Articulated hybrid mobile robot mechanism with compounded mobility and manipulation and on-board wireless sensor/actuator control interfaces

This paper presents the development of a remotely operated mobile robot system with a hybrid mechanism whereby the locomotion platform and manipulator arm are designed as one entity to support both locomotion and manipulation interchangeably. The mechanical design is briefly described as well as the dynamic simulations used to analyze the robot mobility and functionality. As part of the development, this paper mainly focuses on a new generalized control hardware architecture based on embedded on-board wireless communication network between the robot’s subsystems. This approach results in a modular control hardware architecture since no wire connections are used between the actuators and sensors in each of the mobile robot subsystems and also provides operational fault-tolerance. The effectiveness of this approach is experimentally demonstrated and validated by implementing it in the hybrid mobile robot system. The new control hardware architecture and mechanical design demonstrate the qualitative and quantitative performance improvements of the mobile robot in terms of the new locomotion and manipulation capabilities it provides. Experimental results are presented to demonstrate new operative tasks that the robot was able to accomplish, such as traversing challenging obstacles, and manipulating objects of various capacities; functions often required in various challenging applications, such as search and rescue missions, hazardous site inspections, and planetary explorations.     

Control of manipulation robots interacting with dynamicenvironment: Implementation and experiments

In this paper, simulation experiments with different control laws are given, based on a new approach to solving the control tasks for robots in contact with the environment. The comparison of these control laws with the improved versions of the traditional hybrid control are also analyzed. The simulation experiments performed on a real-scale six-degrees-of-freedom industrial robot demonstrate the advantage of the new control concept and improved performances of the robot interacting with a dynamic environment. The tests conducted on industrial robot Manutec r3 are also presented     

一种飞行巡线机器人的设计与实现

针对2019年全国大学生电子设计竞赛中要求设计制作一款四旋翼飞行器的巡线机器人来实现对电力线路进行自动巡检、巡查和巧遇故障时自动拍照存储记录等功能,设计提出了一种基于四旋翼飞行器的巡线机器人的设计方案。采用高性能微控制器TM4C123GH6PM作为巡线机器人的飞控主处理器,为了满足自动巡检任务,在飞控板上增加了视觉Open MV传感器、姿态传感器和超声波模块协同作用来识别线缆、定高和测距。实验结果表明,设计的四旋翼巡线机器人能够在多种飞行速度和无路径规划条件下完成正常的电力线路巡检任务。     

Hardware design and distributed embedded control architecture of a mobile soccer robot

Designing robust, modular and fast mobile robots, operating in high dynamic environments is a challenging task. This includes design of the mechanics and the control system of the robot. This paper presents the modular hardware design of a mobile soccer robot platform, including the mechanics, electronic system and the low-level distributed control architecture of the robot. The basic idea behind this paper is not to introduce a new distributed control architecture, both at low and high levels of control, but to focus on a novel approach to manage the distributed control system of a single robot, consisting of a number of microcontroller based modules connected together through a data bus.     

Localization of a mobile robot using the image of a moving object

This paper proposes a new approach for determining the location of a mobile robot using the image of a moving object. This scheme combines data from the observed position, using dead-reckoning sensors, and the estimated position, using images of moving objects captured by a fixed camera to determine the location of a mobile robot. Using the a priori known path of a moving object and a perspective camera model, the geometric constraint equations that represent the relation between image frame coordinates for a moving object and the estimated robot's position are derived. Since the equations are based on estimated position, measurement error may exist. However, the proposed method utilizes the error between the observed and estimated image coordinates to localize the mobile robot, and the Kalman filtering scheme is used for the estimation of the mobile robot location. The proposed approach is applied for a moving object on the wall to show the reduction of uncertainty in the determining of mobile robot location.     

Fuzzy neural network-based real-time self-reaction of mobile robot in unknown environments

In this paper, a hybrid intelligent method including fuzzy inference and neural network is presented for real-time self-reaction of a mobile robot in unknown environments. A neural network with fuzzy inference (fuzzy neural network, FNN) presented can effectively improve the learning speed of the neural network. The method can be used to control a mobile robot based on the present motion situations of the robot in real-time; these situations include the distances in different directions between the obstacles and the robot provided by ultrasonic sensors, the target orientation sensed by a simple optical range-finder and the movement direction of the robot. Simulation results showed that the above method can quickly map the fuzzy relationship between the inputs and the output of the control system of the mobile robot.     

