Robotics Commons^™

Human-Machine Communication Scholarship Trends: An Examination Of Research From 2011 To 2021 In Communication Journals, Riley J. Richards, Patric R. Spence, Chad Edwards

Human-Machine Communication

Despite a relatively short history, the modern-day study of communication has grown into multiple subfields. To better understand the relationship between Human-Machine Communication (HMC) research and traditional communication science, this study examines the published scholarship in 28 communication-specific journals from 2011–2021 focused on human-machine communication (HMC). Findings suggest limited prior emphasis of HMC research within the 28 reviewed journals; however, more recent trends show a promising future for HMC scholarship. Additionally, HMC appears to be diverse in the specific context areas of research in the communication context. Finally, we offer future directions of research and suggestions for the development of …

Fight For Flight: The Narratives Of Human Versus Machine Following Two Aviation Tragedies, Andrew Prahl, Rio Kin Ho Leung, Alicia Ning Shan Chua

Human-Machine Communication

This study provides insight into the relationship between human and machine in the professional aviation community following the 737 MAX accidents. Content analysis was conducted on a discussion forum for professional pilots to identify the major topics emerging in discussion of the accidents. A subsequent narrative analysis reveals dominant arguments of human versus machine as zero-sum, surrender to machines, and an epidemic of mistrust. Results are discussed in the context of current issues in human-machine communication, and we discuss what other quickly automating industries can learn from aviation’s experience.

Visual Homing For Robot Teams: Do You See What I See?, Damian Lyons, Noah Petzinger

Faculty Publications

Visual homing is a lightweight approach to visual navigation which does not require GPS. It is very attractive for robot platforms with a low computational capacity. However, a limitation is that the stored home location must be initially within the field of view of the robot. Motivated by the increasing ubiquity of camera information we propose to address this line-of-sight limitation by leveraging camera information from other robots and fixed cameras. To home to a location that is not initially within view, a robot must be able to identify a common visual landmark with another robot that can be used …

Visual Homing For Robot Teams: Do You See What I See?, Damian Lyons, Noah Petzinger

Faculty Publications

Visual homing is a lightweight approach to visual navigation which does not require GPS. It is very attractive for robot platforms with a low computational capacity. However, a limitation is that the stored home location must be initially within the field of view of the robot. Motivated by the increasing ubiquity of camera information we propose to address this line-of-sight limitation by leveraging camera information from other robots and fixed cameras. To home to a location that is not initially within view, a robot must be able to identify a common visual landmark with another robot that can be used …

A Low-Cost And Low-Tech Solution To Test For Variations Between Multiple Offline Programming Software Packages., Steffen Wendell Bolz

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

This research paper chronicles the attempt to bring forth a low-cost and low-tech testing methodology whereby multiple offline programming (OLP) software packages’ generated programs may be compared when run on industrial robots. This research was initiated by the discovery that no real research exists to test between iterations of OLP software packages and that most research for positional accuracy and/or repeatability on industrial robots is expensive and technologically intensive. Despite this, many countries’ leaders are pushing for intensive digitalization of manufacturing and Small and Mediumsized Enterprises (SMEs) are noted to be lagging in adoption of such technologies. The research consisted …

Society Dilemma Of Computer Technology Management In Today's World, Iwasan D. Kejawa Ed.D

School of Computing: Faculty Publications

Abstract - Is it true that some of the inhabitants of the world’s today are still hesitant in using computers? Research has shown that today many people are still against the use of computers. Computer technology management can be said to be obliterated by security problems. Research shows that some people in society feel reluctant or afraid to use computers because of errors and exposure of their privacy and their sophistication, which sometimes are caused by computer hackers and malfunction of the computers. The dilemma of not utilizing computer technology at all or, to its utmost, by certain people in …

Analyzing Decision-Making In Robot Soccer For Attacking Behaviors, Justin Rodney

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In robotics soccer, decision-making is critical to the performance of a team’s SoftwareSystem. The University of South Florida’s (USF) RoboBulls team implements behavior for the robots by using traditional methods such as analytical geometry to path plan and determine whether an action should be taken. In recent works, Machine Learning (ML) and Reinforcement Learning (RL) techniques have been used to calculate the probability of success for a pass or goal, and even train models for performing low-level skills such as traveling towards a ball and shooting it towards the goal[1, 2]. Open-source frameworks have been created for training Reinforcement Learning …

Humanoid Robot Motion Control For Ramps And Stairs, Tommy Truong

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Humanoid robot research and development have been an ongoing effort since the 1900sand can be broken down to two problems. A mechanical problem, getting a humanoid robot to move human-like or a software problem, getting a humanoid robot to behave human-like. These problems of moving and behaving human-like can be often solved using control theory as research advances. For the premise of this research, we explore how to balance and walk on non-flat terrain for the humanoid robot Darwin-Op. Since the focus was on the control theory, the vision control to detect the non-flat terrain was a side objective. The …

