Current Issue : April - June Volume : 2013 Issue Number : 2 Articles : 5 Articles
Jumping may be considered to be quite a useful\r\nmeans of mobile robot locomotion, but acquiring a stable\r\nlanding has been a difficult problem. This paper reports on\r\nthe design, analysis, simulation and experiments of a\r\nmesoscale jumping robot that is capable of stable landing.\r\nA jumping mechanism inspired by jumping insects is\r\nintroduced and an actuation scheme using only one shape\r\nmemory alloy (SMA) spring is described. Experimental\r\nresults show that a robot with a 17 gram weight and 13 cm\r\ndiameter can jump forward as far as 1.2 times its body\r\ndiameter and vertically as high as 1.5 times its body\r\ndiameter. In addition, the robot is able to land in a stable\r\nmanner and recover its initial posture after landing...
Driver assistant systems enhance traffic safety and\r\nefficiency. The accurate 3D pose of a front vehicle can help\r\na driver to make the right decision on the road. We\r\npropose a novel real-time system to estimate the 3D pose of\r\nthe front vehicle. This system consists of two parallel\r\nthreads: vehicle rear tracking and mapping. The vehicle\r\nrear is first identified in the video captured by an onboard\r\ncamera, after license plate localization and foreground\r\nextraction. The 3D pose estimation technique is then\r\nemployed with respect to the extracted vehicle rear. Most\r\ncurrent 3D pose estimation techniques need prior models\r\nor a stereo initialization with user cooperation. It is\r\nextremely difficult to obtain prior models due to the\r\nvarying appearance of vehicles� rears. Moreover, it is\r\nunsafe to ask for drivers� cooperation when a vehicle is\r\nrunning. In our system, two initial keyframes for stereo\r\nalgorithms are automatically extracted by vehicle rear\r\ndetection and tracking. Map points are defined as a\r\ncollection of point features extracted from the vehicle�s rear\r\nwith their 3D information. These map points are inferences\r\nthat relate the 2D features detected in following vehicles�\r\nrears with the 3D world. The relative 3D pose of the\r\nonboard camera to the front vehicle rear is then estimated\r\nthrough matching the map points with point features\r\ndetected on the front vehicle rear. We demonstrate the\r\ncapabilities of our system by testing on real-time and\r\nsynthesized videos. In order to make the experimental\r\nanalysis visible, we demonstrated an estimated 3D pose\r\nthrough augmented reality, which needs accurate and\r\nreal-time 3D pose estimation....
Collaborative tasks between human operators\r\nand robotic manipulators can improve the performance\r\nand flexibility of industrial environments. Nevertheless,\r\nthe safety of humans should always be guaranteed and\r\nthe behaviour of the robots should be modified when a\r\nrisk of collision may happen. This paper presents the\r\nresearch that the authors have performed in recent years\r\nin order to develop a human-robot interaction system\r\nwhich guarantees human safety by precisely tracking the\r\ncomplete body of the human and by activating safety\r\nstrategies when the distance between them is too small.\r\nThis paper not only summarizes the techniques which\r\nhave been implemented in order to develop this system,\r\nbut it also shows its application in three real human-robot\r\ninteraction tasks....
This paper deals with the real-time walking of a\r\nmulti-legged robot over difficult terrains using a balance\r\nstabilization method in order to achieve a fast speed and\r\nrobust locomotion with minimal tracking errors. The\r\nstabilization method is described through a ZMP-based\r\nonline pattern-generation scheme inspired by bio-mimetic\r\nstepping leg transferences with an active balance control so\r\nas to reduce the propagation of instability while performing\r\nrapid stepping actions for a fast walking gait in the presence\r\nof external disturbances. The proposed control system uses a\r\nforce-position controller [14] which takes impact dynamics\r\ninto consideration to compensate for the effect of external\r\nperturbations during walking by estimating impulsive\r\nforces in real-time. Using the proposed stabilization\r\nmethod, the robot plans appropriate footholds on the\r\nground in order to achieve a reasonable average walking\r\nspeed over difficult terrains in a natural environment. The\r\nsuccess and performance of the proposed method is\r\nrealized through dynamic simulations and real-world\r\nexperiments using a six-legged hexapod robot....
Autonomous robots are complex systems that require the interaction between numerous heterogeneous components (software and\r\nhardware). Because of the increase in complexity of robotic applications and the diverse range of hardware, robotic middleware\r\nis designed to manage the complexity and heterogeneity of the hardware and applications, promote the integration of new\r\ntechnologies, simplify software design, hide the complexity of low-level communication and the sensor heterogeneity of the\r\nsensors, improve software quality, reuse robotic software infrastructure across multiple research efforts, and to reduce production\r\ncosts. This paper presents a literature survey and attribute-based bibliography of the current state of the art in robotic middleware\r\ndesign. The main aim of the survey is to assist robotic middleware researchers in evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of\r\ncurrent approaches and their appropriateness for their applications. Furthermore, we provide a comprehensive set of appropriate\r\nbibliographic references that are classified based on middleware attributes....
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