Jaewook Bae

Evolving gaits for increased discriminability in terrain classification

Limbs are an attractive approach to certain niche robotic applications, such as urban search and rescue, that require both small size and the ability to locomote through highly rubbled terrain. Unfortunately, a large number of degrees of freedom implies there is a large space of non- optimal locomotion trajectories (gaits), making gait adaptation critical. On the other hand, these extra degrees of freedom open many possibilities for active sensing of the terrain, which is essential information for adapting the gait. In previous work, we developed a metric for terrain classification that makes use of the loping body motion (i.e. gait bounce) during locomotion. In this work we present a framework for evolving gaits to better differentiate the gait bounce signal across terrains. This framework includes a limb/terrain interaction model that estimates gait bounce based on established models of wheel/terrain interaction, and an objective function that can be optimized for terrain discriminability. Additional objective functions for improved locomotion are presented, as well as culling agents that help guide the evolution process away from real-world impossibilities.

Smart tupperware: Active containers for kitchen automation

Smart Tupperware is an example of a personal task assistant (PTA) for kitchen automation. The system is intended to automatically maintain inventory status of kitchen foodstuffs for the purpose of updating the userpsilas shopping list. A variety of system configurations were investigated ranging from an active system with microcontroller-based kitchen containers instrumented with sensors to passive systems with only identification tagging on the containers. A base station provides network connectivity if the application warrants.

Development and User Testing of the Gestural Joystick for Gloves-On Hazardous Environments

For controlling robots in an urban search and rescue (USAR) application, a wearable joystick is presented with improved sensing capability as well as a giant magneto-resistance (GMR) sensor model for use with rare-earth magnets. Scientists have been studying a variety of existing human/robot interface devices to control USAR robots in a disaster. Due to the stresses involved in USAR environments, the selection of an appropriate interface device out of the numerous interactive devices available has to be carefully considered. Furthermore, the total burden to the user of human/robot interface devices in USAR tasks includes not only the periods of interaction, but also the burden of transporting and remotely setting up the devices. The wearable joystick presented is developed with the design goal of minimizing total encumbrances. The features of this wearable joystick include easy and wire-free installation into regular gloves. An improved hardware structure for the sensor pad and the alignment of magnets is described that completely wraps the wrist. This band-type mechanism provides more robust data acquisition than previous prototypes. To evaluate performance, time-to-complete tests are performed, with a comparison to a metric for path tortuosity. The fractal dimension of the resulting path is analyzed to represent the degree of control the user has over the interface device. Experimental results are provided from both computer screen tess and real USAR robot driving tests.

Locally selectable protocol for sparse, highly-volatile, robotic wireless video sensor networks

Wireless video sensor networks WVSNs are a specialisation of wireless sensor networks that focus on high bandwidth transmission with low latency and under low power conditions. This type of network might be applied is in multi-robot exploration for urban search and rescue USAR. We propose a new hybrid routing protocol, called locally selectable protocol LSP, on top of a Bluetooth piconet architecture that provides high-bandwidth, multi-hop routing with reduced latency and very low power consumption for sparse topologies that are highly volatile, yet are continuously streaming video. We take advantage of the hybrid combination of proactive and reactive routing schemes. We simulate and implement the proposed scheme on a small team of resource-constrained USAR robots, called TerminatorBot. We have shown that our protocol on top of Bluetooth maintains higher bandwidth with lower latency to dropped nodes and lower overall power consumption in comparison to existing solutions that support ZigBee and Wi-Fi.

The gestural joystick and the efficacy of path tortuosity in rubbled environments

In this paper a gestural joystick embedded in safety gloves for applications requiring 2-D pointing control similar to a mouse or joystick, is described. A gestural joystick is a pointing device based on hand gestures. The WRIST (wearable responder interface for search tasks) system is being developed specifically for hazardous environments that require gloves, which normally interfere with the operation of conventional computer interfaces. Rather than competing with the human/computer interface, WRIST uses the cumbersome gloves to interpret the gestures, rendering them both a necessary piece of safety equipment as well as necessary piece of the human/robot interface.