Challenges Of The Industrial Revolution Era 1.0 To 5.0 : University Digital Library In Indoensia, Merlin Apriliyanti, Ilham M

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

This study explains the development of the world of libraries to establish a very close relationship with the world of information technology. For this reason, facilities and infrastructure are needed to facilitate data and information retrieval quickly and accurately. Facing the challenges of the Industrial Revolution 5.0 era by utilizing information technology, libraries must also adapt to the times. Because the library has an important role, among others, as a source of information and the development of knowledge. Used libraries are still conventional to be converted into digital libraries. In essence, this development represents the desire of library users for …

Autonomous Rock Segmentation From Lidar Point Clouds Using Machine Learning Approaches, Lauren E. Flanagan

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Rover navigation on planetary surfaces currently uses a method called blind drive which requires a navigation goal as input from operators on Earth and uses camera images to autonomously detect obstacles. Images can be affected by lighting conditions, are not highly accurate from far distances, and will not work in the dark; these factors negatively impact the autonomous capabilities of rovers. By improving a rover's ability to autonomously detect obstacles, the capabilities of rovers in future missions would improve; for example, enabling exploration of permanently shadowed regions, and allowing faster driving speeds and farther travel distances. This thesis demonstrates how …

The Adoption Of Artificial Intelligence In Newsrooms In Kenya: A Multi-Case Study, Peter Mwangangi Kioko

Theses & Dissertations

Deployment of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in newsrooms is gaining prominence across the world, with the technology being used to enhance the processes of news gathering, packaging, and distribution. The objectives of this study were to: explore the extent of use of AI in newsrooms in Kenya, determine the factors driving the adoption of AI or lack of it, and identify the challenges and opportunities presented by the adoption of AI in newsrooms in Kenya. The study was guided by the theory of disruptive innovation, the technology acceptance model, and the domestication of technology theory. Qualitative research approach and the exploratory …

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 …

Transferring Studies Across Embodiments: A Case Study In Confusion Detection, Na Li, Robert J. Ross

Articles

Human-robot studies are expensive to conduct and difficult to control, and as such researchers sometimes turn to human-avatar interaction in the hope of faster and cheaper data collection that can be transferred to the robot domain. In terms of our work, we are particularly interested in the challenge of detecting and modelling user confusion in interaction, and as part of this research programme, we conducted situated dialogue studies to investigate users' reactions in confusing scenarios that we give in both physical and virtual environments. In this paper, we present a combined review of these studies and the results that we …

A Water-Surface Self-Leveling Landing Platform For Small-Scale Uavs, Mbidi Santos

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Because many of the most widely used UAVs, such as the Vertical Take-Off and Landing (VTOL), cannot land securely on sloped or fast-changing surfaces, there is a need to design better deployment and landing stations. This document proposes an approach to design a water-surface self-leveling landing platform by implementing the best concept to be used as a safe ground for UAVs to land and deploy on open waters. After conceptualizing multiple design ideas, these options were laid out in a decision matrix with four criteria: degrees of freedom, mechanical complexity, manufacturing, and cost. The chosen concept was the spherical parallel …

Design And Analysis Of Marangoni-Driven Robotic Surfers, Mitchel L. Timm

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

We designed and experimentally studied the dynamics of two robotic systems that surf along the water-air interface. The robots were self-propelled by means of creating and maintaining a surface tension gradient resulting from an asymmetric release of isopropyl alcohol (IPA). The imbalance in the distribution of surface tension surrounding the robots generates a propulsive force commonly referred to as Marangoni propulsion. First, we considered a single surfer, which was custom-made with novel control mechanisms that allow for both forward motion and steering to be remotely adjusted solely through the manipulation of local surface stresses. We analyzed the performance of this …

Collective Hydrodynamics Of Robotic Fish, Rohit S. Pandhare

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Many animals in nature travel in groups either for protection, survival, or endurance. Among these, fish do so under the burden of hydrodynamic loads, which incites questions as to the significance of the multi-body fluid-mediated interactions that facilitate collective swimming. We study such interactions in the idealized setting of a rotational array of robotic fish whose tails undergo a prescribed flapping motion, but whose swimming speed is determined as a natural result of the hydrodynamic effects. Specifically, we examine how the measured collective speed of the swimmers varies with the imposed frequency and amplitude of their tail flapping, and with …

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 …

The Implementation Of Advanced Digitalization In The Oil And Gas Industry, Ensieh Rezafar

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

AbstractThe immature advanced digitalization in the oil and gas industry can limit access to the potential value of mature progressive digitalization. Oil and gas leaders must expedite the implementation of advanced digitalization to increase organizational proficiencies and reduce costs and losses. Grounded in Pettigrew and Whipp’s dimensions of strategic change theory, the purpose of this qualitative multiple case study was to explore strategies some leaders in the oil and gas industry used to implement advanced digitalization. The participants were seven leaders in two oil service companies in North America involved in the successful implementation of progressive digitalization. Data were collected …

