A scheme is developed for classifying the types of motion perceived by a humanlike robot. It is assumed that the robot receives visual images of the scene using a perspective system model. Equations, theorems, concepts, clues, etc., relating the objects, their positions, and their motion to their images on the focal plane are presented. >

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel2/815/3148/00100651.pdf

Robot vision

Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) has recently received considerable attention in the academic community, in labs, in technology companies, and through the media. Because of this attention, it is desirable to present a survey of HRI to serve as a tutorial to people outside the field and to promote discussion of a unified vision of HRI within the field. The goal of this review is to present a unified treatment of HRI-related problems, to identify key themes, and discuss challenge problems that are likely to shape the field in the near future. Although the review follows a survey structure, the goal of presenting a coherent "story" of HRI means that there are necessarily some well-written, intriguing, and influential papers that are not referenced. Instead of trying to survey every paper, we describe the HRI story from multiple perspectives with an eye toward identifying themes that cross applications. The survey attempts to include papers that represent a fair cross section of the universities, government efforts, industry labs, and countries that contribute to HRI, and a cross section of the disciplines that contribute to the field, such as human, factors, robotics, cognitive psychology, and design.

/pdf/human-robot-interaction-a-survey-4q8yi606a9.pdf

Human-Robot Interaction: A Survey

: Imagine the face of warfare with autonomous robotics: Instead of our soldiers returning home in flag-draped caskets to heartbroken families, autonomous robots-mobile machines that can make decisions, such as to fire upon a target, without human intervention-can replace the human soldier in an increasing range of dangerous missions: from tunneling through dark caves in search of terrorists, to securing urban streets rife with sniper fire, to patrolling the skies and waterways where there is little cover from attacks, to clearing roads and seas of improvised explosive devices (IEDs), to surveying damage from biochemical weapons, to guarding borders and buildings, to controlling potentially-hostile crowds, and even as the infantry frontlines. These robots would be 'smart' enough to make decisions that only humans now can; and as conflicts increase in tempo and require much quicker information processing and responses, robots have a distinct advantage over the limited and fallible cognitive capabilities that we Homo sapiens have. Not only would robots expand the battlespace over difficult, larger areas of terrain, but they also represent a significant force-multiplier-each effectively doing the work of many human soldiers, while immune to sleep deprivation, fatigue, low morale, perceptual and communication challenges in the 'fog of war', and other performance-hindering conditions.

/pdf/autonomous-military-robotics-risk-ethics-and-design-g5nsuxmfp3.pdf

Autonomous Military Robotics: Risk, Ethics, and Design

Surface and subsurface soil samples from the most arid region within the Atacama Desert, Chile, were analyzed for total organic carbon (TOC), phospholipid fatty acids (PLFA) and culturable bacteria. TOC content was determined to range between 560 and 765 μg/g. PLFA analysis indicated 2.0×10 6 –1.0×10 7  cell equivalents/g. Culturing of soil extracts on R2A and TSA media yielded 1.6×10 3 –4.6×10 3  CFU/g, and 200–300 CFU/g heat shock survivors. Twenty isolated strains were identified based on analysis of 16S rRNA gene sequences, and divided into eight phylogenetic groups, including Rhodopseudomonas , Sphingomonas sp., Mesorhizobium sp., Asticcacaulis sp., Bradyrhizobium sp., Bacillus subtilis , Bacillus pumilus , and Burkholderia sp.

Microflora of extreme arid Atacama Desert soils

The field of robotics relies heavily on various technologies such as mechatronics, computing systems, and wireless communication. Given the fast growing technological progress in these fields, robots can offer a wide range of applications. However real world integration and application development for such a distributed system composed of many robotic modules and networked robotic devices is very difficult. Therefore, middleware services provide a novel approach offering many possibilities and drastically enhancing the application development for robots. This paper surveys the current state of middleware approaches in this domain. It discusses middleware challenges in these systems and presents some representative middleware solutions specifically designed for robots. The selection of the studied methods tries to cover most of the middleware platforms, objectives and approaches that have been proposed by researchers in this field.

/pdf/middleware-for-robotics-a-survey-11yjkl2rpc.pdf

Middleware for Robotics: A Survey

In this paper we summarize a survey conducted by NASA to determine the state-of-the-art in space robotics and to predict future robotic capabilities under either nominal and intensive development effort. The space robotics assessment study examined both in-space operations including assembly, inspection, and maintenance and planetary surface operations like mobility and exploration. Applications of robotic autonomy and human-robot cooperation were considered. The study group devised a decomposition of robotic capabilities and then suggested metrics to specify the technical challenges associated with each. The conclusion of this paper identifies possible areas in which investment in space robotics could lead to significant advances of important technologies.

