No Arabic abstract
Active Search and Tracking for search and rescue missions or collaborative mobile robotics relies on the actuation of a sensing platform to detect and localize a target. In this paper we focus on visually detecting a radio-emitting target with an aerial robot equipped with a radio receiver and a camera. Visual-based tracking provides high accuracy, but the directionality of the sensing domain may require long search times before detecting the target. Conversely, radio signals have larger coverage, but lower tracking accuracy. Thus, we design a Recursive Bayesian Estimation scheme that uses camera observations to refine radio measurements. To regulate the camera pose, we design an optimal controller whose cost function is built upon a probabilistic map. Theoretical results support the proposed algorithm, while numerical analyses show higher robustness and efficiency with respect to visual and radio-only baselines.
Model predictive control (MPC) is widely used for path tracking of autonomous vehicles due to its ability to handle various types of constraints. However, a considerable predictive error exists because of the error of mathematics model or the model linearization. In this paper, we propose a framework combining the MPC with a learning-based error estimator and a feedforward compensator to improve the path tracking accuracy. An extreme learning machine is implemented to estimate the model based predictive error from vehicle state feedback information. Offline training data is collected from a vehicle controlled by a model-defective regular MPC for path tracking in several working conditions, respectively. The data include vehicle state and the spatial error between the current actual position and the corresponding predictive position. According to the estimated predictive error, we then design a PID-based feedforward compensator. Simulation results via Carsim show the estimation accuracy of the predictive error and the effectiveness of the proposed framework for path tracking of an autonomous vehicle.
We consider the problem of bridging the gap between geometric tracking control theory and implementation of model predictive control (MPC) for robotic systems operating on manifolds. We propose a generic on-manifold MPC formulation based on a canonical representation of the system evolving on manifolds. Then, we present a method that solves the on-manifold MPC formulation by linearizing the system along the trajectory under tracking. There are two main advantages of the proposed scheme. The first is that the linearized system leads to an equivalent error system represented by a set of minimal parameters without any singularity. Secondly, the process of system modeling, error-system derivation, linearization and control has the manifold constraints completely decoupled from the system descriptions, enabling the development of a symbolic MPC framework that naturally encapsulates the manifold constraints. In this framework, users need only to supply system-specific descriptions without dealing with the manifold constraints. We implement this framework and test it on a quadrotor unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) operating on $SO(3) times mathbb{R}^n$ and an unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) moving on a curved surface. Real-world experiments show that the proposed framework and implementation achieve high tracking performance and computational efficiency even in highly aggressive aerobatic quadrotor maneuvers.
We present an active visual search model for finding objects in unknown environments. The proposed algorithm guides the robot towards the sought object using the relevant stimuli provided by the visual sensors. Existing search strategies are either purely reactive or use simplified sensor models that do not exploit all the visual information available. In this paper, we propose a new model that actively extracts visual information via visual attention techniques and, in conjunction with a non-myopic decision-making algorithm, leads the robot to search more relevant areas of the environment. The attention module couples both top-down and bottom-up attention models enabling the robot to search regions with higher importance first. The proposed algorithm is evaluated on a mobile robot platform in a 3D simulated environment. The results indicate that the use of visual attention significantly improves search, but the degree of improvement depends on the nature of the task and the complexity of the environment. In our experiments, we found that performance enhancements of up to 42% in structured and 38% in highly unstructured cluttered environments can be achieved using visual attention mechanisms.
This paper proposes a controller for stable grasping of unknown-shaped objects by two robotic fingers with tactile fingertips. The grasp is stabilised by rolling the fingertips on the contact surface and applying a desired grasping force to reach an equilibrium state. The validation is both in simulation and on a fully-actuated robot hand (the Shadow Modular Grasper) fitted with custom-built optical tactile sensors (based on the BRL TacTip). The controller requires the orientations of the contact surfaces, which are estimated by regressing a deep convolutional neural network over the tactile images. Overall, the grasp system is demonstrated to achieve stable equilibrium poses on various objects ranging in shape and softness, with the system being robust to perturbations and measurement errors. This approach also has promise to extend beyond grasping to stable in-hand object manipulation with multiple fingers.
This paper introduces a new technique for learning probabilistic models of mass and friction distributions of unknown objects, and performing robust sliding actions by using the learned models. The proposed method is executed in two consecutive phases. In the exploration phase, a table-top object is poked by a robot from different angles. The observed motions of the object are compared against simulated motions with various hypothesized mass and friction models. The simulation-to-reality gap is then differentiated with respect to the unknown mass and friction parameters, and the analytically computed gradient is used to optimize those parameters. Since it is difficult to disentangle the mass from the friction coefficients in low-data and quasi-static motion regimes, our approach retains a set of locally optimal pairs of mass and friction models. A probability distribution on the models is computed based on the relative accuracy of each pair of models. In the exploitation phase, a probabilistic planner is used to select a goal configuration and waypoints that are stable with a high confidence. The proposed technique is evaluated on real objects and using a real manipulator. The results show that this technique can not only identify accurately mass and friction coefficients of non-uniform heterogeneous objects, but can also be used to successfully slide an unknown object to the edge of a table and pick it up from there, without any human assistance or feedback.