Examining modality usage in a conversational multimodal application for mobile e-mail access

As Third Generation (3G) networks emerge they provide not only higher data transmission rates but also the ability to transmit both voice and low latency data within the same session. This paper describes the architecture and implementation of a multimodal application (voice and text) that uses natural language understanding combined with a WAP browser to access email messages on a cell phone. We present results from the use of the system by users as part of a laboratory trial that evaluated usage. The user trial also compared the multimodal system with a text-only system that is representative of current products in the market today. We discuss the observed modality issues and highlight implementation problems and usability concerns that were encountered in the trial. Findings indicate that speech was used the majority of the time by participants for both input and navigation even though most of the participants had little or no prior experience with speech systems (yet did have prior experience with text-only access to applications on their phones). To our knowledge this represents the first implementation and evaluation of its kind using this combination of technologies on an unmodified cell phone. Design implications resulting from the study findings and usability issues encountered are presented to inform the design of future conversational multimodal mobile applications.     

Knowledge-based multimodal information fusion for role recognition and situation assessment by using mobile robot

Decision-making is the key for autonomous systems to achieve real intelligence and autonomy. This paper presents an integrated probabilistic decision framework for a robot to infer roles that humans fulfill in specific missions. The framework also enables the assessment of the situation and necessity of interaction with the person fulfilling the target role. The target role is the person who is distinctive in movement or holds a mission-critical object, where the object is pre-specified in the corresponding mission. The proposed framework associates prior knowledge with spatial relationships between the humans and objects as well as with their temporal changes. Distance-Based Inference (DBI) and Knowledge-Based Inference (KBI) support recognition of human roles. DBI deduces the role based on the relative distance between humans and the specified objects. KBI focuses on human actions and objects existence. The role is estimated using weighted fusion scheme based on the information entropy. The situation is assessed by analyzing the action of the person fulfilling the target role and relative position of this person to the mission-related entities, where the entity is something that has a particular function in the corresponding mission. This assessment determines the robot decision on what actions it should take. A series of experiments has proofed that the proposed framework provides a reasonable assessment of the situation. Moreover, it outperforms other approaches on accuracy, efficiency, and robustness.     

Mental imagery for a conversational robot

To build robots that engage in fluid face-to-face spoken conversations with people, robots must have ways to connect what they say to what they see. A critical aspect of how language connects to vision is that language encodes points of view. The meaning of my left and your left differs due to an implied shift of visual perspective. The connection of language to vision also relies on object permanence. We can talk about things that are not in view. For a robot to participate in situated spoken dialog, it must have the capacity to imagine shifts of perspective, and it must maintain object permanence. We present a set of representations and procedures that enable a robotic manipulator to maintain a "mental model" of its physical environment by coupling active vision to physical simulation. Within this model, "imagined" views can be generated from arbitrary perspectives, providing the basis for situated language comprehension and production. An initial application of mental imagery for spatial language understanding for an interactive robot is described.     

High-speed laser localization for a restaurant service mobile robot

Nowadays, service robots have become very popular. The objective of this work was to develop a restaurant service mobile robot. This service mobile robot can transfer dishes around the restaurant. It can also show customers to an unoccupied table. The efficiency of the restaurant service can be increased with this robot. This service mobile robot is equipped with a “laser positioning system.” The laser positioning system is used for rapid and precise positioning and guidance of the mobile robot.     

Evolutionary optimization using graphical models

We have previously shown that a genetic algorithm can be approximated by an evolutionary algorithm using the product of univariate marginal distributions of selected points as search distribution. This algorithm (UMDA) successfully optimizes difficult multi-modal optimization problems. For correlated fitness landscapes more complex factorizations of the search distribution have to be used. These factorizations are used by the Factorized Distribution Algorithm FDA. In this paper we extend FDA to an algorithm which computes a factorization from the data. The factorization can be represented by a Bayesian network. The Bayesian network is used to generate the search points. Heinz Mühlenbein, Ph.D.: He is a research manager at GMD, the German national center for information technology. He obtained his diploma in mathematics from the University of Cologne in 1969, and his Ph.D from the University of Bonn in 1975. He entered GMD in 1969. He has worked on performance analysis of computer systems, computer networks, and massively parallel computers. Since 1988 his research interests are in Natural Computation. He was Visiting Professor at the Universities Paderborn, Bonn, Edinburgh and Carnegie-Mellon University. He has published over 60 research papers. He initiated the international conference series in natural computation PPSN in 1990. From 1993 to 1998 he was responsible European editor of Evolutionary Computation. He is presently on the Editorial Board of Evolutionary Computation, Scientific Computation and Journal of Heuristics. Thilo Mahnig, Ph.D. student: He is working at GMD — German National Research Center for Information Technology in St. Augustin. He obtained his diploma in mathematics from the University of Bonn in differential geometry in 1996. His research interest lies in the theory of population based optimization algorithms. He has co-authored several papers with Heinz Mühlenbein.     

