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Chapter 46 — Simultaneous Localization and Mapping

Cyrill Stachniss, John J. Leonard and Sebastian Thrun

This chapter provides a comprehensive introduction in to the simultaneous localization and mapping problem, better known in its abbreviated form as SLAM. SLAM addresses the main perception problem of a robot navigating an unknown environment. While navigating the environment, the robot seeks to acquire a map thereof, and at the same time it wishes to localize itself using its map. The use of SLAM problems can be motivated in two different ways: one might be interested in detailed environment models, or one might seek to maintain an accurate sense of a mobile robot’s location. SLAM serves both of these purposes.

We review the three major paradigms from which many published methods for SLAM are derived: (1) the extended Kalman filter (EKF); (2) particle filtering; and (3) graph optimization. We also review recent work in three-dimensional (3-D) SLAM using visual and red green blue distance-sensors (RGB-D), and close with a discussion of open research problems in robotic mapping.

Treemap: An O(log n) algorithm for indoor simultaneous localization and mapping

Author  Udo Frese

Video ID : 441

This video provides an illustration of graph-based SLAM, described in Chap. 46.3.3, Springer Handbook of Robotics, 2nd edn (2016). Reference: U. Frese: Treemap: An O(log n) algorithm for indoor simultaneous localization and mapping, Auton. Robot. 21(2), 103–122 (2006).

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.

Atlas walking and manipulation

Author  DRC Team MIT

Video ID : 662

Autonomy demonstration with the MIT Atlas robot which is composed of the execution of a sequence of autonomous sub-tasks. Walking and manipulation plans are computed online with object fitting input from the perception system.

A day in the life of Romeo and Juliet (mobile manipulators)

Author  Oussama Khatib

Video ID : 776

Arm/vehicle coordination, dynamically decoupled self motion control, useful compliant motion tasks, cooperative compliant motion and internal force control.

Chapter 61 — Robot Surveillance and Security

Wendell H. Chun and Nikolaos Papanikolopoulos

This chapter introduces the foundation for surveillance and security robots for multiple military and civilian applications. The key environmental domains are mobile robots for ground, aerial, surface water, and underwater applications. Surveillance literallymeans to watch fromabove,while surveillance robots are used to monitor the behavior, activities, and other changing information that are gathered for the general purpose of managing, directing, or protecting one’s assets or position. In a practical sense, the term surveillance is taken to mean the act of observation from a distance, and security robots are commonly used to protect and safeguard a location, some valuable assets, or personal against danger, damage, loss, and crime. Surveillance is a proactive operation,while security robots are a defensive operation. The construction of each type of robot is similar in nature with amobility component, sensor payload, communication system, and an operator control station.

After introducing the major robot components, this chapter focuses on the various applications. More specifically, Sect. 61.3 discusses the enabling technologies of mobile robot navigation, various payload sensors used for surveillance or security applications, target detection and tracking algorithms, and the operator’s robot control console for human–machine interface (HMI). Section 61.4 presents selected research activities relevant to surveillance and security, including automatic data processing of the payload sensors, automaticmonitoring of human activities, facial recognition, and collaborative automatic target recognition (ATR). Finally, Sect. 61.5 discusses future directions in robot surveillance and security, giving some conclusions and followed by references.

Scout robot for outdoor surveillance

Author  Nikos Papanikolopoulos

Video ID : 681

The Scout robot has been developed at the University of Minnesota in partnership with MTS, Honeywell, and ATC. The Scouts are specialized robots that carry out low-level, usually parallel tasks to meet the mission objectives. Scouts can include simple sensory units or units with locomotion, tools, or other specializations. All Scouts have a similar form factor to enable delivery of the ranger by a uniform mechanism. The Scout has a body roughly 11 cm long and 4 cm in diameter (the special foam wheels can expand to 5 cm in diameter). This body fits snugly inside a protective covering called a Sabot which absorbs much of the impact during the launch and enables the Scout to break through a glass window, land safely, and be ready to begin its mission.

