Robotics Commons^™

Integration Of Robotic And Electro-Pneumatic Systems Using Advanced Control And Communication Schemes, Chinmay Kondekar

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Modern industrial automation systems are designed by interconnecting various subsystems which work together to perform a process. The thesis project aims to integrate fragmented subsystems into a flexible and reconfigurable system through advanced communication protocols and perform a process to demonstrate the effectiveness of interconnected systems.

The system consists of three six-axis robots, one electro-pneumatic robot, and two conveyors connected using EthernetIP communication and hardwired connections. The interconnected system works together to perform machining of a workpiece using advanced control methods of CAD to robot path generation, central control through a PLC, and process control through HMI.

Standardized programming blocks …

Open-Source Tig-Based Metal 3d-Printing, Shane Oberloier

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Metal 3-D printing has been relegated to high-cost proprietary high-resolution systems and low-resolution low-cost metal inert gas (MIG) systems. In order to provide a path to high-resolution, low-cost, metal 3-D printing, this manuscript proposes a new open source metal 3-D printer design based around a low-cost tungsten inert gas (TIG) welder coupled to a commercial open source self replicating rapid prototyper. Optimal printing parameters for the machine are acquired using a novel computational intelligence software. TIG has many advantages over MIG, such as having a low heat input, clean beads, and the potential for both high-resolution prints as well as …

Leveraging Chemical And Computational Biology To Probe The Cellulose Synthase Complex, B. Kirtley Amos

Theses and Dissertations--Plant and Soil Sciences

Cellular expansion in plants is a complex process driven by the constraint of internal cellular turgor pressure by an expansible cell wall. The main structural element of the cell wall is cellulose. Cellulose is vital to plant fitness and the protein complex that creates it is an excellent target for small molecule inhibition to create herbicides. In the following thesis many small molecules (SMs) from a diverse library were screened in search of new cellulose biosynthesis inhibitors (CBI). Loss of cellular expansion was the primary phenotype used to search for putative CBIs. As such, this was approached in a forward …

Ping Pong Ball Collecting Robot, Gina Lanese, Jason Colonna, Sarah Kuchcinski, Johndavid Rogers

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The ping pong ball collecting robot will collect ping pong balls in a ping pong arena, such as after a game or practice session. Ball collection is now typically done by a human, collecting the balls either by hand or with a net. A robot, autonomously collecting the ping pong balls from the floor, would allow for the time spent playing or practicing to be maximized. The team will design the software and hardware for the robot, including the mechanical system, the software, and circuit boards. This robot will serve as a capstone project for the senior design team consisting …

Light Loaded Automated Guided Vehicle, Marcus Radtka, Nazar Paramashchuk, Lawrence Shevock

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The objective of the locomotion system was to design and implement the mechanical, electrical, and software related functions to ensure the LLAGV had the capability of maneuvering its surroundings. The LLAGV’s motors were represented in an open loop transfer function to utilize RPM feedback and a compensator when needed. The modeled compensator helped control the LLAGV’s speed and acceleration, enabling further control of the LLAGV. The internal circuitry has the means to properly distributed power to all components and allowed the user to control the LLAGV to their desire. The application software within the LLAGV locomotion system (LLAGV-LS) had consideration …

Toward Intelligent Welding By Building Its Digital Twin, Qiyue Wang

Theses and Dissertations--Electrical and Computer Engineering

To meet the increasing requirements for production on individualization, efficiency and quality, traditional manufacturing processes are evolving to smart manufacturing with the support from the information technology advancements including cyber-physical systems (CPS), Internet of Things (IoT), big industrial data, and artificial intelligence (AI). The pre-requirement for integrating with these advanced information technologies is to digitalize manufacturing processes such that they can be analyzed, controlled, and interacted with other digitalized components. Digital twin is developed as a general framework to do that by building the digital replicas for the physical entities. This work takes welding manufacturing as the case study to …

Human-Aware Information-Theoretic Control Of Robotic Swarms, Rafal David Krzysiak

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Robotic swarms provide a scalable and robust solution for monitoring large environments. In this context, the inclusion of a human has the potential advantage of incorporating prior knowledge about the target location or dynamics, thus increasing the overall efficiency of the task at hand. This is especially critical when dealing with time-intensive missions such as search and rescue. In this thesis we develop a general information-theoretic framework to control multiple autonomous robots in search and rescue missions that include a human teleoperator. Human prior knowledge is modeled to capture target location and dynamics, and a mutual information based control is …

