Robotics Commons^™

Biologically Inspired Multi-Robot System Based On Wolf Hunting Behavior, Zachary Hinnen, Chance Hamilton, Alfredo Weitzenfeld

36th Florida Conference on Recent Advances in Robotics

Studies involving the group predator behavior of wolves have inspired multiple robotic architectures to mimic these biological behaviors in their designs and research. In this work, we aim to use robotic systems to mimic wolf packs' single and group behavior. This work aims to extend the original research by Weitzenfeld et al [7] and evaluate under a new multi-robot robot system architecture. The multiple robot architecture includes a 'Prey' pursued by a wolf pack consisting of an 'Alpha' and 'Beta' robotic group. The Alpha Wolf' will be the group leader, searching and tracking the 'Prey.' At the same time, the …

Programming By Demonstration Using Learning Based Approach: A Mini Review, Atul Acharya, Rajiv Dubey, Redwan Alqasemi

36th Florida Conference on Recent Advances in Robotics

Wheelchair-mounted robotic arms are used in rehabilitation robotics to help physically impaired people perform ADL (Activity of daily living) tasks. However, the dexterity of manipulation tasks makes the teleoperation of the robotic arm challenging for the user, as it is difficult to control all degrees of freedom with a handheld joystick or a screen touch device. PbD (Programming by demonstration) allows the user to demonstrate the desired behavior and enables the system to learn from the demonstrations and adapt to a new environment. This learned model can perform a new set of actions in a new environment. Learning from a …

Targeted Adversarial Attacks Against Neural Network Trajectory Predictors, Kaiyuan Tan

McKelvey School of Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Trajectory prediction is an integral component of modern autonomous systems as it allows for envisioning future intentions of nearby moving agents. Due to the lack of other agents' dynamics and control policies, deep neural network (DNN) models are often employed for trajectory forecasting tasks. Although there exists an extensive literature on improving the accuracy of these models, there is a very limited number of works studying their robustness against adversarially crafted input trajectories. To bridge this gap, in this paper, we propose a targeted adversarial attack against DNN models for trajectory forecasting tasks. We call the proposed attack TA4TP for …

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 …

Roboretrieve--In A Dual Role As A Hand-Held Surgical Robot And A Collaborative Robot End-Effector To Perform Spillage-Free Specimen Retrieval In Laparoscopy, Siqin Dong

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Recent advances in surgical robotics attempt to overcome limitations of manual surgery by augmenting the surgeon’s capabilities while performing suturing, incision, retraction, and retrieval tasks. This dissertation presents novel approaches for spillage-free specimen retrieval in confined spaces, targeted toward the surgical domain of minimally invasive robotic surgery. The retrieval task involves extraction of a resected specimen, residing in the abdominal cavity, completely outside of the patient’s body. A major challenge in this context is the spillage of content being retrieved, which may cause dissemination of malignancy. To address this challenge, this dissertation develops RoboRetrieve, a portable hand-held robot that …

Power Amplifier Based On Composite Injection-Voltaic Transistors, Nodira Batirdjanovna Alimova

Chemical Technology, Control and Management

The problem of high-current radio engineering devices is related to the fact that the use of high-power transistors and other semiconductor devices is limited by such a phenomenon as a secondary breakdown, in which there is a sharp decrease in the voltage on the device with simultaneous internal current lacing, and the device fails. To solve the problem of secondary breakdown, schemes have been proposed that operate stably at reverse voltage values 4-5 times higher than usual and at power dissipation 2-3 times higher than the maximum allowable power for an individual device. The problem is proposed to be solved …

Motion Control Simulation Of A Hexapod Robot, Weishu Zhan

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

This thesis addresses hexapod robot motion control. Insect morphology and locomotion patterns inform the design of a robotic model, and motion control is achieved via trajectory planning and bio-inspired principles. Additionally, deep learning and multi-agent reinforcement learning are employed to train the robot motion control strategy with leg coordination achieves using a multi-agent deep reinforcement learning framework. The thesis makes the following contributions:

First, research on legged robots is synthesized, with a focus on hexapod robot motion control. Insect anatomy analysis informs the hexagonal robot body and three-joint single robotic leg design, which is assembled using SolidWorks. Different gaits are …