Chapter 72 — Social Robotics

Cynthia Breazeal, Kerstin Dautenhahn and Takayuki Kanda

This chapter surveys some of the principal research trends in Social Robotics and its application to human–robot interaction (HRI). Social (or Sociable) robots are designed to interact with people in a natural, interpersonal manner – often to achieve positive outcomes in diverse applications such as education, health, quality of life, entertainment, communication, and tasks requiring collaborative teamwork. The long-term goal of creating social robots that are competent and capable partners for people is quite a challenging task. They will need to be able to communicate naturally with people using both verbal and nonverbal signals. They will need to engage us not only on a cognitive level, but on an emotional level as well in order to provide effective social and task-related support to people. They will need a wide range of socialcognitive skills and a theory of other minds to understand human behavior, and to be intuitively understood by people. A deep understanding of human intelligence and behavior across multiple dimensions (i. e., cognitive, affective, physical, social, etc.) is necessary in order to design robots that can successfully play a beneficial role in the daily lives of people. This requires a multidisciplinary approach where the design of social robot technologies and methodologies are informed by robotics, artificial intelligence, psychology, neuroscience, human factors, design, anthropology, and more.

Visual communicative nonverbal behaviors of the Sunflower robot

Author  Kerstin Dautenhahn

Video ID : 219

The video illustrates the experiments as described in Koay et. al (2013). The Sunflower robot, developed by Kheng Lee Koay at the University of Hertfordshire, is a non-humanoid robot, using communicative signals inspired by dog-human interaction. The biological behaviors had been abstracted and translated to the specific robot embodiment. The results show that the robot is able to communicate its intention to a person and encourages the participant to attend to events and locations in a home environment. The work has been part of the of the European project LIREC (http://lirec.eu/project).

Chapter 17 — Limbed Systems

Shuuji Kajita and Christian Ott

A limbed system is a mobile robot with a body, legs and arms. First, its general design process is discussed in Sect. 17.1. Then we consider issues of conceptual design and observe designs of various existing robots in Sect. 17.2. As an example in detail, the design of a humanoid robot HRP-4C is shown in Sect. 17.3. To design a limbed system of good performance, it is important to take into account of actuation and control, like gravity compensation, limit cycle dynamics, template models, and backdrivable actuation. These are discussed in Sect. 17.4.

In Sect. 17.5, we overview divergence of limbed systems. We see odd legged walkers, leg–wheel hybrid robots, leg–arm hybrid robots, tethered walking robots, and wall-climbing robots. To compare limbed systems of different configurations,we can use performance indices such as the gait sensitivity norm, the Froude number, and the specific resistance, etc., which are introduced in Sect. 17.6.

STriDER: Self-excited tripedal dynamic experimental robot

Author  Dennis Hong

Video ID : 534

Tripod walking robot developed by Dr. Heaston, Prof. Hong, Dr. Morazzani, Dr. Ren, and Dr. Goldman at the Robotics and Mechanisms Laboratory of Virginia Tech.

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.

Combined mobility and manipulation - Operational space control of free-flying space robots

Author  Jeff Russakow, Stephen Rock

Video ID : 787

An environmental space is simulated in two dimensions using an air-bearing over a flat surface. The operational space-control framework enables the dynamically decoupled motion and force control of the object.

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.

Dancing with Juliet

Author  Oussama Khatib, Kyong-Sok Chang, Oliver Brock, Kazuhito Yokoi, Arancha Casal, Robert Holmberg

Video ID : 820

This video presents experiments in human-robot interaction using the Stanford Mobile Manipulator platforms. Each platform consists of a Puma 560 manipulator mounted on a holonomic mobile base. The experiments shown in this video are the results of the implementation of various methodologies developed for establishing the basic autonomous capabilities needed for robot operations in human environments. The integration of mobility and manipulation is based on a task-oriented control strategy which provides the user with two basic control primitives: end-effector task control and platform self-posture control.

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 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.

Safe physical human-robot collaboration

Author  Fabrizio Flacco, Alessandro De Luca

Video ID : 609

The video summarizes the state of the on-going research activities on physical human-robot collaboration (pHRC) at the DIAG Robotics Lab, Sapienza University of Rome, as of March 2013, and performed within the European Research Project FP7 287511 SAPHARI (http://www.saphari.eu) Reference: F. Flacco, A. De Luca: Safe physical human-robot collaboration, IEEE/RSJ Int. Conf. Intel. Robot. Syst. (IROS), Tokyo (2013)