Lecture Notes in Control and Information Sciences 236 Editor: M. Thoma Anibal T. de Almeida and Oussama Khatib (Eds) Autonomous Robotic Systems ~ Springer Series Advisory Board A. Bensoussan • M.J. Grimble I.L. Massey • Y.Z. Tsypkin P. Kokotovic • H. Kwakernaak Editors Professor Anibal T. de Almeida Instituto de Sistemas e Rob6tica Departamento de Engenharia Electrot~cnica, Universidade de Coimbra, Polo II, 3030 Coimbra, Portugal Professor Oussama Khatib Department of Computer Science, University of Stanford, Palo Alto, CA 94305, USA ISBN 1-85233-036-8 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg New York British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Autonomous robotic systems. (Lecture notes in control and information sciences ; 236) 1.Robotics 2.Automation I.Almeida, Anibal T. de II.Khatib, O. (Oussama) 629.8'92 ISBN 1852330368 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers. © Springer-Verlag London Limited 1998 Printed in Great Britain The use of registered names, trademarks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher makes no representation, express or implied, with regard to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and cannot accept any legal responsibility or liability for any errors or omissions that may be made. Typesetting: Camera ready by editors Printed and bound at the Athenaeum Press Ltd., Gateshead, TDae & Wear 6913830-543210 Printed on acid-free paper Preface The Advanced Research Workshop on "Autonomous Robotic Systems" was held in the University of Coimbra, in Cohrkbra, Portugal, from June 19 to 21, 1997. The aim of this meeting was to bring together leading researchers from around the world to present and discuss the recent developments in the area of autonomous systems for mobility and manipulation. The presentations at the workshop were made by researchers from Europe, Asia, and North America, and the meeting was attended by 80 participants from 15 countries. Autonomous robotic systems have been the focus of much attention in recent years and significant progress has been made in this growing area. These efforts have resulted in a host of successful applications. However, there is a vast potential for new applications, which require further research and technological advances. This volume includes the key contributions presented at the workshop. These contributions represent a wide coverage of the state-of-the-art and the emerging research directions in autonomous robotic systems. The material was developed in an advanced tutorial style making its contents more accessible to interested readers. These contributions are organised in four parts: Sensors and Navigation, Cooperation and Telerobotics, Applications, and Legged and Climbing Robots. The first part concerns sensors and navigation in mobile robotics. An effective navigation system developed for natural unstructured environments, as well as its implementation results on a cross-country rover, are presented. Various active vision systems, with potential application to surveillance tasks, are described, and the integration of active vision in mobile platforms is analysed. A survey of sensors for mobile robot navigation is presented. The synergy of combining inertial sensors with absolute sensors seems to overcome the limitations of either type of systems when used alone. The emerging area of odour sensors in mobile robotics, based on biological systems, is also analysed. The second part focuses on cooperation and telerobotics. Different approaches for the generation of smooth robot motion and desired forces in a natural way, are outlined. Issues of position versus velocity control are discussed and alternatives to force-reflection and pure force feed-forward are described. Cooperation is vI central to distributed autonomous robot systems. The development of cooperative behaviours is discussed from a local and global coordination point of view and new cooperation methodologies are proposed. Mobile manipulation capabilities are key to many new applications of robotics. The inertial properties of holonomic mobile manipulation systems are discussed, and the basic strategies developed for their dynamic coordination and control are presented. The third part is devoted to applications. Existing and emerging new applications of autonomous systems are discussed. These applications include operations in the forestry sector, floor cleaning in buildings, mining industry, hospitals and tertiary buildings, assistance to the elderly and handicapped, and surgery. The fourth part is concemed with legged and climbing robots. These machines are becoming increasingly important for dealing with highly irregular environments and steep surfaces. A survey of walking and climbing machines, as well as the characterisation of machines with different configurations, are presented. On behalf of the Organising Committee, we would like to express our appreciation and thanks to the European Commission, Junta Nacional de Investigacao Cientifica e Tecnologica, FLAD, and the University of Coimbra, for the financial support they extended to this workshop. Also we would like to thank the University of Coimbra and the Department of Electrical Engineering for hosting the workshop. Our special thanks go to the researchers, staff, and students of the Institute of Systems and Robotics, who generously gave of their time to help in the organisation of this meeting. The Editors Anibal T. de Almeida Oussama Khatib February, 1998 Contents Preface v Part I - Sensors and Navigation Autonomous Outdoor Mobile Robot Navigation: The EDEN Project 3 Raja Chatila, Simon Lacroix, Michel Devy, Thierry Simdon Active Vision for Autonomous Systems 21 Helder ]. Ara~jo, ]. Dias, ]. Batista, P. Peixoto Sensors for Mobile Robot 51 ]orge Lobo, Lino Marques, ]. Dias, U. Nunes, A.T. de Almeida Application of Odour Sensors in Mobile Robotics 83 Lino