engleski

Advanced Control of Professional Service Robots in Complex Environments – from Remote Control to Full Autonomy

In the last decade, the significance of professional service robotics has been growing rapidly, evolving to some very successful commercial products such as robotic vacuum cleaners, autonomous closed-space surveillance robots and many others. According to the official CARE-EUROP strategic research agenda for robotics in Europe “Robotic visions to 2020 and beyond - 07/2009, ” large breakthroughs are expected especially in the areas of professional and domestic service robotics (e.g. security, space & undersea missions, medical diagnosis, therapy, rehabilitation, household robots). Mentioning just the recent ecological disaster in the Mexican Gulf caused by the deep-sea oil spill, it is easy to comprehend that a formation of specialized undersea professional service robots could effectively act together and close the spill in short time and thus reduce the scale of the disaster to minimum. The laboratory the author comes from has collaborated with industry on several R&D professional service robotics projects. This ranges from the study of wireless remote control for all-terrain humanitarian demining mobile robots and fire-fighting mobile robots (ground vehicles), design (construction) and control of an all-terrain ground mobile robot equipped for exploration tasks in life-threatening missions, control of an all-terrain mobile robot for hydrodynamic treatment of concrete and metal surfaces, and finally, supervisory control of multiple autonomous laser guided vehicles (LGV) operating in the mixed factory zone (production + packaging + storage) as a vital part of automated factory warehouses. The experience says that control of each professional service robot has been specific and requirements put on control have extended from pure remote control with no autonomy at all up to full autonomy. In other words, a road to autonomy depends largely on the purpose of a particular professional service robot. This involves HW & SW standardization, increase of robot’s intelligence, robot awareness of complex environments, learning and adaptation, as well as integration of common safety rules that turn robots into safe objects (subjects) within the working environment.

Service robots; professional service robots; robot control; remote control; humanitarian demining robots; fire-fighting robots; hydro-demolition robots; exploration robots; life- threatening missions; safety.

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