关键词： MEMS mirror   micro-robotics   electrothermal actuation   LiDAR  

摘要： Light detection and ranging (LiDAR) has been widely used for airborne surveillance and autonomous driving. The ability of robotics or even micro-robotics can be drastically enhanced if equipped with LiDAR, but very light and small LiDAR must be used. Micro-robots have sizes close to birds or insects, and almost all existing LiDAR are too heavy and too large for them. In this work, a novel MEMS LiDAR, with its optical scanner separated from its base, is proposed and demonstrated. The scanner head will be carried by a moving micro-robot while the LiDAR base is fixed on the ground. There is a thin, flexible optical/electrical cable connecting the scanner head to the base. The scanner head consists of a MEMS mirror and a rod lens, which weighs only 10 g and measures under 4 cm long. The MEMS mirror has an aperture of 1.2 mm x 1.4 mm and can scan a field of view (FoV) of 9 degrees x 8 degrees. As the micro-robot and the optical scanner head moves with respect to the optical receiver, an IMU (inertial measurement unit) has been embedded in the scanner head to track the motion and an algorithm has been developed to reconstruct the true point clouds. The movable head LiDAR can acquire 400 points per second and detect targets up to 35 cm away. A micro-robot can carry the scanner head while it is moving, and the point clouds can be generated at the LiDAR base. This new LiDAR configuration enables ranging, mapping, tracking, and zoom-in scanning for micro-robots.

关键词： 卓越工程师   机器人竞赛与实训   课程建设  

摘要： 根据“卓越工程师教育培养计划2.0”旨在培养学生的工程能力和创新能力的建设理念,课题组对“机器人竞赛与实训”进行了课程建设,采用了“以学生为中心”的教学理念和以工作任务为驱动的工程项目式教学模式,开发该课程的工程项目载体,构建该课程的过程化考核与评价方法。实施结果表明:学生综合平均成绩均在80分以上,学习效果明显提升;学习兴趣普遍提高;设计能力、动手实践能力、分析解决问题能力有所提高。

关键词： 关节电机   行星减速器   动力学仿真  

摘要： 关节电机是足式机器人核心部件之一,其动态响应直接影响着机器人的性能。其中的行星减速器属于精密机械传动机构,其传动精度与关键零件的变形密切相关。利用Adams建立了关节电机行星减速器刚柔耦合动力学仿真模型,模拟在启动过程中的瞬态输出特性。模型中对关键零件进行柔性化处理,设置各零件间的运动副约束,利用Hertz接触理论计算了行星轮与太阳轮、内齿圈的接触刚度系数。仿真结果表明,关节电机的动态特性与加速时间和惯性载荷密切相关,较大的加速时间与较小的惯性载荷有利于提高其动态性能。

关键词： 综合实践教学   中学教师   全国冠军   机器人竞赛   科技辅导员   九年一贯制学校   科技之光   一所  

摘要： 董皓,济南育文中学综合实践教师、科技辅导员。工作15年来,他带领学生自主设计机器人,研发科技校本课程,用科技之光点燃了学生的科技梦想。济南育文中学是一所九年一贯制学校,董皓担任学校六年级、七年级的综合实践教学任务。15年间,董皓和学生们参加各级机器人竞赛活动800余场,荣获市级以上奖励500余项,取得了国际金牌7枚、银牌2枚、铜牌3枚、技术奖5项,国家级金牌36枚、银牌19枚,培养出8位世界冠军、20位全国冠军、6名"省少科院院士"、1名"齐鲁小名士"、3名"济南小名士"。

关键词： 森林防火   履带平台   机器人   Adams   动力学仿真  

摘要： 针对森林的复杂环境,为满足森林防火机器人履带平台的越障性能要求,本文提出一种基于椭圆定理的可变形履带平台。该履带平台通过摆臂的转动来调节履带形状,具有更好的越障性能和张紧能力。为充分了解履带平台的越障性能,在履带平台的运动机理分析基础上,对履带平台典型障碍进行动力学分析,得到越障过程的最大理论值。根据理论值结合林区实际情况计算,用Adams建立仿真平台,对攀爬高地及跨越沟壑的状态进行仿真实验,验证表明履带平台可攀爬200 mm高度台阶,跨越255 mm宽度沟壑,具有良好的越障性能。

关键词： Transfer functions   Robots   Unmanned aerial vehicles   Control systems   Vehicle dynamics   Stability analysis   Robustness   Adaptive strictly negative-imaginary (ASNI) controller   distributed unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) formation control   fuzzy inference systems (FIS)   robust control  

摘要： Wind gusts are significant barriers to the outdoor operations of networked multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), which fly in close proximity to each other or around obstacles. As such, traditional control methods such as PID control may not perform adequately. Based on the strictly negative imaginary (SNI) systems theory, this article presents a novel decentralized and adaptive consensus-based formation control law that drives multiple UAVs to follow the desired formation in the presence of limited bandwidth for information exchange and dynamically changing environmental conditions. To be consistent with a decentralized approach, each UAV only measures its relative position with respect to its neighbors according to a fixed information graph. As a result, the required formation is obtained by maintaining the desired relative positions among UAVs. Moreover, to deal with the challenging dynamics of flight environments, we also employ a knowledge-based fuzzy inference system to automatically adjust the parameters of the SNI consensus controllers, leading to the development of a fast and robust adaption method. In this article, we conduct a stability analysis based on the SNI theorem and rigorously compare the performance of our controllers with respect to the performance of conventional PID controllers. The efficacy of the overall closed loop control system is highlighted in real-time flight tests.

