基于传感器信息融合的移动机器人自主爬楼梯技术研究

机器人自主爬楼梯是移动机器人完成危险环境探查、侦察、救灾等任务需要具备的基本智能行为之一.分析了楼梯的多样性和履带式机器人爬楼梯固有的不稳定性导致机器人爬楼梯工作的复杂性,描述了带前导手臂的履带式移动机器人爬楼梯的步骤,简要介绍了利用超声波、视频摄像头和激光扫描测距仪信息来感知楼梯和判断机器人与楼梯相对位置的算法,最后提出了一个基于传感器测量值可信度的信息融合方法进行楼梯参数感知和行驶方向计算的机器人自主爬楼梯的控制系统结构.     

Contact angle estimation and composite locomotive strategy of a stair-climbing mobile platform

This paper presents a stair-climbing mobile platform built on the Rocker–Bogie mechanism which enables to effectively climb up/down various sizes of stairs in indoor environments without violating its mobile stability. First, the link parameters of Rocker–Bogie mechanism are optimally chosen via the Taguchi method in order to make the trajectory of its center of mass (CM) as smooth as possible, which implies high mobile stability as well as excellent adaptability during climbing up/down stairs. Based on this optimization result, the proposed mobile platform is compactly and lightly constructed suitable for indoor applications by placing all motors and sensors inside the hollow links in order to prevent undesired interferences with stairs as well as to protect themselves from external impact. A simple, robust and cost-effective estimation algorithm is proposed to detect the contact angles between wheels and a stair with high fidelity. Through the kinematic and kinetic analysis combined with the wheel-stair contact angle information, a composite locomotive strategy is established not only to minimize the slip during climbing up a stair but also to prevent falling down during climbing down a stair. The extensive experiments against various types of stairs successfully demonstrate the capability of the proposed mobile platform to effectively and safely climb up/down stairs.     

Study on mobile mechanism of a climbing robot for stair cleaning: a translational locomotion mechanism and turning motion

In human living environments, it is often the case that the cleaning area is three-dimensional space such as a high-rise building. An autonomous cleaning robot is proposed so as to move on all floors including stairs in a building. When a robot cleans in three-dimensional space, it needs to turn for direction in addition to climb down stairs. The proposed robot selects movement using legs or wheels depending on stairs or flat surfaces. In this paper, a mobile mechanism and a control method are described for translational locomotion. The translational mechanism is based on using two-wheel-drive type omni-directional mobile mechanism. To recognize a stair using the position-sensitive detector, the robot shifts from translational locomotion to climbing down motion or edge-following motion. It is shown that the proposed robot turns to face a stair with the accuracy of 5°.     

六轮移动机器人爬楼梯能力分析

研究了PBJ-01防暴机器人攀越楼梯的能力. 从机器人对楼梯的几何包容、机器人重心和机器人爬楼梯过程中的最大俯仰角对机器人倾覆的影响等多方面考虑, 得出机器人能够爬越楼梯时楼梯参数必须满足的条件. 在该机器人的行为决策中, 为其选择越障还是避障提供了依据.     

一种多模式全向移动机器人攀爬楼梯的步态

针对移动机器人在户外运动中所遇到的台阶、楼梯等复杂地形,设计了一种可攀爬楼梯的多模式全向移动机器人。通过切换运动模态,该机器人既能像传统移动机器人一样快速移动,又具备了足式机器人的越障能力。首先,分析并构建了多模式全向移动机器人的运动学模型;其次,研究了该机器人越障能力和质心位置之间的关系并计算了该机器人可以翻越台阶的...     

Development of a stair-climbing mobile robot with legs and wheels

This paper deals with the development of a stair-climbing mobile robot with legs and wheels. The main technical issues in developing this type of robot are the stability and speed of the robot while climbing stairs. The robot has two wheels in the front of the body to support its weight when it moves on flat terrain, and it also has arms between the wheels to hook onto the tread of stairs. There are two pairs of legs in the rear of the body. Using not only the rorational torque of the arms and the wheels, but also the force of the legs, the robot goes up and down stairs. It measures the size of stairs when going up and down the first step, and therefore the measurement process does not cause this robot to lose any time. The computer which controls the motion of the robot needs no complicated calculations as other legged robots do. The mechanism of this robot and the control algorithm are described in this paper. This robot will be developed as a wheelchair with a stair climbing mechanism for disabled and elderly people in the near future. This work was presented, in part, at the International Symposium on Artificial Life and Robotics, Oita, Japan, February 18–20, 1996     

Mobile robot with transformable crawler and intelligent guidance

Recently, great advances have been made in intelligent mobile robot technology, advances which will provide autonomous travelling ability to robots, allowing them to surmount stairs and other obstacles. In this paper, we present an active adaptive crawler mechanism and a visual navigating system, developed to achieve practical speed for industrial use of the mobile robot. By using a crawler-type mechanism, the active adaptive suspension mechanism maintains vehicle stability and achieves good climbing capability without increasing weight. Further, we have developed technology for an intelligent navigating mechanism, to guide the robot as it passes through a building. Once the robot is provided with an inner layout plan of the respective building, it can achieve practical mobile speed for industrial use.     

