{"title":"Design of Modular End-effector for Collaborative Robot based on Underactuated Mechanism","authors":"Hyeonjun Park, D. Kim, Bumjoo Lee","doi":"10.1109/IRC.2020.00090","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/IRC.2020.00090","url":null,"abstract":"In this paper, we introduce end-effector adopting the modular finger module, which is the under-actuated system based on two four-bar link mechanism. The four fingers, excluding the thumb, consist of distal interphalangeal (DIP), proximal interphalangeal (PIP), metacarpophalangeal (MCP) joints. The thumb part consists of interphalangeal (IP), metacarpophalaneal (MCP), carpometacarpal (CMC) joint. The size of proposed modular end-effector similar to the average adult male's hand. Four fingers assemble on the palm of the end-effector, and those are arranged to parallel for the force balance during grasping objects. Each finger was modularized for easy replacement, and each one was actuated by one linear motor. The Thumb module has an extra motor for abduction/adduction. The finger module consists of the four links and three joints; MCP, PIP, DIP joint. The finger module is an under-actuated system based on the two four-bar linkage mechanism.","PeriodicalId":232817,"journal":{"name":"2020 Fourth IEEE International Conference on Robotic Computing (IRC)","volume":"58 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"117076774","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
G. Zamanakos, Adam Seewald, H. Midtiby, U. Schultz
{"title":"Energy-Aware Design of Vision-Based Autonomous Tracking and Landing of a UAV","authors":"G. Zamanakos, Adam Seewald, H. Midtiby, U. Schultz","doi":"10.1109/IRC.2020.00054","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/IRC.2020.00054","url":null,"abstract":"In this paper, we present the design and evaluation of a vision-based algorithm for autonomous tracking and landing on a moving platform in varying environmental conditions. We use an energy-aware approach, where the design of the algorithm is based on an evaluation of the energy consumption and Quality of Service (QoS) of each computational component. We evaluate our approach with an agricultural use case where a moving platform is tracked using a landing marker and the YOLOv3-tiny CNN is used to detect ground-based hazards. We perform all computations onboard using an NVIDIA Jetson Nano and analyse the impact on the flight time by profiling the energy consumption of the marker detection and the CNN. Experiments are conducted in Gazebo simulation using an energy modeling tool to measure the computational energy cost as a function of QoS. We test the energy efficiency and robustness of our system in various dynamic wind disturbances. We show that the marker detection algorithm can be run at the highest QoS with only a marginal energy overhead whereas adapting the QoS level of CNN results in a considerable power saving. The power saving is significant for a system executing on a fixed-wing UAV.","PeriodicalId":232817,"journal":{"name":"2020 Fourth IEEE International Conference on Robotic Computing (IRC)","volume":"13 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124195624","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Non-Prehensile Manipulation Learning through Self-Supervision","authors":"Ziyan Gao, A. Elibol, N. Chong","doi":"10.1109/IRC.2020.00022","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/IRC.2020.00022","url":null,"abstract":"Manipulation is one of most emerging research and development areas in the field of robotics. Recently, state representation learning for control has been gaining attention. In this paper, we proposed a novel learning model based on neural networks in order to sample the actions of the robot to push objects to desired positions. Furthermore, an intuitive method was proposed to enable the robot to collect training data in an efficiently way. Specifically, a fully convolutional network encodes observations into latent space, and a mixture density network is implemented to infer an action distribution, since there are an infinite number of possible actions that may result in the same change of the state of the object. Through extensive experimental simulations and comparisons with the existing models, we demonstrated the efficiency of the proposed method applied to non-prehensile manipulation, such as pushing or rotating of small objects on the table.","PeriodicalId":232817,"journal":{"name":"2020 Fourth IEEE International Conference on Robotic Computing (IRC)","volume":"101 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116677292","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"How to find assembly plans (fast): Hierarchical state space partitioning for efficient multi-robot assembly","authors":"A. Hoffmann, Ludwig Nägele, W. Reif","doi":"10.1109/IRC.2020.00034","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/IRC.2020.00034","url":null,"abstract":"The programming of cooperating teams of robots in automation and in particular for assembling small batch sizes is a tedious task. Apart from that, the use of AI-based planning for multiple robots is computationally expensive. Using state space techniques, the state space increases dramatically for numerous possibilities in an indiscrete, continuous world. Hence, in this work we present a two-layer planning