Peter Jakubik

The concept of robot society and its utilization

Societies are formed as collaborative structures to execute tasks which are not possible or are difficult for individuals alone. There are many types of biological societies, but societies formed by machines or robots are still rare. The concept offers, however, interesting possibilities especially in applications where a long term fully autonomous operation is needed and/or the work to be done can be executed in a parallel way by a group of individuals. The paper introduces the basic control and communication structures of robot societies by using a model society. Also, a mini-scaled mobile robot which is under construction to be multiplied for the corresponding physical society demonstrator is introduced. Simulation results illustrating the behaviour of the model society are given. Possible applications in waste treatment and process monitoring and cleaning are considered.<<ETX>>

An Application Concept of an Underwater Robot Society

Cooperation as a mean to adapt to dynamic environments is well known in animal world from the social insects up to primates. But similar behavior seems to exist also in simple unicellular microbes. In this paper a novel approach for a very application oriented multi-agent system is taken. The principles of this robot society are derived from bacteria, which are here considered as multicellurar organisms. The analogy from Nature includes bacteria’s ability to communicate through chemical substances, to form a colony (a society) and to act as a predator hunting for food. The concept is tested in simulations, where the behavior of the society is used to demonstrate how the extensive use of chemical in a closed water circuit for algae removal could be minimized with a collective cooperation of mobile underwater robots. Additionally, some early tests with the first generation society member will be shown in order to validate some of the simulation results including a simple topological mapping and navigation method.

Bacterium Robot Society-A biologically inspired multi-agent concept for internal monitoring and controlling of processes

Societies are formed as collaborative structures to execute tasks that are not possible or are difficult for individuals alone. There are many types of biological societies formed by animals, but societies formed by machines or robots are still rare. This paper introduces the concept of an application oriented robot society formed by autonomous underwater robots. The Bacterium Robot Society is a generic concept with many potential applications. As an example of such application a scenario, where robot society serves as a mobile distributed sensor instrument inside a process plant, is presented.

Optimizing the Performance of a Robot Society in Structured Environment Through Genetic Algorithms

Societies are formed as collaborative structures to execute tasks that are not possible or are otherwise difficult for individuals alone. There are many types of biological societies, but societies formed by machines or robots are still rare. The concept offers, however, interesting possibilities especially in applications where a long term fully autonomous operation is needed and/or the work to be done can be executed in a parallel way by a group of individuals. To explore these features a foraging society formed by several autonomous mobile robots working in structured environment was defined. The society members have restricted communication properties and their work is evaluated and controlled when needed by an outside operator. So far the problems for the societys functional optimization with a simulator have been caused by the large number of parameters with built-in cross relations and by the strong dependence on a given environment. To deal with these problems and to provide the society ways to adapt itself to changing circumstances Genetic Algorithms were applied. The concept was tested with simulations, which indicated the existence of adaptation both at the individual member level and at the higher society level.

Novel design of biped robot based on Linear Induction Motors

This work reports the preliminary results on a new design concept for bipedal walking robots. The concept is based on the actuators (linear induction motors), and the prospect that these actuators provide to combine passive dynamic walking with active walking. Comprehensive mechanical and dynamic simulations were done to decide the suitable parameter for the actuators and the mechanical design. This paper presents results from the early stages of the actuators simulations until the preliminary result on equilibrium control tested in the real robot. These results show promising outcome on the use of these actuators for more complex equilibrium control and walking algorithms. The energy consumption is a key factor for further consideration of this actuators and design approach.

Underwater robot society doing internal inspection and leak monitoring of water systems

In the field of civil engineering an effective internal monitoring of pipes and water storage is very problematic. Normally the sensors used for the task are either fixed or manually movable. Thus they will only provide locally and temporally restricted information. As a solution an underwater robotic sensor/actuator society is presented. The system is capable of operating inside a fluid environment as a kind of distributed sensory system. The value of the system emerges from the interactions between the members. Through a communication system the society fuses information from individual members and provides a more reliable estimate of the conditions inside water systems. Tests results in a transparent demo process consisting of tanks and pipes with a volume of 700 liters are presented.

Controlling the Operation of a Robot Society Through Distributed Environment Sensing

Abstract Societies are formed as collaborative structures to execute tasks that are not possible or are otherwise difficult for individuals alone. There are many types of biological societies, but societies formed by machines or robots are still rare. The concept offers, however, interesting possibilities especially in applications where a long term fully autonomous operation is needed and/or the work to be done can be executed in a parallel way by a group of individuals. The control system for a distributed autonomous robotic system can easily become highly complex. It is normally based on extensive bi-directional communication with a central controller and a guidance of individual robots. When the number of robots increases, the operator’s task becomes difficult. A concept, called robot society, with a flexible operator interface is presented, allowing easy handling of large amount of robots. The operation of the whole society with exploring and foraging as its task is controlled by varying the autonomousity level according to the environment information received from the society members.

Model-based restoration of vibrated images with geometry-free tomography: in-vessel viewing with the ITER European Home Team's probe

A novel approach to restoration of strongly vibrated images is described. The technique uses geometry free tomography method to formulate the task and the Theory of Convex Projections to restore the image. For the restoration no other information is used than the vibrated image itself and the model of the vibration. Subsequently it is shown that the parameters of the vibration model could be easily estimated. The paper emphasizes the insight to the problem as well as describes numerical experiments showing superb performance of the method applied to an international project of designing fusion reactors. It also can be applied to other complex tasks where the need of an acceptable visual observation is higher than the level of the technically available or economically justified potentialities, as in space robotics, machine hand eye coordination, vehicle guidance, mid-flight aircraft refueling, etc.