Computer Engineering Commons^™

A Modular Framework For Surface-Embedded Actuation And Optical Sensing In Soft Robots., Paul Bupe Jr

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores the development and integration of modular technologies in soft robotics, with a focus on the OptiGap sensor system. OptiGap serves as a simple, flexible, cost-effective solution for real-time sensing of bending and deformation, validated through simulation and experimentation. Working as part of an emerging category of soft robotics called Soft, Curved, Reconfigurable, Anisotropic Mechanisms, or SCRAMs, this research also introduces the Thermally-Activated SCRAM Limb (TASL) technology, which employs shape-memory alloy (SMA) wire embedded in curved sheets for surface actuation and served as the initial inspiration for OptiGap. In addition, the EneGate system is presented as a complementary …

Modeling, Simulation And Control Of Microrobots For The Microfactory., Zhong Yang

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Future assembly technologies will involve higher levels of automation in order to satisfy increased microscale or nanoscale precision requirements. Traditionally, assembly using a top-down robotic approach has been well-studied and applied to the microelectronics and MEMS industries, but less so in nanotechnology. With the boom of nanotechnology since the 1990s, newly designed products with new materials, coatings, and nanoparticles are gradually entering everyone’s lives, while the industry has grown into a billion-dollar volume worldwide. Traditionally, nanotechnology products are assembled using bottom-up methods, such as self-assembly, rather than top-down robotic assembly. This is due to considerations of volume handling of large …

Reference Frames In Human Sensory, Motor, And Cognitive Processing, Dongcheng He

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Reference-frames, or coordinate systems, are used to express properties and relationships of objects in the environment. While the use of reference-frames is well understood in physical sciences, how the brain uses reference-frames remains a fundamental question. The goal of this dissertation is to reach a better understanding of reference-frames in human perceptual, motor, and cognitive processing. In the first project, we study reference-frames in perception and develop a model to explain the transition from egocentric (based on the observer) to exocentric (based outside the observer) reference-frames to account for the perception of relative motion. In a second project, we focus …

Artificial Emotional Intelligence In Socially Assistive Robots, Hojjat Abdollahi

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Artificial Emotional Intelligence (AEI) bridges the gap between humans and machines by demonstrating empathy and affection towards each other. This is achieved by evaluating the emotional state of human users, adapting the machine’s behavior to them, and hence giving an appropriate response to those emotions. AEI is part of a larger field of studies called Affective Computing. Affective computing is the integration of artificial intelligence, psychology, robotics, biometrics, and many more fields of study. The main component in AEI and affective computing is emotion, and how we can utilize emotion to create a more natural and productive relationship between humans …

A Camera-Only Based Approach To Traffic Parameter Estimation Using Mobile Observer Methods, Temitope D. Jegede

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

As vehicles become more modern, a large majority of vehicles on the road will have the required sensors to smoothly interact with other vehicles and infrastructure on the road. There will be many benefits of this new connectivity between vehicles on the road but one of the most profound improvements will be in the area of road accident prevention. Vehicles will be able to share information vital to road safety to oncoming vehicles and vehicles that are occluded so they do not have a direct line of sight to see a pedestrian or another vehicle on the road.

Another advantage …

Design And Fabrication Of A Force-Displacement Control Mechanism For Bone-Surgical Tool Testing, Kenneth Nwagu

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project focuses on the design and fabrication of an experimental setup for orthopedic-tool testing, tailored for a surgical instrumentation company. The multifaceted project encompasses a literature review, conceptual design, prototyping, and rigorous testing, resulting in a versatile control system capable of assessing various orthopedic tools, including bone drills, saws, burrs, and power handpieces.

Orthopedic surgical procedures (which include cutting and/or drilling into bone) often need to be performed on bones for faster recovery. The drilling and cutting process can cause an increase in temperature at the cutting site which can cause bone necrosis. The tools also need to be …

Reduced Fuel Emissions Through Connected Vehicles And Truck Platooning, Paul D. Brummitt

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) and vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication enable the sharing, in real time, of vehicular locations and speeds with other vehicles, traffic signals, and traffic control centers. This shared information can help traffic to better traverse intersections, road segments, and congested neighborhoods, thereby reducing travel times, increasing driver safety, generating data for traffic planning, and reducing vehicular pollution. This study, which focuses on vehicular pollution, used an analysis of data from NREL, BTS, and the EPA to determine that the widespread use of V2V-based truck platooning—the convoying of trucks in close proximity to one another so as to reduce air drag …

