The goal of this article is to design a navigation algorithm to improve the capabilities of an all-terrain unmanned ground vehicle by optimizing its configuration (the angles between its legs and i...

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1729881417752726

Methodology for the navigation optimization of a terrain-adaptive unmanned ground vehicle:

In this paper, we propose the design of a single-wheeled robot capable of climbing stairs. The robot is equipped with the proposed climbing mechanism, which enables it to climb stairs. The mechanis...

Development of a single-wheeled inverted pendulum robot capable of climbing stairs

Cleaning the staircases is the next big leap for every commercial cleaning robot in order to accomplish a full-fledged cleaning of a constructed buildings. Such an effort could be witnessed in the academic literature where a robotic system can autonomously clean the staircase by ascending. However, none of the existing staircase traversing platforms demonstrated the ability to perform both ascending and descending motion while cleaning, which can significantly improvise the overall robot’s performance. In this paper, we propose a novel reconfigurable cleaning robotic platform called sTetro_plotter, which can perform both ascend and descend motion in the staircases. Pointedly, in this work, we presented a perception framework for the developed robot to traverse on the staircase and perform area coverage autonomously. The framework was constructed with a pointNet++ based feature extractor and classification and regression network to generate a bounding box on the targeted feature. Also, we discussed the process of a staircase descending through tracking the generated bounding box. We implemented a sweeping-based lidar device that can generate a 3D point cloud by sensing its environment. We evaluated the performance of the proposed robot and its perception system through conducting experiments in real-world scenarios. The experimental trials successfully demonstrate the ability of the sTetro_plotter robot to perform autonomous area coverage while traversing on the staircase using the developed perception framework. 

A novel autonomous staircase cleaning system with robust 3D-Deep Learning-based perception technique for Area-Coverage

Abstract The described wheeled double inverted pendulum was built to serve as a stair-climbing device (SCD). It can negotiate steps autonomously. The overall SCD model is represented by a hybrid automaton. It consists of nonlinear situation-changing continuous-time properties. Depending on the situation, the SCD is either fully actuated or under-actuated. Furthermore, discontinuous phenomena exist due to wheel-to-ground unilateral constraints. Feedback linearization is used as a basis for the control design. Due to a different situation-changing relative degree a full-state linearization or a partial linearization is applied. The state transition “settling” is developed within the virtual constraints framework.

Autonomous Stair Climbing of a Wheeled Double Inverted Pendulum Mechatronic Systems

This paper presents a (patent-pending) small, quasi-static, minimal-complexity Stair Climbing Robot (SCR). The vehicle design is given simply by adding a third motor to a (Segway-like) Mobile Inverted Pendulum (MIP), enabling it to maneuver up stairs, leveraging feedback control, by planting it's “foot” onto the ground in front of the next step, lifting the chassis/wheel assembly up it's own “leg”, leaning over onto the top of the next step, self uprighting, and repeating for the following step(s). Fore/aft stabilization during leg balancing is given by using the MIP drive wheels as reaction wheels, while left/right stability is given by the width of the foot itself. The design is small and simple enough to potentially be ruggedized as a stair-climbing throwbot, akin to the Recon Scout (but able to climb up stairs) for reconnaissance in military and homeland security applications.

A minimalist Stair Climbing Robot (SCR) formed as a leg balancing & climbing Mobile Inverted Pendulum (MIP)

In this study, the control of a two-wheeled stair-climbing inverted pendulum robot and its climbing motion are analyzed and discussed. The robot adopts a state-feedback controller with a feed-forwa...

Dynamic modeling and step-climbing analysis of a two-wheeled stair-climbing inverted pendulum robot

In this paper, we develop the control system of a stair-climbing inverted pendulum robot using a planetary wheel mechanism. The purpose of the control system is to ensure that the robot adjusts its orientation towards a given step before climbing the step and keep its main body stable before and after performing the climbing maneuver. The proposed system operates as follows. We utilize a state feedback control with a reference speed input and additional torque in order to guarantee the stability while moving and performing climbing maneuver. We use a proportional-derivative controller to control the orientation of the robot towards the stairs before climbing and to maintain the same orientation after the ascent or descent. Experimental results confirmed that the robot successfully ascended and descended the stairs by using the proposed method, even though the angles of each step's riser surface varied.

Development of a control system for a stair-climbing inverted pendulum robot

In this paper, we developed a concept of video monitoring system using a single mirror-drive pan-tilt mechanism. The system provides multiple zoomed videos with controllable viewing angle for each zoomed video and a wide-angle video. The system can be accessed by several users by connecting their personal computer (PC) to the server PC through the network. Every user is granted to change of their respected viewing angle of zoomed videos. The system is suitable for the remote observation deck for sight-seeing purpose. The system is composed of two high-speed cameras with wide-angle and zoomed lens, and a high-speed mirror-drive pan-tilt mechanism. The system implements a convoluted neural network-based (CNN-based) object detection to assist every user client identifying objects appearing on wide-angle and zoomed videos. We demonstrated that our proposed system is capable to provide wide-angle and zoomed videos with CNN-based object detection to four clients, where each client receives a 30 frames per second zoomed video.

Development of a Multi-User Remote Video Monitoring System Using a Single Mirror-Drive Pan-Tilt Mechanism

This study develops a real-world haptization system based on high-speed active vision that can virtually touch a remote human-untouchable object vibrating at the audio frequency level such as product machines operating at high speed and heated systems in factories. A high-speed active vision system can simultaneously observe small vibrations at hundreds of Hertz by executing digital image correlation analysis with sub-pixel accuracy in real time at 500 fps. A remote user enables wide-angle observation by operating its pan-tilt mirror direction with a trackball interface, and virtually feels the vibration by exciting his finger with a high-speed one-axis vibrator. Several experimental results show the effectiveness of our vibration haptization system that enables remote touch on human-untouchable vibrating objects such as a boiling electric kettle, a heated boiler, and a fast-rotating pump motor. 

Ananta Adhi Wardana

Papers

Development of a single-wheeled inverted pendulum robot capable of climbing stairs

Dynamic modeling and step-climbing analysis of a two-wheeled stair-climbing inverted pendulum robot

Development of a control system for a stair-climbing inverted pendulum robot

Development of a Multi-User Remote Video Monitoring System Using a Single Mirror-Drive Pan-Tilt Mechanism

A Real-time Vibration Haptization System Using High-Speed Active Vision