Robust omnidirectional mobile robot topological navigation system using omnidirectional vision

Robust topological navigation strategy for omnidirectional mobile robot using an omnidirectional camera is described. The navigation system is composed of on-line and off-line stages. During the off-line learning stage, the robot performs paths based on motion model about omnidirectional motion structure and records a set of ordered key images from omnidirectional camera. From this sequence a topological map is built based on the probabilistic technique and the loop closure detection algorithm, which can deal with the perceptual aliasing problem in mapping process. Each topological node provides a set of omnidirectional images characterized by geometrical affine and scale invariant keypoints combined with GPU implementation. Given a topological node as a target, the robot navigation mission is a concatenation of topological node subsets. In the on-line navigation stage, the robot hierarchical localizes itself to the most likely node through the robust probability distribution global localization algorithm, and estimates the relative robot pose in topological node with an effective solution to the classical five-point relative pose estimation algorithm. Then the robot is controlled by a vision based control law adapted to omnidirectional cameras to follow the visual path. Experiment results carried out with a real robot in an indoor environment show the performance of the proposed method.     

Trajectory tracking optimization of mobile robot using artificial immune system

In this paper, an optimization method that provides quick response using artificial immune system, is proposed and applied to a mobile robot for trajectory tracking. The study focuses on the immune theory to derive a quick optimization method that puts emphasis on immunity feedback using memory cells by the expansion and suppression of the test group rather than to derive a specific mathematical model of the artificial immune system. Various trajectories were selected in mobile environment to evaluate the performance of the proposed artificial immune system. The global inputs to the mobile robot are reference position and reference velocity, which are time variables. The global output of mobile robot is a current position. The tracking controller makes position error to be converged to zero. In order to reduce position error, compensation velocities on the track of trajectory are necessary. Input variables of fuzzy are position errors in every sampling time. The output values of fuzzy are compensation velocities. Immune algorithm is implemented to adjust the scaling factor of fuzzy automatically. The results of the computer simulation proved the system to be efficient and effective for tracing the trajectory to the final destination by the mobile robot.

     

The localization of a mobile robot using a pseudolite ultrasonic system and a dead reckoning integrated system

In this paper, an integration system is proposed to improve the positioning performance of a mobile robot by fusing a Pseudolite Ultrasonic System (PUS), an absolute position measurement system using direct ultrasonic waves, with a Dead Reckoning (DR) odometer. As an integration algorithm of the absolute position measurement system and DR, two methods are proposed. In the loosely coupled method, the PUS and the DR calculate the position independently and a Kalman filter estimates the position using position information from the PUS and the DR. In the tightly coupled method, the PUS provides the distance between the ultrasonic transmitters and receivers without calculating the position directly and the DR provides the translational and rotational displacement of the mobile robot. The Kalman filter then estimates the position using information from the PUS and the DR. In addition, to improve the positioning performance in case the line-of-sight (LOS) between the ultrasonic transmitter and receiver is blocked due to obstacles, a positioning failure detection algorithm and reckoning methods are proposed. The positioning performances of the proposed PUS/DR integrated systems and the validity of the positioning failure detection algorithm are verified and evaluated by experiments.     

A relative localisation system of a mobile robot

This paper describes a localisation system applied to vehicle displacements on irregular grounds and at moderate speed (about 1 m/s). It is composed of a gyrometer and a Doppler sensor, which give, by integration, the attitude and position of the vehicle supporting them, without contact with the ground. The precision of the obtained localisation is about 2% for ranges of about a hundred meters.     

Path planning of a multiple mobile robot system

We present path-planning techniques for a multiple mobile robot system. The mobile robot has the shape of a cylinder, and its diameter, height, and weight are 8 cm, 15 cm, and 1.5 kg, respectively. The controller of the mobile robot is an MCS-51 chip, and it acquires detection signals from sensors through I/O pins. It receives commands from the supervising computer via a wireless RF interface, and transmits the status of the robots to the supervising computer via a wireless RF interface. The mobile robot system is a module-based system, and contains a controller module (including two DC motors and drivers), an obstacle detection module, a voice module, a wireless RF module, an encoder module, and a compass detection module. We propose an evaluation method to arrange the position of the multiple mobile robot system, and develop a path-planning interface on the supervising computer. In the experimental results, the mobile robots were able to receive commands from the supervising computer, and to move their next positions according to the proposed method.     

Sensing error for a mobile robot using line navigation

The use of a contrasting line for the visual navigation of autonomous mobile robots in a factory environment is developed. Minimum and maximum linewidths are determined analytically by considering sensor geometry, field of view, and error conditions present in the system. The effects of these error conditions on the width of the line, as seen in the image plane, determines the optimal linewidth. Numerical examples using typical sensor parameters are given.     

Control of a nonholonomic mobile robot using neural networks

A control structure that makes possible the integration of a kinematic controller and a neural network (NN) computed-torque controller for nonholonomic mobile robots is presented. A combined kinematic/torque control law is developed using backstepping and stability is guaranteed by Lyapunov theory. This control algorithm can be applied to the three basic nonholonomic navigation problems: tracking a reference trajectory, path following, and stabilization about a desired posture. Moreover, the NN controller proposed in this work can deal with unmodeled bounded disturbances and/or unstructured unmodeled dynamics in the vehicle. Online NN weight tuning algorithms do not require off-line learning yet guarantee small tracking errors and bounded control signals are utilized.     

