Control Of Service Robots Research Articles

Special issue on advanced intelligent control of service robots for healthy home living

Special issue on advanced intelligent control of service robots for healthy home living

Research on SLAM of Large-scale Space Point Cloud Topological Robot

This paper focuses on the cutting-edge and difficult issues in the field of navigation and positioning of service robots. By exploring the technical approach to practical service robot environment modeling and positioning, a new topology SLAM method is proposed. This paper focus on the key technologies involved in 3D SLAM of robots based on large-scale spatial point clouds, including back-end optimization and closed-loop, high-precision sensor calibration technology. Further propose topological map construction strategies, and focus on designing map-generating algorithms based on graphs or tree structures. The research results will provide innovative ideas and practical solutions for environmental modeling and navigation control of service robots, and strongly support technological advances in related research fields based on three-dimensional environmental perception.

Communication system for remote control of service robots

the paper presents personalized communication system for remote control of service robots. The system is based on the IoT, Web, Wi-Fi and ROS. The structure of the proposed system and applied technologies used for development of the system are described. Web based user interface is presented and used for remote control of a service robot. There have been conducted experiments on the network traffic, network delay and response time. Finally, the obtained results are analyzed and shows that the system is able to provide web remote control of service robots.

User Created Contents 기반 서비스 로봇 제어의 개발 연구

User Created Contents 기반 서비스 로봇 제어의 개발 연구

Using a cognitive architecture for general purpose service robot control

A humanoid service robot equipped with a set of simple action skills including navigating, grasping, recognising objects or people, among others, is considered in this paper. By using those skills the robot should complete a voice command expressed in natural language encoding a complex task (defined as the concatenation of a number of those basic skills). As a main feature, no traditional planner has been used to decide skills to be activated, as well as in which sequence. Instead, the SOAR cognitive architecture acts as the reasoner by selecting which action the robot should complete, addressing it towards the goal. Our proposal allows to include new goals for the robot just by adding new skills (without the need to encode new plans). The proposed architecture has been tested on a human-sized humanoid robot, REEM, acting as a general purpose service robot.

Control of Service Robot by Integration of Multiple Intermittent Sensors

In this paper, we design a service robot which not only can plan road to a destination by itself, but also can take an elevator to every floor. For planning road, in order to solve the Hagisonic Stargazer Robot localization system problem which in large environment will need to set a lot of landmark and this way will increase the lead time and memory capacity. So we use the concept of road nodes to combine with Stargazer landmark and Dijkstra’s algorithm. Robot can localize by itself and can plan the shortest road to a destination. In dead region of Stargazer, we integrate with a laser range finder and e-compass to assist robot in navigation, and use the laser range finder simultaneously to avoid front obstacle. For taking elevator, we design a wireless control of independent mechanism. Robot can use Xbee transmit command to control servo motor to push elevator button and use RFID to determine whether the arrival task Floor. Last, we use Borland C++ Builder to design a Human–Computer interaction. People can operate monitor to choice receiver, and we add the functions of remote call and setting code which can increase the practicability of this service robots.

Speech-Based Human and Service Robot Interaction: An Application for Mexican Dysarthric People

Dysarthria is a motor speech disorder due to weakness or poor coordination of the speech muscles. This condition can be caused by a stroke, traumatic brain injury, or by a degenerative neurological disease. Commonly, people with this disorder also have muscular dystrophy, which restricts their use of switches or keyboards for communication or control of assistive devices (i.e., an electric wheelchair or a service robot). In this case, speech recognition is an attractive alternative for interaction and control of service robots, despite the difficulty of achieving robust recognition performance. In this paper we present a speech recognition system for human and service robot interaction for Mexican Spanish dysarthric speakers. The core of the system consisted of a Speaker Adaptive (SA) recognition system trained with normal-speech. Features such as on-line control of the language model perplexity and the adding of vocabulary, contribute to high recognition performance. Others, such as assessment and text-to-speech (TTS) synthesis, contribute to a more complete interaction with a service robot. Live tests were performed with two mild dysarthric speakers, achieving recognition accuracies of 90–95% for spontaneous speech and 95–100% of accomplished simulated service robot tasks.