Implementation Of Static Rfid Landmarks In Slam For Planogram Compliance, Brennan L. Drake

Honors College Theses

Autonomous robotic systems are becoming increasingly prevalent in everyday life and exhibit robust solutions in a wide range of applications. They face many obstacles with the foremost of which being SLAM, or Simultaneous Localization and Mapping, that encompasses both creation of the map of an unknown environment and localization of the robot in said environment. In this experiment, researchers propose the use of RFID tags in a semi-dynamic commercial environment to provide concrete landmarks for localization and mapping in pursuit of increased locational certainty. With this obtained, the ultimate goal of the research is to construct a robotics platform for …

Claw Hand Activity, Admin Stem For Success, Natalie Wilson

STEM for Success Showcase

Activity plan where students practice coding principles by programming the actions of a claw hand

Reactive Particle Swarm Control Architecture And Application For Scalar Field Adaptive Navigation, Shae Taylor Hart

Engineering Ph.D. Theses

Adaptive navigation is a subcategory of navigation techniques that attempts to identify goal locations that satisfy specific criteria in an unknown area. In 2D scalar field adaptive navigation (SFAN), primitives navigate to or along features of interest in an unknown, possibly time-varying, planar scalar field. Features include extrema, contours, and fronts. This work solves the 2D SFAN problem using swarm robotic techniques. Robotic swarms are a subset of multi-robot systems that use decentralized control of simple interchangeable robots to perform collective actions. A subgroup of swarms is the Reactive Particle Swarm (RPS), characterized based on its simplicity, reactivity to its …

Assessing High Dynamic Range Imagery Performance For Object Detection In Maritime Environments, Erasmo Landaeta

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

The field of autonomous robotics has benefited from the implementation of convolutional neural networks in vision-based situational awareness. These strategies help identify surface obstacles and nearby vessels. This study proposes the introduction of high dynamic range cameras on autonomous surface vessels because these cameras capture images at different levels of exposure revealing more detail than fixed exposure cameras. To see if this introduction will be beneficial for autonomous vessels this research will create a dataset of labeled high dynamic range images and single exposure images, then train object detection networks with these datasets to compare the performance of these networks. …

Neural Network Fusion Of Multi-Modal Sensor Data For Autonomous Surface Vessels, David J. Thompson

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

Autonomous surface vessels (ASV) can potentially improve the safety of vessels traditionally operated by humans. Despite advancements in autonomous on-road vehicles, many of these advancements have yet to be realized for ASVs. This is primarily due to lacking ASV sensing platforms and public datasets for ASV-based perception research. To that end, this dissertation demonstrates the design of a synchronized multi-modal sensing platform for ASVs utilizing GPS/INS, LiDAR, LWIR cameras, HDR camera, and high-resolution cameras. The sensing platform is designed to maximize the overlap of sensors for multi-modal research and provides accurate intrinsic and extrinsic calibration between each sensor. Furthermore, the …

A Human-In-The-Loop Robot Grasping System With Grasp Quality Refinement, Tian Tan

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The goal of this dissertation is to develop a grasping system for assistive robots that can help people with disabilities and the elderly to perform tasks of daily living. In developing this robot grasping system, we maximize its reliability, accuracy, and autonomy. High reliability and accuracy are required for robots to perform tasks around human users and to safely interact with objects that might be fragile or have contents that could spill. High autonomy is desired as users with disabilities are usually not dexterous enough to directly operate the robot. In this dissertation, a human-in-the-loop (HitL) robot grasping system is …

Accurate Indoor Navigation System Based On Imu/Lp-Mm Integrated Method Using Kalman Filter Algorithm, Abdullah Mohammed Bahasan

Hadhramout University Journal of Natural & Applied Sciences

Abstract

The demand for navigation systems is rapidly increasing, especially in indoor environments which the signal of GPS is not available. Therefore the Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) system is a suitable navigation system in such indoor environments. It usually consists of three accelerometers and three gyroscopes to determine position, velocity and attitude information, respectively, without need of any external source. But this type of navigation systems has errors growth with time due to accelerometers and gyroscopes drifts. This paper introduces indoor navigation system based on integrated IMU navigation system with proposed system called Landmarks Points-Map Matching (LP-MM) system using Kalman …