/pdf/a-survey-of-space-robotics-n6l32s5eas.pdf

A Survey of Space Robotics

Nomad was deployed for a 45 day traverse in the Atacama Desert, Chile, during the summer of 1997. During this traverse, 1 week was devoted to science experiments. The goal of the science experiments was to test different planetary surface exploration strategies that included (1) a Mars mission simulation, (2) a science on the fly experiment, where the rover was kept moving 75% of the operation time. (The goal of this operation was to determine whether or not successful interpretation of the environment is related to the time spent on a target. The role of mobility in helping the interpretation was also assessed.) (3) a meteorite search using visual and instrumental methods to remotely identify meteorites in extreme environments, and (4) a time-delay experiment with and without using the panospheric camera. The results were as follow: the remote science team positively identified the main characteristics of the test site geological environment. The science on the fly experiment showed that the selection of appropriate targets might be even more critical than the time spent on a study area to reconstruct the history of a site. During the same operation the science team members identified and sampled a rock from a Jurassic outcrop that they proposed to be a fossil. The presence of paleolife indicators in this rock was confirmed later by laboratory analysis. Both visual and instrumental modes demonstrated the feasibility, in at least some conditions, of carrying out a field search for meteorites by using remote-controlled vehicles. Finally, metrics collected from the observation of the science team operations, and the use team members made of mission data, provided critical information on what operation sequences could be automated on board rovers in future planetary surface explorations.

/pdf/nomad-rover-field-experiment-atacama-desert-chile-1-science-37v4uz36za.pdf

Nomad Rover Field Experiment, Atacama Desert, Chile: 1. Science results overview

Since 2004, NASA has been working to return to the Moon. In contrast to the Apollo missions, two key objectives of the current exploration program is to establish significant infrastructure and an outpost. Achieving these objectives will enable long-duration stays and long-distance exploration of the Moon. To do this, robotic systems will be needed to perform tasks which cannot, or should not, be performed by crew alone. In this paper, we summarize our work to develop "utility robots" for lunar surface operations, present results and lessons learned from field testing, and discuss directions for future research.

/pdf/field-testing-of-utility-robots-for-lunar-surface-operations-1i4npn2zo2.pdf

Field Testing of Utility Robots for Lunar Surface Operations

Future planetary rover missions, such as the upcoming Mars Science Laboratory, will require rovers to autonomously navigate to science targets specified from up to 10 meters away, and to place instruments against these targets with up to 1 centimeter precision. The current state of the art, demonstrated by the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) mission, typically requires three sols (Martian days) for approach and placement, with several communication cycles between the rovers and ground operations. The capability for goal level commanding of a rover to visit multiple science targets in a single sol represents a tenfold increase in productivity, and decreases daily operations costs. Such a capability requires a high degree of robotic autonomy: visual target tracking and navigation for the rover to approach the targets, mission planning for determining the most beneficial course of action given a large set of desired goals in the face of uncertainty, and robust execution for coping with variations in time and power consumption, as well as the possibility of failures in tracking or navigation due to occlusion or unexpected obstacles. We have developed a system that provides these features. The system uses a vision-based target tracker that recovers the 6-DOF transformations between the rover and the tracked targets as the rover moves, and an off-board planner that creates plans that are carried out on an on-board robust executive. The tracker comprises a feature based approach that tracks a set of interest points in 3D using stereo, with a shape based approach that registers dense 3D meshes. The off-board planner, in addition to generating a primary activity sequence, creates a large set of contingent, or alternate plans to deal with anticipated failures in tracking and the uncertainty in resource consumption. This paper describes our tracking and planning systems, including the results of experiments carried out using the K9 rover. These systems are part of a larger effort, which includes tools for target specification in 3D, ground-based simulation and plan verification, round-trip data tracking, rover software and hardware, and scientific visualization. The complete system has been shown to provide the capability of multiple instrument placements on rocks within a 10 meter radius, all within a single command cycle.

/pdf/mission-planning-and-target-tracking-for-autonomous-2lwx5t25u1.pdf

Mission planning and target tracking for autonomous instrument placement

This article provides an overview of the nature and role of autonomy for space exploration, with a bias in focus towards describing the relevance of AI technologies. It explores the range of autonomous behavior that is relevant and useful in space exploration and illustrates the range of possible behaviors by presenting four case studies in space-exploration systems, each differing from the others in the degree of autonomy exemplified. Three core requirements are defined for autonomous space systems, and the architectures for integrating capabilities into an autonomous system are described. The article concludes with a discussion of the challenges that are faced currently in developing and deploying autonomy technologies for space.

Liam Pedersen

Papers

A Survey of Space Robotics

Nomad Rover Field Experiment, Atacama Desert, Chile: 1. Science results overview

Field Testing of Utility Robots for Lunar Surface Operations

Mission planning and target tracking for autonomous instrument placement

Autonomy in Space: Current Capabilities and Future Challenge