Robotics Commons^™

Developing A Miniature Smart Boat For Marine Research, Michael Isaac Eirinberg

Computer Engineering

This project examines the development of a smart boat which could serve as a possible marine research apparatus. The smart boat consists of a miniature vessel containing a low-cost microcontroller to live stream a camera feed, GPS telemetry, and compass data through its own WiFi access point. The smart boat also has the potential for autonomous navigation. My project captivated the interest of several members of California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo’s (Cal Poly SLO) Marine Science Department faculty, who proposed a variety of fascinating and valuable smart boat applications.

Outdoor Operations Of Multiple Quadrotors In Windy Environment, Deepan Lobo

Dissertations

Coordinated multiple small unmanned aerial vehicles (sUAVs) offer several advantages over a single sUAV platform. These advantages include improved task efficiency, reduced task completion time, improved fault tolerance, and higher task flexibility. However, their deployment in an outdoor environment is challenging due to the presence of wind gusts. The coordinated motion of a multi-sUAV system in the presence of wind disturbances is a challenging problem when considering collision avoidance (safety), scalability, and communication connectivity. Performing wind-agnostic motion planning for sUAVs may produce a sizeable cross-track error if the wind on the planned route leads to actuator saturation. In a multi-sUAV …

Automotive Sensor Fusion Systems For Traffic Aware Adaptive Cruise Control, Jonah T. Gandy

Theses and Dissertations

The autonomous driving (AD) industry is advancing at a rapid pace. New sensing technology for tracking vehicles, controlling vehicle behavior, and communicating with infrastructure are being added to commercial vehicles. These new automotive technologies reduce on road fatalities, improve ride quality, and improve vehicle fuel economy. This research explores two types of automotive sensor fusion systems: a novel radar/camera sensor fusion system using a long shortterm memory (LSTM) neural network (NN) to perform data fusion improving tracking capabilities in a simulated environment and a traditional radar/camera sensor fusion system that is deployed in Mississippi State’s entry in the EcoCAR Mobility …

Automated Robotic Light Bulb Testing Platform, Agha I. Akram, Muhammad Ali Ummy

Publications and Research

The main purpose of this project is to create a functional prototype of a multilayered system that incorporates aspects of electrical, mechanical, and computer engineering technology. The main objective of the system is to be able to determine whether a light bulb is working or not. The building blocks of this system are a robotic arm that is able to slide along a rail (for added mobility), a conveyor belt, and an electromechanical device that holds and tests light bulbs. Initially, the robot arm picks up a light bulb and places it into the holder which then tests it. A …

Control, Decision-Making, And Learning Approaches For Connected And Autonomous Driving Systems With Humans-In-The-Loop, Fangjian Li

All Dissertations

By virtue of vehicular connectivity and automation, the vehicle becomes increasingly intelligent and self-driving capable. However, no matter what automation level the vehicle can achieve, humans will still be in the loop despite their roles. First, considering the manual driving car as a disturbance to the connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs), a novel string stability is proposed for mixed traffic platoons consisting of both autonomous and manual driving cars to guarantee acceptable motion fluctuation and platoon safety. Furthermore, humans are naturally considered as the rider in the passenger vehicle. A human-centered cooperative adaptive cruise control (CACC) is designed to improve …

Autonomous Navigator Mobile Robot Upgrade, David Sansoucy

Thinking Matters Symposium

The mobile robot platform has been developed over the course of 10 years at USM. In Spring 2020, Belle-Isle and Werner updated the previous framework by rewriting the software to use the ROS framework running on an on-board Raspberry Pi 3. They also implemented navigation using an A* motion planning algorithm and image processing. In Summer 2021, Ames incorporated Lidar and Kinect sensors onto the robot to improve its real-time navigation capabilities. He also made improvements to the power distribution systems. This project aimed to build on the ROS frameworks developed by the previous 2 teams with the main goal …

Combat Robot, Wayne Lambert, Elijah Harris, Brian Eiseman, Jordan Meyer

ONU Student Research Colloquium

The senior capstone project that was tasked to the team was the decision of choosing a challenge within a national robotics competition. The group decided to compete at the National Robotics Challenge in Marion, Ohio. The idea was to participate in the combat robot competition at this NRC event. Once this decision had been made the next steps were to get an idea of what the rules and requirements of the competition were and to try and to sketch a very rough drawing of what the ideal robot should look like. From there it was decided to start a timeline …

Development Of A Compliant Gripper Driven By 3 Dof Soft Robot, Derek M. Price Ii, Ricardo Ramirez, Pt Angel Tran

Symposium of Student Scholars

Industrial robots are moving toward automation, which makes it increasingly necessary to replace the functions traditionally performed by humans with robotics. Pick and place operation is a prime example of such automation. Robots that pick up and place objects mimic the human action of picking an object up and placing it in a targeted location. It has led to the development of robotic end-effectors that have a human-like feel. Grippers can be articulated in various ways depending on their application area and well-defined desired tasks. As compliant and soft links deflect more under the same load than their rigid body …

