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Chapter 7 — Motion Planning

Lydia E. Kavraki and Steven M. LaValle

This chapter first provides a formulation of the geometric path planning problem in Sect. 7.2 and then introduces sampling-based planning in Sect. 7.3. Sampling-based planners are general techniques applicable to a wide set of problems and have been successful in dealing with hard planning instances. For specific, often simpler, planning instances, alternative approaches exist and are presented in Sect. 7.4. These approaches provide theoretical guarantees and for simple planning instances they outperform samplingbased planners. Section 7.5 considers problems that involve differential constraints, while Sect. 7.6 overviews several other extensions of the basic problem formulation and proposed solutions. Finally, Sect. 7.8 addresses some important andmore advanced topics related to motion planning.

Kinodynamic motion planning for a car-like robot

Author  Caleb Voss

Video ID : 24

In this video, the objective of the car is to reach a goal location by jumping over a ramp and pushing a block out of the way. This problem requires kinodynamic motion planning for a car-like robot using a physics simulator. This video was generated using the software tools OMPL, Blender, and MORSE.

Chapter 40 — Mobility and Manipulation

Oliver Brock, Jaeheung Park and Marc Toussaint

Mobile manipulation requires the integration of methodologies from all aspects of robotics. Instead of tackling each aspect in isolation,mobilemanipulation research exploits their interdependence to solve challenging problems. As a result, novel views of long-standing problems emerge. In this chapter, we present these emerging views in the areas of grasping, control, motion generation, learning, and perception. All of these areas must address the shared challenges of high-dimensionality, uncertainty, and task variability. The section on grasping and manipulation describes a trend towards actively leveraging contact and physical and dynamic interactions between hand, object, and environment. Research in control addresses the challenges of appropriately coupling mobility and manipulation. The field of motion generation increasingly blurs the boundaries between control and planning, leading to task-consistent motion in high-dimensional configuration spaces, even in dynamic and partially unknown environments. A key challenge of learning formobilemanipulation consists of identifying the appropriate priors, and we survey recent learning approaches to perception, grasping, motion, and manipulation. Finally, a discussion of promising methods in perception shows how concepts and methods from navigation and active perception are applied.

Adaptive synergies for a humanoid robot hand

Author  Centro di Ricerca Enrico Piaggio

Video ID : 658

We present the first implementation of the UNIPI-hand, a highly integrated prototype of an anthropomorphic hand that conciliates the idea of adaptive synergies with a human-form factor. The video validates the hand's versatility by showing grasp and manipulation actions on a variety of objects.

Chapter 74 — Learning from Humans

Aude G. Billard, Sylvain Calinon and Rüdiger Dillmann

This chapter surveys the main approaches developed to date to endow robots with the ability to learn from human guidance. The field is best known as robot programming by demonstration, robot learning from/by demonstration, apprenticeship learning and imitation learning. We start with a brief historical overview of the field. We then summarize the various approaches taken to solve four main questions: when, what, who and when to imitate. We emphasize the importance of choosing well the interface and the channels used to convey the demonstrations, with an eye on interfaces providing force control and force feedback. We then review algorithmic approaches to model skills individually and as a compound and algorithms that combine learning from human guidance with reinforcement learning. We close with a look on the use of language to guide teaching and a list of open issues.

Learning from failure I

Author  Aude Billard

Video ID : 476

This video illustrates how learning from demonstration can be bootstrapped using failed demonstrations only (in place of traditional approaches that use successful demonstrations). The algorithm is described in detail in two publications: 1)D.-H. Grollman, A. Billard: Donut as I do: Learning from failed demonstrations, Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. Robot. Autom. (ICRA), Shanghai (2011) Best Paper Award (Cognitive Robotics); 2) D.-H. Grollman, A. Billard: Robot learning from failed demonstrations, Int. J. Social Robot. 4(4), 331-342 (2012).

