Engineering Commons^™

On Sensorless Collision Detection And Measurement Of External Forces In Presence Of Modeling Inaccuracies, Vahid Sotoudehnejad

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The field of human-robot interaction has garnered significant interest in the last decade. Every form of human-robot coexistence must guarantee the safety of the user. Safety in human-robot interaction is being vigorously studied, in areas such as collision avoidance, soft actuators, light-weight robots, computer vision techniques, soft tissue modeling, collision detection, etc. Despite the safety provisions, unwanted collisions can occur in case of system faults. In such cases, before post-collision strategies are triggered, it is imperative to effectively detect the collisions. Implementation of tactile sensors, vision systems, sonar and Lidar sensors, etc., allows for detection of collisions. However, due to …

Remote/Autonomous Sentry Gun Platform, Angelo Gagliardi, Dante Gagliardi

Electrical Engineering

This senior project involves the complete system design and construction of a "Nerf" sentry gun to replace an armed guard. We aimed to develop a compact and highly mobile defense system that allows operational flexibility. The sentry gun can autonomously track and shoot at moving targets, while also allowing a user to remotely access and control the gun via computer. The mobility, hardiness, and functionality of this system allows a reliable replacement for human beings in harsh and hostile environments; ultimately sparing a life.

Computer-Based Stereoscopic Parts Recognition For Robotic Applications, Ahmad A. Fayed

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Most of robotic handling and assembly operations are based on sensors such as range and touch sensors. In certain circumstances, such as in the presence of ionizing radiation where most customary sensors will degrade over time due to radiation exposure, these sensors won't function properly. Utilizing two or more cameras (stereo vision) located outside the target zone and analyzing their images to identify location and dimensions of parts within the robot workspace is an alternative for using sensors. Object Recognition is affected by the light condition which oftentimes causes the gray-scale or red, green, and blue values to have a …

A Hybrid Visual Control Scheme To Assist The Visually Impaired With Guided Reaching Tasks, Duane Jacques

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In recent years, numerous researchers have been working towards adapting technology developed for robotic control to use in the creation of high-technology assistive devices for the visually impaired. These types of devices have been proven to help visually impaired people live with a greater degree of confidence and independence. However, most prior work has focused primarily on a single problem from mobile robotics, namely navigation in an unknown environment. In this work we address the issue of the design and performance of an assistive device application to aid the visually-impaired with a guided reaching task. The device follows an eye-in-hand, …

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 …

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 …

Semantically Grounded Learning From Unstructured Demonstrations, Scott D. Niekum

Open Access Dissertations

Robots exhibit flexible behavior largely in proportion to their degree of semantic knowledge about the world. Such knowledge is often meticulously hand-coded for a narrow class of tasks, limiting the scope of possible robot competencies. Thus, the primary limiting factor of robot capabilities is often not the physical attributes of the robot, but the limited time and skill of expert programmers. One way to deal with the vast number of situations and environments that robots face outside the laboratory is to provide users with simple methods for programming robots that do not require the skill of an expert.

For this …

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 …

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, …

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 …

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 …

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 …

The Design Of A Maneuverable Rolling Robot, David Carabis

Honors Theses

The purpose of this project was to design, fabricate, and test a maneuverable rolling robot. Although some other rolling robots were researched for this project, a novel approach was taken to design a unique, cheap robot that could turn and was fully enclosed by a rotating outer shell. The design and research phase of this project included the evaluation of several designs, the development of a mathematical model detailing forward motion of the robot, and the derivation of several design equations. Of the possible designs, an interior counterweight was chosen to provide a torque to the outside shell and move …

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.

Cpe 200: Small Bear Project, David Burke, Devin Tang

Computer Engineering

CPE 200 is an elective course designed for sophomores in the Computer Engineering Department. This project was intended to design the class, such that, students will understand the skills a computer engineer develops and how to apply those skills.

Caddy: A 2005 Roborodentia Entry With Vision And Path Planning Abilities, Taylor Braun-Jones

Computer Engineering

Roborodentia is an autonomous robotics competition held each year during Cal Poly’s Open House. For the 2005 competition, robot entries needed to navigate a maze searching for three randomly placed golf balls, collect them, and then deposit the balls in the “nest” at the end of the maze. A newly added aspect for the 2005 competition included two bonus balls that were placed on a platform behind the wall in two predetermined corners of the maze.

Caddy is a robot that was entered into the 2005 Roborodentia competition. Caddy included a vision system that allowed searching for balls down untraveled …

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., …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

Radar Based Collision Avoidance For Unmanned Aircraft Systems, Allistair A. Moses

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) have become increasingly prevalent and will represent an increasing percentage of all aviation. These unmanned aircraft are available in a wide range of sizes and capabilities and can be used for a multitude of civilian and military applications. However, as the number of UAS increases so does the risk of mid-air collisions involving unmanned aircraft. This dissertation aims present one possible solution for addressing the mid-air collision problem in addition to increasing the levels of autonomy of UAS beyond waypoint navigation to include preemptive sensor-based collision avoidance. The presented research goes beyond the current state of …

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 …

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 …

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 …