机动塔台管制系统总体设计

直升机/无人机具有飞行灵活性强、反应速度快、可进行野外起降等特点,而机动塔台管制系统对飞行员日常训练、空中交通管制、指挥调度和飞行保障等具有重要作用。介绍了机动塔台管制的任务和作用,提出其建设思路和方法,描述了其主要功能和技术体系结构,对硬件、软件物理组成进行了设计。通过计算机仿真进行分析,探讨了多模交互模型IMM在自动相关监视ADS数据与雷达数据融合应用的可行性。     

基于视觉与行为模型的机器人目标跟踪

由于存在通信延时等问题，月球机器人必须具备一定智能来进行行为控制。Brooks提出机器人的包容结构理论重点在于强调机器人不同控制层间的联系，以及机器人不同行为功能的分配。本文提出一种视觉与行为模型，主要描述在同一控制层内视觉传感器与行为控制之间的关系，它将机器人的视觉行为与运动行为紧密联系起来，在运动的同时计算地面光流场变化来学习当前机器人动作状态，利用颜色信息的多窗口目标跟踪获取目标属性，最后采用强化学习方法，规划加器人动作．提高了运动控制的稳定度和精确席。     

Hybrid Motion Control and Planning Strategies for Visual Servoing

This paper presents two hybrid strategies for robot visual servoing. Two specific image constraints, the image singularities and image local minima, are considered in both strategies. The hybrid motion control strategy consists of a local switching control between the image-based and position-based visual servoing for direct avoidance of image singularities and image local minima. The hybrid motion planning strategy consists of an artificial potential field-based global hybrid trajectory planner, where a complete set of Cartesian, image, and robot joint constraints under a complex visual servoing scenario are considered. In this strategy, the image singularities are resolved using the damped-least-square-based joint trajectory planning, while the image local minima are evaluated only along the planned image trajectories and automatically avoided in the image-based trajectory tracking. Two global planning methods are considered. In the first method, the end-effector trajectory is directly planned with respect to the stationary target object frame, which provides a much shorter translational path compared with the local planning method. In the second method, the target trajectory is planned with respect to the current end-effector frame, which minimizes the chances of image trajectories leaving the camera field of view. Simulation and experimental results are given to demonstrate the efficiency of the two hybrid strategies.     

一种移动机器人的运动控制方法研究

针对反应式移动机器人运动控制中存在的缺乏自主运动规划等问题,介绍了一种新型移动机器人的运动控制方法。设计了一种混合式控制结构实现移动机器人的运动控制。采用基于行为的运动控制策略,将反应式行为和规划行为融合在一起。实验结果表明该策略能够很好地完成复杂环境下移动机器人的运动控制。     

Model-Reference Control Approach to Obstacle Avoidance for a Human-Operated Mobile Robot

Because the obstacle-avoidance function is indispensable for providing the safe and easy operation of human-operated robotic systems, this paper deals with the obstacle-avoidance control for a human-operated mobile robot in unknown environments. A general type of two-wheeled mobile robot with inexpensive distance sensors to detect obstacles is considered. Because the robot cannot move in arbitrary directions due to a nonholonomic constraint, we propose a model-reference control approach, in which a reference model generates the desired trajectory to satisfy the nonholonomic constraint, and the robot follows the desired trajectory. The reference model has the steering-like and brake-like functions that are adjusted according to the distance-sensor information. The stability of the proposed control system is analyzed with a linear model. The effectiveness of the proposed method is confirmed by experiments in which several operators handle the robot in an environment with obstacles.     

基于分布式的移动机器人控制系统设计与实现

移动机器人是近年来研究的热点,针对机器人系统自由度多,可靠性和实时性要求高的特点,提出了一种基于分布式的移动机器人控制系统。利用多借点连接方式的网络拓扑机构,将其他设备和多个机器人连接组成机器人控制系统,以控制芯片ARM Cortex-A9和STM32F407为基础,将开源操作系统植入到开源嵌入式系统中,设计分布式上位机控制软件和下拉机程序,设计了基于分布式的移动机器人控制系统的搭建,实现对分布式移动机器人的控制。该分布式移动机器人软硬件开源、性能高、成本低、具有很好的可扩展性、实时性和稳定性。     

Optimal control at energy performance index of the mobile robots following dynamically created trajectories

In practice, the problem of motion control of the wheeled mobile robots is often neglected. Wheeled mobile robots are strongly nonlinear systems and restricted by non-holonomic constraints. Motion control of such systems is not trivial task and usage of non-optimal control signals can lead to deterioration of the overall robot system's performance. In case of autonomous application of the mobile robots all parts of its control system should work perfectly. The paper presents the theory and application of the optimal control method at the energy performance index towards motion control of the two-wheeled mobile robot during the realisation of complex, dynamically created trajectories. With the use of the proposed control method the two-wheeled mobile robot can realise effectively the desired trajectory, which is generated ad-hoc by the navigation system of the robot. Thus the proposed method can be used for motion control of autonomous or semi-autonomous wheeled mobile robots. The presented results of both computer simulations and experiments indicate that the proposed method works effectively from the point of view of the motion control of two-wheeled mobile robot. Movement of the mobile robot appeared reliable and predictable during all the tests.     