Chapter 36 — Motion for Manipulation Tasks

James Kuffner and Jing Xiao

This chapter serves as an introduction to Part D by giving an overview of motion generation and control strategies in the context of robotic manipulation tasks. Automatic control ranging from the abstract, high-level task specification down to fine-grained feedback at the task interface are considered. Some of the important issues include modeling of the interfaces between the robot and the environment at the different time scales of motion and incorporating sensing and feedback. Manipulation planning is introduced as an extension to the basic motion planning problem, which can be modeled as a hybrid system of continuous configuration spaces arising from the act of grasping and moving parts in the environment. The important example of assembly motion is discussed through the analysis of contact states and compliant motion control. Finally, methods aimed at integrating global planning with state feedback control are summarized.

Robotic assembly of emergency-stop buttons

Author  Andreas Stolt et al.

Video ID : 358

The video presents a framework for dual-arm robotic assembly of stop buttons utilizing force/torque sensing under the fixture and force control.

Chapter 76 — Evolutionary Robotics

Stefano Nolfi, Josh Bongard, Phil Husbands and Dario Floreano

Evolutionary Robotics is a method for automatically generating artificial brains and morphologies of autonomous robots. This approach is useful both for investigating the design space of robotic applications and for testing scientific hypotheses of biological mechanisms and processes. In this chapter we provide an overview of methods and results of Evolutionary Robotics with robots of different shapes, dimensions, and operation features. We consider both simulated and physical robots with special consideration to the transfer between the two worlds.

Visual navigation with collision avoidance

Author  Dario Floreano

Video ID : 37

Evolved Khepera displaying vision-based collision avoidance. A network of spiking neurons is evolved to drive the vision-based robot in the arena. A llight below the rotating contacts enables continuous evolution, even overnight.

Evolved group coordination

Author  Phil Husbands

Video ID : 376

Identical evolved robots are required to coordinate by coming together and moving off in the same direction. No roles are pre-assigned. The robots must evolve to coordinate such that one robot takes on the role of leader and the others follow. Only minimal sensing is available (proximity IR sensing) and no dedicated communication channels. The robot neural-network controllers are evolved using a minimal simualtion and, as can be seen, these successfully transfer to reality. Work by Matt Quinn, Giles Mayley, Linc Smith and Phil Husbands at Sussex University.

Chapter 69 — Physical Human-Robot Interaction

Sami Haddadin and Elizabeth Croft

Over the last two decades, the foundations for physical human–robot interaction (pHRI) have evolved from successful developments in mechatronics, control, and planning, leading toward safer lightweight robot designs and interaction control schemes that advance beyond the current capacities of existing high-payload and highprecision position-controlled industrial robots. Based on their ability to sense physical interaction, render compliant behavior along the robot structure, plan motions that respect human preferences, and generate interaction plans for collaboration and coaction with humans, these novel robots have opened up novel and unforeseen application domains, and have advanced the field of human safety in robotics.

This chapter gives an overview on the state of the art in pHRI as of the date of publication. First, the advances in human safety are outlined, addressing topics in human injury analysis in robotics and safety standards for pHRI. Then, the foundations of human-friendly robot design, including the development of lightweight and intrinsically flexible force/torque-controlled machines together with the required perception abilities for interaction are introduced. Subsequently, motionplanning techniques for human environments, including the domains of biomechanically safe, risk-metric-based, human-aware planning are covered. Finally, the rather recent problem of interaction planning is summarized, including the issues of collaborative action planning, the definition of the interaction planning problem, and an introduction to robot reflexes and reactive control architecture for pHRI.

Injury evaluation of human-robot impacts

Author  Sami Haddadin, Alin Albu-Schäffer, Michael Strohmayr, Mirko Frommberger, Gerd Hirzinger

Video ID : 608

In this video, several blunt impact tests are shown, leading to an assessment of which factors dominate injury severity. We will illustrate the effects that robot speed, robot mass, and constraints in the environment have on safety in human-robot impacts. It will be shown that the intuition about high-impact loads being transmitted by heavy robots is wrong. Furthermore, the conclusion is reached that free impacts are by far less dangerous than being crushed. Reference: S. Haddadin, A. Albu-Schäffer, M. Strohmayr, M. Frommberger, G. Hirzinger: Injury evaluation of human-robot impacts, Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. Robot. Autom. (ICRA), Pasadena (2008), pp. 2203 – 2204; doi: 10.1109/ROBOT.2008.4543534.

