Federico Cuesta

Parallel and diagonal parking in nonholonomic autonomous vehicles

Abstract This paper considers the problem of parallel and diagonal parking in wheeled vehicles. A method to plan in real-time a set of collision-free manoeuvres is presented. Artificial intelligent techniques, namely fuzzy logic, play an important role in the practical application of the method. Thus, a fuzzy system is used to select the most suitable manoeuvre from the solution set according with the environment, dealing with optimality, path tracking performance and collision avoidance trade-off. This technique has been implemented in a fuzzy behaviour-based control architecture combining planning and reactivity. The efficiency of the proposed method is demonstrated using the nonholonomic mobile robot ROMEO-3R designed and built at the University of Seville.

Intelligent Mobile Robot Navigation

Intelligent Mobile Robot Navigation builds upon the application of fuzzy logic to the area of intelligent control of mobile robots. Reactive, planned, and teleoperated techniques are considered, leading to the development of novel fuzzy control systems for perception and navigation of nonholonomic autonomous vehicles. The unique feature of this monograph lies in its comprehensive treatment of the problem, from the theoretical development of the various schemes down to the real-time implementation of algorithms on mobile robot prototypes. As such, the book spans different domains ranging from mobile robots to intelligent transportation systems, from automatic control to artificial intelligence.

Parking maneuvers of industrial-like electrical vehicles with and without trailer

Maneuvering autonomous vehicles in constrained environments is not a trivial task. This paper concentrates in the practical maneuvering of electrical vehicles. The autonomous vehicles considered in the paper, ROMEO-3R and ROMEO-4R, have been developed at the University of Seville, Seville, Spain, as the result of the adaptation of a tricycle and a car-like conventional electrical vehicles for transportation of people, respectively. Moreover, maneuvering of ROMEO-4R backing up a trailer has also been considered. A particular maneuver, namely, autonomous parallel parking, has been used to illustrate the application of the presented methods to different electrical vehicles.

Continuous curvature path generation based on ß-spline curves for parking manoeuvres

This paper focuses attention on continuous curvature path generation for parallel parking manoeuvres of autonomous conventional vehicles. The method is based on @b-spline curves generation from a collision-free path previously calculated. Several constraints have been considered in order to ensure the existence of collision-free and admissible curves. The efficiency of the proposed method is demonstrated using the nonholonomic autonomous vehicles ROMEO-3R and ROMEO-4R designed and built at the University of Seville.

Control and perception components for autonomous vehicle guidance. Application to the ROMEO vehicles

Abstract This paper presents several control and perception components that implement navigation behaviours in autonomous vehicles. A behaviour-based control architecture integrating these components is also presented. The paper concentrates on autonomous tracking behaviours. In particular, the tracking of explicit paths, moving targets and environmental features are described. These behaviours have been implemented using several different position estimation techniques: dead reckoning; global position estimation using GPS; and position estimation with respect to the environment. The control architecture has been implemented in ROMEO vehicles at the University of Seville. These autonomous vehicles are adaptated from conventional electric vehicles and are currently used for experiments in autonomous navigation and teleoperation in outdoor environments. A short description of the general characteristics of the ROMEO-3R (tricycle) and ROMEO-4R (four wheels) vehicles is presented. The paper includes results from the tracking of environmenal features with proximity sensors, and visual tracking of moving targets.

Robust stability constraints for fuzzy model predictive control

This paper addresses the synthesis of a predictive controller for a nonlinear process based on a fuzzy model of the Takagi-Sugeno (T-S) type, resulting in a stable closed-loop control system. Conditions are given that guarantee closed-loop robust asymptotic stability for open-loop bounded-input-bounded-output (BIBO) stable processes with an additive l/sub 1/-norm bounded model uncertainty. The idea is closely related to (small-gain-based) l/sub 1/-control theory, but due to the time-varying approach, the resulting robust stability constraints are less conservative. Therefore the fuzzy model is viewed as a linear time-varying system rather than a nonlinear one. The goal is to obtain constraints on the control signal and its increment that guarantee robust stability. Robust global asymptotic stability and offset-free reference tracking are guaranteed for asymptotically constant reference trajectories and disturbances.

Fuzzy behaviors combination to control a nonholonomic mobile robot using virtual perception memory

This paper presents the implementation of the combination of fuzzy reactive navigation behaviors using virtual perception memory. Robot control actions are generated by different fuzzy behavior components which cooperate to determine the motion of the vehicle. This approach differs from other methods in the use of a virtual perception memory to make a robot controller more robust with respect to temporary loss of sensorial information. Experimental results of an application to a real robot demonstrate the robustness of the proposed method.

Intelligent control of nonholonomic mobile robots with fuzzy perception

This paper is focused on the intelligent control of vehicles with nonholonomic constraints. A new method to compute a fuzzy perception of the environment is presented, dealing with the uncertainties and imprecisions from the sensorial system and taking into account nonholonomic constraints of the vehicle. This fuzzy perception is used, both in the design of each reactive behavior and solving the problem of behavior combination, to implement a fuzzy behavior-based control architecture. Furthermore, teleoperation and planned behaviors, together with their combination with reactive ones, are considered; improving the capabilities of the intelligent control system and its practical application. Experimental results, of an application to control the ROMEO-3R autonomous vehicle, demonstrate the robusmess of the proposed method.

Andruino-A1: Low-Cost Educational Mobile Robot Based on Android and Arduino

This work presents the design of an open educational low-cost (35 euros) modular and extendable mobile robot based on Android and Arduino, with Local Area Network (LAN) and Internet connection capabilities, to be used as an educational tool in labs and classrooms of information and communications technology (ICT) vocational training, or in engineering courses, as well as in e-learning or massive open online courses (MOOC) as an alternative or complementary to virtual labs. It is a first step introducing what we call ”BYOR: Bring Your Own Robot” education policy equivalent to ”BYOD: Bring your own devices” in computers’ world.

Modeling and Control of Autonomous Helicopters

This chapter presents an overview on the modeling and model-based control of autonomous helicopters. Firstly it introduces some of the platforms and control architectures that has been developed in the last 15 years. Later, the Chapter considers the modeling of the helicopter and the identification techniques. Then, it overviews different linear and non-linear model-based control approaches. This section also includes experiments on the control of the helicopter vertical motion that illustrate the presented techniques and point out the interest of nonlinear analysis methods to study the dynamic behavior of the helicopter. Finally, the Chapter presents open research lines coming from two challenging applications: the autonomous landing in oscillating platforms and the lifting and transporting of a single load with several helicopters.