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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.

Playing triadic games with KASPAR

Author  Kerstin Dautenhahn

Video ID : 220

The video illustrates (using researchers taking the roles of children) the system developed by Joshua Wainer as part of his PhD research at University of Hertfordshire. In this study, KASPAR was developed to fully autonomously play games with pairs of children with autism. The robot provides encouragement, motivation and feedback, and 'joins in the game'. The system was evaluated in long-term studies with children with autism (J. Wainer et al. 2014). Results show that KASPAR encourages collaborative skills in children with autism.

Chapter 61 — Robot Surveillance and Security

Wendell H. Chun and Nikolaos Papanikolopoulos

This chapter introduces the foundation for surveillance and security robots for multiple military and civilian applications. The key environmental domains are mobile robots for ground, aerial, surface water, and underwater applications. Surveillance literallymeans to watch fromabove,while surveillance robots are used to monitor the behavior, activities, and other changing information that are gathered for the general purpose of managing, directing, or protecting one’s assets or position. In a practical sense, the term surveillance is taken to mean the act of observation from a distance, and security robots are commonly used to protect and safeguard a location, some valuable assets, or personal against danger, damage, loss, and crime. Surveillance is a proactive operation,while security robots are a defensive operation. The construction of each type of robot is similar in nature with amobility component, sensor payload, communication system, and an operator control station.

After introducing the major robot components, this chapter focuses on the various applications. More specifically, Sect. 61.3 discusses the enabling technologies of mobile robot navigation, various payload sensors used for surveillance or security applications, target detection and tracking algorithms, and the operator’s robot control console for human–machine interface (HMI). Section 61.4 presents selected research activities relevant to surveillance and security, including automatic data processing of the payload sensors, automaticmonitoring of human activities, facial recognition, and collaborative automatic target recognition (ATR). Finally, Sect. 61.5 discusses future directions in robot surveillance and security, giving some conclusions and followed by references.

Indoor, urban aerial vehicle navigation

Author  Jonathan How

Video ID : 703

The MIT indoor multi-vehicle testbed is specially designed to study long duration missions in a controlled, urban environment. This testbed is being used to implement and analyze the performance of techniques for embedding the fleet and vehicle health state into the mission and UAV planning. More than four air vehicles can be flown in a typical-sized room, and it takes no more than one operator to set up the platform for flight testing at any time of day and for any length of time. At the heart of the testbed is a global metrology system that yields very accurate, high bandwidth position and attitude data for all vehicles in the entire room.

Chapter 43 — Telerobotics

Günter Niemeyer, Carsten Preusche, Stefano Stramigioli and Dongjun Lee

In this chapter we present an overview of the field of telerobotics with a focus on control aspects. To acknowledge some of the earliest contributions and motivations the field has provided to robotics in general, we begin with a brief historical perspective and discuss some of the challenging applications. Then, after introducing and classifying the various system architectures and control strategies, we emphasize bilateral control and force feedback. This particular area has seen intense research work in the pursuit of telepresence. We also examine some of the emerging efforts, extending telerobotic concepts to unconventional systems and applications. Finally,we suggest some further reading for a closer engagement with the field.

Passive teleoperation of a nonlinear telerobot with tool-dynamics rendering

Author  Dongjun Lee

Video ID : 74

This is a video showing the passive teleoperation of nonlinear master-slave robots using passive decomposition, which enables master-slave coordination, apparent inertia scaling, and tool-dynamics rendering.

Chapter 27 — Micro-/Nanorobots

Bradley J. Nelson, Lixin Dong and Fumihito Arai

The field of microrobotics covers the robotic manipulation of objects with dimensions in the millimeter to micron range as well as the design and fabrication of autonomous robotic agents that fall within this size range. Nanorobotics is defined in the same way only for dimensions smaller than a micron. With the ability to position and orient objects with micron- and nanometer-scale dimensions, manipulation at each of these scales is a promising way to enable the assembly of micro- and nanosystems, including micro- and nanorobots.

