Bücher der Reihe Springer Tracts in Advanced Robotics

Because actions in the physical world are subject to physical laws and geometric constraints, the design and analysis of robot algorithms raise a unique combination of questions in control theory, computational and differential geometry, and computer science.

Robotic research and developments in computing technologies including artificial intelligence have led to significant improvements in autonomous capabilities of robots. Yet, human supervision is advisable and, in many cases, necessary when robots interact with real-world, outside-lab environments. This is due to the fact that complete autonomy in robots has not yet been achieved. When robots encounter challenges beyond their capabilities, a viable solution is to include human operators in the loop, who can support robots through teleoperation, taking complete control or shared control. This monograph focuses on a special form of shared control, namely mixed-initiative, where the final command to the robot is a weighted sum of the commands from the operator and the autonomous controller. The weights (fixed or adaptive), called authority allocation (AA) factors, decide who has more control authority over the robot. Several research groups use different methods toadapt the AA factors online and the benefits of adaptive mixed-initiative shared control have been well established in terms of task completion success and operator usability. However, stability of the overall shared control framework, with communication time-delays between the operator and the robot, is a field that has not been examined extensively. This monograph presents methods to improve performance and stability in shared control so that the possibilities of its applications can be widened. Firstly, methods to improve the haptic feedback performance of teleoperation are developed. Secondly, methods to stabilize adaptive shared control systems, while still ensuring high teleoperation performance, are proposed. The methods are validated on multiple robotic systems and they were applied in several projects, both in space and terrestrial domains. With the aforementioned contributions, this monograph provides an overarching framework to improve synergy between humans and robots. The flexibility of the framework allows integration of existent teleoperation and shared control approaches, which further promotes synergy within the robotics community.

Coverage includes: physical human-robot interaction, humanoids, mechanisms and design, simultaneous localization and mapping, field robots, robotic vision, robot design and control, underwater robotics, learning and adaptive behavior, networked robotics, and interfaces and interaction.

Although parallel robots are known to offer many advantages with respect to accuracy, dynamics, and stiffness, major breakthroughs in industrial applications have not yet taken place.

This book presents the framework for the versatile specification of physical interaction tasks, as well as the problem of autonomous planning of these tasks. It details novel grasp-task sensor-based control methods using vision, tactile and force feedback.

This monograph covers theoretical aspects of simultaneous localization and map building for mobile robots. One of the most relevant topics covered in this monograph is the theoretical formalism of partial observability in SLAM.

This monograph presents an updated source of information on the state of the art in advanced control of articulated and mobile robots. It includes relevant selected problems dealing with enhanced actuation, motion planning and control functions for articulated robots, as well as of sensory and autonomous decision capabilities for mobile robots.

A fascinating book that covers in detail all of the most recent advances in Telerobotics. A must-read for scientists, researchers and students in teleoperation, it describes everything from methods and experimental results to applications and developments. Its three sections cover human system interfaces, control, and applications.

Focusing on robotic manipulation control systems, this volume explores a mechanical system, equipped with one or more sensors delivering digital and/or analog sensor signals. A new concept is introduced, with many comprehensive examples.

This book contains selected contributions to WAFR, the highly-competitive meeting on the algorithmic foundations of robotics. They address the unique combination of questions that the design and analysis of robot algorithms inspires.

This monograph presents new developments and advances of deformable robots made of electroactive polymer (EAP) gel, a promising new material for artificial muscles. Future direction of gel robots are also presented such as polymer robots and muscle suits.

Service robots often work in indoor environments divided into rooms, corridors and doorways. This book presents several approaches to enable a mobile robot to categorize places indoors. Many approaches come from areas of pattern recognition and classification.

This monograph presents an updated source of information on the state of the art in advanced control of articulated and mobile robots. It includes relevant selected problems dealing with enhanced actuation, motion planning and control functions for articulated robots, as well as of sensory and autonomous decision capabilities for mobile robots.

At the dawn of the new millennium, robotics is undergoing a major transfor- tion in scope and dimension. From a largely dominant industrial focus, robotics is rapidly expanding into the challenges of unstructured environments. Inter- ting with, assisting, serving, and exploring with humans, the emerging robots will increasingly touch people and their lives. The goal of this new series of Springer Tracts in Advanced Robotics is to bring,inatimelyfashion,thelatestadvancesanddevelopmentsinroboticsonthe basisoftheirsigni?canceandquality.Itisourhopethatthegreaterdissemination of research developments will stimulate more exchanges and collaborations among the research community and contribute to further advancement of this rapidly growing ?eld. As one of robotics pioneering symposia, ISRR, the "International Sym- sium on Robotics Research," has established over the past two decades some of the ?eld¿s most fundamental and lasting contributions.With the launching of STAR, this and other thematic symposia devoted to excellence in robotics ?nd an important platform for closer links and extended reach within the research community. The Tenth edition of "Robotics Research" edited by Raymond Jarvis and AlexZelinskyoffersinits11-partvolumeacollectionofabroadrangeoftopics in robotics. The content of these contributions provides a wide coverage of the current state of robotics research: the advances and challenges in its theoretical foundation and technology basis, and the developments in its traditional and new areas of applications.

