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Now showing 1 - 10 of 730
  • Publication
    From Deployments Of Elder Care Service Robots To The Design Of Affordable Low-Complexity End-Effectors And Novel Manipulation Techniques
    (2021-01-01) Rodrigues Mucchiani, Caio Cesar Carlos
    This thesis proposes an investigation on both behavioral and technical aspects of human-robot interaction (HRI) in elder care settings, in view of an affordable platform capable of executing desired tasks. The behavioral investigation combines a qualitative study with focus groups and surveys from not only the elders’ standpoint, but also from the standpoint of healthcare professionals to investigate suitable tasks to be accomplished by a service robot in such environments. Through multiple deployments of various robot embodiments at actual elder care facilities (such as at a low-income Supportive Apartment Living, SAL, and Program of All-Inclusive Care, PACE Centers) and interaction with older adults, design guidelines are developed to improve on both interaction and usability aspects. This need assessment informed the technical investigation of this work, where we initially propose picking and placing objects using end-effectors without internal mobility (or zero degrees-of-freedom, DOF), considering both quasi-static (tipping and regrasping as in-hand manipulation) and dynamic approaches. Maximizing grasping versatility by allowing robots to grasp multiple objects sequentially using a single end-effector and actuator is also proposed. These novel manipulation techniques and end-effector designs focus on minimizing robot hardware usage and cost, while still performing complex tasks and complying with safety constraints imposed by the elder care facilities.
  • Publication
    The Soundness and Completeness of ACSR (Algebra of Communicating Shared Resources)
    (1993-11-01) Brémond-Grégoire, Patrice; Choi, Jin-Young; Lee, Insup
    Recently, significant progress has been made in the development of timed process algebras for the specification and analysis of real-time systems; one of which is a timed process algebra called ACSR. ACSR supports synchronous timed actions and asynchronous instantaneous events. Timed actions are used to represent the usage of resources and to model the passage of time. Events are used to capture synchronization between processes. To be able to specify real systems accurately, ACSR supports a notion of priority that can be used to arbitrate among timed actions competing for the use of resources and among events that are ready for synchronization. Equivalence between ACSR terms is defined in terms of strong bisimulation. The paper contains a set of algebraic laws that are proven sound and complete for finite ACSR agents.
  • Publication
    Analysis of a Simplified Hopping Robot
    (1988-05-01) Koditschek, Daniel E; Buehler, Martin
    We offer some preliminary analytical results concerning simplified models of Raibert’s hopper. We represent the task of achieving a recurring hopping height for an actuated “ball” robot as a stability problem in the setting of a nonlinear discrete dynamical system. We model the properties of Raibert’s control scheme in a simplified fashion, and provide conditions under which the procedure results in closed loop dynamics possessed of a globally attracting fixed point - the formal rendering of what we intuitively mean by a “correct” strategy. The motivation for this work is the hope that it will facilitate the development of general design principles for “dynamically dexterous” robots. For more information: Kod*Lab
  • Publication
    A Scalable Strategy for Open Loop Magnetic Control of Microrobots Using Critical Points
    (2016-05-11) Guerrero-Bonilla, Luis; Bhattacharya, Subhrajit; Kumar, Vijay
    A novel scalable strategy for open loop control of ferromagnetic microrobots on a plane using a scalable array of electromagnets is presented. Instead of controlling the microrobot directly, we create equilibrium points in the magnetic force field that are stable and attractive on the plane in which the microrobot is to be controlled. The microrobot moves into these equilibrium points rapidly in presence of low viscous forces, and thus controlling the equilibrium points let us control the microrobot precisely. An unit/cell in the array of electromagnets allows precise control of the microrobot in the unit/cell’s domain. Motion synthesis across multiple overlapping domains allows control of the microrobot in large regions across the array. We perform numerical analysis and demonstrate the control of the ferromagnetic microrobot using the proposed method through simulations.
  • Publication
    Robust Multi-Sensor Fusion: A Decision-Theoretic Approach
    (1990-08-01) Kamberova, Gerda; Mintz, Max L
    Many tasks in active perception require that we be able to combine different information from a variety of sensors that relate to one or more features of the environment. Prior to combining these data, we must test our observations for consistency. The purpose of this paper is to examine sensor fusion problems for linear location data models using statistical decision theory (SDT). The contribution of this paper is the application of SDT to obtain: (i) a robust test of the hypothesis that data from different sensors are consistent; and (ii) a robust procedure for combining the data that pass this preliminary consistency test. Here, robustness refers to the statistical effectiveness of the decision rules when the probability distributions of the observation noise and the a priori position information associated with the individual sensors are uncertain. The standard linear location data model refers to observations of the form: Z = ϴ + V, where V represents additive sensor noise and ϴ denotes the "sensed" parameter of interest to the observer. While the theory addressed in this paper applies to many uncertainty classes, the primary focus of this paper is on asymmetric and/or multimodal models, that allow one to account for very general deviations from nominal sampling distributions. This paper extends earlier results in SDT and multi-sensor fusion obtained by [Zeytinoglu and Mintz, 1984], [Zeytinoglu and Mintz, 1988], and [McKendall and Mintz, 1988].
