From the Publisher:
This book is about the application of high-speed machine vision for close-loop position control, or visual servoing, of a robot manipulator. It provides a comprehensive coverage of all aspects of the visual servoing problem: robotics, vision, control, technology and implementation issues. While much of the discussion is quite general the experimental work described is based on the use of a high-speed binary vision system with a monocular "eye-in-hand" camera.

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Visual Control of Robots: High-Performance Visual Servoing

A system for automated inventory management and material handling removes the requirement to operate fully automatically or all-manual using conventional vertical storage and retrieval (S&R) machines. Inventory requests to place palletized material into storage at a specified lot location or retrieve palletized material from a specified lot are resolved into missions for autonomous fork trucks, equivalent mobile platforms, or manual fork truck drivers (and their equipment) that are autonomously or manually executed to effect the request. Automated trucks plan their own movements to execute the mission over the warehouse aisles or roadways sharing this space with manually driven trucks. Automated units drive to planned speed limits, manage their loads (stability control), stop, go, and merge at intersections according human driving rules, use on-board sensors to identify static and dynamic obstacles, and human traffic, and either avoid them or stop until potential collision risk is removed.

Automated warehousing using robotic forklifts

Development of machine vision and laser radar based autonomous vehicle guidance systems for citrus grove navigation

A three-dimensional object identifying system is disclosed which identifies a three-dimensional shape object optically such as a part of a human body for preventing an information apparatus such as a personal computer from being used by any other illegitimate user than a legitimate user. The three-dimensional object identifying system has a function generating unit which generates modulation signals, light emitting elements which emit lights based on the modulation signals to a three-dimensional object, light receiving elements which receive reflected lights from the three-dimensional object and which produce detection signals, a correlation detecting unit which detects correlation information between each detection signal and modulation signal, and an identifying unit which performs identifying processing for the three-dimensional object on the basis of both pre-cataloged correlation information and the detected correlation information.

Three-dimensional object identifying system

This thesis describes the development of high bandwidth (~1 GHz) TOF (time-of-flight) laser range finder techniques for industrial measurement applications in the measurement range of zero to a few dozen metres to diffusely reflecting targets. The main goal has been to improve single-shot precision to mm-level in order to shorten the measurement result acquisition time. A TOF laser range finder consists of a laser transmitter, one or two receivers and timing discriminators, and a time measuring unit. In order to improve single-shot precision the slew-rate of the measurement pulse should be increased, so the optical pulse of the laser transmitter should be narrower and more powerful and the bandwidth of the receiver should be higher without increasing the noise level too much. In the transmitter usually avalanche transistors are used for generating the short (3–10 ns) and powerful (20–100 A) current pulses for the semiconductor laser. Several avalanche transistor types were compared and the optimization of the switching circuit was studied. It was shown that as high as 130 A current pulses are achievable using commercially available surface mount avalanche

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Pulsed time-of-flight laser range finder techniques for fast, high precision measurement applications

In this paper we describe the basic operating principles of laser radar sensors and the typical algorithms used to process laser radar imagery for robotic applications. We review 12 laser radar sensors to illustrate the variety of systems that have been applied to robotic applications wherein information extracted from the laser radar data is used to automatically control a mechanism or process. Next we describe selected robotic applications in seven areas: autonomous vehicle navigation, walking machine foot placement, automated service vehicles, manufacturing and inspection, automotive, military and agriculture. We conclude with a discussion of the status of laser radar technology and suggest trends we see in the application of laser radar sensors to robotics. Many new applications are expected as the maturity level progresses and system costs are reduced.

D.C. Carmer

Papers

Laser radar in robotics