Chapter 34 — Visual Servoing

François Chaumette, Seth Hutchinson and Peter Corke

This chapter introduces visual servo control, using computer vision data in the servo loop to control the motion of a robot. We first describe the basic techniques that are by now well established in the field. We give a general overview of the formulation of the visual servo control problem, and describe the two archetypal visual servo control schemes: image-based and pose-based visual servo control. We then discuss performance and stability issues that pertain to these two schemes, motivating advanced techniques. Of the many advanced techniques that have been developed, we discuss 2.5-D, hybrid, partitioned, and switched approaches. Having covered a variety of control schemes, we deal with target tracking and controlling motion directly in the joint space and extensions to under-actuated ground and aerial robots. We conclude by describing applications of visual servoing in robotics.

IBVS on a 6-DOF robot arm (2)

Author  Francois Chaumette, Seth Hutchinson, Peter Corke

Video ID : 60

This video shows an IBVS on a 6-DOF robot arm with Cartesian coordinates of image points as visual features and a current interaction matrix in the control scheme. It corresponds to the results depicted in Figure 34.3.

Chapter 63 — Medical Robotics and Computer-Integrated Surgery

Russell H. Taylor, Arianna Menciassi, Gabor Fichtinger, Paolo Fiorini and Paolo Dario

The growth of medical robotics since the mid- 1980s has been striking. From a few initial efforts in stereotactic brain surgery, orthopaedics, endoscopic surgery, microsurgery, and other areas, the field has expanded to include commercially marketed, clinically deployed systems, and a robust and exponentially expanding research community. This chapter will discuss some major themes and illustrate them with examples from current and past research. Further reading providing a more comprehensive review of this rapidly expanding field is suggested in Sect. 63.4.

Medical robotsmay be classified in many ways: by manipulator design (e.g., kinematics, actuation); by level of autonomy (e.g., preprogrammed versus teleoperation versus constrained cooperative control), by targeted anatomy or technique (e.g., cardiac, intravascular, percutaneous, laparoscopic, microsurgical); or intended operating environment (e.g., in-scanner, conventional operating room). In this chapter, we have chosen to focus on the role of medical robots within the context of larger computer-integrated systems including presurgical planning, intraoperative execution, and postoperative assessment and follow-up.

First, we introduce basic concepts of computerintegrated surgery, discuss critical factors affecting the eventual deployment and acceptance of medical robots, and introduce the basic system paradigms of surgical computer-assisted planning, execution, monitoring, and assessment (surgical CAD/CAM) and surgical assistance. In subsequent sections, we provide an overview of the technology ofmedical robot systems and discuss examples of our basic system paradigms, with brief additional discussion topics of remote telesurgery and robotic surgical simulators. We conclude with some thoughts on future research directions and provide suggested further reading.

Da Vinci Xi introduction | Engadget

Author  Intuitive Surgical

Video ID : 824

The movie shows the use and performance of the Da Vinci Xi robot, the novel generation of the Da Vinci robot which features improved flexibility.

Chapter 40 — Mobility and Manipulation

Oliver Brock, Jaeheung Park and Marc Toussaint

Mobile manipulation requires the integration of methodologies from all aspects of robotics. Instead of tackling each aspect in isolation,mobilemanipulation research exploits their interdependence to solve challenging problems. As a result, novel views of long-standing problems emerge. In this chapter, we present these emerging views in the areas of grasping, control, motion generation, learning, and perception. All of these areas must address the shared challenges of high-dimensionality, uncertainty, and task variability. The section on grasping and manipulation describes a trend towards actively leveraging contact and physical and dynamic interactions between hand, object, and environment. Research in control addresses the challenges of appropriately coupling mobility and manipulation. The field of motion generation increasingly blurs the boundaries between control and planning, leading to task-consistent motion in high-dimensional configuration spaces, even in dynamic and partially unknown environments. A key challenge of learning formobilemanipulation consists of identifying the appropriate priors, and we survey recent learning approaches to perception, grasping, motion, and manipulation. Finally, a discussion of promising methods in perception shows how concepts and methods from navigation and active perception are applied.

Interactive perception of articulated objects

Author  Roberto Martin-Martin

Video ID : 676

Interactive perception of articulated objects with multilevel, recursive estimation based on task-specific priors.