New design of Robotics Remote lab

The Robotic Remote Laboratory (RRL) controls the Robot labs via the Internet and applies the Robot experiment in easy and advanced way. If we want to enhance the RRL system, we must study requirements of the Robot experiment deeply. One of key requirements of the Robot experiment is the Control algorithm, which includes all important activities to affect the Robot; one of them relates the path or obstacle. Our goal is to produce a new design of the RRL that includes a new treatment to the Control algorithm which depends on isolating one of the Control algorithm's activities that relates the paths in a separated algorithm, i.e., design the (Path planning algorithm) is independent of the original Control algorithm. This aim can be achieved by depending on the light to produce the Light obstacle. To apply the Light obstacle, we need to hardware (Light control server and Light arms) and software (path planning algorithm).The NXT 2.0 Robot will sense the Light obstacle depending on its Light sensor. The new design has two servers: one for the path (Light control server) and other for the other activities of the Control algorithm (Robot control server).The website of the new design includes three main parts (Lab Reservation, Open Lab, Download Simulation).We proposed a set of scenarios for organizing the reservation of the Remote Lab. Additionally, we developed an appropriate software to simulate the Robot and to practice it before using the Remote lab.

Multimodal Integration Processes in Plan-Based Service Robot Control

Cross-modal integration processes are essential for service robots to reliably perceive relevant parts of the partially known unstructured environment. We demonstrate how multimodal integration on different abstraction levels leads to reasonable behavior that would be difficult to achieve with unimodal approaches. Sensing and acting modalities are composed to multimodal robot skills via a fuzzy multisensor fusion approach. Single modalities constitute basic robot skills that can dynamically be composed to appropriate behavior by symbolic planning. Furthermore, multimodal integration is exploited to answer relevant queries about the partially known environment. All these approaches are successfully implemented and tested on our mobile service robot platform TASER.

Integrated System for Stereoscopic Cognitive Vision, Localization, Mapping, and Communication with a Mobile Service Robot

This paper describes a stereo-vision-based mobile robot that can navigate and explore its environment autonomously and safely and simultaneously building a tridimensional virtual map of the environment. The control strategy is rule-based and the interaction with robot is done via Bluetooth. The stereoscopic vision allows the robot to recognize objects and to determine the distance to the analyzed objects. The robot is able to generate and simultaneously update a full colour 3D map of the environment that is being explored. The position and type of each detected and recognized object is marked in this 3D map. Furthermore, the robot will be able to use a gripper in order to collect detected objects and carry them to dedicated collecting bins, and so will be able to work in commercial waste cleanup applications. This application represents a successful integration of computers, control and communication techniques in mobile service robot control.

Real-time control architecture using Xenomai for intelligent service robots in USN environments

This paper describes the implementation of a dual-kernel software architecture, based on standard Linux and real-time embedded Linux, for real-time control of service robots in ubiquitous sensor network environments. Mobile robots are used in active service for the assisted living of elderly people, monitoring their mental and physiological data with wireless sensor nodes. The data collected from sensor nodes are routed back to a sink node through multi-hop communication. The moving sink node installed on the main controller of the robot collects data and transmits it to the main controller. To be able to handle emergency situations, the robot needs to satisfy real-time requirements when processing the data collected, and invoking tasks to execute. This paper realizes a multi-hop sensor network and proposes real-time software architecture based on Xenomai. The real-time tasks were implemented, with priority, to rapidly respond to urgent sensor data. In order to validate the deterministic response of the proposed system, the performance measurements for the delay in handling the sensed data transmission and the trajectory control with a feedback loop were evaluated on the non real-time standard Linux.

Rubik's cube as a benchmark validating MRROC++ as an implementation tool for service robot control systems

PurposeThis paper seeks to develop universal software (a programming framework) enabling the implementation of service robot controllers. The software should distinguish the hardware‐oriented part of the system from the task‐oriented one. Moreover, force, vision as well as other sensors should be taken into account. Multi‐effector systems have to be considered.Design/methodology/approachThe robot programming framework MRROC++ has been implemented as a hierarchical structure composed of processes, potentially consisting of threads. All of the software is written in an object‐oriented manner using C++ and is supervised by a QNX real‐time operating system. The framework has been verified on several systems executing diverse tasks. Here, a Rubik's cube puzzle‐solving system, consisting of two arms and utilizing force control and visual servos, is presented.FindingsThe presented framework is well suited to tasks requiring two‐handed manipulation with force sensing, visual servoing and online construction of plans of actions. The Rubik's cube puzzle is a reasonable initial benchmark for validation of fundamental service robot capabilities. It requires force sensing and sight coupled with two‐handed manipulation and logical reasoning, as do the majority of service tasks. Owing to the use of force sensing during manipulation, jamming of the faces has always been avoided; however, visual servoing could only cope with slow handing over of the cube due to the volume of computations associated with vision processing.Research limitations/implicationsThe proposed software structure does not limit the implementation of service robot controllers. However, some of the specific algorithms used for the solution of the benchmark task (i.e. Rubik's cube puzzle) need to be less time‐consuming.Practical implicationsThe MRROC++ robot programming framework can be applied to the implementation of diverse robot controllers executing complex service tasks.Originality/valueA demanding benchmark task for service robots has been formulated. This task, as well as many others, has been used to validate the MRROC++ robot programming framework which significantly facilitates the implementation of diverse robot systems.

