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Chapter 36 — Motion for Manipulation Tasks

James Kuffner and Jing Xiao

This chapter serves as an introduction to Part D by giving an overview of motion generation and control strategies in the context of robotic manipulation tasks. Automatic control ranging from the abstract, high-level task specification down to fine-grained feedback at the task interface are considered. Some of the important issues include modeling of the interfaces between the robot and the environment at the different time scales of motion and incorporating sensing and feedback. Manipulation planning is introduced as an extension to the basic motion planning problem, which can be modeled as a hybrid system of continuous configuration spaces arising from the act of grasping and moving parts in the environment. The important example of assembly motion is discussed through the analysis of contact states and compliant motion control. Finally, methods aimed at integrating global planning with state feedback control are summarized.

Autonomous continuum grasping

Author  Jing Xiao et al.

Video ID : 357

The video shows three example tasks: (1) autonomous grasping and lifting operation of an object, (2) autonomous obstacle avoidance operation, and (3) autonomous operation of grasping and lifting an object while avoiding another object. Note that the grasped object was lifted about 2 inches off the table.

Chapter 21 — Actuators for Soft Robotics

Alin Albu-Schäffer and Antonio Bicchi

Although we do not know as yet how robots of the future will look like exactly, most of us are sure that they will not resemble the heavy, bulky, rigid machines dangerously moving around in old fashioned industrial automation. There is a growing consensus, in the research community as well as in expectations from the public, that robots of the next generation will be physically compliant and adaptable machines, closely interacting with humans and moving safely, smoothly and efficiently - in other terms, robots will be soft.

This chapter discusses the design, modeling and control of actuators for the new generation of soft robots, which can replace conventional actuators in applications where rigidity is not the first and foremost concern in performance. The chapter focuses on the technology, modeling, and control of lumped parameters of soft robotics, that is, systems of discrete, interconnected, and compliant elements. Distributed parameters, snakelike and continuum soft robotics, are presented in Chap. 20, while Chap. 23 discusses in detail the biomimetic motivations that are often behind soft robotics.

BLUE: A biped robot with variable stiffness and damping

Author  Chengxu Zhou, Xin Wang, Zhibin Li, Nikolaos Tsagarakis

Video ID : 466

The video includes clips of the robot walking, squatting while displaying various degrees of stiffness, and the stiffness adjustment mechanism.

Chapter 55 — Space Robotics

Kazuya Yoshida, Brian Wilcox, Gerd Hirzinger and Roberto Lampariello

In the space community, any unmanned spacecraft can be called a robotic spacecraft. However, Space Robots are considered to be more capable devices that can facilitate manipulation, assembling, or servicing functions in orbit as assistants to astronauts, or to extend the areas and abilities of exploration on remote planets as surrogates for human explorers.

In this chapter, a concise digest of the historical overview and technical advances of two distinct types of space robotic systems, orbital robots and surface robots, is provided. In particular, Sect. 55.1 describes orbital robots, and Sect. 55.2 describes surface robots. In Sect. 55.3, the mathematical modeling of the dynamics and control using reference equations are discussed. Finally, advanced topics for future space exploration missions are addressed in Sect. 55.4.

DLR telepresence demo with time delay

Author  Jordi Artigas, Gerd Hirzinger

Video ID : 338

Video demonstration of the behavior of telepresence with force reflection up to 500 ms round-trip delay.

Chapter 46 — Simultaneous Localization and Mapping

Cyrill Stachniss, John J. Leonard and Sebastian Thrun

This chapter provides a comprehensive introduction in to the simultaneous localization and mapping problem, better known in its abbreviated form as SLAM. SLAM addresses the main perception problem of a robot navigating an unknown environment. While navigating the environment, the robot seeks to acquire a map thereof, and at the same time it wishes to localize itself using its map. The use of SLAM problems can be motivated in two different ways: one might be interested in detailed environment models, or one might seek to maintain an accurate sense of a mobile robot’s location. SLAM serves both of these purposes.

We review the three major paradigms from which many published methods for SLAM are derived: (1) the extended Kalman filter (EKF); (2) particle filtering; and (3) graph optimization. We also review recent work in three-dimensional (3-D) SLAM using visual and red green blue distance-sensors (RGB-D), and close with a discussion of open research problems in robotic mapping.