Ai Applications On Planetary Rovers, Alexis David Pascual

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The rise in the number of robotic missions to space is paving the way for the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning in the autonomy and augmentation of rover operations. For one, more rovers mean more images, and more images mean more data bandwidth required for downlinking as well as more mental bandwidth for analyzing the images. On the other hand, light-weight, low-powered microrover platforms are being developed to accommodate the drive for planetary exploration. As a result of the mass and power constraints, these microrover platforms will not carry typical navigational instruments like a stereocamera or a laser …

Chatgpt As Metamorphosis Designer For The Future Of Artificial Intelligence (Ai): A Conceptual Investigation, Amarjit Kumar Singh (Library Assistant), Dr. Pankaj Mathur (Deputy Librarian)

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

Abstract

Purpose: The purpose of this research paper is to explore ChatGPT’s potential as an innovative designer tool for the future development of artificial intelligence. Specifically, this conceptual investigation aims to analyze ChatGPT’s capabilities as a tool for designing and developing near about human intelligent systems for futuristic used and developed in the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Also with the helps of this paper, researchers are analyzed the strengths and weaknesses of ChatGPT as a tool, and identify possible areas for improvement in its development and implementation. This investigation focused on the various features and functions of ChatGPT that …

Process Automation And Robotics Engineering For Industrial Processing Systems, Drake Stimpson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Automation in industrial systems applications has emerged as the fundamental solution for improving quality, production rate, and efficiency of a process. Much of the recent popularity surrounding the transition of processes from manually operated tasks to automated systems can be attributed to the concept of Industry 4.0, which outlines the fundamental guidelines for integrating cyber-physical systems into industrial processes. Due to rapid advancement of technology in robotics and automation as well as the increase in accessibility of resources to this technology, the capability to develop automated systems has become feasible for small-scale enterprise. This work presents a two-part initiative to …

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 …

Drone Detection Using Yolov5, Burchan Aydin, Subroto Singha

Faculty Publications

The rapidly increasing number of drones in the national airspace, including those for recreational and commercial applications, has raised concerns regarding misuse. Autonomous drone detection systems offer a probable solution to overcoming the issue of potential drone misuse, such as drug smuggling, violating people’s privacy, etc. Detecting drones can be difficult, due to similar objects in the sky, such as airplanes and birds. In addition, automated drone detection systems need to be trained with ample amounts of data to provide high accuracy. Real-time detection is also necessary, but this requires highly configured devices such as a graphical processing unit (GPU). …

Parallel Real Time Rrt*: An Rrt* Based Path Planning Process, David Yackzan

Theses and Dissertations--Mechanical Engineering

This thesis presents a new parallelized real-time path planning process. This process is an extension of the Real-Time Rapidly Exploring Random Trees* (RT-RRT*) algorithm developed by Naderi et al in 2015 [1]. The RT-RRT* algorithm was demonstrated on a simulated two-dimensional dynamic environment while finding paths to a varying target state. We demonstrate that the original algorithm is incapable of running at a sufficient rate for control of a 7-degree-of-freedom (7-DoF) robotic arm while maintaining a path planning tree in 7 dimensions. This limitation is due to the complexity of maintaining a tree in a high-dimensional space and the network …

A Path Planning Framework For Multi-Agent Robotic Systems Based On Multivariate Skew-Normal Distributions, Peter Estephan

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

This thesis presents a path planning framework for a very-large-scale robotic (VLSR) system in an known obstacle environment, where the time-varying distributions of agents are applied to represent the multi-agent robotic system (MARS). A novel family of the multivariate skew-normal (MVSN) distributions is proposed based on the Bernoulli random field (BRF) referred to as the Bernoulli-random-field based skew-normal (BRF-SN) distribution. The proposed distributions are applied to model the agents’ distributions in an obstacle-deployed environment, where the obstacle effect is represented by a skew function and separated from the no-obstacle agents’ distributions. First, the obstacle layout is represented by a Hilbert …

Implementing A Smart Campus Chatbot Using Tf-Idf, Erica Lee

Senior Projects Fall 2023

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Science, Mathematics and Computing of Bard College.

