Giving life to robotic skins
Ahmad Rafsanjani, Fergal B. Coulter, André R. Studart
The skin of humanoid robots often lacks human tactility and the inherent self-repair capability of biological tissues. Recently, researchers have grown a living, self-healing skin on a robot finger by subsequent culturing of human dermal and epidermal cells. Here, we highlight the significance of this study alongside challenges toward developing biohybrid robots equipped with sensate and adaptive living robotic skins.
Deep Learning for Visual Navigation of Underwater Robots
M. Sunbeam
This paper aims to briefly survey deep learning methods for visual navigation of underwater robotics. The scope of this paper includes the visual perception of underwater robotics with deep learning methods, the available visual underwater datasets, imitation learning, and reinforcement learning methods for navigation. Additionally, relevant works will be categorized under the imitation learning or deep learning paradigm for underwater robots for clarity of the training methodologies in the current landscape. Literature that uses deep learning algorithms to process non-visual data for underwater navigation will not be considered, except as contrasting examples.
Service-Based Drone Delivery
Balsam Alkouz, Babar Shahzaad, Athman Bouguettaya
Service delivery is set to experience a major paradigm shift with fast advances in drone technologies coupled with higher expectations from customers and increased competition. We propose a novel service-oriented approach to enable the ubiquitous delivery of packages in a drone-operated skyway network. We discuss the benefits, framework and architecture, contemporary approaches, open challenges and future visioned directions of service-based drone deliveries.
Exploring Human-robot Interaction by Simulating Robots
Khaled Kassem, Florian Michahelles
As collaborative robots enter industrial shop floors, logistics, and manufacturing, rapid and flexible evaluation of human-machine interaction has become more important. The availability of consumer headsets for virtual and augmented realities has lowered the barrier of entry for virtual environments. In this paper, we explore the different aspects of using such environments for simulating robots in user studies and present the first findings from our own research work. Finally, we recommend directions for applying and using simulation in human-robot interaction.
Recent Approaches for Perceptive Legged Locomotion
Hersh Sanghvi
As both legged robots and embedded compute have become more capable, researchers have started to focus on field deployment of these robots. Robust autonomy in unstructured environments requires perception of the world around the robot in order to avoid hazards. However, incorporating perception online while maintaining agile motion is more challenging for legged robots than other mobile robots due to the complex planners and controllers required to handle the dynamics of locomotion. This report will compare three recent approaches for perceptive locomotion and discuss the different ways in which vision can be used to enable legged autonomy.
Minimum Displacement Motion Planning for Movable Obstacles
Antony Thomas, Fulvio Mastrogiovanni
This paper presents a minimum displacement motion planning problem wherein obstacles are displaced by a minimum amount to find a feasible path. We define a metric for robot-obstacle intersection that measures the extent of the intersection and use this to penalize robot-obstacle overlaps. Employing the actual robot dynamics, the planner first finds a path through the obstacles that minimizes the robot-obstacle intersections. The metric is then used to iteratively displace the obstacles to achieve a feasible path. Several examples are provided that successfully demonstrates the proposed problem.
Simultaneous Control and Trajectory Estimation for Collision Avoidance of Autonomous Robotic Spacecraft Systems
Matthew King-Smith, Panagiotis Tsiotras, Frank Dellaert
We propose factor graph optimization for simultaneous planning, control, and trajectory estimation for collision-free navigation of autonomous systems in environments with moving objects. The proposed online probabilistic motion planning and trajectory estimation navigation technique generates optimal collision-free state and control trajectories for autonomous vehicles when the obstacle motion model is both unknown and known. We evaluate the utility of the algorithm to support future autonomous robotic space missions.
Midas: A Multi-Joint Robotics Simulator with Intersection-Free Frictional Contact
Yunuo Chen, Minchen Li, Wenlong Lu
et al.
We introduce Midas, a robotics simulation framework based on the Incremental Potential Contact (IPC) model. Our simulator guarantees intersection-free, stable, and accurate resolution of frictional contact. We demonstrate the efficacy of our framework with experimental validations on high-precision tasks and through comparisons with Bullet physics. A reinforcement learning pipeline using Midas is also developed and tested to perform intersection-free peg-in-hole tasks.
A comparative study of the performance of different search algorithms on FOON graphs
Kumar Shashwat
A robot finds it really hard to learn creatively and adapt to new unseen challenges. This is mainly because of the minimal information it has access to or experience towards. Paulius et al. [1] presented a way to construct functional graphs that encapsulate. Sakib et al. [2] further expanded FOON objects for robotic cooking. This paper presents a comparative study of Breadth First Search (BFS), Greedy Breadth First search (GBFS) with two heuristic functions, and Iterative Depth First Search (IDFS) and provides a comparison of their performance.
DREAM Lite: Simplifying Robot Assisted Therapy for ASD
Alexandre Mazel, Silviu Matu
Robot-Assisted Therapy (RAT) has successfully been used to improve social skills in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). The DREAM project explores how to deliver effective RAT interventions to ASD children within a supervisedautonomy framework for controlling the robotic agent, which could decrease the burden on the clinicians delivering such interventions. In this paper we describe how to use in real life settings the experimental protocols that were developed and extensively tested in the DREAM Project, as well as their deployment and validation in a new ecological study conducted by clinicians.