algorithm for multi-robot assembly which automatically partitions the state space in order to reduce complexity and to speed up planning time. We depict formal considerations about planning complexity and show how and why the state space size and, thus, planning time is strongly lower compared to common approaches.","PeriodicalId":232817,"journal":{"name":"2020 Fourth IEEE International Conference on Robotic Computing (IRC)","volume":"9 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"117153812","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Using Active Vision for Enhancing an Surface-based Object Recognition Approach","authors":"Dorian Rohner, D. Henrich","doi":"10.1109/IRC.2020.00065","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/IRC.2020.00065","url":null,"abstract":"For robots, the sensing of their surroundings is a necessary skill in nowadays tasks. One possible realization are one-shot object recognition methods. These may fail due to occlusions within the scene or because of objects that cannot be identified from only one view. This problem may be tackled by utilizing Active Vision methods, which means capturing additional information of the scene from different poses. In this paper, we contribute a novel approach with the goal of increasing the performance of an object recognition method. To do this, we try to identify so called regions of interest that the robot should inspect. We describe, how regions of interest can be determined and how possible views are calculated based on the current representation of the scene. On the one hand, we use the resulting additional views to generate new object hypotheses. On the other hand, they enable the validation of existing hypotheses. We test for each possible view whether it is reasonable regarding distance to the scene and occlusions. For remaining views, the corresponding pose as well as a quality measure is calculated and the best pose is selected as the next view. Evaluation results from our prototype system show that the classification rate increases with additional views.","PeriodicalId":232817,"journal":{"name":"2020 Fourth IEEE International Conference on Robotic Computing (IRC)","volume":"81 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115767990","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"UAV Threat Level Assessment based on the Velocity and Distance from Collision","authors":"Youlim Ko, K. Ho, Minji Lee, E. Matson","doi":"10.1109/IRC.2020.00094","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/IRC.2020.00094","url":null,"abstract":"With the growing interest in Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) complemented by its high functionality and easy accessibility, UAVs are now applied to a variety of fields from delivery services to military surveillance. As much as it holds potential in various positive applications, UAV-associated threats on sensitive facilities and public safety with its increased involvement in illegal activities and terrorist attacks have triggered active research in Counter-Uav(cuav) systems. The velocity of UAVs has a large impact on the collision distance between UAVs and facilities of importance, and with malicious intent, it could cause a disastrous outcome. In this paper, we propose a UAV threat assessment algorithm that classifies the threat level of UAVs based on the velocity change and distance from the facility of importance. The proposed algorithm was tested and compared with our previous algorithm through simulation. From the simulation results, we were able to confirm that analyzing the velocity and the type of velocity variation of a UAV based on its distance from the target can improve the accuracy of UAV threat assessment compared to our previous study that only utilized the different type of velocity variations. The results of this research are expected to be utilized in CUAV systems on predicting the threat of hostile UAVs and securing mitigation time to the posed threat, and research should further be continued on the velocity factor of UAV threat analysis.","PeriodicalId":232817,"journal":{"name":"2020 Fourth IEEE International Conference on Robotic Computing (IRC)","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125857359","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Iterative Deep Fusion for 3D Semantic Segmentation","authors":"Fabian Duerr, H. Weigel, M. Maehlisch, J. Beyerer","doi":"10.1109/IRC.2020.00067","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/IRC.2020.00067","url":null,"abstract":"Understanding and interpreting a scene is a key task of environment perception for autonomous driving, which is why autonomous vehicles are equipped with a wide range of different sensors. Semantic segmentation of sensor data provides valuable information for this task and is often seen as key enabler. In this paper, we are presenting a deep learning approach for 3D semantic segmentation of lidar point clouds. The proposed architecture uses a range view representation of 3D point clouds and additionally exploits camera features to increase accuracy and robustness. In contrast to other approaches, which fuse lidar and camera feature maps once, we fuse them iteratively and at different scales inside our network architecture. We demonstrate the benefits of the presented iterative deep fusion approach over single fusion approaches on a large benchmark dataset. Our evaluation shows considerable improvements, resulting from the additional use of camera features. Furthermore, our fusion strategy outperforms the current state-of-the-art strategy by a considerable margin. Despite the use of camera features, the presented approach is also trainable solely with point cloud labels.","PeriodicalId":232817,"journal":{"name":"2020 Fourth IEEE International Conference on Robotic Computing (IRC)","volume":"91 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115233140","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Tauhidul Alam, Alexander Campaneria, Mathew Silva, Leonardo Bobadilla, G. Weaver