Deep Learning Assisted Intelligent Visual And Vehicle Tracking Systems, Liang Xu

Theses and Dissertations

Sensor fusion and tracking is the ability to bring together measurements from multiple sensors of the current and past time to estimate the current state of a system. The resulting state estimate is more accurate compared with the direct sensor measurement because it balances between the state prediction based on the assumed motion model and the noisy sensor measurement. Systems can then use the information provided by the sensor fusion and tracking process to support more-intelligent actions and achieve autonomy in a system like an autonomous vehicle. In the past, widely used sensor data are structured, which can be directly …

Unobtrusive Assessment Of Student Engagement Levels In Online Classroom Environment Using Emotion Analysis, Sasirekha Anbusegaran

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

Measuring student engagement has emerged as a significant factor in the process of learning and a good indicator of the knowledge retention capacity of the student. As synchronous online classes have become more prevalent in recent years, gauging a student's attention level is more critical in validating the progress of every student in an online classroom environment. This paper details the study on profiling the student attentiveness to different gradients of engagement level using multiple machine learning models. Results from the high accuracy model and the confidence score obtained from the cloud-based computer vision platform - Amazon Rekognition were then …

Detecting Interlocutor Confusion In Situated Human-Avatar Dialogue: A Pilot Study, Na Li, John D. Kelleher, Robert J. Ross

Conference papers

In order to enhance levels of engagement with conversational systems, our long term research goal seeks to monitor the confusion state of a user and adapt dialogue policies in response to such user confusion states. To this end, in this paper, we present our initial research centred on a user-avatar dialogue scenario that we have developed to study the manifestation of confusion and in the long term its mitigation. We present a new definition of confusion that is particularly tailored to the requirements of intelligent conversational system development for task-oriented dialogue. We also present the details of our Wizard-of-Oz based …

Planetary Rover Inertial Navigation Applications: Pseudo Measurements And Wheel Terrain Interactions, Cagri Kilic

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Accurate localization is a critical component of any robotic system. During planetary missions, these systems are often limited by energy sources and slow spacecraft computers. Using proprioceptive localization (e.g., using an inertial measurement unit and wheel encoders) without external aiding is insufficient for accurate localization. This is mainly due to the integrated and unbounded errors of the inertial navigation solutions and the drifted position information from wheel encoders caused by wheel slippage. For this reason, planetary rovers often utilize exteroceptive (e.g., vision-based) sensors. On the one hand, localization with proprioceptive sensors is straightforward, computationally efficient, and continuous. On the other …

Designs And Practical Control Methods For Soft Parallel Robots, Benjamin T. Buzzo

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

The use of soft robotics is becoming an increasingly researched topic, since they can provide more flexibility in movements and increase safety when working with humans. However, they are more susceptible to modeling and manufacturing errors in the design.

The objective of this thesis is two-fold, the first objective is to determine the benefits and limitations of using calibration tables that rely on the PWM signals instead of modeling as a control method. If calibration tables are not adequate to achieve a high level of precision. The second objective is to determine if using a tethered mobile robot in unison …

Active Localization For Robotic Systems: Algorithms And Cost Metrics, Jared Strader

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

In the real world, a robotic system must operate in the presence of motion and sensing uncertainty. This is caused by the fact that the motion of a robotic system is stochastic due to disturbances from the environment, and the states are only partially observable due noise in the sensor measurements. As a result, the true state of a robotic system is unknown, and estimation techniques must be used to infer the states from the belief, which is the probability distribution over all possible states. Accordingly, a robotic system must be capable of reasoning about the quality of the belief …

Planning Algorithms Under Uncertainty For A Team Of A Uav And A Ugv For Underground Exploration, Matteo De Petrillo

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Robots’ autonomy has been studied for decades in different environments, but only recently, thanks to the advance in technology and interests, robots for underground exploration gained more attention. Due to the many challenges that any robot must face in such harsh environments, this remains an challenging and complex problem to solve.

As technology became cheaper and more accessible, the use of robots for underground ex- ploration increased. One of the main challenges is concerned with robot localization, which is not easily provided by any Global Navigation Services System (GNSS). Many developments have been achieved for indoor mobile ground robots, making …

Cooperative Target Tracking In Concentric Formations, Lili Ma

Publications and Research

This paper considers the problem of coordinating multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in a circular formation around a moving target. The main contribution is allowing for versatile formation patterns on the basis of the following components. Firstly, new uniform spacing control laws are proposed that spread the agents not necessarily over a full circle, but over a circular arc. Uniform spacing formation controllers are proposed, regulating either the separation distances or the separation angles between agents. Secondly, the use of virtual agents is proposed to allow for different radii in agents’ orbits. Thirdly, a hierarchical combination of formation patterns is …