Kinematic Control of compliant serial manipulators composed of dual-triangles
Wanda Zhao, Anatol Pashkevich, Alexandr Klimchik
et al.
The paper focuses on the kinematics control of a compliant serial manipulator composed of a new type of dualtriangle elastic segments. Some useful optimization techniques were applied to solve the geometric redundancy problem, ensure the stability of the manipulator configurations with respect to the external forces/torques applied to the endeffector. The efficiency of the developed control algorisms is confirmed by simulation.
Incorporating Gaze into Social Navigation
Justin Hart, Reuth Mirsky, Xuesu Xiao
et al.
Most current approaches to social navigation focus on the trajectory and position of participants in the interaction. Our current work on the topic focuses on integrating gaze into social navigation, both to cue nearby pedestrians as to the intended trajectory of the robot and to enable the robot to read the intentions of nearby pedestrians. This paper documents a series of experiments in our laboratory investigating the role of gaze in social navigation.
Iterative Smoothing and Outlier Detection for Underwater Navigation
Sajad Hassan, Hongkyoon Byun, Jonghyuk Kim
Underwater visual-inertial navigation is challenging due to the poor visibility and presence of outliers in underwater environments. The navigation performance is closely related to outlier detection and elimination. Existing methods assume the inertial odometry is accurate enough for outlier detection, which is not valid for low-cost inertial applications. We propose a novel iterative smoothing and outlier detection method aiming for underwater navigation. Using the dataset collected from an underwater robot and fiducial markers, experimental results confirm that the method can successfully eliminate the outliers and enhance navigation accuracy.
Anytime informed path re-planning and optimization for robots in changing environments
Cesare Tonola, Marco Faroni, Nicola Pedrocchi
et al.
In this paper, we propose a path re-planning algorithm that makes robots able to work in scenarios with moving obstacles. The algorithm switches between a set of pre-computed paths to avoid collisions with moving obstacles. It also improves the current path in an anytime fashion. The use of informed sampling enhances the search speed. Numerical results show the effectiveness of the strategy in different simulation scenarios.
A Neurorobotics Approach to Investigating the Emergence of Communication in Robots
Jungsik Hwang, Nadine Wirkuttis, Jun Tani
This paper introduces our approach to building a robot with communication capability based on the two key features: stochastic neural dynamics and prediction error minimization (PEM). A preliminary experiment with humanoid robots showed that the robot was able to imitate other's action by means of those key features. In addition, we found that some sorts of communicative patterns emerged between two robots in which the robots inferred the intention of another agent behind the sensory observation.
A New Concept for an Obstacle Avoidance System for the AUV "SLOCUM Glider" Operation under Ice
Mike Eichhorn
This paper presents a concept for a control System for an autonomous underwater vehicle under ice using a "SLOCUM" underwater glider. The project concept, the separate working tasks for the next one-and-a-half years and the first results will be presented. In this context the structure of the obstacle avoidance system and a simulator structure with a sensor and environment simulation as well as the interfaces to the glider hardware will be discussed. As a first result of the main research, a graph-based algorithm for the path planning in a time-varying environment (variable ocean field, moving obstacles) will be described.
Emotional Metaheuristics For in-situ Foraging Using Sensor Constrained Robot Swarms
Esh Vckay, Debasish Ghose
We present a new social animal inspired emotional swarm intelligence technique. This technique is used to solve a variant of the popular collective robots problem called foraging. We show with a simulation study how simple interaction rules based on sensations like hunger and loneliness can lead to globally coherent emergent behavior which allows sensor constrained robots to solve the given problem
A Hybrid Dynamical Extension of Averaging
Avik De, Samuel A. Burden, Daniel E. Koditschek
We extend a smooth dynamical systems averaging technique to a class of hybrid systems with a limit cycle that is particularly relevant to the synthesis of stable legged gaits. After introducing a definition of hybrid averageability sufficient to recover the classical result, we provide a simple illustration of its applicability to legged locomotion and conclude with some rather more speculative remarks concerning the prospects for further generalization of these ideas.
Modelling of the gravity compensators in robotic manufacturing cells
Alexandr Klimchik, Yier Wu, Stéphane Caro
et al.
The paper deals with the modeling and identification of the gravity compensators used in heavy industrial robots. The main attention is paid to the geometrical parameters identification and calibration accuracy. To reduce impact of the measurement errors, the design of calibration experiments is used. The advantages of the developed technique are illustrated by experimental results
An IMU-Aided Carrier-Phase Differential GPS Positioning System
Shuqing Zeng
We consider the problem of carrier-phase differential GPS positioning for an land vehicle navigation system (LVNS), tightly coupled with an inertial measurement unit (IMU) and a speedometer. The primary focus is to apply Bayesian network to an IMU-aided GPS positioning system based on carrier-phase differential GPS. We describe the implementation details of the positioning system that integrates GPS measurements (i.e., pseudo-range, carrier-phase and doppler), IMU measurements, and speedometer measurements. We derive the linearized state process equation and the measurement equation for GPS and speedometer. To account for constraints of land vehicle, we add two more pseudo measurements to ensure the perpendicular velocities close to zero.