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Chapter 6 — Model Identification

John Hollerbach, Wisama Khalil and Maxime Gautier

This chapter discusses how to determine the kinematic parameters and the inertial parameters of robot manipulators. Both instances of model identification are cast into a common framework of least-squares parameter estimation, and are shown to have common numerical issues relating to the identifiability of parameters, adequacy of the measurement sets, and numerical robustness. These discussions are generic to any parameter estimation problem, and can be applied in other contexts.

For kinematic calibration, the main aim is to identify the geometric Denavit–Hartenberg (DH) parameters, although joint-based parameters relating to the sensing and transmission elements can also be identified. Endpoint sensing or endpoint constraints can provide equivalent calibration equations. By casting all calibration methods as closed-loop calibration, the calibration index categorizes methods in terms of how many equations per pose are generated.

Inertial parameters may be estimated through the execution of a trajectory while sensing one or more components of force/torque at a joint. Load estimation of a handheld object is simplest because of full mobility and full wrist force-torque sensing. For link inertial parameter estimation, restricted mobility of links nearer the base as well as sensing only the joint torque means that not all inertial parameters can be identified. Those that can be identified are those that affect joint torque, although they may appear in complicated linear combinations.

Dynamic identification of Staubli TX40 : Trajectory with load

Author  Maxime Gautier

Video ID : 481

This video shows a trajectory with a known payload mass of 4.5 kg attached to the end effector of an industrial Staubli TX 40 manipulator. Joint position and current reference data are collected on this short-time (8s) trajectory and used with data collected on a trajectory without load to identify all the dynamic parameters of the links, load and joint drive chain in a single global LS procedure. Details and results are given in the paper : M. Gautier, S. Briot: Global identification of joint drive gains and dynamic parameters of robots, ASME J. Dyn. Syst. Meas. Control 136(5), 051025̶ 051025-9 (2014); doi:10.1115/1.4027506

Chapter 72 — Social Robotics

Cynthia Breazeal, Kerstin Dautenhahn and Takayuki Kanda

This chapter surveys some of the principal research trends in Social Robotics and its application to human–robot interaction (HRI). Social (or Sociable) robots are designed to interact with people in a natural, interpersonal manner – often to achieve positive outcomes in diverse applications such as education, health, quality of life, entertainment, communication, and tasks requiring collaborative teamwork. The long-term goal of creating social robots that are competent and capable partners for people is quite a challenging task. They will need to be able to communicate naturally with people using both verbal and nonverbal signals. They will need to engage us not only on a cognitive level, but on an emotional level as well in order to provide effective social and task-related support to people. They will need a wide range of socialcognitive skills and a theory of other minds to understand human behavior, and to be intuitively understood by people. A deep understanding of human intelligence and behavior across multiple dimensions (i. e., cognitive, affective, physical, social, etc.) is necessary in order to design robots that can successfully play a beneficial role in the daily lives of people. This requires a multidisciplinary approach where the design of social robot technologies and methodologies are informed by robotics, artificial intelligence, psychology, neuroscience, human factors, design, anthropology, and more.

A robot that provides a direction based on the model of the environment

Author  Takayuki Kanda

Video ID : 259

The video shows a scene of direction-giving interaction. The robot communicates the way to reach the destination with pointing in the direction to go. This interaction is supported with its capability to understand the environment. That is, the robot possesses the model of the environment, like a geographical map, topology, and landmarks from a first-person perspective, the so called route-perspective model.

