Robotics Commons^™

Development And Human Performance Evaluation Of A Ground Vehicle Robotic Force-Feedback Tele-Operation System, Ankur Saraf

Wayne State University Theses

ABSTRACT

DEVELOPMENT AND HUMAN PERFORMANCE EVALUATION OF A GROUND VEHICLE ROBOTIC FORCE-FEEDBACK TELE-OPERATION SYSTEM

by

ANKUR SARAF

May 2011

Advisor: Dr. Abhilash K. Pandya.

Major: Electrical Engineering.

Degree: Master of Science.

Modern tele-operation systems are trying to take into account haptic and audio information in addition to visual data to provide as feedback to the tele-operator.This research emphasizes on the development of hardware and software architecture to enhance the tele-operation capabilities of omni-directional inspection robot (ODIS). The system enhances the tele-operation capabilities by introducing force-feedback to the tele-operators. The conventional joystick is replaced with Novint Falcon haptic joystick which gets …

Control Of A Single Ground Vehicle Using Aerial And Onboard Camera Views, Vishal Lowalekar

Wayne State University Theses

Controlling a ground vehicle using only onboard and aerial camera views, can be a tedious task, as it is challenging for the operator to estimate information about the robots location and orientation using only these view. However the visual data can be sufficient for computerized calculation of this information even in the absence of other sensors. This approach is of interest to the military because the use of passive sensors instead of active sensors (e.g. LIDAR) would be easier and more reliable and would not give off detectable signatures.

The goal of this research was to control a ground vehicle …

Evidence Supporting Measure Of Similarity For Reducing The Complexity In Information Fusion, Florentin Smarandache, Jean Dezert, Xinde Li, Xinhan Huang

Branch Mathematics and Statistics Faculty and Staff Publications

This paper presents a new method for reducing the number of sources of evidence to combine in order to reduce the complexity of the fusion processing. Such a complexity reduction is often required in many applications where the real-time constraint and limited computing resources are of prime importance. The basic idea consists in selecting, among all sources available, only a subset of sources of evidence to combine. The selection is based on an evidence supporting measure of similarity (ESMS) criterion which is an efficient generic tool for outlier sources identification and rejection. The ESMS between two sources of evidence can …

Optimal Port Placement And Automated Robotic Positioning For Instrumented Laparoscopic Biosensors, Brady King

Wayne State University Dissertations

OPTIMAL SURGICAL PORT PLACEMENT AND AUTOMATED ROBOTIC POSITIONING FOR RAMAN AND OTHER BIOSENSORS

by

BRADY KING

January 2011

Advisors: Dr. Abhilash Pandya, Dr. Darin Ellis, Dr. Le Yi Wang, and Dr. Greg Auner

Major: Computer Engineering

Degree: Doctor of Philosophy

Medical biosensors can provide new information during minimally invasive and robotic surgical procedures. However, these biosensors have significant physical limitations that make it difficult to find optimal port locations and place them in vivo. This dissertation explores the application of robotics and virtual/augmented reality to biosensors to enable their optimal use in vivo.

In the first study, human …

Reactivation Of A Six-Degree-Of-Freedom Repeated Impact Machine Using Programmable Logical Controller (Plc), Cheng Lin

Engineering Technology Faculty Publications

Reactivation of a six-degree-of-freedom impact machine using Programmable Logical Control (PLC) is presented. The output from the machine is the history of accelerations collected from accelerometers attached at the testing article and a load cell mounted at the rubber pad where the impact occurs. Readings of the acceleration and impact force are sent to a PC for analysis through a data acquisition device (USB 6251) and Labview software provided by National Instrument (NI). Result shows that the machine can repeatedly generate an impact force up to eleven Gs. Demonstration of the project can be used as one of labs in …

Asymmetric Passive Dynamic Walker Used To Examine Gait Rehabilitation Methods, John Sushko

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Testing gait rehabilitation devices on humans can be a difficult task, due to the effects of the neurological controls of the human body. This thesis advances the use of a passive dynamic walker (PDW) tuned to have asymmetric gait patterns similar to those with physical impairments to test rehabilitation devices. A passive dynamic walker is a multipendulum system that has a stable gait pattern when walking down a slope without any energy inputs except the forces due to gravity. A PDW model is better suited for testing rehabilitation devices because it has been shown to resemble human gait and separates …

Robotic Hand Evaluation Based On Task Specific Kinematic Requirements, Carlos Rafael Neninger

