Robotics Commons^™

Getting It Right The First Time: Robot Mission Guarantees In The Presence Of Uncertainty, Damian Lyons, Ron Arkin, Paramesh Nirmal, Shu Jiang, Tsung-Ming Liu, Julia Deeb

Faculty Publications

Abstract—Certain robot missions need to perform predictably in a physical environment that may only be poorly characterized in advance. We have previously developed an approach to establishing performance guarantees for behavior-based controllers in a process-algebra framework. We extend that work here to include random variables, and we show how our prior results can be used to generate a Dynamic Bayesian Network for the coupled system of program and environment model. Verification is reduced to a filtering problem for this network. Finally, we present validation results that demonstrate the effectiveness of the verification of a multiple waypoint robot mission using this …

Dexterous Hexrotor Uav Platform, Guangying Jiang

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Mobile manipulation is a hot area of study in robotics as it unites the two classes of robots: locomotors and manipulators. An emerging niche in the field of mobile manipulation is aerial mobile manipulation. Although there has been a fair amount of study of free-flying satellites with graspers, the more recent trend has been to outfit UAVs with graspers to assist various manipulation tasks. While this recent work has yielded impressive results, it is hampered by a lack of appropriate testbeds for aerial mobile manipulation, similar to the state of ground-based mobile manipulation a decade ago. Typical helicopters or quadrotors …

Development Of Pneumatic Robot For Outreach, Eshamogbo E. Ojuba, John Lumkes

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

To encourage the current generation of high school and middle school students to pursue careers in engineering, it is important to have challenging hands-on engineering activities for them. Such activities should be interesting, compelling, and, most importantly, educative. A mini-excavator was built for fluid power outreach, but this tool only demonstrates fluid power, without showing other important aspects of engineering. The tool being developed is able to demonstrate fluid power, as well as other important aspects of engineering, such as controls, electronics, and programming. This tool is an electronically-controlled device that allows the user control a pneumatic circuit, coupled with …

Performance Guarantees For C-Wmd Robot Missions, Shu Jiang, Ronald C. Arkin, Damian M. Lyons, Tsung-Ming Liu, Dagon Harrington

Faculty Publications

Robotics has been considered as one of the five key technology areas for defense against attacks with weapons of mass destruction (WMD). However, due to the mass impact nature of WMD, failures of counter-WMD (C-WMD) missions can have catastrophic consequences.To ensure robot's success in carrying out C-WMD missions, we have developed a novel verification framework in providing performance guarantees for behavior-based and probabilistic robot algorithms in complex real-world environments. This paper describes the system architecture and discusses how the verification framework can be used to provide pre-mission performance guarantees for robots in executing C-WMD missions.

Reasoning Across Language And Vision In Machines And Humans, Andrei Barbu

Open Access Dissertations

Humans not only outperform AI and computer-vision systems, but use an unknown computational mechanism to perform tasks for which no suitable approaches exist. I present work investigating both novel tasks and how humans approach them in the context of computer vision and linguistics. I demonstrate a system which, like children, acquires high-level linguistic knowledge about the world. Robots learn to play physically-instantiated board games and use that knowledge to engage in physical play. To further integrate language and vision I develop an approach which produces rich sentential descriptions of events depicted in videos. I then show how to simultaneously detect …

Hypothesize-And-Verify Based Solutions For Place Recognition And Mobile Robot Self-Localization In Interior Hallways, Khalil Mustafa Ahmad Yousef

Open Access Dissertations

There is much research interest currently in having mobile robots build accurate and visually dense models ofinterior space as they traverse through such spaces. One of the interesting problems that has came out of this research is that of visual place recognition and self-localization. This is the problem that forms the focus of the present dissertation. We show how dense and accurate 3D models of the interior space can be constructed using a hierarchical sensor-fusion architecture. Our system fuses images from a single photometric camera with range data from a laser scanning sensor. The range data used is rudimentary--the range …

Continuum Robotic Surface: Forward Kinematic Analysis And Implementation, Jessica Merino

