Articulated hybrid mobile robot mechanism with compounded mobility and manipulation and on-board wireless sensor/actuator control interfaces

This paper presents the development of a remotely operated mobile robot system with a hybrid mechanism whereby the locomotion platform and manipulator arm are designed as one entity to support both locomotion and manipulation interchangeably. The mechanical design is briefly described as well as the dynamic simulations used to analyze the robot mobility and functionality. As part of the development, this paper mainly focuses on a new generalized control hardware architecture based on embedded on-board wireless communication network between the robot’s subsystems. This approach results in a modular control hardware architecture since no wire connections are used between the actuators and sensors in each of the mobile robot subsystems and also provides operational fault-tolerance. The effectiveness of this approach is experimentally demonstrated and validated by implementing it in the hybrid mobile robot system. The new control hardware architecture and mechanical design demonstrate the qualitative and quantitative performance improvements of the mobile robot in terms of the new locomotion and manipulation capabilities it provides. Experimental results are presented to demonstrate new operative tasks that the robot was able to accomplish, such as traversing challenging obstacles, and manipulating objects of various capacities; functions often required in various challenging applications, such as search and rescue missions, hazardous site inspections, and planetary explorations.     

基于分布式的移动机器人控制系统设计与实现

移动机器人是近年来研究的热点,针对机器人系统自由度多,可靠性和实时性要求高的特点,提出了一种基于分布式的移动机器人控制系统。利用多借点连接方式的网络拓扑机构,将其他设备和多个机器人连接组成机器人控制系统,以控制芯片ARM Cortex-A9和STM32F407为基础,将开源操作系统植入到开源嵌入式系统中,设计分布式上位机控制软件和下拉机程序,设计了基于分布式的移动机器人控制系统的搭建,实现对分布式移动机器人的控制。该分布式移动机器人软硬件开源、性能高、成本低、具有很好的可扩展性、实时性和稳定性。     

基于航迹推算的移动式机器人定位系统设计

为实现移动式机器人的智能工作,研究了航迹推算定位技术,采用陀螺仪、光电编码器等传感器对已知航线的机器人进行行走定位。系统由驱动模块、传感器和反馈模块以及控制模块等组成,其模块化设计充分整合了系统资源,抗干扰能力强,同时使用了伺服器驱动电机减小行走误差,成本低廉,可移植性强,能很好地运用于工业加工机器人和特种作业机器人。     

Neurofuzzy control of modular and reconfigurable robots

In recent years, the concept of modular and reconfigurable robotics emerged as a means for flexible and versatile automation. This concept allows for the execution of many complex tasks that cannot be performed by fixed-configuration manipulators. Nevertheless, reconfigurable robots introduce a challenging level of complexity to the problem of design of controllers that can handle a wide range of robot configurations with reliable performance. This paper addresses the position control of modular and reconfigurable robots. We develop a practical intelligent-control architecture that can be easily used in the presence of dynamic parameter uncertainty and unmodeled disturbances. The architecture requires no a priori knowledge of the system-dynamics parameters. Adaptive control is provided using fuzzy gain tuning of proportional-integral-derivative parameters in the presence of external disturbances. The architecture also provides learning control using feedforward neural networks. Moreover, the architecture has the capability of updating the adaptive control under reconfigurability. Experiments on a modular robot test bed are reported to validate the effectiveness of the control methodology.     

基于DSP的移动机器人的设计与实现

智能交通系统(ITS)是21世纪城市交通的发展方向，移动机器人作为智能车辆控制系统实验平台的一个主要部分，对ITS的关键技术的研究具有十分重要的意义。文中介绍面向ITS的SJTNC-1移动机器人的组成和结构，详细叙述了基于数字信号处理器TMS320LF2407A的控制系统的设计和实现。     

Quanta - A platform for rapid control and monitoring of heterogeneous rbots

Rapid prototyping, real-time control and monitoring of various events in robots are crucial requirements for research in the fields of modular and swarm robotics. A large quantities of resources (time, man power, infrastructure, etc.) are often invested in programming, interfacing the sensors, debugging the response to algorithms during prototyping and operational phases of a robot development cycle. The cost of developing an optimal infrastructure to efficiently address such control and monitoring requirements increases significantly in the presence of mobile robots. Though numerous solutions have been developed for minimizing the resources spent on hardware prototyping and algorithm validation in both static and mobile scenarios, it can be observed that researchers have either chosen methodologies that conflict with the power and infrastructure constraints of the research field or generated constrained solutions whose applications are restricted to the field itself. This paper develops a solution for addressing the challenges in controlling heterogeneous mobile robots. A platform named Quanta - a cost effective, energy efficient and high-speed wireless infrastructure is prototyped as a part of the research in the field of modular robotics. Quanta is capable of controlling and monitoring various events in/using a robot with the help of a light-weight communication protocol independent of the robot hardware architecture(s).     