This chapter overviews the state of the art of both micro- and nanorobotics, outlines scaling effects, actuation, and sensing and fabrication at these scales, and focuses on micro- and nanorobotic manipulation systems and their application in microassembly, biotechnology, and the construction and characterization of micro and nanoelectromechanical systems (MEMS/NEMS). Material science, biotechnology, and micro- and nanoelectronics will also benefit from advances in these areas of robotics.

The electromagnetic control of an untethered microrobot

Author  Bradley J. Nelson

Video ID : 12

This is a video of a computer simulation showing the electromagnetic control of an untethered microrobot for ophthalmic applications, such as targeted drug delivery and epiretinal membrane peeling.

Chapter 63 — Medical Robotics and Computer-Integrated Surgery

Russell H. Taylor, Arianna Menciassi, Gabor Fichtinger, Paolo Fiorini and Paolo Dario

The growth of medical robotics since the mid- 1980s has been striking. From a few initial efforts in stereotactic brain surgery, orthopaedics, endoscopic surgery, microsurgery, and other areas, the field has expanded to include commercially marketed, clinically deployed systems, and a robust and exponentially expanding research community. This chapter will discuss some major themes and illustrate them with examples from current and past research. Further reading providing a more comprehensive review of this rapidly expanding field is suggested in Sect. 63.4.

Medical robotsmay be classified in many ways: by manipulator design (e.g., kinematics, actuation); by level of autonomy (e.g., preprogrammed versus teleoperation versus constrained cooperative control), by targeted anatomy or technique (e.g., cardiac, intravascular, percutaneous, laparoscopic, microsurgical); or intended operating environment (e.g., in-scanner, conventional operating room). In this chapter, we have chosen to focus on the role of medical robots within the context of larger computer-integrated systems including presurgical planning, intraoperative execution, and postoperative assessment and follow-up.

First, we introduce basic concepts of computerintegrated surgery, discuss critical factors affecting the eventual deployment and acceptance of medical robots, and introduce the basic system paradigms of surgical computer-assisted planning, execution, monitoring, and assessment (surgical CAD/CAM) and surgical assistance. In subsequent sections, we provide an overview of the technology ofmedical robot systems and discuss examples of our basic system paradigms, with brief additional discussion topics of remote telesurgery and robotic surgical simulators. We conclude with some thoughts on future research directions and provide suggested further reading.

Robot for single-port surgery by the University of Nebraska

Author  University of Nebraska Medical Center

Video ID : 827

Robot for single-port surgery by the University of Nebraska: The video includes an explanation of the working principle, tests, and comments by clinicians.

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.

Mini-Whegs™

Author  Jeremy M. Morrey, Bram Lambrecht, Andrew D. Horchler, Roy E. Ritzmann, Roger D. Quinn

Video ID : 401

The video describes a new biologically inspired robot series called Mini-Whegs™. These 8-9 cm long robots can run at sustained speeds of over 10 body lengths per second and navigate in challenging terrain.

Chapter 54 — Industrial Robotics

Martin Hägele, Klas Nilsson, J. Norberto Pires and Rainer Bischoff

Much of the technology that makes robots reliable, human friendly, and adaptable for numerous applications has emerged from manufacturers of industrial robots. With an estimated installation base in 2014 of about 1:5million units, some 171 000 new installations in that year and an annual turnover of the robotics industry estimated to be US$ 32 billion, industrial robots are by far the largest commercial application of robotics technology today.

The foundations for robot motion planning and control were initially developed with industrial applications in mind. These applications deserve special attention in order to understand the origin of robotics science and to appreciate the many unsolved problems that still prevent the wider use of robots in today’s agile manufacturing environments. In this chapter, we present a brief history and descriptions of typical industrial robotics applications and at the same time we address current critical state-of-the-art technological developments. We show how robots with differentmechanisms fit different applications and how applications are further enabled by latest technologies, often adopted from technological fields outside manufacturing automation.

