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A soft robotic surface manipulator is a device equipped with a computer-controlled, deformable surface. By moving the surface, objects placed on the robot can be transported, rotated, or otherwise brought into a desired configuration. A probabilistic automaton can use camera feedback to measure and control the movement of the work pieces, and find the optimal sequence of actions to reach a desired...
This paper presents an objects-based topological mapping algorithm on different floors with various objects using a wheeled mobile robot. The extended Kalman filter (EKF) with adaptive measurement noise according to the terrain type is proposed to estimate the position of the robot. If an infrared distance sensor detects an object, the robot moves around the object to obtain the shape information...
Ophthalmic surgery is a typical microsurgery, where the surgical progress imposes huge challenges on delicate operations to surgeons. The fixation plays an important role in restriction the head movement and also providing a friendly interaction with both patients and surgeons. A fixation specific for ophthalmic robotic set-ups is developed in this paper for a hybrid parallel-serial robot. Evaluations...
The success of various applications including robotics, digital content creation, and visualization demand a structured and abstract representation of the 3D world from limited sensor data. Inspired by the nature of human perception of 3D shapes as a collection of simple parts, we explore such an abstract shape representation based on primitives. Given a single depth image of an object, we present...
Fiber Bragg Grating (FBG) sensors are proposed for medical applications, especially for shape sensing of continuum manipulators due to their numerous advantages over other types of sensors. In this paper, we design, fabricate, and evaluate a novel FBG sensor assembly addressing challenges associated with integration with continuum manipulators. Experimental results with the new FBG sensor demonstrated...
In the last decade, Japan becomes the world's first “super-aging society” and sooner or later, many other OECD member countries will also be following the same situation. Under the above mentioned circumstances, our research group has proposed a Preventive Care system with learning Communication robot (PrevCareCom) which aims to provide a fall-prevention approach wherein older adults can engage in...
This paper proposes a framework for an Agent Auto-Generation System (AAGS) which gets information from sensor devices and improvises a conversational agent from arbitrary things. AAGS has agent-types to prepare a perception for an improvised agent according to the shape of the agentization targets. It also has virtual-input, which generates knowledge representation related to information extracted...
In recent years, much attention has been given to developing robots with various social skills. An important social skill is navigation in the presence of people. Earlier research has indicated preferred approach angles and stopping distances for a robot when approaching people who are interacting with each other. However, an experimental validation of user experiences with such a robot is largely...
We propose a real-time algorithm for the generic classification of humans and objects in 3D scenes. The algorithm does not depend on color information and works with depth data alone, making it very flexible for a wide area of applications. Further, we will show that it is very resistant to occlusion and will give correct classification results even in cases, where only a fraction of a full human...
This paper presents a novel approach for recognizing a human hand touch by processing pressure measurements generated by a robotic skin. Physical cooperation among humans is mainly based on the sense of touch and usually starts with hand contacts. If a robot can distinguish a human touch from a generic contact, the human-robot cooperation can be more natural and effective. The proposed approach consists...
Puffy is a learning and playful robotic companion for pre-school children. Designed in cooperation with a team of educators and inspired by Disney's Baymax, Puffy has a combination of features which makes it unique with respect to existing robots used in educational contexts. It is mobile and has an egg-shaped inflatable and soft body; it supports multimodal interaction, reacting to children's gestures...
An important and emerging component of planetary exploration is sample retrieval and return to Earth. Obtaining and analyzing rock samples can provide unprecedented insight into the geology, geo-history and prospects for finding past life and water. Current methods of exploration rely on mission scientists to identify objects of interests and this presents major operational challenges. Finding objects...
Wire-driven flexible robot can work in confined and complex environments, so that it has been studied for minimally invasive surgery. On account of guarantee the accuracy and effectiveness of the robot, the real-time tip pose and shape information of the robot should be measured. In this paper, a tip pose and shape detection method based on magnetic tracking for the wire-driven flexible robot is presented...
In this paper, a novel approach is presented to perform a deformable shape registration of workpiece geometries in robotic welding. Based on the free-form deformation (FFD) method, a surface-based extension FFDS is presented where the initial shape of the control points lattice corresponds to the shape of the surface to be deformed. A point-based registration is performed using the sum of least squares...
Mobile sensors deployment over a target area is an important problem for autonomous operations in applications such as surveillance and environmental monitoring. The problem of optimal deployment of heterogeneous anisotropic field sensor network, having different sensing range, is addressed in this paper. A sensor coverage model for a planar field sensor is developed through introducing a performance...
We are designing an unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) for use in a large-scale and long-term environmental monitoring system. Existing high-performance UGVs cannot cope with unexpected events because their design concept, like that of almost all previous mobile robots, is based on the development of a single high-performance robot capable of performing every task. To overcome this limitation, we propose...
This paper aims to optimize the coverage of a given area from a set of views to allow a complete mosaicing. Among the investigated methods to find the best camera positions, two of them are studied, namely the Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) and the Genetic Algorithms (GA). After having performed experiments to compare the algorithms, the hybridization of GA and PSO is investigated. To validate...
This paper discusses the possibility of using the geometric shape of a pedestrian's head to shoulder region as a feature to identify individuals. The main aim is to track humans in a high density crowd using a 3D laser range finder (3D-LRF). One of the most critical problems of human tracking in a high density crowd is the occurrence of occlusion. Occlusion might occur because of the lack of features...
In this paper, we propose a real-time spatial shape estimation method for an elastic rod. Our proposed method does not use any image sensor nor shape sensor, but does use a six-axis force/torque sensor placed near one end of the elastic rod. In the proposed shape estimation method, the occlusion problem never occurs principally because the shape of a flexible object will be estimated based on an elastic...
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