Hierarchical optimization for pose graphs on manifolds

Author  Giorgio Grisetti

Video ID : 445

This video provides an illustration of graph-based SLAM, as described in Chap. 46.3.3, Springer Handbook of Robotics, 2nd edn (2016), using the HOGMAN algorithm. Reference: G. Grisetti, R. Kuemmerle, C. Stachniss, U. Frese, C. Hertzberg: Hierarchical optimization on manifolds for online 2-D and 3-D mapping, IEEE Int. Conf. Robot. Autom. (ICRA), Anchorage (2010), pp. 273-278; doi: 10.1109/ROBOT.2010.5509407.

Chapter 20 — Snake-Like and Continuum Robots

Ian D. Walker, Howie Choset and Gregory S. Chirikjian

This chapter provides an overview of the state of the art of snake-like (backbones comprised of many small links) and continuum (continuous backbone) robots. The history of each of these classes of robot is reviewed, focusing on key hardware developments. A review of the existing theory and algorithms for kinematics for both types of robot is presented, followed by a summary ofmodeling of locomotion for snake-like and continuum mechanisms.

CMU medical snake robot

Author  Howie Choset

Video ID : 175

Video of CMU medical snake robot performing a closed-chest ablation of left atrial appendage.

Chapter 14 — AI Reasoning Methods for Robotics

Michael Beetz, Raja Chatila, Joachim Hertzberg and Federico Pecora

Artificial intelligence (AI) reasoning technology involving, e.g., inference, planning, and learning, has a track record with a healthy number of successful applications. So can it be used as a toolbox of methods for autonomous mobile robots? Not necessarily, as reasoning on a mobile robot about its dynamic, partially known environment may differ substantially from that in knowledge-based pure software systems, where most of the named successes have been registered. Moreover, recent knowledge about the robot’s environment cannot be given a priori, but needs to be updated from sensor data, involving challenging problems of symbol grounding and knowledge base change. This chapter sketches the main roboticsrelevant topics of symbol-based AI reasoning. Basic methods of knowledge representation and inference are described in general, covering both logicand probability-based approaches. The chapter first gives a motivation by example, to what extent symbolic reasoning has the potential of helping robots perform in the first place. Then (Sect. 14.2), we sketch the landscape of representation languages available for the endeavor. After that (Sect. 14.3), we present approaches and results for several types of practical, robotics-related reasoning tasks, with an emphasis on temporal and spatial reasoning. Plan-based robot control is described in some more detail in Sect. 14.4. Section 14.5 concludes.

RoboEarth final demonstrator

Author  Gajamohan Mohanarajah

Video ID : 706

This video made in 2014 summarizes the final demonstrator of the joint project RoboEarth -- A World Wide Web for robots (http://roboearth.org/). The demonstrator includes four robots collaboratively working together to help patients in a hospital. These robots used their common knowledge base and infrastructure in the following ways: 1. a knowledge repository to share and learn from each others' experience, 2. a communication medium to perform collaborative tasks, and 3. a computational resource to offload some of their heavy computational load.

Chapter 23 — Biomimetic Robots

Kyu-Jin Cho and Robert Wood

Biomimetic robot designs attempt to translate biological principles into engineered systems, replacing more classical engineering solutions in order to achieve a function observed in the natural system. This chapter will focus on mechanism design for bio-inspired robots that replicate key principles from nature with novel engineering solutions. The challenges of biomimetic design include developing a deep understanding of the relevant natural system and translating this understanding into engineering design rules. This often entails the development of novel fabrication and actuation to realize the biomimetic design.

This chapter consists of four sections. In Sect. 23.1, we will define what biomimetic design entails, and contrast biomimetic robots with bio-inspired robots. In Sect. 23.2, we will discuss the fundamental components for developing a biomimetic robot. In Sect. 23.3, we will review detailed biomimetic designs that have been developed for canonical robot locomotion behaviors including flapping-wing flight, jumping, crawling, wall climbing, and swimming. In Sect. 23.4, we will discuss the enabling technologies for these biomimetic designs including material and fabrication.