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

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-

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 …

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 …

Design And Control Of Quasi-Direct Drive Actuation For Lightweight And Versatile Wearable Robots, Shuangyue Yu

Dissertations and Theses

Wearable robots have shown great potential for augmenting the physical capabilities of humans in lab settings. However, wearable robots for augmenting the physical capabilities of humans under community-based conditions are the new frontier of robotics. Furthermore, the design and control are still considered to be grand challenges for providing physical augmentation for humans. In terms of design, the state-of-the-art exoskeletons are typically rigid, bulky, and limited to lab settings. In terms of control, most of the rhythmic controllers are not versatile and are focused only on steady-state walking assistance.

The motivation behind my research is to improve both the design …

Factors Influencing The Effectiveness Of Managing Human–Robot Teams, Theodore B. Terry

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Certain factors can influence the capabilities of a robot–human team by affecting their social and behavioral dynamics in a work environment. But these factors were not known due to the progressive nature of human–robot partnerships and a lack of peer-reviewed literature on the topic. This e-Delphi study aimed to identify and understand these unknown influential factors based on the participants’ insights. The overarching research question asked about the need to determine factors that might influence the effectiveness of managing human-robot teams. The basis for the conceptual framework for this study was the theory of communication used in organizational management. Twelve …

Can We Make Our Robot Play Soccer? Influence Of Collaborating With Preservice Teachers And Fifth Graders On Undergraduate Engineering Students' Learning During A Robotic Design Process (Work In Progress), Krishnanand Kaipa, Jennifer Kidd, Julia Noginova, Francisco Cima, Stacie Ringleb, Orlando Ayala, Pilar Pazos, Kristie Gutierrez, Min Jung Lee

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Faculty Publications

This work-in-progress paper describes engineering students’ experiences in an NSF-funded project that partnered undergraduate engineering students with pre-service teachers to plan and deliver robotics lessons to fifth graders at a local school. This project aims to address an apparent gap between what is taught in academia and industry’s expectations of engineers to integrate perspectives from outside their field to solve modern societal problems requiring a multidisciplinary approach. Working in small teams over Zoom, participating engineering, education, and fifth grade students designed, built, and coded bio-inspired COVID companion robots. The goal for the engineering students was to build new interprofessional skills, …

System Development Of An Unmanned Ground Vehicle And Implementation Of An Autonomous Navigation Module In A Mine Environment, Jonas Amoama Bredu Jnr

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

There are numerous benefits to the insights gained from the exploration and exploitation of underground mines. There are also great risks and challenges involved, such as accidents that have claimed many lives. To avoid these accidents, inspections of the large mines were carried out by the miners, which is not always economically feasible and puts the safety of the inspectors at risk. Despite the progress in the development of robotic systems, autonomous navigation, localization and mapping algorithms, these environments remain particularly demanding for these systems. The successful implementation of the autonomous unmanned system will allow mine workers to autonomously determine …

Improving Robotic Decision-Making In Unmodeled Situations, Nicholas Scott Ohi

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

Existing methods of autonomous robotic decision-making are often fragile when faced with inaccurate or incompletely modeled distributions of uncertainty, also known as ambiguity. While decision-making under ambiguity is a field of study that has been gaining interest, many existing methods tend to be computationally challenging, require many assumptions about the nature of the problem, and often require much prior knowledge. Therefore, they do not scale well to complex real-world problems where fulfilling all of these requirements is often impractical if not impossible. The research described in this dissertation investigates novel approaches to robotic decision-making strategies which are resilient to …

Multimodal Adversarial Learning, Uche Osahor

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

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 …

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 …

Off Road Autonomous Vehicle Modeling And Repeatability Using Real World Telemetry Via Simulation, Matthew Paul Spencer

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

One approach to autonomous control of high mobility ground vehicle platforms operating on challenging terrain is with the use of predictive simulation. Using a simulated or virtual world, an autonomous system can optimize use of its control systems by predicting interaction between the vehicle and ground as well as the vehicle actuator state. Such a simulation allows the platform to assess multiple possible scenarios before attempting to execute a path. Physically realistic simulations covering all of these domains are currently computationally expensive, and are unable to provide fast execution times when assessing each individual scenario due to the use of …

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, …

Cardbot, Jakob Reiter, Grant Crump, Drake Drivere, Adam Miner

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Many people enjoy playing cards but playing cards in the times of COVID-19 is difficult. There are many designs for dealing and shuffling robots, but few include sanitization and autonomous operation. This design is for a BlackJack card dealing and shuffling robot that will be autonomous and will sanitize the playing cards using UV-C LEDs. This will assist in keeping the user safe while playing a game of BlackJack