Active Stereo Vision for Mobile Robot Localization and Mapping Path Planning

We present path-planning techniques for a multiple mobile robot system. The mobile robot has the shape of a cylinder, and its diameter, height, and weight are 8 cm, 15 cm, and 1.5 kg, respectively. The controller of the mobile robot is an MCS-51 chip, and it acquires detection signals from sensors through I/O pins. It receives commands from the supervising computer via a wireless RF interface, and transmits the status of the robots to the supervising computer via a wireless RF interface. The mobile robot system is a module-based system, and contains a controller module (including two DC motors and drivers), an obstacle detection module, a voice module, a wireless RF module, an encoder module, and a compass detection module. We propose an evaluation method to arrange the position of the multiple mobile robot system, and develop a path-planning interface on the supervising computer. In the experimental results, the mobile robots were able to receive commands from the supervising computer, and to move their next positions according to the proposed method.

The construction of a smart autonomous mobile robot system that can operate in an anonymous environment can be difficult. Building an autonomous mobile robot requires collecting data from sensors and cameras in order to recognize the surrounding environment, get knowledge of existing landmarks, and figure out its position and orientation. Many research studies have been carried out in recent years providing algorithms for achieving autonomous motion of mobile robot systems and object detection. The most common platform utilized for robot motion design is ROS (Robot Operating System) and for object detection YOLO (You Only Look Once) is a common choice. Additionally, the autonomous system needs motion planning in a systematic way to avoid obstacles by using LIDAR or other sensing methods generating the feedback signals required for control of motion around occupied spaces. One of the most effective and versatile feedback systems for mobile robot control can be constructed using visual feedback, which relies on a high-resolution camera that processes the image in real-time and the result is fed back to the control system for decision making. Visual feedback can be employed alone without sensors for feedback control of autonomous mobile robots, and it can be used for multiple tasks like path planning, obstacle avoidance, object detection, object recognition in addition to motion control. In this research, results of design and construction of an autonomous mobile rescue robot for finding victims through video data are presented. It is aimed to find victims via applying video as a data collection and feedback generation tool in the autonomous mobile robot control system. The visual feedback and YOLO v3 are used not only for finding victims but also for motion control. Our autonomous mobile robot is designed to move smoothly to the victim's direction and avoids obstacles by using ROS Global Planner. The robot is tested in multiple scenarios in different locations, various obstacle and victim numbers, and satisfactory results with good performances are obtained.

According to the problem of obstacles avoidance path planning in mobile robot system, this article uses the Q-learning algorithm in reinforcement learning to solve it. The original Q-learning algorithm has the problem of low learning efficiency, then an improved algorithm is proposed that adds a layer of learning process based on it. So that the mobile robot can find obstacles and target positions as soon as possible, which accelerates the efficiency of path planning and improves the efficiency. Finally, the path planning is established by a grid method on Python, and the comparison between the original algorithm, the improved algorithm proves that the learning efficiency of the algorithm is improved.

Robotic path planning is a field of research which is gaining traction given the broad domains of interest to which path planning is an important systemic requirement. The aim of path planning is to optimise the efficacy of robotic movement in a defined operational environment. For example, robots have been employed in many domains including: Cleaning robots (such as vacuum cleaners), automated paint spraying robots, window cleaning robots, forest monitoring robots, and agricultural robots (often driven using satellite and geostationary positional satellite data). Additionally, mobile robotic systems have been utilised in disaster areas and locations hazardous to humans (such as war zones in mine clearance). The coverage path planning problem describes an approach which is designed to determine the path that traverses all points in a defined operational environment while avoiding static and dynamic (moving) obstacles. In this paper we present our proposed Smooth-STC model, the aim of the model being to identify an optimal path, avoid all obstacles, prevent (or at least minimise) backtracking, and maximise the coverage in any defined operational environment. The experimental results in a simulation show that, in uncertain environments, our proposed smooth STC method achieves an almost absolute coverage rate and demonstrates improvement when measured against alternative conventional algorithms.

The challenges of integrating a mobile robotic system into an application environment are many. Most problems inherent to installing the mobile robotic system fall into one of three categories: (1) the physical environment - location(s) where, and conditions under which, the mobile robotic system will work; (2) the technological environment - external equipment with which the mobile robotic system will interact; and (3) the human environment - personnel who will operate and interact with the mobile robotic system. The successful integration of a mobile robotic system into these three types of application environment requires more than a good pair of pliers. The tools for this job include: careful planning, accurate measurement data (as-built drawings), complete technical data of systems to be interfaced, sufficient time and attention of key personnel for training on how to operate and program the robot, on-site access during installation, and a thorough understanding and appreciation - by all concerned - of the mobile robotic system's role in the security mission at the site, as well as the machine's capabilities and limitations. Patience, luck, and a sense of humor are also useful tools to keep handy during a mobile robotic system installation. This paper will discuss some specific examples of problems in each of three categories, and explore approaches to solving these problems. The discussion will draw from the author's experience with on-site installations of mobile robotic systems in various applications. Most of the information discussed in this paper has come directly from knowledge learned during installations of Cybermotion's SR2 security robots. A large part of the discussion will apply to any vehicle with a drive system, collision avoidance, and navigation sensors, which is, of course, what makes a vehicle autonomous. And it is with these sensors and a drive system that the installer must become familiar in order to foresee potential trouble areas in the physical, technical, and human environment.

