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This paper shows a new design and prototyping method for a bending pneumatic rubber actuator and its application to a soft-bodied manta swimming robot. The design is based on optimal design using non-linear finite element method, in which geometrical and material non-linearity are considered and fabrication process is based on a rapid and efficient prototyping system using a CAD/CAM based rubber molding...
Object tracking is a challenging problem in a number of computer vision applications. A number of approaches have been proposed and implemented to track moving objects in image sequences. The particle filter, which recursively constructs the posterior probability distributions of the state space, is the most popular approach. In the particle filter, many kinds of features are used for tracking a moving...
We provide a method for planning under uncertainty for robotic manipulation by partitioning the configuration space into a set of regions that are closed under compliant motions. These regions can be treated as states in a partially observable Markov decision process (POMDP), which can be solved to yield optimal control policies under uncertainty. We demonstrate the approach on simple grasping problems,...
We consider a 3D grasping problem. We propose a test of Ropf3-positive span of force cones and a test of Ropf3-positive span of their torque set. Our methods consider directly the quadratic force cone without pyramidal linearization of a cone. The conditions can be computed in a constant time and they are used as a heuristic for 3D force closure test. We also show that our proposed heuristic greatly...
We present a novel method for the localization of a legged robot on known terrain using only proprioceptive sensors such as joint encoders and an inertial measurement unit. In contrast to other proprioceptive pose estimation techniques, this method allows for global localization (i.e., localization with large initial uncertainty) without the use of exteroceptive sensors. This is made possible by establishing...
With our proposed decomposition into layers, a generic framework leading to the reuse of previously produced software and the extraction of useful portions can be achieved. The presented transition function based formalism can be applied to specifying programming frameworks for robot controllers executing very diverse tasks. Formalization introduces rigor into the discussion of the structure of embodied...
This paper presents the search problem formulated as a decision problem, where the searcher decides whether the target is present in the search region, and if so, where it is located. Such decision-based search tasks are relevant to many research areas, including mobile robot missions, visual search and attention, and event detection in sensor networks. The effect of control strategies in search problems...
Coupled operator-multiple vehicle systems are modelled in a unified framework using probabilistic graphs to yield a methodology for analyzing semi-autonomous systems. The framework uses conditional probabilistic dependencies between all elements, leading to a Bayesian network (BN) with probabilistic evaluation capability. Vehicle attitude/navigation states and target/classification states can be evaluated...
In this paper, the dynamic model of a robot with antagonistic actuated joints is presented, and the problem of full linearization via static state feedback is analyzed. The use of transmission elements with nonlinear relation between the displacement and the actuated force allows to control both the position and the stiffness of each joint. The main advantage of this actuation modality is that the...
Trotting and galloping allow a quadruped to rapidly traverse rough terrain. Modeling this motion, which is only dynamically stable, is of importance for legged robot operation and for quadrupedal animal motion estimation. Derived from an eight-step galloping cycle, this study presents a kinetic hybrid model in which the states vary based on the principal forces present. As compared to foot contact,...
Automated target acquisition and docking is key to enabling various applications of autonomous mobile robots in indoor environments. For the purpose, many researches have been devoted to the development of location sensing techniques employing the latest in RFID or GPS. However, it has not yet become possible to attain high accuracy in those techniques, particularly in cluttered or dynamically changing...
Localization is a fundamental problem in autonomous mobile robot navigation. This paper introduces a new artificial landmark-based localization system for mobile robots navigating in indoor environments. Laser-activated RFID tag is designed and used as the artificial landmark in the proposed localization system. The robot localization is realized via the combination of the stereo vision and laser-activated...
In this paper, a new region control scheme is proposed for underwater vehicle-manipulator systems (UVMS). In the proposed control concept, the desired objective can be specified as a region instead of a point. The proposed region control concept is a generalization of setpoint control problem because when the desired region is specified arbitrarily small, the control objective reduces to a point....
A way to significantly advance robotic science is to perform experiments that can be replicated by other researchers and be used to compare different methods. This happens rarely in current robotics research. In this paper we present a methodology for performing experimental activities in the area of robotic mapping. The proposed methodology prescribes a number of issues that should be addressed when...
This paper describes the design and control of a transfemoral prosthesis with pneumatically powered knee and ankle joints. The current version of the prosthesis serves as a laboratory testbed for purposes of controller development and testing, and as such is tethered for both power and control. A subsequent version will be self-contained, with on-board control and hot gas (monopropellant) actuation...
This work deals with the problem of force/position trajectory tracking under uncertainties arising from surface position and orientation. A robotic finger with a soft hemispherical tip of uncertain compliance parameter is considered in contact with a rigid flat surface. A novel adaptive controller is designed using online estimates of the unknown parameters and is proved to achieve force and position...
This paper presents a vision-based approach to SLAM in large-scale environments with minimal sensing and computational requirements. The approach is based on a graphical representation of robot poses and links between the poses. Links between the robot poses are established based on odomety and image similarity, then a relaxation algorithm is used to generate a globally consistent map. To estimate...
In this paper we present an observability analysis for a mobile robot performing SLAM with a single monocular camera. The aim is to get a better understanding of the well known intuitive behavior of these systems, such as the need for triangulation to features from different positions in order to get accurate relative pose estimates. The characterisation of the unobservable directions is made using...
In this paper we discuss methods to reduce spatial uncertainty in the simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) procedure for a mobile robot equipped with a 2D laser scanner and operating in a structured, but non-static environment. We augment the classic EKF-based SLAM procedure with two new modules. The first one reliably extracts line segments from the laser scans, employing a novel fuzzy-set-based...
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...
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