Muralindran Mariappan

A design methodology of a flexible robotic arm vision system for OTOROB

Telemedicine is a new and promising application in the field of medical science. Medical consulting and remote medical procedures or examinations became more effective with the development of interactive audiovisual systems and remote mobile robotic platforms. Tele-presence requires real time video transmission. Fixed mounting of video device on mobile robotic platform limits the video projection at certain view angle, thus restricting the remote doctor in obtaining the fine and accurate visual information of the patient. To circumvent the problem, this paper presents a flexible robotic arm with vision system for OTOROB (Orthopedic Robot). A four degree of freedom (DOF) robotic arm with extending and retracting feature enables the remote doctor to articulate the attached video device on robotic arm to target area on patient. The working envelope of the robotic arm increased with the linear motion feature. This combined with yaw and pitch at the end effectors improves the visual projection at the intended target point.

A navigation methodology of an holonomic mobile robot using optical tracking device (OTD)

The main task of a mobile robot is to perform navigation and positioning. Common mobile robot which employs line tracking system can only work on pre-constructed track where else infrared guided robot only can work within infrareds line of sight. In addition to that, the wheel driving system of the mobile robot plays a vital role in allowing the robot to navigate along a limited direction depending on its wheel architecture. To steer a robot in any direction and to know its precise location in the environment is the ultimate goal of mobile robot navigation. To achieve this, a methodology is laid out in this paper. An Optical Tracking Device (OTD) module is utilized to provide the accurate coordinates of the current location of the robot virtually on many flat surfaces. A holonomic wheel system is designed to allow the robot to navigate through multiple destinations. A navigation algorithm is developed to position the robot to any point accurately on a flat surface. This will allow the robot to freely move in any direction to reach multiple target destinations without any difficulties.

Otorob (Ortho Robot) with Docmata (Doctor's Eye): Role of Remote Presence in Developing Countries

Mobile robots are expensive for developing countries and their utilization are general in the field of medicine, from neurosurgery to intensive care units. Our ongoing project “OTOROB” is more specific for orthopedic surgeons with special consideration on its cost effectiveness. Data analysis of our survey, during the first phase helped us to find requirements of orthopaedic surgeons to make it more specific. The new concept of VIrtual Presence (VIP) Specialist Clinics and Roboscope are described. The inevitability & rationalization of the integrated tools are discussed in second phase of our ongoing project.

Probabilistic multi SVM weed species classification for weed scouting and selective spot weeding

In this paper, a probabilistic output multi SVMs were used to classify the weed seedlings into groups for spot spraying and weed scouting application. Weeds in the samples are collected at approximely 1-4 weeks after post emergence. The weed seedlings are classified using Support Vector machines while feature selection and fine tuning of classifier parameters were fine tuned using genetic algorithm. The features which included regional shapes parameters, fractal dimensions and elliptical Fourier coefficients, skeleton statistics, boundary to centroid and colour statistics were extracted from individual leaves and the overall binarized shape of the weed seedlings. The resulting SVM ensemble classifier is able to classify the various weed seedlings into various classes at a reasonable rate which can be further improved by enlarging training sets and improving individual SVMs.

Medical Tele-Diagnosis Robot (MTR) - Internet Based Communication & Navigation System

Medical Tele-diagnosis Robot (MTR) is a cost effective telemedicine mobile robot that provides tele-presence capability for the specialist on a remote location to virtually meet the patient, perform diagnostics and consult the resident doctor regarding the patient via internet. This paper highlights on the development of a doctor-robot interface where the doctor or user can control the robot reliably via regular internet connection from a different location, a distributed secured network for MTRs communication, an audiovisual communication system for tele-diagnosis and a navigation safety system called Danger Monitoring System (DMS) as part of MTRs assistive internet based navigation remote control system. The overall setup and maintenance cost of MTR is reduced by adopting a decentralized network via hybrid P2P technology. With this, the network load is distributed among the users. As for the audiovisual system, the timeliness of the video transmission from the robot to the operator can be attained by CUDA H.264 video encoding to reduce the size of the video stream and by taking advantage of the highly-parallel processors in the graphics processing unit. Combinations of sensors are place around the robot to provide data on the robots surrounding during operation. The sensors data are fed into the DMS algorithm which is equipped with fuzzy logic based artificial intelligence system to process the data from all the sensors and user input to decide preventative measures to avoid any danger to humans and the robot in terms of obstacle avoidance and robot tilt angle safety. The overall system is tested by a set of experiments and found to be demonstrating an acceptable performance. This system proved to be suitable to be used in MTR.

