Article
Automation & Control Systems
Ronja Moller, Antonino Furnari, Sebastiano Battiato, Aki Harma, Giovanni Maria Farinella
Summary: With the integration of intelligent systems and the increasing use of robots for specific applications, the design of socially-compliant robots that can function as companions requires consideration of various research areas. The future of robot navigation, human-robot interaction and human activity recognition is promising as research communities continue to grow and innovate.
ROBOTICS AND AUTONOMOUS SYSTEMS
(2021)
Article
Robotics
Cheng Fang, Luka Peternel, Ajay Seth, Massimo Sartori, Katja Mombaur, Eiichi Yoshida
Summary: The advancement of human modeling and robotics have common interests and interconnections. The principles used in robotics, such as multibody dynamics and control theory, have greatly benefited human modeling. With the development of safer and smarter robots, they actively participate in our lives and assist us. By combining human modeling and robotic methods in physical human-robot interaction, it can lead to improved human understanding and functional assistance.
IEEE ROBOTICS AND AUTOMATION LETTERS
(2023)
Article
Computer Science, Information Systems
Isanka Diddeniya, Indika Wanniarachchi, Hansi Gunasinghe, Chinthaka Premachandra, Hiroharu Kawanaka
Summary: This paper presents a service robot navigation system based on the MQTT protocol, which allows real-time updates of robot states for multiple users. The system includes a navigable structure, a mobile app, and a central control workstation, enabling wireless communication between these components. The mobile app uses voice commands for user interaction, which are processed by the workstation to assign actions to the robot. The robot can navigate and localize itself in the room using real-time maps, and it is equipped with a digital camera for identifying people in certain locations. The system provides MQTT updates to multiple users, allowing them to be notified of the robot's status in real-time. With an average accuracy of 96%, the system successfully navigates to instructed destinations and identifies target persons. Its usefulness for contactless delivery in isolated indoor environments with social distancing restrictions is particularly noteworthy.
Article
Computer Science, Information Systems
Silvia Guillen-Ruiz, Juan Pedro Bandera, Alejandro Hidalgo-Paniagua, Antonio Bandera
Summary: In recent years, there has been growing commercial and research interest in service robots operating in everyday environments. These devices are expected to autonomously navigate in crowded environments while taking into account movement efficiency, safety, and social acceptability. Incorporating socially aware criteria into traditional path planning modules to react to human behavior without causing discomfort presents a complex challenge. This review explores approaches to socially aware navigation and categorizes them based on the strategies adopted by robots to manage interaction or cooperation with humans.
Article
Robotics
Mario Selvaggio, Marco Cognetti, Stefanos Nikolaidis, Serena Ivaldi, Bruno Siciliano
Summary: Sharing control of a robotic system with an autonomous controller allows humans to reduce cognitive and physical workload during tasks, and recent developments in inference and learning techniques have expanded the applications of shared control approaches. This enables robotic systems to seamlessly adapt their autonomy levels. This letter compiles the latest research results in shared control and shared autonomy, with a focus on physical human-robot interaction, discussing architectures and methods developed for shared control and shared autonomy. The letter concludes with a discussion on open issues.
IEEE ROBOTICS AND AUTOMATION LETTERS
(2021)
Article
Computer Science, Information Systems
Jaroslaw Karwowski, Wojciech Szynkiewicz
Summary: This work presents a comprehensive benchmark, SRPB, for quantitatively assessing robot navigation methods. It extends task performance scores and proposes novel social metrics regarding robot motion naturalness and perceived safety. The experiments show that the human-aware trajectory planners significantly improve human-awareness indicators while maintaining reasonable navigation performance. An open-source implementation compatible with ROS is provided.
Article
Computer Science, Information Systems
P. Bachiller, D. Rodriguez-Criado, R. R. Jorvekar, P. Bustos, D. R. Faria, L. J. Manso
Summary: In this paper, Graph Neural Networks are used to model robot disruption, considering the movement of humans and robots for path planning. The model achieves close-to-human performance in the dataset. The main advantage of this approach is its scalability in considering the number of social factors.