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

With the rise autonomous and robotic systems in field applications, the need for dexterous, highly adaptable end effectors has become a major research topic. Control mechanisms of robotics hands with a high number independent actuators is recognized as a complex, high dimensional problem, with exponentially complex algorithms. However, recent studies have shown that human hand motion possesses very high joint correlation which translates into a set of predefined postures, or synergies. The hand produces a motion using a complementing contribution of multiple joints, called synergies. The similarities place variables onto a common dimensional space, effectively reducing the number of independent …

Utilizing A Computational Model For The Design Of A Passive Dynamic Walker, Craig Alan Honeycutt

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Recent interest in using passive dynamic walkers (PDWs) for gait rehabilitation studies has presented a need for a robust, easily built mechanism. Unfortunately, these passive robots are hypersensitive to many variables outside of the usual design considerations that are studied when constructing them. By accentuating previous failures instead of suppressing them, this thesis presents a number of problematic situations commonly experienced when testing and tuning a PDW.

Further, through a complete design of a 4-legged PDW with knees, simple design axioms brought about by myself and others are put into a practical context and applied directly to design. This thesis …

Intelligent Planning And Assimilation Of Auv-Obtained Measurements Within A Roms-Based Ocean Modeling System, Benjamin J. Davini

Master's Theses

Efforts to learn more about the oceans that surround us have increased dramatically as the technological ability to do so grows. Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) are one such technological advance. They allow for rapid deployment and can gather data quickly in places and ways that traditional measurement systems (bouys, profilers, etc.) cannot. A ROMS-based data assimilation method was developed that intelligently plans for and integrates AUV measurements with the goal of minimizing model standard deviation. An algorithm developed for this system is first described that optimizes paths for AUVs that seeks to improve the model by gathering data in high-interest …

Increasing High School Stem Participation Through Robotics Training And Tournaments (Final Report), Richard Kline

Cornerstone 2 Reports : Community Outreach and Empowerment Through Service Learning and Volunteerism

The overall goal of this project was to engage high school students in an exciting way to increase their interest in science and technology. We planned to accomplish this by making Pace University an official Affiliate Partner of the FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) robotics competition, a fast-growing program with more than 1,100 participating teams in 2009-2010. In FTC, high-school age participants design, build, and program their own robots to enter into regional and national competitions. Building on the Seidenberg School’s past success as a partner to FIRST with its FIRST LEGO League program, we intended to organize, host, and run …

Autonomous Underwater Vehicles As Tools For Deep-Submergence Archaeology, Christopher N. Roman, Ian Roderick Mather

Graduate School of Oceanography Faculty Publications

Marine archaeology beyond the capabilities of scuba divers is a technologically enabled field. The tool suite includes ship-based systems such as towed side-scan sonars and remotely operated vehicles, and more recently free-swimming autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs). Each of these platforms has various imaging and mapping capabilities appropriate for specific scales and tasks. Broadly speaking, AUVs are becoming effective tools for locating, identifying, and surveying archaeological sites. This paper discusses the role of AUVs in this suite of tools, outlines some specific design criteria necessary to maximize their utility in the field, and presents directions for future developments. Results are presented …

Selection And Recognition Of Landmarks Using Terrain Spatiograms, Damian M. Lyons

Faculty Publications

A team of robots working to explore and map an area may need to share information about landmarks so as to register their local maps and to plan effective exploration strategies. In previous papers we have introduced a combined image and spatial representation for landmarks: terrain spatiograms. We have shown that for manually selected views, terrain spatiograms provide an effective, shared representation that allows for occlusion filtering and a combination of multiple views.

In this paper, we present a landmark saliency architecture (LSA) for automatically selecting candidate landmarks. Using a dataset of 21 outdoor stereo images generated by LSA, we …

Nonlinear Control Strategy For A Cost Effective Myoelectric Prosthetic Hand, Cristian Federico Pasluosta

Doctoral Dissertations

The loss of a limb tremendously impacts the life of the affected individual. In the past decades, researchers have been developing artificial limbs that may return some of the missing functions and cosmetics. However, the development of dexterous mechanisms capable of mimicking the function of the human hand is a complex venture. Even though myoelectric prostheses have advanced, several issues remain to be solved before an artificial limb may be comparable to its human counterpart. Moreover, the high cost of advanced limbs prevents their widespread use among the low-income population.

