Engineering Commons^™

Extended Abstract Rotopod: A Novel Approach To Efficient Legged Locomotion, Damian M. Lyons

Faculty Publications

A number of attempts have been made to integrate the efficiency of wheeled locomotion with the terrain versatility of legged locomotion, e.g., Univ.Michigan’s Rhex platform and Case Western’s Whegs. Those platforms cast legs as rotating spokes placed traditionally at the corners of a rectangular platform. In this paper, we present an alternate approach, with three legs radiating down from a central hub. The energy to move the platform is generated by a rotating reaction mass mounted at the hub and, at rest, rotating parallel to the ground plane.

Our approach is to construct a platform whose natural, uncontrolled motion is …

Evaluation Of A Parallel Architecture And Algorithm For Mapping And Localization, Damian M. Lyons, Giselle R. Isner

Faculty Publications

The Beowulf cluster approach to parallel computation offers a potentially cheap and robust source of computational power for high complexity algorithms in robotics. The challenge is to integrate this approach with the mobility and time critical response constraints of many robotic algorithms. The key contributions of this paper are: (1) introduction of a computational architecture for integrating a cluster into the control architecture of one or more robots, (2) a cluster implementation of Thrun et al’s Concurrent Localization and Mapping (CML) algorithm, and (3) presentation of results to illustrate the performance of the implemented CML algorithm and validate the architectural …

Combinatorial Fusion Criteria For Robot Mapping, Damian M. Lyons, D. Frank Hsu, Qiang Ma, Liang Wang

Faculty Publications

We address the problem of sensor fusion for stereo and ultrasound depth measurements for map building for a robot operating in a cluttered environment. In such a situation it’s difficult to make useful and realistic assumpt ions about the sensor or environment statistics. Combinatorial Fusion Analysis is used to develop an approach to fusion with unknown sensor and environment statistics. A metric is proposed that shows when fusion from a set of fusion alternatives will produ ce a more accurate estimation of depth than either sonar or stereo alone and when not. The metric consists of two crit eria: (a) …

Selection Of Fusion Operations Using Rank-Score Diversity For Robot Mapping And Localization, Damian M. Lyons, D. Frank Hsu, Qiang Ma, Liang Wang

Faculty Publications

In this paper, we evaluate the use of a rank-score diversity measure for selecting sensory fusion operations for a robot localization and mapping application. Our current application involves robot mapping and navigation in an outdoor urban search and rescue situation in which we have many similar and mutually occluding landmarks. The robot is a 4- wheel direct drive platform equipped with visual, stereo depth and ultrasound sensors. In such an application it’s difficult to make useful and realistic assumptions about the sensor or environment statistics. Combinatorial Fusion Analysis(CFA) is used to develop an approach to fusion with unknown sensor and …