Practical Considerations And Applications For Autonomous Robot Swarms, Rory Alan Hector

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In recent years, the study of autonomous entities such as unmanned vehicles has begun to revolutionize both military and civilian devices. One important research focus of autonomous entities has been coordination problems for autonomous robot swarms. Traditionally, robot models are used for algorithms that account for the minimum specifications needed to operate the swarm. However, these theoretical models also gloss over important practical details. Some of these details, such as time, have been considered before (as epochs of execution). In this dissertation, we examine these details in the context of several problems and introduce new performance measures to capture practical …

Physiological Signal Analysis For Emotion Estimation Of Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder, Janet Pulgares Soriano, Karla Conn Welch Phd

Posters-at-the-Capitol

The diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) in children is based on human observations by a clinician. The medical evaluation assesses deficits in social communication, social interaction, and restricted, repetitive behaviors. Robotic technology can assist in quantitatively measuring the observations to be used as a future tool for autism diagnosis and intervention. The project explores this technology to produce robotic partners that can adapt to the needs of the ASD population. This way, such robots could serve as instructors or learning peers. A friendly, partner robot, specifically designed for children with ASD could be used to investigate the effect of …

A Machine Learning Approach To Intended Motion Prediction For Upper Extremity Exoskeletons, Justin Berdell

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

A fully solid-state, software-defined, one-handed, handle-type control device built around a machine-learning (ML) model that provides intuitive and simultaneous control in position and orientation each in a full three degrees-of-freedom (DOF) is proposed in this paper. The device, referred to as the “Smart Handle”, and it is compact, lightweight, and only reliant on low-cost and readily available sensors and materials for construction. Mobility chairs for persons with motor difficulties could make use of a control device that can learn to recognize arbitrary inputs as control commands. Upper-extremity exoskeletons used in occupational settings and rehabilitation require a natural control device like …

Biomimetic Design, Modeling, And Adaptive Control Of Robotic Gripper For Optimal Grasping, Mushtaq Al-Mohammed

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

Grasping is an essential skill for almost every assistive robot. Variations in shape and/or weight of different objects involved in Activities of Daily Living (ADL) lead to complications, especially, when the robot is trying to grip novel objects for which it has no prior information –too much force will deform or crush the object while too little force will lead to slipping and possibly dropped objects. Thus, successful grasping requires the gripper to immobilize an object with the minimal force. In Chapter 2, we present the design, analysis, and experimental implementation of an adaptive control to facilitate 1-click grasping of …

Formation Control With Bounded Controls And Collision Avoidance: Theory And Application To Quadrotor Unmanned Air Vehicles, Zachary S. Lippay

Theses and Dissertations--Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

This dissertation presents new results on multi-agent formation control and applies the new control algorithms to quadrotor unmanned air vehicles. First, this dissertation presents a formation control algorithm for double-integrator agents, where the formation is time varying and the agents’ controls satisfy a priori bounds (e.g., the controls accommodate actuator saturation). The main analytic results provide sufficient conditions such that all agents converge to the desired time-varying relative positions with one another and the leader, and have a priori bounded controls (if applicable). We also present results from rotorcraft experiments that demonstrate the algorithm with time-varying formations and bounded controls. …

An Experimental Study Towards Underwater Propulsion System Using Structure Borne Traveling Waves, Shreyas Suhas Gadekar

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

The method of generating steady-state structure-borne traveling waves underwater in an infinite media creates abundant opportunities in the field of propulsive applications, and they are gaining attention from several researchers. This experimental study provides a framework for harnessing traveling waves in a 1D beam immersed under quiescent water using two force input methods and providing a motion to an object floating on the surface of the water.

In this study, underwater traveling waves are tailored using structural vibrations at five different frequencies in the range of 10Hz to 300Hz. The resulting fluid motion provides a propulsive thrust that moves a …

Garden Bot: Autonomous Home Garden Weed Removal Robot, Brendon Lovejoy, Robert Connolly, Isaac Lucas, Stevan Veselinov

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

With frequent weeding being a tedious chore and an essential task for a successful garden, there is need for an automated method of handling this routine. Existing technologies utilize computer vision, GPS, multiple units and other tools to remove weeds from garden plots. However, these solutions are often complex and expensive, suited for large agricultural plots in contrast to small-scale home gardens. In addition, many of these technologies, along with manual tillers and cultivators suited for home use, are unable to perform weeding within rows of crops in a process known as intra-row weeding. The Garden Bot is an autonomous, …