Development and field test of the articulated mobile robot T2 Snake-4 for plant disaster prevention

Abstract

In this work, we develop an articulated mobile robot that can move in narrow spaces, climb stairs, gather information, and operate valves for plant disaster prevention. The robot can adopt a tall position using a folding arm and gather information using sensors mounted on the arm. In addition, this paper presents a stair climbing method using a single backward wave. This method enables the robot to climb stairs that have a short tread. The developed robot system is tested in a field test at the World Robot Summit 2018, and the lessons learned in the field test are discussed.     

Autonomous stair-climbing with miniature jumping robots.

The problem of vision-guided control of miniature mobile robots is investigated. Untethered mobile robots with small physical dimensions of around 10 cm or less do not permit powerful onboard computers because of size and power constraints. These challenges have, in the past, reduced the functionality of such devices to that of a complex remote control vehicle with fancy sensors. With the help of a computationally more powerful entity such as a larger companion robot, the control loop can be closed. Using the miniature robot's video transmission or that of an observer to localize it in the world, control commands can be computed and relayed to the inept robot. The result is a system that exhibits autonomous capabilities. The framework presented here solves the problem of climbing stairs with the miniature Scout robot. The robot's unique locomotion mode, the jump, is employed to hop one step at a time. Methods for externally tracking the Scout are developed. A large number of real-world experiments are conducted and the results discussed.     

桥梁缆索检测蛇形机器人攀爬运动分析与实现

为方便实现对桥梁缆索的检测和日常维护任务,利用蛇形机器人良好的适应性,通过研究其控制规律,给出了一种简单的并可实现蛇形机器人沿缆索进行螺旋攀爬运动的控制函数.分析了螺旋攀爬运动中控制参数与螺旋参数之间的关系,利用粒子群优化算法对控制参数与螺旋半径、螺旋上升角、螺距之间的关系进行优化拟合,给出了拟合函数.通过Webots...     

变形履带轮椅机器人的张紧力最优估计和越障能力分析

针对一种新型变形履带机构的轮椅机器人,提出了一种动态确定履带张紧力大小的最优估计算法． 相对于传统的恒定张紧力履带式移动机构,动态确定张紧力显著地降低了功率损耗． 考虑到张紧力的建模复杂性,文中采用模糊决策算法,将影响张紧力的主要因素输入模糊决策模块． 然后结合最小二乘法得到履带张紧力的最优估计算法． 鉴于轮椅机器人越障过程中移动速度较慢的特点, 结合张紧力最优估计算法结果对轮椅机器人上楼梯起始阶段进行了静力学建模． 仿真结果证明了利用张紧力估计算法的越障轮椅机构能够平稳爬楼梯, 同时也表明了动态张紧力算法大大降低了驱动功率损耗．     

基于数字图像的台阶斜率提取

机器人的姿态是机器人自主爬楼的前提.为了获得机器人与台阶棱线的夹角,对视觉传感器拍摄的数字图像进行处理.首先对图像一阶微分后按"录取线"取阈值二值化,凸现台阶棱线的像;其次采用聚类分析的办法,提取出像上台阶斜率,该方法能滤除噪声且逼近真实值;最后根据几何成像原理,列出了像上斜率与真实斜率之间关系的表达式并对式中参数进行了标定.经实验验证得出误差不超过5°.     

Development of a single-wheeled inverted pendulum robot capable of climbing stairs

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we propose the design of a single-wheeled robot capable of climbing stairs. The robot is equipped with the proposed climbing mechanism, which enables it to climb stairs. The mechanism has an extremely simple structure, comprised of a parallel arm, belt, harmonic drive, and pulley. The proposed climbing mechanism has the advantage of not requiring an additional actuator because it can be driven by using a single actuator that drives the wheel. The robot is equipped with a control moment gyroscope to control the stability in a lateral direction. Experimental results demonstrate that the robot can climb stairs with a riser height of 12–13?cm and a tread depth of 39?cm at an approximate rate of 2 to 3 s for each step.     

Dynamic modeling and step-climbing analysis of a two-wheeled stair-climbing inverted pendulum robot

ABSTRACT

In this study, the control of a two-wheeled stair-climbing inverted pendulum robot and its climbing motion are analyzed and discussed. The robot adopts a state-feedback controller with a feed-forward constant to stabilize the body and achieve step-climbing motion. The control parameter is considered based on the dynamic model motion on a flat surface and the static model of motion on the step. For climbing stairs with a narrow step tread, a constant torque is applied to reduce the space required for recovering the body stability after climbing. The stability of the robot is numerically analyzed by analyzing the orbital stability of its limit cycle. The stability analysis shows that the control method can achieve a stable stair-climbing motion. The effectiveness of the control method is demonstrated through an experiment. The result indicates that the robot can climb the stairs, and the required time for climbing a single step is approximately 1.8?s.     