All Theses

This thesis presents a new class of biologically inspired robots: continuum robotic surfaces. This work is fueled by the question: can the interaction between robot and environment be advanced with “programmable surfaces in space?” The novelty of continuum robotic surfaces lies in their ability to be actively controlled and reconfigured in what we believe is the current “missing dimension” in robot movements — two–dimensional space. We believe that such surfaces will lend themselves to more complex applications. However, to effectively deploy such surfaces for these complex applications, kinematic models will be necessary to plan and control desired configurations. The forward …

Modeling, Control, And Motion Analysis Of A Class Of Extensible Continuum Manipulators, Apoorva Kapadia

All Dissertations

In this dissertation, the development of a kinematic model, a configuration-space controller, a master-slave teleoperation controller, along with the analysis of the self-motion properties for redundant, extensible, continuous backbone (continuum) ``trunk and tentacle' manipulators are detailed. Unlike conventional rigid-link robots, continuum manipulators are robots that can bend at any point along their backbone, resulting in new and unique modeling and control issues. Taken together, these chapters represent one of the first efforts towards devising model-based controllers of such robots, as well as characterizing their self-motion in its simplest form.
Chapter 2 describes the development of a convenient set of generalized, …

Mobile Robot Navigation For Person Following In Indoor Environments, Ninad Pradhan

All Dissertations

Service robotics is a rapidly growing area of interest in robotics research. Service robots inhabit human-populated environments and carry out specific tasks. The goal of this dissertation is to develop a service robot capable of following a human leader around populated indoor environments. A classification system for person followers is proposed such that it clearly defines the expected interaction between the leader and the robotic follower. In populated environments, the robot needs to be able to detect and identify its leader and track the leader through occlusions, a common characteristic of populated spaces. An appearance-based person descriptor, which augments the …

Decentralized Collision Avoidance, Jayasri K. Janardanan

School of Computing: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Autonomous Robots must carry out their tasks as independently as possible and each robot may be assigned different tasks at different locations. As these tasks are being performed, the robots have to navigate correctly such that the assigned tasks are completed efficiently, while also avoiding each other and other obstacles. To accomplish effective navigation, we must ensure that the robots are calibrated to avoid colliding with any kind of object on its path. Each robot has to sense the obstacles on its path and take necessary corrective measure to avoid those obstacles. In a situation with multiple robots, robots may …

Verifying Performance For Autonomous Robot Missions With Uncertainty, Damian M. Lyons, Ronald Arkin, Tsung-Ming Liu, Shu Jiang, Paramesh Nirmal

Faculty Publications

Establishing performance guarantees for robot missions is especially important for C-WMD applications. Software verification techniques, such as model checking (Clark 1999, Jhala & Majumdar 2009), can be applied to robotic applications but characteristics of this application area, including addition of a robot environment model and handling continuous spatial location well, exacerbate state explosion, a key weakness of these methods. We have proposed an approach to verifying robot missions that shifts the focus from state-based analysis onto the solution of a set of flow equations (Lyons et al. 2012). The key novelty introduced in this paper is a probabilistic spatial representation …

Bruno The Robotic Bear, Aaron Brauner, Ian Panzer

Computer Engineering

Creating homemade robots are becoming a popular hobby among engineers. With the dramatic reduction in costs over the past few decades, it is finally possible to build a personal automated mailbox. Microcontrollers needed to function as the brains of the robot are also becoming powerful enough that relatively complicated instructions could be programmed into the robot to handle a plethora of sensors and peripherals. In order to demonstrate how the Computer Engineering department models the synthesis of computer science and electrical engineering, the topic chosen was robotics, specifically, a stuffed bear robot.

The microcontroller chosen was the Arduino Mega 2560 …

Flarebot - Analysis Of An Autonomous Robot, Sanat S. Sahasrabudhe

Computer Engineering

Autonomous robots are increasing in popularity for educational, research, and household purposes. This report analyzes the design and functionality of one such example, called FlareBot, which is designed to self-navigate and stack cans. Specifically, the robot is designed to follow a fixed path for navigation, and stack any cans it comes across. Once a maximum number of cans is stacked, the robot releases them and restarts the process. The design is achieved using three DC motors, two servo motors, one line sensor, and one infrared sensor. Designing autonomous robots is a strong test of the engineering design process, which includes …

Automatic Site Reconstruction With A Mobile Robot And Scanning Laser Proximity Sensor, Erik Nelson, Sean Willis, Nathan Lucero