Automatic locomotion design and experiments for a Modular robotic system

This paper presents a design method and experiments for whole-body locomotion by a modular robot. There are two types of locomotion for modular robots: a repeating self-reconfiguration and whole-body motion such as walking or crawling. For whole-body locomotion, designing a control method is more difficult than for ordinary robots because a modular robotic system can form various configurations, each of which has many degrees of freedom. This study proposes a unified framework for automatically designing an efficient locomotion controller suitable for any module configuration. The method utilizes neural oscillators (central pattern generators, CPGs), each of which works as a distributed joint controller of each module, and a genetic algorithm to optimize the CPG network. We verified the method by software simulations and hardware experiments, in which our modular robotic system, named M-TRAN II, performed stable and effective locomotion in various configurations.     

足球机器人系统控制结构的研究与协作实现

本文分析了足球机器人系统集中式控制结构存在的问题，提出了足球机器人系统分布式控制结构，研究了足球机器人系统的协作机理和规则。仿真实验表明，分布式控制结构优于集中式控制结构。     

Design and control of robotic highway safety markers

Proper traffic control is critical in highway work zone safety. Traffic control devices such as signs, barricades, cones, and safety barrels are used. Accidents can occur because of improper work zone design, improper work zone housekeeping, and driver negligence. Automated safety devices could improve work zone design and housekeeping and therefore increase safety. This paper presents a mobile safety barrel robot. The robotic safety barrels can self-deploy and self-retrieve-removing workers from this dangerous task. The robots move independently so they can be deployed in parallel and can quickly reconfigure as the work zone changes. The system must be reliable and have a low per-robot cost. A robot that malfunctions could create a significant hazard. Also, multiple barrels are used and they are often struck by vehicles, therefore a high replacement cost is not practical. A six-robot system, which consists of a lead robot and five low-cost barrel robots, is described. A distributed planning and control approach is presented that reduces the per-robot cost by centralizing the intelligence and sensing while keeping communication bandwidth low by distributing local control. Test results are presented including a statistical analysis of the performance of the local robot controllers and field tests of the full system.     

A platform for aerial robotics research and demonstration: The Flying Machine Arena

The Flying Machine Arena is a platform for experiments and demonstrations with fleets of small flying vehicles. It utilizes a distributed, modular architecture linked by robust communication layers. An estimation and control framework along with built-in system protection components enable prototyping of new control systems concepts and implementation of novel demonstrations. More recently, a mobile version has been featured at several eminent public events. We describe the architecture of the Arena from the viewpoint of system robustness and its capability as a dual-purpose research and demonstration platform.     

基于无线传感网络的移动机器人通信研究

文章对无线传感网络在机器人设计中的应用进行了研究,提出了一种基于Ad hoc网络的分布式无线令牌环协议的机器人通信系统实现方案,分析了其在机器人通信系统应用中的可行性.文中给出了基于无线传感网络的机器人通信系统的软硬件设计方案,并对其在移动机器人通信系统中的应用问题进行了探讨,最终提出了无线传感器网络应用于移动机器人通信系统的实现方法.     

Communication Timing Control and Topology Reconfiguration of a Sink-Free Meshed Sensor Network With Mobile Robots

This paper deals with a unified system of fully distributed meshed sensor network and mobile robot cooperation that serves as a sink node. The meshed sensor network in this paper is composed of static wireless nodes, and is capable of fully distributed peer-to-peer (P2P) ad hoc communication with ZigBee-based protocol. A novel communication timing control employing coupled-oscillator dynamics, named phase-diffusion time-division method (PDTD), has been proposed so far, aiming at realization of an ad hoc collision-free wireless communication network. In this paper, we extend the basic PDTD so that it can exhibit flexible topological reconfiguration according to the moving sink node (robot). Unlike conventional sensor network, no static sink node is supposed inside the network; however, a mobile robot will function as a sink node and access the mesh network from an arbitrary position. A large-scale experiment was conducted, and its results show that satisfactory collaboration between the mesh sensor network and the mobile robot is achieved, and the proposed system outperformed the carrier-sense-multiple-access-based sensor system.     

