Advanced Robotics

Tadokoro, Satoshi; Matsuno, Fumitoshi; Nardi, Daniele; Jacoff, Adam

doi: 10.1163/156855309X452458pmid: N/A

Schempf, Hagen

doi: 10.1163/156855309X452467pmid: N/A

A new type of self-rappelling search and rescue robot with chassis articulation, dubbed SPIDAR, has been developed and tested for use by first-responders. SPIDAR is built around a set of articulating body sections, operating with a modular running gear configuration (wheels, legs, tracks, etc.) to allow for maximum terrainability in chaotic collapsed urban structures. The onboard tether system allows for continuous powering and real-time data/video feedback. The tether serves as a tensile member that allows for rappelling and winching the robot into and out of precipices and crevasses, with a range of up to 30 m. The system is deployable and operable by a single person off a remote console. This paper describes the overall system design and prototype efforts to date, including testing on critical elements of the system and field testing in a collapsed structure environment. Future testing is envisioned with first responders to further evaluate the prototype design and collect data for future improvements. The vehicle design was shown to be effective for terrainability and access into small/vertical spaces, but future improvements in key areas (tethering, displays, etc.) are recommended to improve system performance. The project is being funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency with the intent to transfer technologies from the military domain to the civilian first-responder application markets.

Li, B.; Ma, S.; Liu, J.; Wang, M.; Liu, T.; Wang, Y.

doi: 10.1163/156855309X452485pmid: N/A

This work intends to enhance the mobility and flexibility of a tracked mobile robot through changing its shape in unstructured environments. A shape-shifting mobile robot, AMOEBA-I, has been developed. With three tracked modules, AMOEBA-I has nine locomotion configurations and three of them are symmetrical configurations. The key advantage of this design over other mobile robots is its adaptability and flexibility because of its various configurations. It can change its configuration fluently and automatically to adapt to different environments or missions. A modularized structure of the control system is proposed and designed for AMOEBA-I to improve the fault tolerance and substitutability of the system. The strategies of cooperative control, including cooperative shape shifting, cooperative turning and cooperative obstacle negotiation, have been proposed to improve the capability of shape shifting, locomotion and obstacle negotiation for AMOEBA-I. A series of experiments have been carried out, and demonstrated that such a structure possesses excellent mobility and high flexibility under various urban environments including stairs, a narrow space, an obstacle, uneven debris and an underground garage. Being small, portable, and remotely controlled, AMOEBA-I has potential applications in areas such as urban search and rescue and environment reconnaissance.

Gao, Xueshan; Li, Kejie; Gao, Junyao

doi: 10.1163/156855309X452548pmid: N/A

This paper presents a different structured mobile robot platform (MRP) with double tracks, which consists of two segments connected with a swing joint. As the angle between the two segments of the robot platform can be changed, the robot can travel over steep obstacles and climb up stairs. Two track-adjusting devices with passive track-adapting function are designed especially, which ensure that the tracks are always tight to keep the robot platform running reliably. In addition, a design idea for the track wheels is presented. The wheel could be favorable for the robot running smoothly in many kinds of terrains without the tracks coming apart from their wheels. Furthermore, the robot platform has other characteristics such as compact architecture and large useful inner space for arranging the control system and vibration absorption system. Experiments proved that the MRP can run flexibly and reliably in indoor and outdoor environments, and be suitable as a mobile carrier for executing search, rescue, detection and scout missions.

Senga, Hidetaka; Kato, Naomi; Ito, Asuka; Niou, Hiroki; Yoshie, Muneo; Fujita, Isamu; Igarashi, Kazuyuki; Okuyama, Etsuro

doi: 10.1163/156855309X452476pmid: N/A

Spilled oil damages not only the ocean environment but also the regional economy. In order to minimize such damages we are now developing a spilled oil tracking autonomous buoy system. The buoys used in this system are expected to send their location, and the meteorological and oceanographic data around them, to the land base in real-time while they drift with spilled oil. In the case that the buoy detaches from the spilled oil by external forces, it must be capable of detecting and tracking the spilled oil autonomously. In this paper, we first describe the concept of this system. This is followed by the development of two kinds of oil-detecting sensors installed on the buoy: a contact sensor and a non-contact sensor. The efficiencies of these sensors were verified by carrying out various water tank experiments. The buoy tracks spilled oil with descending and ascending procedures by controlling its buoyancy and movable wings. The developed control algorithm was validated with some water tank experiments using a simple buoy model. Finally, we carried out field experiments, such as data measurements and autonomous tracking experiments, using a new buoy model equipped with oil detecting sensors, GPS and an anemometer. The results of field experiments show the efficiency of this system.

