Gerard T. McKee

Reconfigurable robots for all-terrain exploration

While significant recent progress has been made in development of mobile robots for planetary surface exploration, there remain major challenges. These include increased autonomy of operation, traverse of challenging terrain, and fault-tolerance under long, unattended periods of use. We have begun work which addresses some of these issues, with an initial focus on problems of high risk access, that is, autonomous roving over highly variable, rough terrain. This is a dual problem of sensing those conditions which require rover adaptation, and controlling the rover actions so as to implement this adaptation in a well understood way (relative to metrics of rover stability, traction, power utilization, etc.). Our work progresses along several related technical lines: 1) development a fused state estimator which robustly integrates internal rover state and externally sensed environmental information to provide accurate configuration information; 2) kinematic and dynamical stability analysis of such configurations so as to determine predicts for a needed change of control regime (e.g., traction control, active c.g. positioning, rover shoulder stance/pose); 3) definition and implementation of a behavior-based control architecture and action-selection strategy which autonomously sequences multi-level rover controls and reconfiguration. We report on these developments, both software simulations and hardware experimentation. Experiments include reconfigurable control of JPSs Sample Return Rover geometry and motion during its autonomous traverse over simulated Mars terrain.

The development of Internet-based laboratory environments for teaching robotics and artificial intelligence

This paper reports on the development of an online environment supporting a network-based robotics educational project. The project was undertaken by a large body of students and involved adding a level of intelligence to control a toy device that was accessible remotely over the network. The students were to design and implement a stop-look-act control strategy for a simple pick-up task. The paper describes the educational context of the project, the task the students were required to undertake, the hardware and software environment used to support the project, and the performance of the environment over the duration of the assignment. The results contribute to the understanding of the infrastructure support required for Internet-based robotics projects and online robot demonstrations.

What is Networked Robotics

Networked Robotics is an area that straddles robotics and network technology. A robot system controlled via the WWW exploits the Internet network and hence is one realisation of networked robotics. A set of field robots that exploit wireless networks to share and distribute tasks might also be considered an exemplar of networked robotics. But isn’t this just an exemplar of distributed robotics? And if so, what does networked robotics bring to the “robotics” table? These are questions and issues addressed in this chapter. The chapter will propose that networks are at once both enabling and constraining to robotics. They enlarge the scope of the robotics discipline yet introduce challenges that must be overcome if that potential is to be fully realized. In short, when the network becomes a design issue – normally when performance of the system is at a premium – networked robotics is at play.

A mathematical model, implementation and study of a swarm system

The work reported in this paper is motivated towards the development of a mathematical model for swarm systems based on macroscopic primitives. A pattern formation and transformation model is proposed. The pattern transformation model comprises two general methods for pattern transformation, namely a macroscopic transformation method and a mathematical transformation method. The problem of transformation is formally expressed and four special cases of transformation are considered. Simulations to confirm the feasibility of the proposed models and transformation methods are presented. Comparison between the two transformation methods is also reported.

Robotic automation for space: planetary surface exploration, terrain-adaptive mobility, and multirobot cooperative tasks

During the last decade, there has been significant progress toward a supervised autonomous robotic capability for remotely controlled scientific exploration of planetary surfaces. While planetary exploration potentially encompasses many elements ranging from orbital remote sensing to subsurface drilling, the surface robotics element is particularly important to advancing in situ science objectives. Surface activities include a direct characterization of geology, mineralogy, atmosphere and other descriptors of current and historical planetary processes-and ultimately-the return of pristine samples to Earth for detailed analysis. Toward these ends, we have conducted a broad program of research on robotic systems for scientific exploration of the Mars surface, with minimal remote intervention. The goal is to enable high productivity semi-autonomous science operations where available mission time is concentrated on robotic operations, rather than up-and-down-link delays. Results of our work include prototypes for landed manipulators, long-ranging science rovers, sampling/sample return mobility systems, and more recently, terrain-adaptive reconfigurable/modular robots and closely cooperating multiple rover systems. The last of these are intended to facilitate deployment of planetary robotic outposts for an eventual human-robot sustained scientific presence. We overview our progress in these related areas of planetary robotics R&D, spanning 1995-to-present.

