Robotics Commons^™

Reducing Communication Delay Variability For A Group Of Robots, Goncalo Martins

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

A novel architecture is presented for reducing communication delay variability for a group of robots. This architecture relies on using three components: a microprocessor architecture that allows deterministic real-time tasks; an event-based communication protocol in which nodes transmit in a TDMA fashion, without the need of global clock synchronization techniques; and a novel communication scheme that enables deterministic communications by allowing senders to transmit without regard for the state of the medium or coordination with other senders, and receivers can tease apart messages sent simultaneously with a high probability of success. This approach compared to others, allows simultaneous communications without …

Robot Team Formation Control Using Communication "Throughput Approach", Fatmazahra Ahmed Benhalim

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, we consider a team of robots forming a mobile robot network cooperating to accomplish a mission in an unknown but structured environment. The team has no a-priori knowledge of the environment. Robots have limited memory storage capabilities, not enough to map the environment. Each robot also has limited sensor capability and computational power. Due to the need to avoid obstacles and other environment effects, some robots get delayed from the rest. Using tracking controller, the robot team should follow the leader in a flexible formation shape without losing network connectivity, and that was achieved by monitoring the …

Navigation & Control Of An Automated Swath Surface Vessel For Bathymetric Mapping, Ketan Rasal

Mechanical Engineering Master's Theses

With the abundant amount of water on the earth, the study of underwater terrain plays an important role in the use and sustainability of marine resources. A wide variety of technical systems are used to collect such bathymetric data, and autonomous vehicles are being explored as a manner in which to make this process more cost-effective. Students in Santa Clara University's Robotic Systems Laboratory are contributing to this effort through the development of an autonomous SWATH boat that can create such maps. As part of this thesis work, the navigation and control system of this SWATH boat has been significantly …

Human Intention Recognition Based Assisted Telerobotic Grasping Of Objects In An Unstructured Environment, Karan Hariharan Khokar

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation work, a methodology is proposed to enable a robot to identify an object to be grasped and its intended grasp configuration while a human is teleoperating a robot towards the desired object. Based on the detected object and grasp configuration, the human is assisted in the teleoperation task. The environment is unstructured and consists of a number of objects, each with various possible grasp configurations. The identification of the object and the grasp configuration is carried out in real time, by recognizing the intention of the human motion. Simultaneously, the human user is assisted to preshape over …

A Distributed Local-Leg Feedback Algorithm For Robust Walking On Uneven Terrain, Mayur Ramakant Palankar

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Legged animals can traverse significantly more of the Earth's land mass than man-made wheeled and tracked vehicles~\cite{Anonymous67}. Their impressive mobility is largely due to multiple dexterous legs and the robust algorithms that coordinate and control them. A legged animal such as a squirrel can exhibit multiple locomotion modes such as walking, running and jumping and also multiple gaits or leg phase timings within each mode. A robot that could mimic this level of robust locomotion would be highly useful for planetary exploration, military reconnaissance, and time-critical search and rescue in cluttered or collapsed buildings.

A number of biological studies on …

Robotic Swarming Without Inter-Agent Communication, Daniel Jonathan Standish

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Many physical and algorithmic swarms utilize inter-agent communication to achieve advanced swarming behaviors. These swarms are inspired by biological swarms that can be seen throughout nature and include bee swarms, ant colonies, fish schools, and bird flocks. These biological swarms do not utilize inter-agent communication like their physical and algorithmic counterparts. Instead, organisms in nature rely on a local awareness of other swarm members that facilitates proper swarm motion and behavior. This research aims to pursue an effective swarm algorithm using only line-of-sight proximity information and no inter-agent communication. It is expected that the swarm performance will be lower than …

Fpca Based Human-Like Trajectory Generating, Wei Dai

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis presents a new human-like upper limb and hand motion generating method. The work is based on Functional Principal Component Analysis and Quadratic Programming. The human-like motion generating problem is formulated in a framework of minimizing the difference of the dynamic profile of the optimal trajectory and the known types of trajectory. Statistical analysis is applied to the pre-captured human motion records to work in a low dimensional space. A novel PCA FPCA hybrid motion recognition method is proposed. This method is implemented on human grasping data to demonstrate its advantage in human motion recognition. One human grasping hierarchy …

