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1 – 10 of 416J.A. Cobano, R. Ponticelli and P. Gonzalez de Santos
The purpose of this paper is to present the results obtained in the field tests of a new system for detection and location of antipersonnel land mines.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to present the results obtained in the field tests of a new system for detection and location of antipersonnel land mines.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper presents briefly the overall system and then it focuses on the description and analysis of the results obtained in three basic experiments: accuracy for following trajectories, mine detection and capability for walking over landmines.
Findings
The paper finds that the system has been assessed positively for this specific application because it satisfies the initial system requirements.
Research limitations/implications
The research and experiments have been focused on irregular terrain with low vegetation and free from obstacles. Further research will be focused on the complete coverage of a terrain including large vegetation and obstacles.
Practical implications
This paper presents practical results for a very well defined application: humanitarian de‐mining. However, many of the results related with robot location, following of trajectories and general control techniques are applicable to any mobile robot for outdoor applications in general.
Originality/value
This paper is the first work (to the best author's knowledge) reporting experimental features of a walking system for humanitarian de‐mining. The paper does not only report on the mobile platform, but also on the scanning manipulator and sensor head features.
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Abstract
Outlines the development of a prototype climbing robot for remote testing using standard off‐the‐shelf components. The system construction is modularized so that it can be easily reconfigured for a different task. Describes the desired characteristics of a climbing inspection robot and how the prototype robot has been designed and constructed. Gives the system specifications and performance and concludes that laboratory operation of the CART prototype robot on a steel plate that simulates an oil storage tank has demonstrated that a cost‐effective system can be built entirely from standard, commercially available components.
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R. Ponticelli, E. Garcia, P. Gonzalez de Santos and M. Armada
Humanitarian de‐mining tasks require the use of specific detecting sets to detect landmines. These sets are normally based on a one‐point sensor, which must be moved over the…
Abstract
Purpose
Humanitarian de‐mining tasks require the use of specific detecting sets to detect landmines. These sets are normally based on a one‐point sensor, which must be moved over the infested terrain by a combination of a scanning manipulator and a mobile platform. The purpose of this paper is to present the development of the sensor head and the scanning manipulator.
Design/methodology/approach
The manipulator needs sensors in order to negotiate ground irregularities and detect obstacles in the path of the mine‐detecting set. All of the sensors must be integrated into a sensor head that is in charge of both detecting land mines and providing overall sensor functions for the mobile platform's steering controller.
Findings
The sensor head is based on a commercial mine‐detecting set and a ground‐tracking set based on a network of range sensors tailor‐made for this purpose; the scanning manipulator is based on a mechanism with five degrees of freedom.
Originality/value
The design assessment and some experiments are reported.
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Homayoun Najjaran and Andrew A. Goldenberg
Describes a dual‐arm mobile manipulator that can autonomously scan natural terrain using a typical handheld landmine detector in a manner similar to a human operator.
Abstract
Purpose
Describes a dual‐arm mobile manipulator that can autonomously scan natural terrain using a typical handheld landmine detector in a manner similar to a human operator.
Design/methodology/approach
Presents a terrain‐scanning robot that consists of two articulated arms mounted on an off‐road remotely operated vehicle. One arm carries a laser and four ultrasonic rangefinders to build a terrain map. The map is used in real time to generate an obstacle‐free path for the second arm that manipulates the landmine detector autonomously. The arms are mounted on the vehicle that is controlled by an operator from a safe distance. Motion planning and control of the robot is carried out using an embedded computer that is linked to a host computer to transmit the detector data and operator commands.
Findings
Finds that the terrain‐scanning robot can effectively manipulate a relatively large landmine detector on rugged terrain with undulations and obstacles.
Research limitations/implications
Proposes real‐time motion planning that may be equally applicable to other mobile manipulators.
Practical implications
Provides a technology that together with state‐of‐the‐art landmine sensors will offer a safe solution for detecting hidden landmines and clearing them from the postwar countries.
Originality/value
Introduces the concept of a dual‐arm mobile terrain scanning robot for landmine detection in off‐road missions and civilian areas where truck‐mounted detectors are inefficient.
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Hector Montes, Lisbeth Mena, Roemi Fernández and Manuel Armada
The aim of this paper is to introduce a hexapod walking robot specifically designed for applications in humanitarian demining, intended to operate autonomously for several hours…
Abstract
Purpose
The aim of this paper is to introduce a hexapod walking robot specifically designed for applications in humanitarian demining, intended to operate autonomously for several hours. To this end, the paper presents an experimental study for the evaluation of its energy efficiency.
Design/methodology/approach
First, the interest of using a walking robot for detection and localization of anti-personnel landmines is described, followed by the description of the mechanical system and the control architecture of the hexapod robot. Second, the energy efficiency of the hexapod robot is assessed to demonstrate its autonomy for performing humanitarian demining tasks. To achieve this, the power consumed by the robot is measured and logged, with a number of different payloads placed on-board (always including the scanning manipulator arm assembled on the robot front end), during the execution of a discontinuous gait on flat terrain.
Findings
The hexapod walking robot has demonstrated low energy consumption when it is carrying out several locomotion cycles with different loads on it, which is fundamental to have a desired autonomy. It should be considered that the robot has a mass of about 250 kg and that it has been loaded with additional masses of up to 170 kg during the experiments, with a consumption of mean power of 72 W, approximately.