A Water-Surface Self-Leveling Landing Platform For Small-Scale Uavs, Mbidi Santos

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Because many of the most widely used UAVs, such as the Vertical Take-Off and Landing (VTOL), cannot land securely on sloped or fast-changing surfaces, there is a need to design better deployment and landing stations. This document proposes an approach to design a water-surface self-leveling landing platform by implementing the best concept to be used as a safe ground for UAVs to land and deploy on open waters. After conceptualizing multiple design ideas, these options were laid out in a decision matrix with four criteria: degrees of freedom, mechanical complexity, manufacturing, and cost. The chosen concept was the spherical parallel …

Collaborative Human-Machine Interfaces For Mobile Manipulators., Shamsudeen Olawale Abubakar

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The use of mobile manipulators in service industries as both agents in physical Human Robot Interaction (pHRI) and for social interactions has been on the increase in recent times due to necessities like compensating for workforce shortages and enabling safer and more efficient operations amongst other reasons. Collaborative robots, or co-bots, are robots that are developed for use with human interaction through direct contact or close proximity in a shared space with the human users. The work presented in this dissertation focuses on the design, implementation and analysis of components for the next-generation collaborative human machine interfaces (CHMI) needed for …

Motion And Emotion Estimation For Robotic Autism Intervention., Jacob M Berdichevsky

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Robots have recently emerged as a novel approach to treating autism spectrum disorder (ASD). A robot can be programmed to interact with children with ASD in order to reinforce positive social skills in a non-threatening environment. In prior work, robots were employed in interaction sessions with ASD children, but their sensory and learning abilities were limited, while a human therapist was heavily involved in “puppeteering” the robot. The objective of this work is to create the next-generation autism robot that includes several new interactive and decision-making capabilities that are not found in prior technology. Two of the main features that …

Human-Robot Collaboration Enabled By Real-Time Vision Tracking, Travis Deegan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The number of robotic systems in the world is growing rapidly. However, most industrial robots are isolated in caged environments for the safety of users. There is an urgent need for human-in-the-loop collaborative robotic systems since robots are very good at performing precise and repetitive tasks but lack the cognitive ability and soft skills of humans. To fill this need, a key challenge is how to enable a robot to interpret its human co-worker’s motion and intention. This research addresses this challenge by developing a collaborative human-robot interface via innovations in computer vision, robotics, and system integration techniques. Specifically, this …

Design Of Lower Legs Of Mithra, A High-Performance Backdrivable Humanoid Robot, Drake Taylor

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis presents the design of the knee and ankle of Mithra, a new humanoid robot that aims to be an energy-efficient and highly agile machine. Mithra makes use of new optimization metrics for legged robots to develop a system capable of mimicking human movement. A series of low-impedance, high-torque actuator systems were developed with the goal of creating lightweight, powerful, and robust motion. The structure of Mithra's legs mimics the human structure in leg segment length and weight proportions. Detailed design and analysis were conducted in order to allow Mithra to be a robust and maintainable system. Mithra will …

Design, Manufacture, And Test Of A Hybrid Aerial-Ground Robotic Platform, William Garrett Willmon

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

A hybrid aerial-ground robotic platform allows for enhanced functionality combining most of the operational profiles of an aerial and ground vehicle with applications to intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance (ISR), infrastructure inspection, emergency response, photography, etc. Motivated by this challenge, we designed, developed, and tested a prototype hybrid aerial-ground robotic vehicle capable of guidance, navigation, and control in the air and on the ground. The thesis focus is on the system design. As such, at first, we designed and analyzed the mechanical component to ensure durability. We then designed the electrical component to reduce overall weight and maximize battery life. We developed …

Unobtrusive Assessment Of Student Engagement Levels In Online Classroom Environment Using Emotion Analysis, Sasirekha Anbusegaran

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Measuring student engagement has emerged as a significant factor in the process of learning and a good indicator of the knowledge retention capacity of the student. As synchronous online classes have become more prevalent in recent years, gauging a student's attention level is more critical in validating the progress of every student in an online classroom environment. This paper details the study on profiling the student attentiveness to different gradients of engagement level using multiple machine learning models. Results from the high accuracy model and the confidence score obtained from the cloud-based computer vision platform - Amazon Rekognition were then …

Xylo-Bot: A Therapeutic Robot-Based Music Platform For Children With Autism, Huanghao Feng

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) experience deficits in verbal and nonverbal communication skills, including motor control, emotional facial expressions, and eye gaze / joint attention. This Ph.D. dissertation focuses on studying the feasibility and effectiveness of using a social robot, called NAO, and a toy music instrument, xylophone, at modeling and improving the social responses and behaviors of children with ASD. In our investigation, we designed an autonomous social interactive music teaching system to fulfill this mission.