A LabVIEW Design for Frontal and Non-Frontal Human Face Detection System in Complex Background

Biometric identification has advanced vastly since many decades ago. It became a blooming area for research as biometric technology has been used extensively in areas like robotics, surveillance, security and others. Face technology is more preferable due to its reliability and accuracy. By and large, face detection is the first processing stage that is performed before extending to face identification or tracking. The main challenge in face detection is the sensitiveness of the detection to pose, illumination, background and orientation. Thus, it is crucial to design a face detection system that can accommodate those problems. In this paper, a face detection algorithm is developed and designed in LabVIEW that is flexible to adapt changes in background and different face angle. Skin color detection method blending with edge and circle detection is used to improve the accuracy of face detected. The overall system designed in LabVIEW was tested in real time and it achieves accuracy about 97%.

Safety system and navigation for orthopaedic robot (OTOROB)

OTOROB is a telemedicine mobile robot for orthopaedic surgeons that have remote presence capability to diagnose patients in remote area. As a telemedicine robot that interacts with human being, it is required to have extensive safety system. This paper presents a Fuzzy Logic based Danger Monitoring System (DMS) and Fail-Safe and Auto Recovery System (FSARS) that monitors the robots operation. It is incorporated to the onboard flexible robotic arm vision system and the robots navigation system. It monitors the robot surrounding and internal systems for danger or failures and takes precaution measures to overcome it. The system is tested by a set of experiments and found to be demonstrating an acceptable performance.

Design and Development of Tangible Instruction Set for Educational Robotic System

Programmable tangible blocks educational robotic system (C-Block) was introduced as an approach for project-based learning (PBL) curriculum. It aims to provide a tangible method of doing programming for younger kids and hence allowing them to exploring in STEM education as early as possible. In this paper, the design and development of instruction block sets and the corresponding system to extract the information out from the instruction blocks were discussed. The state-of-the-art technology proposed in this research can be very fruitful to enhance the implementation of the robotics in education system.

Electroencephalography (EEG) Based Control in Assistive Mobile Robots: A Review

Recently, EEG based control in assistive robot usage has been gradually increasing in the area of biomedical field for giving quality and stress free life for disabled and elderly people. This study reviews the deployment of EGG based control in assistive robots, especially for those who in need and neurologically disabled. The main objective of this paper is to describe the methods used for (i) EEG data acquisition and signal preprocessing, (ii) feature extraction and (iii) signal classification methods. Besides that, this study presents the specific research challenges in the designing of these control systems and future research directions.

Simultaneous rotation and translation movement for four omnidirectional wheels holonomic mobile robot

Navigation and positioning is the main system for a mobile robot. Holonomicity in the field of robotic has becoming more and more important as it allow the mobile robot to do translation and rotation movements. Although many research had done to overcome the poor motion stability and trajectory motion using three omnidirectional wheels, they may have stability problems due to triangular contact area with the ground and the payload they carry. Thus, to increase the movement efficiency of the holonomic mobile robot, simultaneous translation and rotation movements for four omnidirectional wheels holonomic mobile robot was introduced. To create the system for the movement, a methodology is laid out in this paper. A kinematic analysis was done on the movement of the holonomic mobile robot. The algorithm of the kinematic movement of the mobile robot then was developed. A test grid was carry out to test the navigation algorithm of the system and the result is within the acceptable range. This algorithm would allow the holonomic mobile robot to do translation and rotation movements either simultaneously or independently.