1,720,973 research outputs found
AI-CART: An Algorithm to Incrementally Calculate Artificial potential fields in Real-Time
No full textPotential fields have been widely used for mobile robot navigation and obstacle avoidance. Their success is due to two main reasons: the simplicity with which a path planning problem can be represented and solved and, most of all, the computational efficiency that allows its real-time applicability. In this paper we analyze the complexity of calculating the artificial potential field and propose a novel algorithm that statistically reduces i
Exploiting ETHNOS for Communication and Coordination of Heterogeneous Soccer Robots in the ART Team
No full textInter robot communication and coordination is without doubt a key issue for every robotic application that relies on the successful cooperation of different robots to achieve a specific goal. RoboCup is an example of a scenario in which this problem needs to be addressed and many teams have focused on this research aspect in their system development
Distributed architecture for autonomous robots
No full textIn this paper we propose a distributed architecture for intelligent robotic systems. The architecture is specific to this domain because it intends to provide support for this type of applications that share particular functional requirements: concurrent perception and action, task and plan execution, reasoning, `intelligent behaviours'. The architecture also aims to improve re-usability and integration of different software components. It allows the transparent distribution of processes on different computers in a network to take advantage of the increased computational power and to overcome the vehicles on-board limitations. We focus on the related cognitive model, on the internal structure of the architecture and of its components. We also examine in detail the EIE protocol we defined to exchange information within the distributed system. Finally we indicate some experimental results
Autonomous Navigation and Localization in Service Mobile Robotics
No full textIn this paper we address the problem of autonomous navigation and localization in indoor environments, by referring in particular to the specific scenario of Service Mobile Robotics applications. The localization system uses active beacons (i.e. active transponders distributed throughout the building) as reference points; the estimate of the position of the robot and its uncertainty, both retrieved by correcting the estimate provided by odometry through an Extended Kalman Filter, are fed to the navigation system in order to help the robot to plan and execute target-oriented navigation tasks while showing a reactive behavior to handle the unpredictability of the environment
Pre-emptive versus non-pre-emptive real time scheduling in intelligent mobile robotics
No full textAutonomous and semi-autonomous mobile robots have to perform a multiplicity of concurrent activities in order to carry out useful tasks in unstructured human-populated environments. Even if it is commonly accepted that a successful accomplishment of assigned tasks requires some sort of real time capability to quickly react and adapt to environmental changes, it is not clear which operating system support is best suited for the scheduling and synchronizing of concurrent activities with different timing requirements. This paper discusses this problem, comparing two different real time scheduling policies for autonomous robot applications: pre-emptive rate monotonic and non pre-emptive Earliest Deadline First (EDF). Experimental results are presented and evaluated
Global Localisation via Sub-Graph Isomorphism
No full textA novel approach to the global localisation problem
for an autonomous mobile robot is presented. Instead of
referring to traditional map-based techniques, we choose
to extract a graph-like topological representation of the
free-space from occupancy grids, thus shifting the map-
matching problem to a sub-graph isomorphism one. An
efficient any-time algorithm is described in detail and
simulated experimental results are provided
Navigation and localization for service mobile robots based on active beacons
No full textIn this paper, we discuss the problem related to a reference scenario in which Service Mobile Robots must be able to operate within human populated environments for carrying out different tasks, focusing in particular on navigation and localization issues. We present an approach that relies on a beacon-based positioning system and ultrasonic sensors in order to carry out safe localization and navigation throughout different areas of large and complex buildings. The localization system uses active beacons (i.e., active transponders distributed throughout the building) as reference points; the estimate of the position of the robot and of its uncertainty, both retrieved by correcting the estimate provided by odometry through an Extended Kalman Filter, are fed to navigation system in order to help the robot to plan and execute target-oriented navigation tasks while showing a reactive behaviour to handle the unpredictability of the environment
ETHNOS-II – A Programming Environment for Distributed Multiple Robotic Systems
No full textMost robot software architectures focus on the problem of imitating human intelligence and thus typically refer to a single robot perceiving, navigating and acting in the environment. However, the rapid progress of communication technology has modified this reference scenario, offering, the possibility of “distributing” the intelligent activity on a network of robots, computers and other general sensing and actuating devices. This allows the robot to merge with the environment it operates in and, moreover, different robots may co-operate as a single entity in order to carry out a specific task more efficiently. This paper tackles this “extended” problem, presenting ETHNOS-II, a programming environment for the design of a system composed of different robots integrated with the environment they operate in ETHNOS-II provides support from two main point of views: from the software engineering perspective it provides support for platform independence, software integration and re-use, computation distribution; from the runtime perspective it provides support for real-time execution and event handling, inter-robot communication, and intra-robot resource allocation
A programming environment for real-time control of distributed multiple robotic systems
No full textIn recent years there has been great interest in robot software control architectures. However, although many interesting solutions have been presented, most of the research problems tackled related to a single robot perception, navigation and action in everyday environments. Instead, most of the practical applications of mobile robotics for service tasks in civilian environments consist of systems composed of multiple robots communicating with each other, with external sensing and actuating devices, and with external supervising workstations. RoboCup offers a great opportunity to deal with this problem. In fact the software architecture of a robot soccer player must allow successful intra-robot integration of the different activities (visual perception, path planning, strategy planning, motion control, etc.) spanning many different types of representation (raw sensor data, images, symbolic plans, etc.) and it must also guarantee successful inter-robot integration by supporting communication and cooperation. This paper focuses on this problem, presenting ETHNOS-IV - a programming environment for the design of a real-time control system composed of different robots, devices and external supervising or control stations - which has been successfully used within the Italian ART robot team in the RoboCup-99 competition. ETHNOS provides support from three main point of views which will be addressed in detail: inter-robot and intra-robot communication, real-time task scheduling, and software engineering and code reuse. Experimental results illustrating the advantages of this approach will also be presented
- …
