关键词： NASA   Space vehicles   Robot kinematics   Moon   Software algorithms   Multi-robot systems   Resource management  

摘要： Plans for establishing a long-term human presence on the Moon will require substantial increases in robot autonomy and multirobot coordination to support establishing a lunar outpost. To achieve these objectives, algorithm design choices for the software developments need to be tested and validated for expected scenarios such as autonomous in situ resource utilization, localization in challenging environments, and multirobot coordination. However, real-world experiments are extremely challenging and limited for extraterrestrial environment. Also, realistic simulation demonstrations in these environments are still rare and demanded for initial algorithm testing capabilities. To help some of these needs, the NASA Centennial Challenges program established the Space Robotics Challenge Phase 2 (SRC2), which consist of virtual robotic systems in a realistic lunar simulation environment, where a group of mobile robots were tasked with reporting volatile locations within a global map, excavating and transporting these resources, and detecting and localizing a target of interest. The main goal of this article is to share our team's experiences on the design tradeoffs to perform autonomous robotic operations in a virtual lunar environment and to share strategies to complete the mission requirements posed by NASA SRC2 competition during the qualification round. Of the 114 teams that registered for participation in the NASA SRC2, team Mountaineers finished as one of only six teams to receive the top qualification round prize.

关键词： Handover   Robots   Receivers   Task analysis   Robot kinematics   Tools   Planning   Human-robot interaction (HRI)   object handover  

摘要： This article surveys the literature on human-robot object handovers. A handover is a collaborative joint action, where an agent, the giver, gives an object to another agent, the receiver. The physical exchange starts when the receiver first contacts the object held by the giver and ends when the giver fully releases the object to the receiver. However, important cognitive and physical processes begin before the physical exchange, including initiating implicit agreement with respect to the location and timing of the exchange. From this perspective, we structure our review into the two main phases delimited by the aforementioned events: a prehandover phase and the physical exchange. We focus our analysis on the two actors (giver and receiver) and report the state of the art of robotic givers (robot-to-human handovers) and the robotic receivers (human-to-robot handovers). We report a comprehensive list of qualitative and quantitative metrics commonly used to assess the interaction. While focusing our review on the cognitive level (e.g., prediction, perception, motion planning, and learning) and the physical level (e.g., motion, grasping, and grip release) of the handover, we also discuss safety. We compare the behaviors displayed during human-to-human handovers to the state of the art of robotic assistants and identify the major areas of improvement for robotic assistants to reach performance comparable to human interactions. Finally, we propose a minimal set of metrics that should be used in order to enable a fair comparison among the approaches.

关键词： Ophthalmic surgery   Robotics  

摘要： The future of robotic ophthalmologic surgery looks promising. Innovations in robotic technology and artificial intelligence may provide an ideal machine-human interface with planned and precise movements minimizing unwanted tissue damage and improving clinical outcomes.

关键词： Robots   COVID-19   Pandemics   Stakeholders   Service robots   Hospitals   Automation  

摘要： The COVID-19 pandemic is forcing a rethink in robotics. In the form it is known today, robotics has been the prerogative of a broad community of insiders. But now, in the wreckage left behind by COVID-19, a new era is beginning. What does it hold? During the pandemic, increasing numbers of people had manifested the hope that robotics might bring novel solutions. And this interest has emerged beyond the usual boundaries of the experts or technology enthusiasts. This provides an opportunity to reinforce the community of people involved in the process of innovation. By involving citizens, the community becomes more comprehensive (that is, plural and diverse). This broadening will involve more practical knowledge and therefore produce better robots of many shapes and functions. If progress is possible in the industry, why not in the hospitals, shopping malls, restaurants, hotels, and schools? What is more, the approach endorsed by the Italian robotics community during the lockdown has established a new cooperation among those who labor with robots, and the professionals who work in hospitals, which is bound to last a long time. As a major impact, this experience will enable an improvement on science's relationship with and for society. This may entail a further shift: to value more scientific knowledge and scientific literacy.

摘要： The article explores the words "autonomy," "autonomous systems," "AI" and the like are thrown around in conferences, product marketing materials, research papers, and prospectuses on the future of the marine robotics industry. These terms inspire notions of an exciting future where we ask our robots to perform a task, and off they go.

关键词： Education   Pandemics   COVID-19   Hardware   Educational robots   Data models   Distance learning  

摘要： The COVID-19 pandemic had profound effects on almost all aspects of daily life, including education, where it led to a rapid and massive switch to online teaching. There is evidence that the responses to the pandemic will have lasting effects in higher education and that they have accelerated the trend that (elements of) online education will be the new normal in higher education [13]. For example, students expect, as a main change for universities, that, in 10 years' time, most lectures will be online [18].

关键词： Robots   Vehicle dynamics   Delays   Upper bound   Uncertainty   System dynamics   Standards   Artificial-delay control   Euler-Lagrange (EL) systems   time delay estimation (TDE)   underactuated robotics  

摘要： Artificial-delay control is a method in which state and input measurements collected at an immediate past time instant (i.e., artificially delayed) are used to compensate the uncertain dynamics affecting the system at the current time. This article formulates an artificial-delay control method with adaptive gains in the presence of nonlinear (Euler-Lagrange) underactuation. The appeal of studying Euler-Lagrange dynamics is to capture many robotics applications of practical interest, as demonstrated via stability and robustness analysis and via robotic ship and robotic aerial vehicle test cases.

关键词： Multi-robot system   Path planning   Neural dynamics   Neural network  

摘要： The coordination of multi-robot system (MRS) are applied commonly to various fields of the automotive industry. In a variety of cooperative modes, online path planning with obstacles avoidance is a fundamentally important hotspot, especially in a 3-D, complex, or dynamic environment. In the paper, an improved neural dynamics based approach with territorial mechanism is proposed to online path planning of MRS, which can be used as the online path planner for multi-AUVs and multi-UAVs in complex and dynamic environments. This approach integrates biological neural network, computational fluid dynamics, and territorial mechanism of animals, which has the characteristics and advantages of the biological nervous system, namely self-regulation, self-adaptation, self-organization, etc. It can cope with a variety of accidents during path planning, such as the disappearance of targets, the breakdown of robots, the change of environments, and so forth. Meanwhile, the proposed approach has better time performance and is insensitive to the number of robots in MRS. During the path planning of MRS, it can also guarantee to balance workload and to reduce entire workload and total time, which enhance robustness and fairness. The effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed approach are demonstrated by simulations and comparative studies.

关键词： Professional aspects  

摘要： While the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society (IES) is celebrating its 70th anniversary, the energy, information, robotics, and industrial revolution is speeding up. It seems that soon everyone in the world will have access to electricity. The electric power supply is a common factor for electrical and electronics devices. It does not matter if we are considering electrifying a Honduran primary school or automating a Japanese robotic factory—without a reliable, flexible, environmentally friendly energy source, modern education and industrialization is not possible. Therefore, one role of the IES is to attract as many new engineers as possible. We need to show girls that engineering is as attractive as other study fields. We must propose a discussion platform for undergraduates, postgraduates, and young professionals from industry. This kind of platform was presented at the IES 70th Anniversary Joint Forum of Women in Engineering (WiE) and Students & Young Professionals (S&YP) at the 2021 International Symposium on Industrial Electronics (ISIE2021)-Kyoto online conference by IES Vice President for Planning and Development, Prof. Makoto Iwasaki, Nagoya Institute of Technology, Japan.