Chapter 58 — Robotics in Hazardous Applications

James Trevelyan, William R. Hamel and Sung-Chul Kang

Robotics researchers have worked hard to realize a long-awaited vision: machines that can eliminate the need for people to work in hazardous environments. Chapter 60 is framed by the vision of disaster response: search and rescue robots carrying people from burning buildings or tunneling through collapsed rock falls to reach trapped miners. In this chapter we review tangible progress towards robots that perform routine work in places too dangerous for humans. Researchers still have many challenges ahead of them but there has been remarkable progress in some areas. Hazardous environments present special challenges for the accomplishment of desired tasks depending on the nature and magnitude of the hazards. Hazards may be present in the form of radiation, toxic contamination, falling objects or potential explosions. Technology that specialized engineering companies can develop and sell without active help from researchers marks the frontier of commercial feasibility. Just inside this border lie teleoperated robots for explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) and for underwater engineering work. Even with the typical tenfold disadvantage in manipulation performance imposed by the limits of today’s telepresence and teleoperation technology, in terms of human dexterity and speed, robots often can offer a more cost-effective solution. However, most routine applications in hazardous environments still lie far beyond the feasibility frontier. Fire fighting, remediating nuclear contamination, reactor decommissioning, tunneling, underwater engineering, underground mining and clearance of landmines and unexploded ordnance still present many unsolved problems.

Promotional video of robot for cleaning up Fukushima

Author  James P. Trevelyan

Video ID : 583

Many companies have proposed new robots to help with the Fukushima reactor decommissioning process. This is one of many such promotional videos.

Chapter 24 — Wheeled Robots

Woojin Chung and Karl Iagnemma

The purpose of this chapter is to introduce, analyze, and compare various wheeled mobile robots (WMRs) and to present several realizations and commonly encountered designs. The mobility of WMR is discussed on the basis of the kinematic constraints resulting from the pure rolling conditions at the contact points between the wheels and the ground. Practical robot structures are classified according to the number of wheels, and features are introduced focusing on commonly adopted designs. Omnimobile robot and articulated robots realizations are described. Wheel–terrain interaction models are presented in order to compute forces at the contact interface. Four possible wheel-terrain interaction cases are shown on the basis of relative stiffness of the wheel and terrain. A suspension system is required to move on uneven surfaces. Structures, dynamics, and important features of commonly used suspensions are explained.

An omnidirectional mobile robot with active caster wheels

Author  Woojin Chung

Video ID : 325

This video shows a holonomic omnidirectional mobile robot with two active and two passive caster wheels. Each active caster is composed of two actuators. The first actuator drives a wheel; the second actuator steers the wheel orientation. Although the mechanical structure of the driving mechanisms becomes a little complicated, conventional tires can be used for omnidirectional motions. Since the robot is overactuated, four actuators should be carefully controlled.

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.

Mesoscale manipulation: System, modeling, planning and control

Author  David J. Cappelleri et al.

Video ID : 359

This video shows an example of peg-in-hole manipulation on the mesoscale. Three robust motion primitives are introduced, i.e., one-point sticking contact with counterclockwise rotation, two-point contact motion without rotation, and robust rotation. These motion primitives are sequentially executed to accomplish the peg-in-hole manipulation task.

Chapter 30 — Sonar Sensing

Lindsay Kleeman and Roman Kuc

Sonar or ultrasonic sensing uses the propagation of acoustic energy at higher frequencies than normal hearing to extract information from the environment. This chapter presents the fundamentals and physics of sonar sensing for object localization, landmark measurement and classification in robotics applications. The source of sonar artifacts is explained and how they can be dealt with. Different ultrasonic transducer technologies are outlined with their main characteristics highlighted.

Sonar systems are described that range in sophistication from low-cost threshold-based ranging modules to multitransducer multipulse configurations with associated signal processing requirements capable of accurate range and bearing measurement, interference rejection, motion compensation, and target classification. Continuous-transmission frequency-modulated (CTFM) systems are introduced and their ability to improve target sensitivity in the presence of noise is discussed. Various sonar ring designs that provide rapid surrounding environmental coverage are described in conjunction with mapping results. Finally the chapter ends with a discussion of biomimetic sonar, which draws inspiration from animals such as bats and dolphins.

Biological bat-ear deformation in sonar detection

Author  Rolf Mueller

Video ID : 312

Fast deformations of the outer ear (pinnae) in a female Pratt's roundleaf bat (Hipposideros pratti). The deformations are shown at a speed 67 times slower than real time and occur synchronously with the emission of the biosonar pulses and the reception of the echoes. These changes in the pinnae give the biosonar of roundleaf bats a dynamic dimension that is not found in technical sonar.

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.

