Engineering Commons^™

Multi-Robot Coordination And Scheduling For Deactivation & Decommissioning, Sebastian A. Zanlongo

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Large quantities of high-level radioactive waste were generated during WWII. This waste is being stored in facilities such as double-shell tanks in Washington, and the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico. Due to the dangerous nature of radioactive waste, these facilities must undergo periodic inspections to ensure that leaks are detected quickly. In this work, we provide a set of methodologies to aid in the monitoring and inspection of these hazardous facilities. This allows inspection of dangerous regions without a human operator, and for the inspection of locations where a person would not be physically able to enter.

First, …

A Mathematical Framework On Machine Learning: Theory And Application, Bin Shi

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The dissertation addresses the research topics of machine learning outlined below. We developed the theory about traditional first-order algorithms from convex opti- mization and provide new insights in nonconvex objective functions from machine learning. Based on the theory analysis, we designed and developed new algorithms to overcome the difficulty of nonconvex objective and to accelerate the speed to obtain the desired result. In this thesis, we answer the two questions: (1) How to design a step size for gradient descent with random initialization? (2) Can we accelerate the current convex optimization algorithms and improve them into nonconvex objective? For application, …

Integration Of Robotic Perception, Action, And Memory, Li Yang Ku

Doctoral Dissertations

In the book "On Intelligence", Hawkins states that intelligence should be measured by the capacity to memorize and predict patterns. I further suggest that the ability to predict action consequences based on perception and memory is essential for robots to demonstrate intelligent behaviors in unstructured environments. However, traditional approaches generally represent action and perception separately---as computer vision modules that recognize objects and as planners that execute actions based on labels and poses. I propose here a more integrated approach where action and perception are combined in a memory model, in which a sequence of actions can be planned based on …

Development Of A Locomotion And Balancing Strategy For Humanoid Robots, Emile Bahdi

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The locomotion ability and high mobility are the most distinguished features of humanoid robots. Due to the non-linear dynamics of walking, developing and controlling the locomotion of humanoid robots is a challenging task. In this thesis, we study and develop a walking engine for the humanoid robot, NAO, which is the official robotic platform used in the RoboCup Spl. Aldebaran Robotics, the manufacturing company of NAO provides a walking module that has disadvantages, such as being a black box that does not provide control of the gait as well as the robot walk with a bent knee. The latter disadvantage, …