Frontiers In Robotics Automation And Control

This book covers the most attractive problem in robot control, dealing with the direct interaction between a robot and a dynamic environment, including the human-robot physical interaction. It provides comprehensive theoretical and experimental coverage of interaction control problems, starting from the mathematical modeling of robots interacting with complex dynamic environments, and proceeding to various concepts for interaction control design and implementation algorithms at different control layers. Focusing on the learning principle, it also shows the application of new and advanced learning algorithms for robotic contact tasks.

This book introduces intellectual control systems and electromechanics of heterogeneous robots. The book uncovers fundamental principles of robot control and recent developments in software and hardware of robots. The book presents solutions and discusses problems of single robotic devices as well as heterogeneous robotic teams while performing technological tasks that require informational, physical or energetic interaction with human users, environment and other robots. The book considers model–algorithmic and software–hardware control of ground, water and underwater robots, unmanned aerial vehicles, as well as their embedded and attached sub-systems, including manipulators, end-effectors, sensors, actuators, etc. The book will be useful for researchers of interdisciplinary issues related to robotics, electromechanics and artificial intelligence. The book is recommended for graduate students with a major/minor in the areas of robotics and mechatronics, management in technical systems, Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering and computer science.

The ?eld of robotics continues to ?ourish and develop. In common with general scienti?c investigation, new ideas and implementations emerge quite spontaneously and these are discussed, used, discarded or subsumed at c- ferences, in the reference journals, as well as through the Internet. After a little more maturity has been acquired by the new concepts, then archival publication as a scienti?c or engineering monograph may occur. The goal of the Springer Tracts in Advanced Robotics is to publish new developments and advances in the ?elds of robotics research – rapidly and informally but with a high quality. It is hoped that prospective authors will welcome the opportunity to publish a structured presentation of some of the emerging robotics methodologies and technologies. The edited volume by Antonio Bicchi, Henrik Christensen and Domenico Prattichizzo is the outcome of the second edition of a workshop jointly sponsored by the IEEE Control Systems Society and the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society. Noticeably, the previous volume was published in the Springer Lecture Notes on Control and Information Sciences. The authors are recognised as leading scholars internationally. A n- ber of challenging control problems on the forefront of today’s research in robotics and automation are covered, with special emphasis on vision, sensory-feedback control, human-centered robotics, manipulation, planning, ?exible and cooperative robots, assembly systems.

The first volume of the Advances in Robotics and Automatic Control: Reviews, Book Series started by IFSA Publishing in 2018 contains ten chapters written by 32 contributors from 9 countries: Belgium, China, Germany, India, Ireland, Japan, Serbia, Tunisia and USA. We hope that readers will enjoy this book and it can be a valuable tool for those who involved in research and development of various robots and automatic control systems.

Robotics began as a science fiction creation which has become quite real, first in assembly line operations such as automobile manufacturing, aeroplane construction etc. They have now reached such areas as the Internet, ever-multiplying-medical uses and sophisticated military applications. Control of today's robots is often remote which requires even more advanced computer vision capabilities as well as sensors and interface techniques. Learning has become crucial for modern robotic systems as well. This book brings together leading research in this exciting field.

Robotics is a diverse area that encompasses the creation, assembly, functioning, and utilization of robots. A robot is an automated mechanical or virtual entity that is usually controlled by computer programs or electronic circuitry. Robots can operate independently or with some level of human control and have the ability to carry out a wide range of jobs, from basic repetitive movements to intricate operations in various settings. Androids are humanoid robots that are particularly created to imitate and replicate human behavior, appearance, and movement to different extents. Androids possess characteristics such as a face like that of a human, limbs, and the ability to move. They are commonly utilized in situations that necessitate interaction with people. Robotics is an interdisciplinary field that incorporates knowledge from mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, computer science, and artificial intelligence. The field of robotics study is dedicated to the advancement of robots that possess sophisticated abilities in areas such as sensing, cognition, decision-making, and learning. The applications of robotics and androids are many and constantly developing across industries including manufacturing, healthcare, transportation, entertainment, and defense. Robots are employed in manufacturing to carry out operations such as assembly, welding, and packaging, thereby enhancing efficiency, accuracy, and safety.

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 to adapt 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.

This book was conceived as a gathering place of new ideas from academia, industry, research and practice in the fields of robotics, automation and control. The aim of the book was to point out interactions among various fields of interests in spite of diversity and narrow specializations which prevail in the current research. The common denominator of all included chapters appears to be a synergy of various specializations. This synergy yields deeper understanding of the treated problems. Each new approach applied to a particular problem can enrich and inspire improvements of already established approaches to the problem.