A review and implementation of swarm pattern formation and transformation models

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to address a classic problem – pattern formation identified by researchers in the area of swarm robotic systems – and is also motivated by the need for mathematical foundations in swarm systems.Design/methodology/approach – The work is separated out as inspirations, applications, definitions, challenges and classifications of pattern formation in swarm systems based on recent literature. Further, the work proposes a mathematical model for swarm pattern formation and transformation.Findings – A swarm pattern formation model based on mathematical foundations and macroscopic primitives is proposed. A formal definition for swarm pattern transformation and four special cases of transformation are introduced. Two general methods for transforming patterns are investigated and a comparison of the two methods is presented. The validity of the proposed models, and the feasibility of the methods investigated are confirmed on the Traer Physics and Processing environment.Original...

Network robotics: dynamic reconfigurable architectures

In this paper we present the Networked Robotics approach to dynamic robotic architecture creation. Building on our prior work we highlight the ease at which system and architecture creation can be moved from the single robot domain to the cooperative/multiple robotic domain; indeed under the Networked Robotic framework there are no differences between the two, a multiple, cooperative, robotic architecture simply emerges from a richer network environment (the module pool). Essentially task-driven architectures are instantiated on an as needed basis, allowing conceptualised designs to be run wherever a suitable framework (i.e. a module pool) exists. Using a basic scenario, that of mapping an environment, we show how radically different architectures for achieving the same task can emerge from the same building blocks. We highlight the flexibility and robustness of the instantiated architectures and the experimental freedom inherent in the approach. The approach has been implemented and tested experimentally.

A behaviour-based manipulator for multi-robot transport tasks

In this paper we report on the design, implementation and testing of a manipulator for a multi-robot task involving the transport of an extended payload by two robots. The overall task involves three main manipulation components, namely payload pickup, terrain traversal and putdown at the deployment site. The manipulator was specifically designed to meet the requirements of these manipulation operations. It comprises three main components, a two-degree of freedom arm, a passive but compliant one-degree of freedom wrist, and an active gripper mechanism. Low-level control is accomplished using a small network of PIC microcontrollers. A key design goal of the control architecture was software and hardware modularity: separate modules drive the motors, measure encoder counts and support a range of low-level behaviors suitable for the task. Several sensors were specifically designed to enhance the compliance of the system. High-level control is based on an on-board laptop computer. The paper describes the motivation, the design and implementation, and the experimental results to date.

Task-directed configuration of networked robotic agents

In this paper we present research aimed at exploring the configuration of robot architecture from robot components that are distributed about a network environment. The research is motivated by previous work focusing on representation and reasoning methods for modeling modular robotics systems. We look specifically at self-configuring networked robotic agents. The proposed model combines the notions of a task factory that generate task modules and a pool of modules representing robotics components such as sensors and effectors. A number of successively more complex scenarios are used to illustrate the concepts. These have been implemented and tested experimentally. The paper describes the experimental implementation.

Virtual robotics laboratory for research

We report on work currently underway to put a robotics laboratory onto the Internet in support of teaching and research in robotics and artificial intelligence in higher education institutions in the UK. The project is called Netrolab. The robotics laboratory comprises a set of robotics resources including a manipulator, a mobile robot with an on-board monocular active vision head and a set of sonar sensing modules, and a set of laboratory cameras to allow the user to see into the laboratory. The paper will report on key aspect of the project aimed at using multimedia tools and object-oriented techniques to network the robotics resources and to allow them to be configured into complex teaching and experimental modules. The paper will outline both the current developments of Netrolab and provide a perspective on the future development of networked virtual laboratories for research.