We will first present a brief historical introduction to industrial robotics with a selection of contemporary application examples which at the same time refer to a critical key technology. Then, the basic principles that are used in industrial robotics and a review of programming methods will be presented. We will also introduce the topic of system integration particularly from a data integration point of view. The chapter will be closed with an outlook based on a presentation of some unsolved problems that currently inhibit wider use of industrial robots.

SMErobotics Demonstrator D1 assembly with dual-arm industrial manipulators

Author  Martin Haegele, Thilo Zimmermann, Björn Kahl

Video ID : 380

SMErobotics: Europe's leading robot manufacturers and research institutes have teamed up with the European Robotics Initiative for Strengthening the Competitiveness of SMEs in Manufacturing - to make the vision of cognitive robotics a reality in a key segment of EU manufacturing. Funded by the European Union 7th Framework Programme under GA number 287787. Project runtime: 01.01.2012 - 30.06.2016 For a general introduction, please also watch the general SMErobotics project video (ID 260). About this video: Chapter 1: Introduction (0:00); Chapter 2: Fenceless approach in a safe; environment & Gesture Control (00:27); Chapter 3: Cooperative motion (00:57); Chapter 4: Minimal fixtures for maximum flexibility (Scan Objects) (01:36); Chapter 5: Offline preview (02:12); Chapter 6: Task execution (02:26); Chapter 7: Tool changer device (03:49); Chapter 8: Statement (04:11); Chapter 9: Outro (04:39); Chapter 10: The Consortium (05:08). For details, please visit: http://www.smerobotics.org/project/video-of-demonstrator-d1.html

Chapter 49 — Modeling and Control of Wheeled Mobile Robots

Claude Samson, Pascal Morin and Roland Lenain

This chaptermay be seen as a follow up to Chap. 24, devoted to the classification and modeling of basic wheeled mobile robot (WMR) structures, and a natural complement to Chap. 47, which surveys motion planning methods for WMRs. A typical output of these methods is a feasible (or admissible) reference state trajectory for a given mobile robot, and a question which then arises is how to make the physical mobile robot track this reference trajectory via the control of the actuators with which the vehicle is equipped. The object of the present chapter is to bring elements of the answer to this question based on simple and effective control strategies.

The chapter is organized as follows. Section 49.2 is devoted to the choice of controlmodels and the determination of modeling equations associated with the path-following control problem. In Sect. 49.3, the path following and trajectory stabilization problems are addressed in the simplest case when no requirement is made on the robot orientation (i. e., position control). In Sect. 49.4 the same problems are revisited for the control of both position and orientation. The previously mentionned sections consider an ideal robot satisfying the rolling-without-sliding assumption. In Sect. 49.5, we relax this assumption in order to take into account nonideal wheel-ground contact. This is especially important for field-robotics applications and the proposed results are validated through full scale experiments on natural terrain. Finally, a few complementary issues on the feedback control of mobile robots are briefly discussed in the concluding Sect. 49.6, with a list of commented references for further reading on WMRs motion control.

Tracking of an admissible trajectory with a car-like vehicle

Author  Pascal Morin, Claude Samson

Video ID : 181

This is an animation showing the tracking of an admissible reference trajectory (red vehicle) with a car-like vehicle (green vehicle). The robot is able to ensure asymptotic convergence of the tracking error to zero, based on the feedback controller presented in Chap. 49.4, Springer Handbook of Robotics, 2nd edn (2016).

Chapter 0 — Preface

Bruno Siciliano, Oussama Khatib and Torsten Kröger

The preface of the Second Edition of the Springer Handbook of Robotics contains three videos about the creation of the book and using its multimedia app on mobile devices.

The handbook — A short story

Author  Oussama Khatib

Video ID : 844

With a bit of humor, this video illustrates how the first edition of the Springer Handbook of Robotics was created.

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 .