Human-Robot Interaction For Assistive Robotics, Jiawei Li

Dissertations

This dissertation presents an in-depth study of human-robot interaction (HRI) withapplication to assistive robotics. In various studies, dexterous in-hand manipulation is included, assistive robots for Sit-To-stand (STS) assistance along with the human intention estimation. In Chapter 1, the background and issues of HRI are explicitly discussed. In Chapter 2, the literature review introduces the recent state-of-the-art research on HRI, such as physical Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), robot STS assistance, dexterous in hand manipulation and human intention estimation. In Chapter 3, various models and control algorithms are described in detail. Chapter 4 introduces the research equipment. Chapter 5 presents innovative theories and …

Pendeteksi Bola Pada Robot Penjaga Gawang Menggunakan Metode Hough Circle, Alwi Widi Pradana, Dessy Irmawati

Elinvo (Electronics, Informatics, and Vocational Education)

Robot penjaga gawang bertugas untuk dapat menghadang bola berwarna oranye memasuki gawang. Robot tersebut harus mampu mendeteksi bola dengan akurat untuk menentukan pergerakan robot selanjutnya. Artikel ini mendeskrepsikan pengembangan robot penjaga gawang yang mampu mendeteksi warna dan bentuk boladengan metode hough circle menggunakan emgucv. Metode pengembangan yang dilakukan merujuk pada modifikasi ADDIE pada pengembangan robot speak bola. Hasil dari pengembangan ini adalah lapangan robot dan robot penjaga gawang. Hasil unjuk kerja menunjukkan pendeteksian bola memiliki presentase rerata sebesar 80%, sedangkan kemampuan menghadang bola sebesar 90%. Penerapan metode hough circle terdiri atas beberapa proses yaitu: (1) mencari ciri warna bola, langkah …

The Ftc And Ai Governance: A Regulatory Proposal, Michael Spiro

Seattle Journal of Technology, Environmental, & Innovation Law

No abstract provided.

Efficient End-To-End Autonomous Driving, Hesham Eraqi

Theses and Dissertations

Steering a car through traffic is a complex task that is difficult to cast into algorithms. Therefore, researchers turn to train artificial neural networks from front-facing camera data stream along with the associated steering angles. Nevertheless, most existing solutions consider only the visual camera frames as input, thus ignoring the temporal relationship between frames. In this work, we propose a Convolution Long Short-Term Memory Recurrent Neural Network (C-LSTM), which is end-to-end trainable, to learn both visual and dynamic temporal dependencies of driving. Additionally, We introduce posing the steering angle regression problem as classification while imposing a spatial relationship between the …

Reinforcement Learning Approach For Inspect/Correct Tasks, Hoda Nasereddin

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In this research, we focus on the application of reinforcement learning (RL) in automated agent tasks involving considerable target variability (i.e., characterized by stochastic distributions); in particular, learning of inspect/correct tasks. Examples include automated identification & correction of rivet failures in airplane maintenance procedures, and automated cleaning of surgical instruments in a hospital sterilization processing department. The location of defects and the corrective action to be taken for each varies from task episode. What needs to be learned are optimal stochastic strategies rather than optimization of any one single defect type and location. RL has been widely applied in robotics …

Towards Sensorimotor Coupling Of A Spiking Neural Network And Deep Reinforcement Learning For Robotics Application, Kashu Yamazaki

Mechanical Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Deep reinforcement learning augments the reinforcement learning framework and utilizes the powerful representation of deep neural networks. Recent works have demonstrated the great achievements of deep reinforcement learning in various domains including finance,medicine, healthcare, video games, robotics and computer vision.Deep neural network was started with multi-layer perceptron (1stgeneration) and developed to deep neural networks (2ndgeneration)and it is moving forward to spiking neural networks which are knownas3rdgeneration of neural networks. Spiking neural networks aim to bridge the gap between neuroscience and machine learning, using biologically-realistic models of neurons to carry out computation. In this thesis, we first provide a comprehensive review …

Emergency Landing And Guidance System, Joseph Alarid

Master's Theses

Every year there are thousands of aviation accidents along with hundreds of human deaths that happen around the world. While the data is sparse, it is well documented that many of these happen from emergency landings gone awry. While pilots can generally make great landings in clear daytime conditions, they are significantly handicapped when it comes to landing at night or amongst poor visibility conditions.

Due to the nature of this problem and some of the large scale advances in software technology we propose a solution that provides a significant improvement from the status quo. Using transfer learning on neural …

Design And Implementation Of Intuitive Human-Robot Teleoperation Interfaces, Lei Wu

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

We have designed and implemented a novel human-robot teleoperation interface based on an intuitive reference frame and hybrid inverse kinematics to perform activities of daily living(ADL) using multiple input devices.