This dissertation presents a strategy for the low-level of control …

Design Of A Transtibial Prosthesis Utilizing Active And Passive Components In Conjunction With A Four-Bar Mechanism, Bryan Bergelin

Master's Theses (2009 -)

This thesis outlines the design and testing of a powered ankle prosthesis which utilizes a four-bar mechanism in conjunction with a spiral torsion spring and a servo motor that mimics non-amputee (normal) ankle moments during the stance phase of gait. Previous research has shown that this novel approach is feasible, but the proof-of-concept prototype was not designed to be able to be worn by an amputee due to size, strength and mobility limitations. The goal of this research was to redesign the transtibial prosthesis to fit the requirements of the targeted amputee population. A preliminary virtual prosthesis was designed using …

Reconode: Towards An Autonomous Multi-Robot Team Agent For Usar, Kang Li

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Urban search and rescue (USAR) robots can benefit from small size as it facilitates movement in cramped quarters. Yet, small size limits actuator power, sensor payloads, computational capacity and battery life. We are alleviating these issues by developing the hardware and software infrastructure for high performance, heterogeneous, dynamically-reconfigurable miniature USAR robots, as well as a host of other relevant applications. In this thesis, a generic modular embedded system architecture based on the RecoNode multiprocessor is proposed, which consists of a set of hardware and software modules that can be configured to construct various types of robot systems for dynamic and …

Ultrasonic Shark-Tag Locator System For Iver2 Auv, Nathaniel Garcia

Computer Engineering

The purpose of this project is to develop a system for tracking an ultrasonic underwater transmitter that can be integrated into an IVER2 AUV to allow it to follow and monitor tagged sharks in the ocean for scientific research.

The system consists of a four main components including a shark-tag, two hydrophones, a filter/amplifier & threshold detector circuit, and a microcontroller.

This project, while not completing field testing and integration with the IVER2, is a proof of concept of a system that utilizes passive sonar to determine a bearing from the system to a shark-tag transmitter. Additionally, it devised several …

Multiple Robot Boundary Tracking With Phase And Workload Balancing, Michael Jay Boardman

Master's Theses

This thesis discusses the use of a cooperative multiple robot system as applied to distributed tracking and sampling of a boundary edge. Within this system the boundary edge is partitioned into subsegments, each allocated to a particular robot such that workload is balanced across the robots. Also, to minimize the time between sampling local areas of the boundary edge, it is desirable to minimize the difference between each robot’s progression (i.e. phase) along its allocated sub segment of the edge. The paper introduces a new distributed controller that handles both workload and phase balancing. Simulation results are used to illustrate …

Monocular Vision And Image Correlation To Accomplish Autonomous Localization, Matthew Paul Schlachtman

Master's Theses

For autonomous navigation, robots and vehicles must have accurate estimates of their current state (i.e. location and orientation) within an inertial coordinate frame. If a map is given a priori, the process of determining this state is known as localization. When operating in the outdoors, localization is often assumed to be a solved problem when GPS measurements are available. However, in urban canyons and other areas where GPS accuracy is decreased, additional techniques with other sensors and filtering are required.

This thesis aims to provide one such technique based on monocular vision. First, the system requires a map be generated, …

Application Of Structured Light Imaging For High Resolution Mapping Of Underwater Archaeological Sites, Chris Roman, Gabrielle Inglis, James Rutter

Graduate School of Oceanography Faculty Publications

This paper presents results from recent work using structured light laser profile imaging to create high resolution bathymetric maps of underwater archaeological sites. Documenting the texture and structure of submerged sites is a difficult task and many applicable acoustic and photographic mapping techniques have recently emerged. This effort was completed to evaluate laser profile imaging in comparison to stereo imaging and high frequency multibeam mapping. A ROV mounted camera and inclined 532 nm sheet laser were used to create profiles of the bottom that were then merged into maps using platform navigation data. These initial results show very promising resolution …

Detection And Filtering Of Landmark Occlusions Using Terrain Spatiograms, Damian M. Lyons

Faculty Publications

A team of robots cooperating to quickly produce a map needs to share landmark information between members so that the local maps can be accurately merged. However, the appearance of landmarks as seen by members of the team can change dramatically due to the phenomenon of occlusion.

We have previously presented an approach to landmark representation using Terrain Spatiograms – an extension to image spatiograms in which the spatial information relates to the scene rather than the image. Because this representation preserves depth structure, it is possible to identify and filter potential occlusions.

We present an approach to identifying and …