Originality/value
This work provides insight on the use of a walking robot for humanitarian demining tasks, which has high stability and an autonomy of about 3 hours for a robot with high mass and high payload. In addition, the robot can be supervised and controlled remotely, which is an added value when it is working in the field.
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This paper aims to propose a new view planning method which can be used to calculate the next-best-view (NBV) for multiple manipulators simultaneously and build an automated…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to propose a new view planning method which can be used to calculate the next-best-view (NBV) for multiple manipulators simultaneously and build an automated three-dimensional (3D) object reconstruction system, which is based on the proposed method and can adapt to various industrial applications.
Design/methodology/approach
The entire 3D space is encoded with octree, which marks the voxels with different tags. A set of candidate viewpoints is generated, filtered and evaluated. The viewpoint with the highest score is selected as the NBV.
Findings
The proposed method is able to make the multiple manipulators, equipped with “eye-in-hand” RGB-D sensors, work together to accelerate the object reconstruction process.
Originality/value
Compared to the existed approaches, the proposed method in this paper is fast, computationally efficient, has low memory cost and can be used in actual industrial productions where the multiple different manipulators exist. And, more notably, a new algorithm is designed to speed up the generation and filtration of the candidate viewpoints, which can guarantee both speed and quality.
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Weidong Wang, Wenrui Gao, DongMei Wu and Zhijiang Du
The paper aims to present a tracked robot comprised of several biochemical sampling instruments and a universal control architecture. In addition, a dynamic motion planning…
Abstract
Purpose
The paper aims to present a tracked robot comprised of several biochemical sampling instruments and a universal control architecture. In addition, a dynamic motion planning strategy and autonomous modules in sampling tasks are designed and illustrated at length.
Design/methodology/approach
Several sampling instruments with position tolerance and sealing property are specifically developed, and a robotic operation system (ROS)-based universal control architecture is established. Then, based on the system, two typical problems in sampling tasks, i.e. arm motion planning in unknown environment and autonomous modules, are discussed, implemented and tested. Inspired by the idea of Gaussian process classification (GPC) and Gaussian process (GP) information entropy, three-dimensional (3D) geometric modeling and arm obstacle avoidance strategy are implemented and proven successfully. Moreover, autonomous modules during sampling process are discussed and realized.
Findings
Smooth implementations of the two experiments justify the validity and extensibility of the robot control scheme. Furthermore, the former experiment proves the efficiency of arm obstacle avoidance strategy, while the later one demonstrates the time reduction and accuracy improvement in sampling tasks as the autonomous actions.
Practical implications
The proposed control architecture can be applied to more mobile and industrial robots for its feasible and extensible scheme, and the utility function in arm path planning strategy can also be utilized for other information-driven exploration tasks.
Originality/value
Several specific biochemical sampling instruments are presented in detail, while ROS and Moveit! are integrated into the system scheme, making the robot extensible, achievable and real-time. Based on the control scheme, an information-driven path planning algorithm and automation in sampling tasks are conceived and implemented.
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D. Sanz‐Merodio, E. Garcia and P. Gonzalez‐de‐Santos
Reducing energy consumption in walking robots is an issue of great importance in field applications such as humanitarian demining so as to increase mission time for a given power…
Abstract
Purpose
Reducing energy consumption in walking robots is an issue of great importance in field applications such as humanitarian demining so as to increase mission time for a given power supply. The purpose of this paper is to address the problem of improving energy efficiency in statically stable walking machines by comparing two leg, insect and mammal, configurations on the hexapod robotic platform SILO6.
Design/methodology/approach
Dynamic simulation of this hexapod is used to develop a set of rules that optimize energy expenditure in both configurations. Later, through a theoretical analysis of energy consumption and experimental measurements in the real platform SILO6, a configuration is chosen.
Findings
It is widely accepted that the mammal configuration in statically stable walking machines is better for supporting high loads, while the insect configuration is considered to be better for improving mobility. However, taking into account the leg dynamics and not only the body weight, different results are obtained. In a mammal configuration, supporting body weight accounts for 5 per cent of power consumption while leg dynamics accounts for 31 per cent.
Originality/value
As this paper demonstrates, the energy expended when the robot walks along a straight and horizontal line is the same for both insect and mammal configurations, while power consumption during crab walking in an insect configuration exceeds power consumption in the mammal configuration.
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Mark Moll, Ken Goldberg, Michael A. Erdmann and Ron Fearing
Orienting parts that measure only a few micrometers in diameter introduces several challenges that need not be considered at the macro‐scale. First, there are several kinds of…
Abstract
Orienting parts that measure only a few micrometers in diameter introduces several challenges that need not be considered at the macro‐scale. First, there are several kinds of sticking effects due to Van der Waals forces and static electricity, which complicate hand‐off motions and release of a part. Second, the degrees of freedom of micro‐manipulators are limited. This paper proposes a pair of manipulation primitives and a complete algorithm that addresses these challenges. We will show that a sequence of these two manipulation primitives can uniquely orient any asymmetric part while maintaining contact without sensing. This allows us to apply the same plan to many (identical) parts simultaneously. For asymmetric parts we can find a plan of length O(n) in O(n) time that orients the part, where n is the number of vertices.
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Abstract
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