HAMR3: An autonomous 1.7 g ambulatory robot

Author  Andrew T. Baisch, Christian Heimlich, Michael Karpelson, Robert J. Wood

Video ID : 406

The successor to HAMR2, HAMR3 is a cockroach-inspired robot developed at the Harvard Microrobotics Lab by Andrew Baisch, Christian Heimlich, Michael Karpelson and Robert J. Wood. This version of the robot includes fully-integrated, onboard power electronics.

Chapter 7 — Motion Planning

Lydia E. Kavraki and Steven M. LaValle

This chapter first provides a formulation of the geometric path planning problem in Sect. 7.2 and then introduces sampling-based planning in Sect. 7.3. Sampling-based planners are general techniques applicable to a wide set of problems and have been successful in dealing with hard planning instances. For specific, often simpler, planning instances, alternative approaches exist and are presented in Sect. 7.4. These approaches provide theoretical guarantees and for simple planning instances they outperform samplingbased planners. Section 7.5 considers problems that involve differential constraints, while Sect. 7.6 overviews several other extensions of the basic problem formulation and proposed solutions. Finally, Sect. 7.8 addresses some important andmore advanced topics related to motion planning.

Alpha puzzle

Author  Mark Moll

Video ID : 23

The alpha puzzle problem is a common benchmark scenario for motion planning. The puzzle consists of two intertwined twisted tubes. The objective is to separate the tubes, where one tube is considered a stationary obstacle and the other tube is the moving object (robot). Solving the problem is challenging because it contains a narrow passage in the configuration space. This plan was generated by a sampling-based motion planner implemented in the Open Motion Planning Library (OMPL).

Chapter 47 — Motion Planning and Obstacle Avoidance

Javier Minguez, Florant Lamiraux and Jean-Paul Laumond

This chapter describes motion planning and obstacle avoidance for mobile robots. We will see how the two areas do not share the same modeling background. From the very beginning of motion planning, research has been dominated by computer sciences. Researchers aim at devising well-grounded algorithms with well-understood completeness and exactness properties.

The challenge of this chapter is to present both nonholonomic motion planning (Sects. 47.1–47.6) and obstacle avoidance (Sects. 47.7–47.10) issues. Section 47.11 reviews recent successful approaches that tend to embrace the whole problemofmotion planning and motion control. These approaches benefit from both nonholonomic motion planning and obstacle avoidance methods.

Sena wheelchair: Autonomous navigation at University of Malaga (2007)

Author  Jose Luis Blanco

Video ID : 708

This experiment demonstrates how a reactive navigation method successfully enables our robotic wheelchair SENA to navigate reliably in the entrance of our building at the University of Malaga (Spain). The robot navigates autonomously amidst dozens of students while avoiding collisions. The method is based on a space transformation, which simplifies finding collision-free movements in real-time despite the arbitrarily complex shape of the robot and its kinematic restrictions.

Chapter 40 — Mobility and Manipulation

Oliver Brock, Jaeheung Park and Marc Toussaint

Mobile manipulation requires the integration of methodologies from all aspects of robotics. Instead of tackling each aspect in isolation,mobilemanipulation research exploits their interdependence to solve challenging problems. As a result, novel views of long-standing problems emerge. In this chapter, we present these emerging views in the areas of grasping, control, motion generation, learning, and perception. All of these areas must address the shared challenges of high-dimensionality, uncertainty, and task variability. The section on grasping and manipulation describes a trend towards actively leveraging contact and physical and dynamic interactions between hand, object, and environment. Research in control addresses the challenges of appropriately coupling mobility and manipulation. The field of motion generation increasingly blurs the boundaries between control and planning, leading to task-consistent motion in high-dimensional configuration spaces, even in dynamic and partially unknown environments. A key challenge of learning formobilemanipulation consists of identifying the appropriate priors, and we survey recent learning approaches to perception, grasping, motion, and manipulation. Finally, a discussion of promising methods in perception shows how concepts and methods from navigation and active perception are applied.

Universal gripper

Author  Cornel Creative Machines Lab

Video ID : 660

Universal robotic gripper based on the jamming of granular material.