关键词： Mathematical model   Computational modeling   Neural networks   Analytical models   Robots   Convergence   Kinematics   Computer simulations   robot experiments   saturation-allowed neural dynamics (SAND)   theoretical analyses   time-dependent system of linear equations  

摘要： Neural networks as well as the related neural dynamics have been widely exploited to conduct online computing operations for solving various problems in recent years. This article makes progress along this direction by proposing a saturation-allowed neural dynamics (SAND) model for solving the perturbed time-dependent system of linear equations with noise-tolerant capacity. Specifically, by elaborately constructing a new general framework enhanced by the error-integration information and nonlinear projection functions (PFs), a SAND model is proposed and investigated under various additive noises. In addition, theoretical analyses reveal that the proposed SAND model is of global convergence with zero theoretical error. Moreover, when the value of PF is strictly limited by bounds, i.e., a saturation function, the upper bound of the residual errors of the proposed SAND model is subject to the noises and the bounds of PF. Computer simulation results, as well as robot experiments, verify the superior property of the proposed SAND model for solving the perturbed time-dependent system of linear equations, compared with the state of the prior art.

关键词： Cellular automata   Swarm robotics   Bio-inspired controller   Ant colony optimization   Genetic algorithms   Surveillance task   Tabu search  

摘要： The area of swarm robotics has grown widely in recent years, precisely because its formulation is based on the use of various techniques, ranging from computer networks to controllers. We can employ different types of techniques to carry out the control of a robots team. In this work we will focus on creating techniques based on bio-inspired computing. Within this theme, we will be focused on using cellular automata with synchronous and asynchronous rules and ant colonies optimization. Additionally, we will consider greedy approaches to select the next robot's state cell and a local Tabu search with a queue of robot movement restrictions. Thus, we have a surrogate model capable of providing the team robot navigation in the surveillance task. We developed two different controllers, a simpler first, based on a precursor model and a second optimized model, based on the previous controller refinement. At the end, we used a genetic algorithm, which received the surrogate model as input for the improvement of our proposed models parameters. In addition, a survey with the evolution of surveillance models using cellular automata in a systematic review of literature will be shown. Experiments were performed to demonstrate the degree of robot team coverage by different environments. We accomplished statistical analysis with the intention of presenting different sizes of robot teams and amounts of pheromone deposited into the environment. In the end, we fulfilled experiments using the empirical simulation methodology of a robots team using the Webots simulator with e-Puck architecture. The results were promising, the robot team performed this task efficiently and the system is highly scalable. (C) 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

关键词： Agility   Best effort   Robotics   Industry   Control   Standardization  

摘要： In this paper we discuss our evolved understanding on the meaning of agile robotics. The lessons learned are concluded from the four years of our participation in ARIAC, the Agile Robotics for Industrial Automation Competition, that we managed to win in 2020. After elaborating on ARIAC tasks, challenges and scoring and their consequences on algorithm design, error handling and software development processes and methodologies, we introduce the concept of Best Effort Agile Robotics (BEAR). The conclusions are mapped to agility standardization directions. The concept of Best Effort Robotics (BER) is also proposed and discussed, highlighting the similarities with best effort networking, a proven concept in Internet technology.

关键词： Augmented Reality   Robotics   Industrial integration   Distributed automation architectures   Spatial referencing   Robot programming  

摘要： Augmented Reality (AR) has the potential for facilitating the interaction with robots by enhancing the operator's spatial understanding as well as providing further cognitive support, e.g. in order to make manual programming processes more efficient and provide on-site simulation. However, we consider major issues that prevent a widespread use of AR towards robotics in industries. Initially, the commissioning of AR devices for robotic applications demands spatial referencing of robots and AR devices. Fiducial markers are a popular artificial aid, but hard to implement in industrial use cases because of additional efforts and a lack of robustness. A further bottleneck for developing AR applications in robotics is the restricted technical and ergonomic maturity of AR devices, e.g. limited local computation and short product life-cycles. Furthermore, benefit through AR in comparison to classic online and offline programming techniques is still unclear for most applicators. In this paper, we present approaches towards a distributed, hardware-agnostic microservice architecture with standard interfaces for an interoperable usage of AR in robotics. Furthermore, we present marker-less pose estimation methods for articulated robot arms as well as mobile robots based on RGB and depth images that serve automatic referencing. Finally, we reveal further application potential of AR in robotics in terms of combining advantages from online and offline programming.