There is, I think, something ethereal about i —the square root of minus one. I remember first hearing about it at school. It seemed an odd beast at that time—an intruder hovering on the edge of reality.

Usually familiarity dulls this sense of the bizarre, but in the case of i it was the reverse: over the years the sense of its surreal nature intensified. It seemed that it was impossible to write mathematics that described the real world in …

I and i

https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~illah/PAPERS/socialroboticssurvey.pdf

A survey of socially interactive robots

MUCKE aims to mine a large volume of images, to structure them conceptually and to use this conceptual structuring in order to improve large-scale image retrieval. The last decade witnessed important progress concerning low-level image representations. However, there are a number problems which need to be solved in order to unleash the full potential of image mining in applications. The central problem with low-level representations is the mismatch between them and the human interpretation of image content. This problem can be instantiated, for instance, by the incapability of existing descriptors to capture spatial relationships between the concepts represented or by their incapability to convey an explanation of why two images are similar in a content-based image retrieval framework. We start by assessing existing local descriptors for image classification and by proposing to use co-occurrence matrices to better capture spatial relationships in images. The main focus in MUCKE is on cleaning large scale Web image corpora and on proposing image representations which are closer to the human interpretation of images. Consequently, we introduce methods which tackle these two problems and compare results to state of the art methods. Note: some aspects of this deliverable are withheld at this time as they are pending review. Please contact the authors for a preview.

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel2/4524/12820/00592460.pdf

Image Processing

Bilateral teleoperation: An historical survey

1. Abstract This paper describes the PHANToM haptic interface - a device which measures a user’s finger tip position and exerts a precisely controlled force vector on the finger tip. The device has enabled users to interact with and feel a wide variety of virtual objects and will be used for control of remote manipulators. This paper discusses the design rationale, novel kinematics and mechanics of the PHANToM. A brief description of the programming of basic shape elements and contact interactions is also given.

/pdf/the-phantom-haptic-interface-a-device-for-probing-virtual-3ucdtzerj6.pdf

The PHANToM Haptic Interface: A Device for Probing Virtual Objects

This paper presents a method for robot motion planning in dynamic environments. It consists of selecting avoidance maneuvers to avoid static and moving obstacles in the velocity space, based on the cur rent positions and velocities of the robot and obstacles. It is a first- order method, since it does not integrate velocities to yield positions as functions of time.The avoidance maneuvers are generated by selecting robot ve locities outside of the velocity obstacles, which represent the set of robot velocities that would result in a collision with a given obstacle that moves at a given velocity, at some future time. To ensure that the avoidance maneuver is dynamically feasible, the set of avoidance velocities is intersected with the set of admissible velocities, defined by the robot's acceleration constraints. Computing new avoidance maneuvers at regular time intervals accounts for general obstacle trajectories.The trajectory from start to goal is computed by searching a tree of feasible avoidance maneuve...

Motion Planning in Dynamic Environments Using Velocity Obstacles

In this article, we discuss formal methods for the verification of properties of control systems designed for autonomous robotic systems. In the last few decades, robotics played a relevant role in the progress of surgery. The use of robots in the operating rooms has given rise to new terminologies: robot-assisted surgery, medical robotics, rehabilitation robotics, telesurgery, robotic assistive systems, and so on. Since robotic surgery is a relatively new field of investigation, there are no established methods for bringing new concepts and operational procedures to the surgical practice, in spite of the interest and pressing requests of the medical community.

Robotic Surgery

This paper describes an environment for the design, simulation and control of Internet-based force-relflecting telerobotc systems. We define these systems as using a segment of the computer network to connect the master to the slave.

A Design and Control Environment for Internet-Based Telerobotics

This survey presents the state of the art of basic compliant control algorithms in a unified view of past and present literature. Compliant control is fundamental when dealing with unstructured environments, as in the case of human–robot interaction. This is because it implicitly controls the energy transfer to the environment, providing a safe interaction. In this review, we analyze solutions from traditional robotics, usually involving stiff joints, and recent literature to find common control concepts and differences. To this aim, we bring back every schemas and relative mathematics formulation to a common and simplified scenario. Then, for each schema, we explain its intuitive meaning and report issues raised in the literature. We also propose an expansion of taxonomy to account for recent research.

A Review of Algorithms for Compliant Control of Stiff and Fixed-Compliance Robots

A simple and efficient approach to the computation of avoidance maneuvers among moving obstacles is presented. The method is discussed for the case of a single maneuvering object avoiding several obstacles moving on known linear trajectories. The original dynamic problem is transformed into several static problems using the relative velocity between the maneuvering object and each obstacle. The static problems are converted into a single problem by means of a vector transformation, and the set of velocity vectors guaranteeing the avoidance of all the obstacles is computed. Within this set, the best maneuver for the particular approach can be selected. The geometric background of this approach is developed for both 2-D and 3-D cases, and the method is applied to an example of a 3-D avoidance maneuver. >

http://profs.scienze.univr.it/~fiorini/mbzirc/ICRA93.pdf

Paolo Fiorini

Papers

Motion Planning in Dynamic Environments Using Velocity Obstacles

Robotic Surgery

A Design and Control Environment for Internet-Based Telerobotics

A Review of Algorithms for Compliant Control of Stiff and Fixed-Compliance Robots

Motion planning in dynamic environments using the relative velocity paradigm