Learning Robot Motion From Creative Human Demonstration, Charles C. Dietzel

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis presents a learning from demonstration framework that enables a robot to learn and perform creative motions from human demonstrations in real-time. In order to satisfy all of the functional requirements for the framework, the developed technique is comprised of two modular components, which integrate together to provide the desired functionality. The first component, called Dancing from Demonstration (DfD), is a kinesthetic learning from demonstration technique. This technique is capable of playing back newly learned motions in real-time, as well as combining multiple learned motions together in a configurable way, either to reduce trajectory error or to generate entirely …

Multimodal Adversarial Learning, Uche Osahor

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Deep Convolutional Neural Networks (DCNN) have proven to be an exceptional tool for object recognition, generative modelling, and multi-modal learning in various computer vision applications. However, recent findings have shown that such state-of-the-art models can be easily deceived by inserting slight imperceptible perturbations to key pixels in the input. A good target detection systems can accurately identify targets by localizing their coordinates on the input image of interest. This is ideally achieved by labeling each pixel in an image as a background or a potential target pixel. However, prior research still confirms that such state of the art targets models …

High Energy And Power Density Peptidoglycan Musclesthrough Super-Viscous Nanoconfined Water, Haozhen Wang, Zhi-Lun Liu, Jianpei Lao, Sheng Zhang, Rinat Abzalimov, Tong Wang, Xi Chen

Advanced Science Research Center

Water-responsive (WR) materials that reversibly deform in response to humidity changes show great potential for developing muscle-like actuators for miniature and biomimetic robotics. Here, it is presented that Bacillus (B.) subtilis’ peptidoglycan (PG) exhibits WR actuation energy and power densities reaching 72.6 MJ m−3 and 9.1 MW m−3, respectively, orders of magnitude higher than those of frequently used actuators, such as piezoelectric actuators and dielectric elastomers. PG can deform as much as 27.2% within 110 ms, and its actuation pressure reaches ≈354.6 MPa. Surprisingly, PG exhibits an energy conversion efficiency of ≈66.8%, which can be attributed to its super-viscous nanoconfined …

Collaborative Human-Machine Interfaces For Mobile Manipulators., Shamsudeen Olawale Abubakar

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The use of mobile manipulators in service industries as both agents in physical Human Robot Interaction (pHRI) and for social interactions has been on the increase in recent times due to necessities like compensating for workforce shortages and enabling safer and more efficient operations amongst other reasons. Collaborative robots, or co-bots, are robots that are developed for use with human interaction through direct contact or close proximity in a shared space with the human users. The work presented in this dissertation focuses on the design, implementation and analysis of components for the next-generation collaborative human machine interfaces (CHMI) needed for …

The Factors Influencing The Acceptance Of Web-Based E-Learning System Among Academic Staffs Of Saudi Arabia, Ikhlas Zamzami

Future Computing and Informatics Journal

It is possible to learn more quickly and effectively with e-learning software development because it provides learners with convenient and flexible learning environments. This allows them to progress further in their careers. Reports on web-based e-learning systems for in-service education have frequently neglected to include the viewpoint of the instructor. In order to conduct quantitative research, a sample of 50 academic staff members was selected. The purpose of this study was to investigate various factors that influence the intention to use web-based e-learning, with the theoretical foundation being provided by university lecturers. According to the findings of the study, the …

Human-Machine Communication: Complete Volume. Volume 3. Diffusion Of Human-Machine Communication During And After The Covid-19 Pandemic

Human-Machine Communication

This is the complete volume of HMC Volume 3. Diffusion of Human-Machine Communication During and After the COVID-19 Pandemic

What Will Affect The Diffusion Of Ai Agents?, James W. Dearing

Human-Machine Communication

For billions of people, the threat of the Novel Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 and its variants has precipitated the adoption of new behaviors. Pandemics are radical events that disrupt the gradual course of societal change, offering the possibility that some rapidly adopted innovations will persist in use past the time period of the event and, thus, diffuse more rapidly than in the absence of such an event. Human-machine communication includes a range of technologies with which many of us have quickly become more familiar due to stay-athome orders, distancing, workplace closures, remote instruction, home-bound entertainment, fear of contracting COVID-19, and boredom. In …

The Role Of Vidura Chatbot In The Diffusion Of Knowcovid-19 Gateway, Kerk F. Kee, Prasad P. Calyam, Hariharan Regunath

Human-Machine Communication

The COVID-19 pandemic is an unprecedented global emergency. Clinicians and medical researchers are suddenly thrown into a situation where they need to keep up with the latest and best evidence for decision-making at work in order to save lives and develop solutions for COVID-19 treatments and preventions. However, a challenge is the overwhelming numbers of online publications with a wide range of quality. We explain a science gateway platform designed to help users to filter the overwhelming amount of literature efficiently (with speed) and effectively (with quality), to find answers to their scientific questions. It is equipped with a chatbot …