基于姿态角的轮腿机器人驱动控制系统研究

在城市楼道环境中,尤其在面对楼梯等障碍时,五星形轮腿式机器人具有越障能力强、控制简单的优势。为防止机器人在攀爬楼梯时出现较大偏航倾斜,通过仿真软件ADAMS和Simulink中建立了五星形轮腿式机器人的整车动力学模型和PID速度控制模型。结果表明,该联合仿真控制模型能有效、快速地控制机器人速度,减小偏航角度,降低了研究和开发成本。将该驱动控制系统移植到原机器人系统中,并分析了机器人在本控制系统控制下攀爬楼梯等特殊情况下的稳定性能。     

异构多目标差分-动态窗口算法 及其在移动机器人中的应用

为了实现在多移动机器人和多窄通道的复杂动态环境中机器人的节能运动规划,提出异构多目标差分-动态窗口法(heterogeneous multi-objective differential evolution-dynamic window algorithm,HMODE-DWA).首先,建立行驶时间、执行器作用力和平滑度的3目标优化模型,设计具有碰撞约束的异构多目标差分进化算法来获得3个目标函数的最优解,进而在已知的静态环境中获得帕累托前沿,利用平均隶属度函数获得起点与终点间最优的全局路径;其次,定义基于环境缓冲区域的模糊动态窗口法使机器人完成动态复杂环境中避障,利用所提出的HMODE-DWA算法动态避障的同时实现节能规划.仿真和实验结果表明,所提出的混合路径规划控制策略能够有效降低移动机器人动态避障过程中的能耗.     

A Bayesian exploration-exploitation approach for optimal online sensing and planning with a visually guided mobile robot

We address the problem of online path planning for optimal sensing with a mobile robot. The objective of the robot is to learn the most about its pose and the environment given time constraints. We use a POMDP with a utility function that depends on the belief state to model the finite horizon planning problem. We replan as the robot progresses throughout the environment. The POMDP is high-dimensional, continuous, non-differentiable, nonlinear, non-Gaussian and must be solved in real-time. Most existing techniques for stochastic planning and reinforcement learning are therefore inapplicable. To solve this extremely complex problem, we propose a Bayesian optimization method that dynamically trades off exploration (minimizing uncertainty in unknown parts of the policy space) and exploitation (capitalizing on the current best solution). We demonstrate our approach with a visually-guide mobile robot. The solution proposed here is also applicable to other closely-related domains, including active vision, sequential experimental design, dynamic sensing and calibration with mobile sensors.     

窄足爬坡机器人结构及控制电路设计

论述竞赛用窄足爬坡机器人的整体结构以及机器人控制系统硬件部分设计和部分功能的软件实现,结合竞赛要求完成窄足爬坡机器人整体设计安装,经过多次试验调试,机器人达到了完成上坡任务的最佳状态,试验结果表明系统设计的合理性和可行性。     

基于Klann连杆的球腿复合机器人的设计与研究

结合球形和四足机器人两者优势,创新性地提出一种能适应多重作业环境的球腿复合移动机器人．在滚动模式下,对其进行直线滚动和侧滚转向分析,验证机器人转向的可行性．在四足模式下,以复数矢量法求得机器人足端坐标,并用Matlab绘制的足端轨迹曲线与Adams仿真曲线对比,验证了理论的正确性．以抬腿高度作为目标函数,由非线性规划算法求得足端轨迹最优解．采用质心投影法分析了机器人四足行走时的稳定性．建立仿真模型对机器人的四足直行、四足转向、四足爬坡和球体侧滚等运动模式进行仿真试验．同时,制作一台样机,验证了该机器人方案设计及各运动模式的可行性．     

Quasi-Omnidirectional Fuzzy Control of a Climbing Robot for Inspection Tasks

This work presents a novel method to quasi-omnidirectional control of an intelligent inspection robot designed to work inside and outside spherical storage tanks. The main objective is to promote a stable and smooth navigation during inspection tasks, ensuring the safety motion under adhesion and kinematic constraints. The robot is designed with four independent steerable magnetic wheels and a mechanical topology that allows the correct adjustment of adhesion system. A scheduled Fuzzy control is developed to achieve an optimal behavior and maximize the robot’s maneuverability, considering the magnetic restrictions of adhesion system and kinematic constraints of the inspection robot. The high adaptability of its mechanical topology (i.e., wheel misalignment, magnetic adhesion system, wheel camber and flexibilities in mechanical structure) and gravitational disturbance introduce many nonlinear characteristics in dynamic behavior that cannot be neglected, making the determination of its dynamic model a complex task. The Fuzzy approach allows to project a control system without a depth knowledge of its dynamic properties, to minimize the dynamic disturbances found in robot structure. Thus, the proposed motion control works according to the robot specific characteristics to ensure the quasi-omnidirectional motion over a reliable adhesion to tank surface and to minimize the effects of wheels kinematic constraints.