Computer Engineering

Leading research in robotics, especially in the areas of computer vision, planning, and probabilistic learning, require a mobile robot platform to program. The design and construction of such a platform is a laborious task, calling upon knowledge from many branches of engineering. Additionally, hot research topics in robotics such as vision-based Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM), advanced trajectory planning algorithms, and adaptive control for collision avoidance contain algorithms that build upon a localization and mapping architecture which is time-consuming to program in itself. To bring future senior project teams from Cal Poly's computer engineering and computer science departments closer to …

Modeling A Sensor To Improve Its Efficacy, Nabin K. Malakar, Daniil Gladkov, Kevin H. Knuth

Physics Faculty Scholarship

Robots rely on sensors to provide them with information about their surroundings. However, high-quality sensors can be extremely expensive and cost-prohibitive. Thus many robotic systems must make due with lower-quality sensors. Here we demonstrate via a case study how modeling a sensor can improve its efficacy when employed within a Bayesian inferential framework. As a test bed we employ a robotic arm that is designed to autonomously take its own measurements using an inexpensive LEGO light sensor to estimate the position and radius of a white circle on a black field. The light sensor integrates the light arriving from a …

Performance Verification For Behavior-Based Robot Missions, Damian M. Lyons, Ronald Arkin, Shu Jiang, Tsung-Ming Liu, Paramesh Nirmal, J. Deeb

Faculty Publications

Certain robot missions need to perform predictably in a physical en-vironment that may only be poorly characterized in advance. This requirement raises many issues for existing approaches to software verification. An approach based on behavior-based controllers in a process-algebra framework is proposed by Lyons et al [15] to side-step state combinatorics. In this paper we show that this approach can be used to generate a Dynamic Bayesian Network for the problem, and that verification is reduced to a filtering problem for this network. We present validation results for the verification of a multiple waypoint robot mission using this approach.

Robotic Kinect Bear, Spencer Lines, Dennis Waldron, Sagiv Sheelo

Computer Engineering

The goal of this project was to create an interactive 53”-tall robotic teddy bear to showcase various aspects of Cal Poly’s computer engineering degree. The interactive element took the form of a Microsoft Kinect for Windows sensor, which provided body and face position tracking of the user. Using this sensor and various other elements, we successfully made a teddy bear which mirrors a user's face and arm positions in real-time.

An Analysis Of Simultaneous Localization And Mapping (Slam) Algorithms, Megan R. Naminski

Mathematics, Statistics, and Computer Science Honors Projects

This paper provides an introduction to two Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) algorithms: EKF SLAM and Fast-SLAM. SLAM allows an autonomous robot to accurately map an unknown environment as well as locate itself within the environment. These algorithms work iteratively, by moving about the environment and extracting and observing various landmarks in the environment. EKF SLAM and Fast-SLAM solve the SLAM problem by using probabilities to control for errors in the robot's sensors. This paper provides a discussion of these two algorithms and compares their run times and the accuracy of the maps they produce.

Fusion Of Ranging Data From Robot Teams Operating In Confined Areas, Damian M. Lyons, Karma Shrestha, Tsung-Ming Liu

Faculty Publications

We address the problem of fusing laser ranging data from multiple mobile robots that are surveying an area as part of a robot search and rescue or area surveillance mission. We are specifically interested in the case where members of the robot team are working in close proximity to each other. The advantage of this teamwork is that it greatly speeds up the surveying process; the area can be quickly covered even when the robots use a random motion exploration approach. However, the disadvantage of the close proximity is that it is possible, and even likely, that the laser ranging …

A Cognitive Approach To Vision For A Mobile Robot, Paul Benjamin, Christopher Funk, Damian M. Lyons

Faculty Publications

We describe a cognitive vision system for a mobile robot. This system works in a manner similar to the human vision system, using saccadic, vergence and pursuit movements to extract information from visual input. At each fixation, the system builds a 3D model of a small region, combining information about distance, shape, texture and motion. These 3D models are embedded within an overall 3D model of the robot's environment. This approach turns the computer vision problem into a search problem, with the goal of constructing a physically realistic model of the entire environment. At each step, the vision system selects …