A novel modular robot-music teaching system consisting of three modules is presented. Module 1 provides an autonomous self-awareness positioning system for the …

Facial Action Unit Detection With Deep Convolutional Neural Networks, Siddhesh Padwal

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The facial features are the most important tool to understand an individual's state of mind. Automated recognition of facial expressions and particularly Facial Action Units defined by Facial Action Coding System (FACS) is challenging research problem in the field of computer vision and machine learning. Researchers are working on deep learning algorithms to improve state of the art in the area. Automated recognition of facial action units has man applications ranging from developmental psychology to human robot interface design where companies are using this technology to improve their consumer devices (like unlocking phone) and for entertainment like FaceApp. Recent studies …

Nyku: A Social Robot For Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders, Dan Stephan Stoianovici

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The continued growth of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) around the world has spurred a growth in new therapeutic methods to increase the positive outcomes of an ASD diagnosis. It has been agreed that the early detection and intervention of ASD disorders leads to greatly increased positive outcomes for individuals living with the disorders. Among these new therapeutic methods, Robot-Assisted Therapy (RAT) has become a hot area of study. Recent works have shown that high functioning ASD children have an affinity for interacting with robots versus humans. It is proposed that this is due to a less complex set of communication …

Quantitative Performance Assessment Of Lidar-Based Vehicle Contour Estimation Algorithms For Integrated Vehicle Safety Applications, David M. Mothershed

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Many nations and organizations are committing to achieving the goal of `Vision Zero' and eliminate road traffic related deaths around the world. Industry continues to develop integrated safety systems to make vehicles safer, smarter and more capable in safety critical scenarios. Passive safety systems are now focusing on pre-crash deployment of restraint systems to better protect vehicle passengers. Current commonly used bounding box methods for shape estimation of crash partners lack the fidelity required for edge case collision detection and advanced crash modeling. This research presents a novel algorithm for robust and accurate contour estimation of opposing vehicles. The presented …

3d Formation Control In Multi-Robot Teams Using Artificial Potential Fields, Sanjana Reddy Mohan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Multi-robot teams find applications in emergency response, search and rescue operations, convoy support and many more. Teams of autonomous aerial vehicles can also be used to protect a cargo of airplanes by surrounding them in some geometric shape. This research develops a control algorithm to attract UAVs to one or a set of bounded geometric shapes while avoiding collisions, re-configuring in the event of departure or addition of UAVs and maneuvering in mission space while retaining the configuration. Using potential field theory, weighted vector fields are described to attract UAVs to a desired formation. In order to achieve this, three …

Hydrogen Fuel Cell Gasket Handling And Sorting With Machine Vision Integrated Dual Arm Robot, Devin C. Fowler

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Recently demonstrated robotic assembling technologies for fuel cell stacks used fuel cell components manually pre-arranged in stacks (presenters), all oriented in the same position. Identifying the original orientation of fuel cell components and loading them in stacks for a subsequent automated assembly process is a difficult, repetitive work cycle which if done manually, deceives the advantages offered by automated fabrication technologies of fuel cell components and by robotic assembly processes. We present an innovative robotic technology which enables the integration of automated fabrication processes of fuel cell components with robotic assembly of fuel cell stacks into a fully automated fuel …

Robust Fuzzy Clustering For Multiple Instance Regression., Mohamed Trabelsi

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Multiple instance regression (MIR) operates on a collection of bags, where each bag contains multiple instances sharing an identical real-valued label. Only few instances, called primary instances, contribute to the bag labels. The remaining instances are noise and outliers observations. The goal in MIR is to identify the primary instances within each bag and learn a regression model that can predict the label of a previously unseen bag. In this thesis, we introduce an algorithm that uses robust fuzzy clustering with an appropriate distance to learn multiple linear models from a noisy feature space simultaneously. We show that fuzzy memberships …

Force-Canceling Mixer Algorithm For Vehicles With Fully-Articulated Radially Symmetric Thruster Arrays, Joseph Nicholas Casabona