基于ATmega128单片机的机器人路径规划控制器的硬件设计

以ATmage128单片机为核心,提出了一种基于模糊控制的移动机器人路径控制的设计思路,搭建了一个基于人机监督指导的移动机器人智能避障系统。系统预先设定目标,移动机器人通过超声波测物避障,自主移动到达目标。给出了控制系统硬件设计方案,并对系统的显示电路、超声波测距电路、电机驱动电路、无线通信电路等硬件模块接口电路作出了简要描述。该系统各功能模块化,电路简单,易于调试,便于其他功能的扩展,具有较好的工程实用价值。     

Backing control problem of a mobile robot with multiple trailers:fuzzy modeling and LMI-based design

The paper presents backing control of computer simulated mobile robots with multiple trailers by fuzzy modeling and control. We deal with two kinds of mobile robots: a mobile robot with five trailers and a mobile robot with ten trailers. To design fuzzy controllers, nonlinear models of the mobile robots with multiple trailers are represented by Takagi-Sugeno fuzzy models (TS fuzzy model). Before making TS fuzzy models, we simplify the nonlinear dynamics of the mobile robots. Under an assumption, TS fuzzy models are made from the simplified nonlinear models. The so-called parallel distributed compensation (PDC) is employed to design fuzzy controllers from the TS fuzzy models. Next, we derive a stability condition based on the Lyapunov approach. The stability condition of the designed fuzzy control system is cast in terms of linear matrix inequalities (LMI's) since it is reduced to a problem of finding a common Lyapunov function for a set of Lyapunov inequalities. Convex optimization techniques based on LMI's are utilized to solve the problem of finding stable feedback gains and a common Lyapunov function for the designed fuzzy control system. The simulation results show the effects of the fuzzy modeling, the controller design via the PDC, and the stability analysis based on LMIs     

基于K60＋FPGA的小型移动机器人硬件设计

本文介绍了一种基于K60N512处理器和FPGA的嵌入式移动机器人平台,并具体分析了各个模块在硬件上的设计和实现。机器人平台采用模块化的分层结构设计,充分发挥了ARM与FPGA各自的特点,并提供有丰富的外设和接口,具有良好的通用性和可扩展性,为本文以后的工作提供了良好的基础硬件平台。     

Design and implementation of the motion control system of the mobile robot based on PID

A kind of motion control system of the autonomous mobile robot was introduced,and a PID closed-loop control method was proposed that controlling the robot moving along the expected direction and speed effectively through establishing the kinematics model of the autonomous mobile robot.In addition,the modular software program and the hardware system were developed whose main components were the STC12C5A60S2 microprocessor,the MC33886 motor driver chip and hall sensors.Finally,experiments proves the control method and the system effective and stable.     

轮式机器人滑模轨迹跟踪控制器设计

轮式机器人是一个典型的非完整性系统。由于非线性和非完整特性,很难为移动机器人系统的轨迹跟踪建立一个合适的模型。介绍了一种轮式机器人滑模轨迹跟踪控制方法。滑模控制是一个鲁棒的控制方法,能渐近的按一条所期望的轨迹稳定移动机器人。以之为基础,描述了轮式机器人的动力学模型并在二维坐标下建立了运动学方程,根据运动学方程设计滑模控制器,该控制器使得机器人的位置误差收敛到零。     

Generalized proportional integral observer based control of an omnidirectional mobile robot

This paper presents an observer based trajectory tracking control system design for an omnidirectional mobile robot with MY wheel-II. MY wheel-II is a switch wheel mechanism. Switch wheeled omnidirectional mobile robots are complicated autonomous switched nonlinear systems. In this paper, the complicated switching dynamics, unmodeled dynamics and input–output cross-couplings are considered as an unknown time-varying perturbation input vector, which is online estimated by means of a generalized proportional integral observer. The original switched nonlinear multi-input multi-output system is then reduced to three decoupled double integrators in an approximate manner. Traditional proportional derivative controllers are then applied to the decoupled double integrators. In addition, only part of the robot model information is used in the control system design. Simulation and experimental tests illustrate the effectiveness of this practical control method.     

基于STM32的模块化平衡车设计

介绍了一种基于模块化设计的两轮自平衡小车,分析了系统软硬件模块和调试过程.为了增强系统灵活性,设计了上位机和手机应用,对小车姿态数据进行实时显示、对系统参数进行实时调节.实践表明,模块化设计的自平衡小车控制稳定,调试方便,扩展灵活.     

Multilayered fuzzy behavior fusion for real-time reactive controlof systems with multiple sensors

Fuzzy linguistic rules provide an intuitive and powerful means for defining control behavior. Most applications that use fuzzy control feature a single layer of fuzzy inference, mapping a function from one or two inputs to equally few outputs. Highly complex systems, with large numbers of inputs, may also benefit from the use of qualitative linguistic rules if the control task is properly partitioned. This paper presents a modular fuzzy control architecture and inference engine that can be used to control complex systems. The control function is broken down into multiple local agents, each of which samples a subset of a large sensor input space. Additional fuzzy agents are employed to fuse the recommendations of the local agents. Real-time implementation without special hardware is possible by using singleton output values during fuzzy rule evaluation. A development tool is used to translate a fuzzy programming language offline for fast execution at run time. Using this system, a multilayered fuzzy behavior fusion based reactive control system has been implemented on an autonomous mobile robot, MARGE, with great success. MARGE won first place in Event III of the 1993 Robot Competition sponsored by the American Association for Artificial Intelligence