Frantisek Burian

Remote-controlled robotic platform ORPHEUS as a new tool for detection of bacteria in the environment

Remote‐controlled robotic systems are being used for analysis of various types of analytes in hostile environment including those called extraterrestrial. The aim of our study was to develop a remote‐controlled robotic platform (ORPHEUS‐HOPE) for bacterial detection. For the platform ORPHEUS‐HOPE a 3D printed flow chip was designed and created with a culture chamber with volume 600 μL. The flow rate was optimized to 500 μL/min. The chip was tested primarily for detection of 1‐naphthol by differential pulse voltammetry with detection limit (S/N = 3) as 20 nM. Further, the way how to capture bacteria was optimized. To capture bacterial cells (Staphylococcus aureus), maghemite nanoparticles (1 mg/mL) were prepared and modified with collagen, glucose, graphene, gold, hyaluronic acid, and graphene with gold or graphene with glucose (20 mg/mL). The most up to 50% of the bacteria were captured by graphene nanoparticles modified with glucose. The detection limit of the whole assay, which included capturing of bacteria and their detection under remote control operation, was estimated as 30 bacteria per μL.

CASSANDRA - heterogeneous reconnaissance robotic system for dangerous environments

Robotic system consisting of multiple different remotely operated robots and one operators station is described. The system consists of two small robots, two bigger robots, and one flying machine, while each of them has different features to form balanced system for variety of missions. The robots, as well as the whole system and its possible mission configurations are described in the article. Great attention is paid to the communication subsystem, i.e. not only robot-to-operators station communication, but also signal retranslation.

Orpheus Reconnissance Robots

Orpheus robotic system projects, including experimental Orpheus-X2 and Orpheus-EB, are presented. Novel member of Orpheus family named Orpheus-AC is presented. Orpheus-AC is a ruggedized teleoperated robot made for chemical and nuclear reconnaissance and was made at our department for VOP-026, Sternberk, s. p. company. It may be operated wireless or by wire, and fulfills military standards regarding EMC, environmental and special parameters.

Robot mapping with range camera, CCD cameras and thermal imagers.

This paper describes a multispectral data fusion system for real-time telepresence and digital mapping applicable in reconnaissance robotics. The system was developed by our team for CASSANDRA, a robotic group comprising several robots with different features controllable from a single operator station. Special emphasis is put on cooperative mapping and problems arising from the fact that each robot has distinct sensors and computing capabilities; at the same time, however, it is important to stress that all the robots can supply valuable data to the global map. The system is currently able to process distance data, color data, and thermal information, but it is also prepared for extension such that other parts of the electromagnetic spectrum (e.g., the near infrared region) or mission-specific (e.g., radiation) data can be easily added to the map. The fusion quality and map features were studied both theoretically and via field experiments. The data acquisition is performed using a sensor head placed on an Orpheus-X3 robot; both the head and the robot were developed by our working group. The head contains five matrix sensors: a pair of CCD cameras, a pair of thermal imagers, and one TOF camera.

Color and Thermal Image Fusion for Augmented Reality in Rescue Robotics

At the beginning of this article, the authors address the main problems of todays remotely-operated reconnaissance robots. The reconnaissance robots Orpheus-AC, Orpheus-AC2 and Orpheus-Explorer, made in the Department of Control and Instrumentation (DCI), are then shortly described. Since all the described robotic systems use visual telepresence as the main control technique, visual information from the robots surroundings is essential for the operator. For this reason, the authors make a fusion of data from a Charge-Coupled Device (CCD) color camera, and a thermovision camera to provide the operator with data in all visibility conditions, such as complete darkness, fog, smoke, etc.

Multispectral data fusion for robotic reconnaissance and mapping

The aim of the paper is to describe the data-fusion from optical sensors for mobile robotics reconnaissance and mapping. Data are acquired by stereo pair of CCD cameras, stereo pair of thermal imagers, and TOF (time-of-flight) camera. The fusion is realized by means of spatial data from a TOF camera to ensure “natural” representation of a robots environment; thus, the thermal and CCD camera data are comprised in one stereo image presented to a binocular, head-mounted display. The data acquisition is performed using a sensor head, which is placed on an Orpheus-X3 robot; both the head and the robot were developed by our working group. After the geometrical calibration of each sensor, the positions of the sensors in 6DOFs are computed. The corresponding data from the CCD camera and the thermal imager are subsequently determined via homogeneous and perspective transformations. The result consists in an image containing aligned data from the CCD camera and the thermal imager for each eye. TOF camera calibration and its impact to the precision of fusion is described. Although the fusion is used for two different tasks - automatic environment mapping and visual telepresence, the utilised calibration and fusion algorithms are, in principle, the same.

Multi-robot system for disaster area exploration

CASSANDRA robotic system developed at LTR s.r.o. company and Brno University of Technology is described. The system contains an operator’s station controlled with one operator and a couple of robots – small and big ground robots, flying robots (quadrocopters), and mapping robot. The robots are primarily controlled by the operator with an advanced user interface with visual telepresence and augmented reality. Nevertheless, the robots include the possibility of semiautonomous operation based on self-localisation. The user interface consists of a computer, joypad, head-mounted display with inertial head-tracker, communication device, and Cassandra software developed by our team in Microsoft .NET. Orpheus class robots are described in the text. The robots are made to be reliable and to be able to work in extreme conditions, they are tested by a series of MIL-STD military tests for environmental parameters, EMC, vibrations and shocks, contamination/decontamination, etc. Orpheus-X3 is a general US&R robot with enhanced victim search capabilities, Orpheus-HOPE is made for water contamination measurements, Orpheus-AC2 is a ruggedized version for environmental parameter measurement. Two flying drones developed completely by our team are described, as well as EnvMap mapping robot for realtime construction of spatial digital maps with texture mapping. All the robots can be controlled with the help of visual telepresence and augmented reality – that makes robot control much more intuitive, and lets the rescuer concentrate on the mission itself. The control station may be used as a self-containing wearable system. The fusion system with multispectral measurement containing tricolor cameras, thermal imagers and TOF camera is described.

Medical Optical Scanning System - Data Fusion Evaluation Method

A method for evaluation of quality of multispectral data-fusion for robotic scanning is presented. The method was primarily developed for evaluation of robotic scanner developed in our laboratory, but its use is without doubt much wider. The layers to be evaluated are 3D spatial, color, and thermal. The approach is opposite to most commonly used methods for calibration, since the main task is to find corresponding data in already fused point-clouds. Special calibration plate was developed to allow calibration pattern visibility in all spectra.

Small Exploration Robot Accessories

This article describes the design of electronics that is necessary for building of a small remote-controlled exploration robot. Moreover, it specifies additional components needed for the control and terrain work. As the base it is used a car model that is applied in the discipline called “crawling”. The result is a remote-controlled robot named Brontes which can be used for exploration of unknown or hazardous areas. The robot should be used within a larger diverse group of robots, where each member has its own task.

Unified Storage for Laser Scanner Data

The main goal of this paper is to show a way to resolve interoperability of more different laser proximity scanners into a mapping engine. The idea is to make a software layer with unified data approach to be able to access laser scanner data from different 2D or 3D proximity scanners in unified way. Presented work is a part of project with the aim to make widely accessible data for self-localization algorithms assessment in mobile robotics. All the described algorithms, source code and scanner data will be accessible on project web-page http://www.mapping.uamt.feec.vutbr.cz .