  • Publication
    The Penn Baxter Face Database
    (2017-03-23) Fitter, Naomi T.; Kuchenbecker, Katherine J.
    The Penn Baxter Face Database is composed of Baxter robot face images designed in a variety of expressions and colors. Each of these images was photographed on the physical Baxter robot and assessed by internet raters (N = 568) in an Amazon Mechanical Turk survey. Raters assessed the pleasantness and energeticness of each robot face and also shared how safe and pleased each face made them feel. This project was published in our ICSR 2016 paper entitled “Designing and Assessing Expressive Open-Source Faces for the Baxter Robot.” After hearing of interest from other researchers, we previously released our Baxter face database on GitHub at https://github.com/nfitter/BaxterFaces. This dataset, now additionally available on Scholarly Commons, includes the developed Baxter faces, photographs used in the Mechanical Turk survey, editable source files for the studied faces, and bonus faces developed in our subsequent design work with Baxter. These contents may benefit any Baxter users who publish images to the robot's face. The organization of the database is explained in the included ReadMe file.
  • Publication
    On the Correspondence Between Proofs and Lambda-Terms
    (1993-05-27) Gallier, Jean H
    The correspondence between natural deduction proofs and λ-terms is presented and discussed. A variant of the reducibility method is presented, and a general theorem for establishing properties of typed (first-order) λ-terms is proved. As a corollary, we obtain a simple proof of the Church-Rosser property, and of the strong normalization property, for the typed λ-calculus associated with the system of (intuitionistic) first-order natural deduction, including all the connectors →, ×, +, ∀,∃ and ⊥ (falsity) (with or without η-like rules).
  • Publication
    Analysis of A Simplified Hopping Robot
    (1991-12-01) Koditschek, Daniel E; Buehler, Martin
    This article offers some analytical results concerning simplified models of Raibert's hopper. We represent the task of achieving a recurring hopping height for an actuated "ball" robot as a stability problem in a nonlinear discrete dynamical control system. We model the properties of Raibert's control scheme in a simplified fashion and argue that his strategy leads to closed-loop dynamics governed by a well-known class of functions, the unimodal maps. The rich mathematical literature on this subject greatly advances our ability to determine the presence of an essentially globally attracting fixed point-the formal rendering of what we intuitively mean by a "correct" strategy. The motivation for this work is the hope that it will facilitate the development of general design principles for "dynamically dexterous" robots.
  • Publication
    Typing Untyped Lambda-Terms, or Reducibility Strikes Again!
    (1994-12-07) Gallier, Jean H
    It was observed by Curry that when (untyped) λ-terms can be assigned types, for example, simple types, these terms have nice properties (for example, they are strongly normalizing). Coppo, Dezani, and Veneri, introduced type systems using conjunctive types, and showed that several important classes of (untyped) terms can be characterized according to the shape of the types that can be assigned to these terms. For example, the strongly normalizable terms, the normalizable terms, and the terms having head-normal forms, can be characterized in some systems D and DΩ. The proofs use variants of the method of reducibility. In this paper, we present a uniform approach for proving several meta-theorems relating properties of λ-terms and their typability in the systems D and DΩ. Our proofs use a new and more modular version of the reducibility method. As an application of our metatheorems, we show how the characterizations obtained by Coppo, Dezani, Veneri, and Pottinger, can be easily rederived. We also characterize the terms that have weak head-normal forms, which appears to be new. We conclude by stating a number of challenging open problems regarding possible generalizations of the realizability method.
  • Publication
    A Framework for Scalable Cooperative Navigation of Autonomous Vehicles
    (2001-01-01) Fierro, Rafael; Song, Peng; Das, Aveek K; Kumar, R. Vijay
    We describe a general framework for controlling and coordinating a group of non-holonomic mobile robots equipped with range sensors, with applications ranging from scouting and reconnaissance, to search and rescue and manipulation tasks. We first describe a set of control laws that allows each robot to control its position and orientation with respect to neighboring robots or obstacles in the environment. We then develop a coordination protocol that allows the robots to automatically switch between the control laws to follow a specified trajectory. Finally, we describe two simple trajectory generators that are derived from potential field theory. The first allows each robot to plan its reference trajectory based on the information available to it. The second scheme requires sharing of information and results in a trajectory for the designated leader. Numerical simulations illustrate the application of these ideas and demonstrate the scalability of the proposed framework for a large group of robots.