Autonomous Robots and Agents

268 Pages·2007·14.3 MB·English

by  David A. Williamson, Dale A. Carnegie (auth.), Dr. Subhas Chandra Mukhopadhyay Ph.D, Gourab Sen Gupta (eds.)

Subhas Chandra Mukhopadhyay and Gourab Sen Gupta (Eds.)
Autonomous Robots and Agents
Studies in Computational Intelligence, Volume 76
Editor-in-chief
Prof. Janusz Kacprzyk
Systems Research Institute
Polish Academy of Sciences
ul. Newelska 6
01-447 Warsaw
Poland
E-mail:
Subhas Chandra Mukhopadhyay
Gourab Sen Gupta
(Eds.)
Autonomous Robots
and Agents
With 130 Figures and 22 Tables
Subhas Chandra Mukhopadhyay Gourab Sen Gupta
Institute of Information Sciences School of Electrical and Electronic
and Technology Engineering
Massey University (Turitea Campus) Singapore Polytechnic
Palmerston North Singapore
New Zealand E-mail:
Guest Editorial
This special issue titled “Autonomous Robots and Agents” in the book series
of “Studies in Computational Intelligence” contains the extended version of
rd
the papers selected from those presented at the 3 International Confer-
ence on Autonomous Robots and Agents (ICARA 2006) which was held in
December 11-14, 2006 at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand.
A total of 132 papers were presented at ICARA 2006, of which 30 papers have
been selected for this special issue.
The first three papers are in the category of Search and Rescue. In the first
paper D. A. Williamson and D. A. Carnegie have described the development
of an embedded platform which is the core of an Urban Search and Rescue
(USAR) system. An embedded computer, network camera, supervisory mod-
ule and wireless gateway along with a distributed high efficiency power supply
have resulted in a compact, inexpensive and efficient embedded platform for
robotic USAR. In the next paper J. L. Baxter et al., have described a potential
field based approach for multi-robot search and rescue operation. R. Jarvis
and M. Marzouqi have described a search strategy based on a probabilistic
model of target in which location and the partitioning of the environment are
performed autonomously.
The next five papers are in the category of Localisation, Mapping and
Navigation. J. Schmidt et al., have presented an approach for indoor map-
ping and localisation using sparse range data, acquired by a mobile robot
equipped with sonar sensors. T. Taylor has applied high level understanding
to visual localisation for mapping. He has outlined some simple geometric
relationships that can be used to recover vertical edges from an image when
the camera is tilted. By comparing the slopes of vertical edges in succes-
sive images, it is possible to calculate distances moved or angles of rotation.
H. Yussof et al., have developed an optical three-axis tactile sensor for object
handling tasks in humanoid robot system. The developed sensor is capable
of clearly acquiring normal force and shearing force. Furthermore, it can also
detect force at the XYZ-axes of a Cartesian coordinate. C. Astengo-Noguez
and R. Brena-Pinero have presented a clustering method based on negotiation
VI Guest Editorial
in flock traffic navigation and showed by simulation that a non-centred solu-
tion can be achieved letting individual vehicles to communicate and negotiate
among them. M. Happlod and M. Ollis have presented a novel method for
terrain classification for mobile robot navigation that eliminates the need for
guessing which geometric features are relevant. The system learns to mimic
the classification judgments of a human expert rather than applying explicit
rules or thresholds to measured features.
S. M. R. Hasan and J. Potgieter have presented a design of an integrated
circuit for robotic visual object position tracking. H. Andreasson et al., have
proposed a non-iterative algorithm for 3D laser scans based on parameter-free
vision-based interpolation method.
The next three papers are on mobile robots. G. Seet et al., have des-
cribed the design and development of an interactive 3D robotic simulator to
study behaviour of mobile robots in a cooperative environment. A.N. Chand
and G.C. Onwubolo have developed a mobile robot intended to eliminate the
human component in the book retrieval process by autonomously navigating
to and retrieving a specific book from a bookshelf. In the next paper a trajec-
tory planning strategy for surveillance mobile robots has been discussed by
L.S. Martins-Filho and E.E.N. Macau.
The next group of papers are in the area of algorithms and simulation for
robotic systems. T.Y. Li and C.C. Wang have proposed a genetic algorithm to
generate an optimal set of weighting parameters for composing virtual forces
within a given environment and the desired movement behaviour. J.A. Ferland
et al., have applied the particle swarm algorithm in the capacitated open pit
mining problem. N. Murata et al., have proposed a genetic algorithm based
automatic adjustment method of the optical axis in laser systems. A novel
genetic algorithm based method to evolve control system of a computer sim-
ulated mobile inverted pendulum has been presented by M. Beckerleg and
J. Collins.
M. Meenakshi and M.S. Bhat have presented a robust control method
based on H2 controller for lateral stabilisation of a micro air vehicle. The deve-
loped methodology is applicable to all classes of mini and micro air vehicles.
The next two papers are on robot teams. H. Furukawa has designed an
ecological interface for human supervision of a robot team. The performance
of an embedded real-time system for use in a scenario of soccer playing robots
has been evaluated by K. Koker.
The next two papers are on biped walking robot. Takahashi et al., have
detailed the development of a simple six-axis biped robot system which can
be used as a teaching aid for undergraduate students studying intelligent
robotics. In the other paper the autonomous stride-frequency and step-length
adjustment for biped walking control has been reported by L. Yang et al.
An extended Kalman filtering technique has been applied for the iden-
tification of unmanned aerial vehicle by A. G. Kallapur et al. M Goyal has
reported a novel strategy for multi-agent coalitions in a dynamic hostile world.
Guest Editorial VII
K. H. Hyun et al., have designed a filter bank and extracted emotional
speech features for the recognition of emotion based on voice. A FPGA-
