Hammer: an Android based application for end-user industrial robot programming

This paper presents a novel tablet based end-user interface for industrial robot programming (called Hammer). This application makes easier to program tasks for industrial robots like polishing, milling or grinding. It is based on the Scratch programming language, but specifically design and created for Android OS. It is a visual programming concept that allows non-skilled programmer operators to create programs. The application also allows to monitor the tasks while it is being executed by overlapping real time information through augmented reality. The application includes a teach pendant screen that can be customized according to the operator needs at every moment.

Robot building for preschoolers

This paper describes Electronic Blocks, a new robot construction element designed to allow children as young as age three to build and program robotic structures. The Electronic Blocks encapsulate input, output and logic concepts in tangible elements that young children can use to create a wide variety of physical agents. The children are able to determine the behavior of these agents by the choice of blocks and the manner in which they are connected. The Electronic Blocks allow children without any knowledge of mechanical design or computer programming to create and control physically embodied robots. They facilitate the development of technological capability by enabling children to design, construct, explore and evaluate dynamic robotics systems. A study of four and five year-old children using the Electronic Blocks has demonstrated that the interface is well suited to young children. The complexity of the implementation is hidden from the children, leaving the children free to autonomously explore the functionality of the blocks. As a consequence, children are free to move their focus beyond the technology. Instead they are free to focus on the construction process, and to work on goals related to the creation of robotic behaviors and interactions. As a resource for robot building, the blocks have proved to be effective in encouraging children to create robot structures, allowing children to design and program robot behaviors.

Gesture-based teleoperation using a holonomic robot

This work presents the development and integration of an user interface (UI) framework based on various current input devices that take advantage of our ergonomics. The purpose is to teleoperate a holonomic robot using upper member gestures and postures for studying the suitable of such interfaces when programming and interacting with a mobile robot. As performance vary from UI to UI the framework is focused to be used as a complementary industrial or didactic tool thus, changing how inexperience users tackle their first impressions when working with mobile robots while performing simple gesture-based teleoperation tasks. © 2012 ICROS.

Programming Robots with an Agent-Oriented BDI-based Control Architecture: Explorations using the JaCa and Webots Platforms

La crescente disponibilità di dispositivi meccanici e -soprattutto - elettronici le cui performance aumentano mentre il loro costo diminuisce, ha permesso al campo della robotica di compiere notevoli progressi. Tali progressi non sono stati fatti unicamente per ciò che riguarda la robotica per uso industriale, nelle catene di montaggio per esempio, ma anche per quella branca della robotica che comprende i robot autonomi domestici. Questi sistemi autonomi stanno diventando, per i suddetti motivi, sempre più pervasivi, ovvero sono immersi nello stesso ambiente nel quale vivono gli essere umani, e interagiscono con questi in maniera proattiva. Essi stanno compiendo quindi lo stesso percorso che hanno attraversato i personal computer all'incirca 30 anni fa, passando dall'essere costosi ed ingombranti mainframe a disposizione unicamente di enti di ricerca ed università, ad essere presenti all'interno di ogni abitazione, per un utilizzo non solo professionale ma anche di assistenza alle attività quotidiane o anche di intrattenimento. Per questi motivi la robotica è un campo dell'Information Technology che interessa sempre più tutti i tipi di programmatori software. Questa tesi analizza per prima cosa gli aspetti salienti della programmazione di controllori per robot autonomi (ovvero senza essere guidati da un utente), quindi, come l'approccio basato su agenti sia appropriato per la programmazione di questi sistemi. In particolare si mostrerà come un approccio ad agenti, utilizzando il linguaggio di programmazione Jason e quindi l'architettura BDI, sia una scelta significativa, dal momento che il modello sottostante a questo tipo di linguaggio è basato sul ragionamento pratico degli esseri umani (Human Practical Reasoning) e quindi è adatto alla implementazione di sistemi che agiscono in maniera autonoma. Dato che le possibilità di utilizzare un vero e proprio sistema autonomo per poter testare i controllori sono ridotte, per motivi pratici, economici e temporali, mostreremo come è facile e performante arrivare in maniera rapida ad un primo prototipo del robot tramite l'utilizzo del simulatore commerciale Webots. Il contributo portato da questa tesi include la possibilità di poter programmare un robot in maniera modulare e rapida per mezzo di poche linee di codice, in modo tale che l'aumento delle funzionalità di questo risulti un collo di bottiglia, come si verifica nella programmazione di questi sistemi tramite i classici linguaggi di programmazione imperativi. L'organizzazione di questa tesi prevede un capitolo di background nel quale vengono riportare le basi della robotica, della sua programmazione e degli strumenti atti allo scopo, un capitolo che riporta le nozioni di programmazione ad agenti, tramite il linguaggio Jason -quindi l'architettura BDI - e perché tale approccio è adatto alla programmazione di sistemi di controllo per la robotica. Successivamente viene presentata quella che è la struttura completa del nostro ambiente di lavoro software che comprende l'ambiente ad agenti e il simulatore, quindi nel successivo capitolo vengono mostrate quelle che sono le esplorazioni effettuate utilizzando Jason e un approccio classico (per mezzo di linguaggi classici), attraverso diversi casi di studio di crescente complessità; dopodiché, verrà effettuata una valutazione tra i due approcci analizzando i problemi e i vantaggi che comportano questi. Infine, la tesi terminerà con un capitolo di conclusioni e di riflessioni sulle possibili estensioni e lavori futuri.