Absolute localization for a mobile robot using place cells

This paper describes a method for absolute localization and environment recognition for an autonomous, sonar-equipped robot. The addition of an auto-associative memory to previously developed non-neural map making software results in a system that is capable of recognizing its environment and its position within the environment using remembered features and room geometry. In the prior system the robot used sonar to construct a metric map of an environment, but the map information had to be reconstructed each time the robot returned to an environment. We evaluated the system with a task that requires memory of the position of a goal that is not directly detectable by sonar.     

机器人手机编程系统设计

设计了一种基于手机Android系统、机器人ARM核心控制板、蓝牙系统的手机端编程系统。该系统将机器人常见控制指令函数封装成库,存储在机器人控制器内存中,Android手机端使用自主定义的控制指令,通过与机器人的蓝牙连接,将手机编程的指令传输给机器人,存储在机器人的EEPROM中,最后由机器人调取完成相应控制。该系统控制简单,一定程度上摆脱了传统的电脑编程,利用智能手机的便捷性,使得机器人编程变得更加便捷简单,并通过实验证明了设计方法的有效性。     

Range measurements by a mobile robot using a navigation line

A continuous, straight-edged line is used for the visual navigation of an autonomous mobile robot in a factor environment. This line, which resides on the floor and contrasts with background, may also be used to determine range information. Two methods are developed for determining the range of an object in the sensor's field of view. The effects of various error conditions in the system geometry on each ranging method are determined. Equations are derived which yield the percent error in calculating ranges given estimates of these error conditions. Numerical examples using typical sensor parameters are given.     

移动机器人运动轨迹控制系统

以移动机器人的轨迹控制为主要目标,研究了线性控制算法在机器人轨迹控制中的具体实现方法.论证了其可行性,分析了算法的稳定性约束条件,通过仿真分析了控制参数对运动轨迹的影响.将该算法应用到实际的机器人控制中,设计出了基于陀螺仪和光电编码器的温室移动机器人控制系统.     

Mission-based online generation of probabilistic monitoring models for mobile robot navigation using Petri nets

This paper presents a generic hybrid monitoring approach, which allows the detection of inconsistencies in the navigation of autonomous mobile robots using online-generated models. A mission on the context of the navigation corresponds to an autonomous navigation from a start to an end mission point. The operator defines this mission by selecting a final goal point. Based on this selection the monitoring models for the current mission must be generated online. The originalities of this work are (i) the association of classic state estimation based on a particle filter with a special class of Petri net in order to deliver an estimation of the next robot state (position) as well as the environment state (graph nodes) and to use both pieces of information to distinguish between external noise influences, internal component faults and global behaviour inconsistency (ii) the integration of the geometrical and the logical environment representation into the monitor model (iii) the online generation of the corresponding monitoring model for the present mission trajectory while the system is running. The model takes simultaneously into account the uncertainty of the robot and of the environment through a unified modelling of both. To show the feasibility of the approach we apply it to an intelligent wheelchair (IWC) as a special type of autonomous mobile robot.     

Finding misplaced items using a mobile robot in a smart home environment

Frontiers of Information Technology & Electronic Engineering - Smart homes can provide complementary information to assist home service robots. We present a robotic misplaced item finding (MIF)...     

Indoor navigation of a non-holonomic mobile robot using a visual memory

When navigating in an unknown environment for the first time, a natural behavior consists on memorizing some key views along the performed path, in order to use these references as checkpoints for a future navigation mission. The navigation framework for wheeled mobile robots presented in this paper is based on this assumption. During a human-guided learning step, the robot performs paths which are sampled and stored as a set of ordered key images, acquired by an embedded camera. The set of these obtained visual paths is topologically organized and provides a visual memory of the environment. Given an image of one of the visual paths as a target, the robot navigation mission is defined as a concatenation of visual path subsets, called visual route. When running autonomously, the robot is controlled by a visual servoing law adapted to its nonholonomic constraint. Based on the regulation of successive homographies, this control guides the robot along the reference visual route without explicitly planning any trajectory. The proposed framework has been designed for the entire class of central catadioptric cameras (including conventional cameras). It has been validated onto two architectures. In the first one, algorithms have been implemented onto a dedicated hardware and the robot is equipped with a standard perspective camera. In the second one, they have been implemented on a standard PC and an omnidirectional camera is considered.

Wheeled mobile robot navigation using proportional navigation

We present a method for wheeled mobile robot navigation based on the proportional navigation law. This method integrates the robot's kinematics equations and geometric rules. According to the control strategy, the robot's angular velocity is proportional to the rate of turn of the angle of the line of sight that joins the robot and the goal. We derive a relative kinematics system which models the navigation problem of the robot in polar coordinates. The kinematics model captures the robot path as a function of the control law parameters. It turns out that different paths are obtained for different control parameters. Since the control parameters are real, the number of possible paths is infinite. Results concerning the navigation using our control law are rigorously proven. An extensive simulation confirms our theoretical results.