Persons with disabilities often rely on caregivers or family members to assist in their daily living activities. Providing robotic assistants with easy and intuitive user interfaces to assist with ADL can improve their quality of life and lift some of the burdens on caregivers and family members. Current human-robot interface solutions, such as joysticks, Kinect based gesture recognition, and touchscreen-based solutions, including smartphones, are still far from being able to …

We Need Fuzzy Techniques To Design Successful Human-Like Robots, Vladik Kreinovich, Olga Kosheleva, Laxman Bokati

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

In this chapter, we argue that to make sure that human-like robots exhibit human-like behavior, we need to use fuzzy techniques -- and we also provide details of this usage. The chapter is intended both for researchers and practitioners who are very familiar with fuzzy techniques and also for researchers and practitioners who do not know these techniques -- but who are interested in designing human-like robots.

Extending The Functional Subnetwork Approach To A Generalized Linear Integrate-And-Fire Neuron Model, Nicholas Szczecinski, Roger Quinn, Alexander J. Hunt

Mechanical and Materials Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Engineering neural networks to perform specific tasks often represents a monumental challenge in determining network architecture and parameter values. In this work, we extend our previously-developed method for tuning networks of non-spiking neurons, the “Functional subnetwork approach” (FSA), to the tuning of networks composed of spiking neurons. This extension enables the direct assembly and tuning of networks of spiking neurons and synapses based on the network’s intended function, without the use of global optimization ormachine learning. To extend the FSA, we show that the dynamics of a generalized linear integrate and fire (GLIF) neuronmodel have fundamental similarities to those of …

Roboat - Rescue Operations Bot Operating In All Terrains, Akshay Gulhane

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Natural calamities are on a rise with each passing year. Disasters like floods and fire take many lives all around the world, especially in remote areas or less developed countries. One such incident was the Kerala Floods in India where rescue services had difficulty reaching to all the people on time since a huge landmass (more than 9 districts) was flooded and hence villagers or other people risked their lives to save others in danger without proper safety equipment. Amazon Rainforest Fires was another example for a major destruction of an ecosystem. The main reason for lack of facilities in …

Control Of A Human Arm Robotic Unit Using Augmented Reality And Optimized Kinematics, Carlo Canezo

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

There are more than 350000 amputees in the US who suffer loss of functionality in their daily living activities, and roughly 100000 of them are upper arm amputees. Many of these amputees use prostheses to compensate part of their lost arm function, including power prostheses. Research on 6-7 degree of freedom powered prostheses is still relatively new, and most commercially available powered prostheses are typically limited to 1 to 3 degrees of freedom. Due to the myriad of possible options for various powered protheses from different manufacturers, each configuration is governed by a distinct control scheme typically specific to the …

Finite-Time State Estimation For An Inverted Pendulum Under Input-Multiplicative Uncertainty, Sergey V. Drakunov, William Mackunis, Anu Kossery Jayaprakash, Krishna Bhavithavya Kidambi, Mahmut Reyhanoglu

Publications

A sliding mode observer is presented, which is rigorously proven to achieve finite-time state estimation of a dual-parallel underactuated (i.e., single-input multi-output) cart inverted pendulum system in the presence of parametric uncertainty. A salient feature of the proposed sliding mode observer design is that a rigorous analysis is provided, which proves finite-time estimation of the complete system state in the presence of input-multiplicative parametric uncertainty. The performance of the proposed observer design is demonstrated through numerical case studies using both sliding mode control (SMC)- and linear quadratic regulator (LQR)-based closed-loop control systems. The main contribution presented here is the rigorous …

3d-Printed Leg Design And Modification For Improved Support On A Quadruped Robot, Jasmin S. Collins

Maseeh Summer Undergraduate Research Experience

The Agile and Adaptive Robotics Lab aims to uncover the biological and physiological complexities in animal agility and adaptive control, which can be replicated through robotics and provide further applications in biology and medicine. One project within the lab focuses on understanding structure, actuation, and control through the modeling of a canine quadruped robot.

The AARL has developed a full-body quadruped robot with artificial muscles that control limb movement and a body that is built from 3D-printed parts. This specific project involved modification of these existing parts to (a) minimize deflections in the front legs, causing unwanted lateral and abduction/adduction …

Specially Designed Multi-Functional Search And Rescue Robot, Khabibullo Kh Nosirov, A.Sh. Shakhobiddinov, Mukhriddin Arabboev, Shohruh Begmatov, O.T. Togaev

Bulletin of TUIT: Management and Communication Technologies

In digital era, robots are becoming an integral part of human life due to their efficiency and high performance. In recent years, search and rescue robot systems are used tremendously in a natural disaster. Nowadays, many areas of the world are getting affected due to natural disasters. Disasters can be exceptional and unstoppable events that are either man-made or natural, such as building collapse, earthquakes, wildfires, and floods, etc. This witnesses the importance of search and rescue robot systems in the emergency field. In the emergency field, a variety of sensing and wireless technologies are used in remote and vision …