This book collects papers on the state of th eart in experimental robotics. Because robotics experiments are carried out on physical, complex machines whose controllers are subject to uncertainty, devising meaningful experiments and collecting statistically significant results pose important and unique challenges in robotics.

Cable-driven parallel robots are a new kind of lightweight manipulators with excellent scalability in terms of size, payload, and dynamics capacities. For the first time, a comprehensive compendium is presented of the field of cable-driven parallel robots. A thorough theory of cable robots is setup leading the reader from first principles to the latest results in research. The main topics covered in the book are classification, terminology, and fields of application for cable-driven parallel robots. The geometric foundation of the standard cable model is introduced followed by statics, force distribution, and stiffness. Inverse and forward kinematics are addressed by elaborating efficient algorithms. Furthermore, the workspace is introduced and different algorithms are detailed. The book contains the dynamic equations as well as simulation models with applicable parameters. Advanced cable models are described taking into account pulleys, elastic cables, and sagging cables. For practitioner, a descriptive design method is stated including methodology, parameter synthesis, construction design, component selection, and calibration. Rich examples are presented by means of simulation results from sample robots as well as experimental validation on reference demonstrators. The book contains a representative overview of reference demonstrator system. Tables with physical parameters for geometry, cable properties, and robot parameterizations support case studies and are valuable references for building custom cable robots. For scientist, the book provides the starting point to address new scientific challenges as open problems are named and a commented review of the literature on cable robot with more than 500 references are given.

Sight and touch are two elementary, but highly complementary senses - for humans as well as for robots. This monograph develops an integrated vision/force control approach for robotics, combining the advantages of both types of sensors while overcoming their individual drawbacks.

This monograph has arisen from the multidisciplinary research extending over biology, robotics and hybrid systems theory. It is inspired by modeling reactive behavior of the immune system cell population, where each cell is considered an independent agent.

"Nonlinear Kalman Filtering for Force-Controlled Robot Tasks " discusses the latest developments in the areas of contact modeling, nonlinear parameter estimation and task plan optimization for improved estimation accuracy.

This volume presents a collection of papers presented at the 14th International Symposium of Robotic Research (ISRR).

The DARPA Robotics Challenge was a robotics competition that took place in Pomona, California USA in June 2015.

Beyond its impact on physical robots, the body of knowledge robotics has produced is revealing a much wider range of applications reaching across diverse research areas and scientific disciplines, such as: biomechanics, haptics, neurosciences, virtual simulation, animation, surgery, and sensor networks among others.

This is the most complete book on virtual decomposition control. This approach uses subsystem dynamics to conduct control design, while guaranteeing the stability and convergence of the entire robot without compromising the rigorousness of the system analysis.

Beyond its impact on physical robots, the body of knowledge robotics has produced is revealing a much wider range of applications reaching across diverse research areas and scientific disciplines, such as: biomechanics, haptics, neurosciences, virtual simulation, animation, surgery, and sensor networks among others.

Beyond its impact on physical robots, the body of knowledge robotics has produced is revealing a much wider range of applications reaching across diverse research areas and scientific disciplines, such as: biomechanics, haptics, neuros- ences, virtual simulation, animation, surgery, and sensor networks among others.

This book details the use of random finite sets (RFS) and finite set statistics (FISST) in robotics. It focuses on the representation of the environment and its uncertainty, and presents pseudo-code implementations of all the RFS techniques.

The DARPA Robotics Challenge was a robotics competition that took place in Pomona, California USA in June 2015.

Cable-driven parallel robots are a new kind of lightweight manipulators with excellent scalability in terms of size, payload, and dynamics capacities. For the first time, a comprehensive compendium is presented of the field of cable-driven parallel robots. A thorough theory of cable robots is setup leading the reader from first principles to the latest results in research. The main topics covered in the book are classification, terminology, and fields of application for cable-driven parallel robots. The geometric foundation of the standard cable model is introduced followed by statics, force distribution, and stiffness. Inverse and forward kinematics are addressed by elaborating efficient algorithms. Furthermore, the workspace is introduced and different algorithms are detailed. The book contains the dynamic equations as well as simulation models with applicable parameters. Advanced cable models are described taking into account pulleys, elastic cables, and sagging cables. For practitioner, a descriptive design method is stated including methodology, parameter synthesis, construction design, component selection, and calibration. Rich examples are presented by means of simulation results from sample robots as well as experimental validation on reference demonstrators. The book contains a representative overview of reference demonstrator system. Tables with physical parameters for geometry, cable properties, and robot parameterizations support case studies and are valuable references for building custom cable robots. For scientist, the book provides the starting point to address new scientific challenges as open problems are named and a commented review of the literature on cable robot with more than 500 references are given.

A classic in underwater robotics. The problem of controlling a 6-degrees-of-freedoms autonomous underwater vehicle is investigated and a survey of fault detection/tolerant strategies for unmanned underwater vehicles is provided. Inverse kinematics, dynamic and interaction control for underwater vehicle-manipulator systems are then discussed.