{"title":"Coastal Infrastructure Monitoring through Heterogeneous Autonomous Vehicles","authors":"Tauhidul Alam, Alexander Campaneria, Mathew Silva, Leonardo Bobadilla, G. Weaver","doi":"10.1109/IRC.2020.00019","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/IRC.2020.00019","url":null,"abstract":"Coastal ports represent a fundamental component of a country's critical infrastructure, and their surveillance is essential to enhance resilience against natural and man-made disruptions to their operations. Furthermore, the increasing availability of Unmanned Autonomous Vehicles (e.g., UAVs, UGVs, and USVs) has paved the way for their use in surveillance and patrolling tasks. In this paper, we present a patrolling approach for monitoring ports infrastructure utilizing a group of heterogeneous vehicles. Our approach has the following steps: 1) Abstractions that capture the valid motions of the vehicles in a port area are designed; 2) Regions that are visible through line of sight are computed; and 3) An algorithm that finds patrolling cycles to monitor critical port locations with existing energy budgets is developed. We tested our approach through one case study to validate its practical utility.","PeriodicalId":232817,"journal":{"name":"2020 Fourth IEEE International Conference on Robotic Computing (IRC)","volume":"28 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126070447","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Comparison of Market-based and DQN methods for Multi-Robot processing Task Allocation (MRpTA)","authors":"Paul Gautier, J. Laurent, J. Diguet","doi":"10.1109/IRC.2020.00060","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/IRC.2020.00060","url":null,"abstract":"Multi-robot task allocation (MRTA) problems require that robots take complex choices based on their understanding of a dynamic and uncertain environment. As a distributed computing system, the Multi-Robot System (MRS) must handle and distribute processing tasks (MRpTA). Each robot must contribute to the overall efficiency of the system based solely on a limited knowledge of its environment. Market-based methods are a natural candidate to deal processing tasks over a MRS but recent and numerous developments in reinforcement learning and especially Deep Q-Networks (DQN) provide new opportunities to solve the problem. In this paper we propose a new DQN-based method so that robots can learn directly from experience, and compare it with Market-based approaches as well with centralized and purely local solutions. Our study shows the relevancy of learning-based methods and also highlight research challenges to solve the processing load-balancing problem in MRS.","PeriodicalId":232817,"journal":{"name":"2020 Fourth IEEE International Conference on Robotic Computing (IRC)","volume":"71 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127494960","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Separation of Concerns Within Robotic Systems Through Proactive Computing","authors":"Alexandre Frantz, D. Zampuniéris","doi":"10.1109/IRC.2020.00039","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/IRC.2020.00039","url":null,"abstract":"In this short paper, we first introduce a possible new model for designing and implementing software in robotic systems. This model is based on proactive scenarios, coded through dynamic sets of condition-action rules. Each scenario embeds the required rules and can be assembled dynamically with others, allowing the proactive system to achieve a unique objective or behavior and instruct the robot accordingly. Furthermore, a scenario is not aware of the existence of the other scenarios. In fact, it only contains information about a predefined central scenario, which oversees global decision making. In addition, each scenario knows where to enter its suggestions, thus allowing for a high degree in terms of separating concerns and modularity of code. Consequently, allowing easier development, testing and optimization of each scenario independently, possible reuse in different robots, and finally, a faster achievement of robust and scalable robotics software. We then show how to apply this programming model and its functionalities during runtime, by a proof of concept consisting of a virtual robot deployed in the Webots™ simulator. This simulator is controlled with four proactive scenarios (plus the central one), in charge of three different objectives.","PeriodicalId":232817,"journal":{"name":"2020 Fourth IEEE International Conference on Robotic Computing (IRC)","volume":"519 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123119172","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}