Robotics Commons^™

Riley The Cat, Nicholas Zankich

Computer Engineering

There are many toys that exist that are comfort objects. Generally these are toys that are soft such as blankets, stuffed animals, and pillows. Robotic toys also exist such as games, interactive books, and instruments. There exists a crossover market that includes Furbys, Tomagachi pets, and Fur Real Friends. While being very popular, I believe that this crossover isn’t perfect, and that there is a lot of room for improvement. Riley (Figure 1) was created to make something that is both completely a robot and a comfort object.

Polygrasp: Reach; Myoelectric Prosthetic Hand Iteration, Devon Patrick Augustus, Mighells Blaed Deuel, Ian Noel Fraser, Nicholas Philip Moesser

Mechanical Engineering

Amputations are a common occurrence in soldiers returning home who have suffered the effects of IED and munitions explosions. For upper limb amputees, trans-radial amputations are the most common. Traditional hook devices do not offer an adequate level of normalcy for users, prompting the use of myoelectric devices. While current myoelectric devices do offer a more natural experience, they come with a host of other problems that makes their adoption by service personnel not desirable or not permitted by the VA. PolyGrasp Reach seeks to reduce weight and cost and improve performance. This addresses several of the issues with devices …

I Am The Robot. Are You?, Rachel Michelle Feldman

Honors Theses

I was originally inspired by a previous project in a 3D modeling class. For my final project, I designed two robots; male and female; who’s naked bodied reflected the presence of technological communications in society and lack of face-to-face interactions. I displayed the robots in a variety of sexual positions, which appear cute or sweet to the viewer because of the toon-shader effect. The toon-shader effect makes the 3D models look like cartoons. I loved combining the idea of technology, robotics, and sex into one. To this day, the poster of the robots in my room always gets a response. …

Union Advanced Educational Robot, Erik Skorina

Honors Theses

Our project was the design and construction of a medium sized (approximately 40 kg when fully loaded) mobile robot for educational and research use. This robot was designed to provide a strong baseline chassis with sensors, actuators and necessary software to allow for easy integration with existing robotic equipment, software and curricula. In particular, it was designed for use in intermediate and advanced undergraduate robotics courses and undergraduate research projects in robotics.

Multi-Tier Exploration Concept Demonstration Mission, Jeremy Straub

Jeremy Straub

A multi-tier, multi-craft mission architecture has been proposed but, despite its apparent promise, limited use and testing of the architecture has been conducted. This paper proposes and details a mission concept and its implementation for testing this architecture in the terrestrial environment. It is expected that this testing will allow significant refinement of the proposed architecture as well as providing data on its suitability for use in both terrestrial and extra-terrestrial applications. Logistical and technical challenges with this testing are discussed.

Vikis: The Can Collecting Robot, Eric Edwards, Leah Humiston, Jason Foulk

Computer Engineering

RoboRodentia is an annual school-wide robotics competition that has been held during Cal Poly’s Open House for the past thirteen years. The competition rules change from year to year as the objective of the competition changes, but an important aspect of the competition is that the robots run completely autonomously. This paper describes the development, design, and implementation of the RoboRodentia robot from Team Vikis. The technical specifications, robot components, individual responsibilities, and results are described in depth within this document.

Android Powered Autonomous Robot, Dennis Cagle, Zachary Negrey

Computer Engineering

The goal of this Senior Project was to create an autonomous robot powered by an Android phone to compete in Roborodentia 2012. In order to accomplish this task, we used the Android Open Accessory Development Kit (Android ADK) to interface an Android phone with a custom Arduino microcontroller (Arduino Mega) designed by Google. The project contained design and implementation of hardware, electronic devices, and software.

Line Following Navigation, Nicole Marie Pennington

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Robot X, Alan Truong, Alex Haag

Computer Engineering

The following report outlines the design decisions behind Robot X for the 2012 Cal Poly Roborodentia competition held annually during Open House. This investigation includes detailed overview of Robot X's sensory system, driving system, conveyor belt system, and can compartment system. In addition, basic hardware and software design are explored.

Getting It Right The First Time: Predicted Performance Guarantees From The Analysis Of Emergent Behavior In Autonomous And Semi-Autonomous Systems, Ronald C. Arkin, Damian M. Lyons, Shu Jiang, Prem Nirmal, Munzir Zafar

Faculty Publications

A crucially important aspect for mission-critical robotic operations is ensuring as best as possible that an autonomous system be able to complete its task. In a project for the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) we are developing methods to provide such guidance, specifically for counter-Weapons of Mass Destruction (C-WMD) missions. In this paper, we describe the scenarios under consideration, the performance measures and metrics being developed, and an outline of the mechanisms for providing performance guarantees.

Navigation Of Uncertain Terrain By Fusion Of Information From Real And Synthetic Imagery, Damian M. Lyons, Prem Nirmal, D. Paul Benjamin

Faculty Publications

We consider the scenario where an autonomous platform that is searching or traversing a building may observe unstable masonry or may need to travel over unstable rubble. A purely behaviour-based system may handle these challenges but produce behaviour that works against long-terms goals such as reaching a victim as quickly as possible. We extend our work on ADAPT, a cognitive robotics architecture that incorporates 3D simulation and image fusion, to allow the robot to predict the behaviour of physical phenomena, such as falling masonry, and take actions consonant with long-term goals.