PurposeSonar sensor-based mobile robot mapping is an efficient and low cost technique for the application such as localization, autonomous navigation, SLAM and path planning. In multi-robots system, numbers of sonar sensors are used and the sound waves from sonar are interacting with the sound wave of other sonar causes wave interference. Because of wave interference, the generated sonar grid maps get distorted which resulted in decreasing the reliability of mobile robot’s navigation in the generated grid maps. This research study focus in removing the effect of wave interfaces in the sonar mapping to achieve robust navigation of mobile robot.Design/methodology/approachThe wrong perception (occupancy grid map) of the environment due to cross talk/wave interference is eliminated by randomized the triggering time of sonar by varying the delay/sleep time of each sonar sensor. A software-based approach randomized triggering technique (RTT) is design in laboratory virtual instrument engineering workbench (LabVIEW) that randomized the triggering time of the sonar sensor to eliminate the effect of wave interference/cross talk when multiple sonar are placed in face-forward directions.FindingsTo check the reliability of the RTT technique, various real-world experiments are perform and it is experimentally obtained that 64.8% improvement in terms of probabilities in the generated occupancy grid map has been attained when compared with the conventional approaches.Originality/valueThis proposed RTT technique maybe implementing for SLAM, reliable autonomous navigation, optimal path planning, efficient robotics vision, consistent multi-robotic system, etc.

Mobile robot localization and map building are very important for a mobile robot to perform a navigation-based service task to aid the aged or disabled in an indoor environment (office, facilities or at home). In order to enable mobile robot to perform service tasks autonomously, the information of environment in which the mobile robot moves is needed. To obtain the accurate map, many different sensors system and techniques have been developed. Approaches of mapping can roughly be classified according to the kind of sensor data processed and the matching algorithms [S. Thrun et al., 1996, 1998, 2000, 2004; Chong, K.S et al., 1996; C.-C. Wang et al., 2002; G. Dissanayake et al., 2000; B. barshan et al., 1995; Weimin Shen et al., 2005]. In this paper, we proposed a method of map building using interactive GUI for a mobile robot. The reason we proposed this method is that it is difficult for a mobile robot to generate an accurate map although many kinds of sensors are used. The proposed method enables the operator to modify map built by sensors, compared with the real-time video from web camera by using modification tool in interactive GUI. Laser Range Finder (LRF) was used to get the information of the environment in which mobile robot moving. In order to improve self-localization of mobile robot, Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) was introduced. By the results of simulation and experiments, the developed EKF is effective in self-localization of mobile robot. This paper introduces the architecture of the system and gives some experimental results to verify the effectiveness of the developed system. The rest of the paper consists of 5 sections. Section 2 describes the structure of the proposed system. Section 3 presents the developed algorithm of self-localization of mobile robot and gives some simulation and experimental results to verify the effectiveness of the EKF in improving precision of positioning of mobile robot. Section 4 details the developed LRF data processing algorithm. Section 5 introduces the developed interactive GUI. The experimental results are given in Section 6. Section 7 concludes the paper. 13

This article presents experimental studies of fuzzy logic application to control a two-wheel mobile robot(TWMR) system. The TWMR system is composed of two systems, an inverted pendulum system and a mobile robot system. Although linear controllers can stabilize the TWMR, fuzzy controllers are expected to have robustness to uncertainties so that the resulting performances are expected to be better. Nominal fuzzy rules are used to control balance and position of TWMR. Fuzzy logic is embedded on a DSP chip to control the TWMR. Balancing performances of the PID controller and the fuzzy controller under disturbances are compared through extensive experimental studies.

Path planning plays an essential role in mobile robot system. Aiming at the low efficiency of A* algorithm in the process of robot path finding, this paper proposes two improvement methods to solve the problem of inefficient searching of A* algorithm. The first method is to improve the distance calculation formula in A* algorithm, and the second method is to perform the evaluation function in A* algorithm. Weighted processing. Experimental data shows that the comprehensively improved A* algorithm dramatically reduces the number of useless access nodes and speeds up the time-consuming search process, which reduces the search time by about 12～14% compared to the standard A* algorithm.

This paper presents a new tool based on DSmT (Dezert-Smarandache Theory) and fast-Hough self-localization which is applied to autonomous mobile robot's map reconstruction. Uncertainty from sonar information is fused and managed in rebuilding grid map effectively with DSmT, since fast-Hough self-localization from laser information overcomes some shortcomings of classical Hough transformation including high amount of computation and low precision of localization. When a virtual mobile robot evolves in the virtual environment with different outline features, the result can adequately testify that the new tool owns better performance to rebuild map. In general, this research provides an approach for studying autonomous navigation of mobile robot or unmanned land vehicle (ULV) in unknown environment, also provides a human- computer interactive interface to manage and manipulate the robot remotely.

