Albert Ko

An Immuno Control Framework for Decentralized Mechatronic Control

The Immune System is a complex adaptive system containing many details and many exceptions to established rules. Exceptions such as the suppression effect that causes T-cells to develop reversible aggressive and tolerant behaviors create difficulties for the study of immunology but also give hints to how artificial immune systems may be designed.

A decentralized control framework for modular robots

Distributed control paradigm offers robustness, scalability, and simplicity to the control and organization of module based systems. MSR (modular self-reconfigurable) robot is a class of robot that best demonstrate the effectiveness of distributed systems, as all modules in the robot are individuals that perform their own actuation and computation; the behavior of the complete robot is a collective behavior of all independent modules. In this paper, a general control framework, named general suppression framework, is proposed and a distributed control system based on the framework is presented. The control system is designed to control a set of MSR robots configured into a planar manipulator arm. All modules in the manipulator arm contain their own processing and actuation units, which allow them to evaluate and react to the environment independently. The modules can perform passive communication with their immediate neighbors and can exhibit aggressive or tolerant behavior based on the environment change to generate emergent group behaviors. A simulation program is developed to demonstrate the effectiveness of the distributed system in controlling the module based planar manipulator arm.

Intelligent Robot-assisted Humanitarian Search and Rescue System

The unprecedented scale and number of natural and man-made disasters in the past decade has urged international emergency search and rescue communities to seek for novel technology to enhance operation efficiency. Tele-operated search and rescue robots that can navigate deep into rubble to search for victims and to transfer critical field data back to the control console has gained much interest among emergency response institutions. In response to this need, a low-cost autonomous mini robot equipped with thermal sensor, accelerometer, sonar, pin-hole camera, microphone, ultra-bright LED and wireless communication module is developed to study the control of a group of decentralized mini search and rescue robots. The robot can navigate autonomously between voids to look for living body heat and can send back audio and video information to allow the operator to determine if the found object is a living human. This paper introduces the design and control of a low-cost robotic search and rescue system based on an immuno control framework developed for controlling decentralized systems. Design and development of the physical prototype and the immunity-based control system are described in this paper.

Application of Distributed Wireless Sensor Network on Humanitarian Search and Rescue Systems

Humanitarian search and rescue operations can be found in most large-scale emergency operations. Search and rescue technology to-date still rely on old technologies such as search dogs, camera mounted probes, and technology that has been in service for decades. Intelligent robots equipped with advanced sensors are attracting more and more attentions from researchers and rescuers.This paper presents the design and application of a distributed wireless sensor network prototyping system for tracking mobile search and rescue robots. The robotic system can navigate autonomously into rubbles and to search for living human body heat using its thermal array sensor. The wireless sensor network helps to track the location of the robot by analyzing signal strength. Design and development of the network and the physical robot prototype are described in this paper.

General suppression control framework: application in self-balancing robots

The General Suppression Control Framework (GSCF) is a framework inspired by the suppression hypothesis of the immune discrimination theory. The framework consists of five distinct components, the Affinity Evaluator, Cell Differentiator, Cell Reactor, Suppression Modulator, and the Local Environment. These reactive components, each responsible for a specific function, can generate long-term and short-term influences to other components by the use of humoral and cellular signals. This paper focuses in the design of a control system that aims to balance and navigate a self-balancing robot though obstacles based on the five components in GSCF. The control system demonstrates how simple combination of suppression mechanism can filter and fuses two unstable measurements together to obtain reliable measurement to maintain the balance of a dynamically unstable system. The control system is implemented in a two-wheeled self-balancing robot for its inherited instability can best demonstrate the systems responsiveness to dynamic changes.

AIS Based Distributed Wireless Sensor Network for Mobile Search and Rescue Robot Tracking

This research presents the implementation of GSCF, an AIS-based control framework, on a distributed wireless sensor network for tracking search and rescue robots in open fields. The General Suppression Control Framework (GSCF) is a framework inspired by the suppression hypothesis of the immune discrimination theory. The framework consists of five distinct components; each carries a specific function that can generate long-term and short-term influences to other components by the use of humoral and cellular signals. The goal of the research is to develop mathematical models that can assist the control and analyses of robots behavior through the use of Suppressor Cells in the Suppression Modulator. Acquire data from the physical robot will be used as simulation parameters in future search and rescue research.

An Immuno Robotic System for Humanitarian Search and Rescue (Application Stream)

The unprecedented number and scales of natural and human-induced disasters in the past decade has urged the emergency search and rescue community around the world to seek for newer, more effective equipment to enhance their efficiency. Tele-operated robotic search and rescue systems consist of tethered mobile robots that can navigate deep into rubbles to search for victims and to transfer critical on-site data for rescuers to evaluate at a safe spot outside of the disaster affected area has gained the interest of many emergency response institutions. To fully realize the promising characteristics of robotics search and rescue systems, however, mobile robots must first be free from their tether and be granted the ability to navigate autonomously even when wireless control commands from the operator cannot reach them. For search and rescue robots to go autonomous in exceedingly unstructured environment, the control system must be highly adaptive and robust to handle all exceptional situations.

An Immune Inspired Algorithm for Solving Dynamic Vehicle Dispatching Problem in a Port Container Terminal

A typical Vehicle Dispatching Problem (VDP) for a port container terminal often involves offline resource allocation and is often successfully solved by heuristics algorithms. In this research, an autonomous and decentralized vehicle dispatching algorithm is proposed in which the algorithm is inspired by the human immune system. Specifically, the proposed algorithm is inspired by the cell-mediate immune response of T-cells that possess the capability of exploring the environment and providing an adaptive and specific immune response to the invading antigens. We conduct extensive simulation studies to study the performance of the algorithm in solving a typical vehicle dispatch problem derived from realistic terminal configurations and operational constraints. The results show good vehicle utilization and low computational cost when comparing with a GA-based algorithm.