A Robust Rgb-D Slam System For 3d Environment With Planar Surfaces, Po-Chang Su

Theses and Dissertations--Electrical and Computer Engineering

Simultaneous localization and mapping is the technique to construct a 3D map of unknown environment. With the increasing popularity of RGB-depth (RGB-D) sensors such as the Microsoft Kinect, there have been much research on capturing and reconstructing 3D environments using a movable RGB-D sensor. The key process behind these kinds of simultaneous location and mapping (SLAM) systems is the iterative closest point or ICP algorithm, which is an iterative algorithm that can estimate the rigid movement of the camera based on the captured 3D point clouds. While ICP is a well-studied algorithm, it is problematic when it is used in …

Design Of A Running Robot And The Effects Of Foot Placement In The Transverse Plane, Timothy James Sullivan

Open Access Theses

The purpose of this thesis is to make advances in the design of humanoid bipedal running robots. We focus on achieving dynamic running locomotion because it is one metric by which we can measure how far robotic technologies have advanced, in relation to existing benchmarks set by humans and other animals. Designing a running human-inspired robot is challenging because human bodies are exceptionally complex mechanisms to mimic. There are only a few humanoid robots designed specifically for running and the existing robots are either constrained to a plane, do not yet exhibit human-like motion, or are unstable.

One aspect of …

Adaptive Nonlinear Control For Autonomous Ground Vehicles, William Spencer Black

Open Access Theses

We present the background and motivation for ground vehicle autonomy, and focus on uses for space-exploration. Using a simple design example of an autonomous ground vehicle we derive the equations of motion. After providing the mathematical background for nonlinear systems and control we present two common methods for exactly linearizing nonlinear systems, feedback linearization and backstepping. We use these in combination with three adaptive control methods: model reference adaptive control, adaptive sliding mode control, and extremum-seeking model reference adaptive control. We show the performances of each combination through several simulation results. We then consider disturbances in the system, and design …

Combining Multiple, Inexpensive Gps Receivers To Increase Accuracy And Reliability, Daniel Kenneth Schrader

Open Access Theses

GPS is a technology that allows for accurate tracking of various parameters, namely speed and location. Many modern systems and tools require a rapidly-refreshing report of their speed and/or location, but the GPS technology available to most users may not be accurate enough for some applications. Methods currently

exist to improve GPS accuracy, but many or all of these methods are expensive, difficult, or simply not available without special technology and permission.

The research presented in this thesis describes an attempt to improve the accuracy and/or reliability of GPS, without using any expensive or restricted methods. The ability for any …

Analysis Of An Actuated Two Segment Leg Model Of Locomotion, Nikhil Vinayak Rao

Open Access Theses

Research studies on dynamic models of legged locomotion have generally focused on telescoping-type leg models. Such telescoping spring loaded inverted pendulum (SLIP) models have been able to accurately predict observed center of mass (CoM) trajectories. There have been comparatively fewer studies on dynamics of locomotion

with segmented legs. Some earlier studies on the dynamics due to leg segmentation appear straightforward. For example, a simple model with the only joint moment being due to a passive springy knee has been shown to behave similarly to a telescoping spring-mass model. However, in real-life animal locomotion, there are multiple joint-moments acting at the …

Evaluating And Training Intraoperative Analysis Of The Mitral Valve, Neil A. Tenenholtz

Link Foundation Modeling, Simulation and Training Fellowship Reports

Mitral valve repair is the recommended method of treating valve incompetency. However, the procedure is quite difficult and, as a result, underperformed due to surgeon’s need to predict the closed valve shape of the patient’s arrested heart. While the interactive process of predicting closed valve shape is achieved by physically manipulating valve tissue (known as valve analysis), surgical training consists of traditional, non-interactive pedagogy (e.g., book-based learning and lectures) followed by an apprenticeship model where the trainee is gradually given hands-on experience, resulting in post-medical school training that is often 10 years or greater. The continuing education of practicing cardiac …

Influence Of Task-Role Mental Models On Human Interpretation Of Robot Motion Behavior, Scott Ososky

