Robots have come a long way thanks to advances in sensing and computer vision technologies and can be found today in healthcare, medicine and industry. Researchers have been looking at providing them with senses such as the ability to see, smell, hear and perceive touch in order to mimic and interact with humans and their surrounding environments.
This volume contains papers presented at the NATO Advanced Research Workshop (ARW) on "Sensors and Sensory Systems for Advanced Robots", which was held in Maratea, Italy, during the week Apri I 28 - May 3, 1986. Participants in the ARW, who came from eleven NATO and two non-NATO countries, represented an i nternat i ona I assortment of d i st i ngu i shed research centers in industry, government and academia. Purpose of the Workshop was to rev i ew the state of the art of sensing for advanced robots, to discuss basic concepts and new ideas on the use of sensors for robot control and to provide recommendations for future research in this area, There IS an almost unanimous consensus among invest i gators in the fie I d of robot i cs that the add i t i on of sensory capabi I ities represents the "natural" evolution of present industrial robots, as wei I as the necessary premise to the development of advanced robots for nonindustrial app I i cat ions. However, a number of conceptua I and techn i ca I problems sti I I challenge the practical implementation and widespread appl ication of sensor-based robot control techn i ques. Cruc i a I among those prob I ems is the ava i lab iii ty of adequate sensors.
Limp materials are used in many economically impo~tant industries such as garment manufacture, shoe manufacture, aerospace (composites) and automobiles (seats and trim). The use of sensors is essential for reliable robotic handling of these materials, which are often based on naturally occurring substances such as cotton and leather. The materials are limp and have non-homogeneous mechanical properties which are often impossible to predict accurately. The applications are very demanding for vision and tactile sensing and signal processing, adaptive control systems, planning and systems integration. This book comprises the collection of papers presented at the NATO Advanced Research Workshop on 'Sensory Robotics for the Handling of Limp Materials', held in October 1988 at II Ciocco, Tuscany, Italy. The aim of the workshop was to examine the state of the art and determine what research is needed to provide the theoretical and technological tools for the successful application of sensory robotics to the handling of limp materials. The meeting also acted as the first-ever forum for the interchange of knowledge between applications-driven researchers and those researching into the provision of fundamental tools. The participants were drawn from academia (20), industry (5), and other non-university research organisations (5).
The book covers different aspects: - Innovative technologies for tactile sensors development - Tactile data interpretation for control purposes - Alternative sensing technologies - Multi-sensor systems for grasping and manipulation - Sensing solutions for impaired people
"This book explores some of the most recent developments in robotic motion, artificial intelligence, and human-machine interaction, providing insight into a wide variety of applications and functional areas"--Provided by publisher.
Future robots are expected to work closely and interact safely with real-world objects and humans alike. Sense of touch is important in this context, as it helps estimate properties such as shape, texture, hardness, material type and many more; provides action related information, such as slip detection; and helps carrying out actions such as rolling an object between fingers without dropping it. This book presents an in-depth description of the solutions available for gathering tactile data, obtaining aforementioned tactile information from the data and effectively using the same in various robotic tasks. The efforts during last four decades or so have yielded a wide spectrum of tactile sensing technologies and engineered solutions for both intrinsic and extrinsic touch sensors. Nowadays, new materials and structures are being explored for obtaining robotic skin with physical features like bendable, conformable, and stretchable. Such features are important for covering various body parts of robots or 3D surfaces. Nonetheless, there exist many more hardware, software and application related issues that must be considered to make tactile sensing an effective component of future robotic platforms. This book presents an in-depth analysis of various system related issues and presents the trade-offs one may face while developing an effective tactile sensing system. For this purpose, human touch sensing has also been explored. The design hints coming out of the investigations into human sense of touch can be useful in improving the effectiveness of tactile sensory modality in robotics and other machines. Better integration of tactile sensors on a robot’s body is prerequisite for the effective utilization of tactile data. The concept of semiconductor devices based sensors is an interesting one, as it allows compact and fast tactile sensing systems with capabilities such as human-like spatio-temporal resolution. This book presents a comprehensive description of semiconductor devices based tactile sensing. In particular, novel Piezo Oxide Semiconductor Field Effect Transistor (POSFET) based approach for high resolution tactile sensing has been discussed in detail. Finally, the extension of semiconductors devices based sensors concept to large and flexile areas has been discussed for obtaining robotic or electronic skin. With its multidisciplinary scope, this book is suitable for graduate students and researchers coming from diverse areas such robotics (bio-robots, humanoids, rehabilitation etc.), applied materials, humans touch sensing, electronics, microsystems, and instrumentation. To better explain the concepts the text is supported by large number of figures.
Robotic systems consist of object or scene recognition, vision-based motion control, vision-based mapping, and dense range sensing, and are used for identification and navigation. As these computer vision and robotic connections continue to develop, the benefits of vision technology including savings, improved quality, reliability, safety, and productivity are revealed. Robotic Vision: Technologies for Machine Learning and Vision Applications is a comprehensive collection which highlights a solid framework for understanding existing work and planning future research. This book includes current research on the fields of robotics, machine vision, image processing and pattern recognition that is important to applying machine vision methods in the real world.
Neural Systems for Robotics represents the most up-to-date developments in the rapidly growing aplication area of neural networks, which is one of the hottest application areas for neural networks technology. The book not only contains a comprehensive study of neurocontrollers in complex Robotics systems, written by highly respected researchers in the field but outlines a novel approach to solving Robotics problems. The importance of neural networks in all aspects of Robot arm manipulators, neurocontrol, and Robotic systems is also given thorough and in-depth coverage. All researchers and students dealing with Robotics will find Neural Systems for Robotics of immense interest and assistance. Focuses on the use of neural networks in robotics-one of the hottest application areas for neural networks technology Represents the most up-to-date developments in this rapidly growing application area of neural networks Contains a new and novel approach to solving Robotics problems
As robotic systems make their way into standard practice, they have opened the door to a wide spectrum of complex applications. Such applications usually demand that the robots be highly intelligent. Future robots are likely to have greater sensory capabilities, more intelligence, higher levels of manual dexter ity, and adequate mobility, compared to humans. In order to ensure high-quality control and performance in robotics, new intelligent control techniques must be developed, which are capable of coping with task complexity, multi-objective decision making, large volumes of perception data and substantial amounts of heuristic information. Hence, the pursuit of intelligent autonomous robotic systems has been a topic of much fascinating research in recent years. On the other hand, as emerging technologies, Soft Computing paradigms consisting of complementary elements of Fuzzy Logic, Neural Computing and Evolutionary Computation are viewed as the most promising methods towards intelligent robotic systems. Due to their strong learning and cognitive ability and good tolerance of uncertainty and imprecision, Soft Computing techniques have found wide application in the area of intelligent control of robotic systems.