Distributed Telerobotics System Based on Common Object Request Broker Architecture

This paper proposes using CORBA as communication architecture to integrate network-distributed software and robotic systems in support systems for the aged or disabled. The proposed method keeps system costs low and expands availability. Its high scaling and inter-operating ability allows clients and server objects that are written in different languages, run in different operating systems, and connected to different networks to inter-operate. It also enables the system to be extended and integrated with other technologies and applications distributed over the Internet. Based on CORBA, we developed hardware base including a robot arm and an omnidirectional mobile robot and application servers including a task-level robot arm control server, live feedback image server, mobile robot control server and iGPS server. By remotely controlling mobile robot to cooperate with the robot arm, the caregivers or family member can use the developed system for some basic services to the aged or disabled.

Human-assistance robotic system based on distributed computing technology

Population aging is becoming an increasingly pressing problem for society. Thus, the timely development of supporting systems to improve care cost and the quality of life of the elderly is becoming particularly important. Because of the dispersal of the elderly and disabled, a standard software architecture that can implement network-distributed software sharing and improve the cost of writing and maintaining software is in high demand. This paper proposes using distributing computing technology CORBA to integrate network-distributed software and robotic systems for supporting the aged or disabled. Using CORBA as a communication architecture, we implemented a networkdistributed human-assistance robotic system. We developed a hardware base including a robot arm and an omnidirectional mobile robot, developed key technologies such as localization of a mobile robot, real-time recognition, real-time multimedia, and implemented several CORBA servers including a Web user management server, a task-level robot arm control server, a live image and video feedback server, a mobile robot control server, and an indoor Global Positioning System server. With the user controlling a robot arm with 5 d.o.f. to cooperate with an omnidirectional mobile robot, the developed system can provide basic services to support the aged and disabled.

Internet-Based Robotic System Using CORBA as Communication Architecture

In this paper, we propose the Internet-based robotic system that uses Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) to implement networking connections between a client and a remote robotic system. The client can transparently invoke a method on a server across the network without any need to know where the application servers are located, or what programming language and operating system are used. This lets the system overcome the shortcomings of the other typical Internet robotic system. To cope with time delays on the communication path, we have implemented the robot control server, which allows the user to control the telerobotic system at a task-level. We have also implemented the live image feedback server, which provides live image feedback for a remote user. The proposed system gives the users the ability to operate the remote robotic system to retrieve and manipulate the desired tableware or other things to support the aged and disabled over the Internet by using the intuitive user interface.

Control of a Mobile Service Robot Using Human Evaluations of Task-related Movement Patterns

An important future application of robotics will be the utilization of mobile service robots in homes and offices, assisting people with their daily chores. Above all, these robots must be safe to use. In addition, service robots must be designed to be effective, productive, and user-friendly. In order for people to accept and use these robots, the robots must behave in a manner acceptable to humans. The intelligent control of service robots must take into. account the effects of robot behaviors on people. This paper focuses on the interactions between humans and mobile service robots, studying how people respond to a variety of robot behaviors as the robot performs certain tasks. Since different people could react differently to service robots, this paper reports on the effects of users' gender, age, technical background, and robot body preference on the responses to robot behaviors. The robot behaviors include the robot approaching a human, the robot avoiding a human while passing, and the robot performing non-interactive behaviors. The level of comfort the robot caused human subjects was analyzed according to the effects of robot speed, robot distance, and robot body design. It is hoped that information gained from human factor studies can be used to obtain a better understanding of acceptability of service robots by different people, resulting in the design and development of more effective intelligent controllers for service robots in the coming new generation.