Tesch, Matthew; Lipkin, Kevin; Brown, Isaac; Hatton, Ross; Peck, Aaron; Rembisz, Justine; Choset, Howie

doi: 10.1163/156855309X452566pmid: N/A

Snake robots, sometimes called hyper-redundant mechanisms, can use their many degrees of freedom to achieve a variety of locomotive capabilities. These capabilities are ideally suited for disaster response because the snake robot can thread through tightly packed volumes, accessing locations that people and conventional machinery otherwise cannot. Snake robots also have the advantage of possessing a variety of locomotion capabilities that conventional robots do not. Just like their biological counterparts, snake robots achieve these locomotion capabilities using cyclic motions called gaits. These cyclic motions directly control the snake robot's internal degrees of freedom which, in turn, causes a net motion, say forward, lateral and rotational, for the snake robot. The gaits described in this paper fall into two categories: parameterized and scripted. The parameterized gaits, as their name suggests, can be described by a relative simple parameterized function, whereas the scripted cannot. This paper describes the functions we prescribed for gait generation and our experiences in making these robots operate in real experiments.

Pellenz, Johannes; Gossow, David; Paulus, Dietrich

doi: 10.1163/156855309X452494pmid: N/A

One of the goals of the RoboCupRescue competition is to provide a standardized testbed for robots that can autonomously navigate in unknown and unstructured environments. This paper describes in detail our contribution to the competition: Robbie. The robot uses an active sensing approach, so the sensors are adjusted or configured before the data is readout, depending on the task or other sensor readings. A map is generated on the fly using the two-dimensional (2-D) distance measurements of a gimbaled laser range finder (LRF). The measured data are fused in an occupancy grid using a combination of scan matching and particle filter. The same LRF generates 3-D scans for the obstacle detection. The result of the obstacle detection and also the current 2-D laser scan are blended into the 2-D map. This new map is the basis for the path planning, where we developed the so-called Exploration Transform that combines the frontier-based exploration with the path transform. While navigating, the planned path is constantly checked against the updated map and replanning is started as soon as an obstacle is detected that blocks the calculated way. The victim detection relies on a handcrafted thermal camera that captures images with a field of view of up to 180° (horizontally). All components are combined using a strictly message-based software architecture. Robbie was used at the RoboCup (German Open and World Championship) in 2007 and 2008, and won the 'Best in Class Autonomy' award in all four competitions.

Zhang, Zhe; Nejat, Goldie

doi: 10.1163/156855309X452511pmid: N/A

In this paper a unique landmark identification method is proposed for identifying large distinguishable landmarks for three-dimensional (3-D) visual simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) in unknown cluttered urban search and rescue (USAR) environments. The novelty of the method is the utilization of both 3-D (i.e., depth images) and 2-D images. By utilizing a scale-invariant feature transform (SIFT)-based approach and incorporating 3-D depth imagery, we can achieve more reliable and robust recognition and matching of landmarks from multiple images for 3-D mapping of the environment. Preliminary experiments utilizing the proposed methodology verify (i) its ability to identify clusters of SIFT keypoints in both 3-D and 2-D images for representation of potential landmarks in the scene, and (ii) the use of the identified landmarks in constructing a 3-D map of unknown cluttered USAR environments via 3-D visual SLAM.

Calisi, D.; Iocchi, L.; Nardi, D.; Randelli, G.; Ziparo, V. A.

doi: 10.1163/156855309X452539pmid: N/A

Search and rescue (SAR) is a challenging application for autonomous robotics research. The requirements of this kind of application are very demanding and are still far from being met. One of the most compelling requirements is the capability of robots to adapt their functionalities to harsh and heterogeneous environments. In order to meet this requirement, it is common to embed contextual knowledge into robotic modules. We have previously developed a context-based architecture that decouples contextual knowledge, and its use, from typical robotic functionalities. In this paper, we show how it is possible to use this approach to enhance the performance of a robotic system involved in SAR missions. In particular, we provide a case study on exploration and victim detection tasks, specifically tailored to a given SAR mission. Moreover, we extend our contextual knowledge formalism in order to manage complex rules that deal with spatial and temporal aspects that are needed to model mission requirements. The approach has been validated through several experiments that show the effectiveness of the presented methodology for SAR.

Humphrey, Curtis M.; Adams, Julie A.

doi: 10.1163/156855309X452502pmid: N/A

Chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and explosive (CBRNE) incident response varies dramatically based upon the hazardous material, the incident size and the response duration. Robots can facilitate response planning, maintaining situational awareness, removing responders from dangerous situations and allowing for immediate site feedback prior to human responder entry. This paper presents eight robotic tasks informed by a cognitive task analysis and an information flow analysis. These analyses were conducted in order to inform the design of a system of multiple robots and the associated human–robotic interfaces required to support the CBRNE response command hierarchy. The cognitive task analysis was conducted over 3 years, and incorporated direct CBRNE response personnel feedback and CBRNE incident exercise observations. This paper presents the identified tasks and how robots can augment the existing human-based CBRNE incident response by improving the provided information and the speed at which information can be obtained, and reduce responders' physical workload. It is clear from our analyses that poorly designed robots and task capabilities will be highly disruptive to the human-centric CBRNE response activities.