully reproduced.     

Checking If There Exists a Monotonic Function That Is Consistent with the Measurements: An Efficient Algorithm

In many problems in science and engineering ranging from astrophysics to geosciences to financial analysis, we know that a physical quantity y depends on the physical quantity x, i.e., y = f(x) for some function f(x), and we want to check whether this dependence is monotonic. Specifically, finitely many measurements of x_i and y = f(x) have been made, and we want to check whether the results of these measurements are consistent with the monotonicity of f(x). An efficient parallelizable algorithm is known for solving this problem when the values x_i are known precisely, while the values y_i are known with interval uncertainty. In this paper, we extend this algorithm to a more general (and more realistic) situation when both x_i and y_i are known with interval uncertainty.     

Tracking Control of Multiple Mobile Robots: A Case Study of Inter‐Robot Collision‐Free Problem

ABSTRACT Tracking control problem of multiple mobile robots is considered. Our system is composed of a reference and two follower robots of unicycle type, which have their own priority numbers. The purpose is to control the two followers so that the reference is tracked with arbitrary desired clearance and also to avoid an inter‐robot collision, which can occur randomly during the control process subjected to communication range limitation. We introduce two switching controllers and appropriately using their convergence properties leading to the collision‐free movement. Simulation results prove efficiency of our control techniques.