Showing papers in "Robotics and Autonomous Systems in 2002"

TL;DR: This article aims to compare and evaluate the main features and properties of some of the most common control schemes proposed in the literature, firstly presenting the criteria adopted for the comparative study and then illustrating and discussing the results of the comparison.

TL;DR: Embodied Evolution is introduced as a new methodology for evolutionary robotics that uses a population of physical robots that autonomously reproduce with one another while situated in their task environment and designs a fully decentralized, asynchronous evolutionary algorithm.

TL;DR: A new IR sensor based on the light intensity back-scattered from objects and able to measure distances of up to 1 m is described and the expected errors in distance estimates are analysed and modelled.

TL;DR: An innovative locomotion concept for rough terrain based on six motorized wheels based on rhombus configuration, the rover named Shrimp has a steering wheel in the front and the rear, and two wheels arranged on a bogie on each side.

TL;DR: This paper presents a method for finding and optimizing priority schemes for such prioritized and decoupled planning techniques and discusses experimental results obtained with real robots and through systematic robot simulation, illustrating the superior performance of this approach.

TL;DR: A singularly perturbed model has been formulated and used to design a reduced-order controller that is shown to stabilise the link and joint vibrations effectively while maintaining good tracking performance.

TL;DR: A prototype urban robot on a novel chassis with articulated tracks that enable stair climbing and scrambling over rubble and stereo vision-based obstacle avoidance, visual servoing to user-designated goals, and autonomous vision-guided stair climbing is developed.

TL;DR: The components of the Instruction-Based Learning architecture are described and issues of knowledge representation, the selection of primitives and the conversion of natural language into robot-understandable procedures are discussed.

TL;DR: A multi-layer back-propagation n eural network is employed to model non-linear kinematics of the robot to adapt t he robot t o a large operating range and Simulation results for the modelling and control are provided to justify the proposed scheme.

TL;DR: It is argued that this new method for teaching complex actions to an animal-like autonomous robot based on clicker training can be a promising technique for teaching unusual behavior and sequences of actions to a pet robot.

TL;DR: This work presents real time implementation algorithms of Simultaneous Localization and Map Building (SLAM) with emphasis to outdoor land vehicle applications in large environments and investigates the problematic of outdoors navigation in areas with combination of feature and featureless regions.

TL;DR: The work presented in this paper deals with the problem of the navigation of a mobile robot either in unknown indoor environment or in a partially known one, and a hybrid method is used in order to exploit the advantages of global and local navigation strategies.

TL;DR: The biomimetic control scheme for the walking robot SCORPION is presented, using a concept of Basic Motion Patterns, which can be combined in a very flexible manner and reflexes are introduced to increase the reactivity.

TL;DR: This work presents a strategy and an underlying fast algorithm as the computer vision basis to make a safe landing decision and demonstrates the robustness of the approach under widely different light, altitude and background texture conditions, as well as its feasibility for limited-performance embedded computers.

TL;DR: Simulation and experimental results show that large transformations can be obtained with multiple electrodes in a planar configuration and a starfish-shaped gel robot is designed that can turn over using spatially varying electric fields.

TL;DR: A navigation strategy which requires minimum user assistance which first guides a mobile robot to a destination by remote control and a method of selecting effective viewing directions using the history of observation during the guided movement is developed.

TL;DR: Harmonic functions provide optimal potential maps for robot navigation in a previously explored static environment by using simulations and experiments with the Nomad 200 robot to investigate the algorithm performance in respect to parameters such as the frequency of updates and the numerical method used to calculate the harmonic potential.

TL;DR: The use of vision for navigation of mobile robots floating in 3D space is described, Assuming short range regions in the environment, vision can be used for local navigation, so that no global positioning methods are required.

TL;DR: An iterative solution of the Inverse Geometric Model is used, which requires no matrix inversion and iterates directly on the joint position, being thus suitable for on-line application and also preserving repeatability.

TL;DR: This work model the ground plane based on disparity and analyze its uncertainty in order to develop a stereo-based mobility aid for the partially sighted, and shows that obstacles and curbs are detected.

TL;DR: Experimental investigations of a prismatic joint biped robot confirmed the predictions concerning the consumed energy and stability and the effectiveness of the proposed trajectory planning method.

TL;DR: This paper describes a new method for generating optimal path and gait simultaneously of a six-legged robot using a combined GA-fuzzy approach, where fuzzy logic controllers and genetic algorithms are used to find optimized FLCs.

TL;DR: A 2D route planner to support operations for an autonomous vehicle conducting missions at high speeds in a large natural terrain and to take advantage of previous route planning experience to collect route cost data and to build a knowledge base that is used to provide better heuristics to the search engine.

TL;DR: A novel technique based on continuous genetic algorithms (CGAs) to solve the path generation problem for robot manipulators that is the first singularity-free path generation algorithm that can be applied at the path update rate of the manipulator.

TL;DR: A general set of conditions by which a puck collection system may be seen to evolve to a one-cluster system is developed and conditions leading to clustering behavior in the presence and absence of non-embodied agents are derived.

TL;DR: This paper presents a framework for a robotic system with the ability to perform real-world manipulation tasks and integrates vision and control system where the objectives are to provide the discrete state information required to switch between control modes of different complexity.

TL;DR: This paper shows how to enrich a topology-based map with geometric information useful for the generation and execution of navigation plans, and illustrates the use of topological-based maps for planned behavior-based navigation on a real robot.

TL;DR: A self-localization method based on the Hough transform for matching a geometric reference map with a representation of range information acquired by the robot’s sensors that is adequate for indoor office-like environments, especially for those environments that can be suitably represented by a set of segments.

TL;DR: An architecture for distributed control of a team of heterogeneous mobile robots is introduced and a distinguishing feature of the architecture is its versatility in handling resources.

TL;DR: The shape memory effect exhibited by Nitinol wire can be utilized to construct an artificial muscle that is activated by an electric current, which produces heat and initiates a phase transformation.