Designing High Performance Factory Automation Applications on Top of DDS

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The Behavior Language; User's Guide

The Behavior Language is a rule-based real-time parallel robot programming language originally based on ideas from [Brooks 86], [Connell 89], and [Maes 89]. It compiles into a modified and extended version of the subsumption architecture [Brooks 86] and thus has backends for a number of processors including the Motorola 68000 and 68HCll, the Hitachi 6301, and Common Lisp. Behaviors are groups of rules which are activatable by a number of different schemes. There are no shared data structures across behaviors, but instead all communication is by explicit message passing. All rules are assumed to run in parallel and asynchronously. It includes the earlier notions of inhibition and suppression, along with a number of mechanisms for spreading of activation.

Planning and Teaching Compliant Motion Strategies

This thesis presents a new high level robot programming system. The programming system can be used to construct strategies consisting of compliant motions, in which a moving robot slides along obstacles in its environment. The programming system is referred to as high level because the user is spared of many robot-level details, such as the specification of conditional tests, motion termination conditions, and compliance parameters. Instead, the user specifies task-level information, including a geometric model of the robot and its environment. The user may also have to specify some suggested motions. There are two main system components. The first component is an interactive teaching system which accepts motion commands from a user and attempts to build a compliant motion strategy using the specified motions as building blocks. The second component is an autonomous compliant motion planner, which is intended to spare the user from dealing with "simple" problems. The planner simplifies the representation of the environment by decomposing the configuration space of the robot into a finite state space, whose states are vertices, edges, faces, and combinations thereof. States are inked to each other by arcs, which represent reliable compliant motions. Using best first search, states are expanded until a strategy is found from the start state to a global state. This component represents one of the first implemented compliant motion planners. The programming system has been implemented on a Symbolics 3600 computer, and tested on several examples. One of the resulting compliant motion strategies was successfully executed on an IBM 7565 robot manipulator.

Autonomous mobile robots designing for the medical trash collector task

This paper describes the UNESP robotic team in the medical trash collector task, proposed on the 5 rd IEEE Latin American Robots Competition in the LEGO category. We present our understanding of the task and discuss the proposed solution, focusing on the mechanical and computational issues of the robots. The mechanics is based on rigid body capability of transforming rotational into curvilinear movement. With respect to the computational control, the system is modeled as a reactive system with sequential transition of behaviors. A state-machine is proposed to allow this transition, and the synchronization of robotic states is guaranteed by the communication system. The proposed approach has shown itself capable of dealing with the high difficulty degree of this cooperative task. ©2006 IEEE.

A framework for learning in humanoid simulated robots

One of the most important characteristics of intelligent activity is the ability to change behaviour according to many forms of feedback. Through learning an agent can interact with its environment to improve its performance over time. However, most of the techniques known that involves learning are time expensive, i.e., once the agent is supposed to learn over time by experimentation, the task has to be executed many times. Hence, high fidelity simulators can save a lot of time. In this context, this paper describes the framework designed to allow a team of real RoboNova-I humanoids robots to be simulated under USARSim environment. Details about the complete process of modeling and programming the robot are given, as well as the learning methodology proposed to improve robot's performance. Due to the use of a high fidelity model, the learning algorithms can be widely explored in simulation before adapted to real robots. © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.

Scaffolding children’s robot building and programming activities

Since 2001 the School of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering (ITEE) at the University of Queensland has been involved in RoboCupJunior activities aimed at providing children with the Robot building and programming knowledge they need to succeed in RoboCupJunior competitions. These activities include robotics workshops, the organization of the State-wide RoboCupJunior competition, and consultation on all matters robotic with schools and government organizations. The activities initiated by ITEE have succeeded in providing children with the scaffolding necessary to become competent, independent robot builders and programmers. Results from state, national and international competitions suggest that many of the children who participate in the activities supported by ITEE are subsequently able to purpose- build robots to effectively compete in RoboCupJunior competitions. As a result of the scaffolding received within workshops children are able to think deeply and creatively about their designs, and to critique their designs in order to make the best possible creation in an effort to win.

Improving robot vision models for object detection through interaction

We propose a method for learning specific object representations that can be applied (and reused) in visual detection and identification tasks. A machine learning technique called Cartesian Genetic Programming (CGP) is used to create these models based on a series of images. Our research investigates how manipulation actions might allow for the development of better visual models and therefore better robot vision. This paper describes how visual object representations can be learned and improved by performing object manipulation actions, such as, poke, push and pick-up with a humanoid robot. The improvement can be measured and allows for the robot to select and perform the `right' action, i.e. the action with the best possible improvement of the detector.

Positional Consensus of Multi-Agent Systems Using Linear Programming Based Decentralized Control with Rectilinear Decision Domain

In this paper we develop a Linear Programming (LP) based decentralized algorithm for a group of multiple autonomous agents to achieve positional consensus. Each agent is capable of exchanging information about its position and orientation with other agents within their sensing region. The method is computationally feasible and easy to implement. Analytical results are presented. The effectiveness of the approach is illustrated with simulation results.