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This paper introduces an anytime synthesized motion planning algorithm for humanoid robots unifying locomotion and manipulation planning. It generates an entire set of motions to finish specific tasks in an environment containing obstacles by exploiting a powerful inverse kinematics (IK) engine. The IK engine can compute solutions allowing the robot to reposition its feet for meeting the task requirements...
Over the last decade, there have been several unsuccessful attempts to commercialize indoor localization technology for emergency responders mainly due to a poor product-market fit. This paper describes in detail the findings and conclusions of NSF Innovation Corps (I-Corps) Team 735 (Customer Discovery for Field-Deployable Indoor Localization Technology), part of the Spring 2016 DC-area cohort. As...
Two major questions humanoid robots need to solve for manipulation tasks are whether they need to take steps and where to take steps to. In this paper, we introduce the formulation of a powerful inverse kinematics (IK) engine which can help to answer these questions. In the engine, the IK problem is formulated as an optimization problem. After configuring appropriate costs and constraints, the IK...
We present an architecture to enable the modeling of human-in-the-loop control problem of space exploration robotic systems. We describe a shared control architecture, originally developed for assistive and disaster response robotics, for potential use in a space exploration scenario. Examples relevant to space are provided to highlight the different elements of the shared control architecture. A...
We present our preliminary results from the design process for developing the Worcester Polytechnic Institute's personal assistance robot, FRASIER, as an intelligent service robot for enabling active aging. The robot capabilities include vision-based object detection, tracking the user and help with carrying heavy items such as grocery bags or cafeteria trays. This work-in-progress report outlines...
We describe the process towards the design of a safe, reliable, and intuitive emergency treatment unit to facilitate a higher degree of safety and situational awareness for medical staff, leading to an increased level of patient care during an epidemic outbreak in an unprepared, underdeveloped, or disaster stricken area. We start with a human-centered design process to understand the design challenge...
We present a cyber-physical system (CPS) testbed to enable the rapid development, testing, and deployment of assistive robotics technologies in the home of elderly individuals. We built a CPS testbed in a lab environment with initial capabilities allowing for the testing of both individual systems and collections of systems. The CPS testbed has communication, computation, sensing, and control resources...
We describe the approach of Worcester Polytechnic Institute's (WPI) Robotics Engineering C Squad (WRECS)to the utility vehicle driving task at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Robotics Challenge (DRC) Trials held in December 2013. WRECS was one of only seven teams to attempt the driving task, and the only team with an ATLAS robot to successfully drive the course. We implement...
We present the improvements to AERO, the Autonomous Exploration Rover, developed for the 2014 NASA Sample Return Robot competition with the intent of enabling more robust and reliable autonomous operation for sample return rovers. The competition requires the robot to navigate a large outdoor area, find and collect various geologic samples, and return to the starting platform all autonomously and...
The DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC) requires teams to integrate mobility, manipulation, and perception to accomplish several disaster‐response tasks. We describe our hardware choices and software architecture, which enable human‐in‐the‐loop control of a 28 degree‐of‐freedom Atlas humanoid robot over a limited bandwidth link. We discuss our methods, results, and lessons learned for the DRC Trials tasks...
We propose a shared control architecture to enable the modeling of human-in-the-loop cyber physical systems (HiLCPS) in robotics applications. We identify challenges that currently hinder ideas and concepts from cross-domain applications to be shared among different implementation of HiLCPS. The presented architecture is developed with the intent to help bridge the gap between different communities...
This research is aimed at identifying a minimal set of shared control behaviors that would optimize the execution of high-level tasks in terms of robot capabilities and operator engagement in sample return missions. Previous robotic missions to the Moon and Mars, such as Mars Science Laboratory, have relied on supervised autonomy and teleoperation with latency mission scenarios. While this has proven...
This work presents a hierarchical navigation architecture and cascade classifier for sample search and identification on a space exploration rover. A three tier navigation architecture and inverse Jacobian based robot arm controller are presented. The algorithms are implemented on AERO, the Autonomous Exploration Rover, participating in the NASA Sample Return Robot Centennial Challenge in 2013 and...
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