MULTIMEDIA TOOLS AND APPLICATIONS
(2022)
Article
Robotics
Yujiao Cheng, Liting Sun, Masayoshi Tomizuka
Summary: The letter proposes an algorithm to automatically construct a hierarchical task model from single-agent demonstrations, and an optimization-based planner is used to improve the efficiency and human satisfaction in robot-human collaboration.
IEEE ROBOTICS AND AUTOMATION LETTERS
(2021)
Article
Computer Science, Hardware & Architecture
Hrudaya Kumar Tripathy, Sushruta Mishra, Hiren Kumar Thakkar, Deepak Rai
Summary: This paper proposes a collision-free low-complexity Mobile Robot navigation scheme, which utilizes Radio Frequency based Identification for localization, hybrid approach for path planning, and a predefined decision table for navigation. The performance of the algorithms is analyzed in grid-based environments of different sizes, showing effectiveness especially in obstacle-free environments.
COMPUTERS & ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING
(2021)
Article
Chemistry, Analytical
Andrew K. Mackay, Luis Riazuelo, Luis Montano
Summary: This paper presents a novel planner based on reinforcement learning for autonomous navigation in dynamic environments. The method considers robot kinodynamic constraints and uses dynamic information from the environment model to speed up the training process. Simulation results and evaluation compare the performance with other techniques for similar navigation problems.
Article
Robotics
Leonardo Guevara, Marc Hanheide, Simon Parsons
Summary: In recent decades, robots have been introduced in agriculture to enhance task efficiency, but they have not surpassed humans in complex tasks like soft-fruit harvesting. While human labor will continue to be necessary for picking tasks, robots can serve as collaborators to support pickers in fruit transportation. This cooperative harvesting strategy requires further development in human-aware safe navigation and effective bidirectional communication. This work contributes to the development of a human-aware navigation module for commercial agricultural robots, aiming to ensure safe interaction with humans and improving efficiency and ergonomics.
JOURNAL OF FIELD ROBOTICS
(2023)
Article
Chemistry, Analytical
Shengmin Zhao, Seung-Hoon Hwang
Summary: In this study, a autonomous navigation robot platform named Owlbot was designed, equipped with a stepping motor as a mobile actuator. A stepping motor control algorithm was developed using polynomial equations to accurately operate the motor. The platform used 2D LiDAR and an inertial measurement unit as primary sensors, and realized simultaneous localization, mapping, and autonomous navigation based on the particle filtering mapping algorithm. Experimental results showed that Owlbot effectively mapped unknown environments and achieved autonomous navigation with a maximum movement error smaller than 0.015 m.
Article
Automation & Control Systems
Xuesu Xiao, Zifan Xu, Zizhao Wang, Yunlong Song, Garrett Warnell, Peter Stone, Tingnan Zhang, Shravan Ravi, Gary Wang, Haresh Karnan, Joydeep Biswas, Nicholas Mohammad, Lauren Bramblett, Rahul Peddi, Nicola Bezzo, Zhanteng Xie, Philip Dames
Summary: The Benchmark Autonomous Robot Navigation (BARN) Challenge aimed to evaluate autonomous ground navigation systems in highly constrained environments. Teams from all over the world participated in the qualifying simulation competition, and the top three teams competed at physical obstacle courses. The competition results underscore the challenges of autonomous ground navigation.
IEEE ROBOTICS & AUTOMATION MAGAZINE
(2022)
Article
Computer Science, Information Systems
Tymoteusz Lindner, Daniel Wyrwal, Andrzej Milecki
Summary: This paper presents the design of an autonomous humanoid robot aimed at optimizing and enhancing customer service in showrooms and stores. The robot design includes a sensor-equipped mobile platform and a head with a touch tablet and an RGBD camera. The robot is capable of autonomous navigation in various environments and has the ability to adapt to diverse spaces using LIDAR, cliff, and ultrasonic sensors. Unique features of this robot design include its ability to physically alter its configuration and its user-friendly gesture recognition system. The robot actively responds to human inputs by tailoring its services and providing assistance to customers.
Article
Chemistry, Analytical
Ana Corrales-Paredes, Maria Malfaz, Veronica Egido-Garcia, Miguel A. Salichs
Summary: This research examines the skill of robots in marking and navigating the environment, utilizing human-robot interaction and RFID technology for an automated signaling system. Through human-robot interaction, the robot obtains environmental information to improve navigation accuracy through signaling processes.