We experimentally evaluate a cognitive only and reactive only …

Using A Virtual World For Robot Planning, D. Paul Benjamin, John V. Monaco, Yixia Lin, Christopher Funk, Damian M. Lyons

Faculty Publications

We are building a robot cognitive architecture that constructs a real-time virtual copy of itself and its environment, including people, and uses the model to process perceptual information and to plan its movements. This paper describes the structure of this architecture. The software components of this architecture include PhysX for the virtual world, OpenCV and the Point Cloud Library for visual processing, and the Soar cognitive architecture that controls the perceptual processing and task planning. The RS (Robot Schemas) language is implemented in Soar, providing the ability to reason about concurrency and time. This Soar/RS component controls visual processing, deciding …

Exact Robot Navigation Using Artificial Potential Functions, Elon Rimon, Daniel E. Koditschek

Daniel E Koditschek

We present a new methodology for exact robot motion planning and control that unifies the purely kinematic path planning problem with the lower level feedback controller design. Complete information about the freespace and goal is encoded in the form of a special artificial potential function - a navigation function - that connects the kinematic planning problem with the dynamic execution problem in a provably correct fashion. The navigation function automatically gives rise to a bounded-torque feedback controller for the robot's actuators that guarantees collision-free motion and convergence to the destination from almost all initial free configurations. Since navigation functions exist …

Adaptive Algorithms For Coverage Control And Space Partitioning In Mobile Robotic Networks, Jerome Le Ny, George J. Pappas

George J. Pappas

We consider deployment problems where a mobile robotic network must optimize its configuration in a distributed way in order to minimize a steady-state cost function that depends on the spatial distribution of certain probabilistic events of interest. Three classes of problems are discussed in detail: coverage control problems, spatial partitioning problems, and dynamic vehicle routing problems. Moreover, we assume that the event distribution is a priori unknown, and can only be progressively inferred from the observation of the location of the actual event occurrences. For each problem we present distributed stochastic gradient algorithms that optimize the performance objective. The stochastic …

Adaptive Robot Deployment Algorithms, Jerome Le Ny, George J. Pappas

George J. Pappas

In robot deployment problems, the fundamental issue is to optimize a steady state performance measure that depends on the spatial configuration of a group of robots. For static deployment problems, a classical way of designing high- level feedback motion planners is to implement a gradient descent scheme on a suitably chosen objective function. This can lead to computationally expensive deployment algorithms that may not be adaptive to uncertain dynamic environments. We address this challenge by showing that algorithms for a variety of deployment scenarios in stochastic environments and with noisy sensor measurements can be designed as stochastic gradient descent algorithms, …

Adaptive Algorithms For Coverage Control And Space Partitioning In Mobile Robotic Networks, Jerome Le Ny, George J. Pappas

George J. Pappas

We consider deployment problems where a mobile robotic network must optimize its configuration in a distributed way in order to minimize a steady-state cost function that depends on the spatial distribution of certain probabilistic events of interest. Three classes of problems are discussed in detail: coverage control problems, spatial partitioning problems, and dynamic vehicle routing problems. Moreover, we assume that the event distribution is a priori unknown, and can only be progressively inferred from the observation of the location of the actual event occurrences. For each problem we present distributed stochastic gradient algorithms that optimize the performance objective. The stochastic …

Adaptive Robot Deployment Algorithms, Jerome Le Ny, George J. Pappas

George J. Pappas

In robot deployment problems, the fundamental issue is to optimize a steady state performance measure that depends on the spatial configuration of a group of robots. For static deployment problems, a classical way of designing high- level feedback motion planners is to implement a gradient descent scheme on a suitably chosen objective function. This can lead to computationally expensive deployment algorithms that may not be adaptive to uncertain dynamic environments. We address this challenge by showing that algorithms for a variety of deployment scenarios in stochastic environments and with noisy sensor measurements can be designed as stochastic gradient descent algorithms, …

Adaptive Algorithms For Coverage Control And Space Partitioning In Mobile Robotic Networks, Jerome Le Ny, George J. Pappas

George J. Pappas

We consider deployment problems where a mobile robotic network must optimize its configuration in a distributed way in order to minimize a steady-state cost function that depends on the spatial distribution of certain probabilistic events of interest. Three classes of problems are discussed in detail: coverage control problems, spatial partitioning problems, and dynamic vehicle routing problems. Moreover, we assume that the event distribution is a priori unknown, and can only be progressively inferred from the observation of the location of the actual event occurrences. For each problem we present distributed stochastic gradient algorithms that optimize the performance objective. The stochastic …

Adaptive Robot Deployment Algorithms, Jerome Le Ny, George J. Pappas

George J. Pappas

In robot deployment problems, the fundamental issue is to optimize a steady state performance measure that depends on the spatial configuration of a group of robots. For static deployment problems, a classical way of designing high- level feedback motion planners is to implement a gradient descent scheme on a suitably chosen objective function. This can lead to computationally expensive deployment algorithms that may not be adaptive to uncertain dynamic environments. We address this challenge by showing that algorithms for a variety of deployment scenarios in stochastic environments and with noisy sensor measurements can be designed as stochastic gradient descent algorithms, …

The Creation Of A Robotics Based Human Upper Body Model For Predictive Simulation Of Prostheses Performance, Derek James Lura

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This work focuses on the use of 3D motion capture data to create and optimize a robotic human body model (RHBM) to predict the inverse kinematics of the upper body. The RHBM is a 25 degrees of freedom (DoFs) upper body model with subject specific kinematic parameters. The model was developed to predict the inverse kinematics of the upper body in the simulation of a virtual person, including persons with functional limitations such as a transradial or transhumeral amputation. Motion data were collected from 14 subjects: 10 non-amputees control subjects, 1 person with a transradial amputation, and 3 persons with …