{"title":"Mechanism and control of master-slave quadruped walking robot","authors":"S. Aoshima, A. Murao, M. Shiraishi","doi":"10.1109/EURBOT.1999.827616","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/EURBOT.1999.827616","url":null,"abstract":"This paper describes the mechanism and walking control of a proposed master-slave quadruped walking robot. The real time recognition of environment and the decision of control signal to each actuator are very important for the control of walking robot on rough terrain. Their techniques are not perfect at the present. Thus, we proposed a master-slave quadruped walking robot using radio control devices, which can efficiently use the recognition and control functions of human. We have already performed experiments for straight walking using a prototype of the master-slave quadruped walking robot. This robot can walk forward and backward on even terrain, and can get over the low steps, In this paper, we propose a curve walking and a rotation method of the master-slave quadruped walking robot, and describe experiments for the curve walking and rotation of the robot. The experimental results show the validity of the proposed method.","PeriodicalId":364500,"journal":{"name":"1999 Third European Workshop on Advanced Mobile Robots (Eurobot'99). Proceedings (Cat. No.99EX355)","volume":"24 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1999-09-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116901049","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":"Learning to acquire and select useful landmarks for route following","authors":"P. Zingaretti, A. Carbonaro","doi":"10.1109/EURBOT.1999.827636","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/EURBOT.1999.827636","url":null,"abstract":"The paper describes a prototypical system for optimal landmark acquisition and selection. Our landmark-learning approach does not require any type of environment model to be supplied to the robot in advance, and represents a step towards robots interacting with real environments. The approach is fitted and tested for the TMGA system (P. Zingaretti et al., 1998), which the authors developed for landmark tracking by adaptive, stereo template matching. Two complementary strategies, properly managed, are followed to construct a suitable subset of landmarks: the selection of the more discriminant landmarks and the selection of the landmarks that are more invariant in a neighbourhood. The robustness of the TMGA system in analysing the discriminant power of each landmark and the analysis of the disparity map and of the spatial activity maps of the stereo images are used for identifying discriminant and invariant landmarks. The experimental results show that the number of matching failures, and consequent landmark changes during the following of a route is comparable with (not much greater than) those obtained using an a-priori subset.","PeriodicalId":364500,"journal":{"name":"1999 Third European Workshop on Advanced Mobile Robots (Eurobot'99). Proceedings (Cat. No.99EX355)","volume":"31 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1999-09-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115649990","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":"Motion control of a snakelike robot","authors":"R. Linnemann, K. Paap, B. Klaassen, J. Vollmer","doi":"10.1109/EURBOT.1999.827615","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/EURBOT.1999.827615","url":null,"abstract":"Sliding, creeping and climbing are easy for real snakes but not for robots. We attempt to build a robot which can move as similar to real snakes as possible. The first version of our robot, GMD-Snake, was constructed in 1996. It was able to creep on a plain surface, to cross obstacles, and to follow a light source. A re-design was then started to enhance and improve the snake's abilities. An important part of the work is to build a simulation tool, which enables the designer to generate efficient motion and can be used as a basis for motion control. The modeling and simulation tool MOSES was developed for planar motion, where the wheels drive the articulated body and coordinated bending of several active joints causing spatial motion. The simulation is based on the fact that the real system will move in such a way that only a minimum of energy is required.","PeriodicalId":364500,"journal":{"name":"1999 Third European Workshop on Advanced Mobile Robots (Eurobot'99). Proceedings (Cat. No.99EX355)","volume":"208 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1999-09-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115750422","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":"Flying among obstacles","authors":"R. Zapata, P. Lépinay","doi":"10.1109/EURBOT.1999.827625","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/EURBOT.1999.827625","url":null,"abstract":"Addresses the problem of the reactive behaviors of flying 3D robots evolving in dynamic and unknown environments. Collision avoidance and target following have been studied with a common frame based on a nonlinear control algorithm. This method is based on the deformable virtual zone approach, initially developed for land vehicles and submarines. The main characteristics of this approach is the fact that there is no geometrical modelling of the obstacles but a vectorial representation of the interaction between the robot and its environment. This approach allows one to implement fast control laws and can be seen as a efficient low-level algorithm for controlling motions both to avoid obstacles and to reach moving goals. Several experimental results in simulation, demonstrating a 3D flying robot, are proposed, and the implementation of the algorithm on a real small-size helicopter is discussed.","PeriodicalId":364500,"journal":{"name":"1999 Third European Workshop on Advanced Mobile Robots (Eurobot'99). Proceedings (Cat. No.99EX355)","volume":"4 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1999-09-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126826365","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":"Knowing your place in real world environments","authors":"Tom Duckett, U. Nehmzow","doi":"10.1109/EURBOT.1999.827632","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/EURBOT.1999.827632","url":null,"abstract":"The topic of mobile robot self-localisation is usually divided into the sub-problems of global localisation and position tracking. Both are now well understood individually, but few mobile robots can deal simultaneously with the two problems in large, complex environments. While efficient solutions have been found for metric maps, topological maps have, by nature of their compactness, the potential for representing environments which are several orders of magnitude larger than those which can be tractably navigated using metric maps. In this paper, we present a unified approach to global localisation and position tracking which is based on a topological map augmented with metric information. The method was validated through a series of experiments conducted in four real-world environments, including its integration into a complete navigating mobile robot. Quantitative performance measures were used to assess localisation quality versus computational efficiency. The results show that our robot can localise and navigate reliably in large, complex environments using only minimal computational resources.","PeriodicalId":364500,"journal":{"name":"1999 Third European Workshop on Advanced Mobile Robots (Eurobot'99). Proceedings (Cat. No.99EX355)","volume":"21 