Article
Public, Environmental & Occupational Health
Ghita E. Mourry, Rachid Alami, Adil Elyadini, Souad El Hajjaji, Saad El Kabbaj, Mimoun Zouhdi
SAFETY AND HEALTH AT WORK
(2020)
Article
Robotics
Marco Tognon, Rachid Alami, Bruno Siciliano
Summary: Research on physical human-robot interaction has shown the potential of aerial vehicles for interacting with humans. Through an admittance-based controller approach, robots can guide humans to desired positions using forces. The system stability has been formally proven and shown to be robust to various external disturbances.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ROBOTICS
(2021)
Article
Robotics
Amandine Mayima, Aurelie Clodic, Rachid Alami
Summary: This research proposes a method to integrate metrics in robots to evaluate the quality of interaction with human partners, which has been implemented and tested within the high-level controller of an entertainment robot. The results demonstrate the robot's ability to compute interaction quality metrics in different types of human interactions, showing the impact of different human interactions on the robot's performance.
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SOCIAL ROBOTICS
(2022)
Proceedings Paper
Robotics
Olivier Hauterville, Camino Fernandez, Phani Teja Singamaneni, Anthony Favier, Vicente Matellan, Rachid Alami
Summary: Social robotics research requires replicable experiments, but human behavior is difficult to replicate. A system has been developed to simulate interactive agents in a robotic simulator, enabling the robot to perceive and react to their social behavior, such as talking in pairs. These agents can be choreographed to demonstrate high-level social behaviors, such as waiting for an elevator or moving together as a group.
ROBOT2022: FIFTH IBERIAN ROBOTICS CONFERENCE: ADVANCES IN ROBOTICS, VOL 2
(2023)
Article
Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence
Guilhem Buisan, Nathan Compan, Loic Caroux, Aurelie Clodic, Ophelie Carreras, Camille Vrignaud, Rachid Alami
Summary: This article investigates the navigation of robots in confined locations, focusing on how an anthropomorphic robot should behave when crossing a human in a narrow corridor. The research suggests that modifying the robot's trajectory and having its head glance at the human are necessary to increase the robot's usability. The experiments revealed that humans primarily look at the robot's head before crossing, and modifying the robot's trajectory while manifesting its awareness of the human reduces hesitation and feelings of threat.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON HUMAN-MACHINE SYSTEMS
(2023)
Proceedings Paper
Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence
Jerome Truc, Daniel Sidobre, Rachid Alami
Summary: This paper presents a coordinated and reactive human-aware motion planner for performing a handover task by an autonomous aerial manipulator (AAM). The method takes into account the visual field of the human, the effort to turn the head and see the AAM, as well as the discomfort caused to the human. These social constraints are combined with the kinematic constraints of the AAM to determine its coordinated motion along the trajectory.
COMPANION OF THE ACM/IEEE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON HUMAN-ROBOT INTERACTION, HRI 2023
(2023)
Proceedings Paper
Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence
Guilhem Buisan, Rachid Alami
Summary: This study proposes a human-aware task planning approach for robots to consider and emulate human decision, action, and reaction processes. By exploring multiple hierarchical task networks, the roles of robot and human are categorized as controllable and uncontrollable, showing the potential of the method in an illustrative example of the collaborative assembly of a table by a robot and a human.
