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Ball dribbling is a central element of basketball. One main challenge for realizing basketball robots is to stabilize periodic motion of the ball. The task is nontrivial due to the discrete-continuous nature of the corresponding dynamics. This paper proposes to add an elastic element to the manipulator so the ball can be controlled in a continuous-time phase instead of an intermittent contact. Optimal...
This paper presents a first theoretical framework for a dialog strategy handling miscommunication in natural language Human-Robot Interaction (HRI). On the one hand the dialog strategy is deduced from findings about human-human communication patterns and coping strategies for miscommunication. On the other hand, relevant cognitive theories concerning human perception serve as a conceptual basis for...
Most industrial robots nowadays still employ strategies that neglect or minimize the effects of task dynamics. Some tasks, however, are intrinsically dynamic and can only be accomplished by considering their dynamic aspects. We address ball catching as a prominent and widely studied example for such a task. The paper follows a special approach to accomplish the task: the nonprehensile catching, which...
Autonomous mobile robots are deployed in a variety of application domains, resulting in scenario specific implementations. However these systems share common components responsible for perception, path planning and task execution. In order to find a formal way to identify the influence of the environmental complexity to the used methods, an approach for quantitative system interdependence analysis...
The creation of a robot capable of navigating in unknown urban environments without the use of GPS data or prior map knowledge is envisioned in the autonomous city explorer (ACE) project. The robot has to retrieve direction information solely by interacting with humans. This work presents a human-robot communication system that enables the robot to ask for directions and store the retrieved route...
As mobile robotics is gradually moving towards a level of semantic environment understanding, robust 3D object recognition plays an increasingly important role. One of the most crucial prerequisites for object recognition is a set of fast algorithms for geometry segmentation and extraction, which in turn rely on surface normal vectors as a fundamental feature. Although there exists a plethora of different...
In mobile robotics, the segmentation of range data is an important prerequisite to object recognition and environment understanding. This paper presents an algorithm for realtime segmentation of a continuous stream of incoming range data. The method is an extension of the previously developed RBNN algorithm and proceeds in two phases: Firstly, the normal vector of each incoming point is estimated...
One of the greatest challenges nowadays in robotics is the advancement of robots from industrial tools to companions and helpers of humans, operating in natural, populated environments. In this respect, the Autonomous City Explorer (ACE) project aims to combine the research fields of autonomous mobile robot navigation and human robot interaction. A robot has been created that is capable of navigating...
In order to be truly autonomous, robots that operate in natural, populated environments must have the ability to create a model of these unpredictable dynamic environments and make use of this self-acquired uncertain knowledge to decide about their actions. A formal Bayesian framework is introduced, which enables recursive estimation of a dynamic environment model and action selection based on this...
Robots acting in populated environments must be capable of safe but also time efficient navigation. Trying to completely avoid regions resulting from worst case predictions of the obstacle dynamics may leave no free space for a robot to move, especially in environments with high dynamic. This work presents an algorithm for a ldquosoftrdquo risk mapping of dynamic objects leaving the complete space...
Several variations of methodological approaches are used to study the social acceptance in human-robot interaction. Due to the introduction of robots in the home, working practice and usage typically informing the design of new forms of technology are missing. Studying social acceptance in human-robot interaction thus needs new methodological concepts. We propose a so called breaching experiment with...
In this paper we present a novel method for the efficient segmentation of 3D laser range data. The proposed algorithm is based on a radially bounded nearest neighbor strategy and requires only two parameters. It yields deterministic, repeatable results and does not depend on any initialization procedure. The efficiency of the method is verified with synthetic and real 3D data.
Building a basketball robot is a recently launched project at the Institute of Automatic Control Engineering (LSR) for investigating fast manipulation with non-negligible dynamics and changing contact situation. This study presents one of the main preliminary results of the project which is balancing a basketball on a plate using a six degrees of freedom serial industrial robot based on pure haptic...
As robots are gradually leaving highly structured factory environments and moving into human populated environments, they need to possess more complex cognitive abilities. Not only do they have to operate efficiently and safely in natural populated environments, but also be able to achieve higher levels of cooperation and interaction with humans. The autonomous city explorer (ACE) project envisions...
In this paper, a control scheme that combines trajectory planning and gaze direction control for robotic exploration is presented. The objective is to calculate the gaze direction and simultaneously plan the trajectory of the robot over a given time horizon, so that localization and map estimation errors are minimized while the unknown environment is explored. Most existing approaches perform a greedy...
This paper discusses low level control of the humanoid UT-Theta which has been developed at the University of Tokyo. This innovative humanoid walking robot is equipped with knee joint switchable between active and passive operation mode using a backlash clutch. A nonlinear, time optimal, hybrid controller for this knee joint is presented. The controller avoids discontinuities in the commanded trajectories...
This paper discusses walking control of Theta, an innovative humanoid walking robot equipped with a double spherical hip joint and a knee joint switchable between active and passive operation mode, which has been developed at the University of Tokyo. The walking generator and controller are presented, including some implementation aspects. It is based on the inverted pendulum approach with the innovative...
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