Communicative Development And Diffusion Of Humanoid Ai Robots For The Post-Pandemic Health Care System, Do Kyun David Kim, Gary Kreps, Rukhsana Ahmed

Human-Machine Communication

As humanoid robot technology, anthropomorphized by artificial intelligence (AI), has rapidly advanced to introduce more human-resembling automated robots that can communicate, interact, and work like humans, we have begun to expect active interactions with Humanoid AI Robots (HAIRs) in the near future. Coupled with the HAIR technology development, the COVID-19 pandemic triggered our interest in using health care robots with many substantial advantages that overcome critical human vulnerabilities against the strong infectious COVID-19 virus. Recognizing the tremendous potential for the active application of HAIRs, this article explores feasible ways to implement HAIRs in health care and patient services and suggests …

Our Future Arrived: Diffusion Of Human-Machine Communication And Transformation Of The World For The Post-Pandemic Era, Do Kyun David Kim, Gary Kreps, Rukhsana Ahmed

Human-Machine Communication

The world is getting into a new phase in history. For the first time, humans are verbally communicating and developing meaningful relationships with non-living objects. AI is a wormhole to open a gateway to the new world, and the COVID-19 pandemic prepared the world to transform its system to be an open system that responds to, communicates with, and utilizes the remnants coming out of the wormhole of the new world. Now, we urgently need to create a holistic discourse on how we can recognize, develop, or shape the identities of communicable machines as people develop a partnership with them. …

Review Of Data Mining Techniques For Detecting Churners In The Telecommunication Industry, Mahmoud Ewieda, Mohamed Ismail Roushdy, Essam Shaaban

Future Computing and Informatics Journal

The telecommunication sector has been developed rapidly and with large amounts of data obtained as a result of increasing in the number of subscribers, modern techniques, data-based applications, and services. As well as better awareness of customer requirements and excellent quality that meets their satisfaction. This satisfaction raises rivalry between firms to maintain the quality of their services and upgrade them. These data can be helpfully extracted for analysis and used for predicting churners. Researchers around the world have conducted important research to understand the uses of Data mining (DM) that can be used to predict customers' churn. This …

Airborne Counter-Uncrewed Systems With Runtime Assurance Control, Isaac J. Seslar

Mechanical Engineering ETDs

This thesis develops a response to the increase in the availability of the commercially available uncrewed aerial systems and is dedicated to the detection, classification, and tracking required to successfully neutralize when determined malicious. A requirement of actively avoiding obstacles using runtime assurance is addressed and designed to keep the hardware safe in potentially dangerous situations. This work will elaborate on the several components the test bed is comprised of, specifically the hardware and software portions that successfully solve the problem. The software encompasses the simulation, the multiple algorithms required for the tracking, and the machine learning required for detection …

Computational Frameworks For Multi-Robot Cooperative 3d Printing And Planning, Laxmi Prasad Poudel

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation proposes a novel cooperative 3D printing (C3DP) approach for multi-robot additive manufacturing (AM) and presents scheduling and planning strategies that enable multi-robot cooperation in the manufacturing environment. C3DP is the first step towards achieving the overarching goal of swarm manufacturing (SM). SM is a paradigm for distributed manufacturing that envisions networks of micro-factories, each of which employs thousands of mobile robots that can manufacture different products on demand. SM breaks down the complicated supply chain used to deliver a product from a large production facility from one part of the world to another. Instead, it establishes a network …

Bibliometric Analysis On Dynamic Target Tracking By Mobile Robot, Gaurav Atha Mr., Siddhant Chaturvedi Mr., Atishraj Desai Mr., Dhrumil Desai Mr., Shripad V. Deshpande Mr.

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

The survey and bibliometric research on dynamic target tracking by a mobile robot are discussed in this paper. The primary goal of this bibliometric analysis is to comprehend and analyze the scope of the literature in the field of mobile robots for obstacle avoidance, path planning and target tracking using Robot Operating System (ROS). The ROS contains various tools for data analysis, incorporates multiple robots and their sensors, and supports devices interaction for target seeking and localization in mobile robots. This detailed review was performed on various research publications about the mapping of the unknown field/environment by the ROS based …

Multilayer Perceptron With Auto Encoder Enabled Deep Learning Model For Recommender Systems, Subhashini Narayan

Future Computing and Informatics Journal

In this modern world of ever-increasing one-click purchases, movie bookings, music, health- care, fashion, the need for recommendations have increased the more. Google, Netflix, Spotify, Amazon and other tech giants use recommendations to customize and tailor their search engines to suit the user’s interests. Many of the existing systems are based on older algorithms which although have decent accuracies, require large training and testing datasets and with the emergence of deep learning, the accuracy of algorithms has further improved, and error rates have reduced due to the use of multiple layers. The need for large datasets has declined as well. …