HRI '21: COMPANION OF THE 2021 ACM/IEEE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON HUMAN-ROBOT INTERACTION
(2021)
Proceedings Paper
Computer Science, Cybernetics
Yoan Sallami, Katie Winkle, Nicola Webb, Severin Lemaignan, Rachid Alami
HRI'20: COMPANION OF THE 2020 ACM/IEEE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON HUMAN-ROBOT INTERACTION
(2020)
Proceedings Paper
Robotics
Harmish Khambhaita, Rachid Alami
Proceedings Paper
Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence
Amandine Mayima, Aurelie Clodic, Rachid Alami
2020 29TH IEEE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON ROBOT AND HUMAN INTERACTIVE COMMUNICATION (RO-MAN)
(2020)
Proceedings Paper
Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence
Phani S. Teja, Rachid Alami
2020 29TH IEEE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON ROBOT AND HUMAN INTERACTIVE COMMUNICATION (RO-MAN)
(2020)
Proceedings Paper
Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence
Guilhem Buisan, Guillaume Sarthou, Arthur Bit-Monnot, Aurelie Clodic, Rachid Alami
2020 29TH IEEE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON ROBOT AND HUMAN INTERACTIVE COMMUNICATION (RO-MAN)
(2020)
Proceedings Paper
Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence
Yoan Sallami, Severin Lemaignan, Aurelie Clodic, Rachid Alami
2019 IEEE/RSJ INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON INTELLIGENT ROBOTS AND SYSTEMS (IROS)
(2019)
Proceedings Paper
Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence
Guillaume Sarthou, Aurelie Clodic, Rachid Alami
2019 28TH IEEE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON ROBOT AND HUMAN INTERACTIVE COMMUNICATION (RO-MAN)
(2019)
Article
Pharmacology & Pharmacy
Ilias Marmouzi, El Mostafa Karym, Rachid Alami, Meryem El Jemli, Mourad Kharbach, Fouzia Mamouch, Aisha Attar, Bouchra Faridi, Yahia Cherrah, My El Abbes Faouzi
ORIENTAL PHARMACY AND EXPERIMENTAL MEDICINE
(2019)
Article
Automation & Control Systems
Runwei Guan, Shanliang Yao, Lulu Liu, Xiaohui Zhu, Ka Lok Man, Yong Yue, Jeremy Smith, Eng Gee, Yutao Yue
Summary: With the development of Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USVs), the perception of inland waterways has become significant. Traditional RGB cameras cannot work effectively in adverse weather and at night, which has led to the emergence of 4D millimeter-wave radar as a new perception sensor. However, the radar suffers from water-surface clutter and irregular shape of point cloud. To address these issues, this paper proposes a high-performance panoptic perception model called Mask-VRDet, which fuses features of vision and radar using graph neural network.
ROBOTICS AND AUTONOMOUS SYSTEMS
(2024)
Article
Automation & Control Systems
Adrien Le Reun, Kevin Subrin, Anthony Dubois, Sebastien Garnier
Summary: This study aims to evaluate the quality and health of aerospace parts using a high-dimensional robotic cell. By utilizing X-ray Computed Tomography devices, the interior of the parts can be reconstructed and anomalies can be detected. A methodology is proposed to assess both the raw process capability and the improved process capability, with three strategies developed to improve the robot behavior model and calibration.
ROBOTICS AND AUTONOMOUS SYSTEMS
(2024)
Article
Automation & Control Systems
Weiming Ba, Jung-Che Chang, Jing Liu, Xi Wang, Xin Dong, Dragos Axinte
Summary: This paper proposes a hybrid scheme for kinematic control of continuum robots, which avoids errors through tension supervision and accurate piecewise linear approximation. The effectiveness of the controller is verified on different continuum robotic systems.
ROBOTICS AND AUTONOMOUS SYSTEMS
(2024)
Article
Automation & Control Systems
Gabriele Abbate, Alessandro Giusti, Viktor Schmuck, Oya Celiktutan, Antonio Paolillo
Summary: In this study, a learning-based approach is proposed to predict the probability of human users interacting with a robot before the interaction begins. By considering the pose and motion of the user, the approach labels the robot's encounters with humans in a self-supervised manner. The method is validated and deployed in various scenarios, achieving high accuracy in predicting user intentions to interact with the robot.
ROBOTICS AND AUTONOMOUS SYSTEMS
(2024)
Article
Automation & Control Systems
Tiago Cortinhal, Eren Erdal Aksoy
Summary: This work presents a new depth-and semantics-aware conditional generative model, named TITAN-Next, for cross-domain image-to-image translation between LiDAR and camera sensors. The model is able to translate raw LiDAR point clouds to RGB-D camera images by solely relying on semantic scene segments, and it has practical applications in fields like autonomous vehicles.