Bimanual dissection

Author  Pierre Dupont

Video ID : 249

This 2011 video demonstrates bimanual, teleoperated tissue dissection using a CO2 laser and 1 mm-wide forceps at the Pediatric Cardiac Bioengeneering Lab at Boston Children's Hospital.

Chapter 52 — Modeling and Control of Aerial Robots

Robert Mahony, Randal W. Beard and Vijay Kumar

Aerial robotic vehicles are becoming a core field in mobile robotics. This chapter considers some of the fundamental modelling and control architectures in the most common aerial robotic platforms; small-scale rotor vehicles such as the quadrotor, hexacopter, or helicopter, and fixed wing vehicles. In order to control such vehicles one must begin with a good but sufficiently simple dynamic model. Based on such models, physically motivated control architectures can be developed. Such algorithms require realisable target trajectories along with real-time estimates of the system state obtained from on-board sensor suite. This chapter provides a first introduction across all these subjects for the quadrotor and fixed wing aerial robotic vehicles.

Dubins airplane

Author  Randy Beard

Video ID : 437

This video shows how paths are planned using software based on the Dubins airplane model.

Chapter 74 — Learning from Humans

Aude G. Billard, Sylvain Calinon and Rüdiger Dillmann

This chapter surveys the main approaches developed to date to endow robots with the ability to learn from human guidance. The field is best known as robot programming by demonstration, robot learning from/by demonstration, apprenticeship learning and imitation learning. We start with a brief historical overview of the field. We then summarize the various approaches taken to solve four main questions: when, what, who and when to imitate. We emphasize the importance of choosing well the interface and the channels used to convey the demonstrations, with an eye on interfaces providing force control and force feedback. We then review algorithmic approaches to model skills individually and as a compound and algorithms that combine learning from human guidance with reinforcement learning. We close with a look on the use of language to guide teaching and a list of open issues.

Active teaching

Author  Maya Cakmak, Andrea Thomaz

Video ID : 107

Active-teaching scenario where the Simon humanoid robot asks for help during or after teaching, verifying that its understanding of the task is correct. Reference: M. Cakmak, A.L. Thomaz: Designing robot learners that ask good questions, Proc. ACM/IEEE Int. Conf. Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), Boston (2012), pp. 17–24, URL: https://www.youtube.com/user/SimonTheSocialRobot .

Chapter 10 — Redundant Robots

Stefano Chiaverini, Giuseppe Oriolo and Anthony A. Maciejewski

This chapter focuses on redundancy resolution schemes, i. e., the techniques for exploiting the redundant degrees of freedom in the solution of the inverse kinematics problem. This is obviously an issue of major relevance for motion planning and control purposes.

In particular, task-oriented kinematics and the basic methods for its inversion at the velocity (first-order differential) level are first recalled, with a discussion of the main techniques for handling kinematic singularities. Next, different firstorder methods to solve kinematic redundancy are arranged in two main categories, namely those based on the optimization of suitable performance criteria and those relying on the augmentation of the task space. Redundancy resolution methods at the acceleration (second-order differential) level are then considered in order to take into account dynamics issues, e.g., torque minimization. Conditions under which a cyclic task motion results in a cyclic joint motion are also discussed; this is a major issue when a redundant manipulator is used to execute a repetitive task, e.g., in industrial applications. The use of kinematic redundancy for fault tolerance is analyzed in detail. Suggestions for further reading are given in a final section.

Visual servoing control of Baxter robot arms with obstacle avoidance using kinematic edundancy

Author  Chenguang Yang

Video ID : 819

Visual servoing control rby an obstacle avoidance strategy using kinematics redundancy has been developed and tested on a Baxter robot. A Point Grey Bumblebee2 stereo camera is used to obtain the 3-D point cloud of a target object. The object tracking task allocation between two arms has been developed by identifying workspaces of the dual arms and tracing the object location in a convex hull of the workspace. By employment of a simulated artificial robot as a parallel system as well as a task-switching weight factor, the robot is actually able to restore back to the natural pose smoothly in the absence of the obstacle. Two sets of experiments were carried out to demonstrate the effectiveness of the developed servoing control method.