Recently, stereovision has appeared in robotics as a source of information for real-time mapping and path planning. In this paper, an intelligent motion system for mobile robots is designed and implemented using stereovision. The proposed system uses stereovision as a primary method for sensing the environment, and the system is able to navigate intelligently in an indoor environment with varying degrees of obstacle complexity. It creates noiseless and high-confidence 3D point clouds and uses these point clouds as an input for the mapping and path-planning modules. The proposed system was built by developing, enhancing, and integrating various techniques, modules and algorithms. The Stereovision-based Path-planning module is the integration of three main enhanced techniques: (1) the multi-baseline multi-view stereovision filter (MMSVF), (2) accurate floor detection and segmentation (AFDS), and (3) the intelligent gazing module (IGM). This Stereovision-based Path planning (MMSVF, IGM, and AFDS) was integrated with the Fuzzy Logic Motion Controller (FLMC). All techniques, modules and algorithms are implemented using a multi-threaded and client---server-based architecture. To prove the viability and robustness of our proposed system, we have integrated all components of the system into a fully functional mobile robot navigation system. We compared the performance of the main modules with that of similar modules in the literatures, and showed that our modules had better performance. Testing the whole system is more important than just testing each module individually. To the best of our knowledge, the literatures lack such testing. Hence, in this paper we present the performance of our complete integrated system in different environments using different parameters and different architectures.

This paper presents the path planning and motion control of a self-reconfigurable mobile robot system, focusing on module-to-module autonomous docking and alignment tasks. STORM, which stands for Self-configurable and Transformable Omni-Directional Robotic Modules, features a unique mode-switching ability and novel docking mechanism design. This enables the modules that make up STORM to dock with each other and form a variety configurations in or to perform a large array of tasks. The path planning and motion control presented here consists of two parallel schemes. A Lyapunov function-based precision controller is proposed to align the target docking mechanisms in a small range of the target position. Then, an optimization-based path planning algorithm is proposed to help find the fastest path and determine when to switch its locomotion mode in a much larger range. Both numerical simulations and real-world experiments were carried out to validate these proposed controllers.

ABSTRACTOccupancy grid mapping in the field of mobile robotics is an integrative and promising solution for the various prerequisite such as path planning, autonomous navigation, localization, SLAM (Simultaneously Localization And Mapping) etc. The reliability of the occupancy grid mapping depends upon diverse parameters such as sensor accuracy, size of a grid cell, intrinsic and extrinsic parameters, sensor registration, sensor modelling, scanning angle, ambient conditions, etc. This research reveals the uncertainty in the generation of the laser occupancy grid map with the implementation of conventional laser geometry technique when the detected obstacle/target is on the perimeter of the grid cell. During autonomous navigation, the obstacle and the mobile robot are in a dynamic state that consequence in the wrong perception of the environment by identifying the wrong grid cell as occupied in the occupancy grid map when the obstacle is on the perimeter of the grid cell. The examined error is reduced by a newly designed Perimeter-based SLAM (P-SLAM) technique based on the vector algebra, laser geometry, Inverse Sensor Model and coordinate system. The obtained results with the implementation of P-SLAM are validated w.r.t conventional approaches with qualitative and quantitative analysis by performing real-world experiments.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to put forward a rolling assistant robot with two rolling modes, and the multi-mode rolling motion strategy with path planning algorithm, which is suitable to this multi-mode mobile robot, is proposed based on chessboard-shaped grid division (CGD).Design/methodology/approachBased on the kinematic analysis and motion properties of the mobile parallel robot, the motion strategy based on CGD path planning algorithm of a mobile robot with two rolling modes moving to a target position is divided into two parts, which are local self-motion planning and global path planning. In the first part, the mobile parallel robot can move by switching and combining the two rolling modes; and in the second part, the specific algorithm of the global path planning is proposed according to the CGD of the moving ground.FindingsThe assistant robot, which is a novel 4-RSR mobile parallel robot (where R denotes a revolute joint and S denotes a spherical joint) integrating operation and rolling locomotion (Watt linkage rolling mode and 6R linkage rolling mode), can work as a moving spotlight or worktable. A series of simulation and prototype experiment results are presented to verify the CGD path planning strategy of the robot, and the performance of the path planning experiments in simulations and practices shows the validation of the path planning analysis.Originality/valueThe work presented in this paper is a further exploration to apply parallel mechanisms with two rolling modes to the field of assistant rolling robots by proposing the CGD path planning strategy. It is also a new attempt to use the specific path planning algorithm in the field of mobile robots for operating tasks.

Algorithms for mobile robotic systems are generally implemented on purely digital computing platforms. Developing alternative computational platforms may lead to more energy-efficient and responsive mobile robotics. Here, we report a hybrid analog-digital computing platform enabled by memristors on a mobile inverted pendulum robot. Our mobile robotic system can tune the conductance states of memristors adaptively using a model-free optimization method to achieve optimal control performance. We implement sensor fusion and the motion control algorithms on our hybrid analog-digital computing platform and demonstrate more than one order of magnitude enhancement of speed and energy efficiency over traditional digital platforms.