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1999-09-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116752204","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":"Localization in changing environments by matching laser range scans","authors":"Ola Bengtsson, A. Baerveldt","doi":"10.1109/EURBOT.1999.827637","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/EURBOT.1999.827637","url":null,"abstract":"We present a novel scan matching algorithm, IDC-S, Iterative Dual Correspondence-Sector, that matches range scans. The algorithm is based on the known Iterative Dual Correspondence, IDC, algorithm which has shown good performance in real environments. The improvement is that IDC-S is able to deal with relatively large changes in the environment. It divides the scan in several sectors, detects and removes those sectors that are changed and matches the scans only using unchanged sectors. IDC-S and other variants of IDC are extensively simulated and evaluated. The simulations show that IDC-S is very robust and can locate in many different kind of environments. We also show that it is possible to effectively combine the existing IDC algorithms with IDC-S, thus obtaining an algorithm that performs very well both in rectilinear as well as nonrectilinear environments, even when changed as much as 65%.","PeriodicalId":364500,"journal":{"name":"1999 Third European Workshop on Advanced Mobile Robots (Eurobot'99). Proceedings (Cat. No.99EX355)","volume":"10 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1999-09-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121045449","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":"Improving robustness and precision in mobile robot localization by using laser range finding and monocular vision","authors":"K. Arras, N. Tomatis","doi":"10.1109/EURBOT.1999.827638","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/EURBOT.1999.827638","url":null,"abstract":"The paper discusses mobile robot localization by means of geometric features from a laser range finder and a CCD camera. The features are line segments from the laser scanner and vertical edges from the camera. Emphasis is put on sensor models with a strong physical basis. For both sensors, uncertainties in the calibration and measurement process are adequately modeled and propagated through the feature extractors. This yields observations with their first order covariance estimates which are passed to an extended Kalman filter for fusion and position estimation. Experiments on a real platform show that, opposed to the use of the laser range finder only, the multisensor setup allows the uncertainty to stay bounded in difficult localization situations like long corridors, and contributes to an important reduction of uncertainty, particularly in the orientation. The experiments further demonstrate the applicability of such a multisensor localization system in real time on a fully autonomous robot.","PeriodicalId":364500,"journal":{"name":"1999 Third European Workshop on Advanced Mobile Robots (Eurobot'99). Proceedings (Cat. No.99EX355)","volume":"135 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1999-09-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115988855","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":"Recognising plants with ultrasonic sensing for mobile robot navigation","authors":"N. Harper, P. McKerrow","doi":"10.1109/EURBOT.1999.827628","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/EURBOT.1999.827628","url":null,"abstract":"Mobile robots navigate through many environments that include plants. A sensor that can recognise plants would be useful for navigation in these environments. Two problems make plant sensing difficult: plant similarity and plant asymmetry with rotation. A CTFM (continuously transmitted frequency modulated) ultrasonic sensor produces a signal that contains information about the geometric structure of plants. Correlation of echoes from many orientations show that plants can be recognised with sufficient accuracy for navigation.","PeriodicalId":364500,"journal":{"name":"1999 Third European Workshop on Advanced Mobile Robots (Eurobot'99). Proceedings (Cat. No.99EX355)","volume":"12 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1999-09-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122016500","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}
L. Podsędkowski, J. Nowakowski, M. Idzikowski, I. Visvary
{"title":"Nonholonomic mobile robots - a new solution for path planning in changing environment","authors":"L. Podsędkowski, J. Nowakowski, M. Idzikowski, I. Visvary","doi":"10.1109/EURBOT.1999.827626","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/EURBOT.1999.827626","url":null,"abstract":"Presents theoretical analyses of different methods which can be used in online path generation for mobile robots with nonholonomic constraints in a partially known workspace. A new method is then introduced, which works very quickly and gives the optimal path in a complex environment. The algorithm of the presented method is based on A*-graph searching with the nodes placed in a discretized configuration space. This paper focuses on the analysis of different heuristic cost functions and introduces a new statement of this function. The presented method is equipped with procedures for fast path replanning-which is very useful in partially known workspaces. A series of simulation tests and experimental results of online control for a car-like robot are also discussed.","PeriodicalId":364500,"journal":{"name":"1999 Third European Workshop on Advanced Mobile Robots (Eurobot'99). Proceedings (Cat. No.99EX355)","volume":"63 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1999-09-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126736679","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":"Studying robot social cognition within a developmental psychology framework","authors":"K. Dautenhahn, A. Billard","doi":"10.1109/EURBOT.1999.827639","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/EURBOT.1999.827639","url":null,"abstract":"The paper discusses two prominent theories of cognitive development and relates them to experiments in social robotics. The main difference between these theories lies in the different views on the relationship between a child and its social environment: a) the child as a solitary thinker (Piaget) and b) the child in society (Vygotsky). We discuss the implications this has on the design of socially intelligent agents, focusing on robotic agents. We argue that the framework proposed by Vygotsky provides a promising research direction in autonomous agents. We give examples of implementations in the area of social robotics which support our theoretical considerations. More specifically, we demonstrate how a teacher-learner setup can be used to teach a robot a proto-language. The same control architecture is also used for a humanoid doll robot which can interact with a human by imitation. Another experiment addresses dynamic coupling of movements between a human and a mobile robot. Here, emergent robot-human interaction dynamics are influenced by the temporal coordination between the robot's and the human's movements.","PeriodicalId":364500,"journal":{"name":"1999 Third European Workshop on Advanced Mobile Robots (Eurobot'99). Proceedings (Cat. No.99EX355)","volume":"16 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1999-09-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116513643","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}