Development and integration of generic components for a teachable vision-based mobile robot

This paper presents a mobile robotic system for human assistance in navigation-the robot navigates by receiving visual instructions from a human being and is able to replicate them autonomously. We describe three generic components defined as the HOST, the VISION, and the CONTROL components as well as their integration in our teachable mobile robot. These components are connected to each other via a transputer serial link, namely they are loosely coupled, they work in parallel and are asynchronous with each other. Each component is described with a peculiar feature of extensibility. Especially in the VISION component, there are two major features. The first one is a correlator which each vision board possesses. The correlator does block-matching between the template and the grabbed images in real-time. The other is the PIM library which manages the visual tasks over limited parallel visual resources of the mobile robot. These features of our design enable the system to be real-time and allow for efficient and extensible software development. In order to show the feasibility of our system design, we present a preliminary experiment of the route teaching on our mobile robot.     

Visual control of vehicles using two-view geometry

This paper addresses the problem of visual control for mobile robots with nonholonomic motion constraints. The vision system consists of a fixed camera mounted on the robot and no odometry or additional sensors are used. We consider the usual framework in which the target is defined by an image taken previously at the desired position. Then, the control law drives the robot from the initial position to the desired one by processing image information extracted from the current and target images. We present a new approach consisting in a switching control law based on the two-view geometry without scene constraints. Our main contribution is that two controllers are defined and combined in the switching control law. One is based on the epipolar geometry and the other on the homography model. Both models have well-known degenerate cases or particular situations in which the corresponding control fails when used alone. Nevertheless, the designed approach takes advantage of both models avoiding the drawbacks of each one and allowing a smooth motion of the robot. Experimental evaluation is presented to show the performance of the approach.     

轮式机器人滑模轨迹跟踪控制器设计

轮式机器人是一个典型的非完整性系统。由于非线性和非完整特性,很难为移动机器人系统的轨迹跟踪建立一个合适的模型。介绍了一种轮式机器人滑模轨迹跟踪控制方法。滑模控制是一个鲁棒的控制方法,能渐近的按一条所期望的轨迹稳定移动机器人。以之为基础,描述了轮式机器人的动力学模型并在二维坐标下建立了运动学方程,根据运动学方程设计滑模控制器,该控制器使得机器人的位置误差收敛到零。     

iBotGuard: an Internet-based Intelligent Robot security system using Invariant Face Recognition against intruder

One crucial application of intelligent robotic systems is remote surveillance using a security robot. A fundamental need in security is the ability to automatically verify an intruder into a secure or restricted area, to alert remote security personnel, and then to enable them to track the intruder. In this article, we propose an Internet-based security robot system. The face recognition approach possesses "invariant" recognition characteristics, including face recognition where facial expressions, viewing perspectives, three-dimensional poses, individual appearance, and lighting vary and occluding structures are present. The experiment uses a 33.6-kb/s modem Internet connection to successfully remotely control a mobile robot, proving that the streaming technology-based approach greatly improves the "sensibility" of robot teleoperation. This improvement ensures that security personnel can effectively and at low cost use the Internet to remotely control a mobile robot to track and identify a potential intruder.     

Set-based collision avoidance applications to robotic systems

A robotic system can consist of a single or multiple agents with a fixed or mobile base, with full or under-actuation, and possibly redundancy. Collision avoidance is a crucial task for any robotic system and is necessary to ensure safe operation. In this paper, we use a set-based approach to ensure collision avoidance as a high-priority task of a robotic system while simultaneously defining one or more tasks for the system to achieve. The set-based approach is highly generic and flexible, and we present theoretical results, practical implementation and experimental results of the approach applied to a redundant, fully actuated robot manipulator, a full-scale underactuated surface vessel and a multi-agent system of unicycles.     

An advanced robot system for automated diagnostic tasks throughpalpation

An approach to the design of a robot system capable of executing complex sensory-motor sequences aimed at gathering data useful for diagnostic purposes is presented. The main features of such a robot system are discussed, and its possible integration in an advanced, interactive expert system for medical diagnosis is considered. As an example of implementation of the concept of a robot system for automated diagnostic tasks, the design characteristics of a tendon-actuated, anthropomorphic finger, incorporating force and position sensors for low-level compliant motion control and skin-like sensors for tactile perception, are outlined. The hierarchical control architecture devised for managing some different diagnostic sensory-motor sequences (subroutines) is also presented     

Navigation Behavior Selection Using Generalized Stochastic Petri Nets for a Service Robot

Appropriate design and control of behaviors of mobile robots are important for their successful autonomous navigation in a real dynamic environment. This paper proposes a formal selection framework of multiple navigation behaviors for a service robot. In the presented approach, modeling, analysis, and performance evaluation are carried out based on generalized stochastic Petri nets (GSPNs). By adopting a probabilistic approach, the proposed framework helps the robot to select the most desirable navigation behavior in run time according to environmental conditions. Moreover, after mission completion, the robot evaluates its prior navigation performance from accumulated data, and automatically uses the results to improve its future operations. Also, GSPNs have several advantages over direct use of other modeling formalisms such as finite state automata (FSA) or Markov processes (MPs). We conduct experiments on real guidance tasks with visitors by implementing the framework in the guide robot Jinny at the National Science Museum of Korea. The results show that the proposed strategy is useful for a robot's selection of an appropriate navigation behavior in a dynamic environment.