based implementation of graph colouring algorithms has been reported by
V. Sklyarov and his colleagues.
O. Kenta et al., have employed levy based control strategy and extended
it with autonomous role selection to solve the sharing problems of common
resources.
R. Akmeliawati and I. M. Y. Mareels have studied the complex stability
radius for automatic design of gain scheduled control in the next two papers.
In the last paper V. Sklyarov and I. Skliarov have suggested design meth-
ods for reconfigurable hierarchical finite state machines (RHFSM), which pos-
sess two important features such as they enable the control algorithms to be
divided in modules providing direct support for “divide and conquer” strategy
and they allow for static and dynamic reconfiguration.
We do hope that the readers will find this special issue interesting and
useful in their research as well as in practical engineering work in the area of
robotics and autonomous robots. We are very happy to be able to offer the
readers such a diverse special issue, both in terms of its topical coverage and
geographic representation.
Finally, we would like to whole-heartedly thank all the authors who have
contributed their work to this special issue. We are grateful to all the review-
ers from all around the world who have generously devoted their precious
time to review the manuscripts.
Subhas Chandra Mukhopadhyay, Guest Editor
Institute of Information Sciences and Technology,
Massey University (Turitea Campus)
Palmerston North, New Zealand
VIII Guest Editorial
Dr. Subhas Chandra Mukhopadhyay graduated
from the Department of Electrical Engineering,
Jadavpur University, Calcutta, India in 1987 with
a Gold medal and received the Master of Elec-
trical Engineering degree from Indian Institute of
Science, Bangalore, India in 1989. He obtained the
PhD (Eng.) degree from Jadavpur University, India
in 1994 and Doctor of Engineering degree from
Kanazawa University, Japan in 2000.
During 1989-90 he worked almost 2 years in the research and development
department of Crompton Greaves Ltd., India. In 1990 he joined as a Lecturer
in the Electrical Engineering department, Jadavpur University, India and he
promoted to Senior Lecturer of the same department in 1995.
Obtaining Monbusho fellowship he went to Japan in 1995. He worked
with Kanazawa University, Japan as researcher and Assistant professor till
September 2000.
In September 2000 he joined as Senior Lecturer in the Institute of Infor-
mation Sciences and Technology, Massey University, New Zealand where he is
working currently as an Associate professor. His fields of interest include Sen-
sors and Sensing Technology, Electromagnetics, control, electrical machines
and numerical field calculation etc.
He has authored 175 papers in different international journals and confer-
ences, co-authored a book and written a book chapter and edited six confer-
ence proceedings. He has also edited two special issues of international journals
(IEEE Sensors Journal and IJISTA) as guest editor.
He is a Fellow of IET (UK), a senior member of IEEE (USA), an associate
editor of IEEE Sensors journal. He is in the editorial board of e-Journal on
Non-Destructive Testing, Sensors and Transducers, Transactions on Systems,
Signals and Devices (TSSD). He is in the technical programme committee of
IEEE Sensors conference, IEEE IMTC conference and IEEE DELTA confer-
ence. He was the Technical Programme Chair of ICARA 2004 and ICARA
2006. He was the General chair of ICST 2005. He is organizing the ICST
2007 (icst.massey.ac.nz) as the General chair during November 26-28, 2007 at
Palmerston North, New Zealand.
Mr. Gourab Sen Gupta graduated with a Bache-
lor of Engineering (Electronics) from the University
of Indore, India in 1982. In 1984 he got his Mas-
ter of Electronics Engineering from the University of
Eindhoven, The Netherlands. In 1984 he joined Philips
India and worked as an Automation Engineer in the
consumer electronics division till 1989. Currently he
works as a Senior Lecturer in the School of Electrical
and Electronic Engineering at Singapore Polytechnic,
Singapore. He was with Massey University, Palmerston
Guest Editorial IX
North, New Zealand from September 2002 to August 2006 as a Visiting Senior
Lecturer while carrying out studies for his PhD degree.
He has published over 50 papers in international journals and conference
proceedings, co-authored two books on programming, edited four conference
proceedings, and edited two special issues of international journals (IEEE
Sensors Journal and IJISTA) as guest editor. He is a senior member of IEEE.
His area of interest is robotics, autonomous systems, embedded controllers
and vision processing for real-time applications. He was the General Chair of
ICARA 2004 and ICARA 2006. He was the Technical Programme chair of
ICST 2005. He is organizing the ICST 2007 (icst.massey.ac.nz) as the Tech-
nical Programme Chair during November 26-28, 2007 at Palmerston North,
New Zealand.
Contents
1 Toward Hierarchical Multi-Robot Urban Search
and Rescue: Development of a ‘Mother’ Agent
David A. Williamson and Dale A. Carnegie . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
2 Multi-Robot Search and Rescue: A Potential Field
Based Approach
J.L. Baxter, E.K. Burke, J.M. Garibaldi, and M. Norman. . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
3 Probabilistic Target Search Strategy
R. Jarvis and M. Marzouqi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
4 Localisation and Mapping With a Mobile Robot
Using Sparse Range Data
Jochen Schmidt, Chee K. Wong, and Wai K. Yeap . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
5 Applying High-Level Understanding to Visual Localisation
for Mapping
Trevor Taylor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
6 Development of an Optical Three-Axis Tactile
Sensor for Object Handing Tasks in Humanoid Robot
Navigation System
Hanafiah Yussof, Masahiro Ohka, Hiroaki Kobayashi, Jumpei Takata,
Mitsuhiro Yamano, and Yasuo Nasu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
7 Clustering Methods in Flock Traffic Navigation Based
on Negotiation
Carlos Astengo-Noguez and Ram´on Brena-Pinero . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
8 Using Learned Features from 3D Data for Robot Navigation
Michael Happold and Mark Ollis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61