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

A new type of fully-holonomic aerial vehicle is identified and developed that can optionally utilize automatic cancellation of excessive thruster forces to maintain precise control despite little or no throttle authority. After defining the physical attributes of the new vehicle, a flight control mixer algorithm is defined and presented. This mixer is an input/output abstraction that grants a flight control system (or pilot) full authority of the vehicle's position and orientation by means of an input translation vector and input torque vector. The mixer is shown to be general with respect to the number of thrusters in the system provided …

Developing An Affect-Aware Rear-Projected Robotic Agent, Ali Mollahosseini

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Social (or Sociable) robots are designed to interact with people in a natural and interpersonal manner. They are becoming an integrated part of our daily lives and have achieved positive outcomes in several applications such as education, health care, quality of life, entertainment, etc. Despite significant progress towards the development of realistic social robotic agents, a number of problems remain to be solved. First, current social robots either lack enough ability to have deep social interaction with human, or they are very expensive to build and maintain. Second, current social robots have yet to reach the full emotional and social …

Studying Facial Expression Recognition And Imitation Ability Of Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder In Interaction With A Social Robot, Farzaneh Askari

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) experience limited abilities in recognizing non-verbal elements of social interactions such as facial expressions [1]. They also show deficiencies in imitating facial expressions in social situations. In this Master thesis, we focus on studying the ability of children with ASD in recognizing facial expressions and imitating the expressions using a rear-projected expressive humanoid robot, called Ryan. Recent studies show that social robots such as Ryan have great potential for autism therapy. We designed and developed three studies, first to evaluate the ability of children with ASD in recognizing facial expressions that are presented to …

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, …

An Interactive Interface For Nursing Robots., Ankita Sahu

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Physical Human-Robot Interaction (pHRI) is inevitable for a human user while working with assistive robots. There are various aspects of pHRI, such as choosing the interface, type of control schemes implemented and the modes of interaction. The research work presented in this thesis concentrates on a health-care assistive robot called Adaptive Robot Nursing Assistant (ARNA). An assistive robot in a health-care environment has to be able to perform routine tasks and be aware of the surrounding environment at the same time. In order to operate the robot, a teleoperation based interaction would be tedious for some patients as it would …

Optimized Trajectory Generation For Car-Like Robots On A Closed Loop Track, Tyler Friedl

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis presents a method for generating an optimized path through a given track. The path is generated by choosing waypoints throughout the track then iteratively optimizing the position of these waypoints. The waypoints are then connected by optimized paths represented by curvature polynomials. The end result is a path through the track represented as a spline of curvature polynomials. This method is applied to multiple simulated tracks and the results are presented. By generating and representing the paths in the continuous domain, the method has improved computational efficiency from many of the discrete methods used to generate an optimal …

System Identification Of A Circulation Control Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, Mohammed Agha

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The advancement in automation and sensory systems in recent years has led to an increase the demand of UAV missions. Due to this increase in demand, the research community has gained interest in investigating UAV performance enhancing systems. Circulation Control (CC), which is an active control flow method used to enhance UAV lift, is a performance enhancing system currently studied. In prior research, experimental studies have shown that Circulation Control wings (CCW) implemented on class-I UAVs can reduce take-off distance by 54%. Wind tunnel tests reveal that CC improves aircraft payload capabilities through lift enhancement. Increasing aircraft payload capabilities causes …

Ego-Localization Navigation For Intelligent Vehicles Using 360° Lidar Sensor For Point Cloud Mapping, Tyler Naes

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

With its prospects of reducing vehicular accidents and traffic in highly populated urban areas by taking the human error out of driving, the future in automobiles is leaning towards autonomous navigation using intelligent vehicles. Autonomous navigation via Light Detection And Ranging (LIDAR) provides very accurate localization within a predefined, a priori, point cloud environment that is not possible with Global Positioning System (GPS) and video camera technology. Vehicles may be able to follow paths in the point cloud environment if the baseline paths it must follow are known in that environment by referencing objects detected in the point cloud …

Psychophysiological Analysis Of A Pedagogical Agent And Robotic Peer For Individuals With Autism Spectrum Disorders., Mohammad Nasser Saadatzi

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by ongoing problems in social interaction and communication, and engagement in repetitive behaviors. According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an estimated 1 in 68 children in the United States has ASD. Mounting evidence shows that many of these individuals display an interest in social interaction with computers and robots and, in general, feel comfortable spending time in such environments. It is known that the subtlety and unpredictability of people’s social behavior are intimidating and confusing for many individuals with ASD. Computerized learning environments and robots, however, prepare a predictable, …