Vittorio Belotti

Humanitarian demining : path planning and remote robotic sweeping

Purpose – Humanitarian demining is addressed as an engineering‐driven duty, aiming at optimal price/effectiveness figures, joining low‐cost robotics and flexible automation. The mine sweeping is highly dangerous task, and safety is sought by automatic rigs, with remote steering and control. The small price is achieved with resort to locally available equipment, technology and know‐how.Design/methodology/approach – The robotic solutions are split at three levels: the mobility enabler, exploiting standard agricultural machinery; the demining outfits, specialising cheap end‐effectors; the robot path planner, exploring reliable remote govern options. The approach aims at the pace‐wise deployment of consistent rigs with assessed productivity and tiny investment.Findings – The paper explores basic ideas to modify common agricultural machines, placing in front proper effectors and specifying the guidelines needed to choose both carriers and suitable demining tools. The remote command logic of the suggested demin...

Lifecycle Monitoring for the Automotive Eco-Sustainability

The growth sustainability requires dramatic changes to lower the natural resources consumption and the surroundings pollution, by recovery/remediation processes. The EU policy aims at the extended producers/suppliers responsibility, with effective charges on the products allowed to be put on the market, used and called-back, in view of the properly small impact and transparent lifecycle acknowledgement. This leads to «extensions» in designing the new offers with integrated monitoring and service functions. The design for the lifecycle eco-effectiveness is accomplishment, better qualifying the far-seeing companies according to the EU eco-policy. The idea is to reach the duty visibility, by the extended plug-and-play concept, based on series of integrated design options, assigning the structural and functional modules, for the operation monitoring, the reliability assessment and the impact appraisal. This instrumental setting includes intangible information/communication aids, to confer ambient intelligence abilities. This way, the on-process visibility is assured, and exploited for on-duty servicing and end-of-life processing. The example case chosen deals with the critical situation of the parts manufactured in plastics, which are deemed to represent most relevant portion in the cars to come. The following recovery options are possible: - the reuse of the reconditioned items, according to suitably assessed life-extension opportunities; - the recycling of the warn-out components, with the regeneration and reusing of the materials; - the thermal recovery of residual stuffs, within careful handling and pollution-safe warnings; - the reduction to registered ASR, automobile shredding residue, within the EU directives limits. The on-board information system includes, as innovative feature, the resort to identifying tags or labels, to be read and written through wireless links. The technology exploits cheap and compact supports, allowing the labelling of the component, from production, to lifecycle, with an identifying code. The RFID, Radio Frequency Identification Device, is privileged, as ideal means for the component traceability and the history, use modes/styles and cumulated issues storing.Copyright

Remote control and monitoring of an underground robotic drilling equipment for landfill remediation

Pollution control and landfill remediation are urgent incumbents, and robot technology is effective means to supply safe and worthy solutions, on condition to figure out reliable task-oriented architectures and to enable remote-steered duty cycles by implementing the appropriate software-hardware information aids. The paper presents a noteworthy example achievement, specially addressing the requirement analysis, as basic step to develop the instrumental architecture for the measurement and actuation equipment, and to develop the suited remote sensing and control environment, based on an innovative client-server lay-out. The approach introduces actual design demands by explanatory instances, to show how the approach is exploited for the case achievement.

Implementation of a Fractional-Order Control for Robotic Applications

Usually, industrial robots are controlled by means of separate position loops for each axis, and each position loop is closed by a classical discrete-time PID, with integer-order derivative and integral. It is well known that the application of fractional-order derivatives can improve the dynamic position-tracking performance of a closed-loop mechatronic device. Nevertheless, the discrete-time implementation of fractional-order control algorithms presents several issues, which determine differences with respect to continuous-time simulations. In the present paper, the practical discrete-time implementation of a robotic axis controller combining fractional-order and integer-order derivative terms is discussed, and experimental results are shown.

Robot Remote Control and Mine Sweeping

Demining is calamity of third world countries. The clearing is ceaseless, more expensive than the spreading, and terrorist return is obtained by weakening of the antagonistic population. The mines are cheapest weapon, built to make horrible injuries, affecting active people, with major falls-off into economic growth. The disaster is notably cruel in Sri Lanka, with anti-person mines spread in the northeast region. After the ceasefire, the international organisations started the mine sweeping, with poor issues, due to politico-economical motivations in direct bond with wants in the technical effectiveness. The pitiable situation is worsened, as most rich lands are removed from farming exploitation, with increasing of the internally displaced persons. Now, clearing is engineering duty, and the humanitarian goal comes to be technical challenge. The advanced robotics fulfils clean and reliable tasks, on condition to upgrade sophistication and cost and to loose third-world appropriateness. The challenge is to turn local machines and awareness into effective robotic aids, willingly used by the local people, and to enhance the on-going outcomes. The analysis, mainly, addresses the following points: - the engaged technologies need to provide special purpose outfits and to involve operators having adapted uniformity; - the work-flow pre-setting ought to detail the duty-cycles and to establish the standard achievements; - the planning has to specify the on-process warning/emergency management and the failure protection rules; - the operators’ instruction and training shall aim at off-process optimised work-flows to circumvent risky issues; - the effectiveness comes from organised routine agendas, in conformity with allotted tasks and emergency events. This is a mix of organisational and technologic demands, calling for responsible commitment of the involved people, so that the local Civil Service is entitled to do the clearing operations, and the all engaged community is solidly concerned. The winning solution shall look at low-cost robotic outfits, to be obtained with resort to nearby available resources and competences (e.g., drawn on from the local agricultural machinery and know-how), and full account of the cost limits, while aiming at the process effectiveness by the mix of enabling cues, principally deferred to enhancing the regional awareness and the factual dedication. The paper stresses on fairly unorthodox robots, addressing unmanned effectors facilities joined with intelligent remote-command abilities, not as advanced achievements, rather as cheapest productivity upgrading, assembled from standard farming devices, through the shared know-how and commitment of locally involved operators.Copyright

Remote Controlled Underground Robot for Landfill Drainage

The environmental policy of EU, acknowledged by the Economics Ministers in June 2001 meeting, establishes a set of priorities. The present paper deals with urgent demands in these fields, with attention on pollution decreasing/removal. A survey of European Topic Centre on Waste, based on partial data only, points out the risk of sewage and leachate contamination of subsoil and waterbed for 13500 landfills. The European Council, in the Directive 97/C_76/01, requests the member states to take the necessary measures to ensure, to fullest practicable extent, that old-landfills and polluting-sites should be rehabilitated. This request is specifically addressed, with the Microdrainage project, EVK4-CT-2002-30012, successfully achieved building the robotic prototype, properly operative from mid 2005. The paper presents the innovative developments undertaken by the project. A new drilling equipment is built, suited for autonomous operation, with fully automatic effectors and rods feeding and with multi-function boring/drilling head, to comply with complex work-task schedules. The mechanical architecture needs proper sophistication, to deal with rods supplying along the micro-tunnel, local buffering to complete the lay-down of a draining line, and mast feeding by the purposely designed arm. The system implementation, thereafter, tackles with the severe technical specifications for the micro-tunnel surroundings, and exacting performance requirements in rig levelling, mast attitude accuracy and work-task sequencing. By this project, the successful deployment of these enabling technologies helped in developing the novel robotic device, capable to solve the de-pollution requirements of the EU environmental policy.Copyright