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The transition in robotics from tools to teammates has begun. However, the benefit autonomous robots provide will be diminished if human teammates misinterpret robot behaviors. Applying mental model theory as the organizing framework for human understanding of robots, the current empirical study examined the influence of task-role mental models of robots on the interpretation of robot motion behaviors, and the resulting impact on subjective ratings of robots. Observers (N = 120) were exposed to robot behaviors that were either congruent or incongruent with their task-role mental model, by experimental manipulation of preparatory robot task-role information to influence mental models (i.e., …

Dynamics And Control Of Higher-Order Nonholonomic Systems, Jaime Rubio HerváS

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

A theoretical framework is established for the control of higher-order nonholonomic systems, defined as systems that satisfy higher-order nonintegrable constraints. A model for such systems is developed in terms of differential-algebraic equations defined on a higher-order tangent bundle. A number of control-theoretic properties such as nonintegrability, controllability, and stabilizability are presented. Higher-order nonholonomic systems are shown to be strongly accessible and, under certain conditions, small time locally controllable at any equilibrium. There are important examples of higher-order nonholonomic systems that are asymptotically stabilizable via smooth feedback, including space vehicles with multiple slosh modes and Prismatic-Prismatic-Revolute (PPR) robots moving open liquid …

Nonlinear Control For Dual Quaternion Systems, William D. Price

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

The motion of rigid bodies includes three degrees of freedom (DOF) for rotation, generally referred to as roll, pitch and yaw, and 3 DOF for translation, generally described as motion along the x, y and z axis, for a total of 6 DOF. Many complex mechanical systems exhibit this type of motion, with constraints, such as complex humanoid robotic systems, multiple ground vehicles, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), multiple spacecraft vehicles, and even quantum mechanical systems. These motions historically have been analyzed independently, with separate control algorithms being developed for rotation and translation. The goal of this research is to study …

Investigation On The Mobile Robot Navigation In An Unknown Environment, Ahmed S. Khusheef

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Mobile robots could be used to search, find, and relocate objects in many types of manufacturing operations and environments. In this scenario, the target objects might reside with equal probability at any location in the environment and, therefore, the robot must navigate and search the whole area autonomously, and be equipped with specific sensors to detect objects. Novel challenges exist in developing a control system, which helps a mobile robot achieve such tasks, including constructing enhanced systems for navigation, and vision-based object recognition. The latter is important for undertaking the exploration task that requires an optimal object recognition technique.

In …

Mapping And Visualizing Ancient Water Storage Systems With An Rov – An Approach Based On Fusing Stationary Scans Within A Particle Filter, William D. Mcvicker

Master's Theses

This paper presents a new method for constructing 2D maps of enclosed un- derwater structures using an underwater robot equipped with only a 2D scanning sonar, compass and depth sensor. In particular, no motion model or odometry is used. To accomplish this, a two step offline SLAM method is applied to a set of stationary sonar scans. In the first step, the change in position of the robot between each consecutive pair of stationary sonar scans is estimated using a particle filter. This set of pair wise relative scan positions is used to create an estimate of each scan’s position …

Low Cost Neurochairs, Frankie Pike

Master's Theses

Electroencephalography (EEG) was formerly confined to clinical and research settings with the necessary hardware costing thousands of dollars. In the last five years a number of companies have produced simple electroencephalograms, priced below $300 and available direct to consumers. These have stirred the imaginations of enthusiasts and brought the prospects of "thought-controlled" devices ever closer to reality. While these new devices were largely targeted at video games and toys, active research on enabling people suffering from debilitating diseases to control wheelchairs was being pursued. A number of neurochairs have come to fruition offering a truly hands-free mobility solution, but whether …

Evolving Expert Agent Parameters For Capture The Flag Agent In Xpilot, Gary Parker, Sarah Penrose

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Xpilot is an open source, 2d space combat game. Xpilot-AI allows a programmer to write scripts that control an agent playing a game of Xpilot. It provides a reasonable environment for testing learning systems for autonomous agents, both video game agents and robots. In previous work, a wide range of techniques have been used to develop controllers that are focused on the combat skills for an Xpilot agent. In this research, a Genetic Algorithm (GA) was used to evolve the parameters for an expert agent solving the more challenging problem of capture the flag.