ROBOTICS AND AUTONOMOUS SYSTEMS
(2024)
Article
Automation & Control Systems
Marios Krestenitis, Emmanuel K. Raptis, Athanasios Ch. Kapoutsis, Konstantinos Ioannidis, Elias B. Kosmatopoulos, Stefanos Vrochidis
Summary: This paper addresses the issue of informative path planning for a UAV used in precision agriculture. By using a non-uniform scanning approach, the time spent in areas with minimal value is reduced, while maintaining high precision in information-dense regions. A novel active sensing and deep learning-based coverage path planning approach is proposed, which adjusts the UAV's speed based on the quantity and confidence level of identified plant classes.
ROBOTICS AND AUTONOMOUS SYSTEMS
(2024)
Article
Automation & Control Systems
Shota Kokubu, Pablo E. Tortos Vinocour, Wenwei Yu
Summary: In this study, a new modular soft actuator was proposed to improve the support performance of soft rehabilitation gloves (SRGs). Objective evaluations and clinical tests were conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness and functionality of the proposed actuator and SRG.
ROBOTICS AND AUTONOMOUS SYSTEMS
(2024)
Article
Automation & Control Systems
Jinliang Zhu, Yuanxi Sun, Jie Xiong, Yiyang Liu, Jia Zheng, Long Bai
Summary: This paper proposes an active prosthetic knee joint with a variable stiffness parallel elastic actuation mechanism. Numerical verifications and practical experiments demonstrate that the mechanism can reduce torque and power, thus reducing energy consumption and improving the endurance of the prosthetic knee joint.
ROBOTICS AND AUTONOMOUS SYSTEMS
(2024)
Article
Automation & Control Systems
Yong You, Jingtao Wu, Yunlong Meng, Dongye Sun, Datong Qin
Summary: A new power-cycling variable transmission (PCVT) is proposed and applied to construction vehicles to improve transmission efficiency. A shift correction strategy is developed based on identifying the changes in construction vehicles' mass and gradient. Simulation results show that the proposed method can correct shift points, improve operation efficiency, and ensure a safer operation process.
ROBOTICS AND AUTONOMOUS SYSTEMS
(2024)
Article
Automation & Control Systems
Shaorui Liu, Wei Tian, Jianxin Shen, Bo Li, Pengcheng Li
Summary: This paper proposes a two-objective optimization technique for multi-robot systems, addressing the issue of balancing productivity and machining performance in high-quality machining tasks.
ROBOTICS AND AUTONOMOUS SYSTEMS
(2024)
Article
Automation & Control Systems
Pengchao Ding, Faben Zhu, Hongbiao Zhu, Gongcheng Wang, Hua Bai, Han Wang, Dongmei Wu, Zhijiang Du, Weidong Wang
Summary: We propose an autonomous approaching scheme for mobile robot traversing obstacle stairwells, which overcomes the restricted field of vision caused by obstacles. The scheme includes stair localization, structural parameter estimation, and optimization of the approaching process.
ROBOTICS AND AUTONOMOUS SYSTEMS
(2024)
Article
Automation & Control Systems
Pedro Azevedo, Vitor Santos
Summary: Accurate detection and tracking of vulnerable road users and traffic objects are vital tasks for autonomous driving and driving assistance systems. This paper proposes a solution for object detection and tracking in an autonomous driving scenario, comparing different object detectors and exploring the deployment on edge devices. The effectiveness of DeepStream technology and different object trackers is assessed using the KITTI tracking dataset.
ROBOTICS AND AUTONOMOUS SYSTEMS
(2024)
Article
Automation & Control Systems
Benjamin Beiter, Divya Srinivasan, Alexander Leonessa
Summary: Powered exoskeletons can significantly reduce physical workload and have great potential impact on future labor practices. To truly assist users in achieving task goals, a shared autonomy control framework is proposed to separate the control objectives of the human and exoskeleton. Positive Power control is introduced for the human-based controller, while 'acceptance' is used as a measure of matching the exoskeleton's control objective to the human's. Both control objectives are implemented in an optimization-based Whole-Body-Control structure. The results verify the effectiveness of the control framework and its potential for improving cooperative control for powered exoskeletons.
ROBOTICS AND AUTONOMOUS SYSTEMS
(2024)