Alternatives To Reducing Aviation Fuel-Burn With Technology: Fully Electric Autonomous Taxibot, Denzil Neo

Student Works

Aircraft taxiing operations in the aerodrome were identified to consume the most jet fuel apart from the cruise phase of the flight. This was also well supported by various research associating taxi operations at large, congested airports, with high jet fuel consumption, high carbon emissions, and noise pollution. Existing literature recognised the potential to address the environmental issues of aerodrome taxi operations by operating External or Onboard Aircraft Ground Propulsion Systems (AGPS). Designed to power aircraft with sources other than their main engines, external Aircraft Ground Power Systems (AGPS) have shown the potential to significantly cut jet fuel consumption and …

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 …

Understanding And Quantifying Human Factors In Programming From Demonstration: A User Study Proposal, Shakra Mehak, Aayush Jain, John D. Kelleher, Philip Long, Michael Guilfoyle, Maria Chiara Leva

Conference papers

Programming by demonstration (PbD) is a promising method for robots to learn from direct, non-expert human interaction. This approach enables the interactive transfer of human skills to the robot. As the non-expert user is at the center of PbD, the efficacy of the learned skill is largely dependent on the demonstrations provided. Although PbD methods have been extensively developed and validated in the field of robotics, there has been inadequate confirmation of their effectiveness from the perspective of human teachability. To address this gap, we propose to experimentally investigate the impact of communicating robot learning process on the efficacy of …

Human Tracking Function For Robotic Dog, Andrew Sharkey

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

With the increase the increase in automation and humans and robots working side by side, there is a need for a more organic way of controlling robots. The goal of this project is to create a control system for Boston dynamics robotic dog Spot that implements human tracking image software to follow humans using computer vision as well as using hand tracking image software to allow for control input through hand gestures.

Evaluation Of Lidar Uncertainty And Applications Towards Slam In Off-Road Environments, Zachary D. Jeffries

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Safe and robust operation of autonomous ground vehicles in all types of conditions and environment necessitates complex perception systems and unique, innovative solutions. This work addresses automotive lidar and maximizing the performance of a simultaneous localization and mapping stack. An exploratory experiment and an open benchmarking experiment are both presented. Additionally, a popular SLAM application is extended to use the type of information gained from lidar characterization, demonstrating the performance gains and necessity to tightly couple perception software and sensor hardware. The first exploratory experiment collects data from child-sized, low-reflectance targets over a range from 15 m to 35 m. …

Imitation Learning For Swarm Control Using Variational Inference, Hafeez Olafisayo Jimoh

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

Swarms are groups of robots that can coordinate, cooperate, and communicate to achieve tasks that may be impossible for a single robot. These systems exhibit complex dynamical behavior, similar to those observed in physics, neuroscience, finance, biology, social and communication networks, etc. For instance, in Biology, schools of fish, swarm of bacteria, colony of termites exhibit flocking behavior to achieve simple and complex tasks. Modeling the dynamics of flocking in animals is challenging as we usually do not have full knowledge of the dynamics of the system and how individual agent interact. The environment of swarms is also very noisy …

Exploiting The Advantages And Overcoming The Challenges Of The Cable In A Tethered Drone System, Rogerio Rodrigues Lima

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

This dissertation proposes solutions for motion planning, localization, and landing of tethered drones using only tether variables. A tether-based multi-model localization framework for tethered drones is proposed. This framework comprises three independent localization strategies based on a different model. The first strategy uses simple trigonometric relations assuming that the tether is taut; the second method relies on a set of catenary equations for the slack tether case; the third estimator is a neural network-based predictor that can cover different tether shapes. Multi-layer perceptron networks previously trained with a dataset comprised of the tether variables (i.e., length, tether angles on the …

Portable Robotic Navigation Aid For The Visually Impaired, Lingqiu Jin

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation aims to address the limitations of existing visual-inertial (VI) SLAM methods - lack of needed robustness and accuracy - for assistive navigation in a large indoor space. Several improvements are made to existing SLAM technology, and the improved methods are used to enable two robotic assistive devices, a robot cane, and a robotic object manipulation aid, for the visually impaired for assistive wayfinding and object detection/grasping. First, depth measurements are incorporated into the optimization process for device pose estimation to improve the success rate of VI SLAM's initialization and reduce scale drift. The improved method, called depth-enhanced visual-inertial …