Tomasz Kornuta

Rubik's cube as a benchmark validating MRROC++ as an implementation tool for service robot control systems

Purpose – This paper seeks to develop universal software (a programming framework) enabling the implementation of service robot controllers. The software should distinguish the hardware‐oriented part of the system from the task‐oriented one. Moreover, force, vision as well as other sensors should be taken into account. Multi‐effector systems have to be considered.Design/methodology/approach – The robot programming framework MRROC++ has been implemented as a hierarchical structure composed of processes, potentially consisting of threads. All of the software is written in an object‐oriented manner using C++ and is supervised by a QNX real‐time operating system. The framework has been verified on several systems executing diverse tasks. Here, a Rubiks cube puzzle‐solving system, consisting of two arms and utilizing force control and visual servos, is presented.Findings – The presented framework is well suited to tasks requiring two‐handed manipulation with force sensing, visual servoing and online construct...

A systematic method of designing control systems for service and field robots

The paper presents a systematic approach to robot control system design. The robot is treated as an embodied agent decomposed into effectors, receptors, both real and virtual, and a control subsystem. Those entities communicate through communication buffers. The activities of those entities are governed by FSMs that invoke behaviours formulated in terms of transition functions taking as arguments the contents of input buffers and producing the values inserted into output buffers. The method is exemplified by applying it to a design of a control system of a robot capable of locating an open box and covering it with a lid. Other systems that have been designed in a similar way are presented as well, to demonstrate the versatility of the approach.

Performance Evaluation of Binary Descriptors of Local Features

The article is devoted to the evaluation of performance of image features with binary descriptors for the purpose of their utilization in recognition of objects by service robots. In the conducted experiments we used the dataset and followed the methodology proposed by Mikolajczyk and Schmid. The performance analysis takes into account the discriminative power of a combination of keypoint detector and feature descriptor, as well as time consumption.

Control and programming of a multi‐robot‐based reconfigurable fixture

Purpose – Machining fixtures must fit exactly the work piece to support it appropriately. Even slight change in the design of the work piece renders the costly fixture useless. Substitution of traditional fixtures by a programmable multi‐robot system supporting the work pieces requires a specific control system and a specific programming method enabling its quick reconfiguration. The purpose of this paper is to develop a novel approach to task planning (programming) of the reconfigurable fixture system.Design/methodology/approach – The multi‐robot control system has been designed following a formal approach based on the definition of the system structure in terms of agents and transition function definition of their behaviour. Thus, a modular system resulted, enabling software parameterisation. This facilitated the introduction of changes brought about by testing different variants of the mechanical structure of the system. A novel approach to task planning (programming) of the reconfigurable fixture syst...

Specification of a Multi-agent Robot-Based Reconfigurable Fixture Control System

The paper presents a formal specification of the control software of a reconfigurable fixture used for machining thin plates. The fixture is based on relocatable supporting robots. A multi-agent approach to control system structuring is used. The behaviour of agents is defined in terms of finite state automatons, transition functions, and terminal conditions.

Specification of Robotic Systems on an Example of Visual Servoing

Abstract The paper presents a formal method of specifying complex robotic systems. Although the method is general, here it is applied to the description of two, however diverse, robot behaviours, in which the induced motion was computed on the basis of information retrieved from different cameras: a camera integrated with the robot gripper and a camera statically mounted above the scene. The presented experimental results confirm the correctness of the developed systems, thus validate the design method.

Diagnostic Requirements in Multi-robot Systems

The paper presents a generic robot control architecture facilitating the collection of data for the purpose of diagnostics. Each robot within the system is treated as an embodied agent composed of effectors, receptors and a control system. Its behaviour is described in terms of transition functions and: initial, terminal and error conditions. Data within such systems can be collected at the control system sampling rate, thus both continuous monitoring and event driven one are possible.

Behavior-based control system of a robot actively recognizing hand postures

Complex robotic systems require a formal method of specification that guides the system developer and facilitates the implementation. In this paper the proposed formalism is utilized to specify a control system of a robot identifying hand postures. The formalism is based on the concept of an agent and the description of an agents behaviors by defining transition functions. The presented exemplary system — a robot capable of actively adjusting its location so as to recognize reliably hand gestures presented by a human operator — needs to exhibit six behaviors, which are defined formally.

Application of the FraDIA vision framework for robotic purposes

With computer vision playing more and more important role in robotics, it became clear that a new approach, standardizing the method of vision subsystems development and testing, is required. This paper presents FraDIA, a vision framework, that can work as a stand-alone application, as well as a vision subsystem of the MRROC++ based robotic controllers. The framework description emphasizes its architecture and methods of vision tasks implementation. The diversity of presented robotic tasks utilizing the framework prove its usability.

WUT Visual Perception Dataset: A Dataset for Registration and Recognition of Objects

Modern robots are typically equipped with many sensors with different modalities, e.g. RGB cameras, Time-of-Flight cameras or RGB-D sensors. Thus development of universal, modality-independent algorithms require appropriate datasets and benchmarks. In this paper we present WUT Visual Perception Dataset, consisting of five datasets, captured with different sensors with the goal of development, comparison and evaluation of algorithms for automatic object model registration and object recognition.