Marques, A.T. de Almeida Part II - Cooperation and Telerobotics Advanced Telerobotics 99 G. Hirzinger, B. Brunner, R. Koeppe, ]. Vogel Cooperative Behaviour Between Autonomous Agents 125 Toshio Fukuda, Kosuke Sekiyama Mobile Manipulator Systems 141 Oussama Khatib Part III- Applications Forestry Robotics - Why, What and When 151 Aarne Halme, Mika Vainio Robotics for the Mining Industry 163 Peter L Corke, Jonathan M. Roberts, Graeme ]. Winstanley viii HelpMate@, the Trackless Robotic Courier: A Perspective on the Development of a Commercial Autonomous Mobile Robot John M. Evans, Bala Krishnamurthy Intelligent Wheelchairs and Assistant Robots ]osep Amat Robots in Surgery Alicia Casals Part IV - Legged and Climbing Robots Legged Walking Machines Friedrich Pfeiffer, Steuer loser, Thomas Roflmann Climbing Robots Gurvinder S. Virk 182 211 222 237 264 Part One Sensors and Navigation Autonomous Outdoor Mobile Robot Navigation: The EDEN Project Raja Chatila, Simon Lacroix, Michel Devy, Thierry Simeon Active Vision for Autonomous Systems HeIder ]. Ara~jo, ]. Dias, ]. Batista, P. Peixoto Sensors for Mobile Robot ]orge Lobo, Lino Marques, ]. Dias, U. Nunes, A.T. de Almeida Application of Odour Sensors in Mobile Robotics Lino Marques, A.T. de Almeida [...]... tracked by the vision system, and gives information about its position to the robot control The robot control uses that information as a feedback to maintain the distance and orientation to the target The visual fixation control must be one visual process that runs in the active vision system and has capabilities to define a target, to concentrate the vision system on the target and follow it A process with... integration has two distinct aspects: the interaction and cooperation between different control systems and the use of a common feedback information provided by the vision system The system is controlled to keep constant the distance and the orientation of the robot and the vision system The solution for this problem deals implies the interaction of different control systems using visual feedback while performing... Geometric Relations The information of the target position in the images is used to control the position and orientation of the vision system and of the mobile robot in order to maintain the relative distance and orientation to the target Essentially the system must control the position of each actuator to maintain this goal This implies to control the actuators of the vision system and also of the mobile... make them easily recognisable, and uses them as landmarks for anchoring the environment model and to locate itself Landmarks will actually be specific features on such objects As the robot moves the updating of the model is based on an extended Kalman filter To recognize objects and landmarks, we use the two following complementary criteria: • Comparison of the global shape and features of the objects... motorized lenses (allowing for the control of the iris, focus and zoom) and five step motors that confer an equal number of degrees of freedom to the system (vergence of each camera, baseline shifting, head tilt and neck pan) The Master Processing Unit is responsible for the control of the degrees of freedom of the active vision system (using step motor controllers) and for the communication with the... The information provided by the active vision system is used to control the mobile robot to pursuit a person in real - time Target ReLo~~~ Smooth l Pursuit & l /lee Figure 3 State diagram of the pursuit process To perform the pursuit of a moving target we use two basic control schemes: a visual fixation control of the active vision system and the trajectory control of the robot The visual fixation control. .. referential and the image points (u, v) are related with (x~, yv) by: = Sxx + u0 v = + v0 (2) T h a t relation is obtained with a calibration process that gives the scale factors for both the x and the y - axis (S~ and S v respectively) [23].The image center (Uo, vo), the focal length f and the scale factors Sx and Sy are called the intrinsic parameters of the camera 3.2.3 System Models and Geometric... environment map with the six selected landmarks and their corresponding uncertainties (ellipsoid projections~ corresponding to Gaussian distributions drawn at 99%) We can easily notice that precision decreases when the distance increases 12 6 5 4 Z? 3 2 lm Figure 8: Segmented objects (left) and selected landmarks with their uncertainty according to sensor noise and resolution and object shape (right) 4 Planning... of reality Such modelling is very difficult, and therefore, only simple problems can be solved within the framework of classical vision theory In active vision systems only the information required to achieve a specific task or behavior is recovered By extracting only task-specific information and avoiding 3D reconstructions (by tightly coupling perception and action) these systems are able to operate... irregular/uneven in which its motion control system should take into account its stability Limitations of computing capacities (processing power and memory) and of power consumption on the one hand, and the objective of achieving an efficient behaviour on the other hand, have lead us to consider an adaptive approach to mobile robot navigation in natural environments The objective of the EDEN project described . Lecture Notes in Control and Information Sciences 236 Editor: M. Thoma Anibal T. de Almeida and Oussama Khatib (Eds) Autonomous Robotic Systems ~. organised in four parts: Sensors and Navigation, Cooperation and Telerobotics, Applications, and Legged and Climbing Robots. The first part concerns sensors and navigation in mobile robotics buildings, mining industry, hospitals and tertiary buildings, assistance to the elderly and handicapped, and surgery. The fourth part is concemed with legged and climbing robots. These machines