Analysis and experimental kinematics of a skid-steering wheeled robot based on a laser scanner sensor

Simultaneous Obstacle Avoidance and Target Tracking of Multiple Wheeled Mobile Robots With Certified Safety

Collision avoidance plays a major part in the control of the wheeled mobile robot (WMR). Most existing collision-avoidance methods mainly focus on a single WMR and environmental obstacles. There are few products that cast light on the collision-avoidance between multiple WMRs (MWMRs). In this article, the problem of simultaneous collision-avoidance and target tracking is investigated for MWMRs working in the shared environment from the perspective of optimization. The collision-avoidance strategy is formulated as an inequality constraint, which has proven to be collision free between the MWMRs. The designed MWMRs control scheme integrates path following, collision-avoidance, and WMR velocity compliance, in which the path following task is chosen as the secondary task, and collision-avoidance is the primary task so that safety can be guaranteed in advance. A Lagrangian-based dynamic controller is constructed for the dominating behavior of the MWMRs. Combining theoretical analyses and experiments, the feasibility of the designed control scheme for the MWMRs is substantiated. Experimental results show that if obstacles do not threaten the safety of the WMR, the top priority in the control task is the target track task. All robots move along the desired trajectory. Once the collision criterion is satisfied, the collision-avoidance mechanism is activated and prominent in the controller. Under the proposed scheme, all robots achieve the target tracking on the premise of being collision free.

Modelling and dynamic analysis of slippage level for large-scale skid-steered unmanned ground vehicle

To analyze the turning characteristics of a large-scale skid-steered unmanned ground vehicle (UGV), a mathematical model based on geometric characteristics and kinematics was developed in this work. The turning characteristics, as well as some important geometric and moving features, were seriously considered in the model. A self-designed UGV was employed to conduct targeted experiments. Initial experiment showed that the width of UGV was much larger than that of actual value, because slippage phenomenon made the errors of actual velocity and trajectory length between two sides of the UGV were lower than those obtained from direct wheel velocities measurements and calculations. Further experiments which obtained moving velocity of the UAV by means of a highly accurate Inertial Navigation System (INS) were conducted. Combining this velocity, the slippage levels of the four wheels can be quantitatively measured. In addition, using standard velocities derived from the accurate moving velocity, a true turning radius can be accurately calculated in real time when the slippage characteristics were seriously considered, hence, the mathematical model can be sufficiently validated. The work can realize modelling and dynamic analysis and estimation of the slippage characteristics of this type of UGV.

OctoPath: An OcTree-Based Self-Supervised Learning Approach to Local Trajectory Planning for Mobile Robots

Autonomous mobile robots are usually faced with challenging situations when driving in complex environments. Namely, they have to recognize the static and dynamic obstacles, plan the driving path and execute their motion. For addressing the issue of perception and path planning, in this paper, we introduce OctoPath, which is an encoder-decoder deep neural network, trained in a self-supervised manner to predict the local optimal trajectory for the ego-vehicle. Using the discretization provided by a 3D octree environment model, our approach reformulates trajectory prediction as a classification problem with a configurable resolution. During training, OctoPath minimizes the error between the predicted and the manually driven trajectories in a given training dataset. This allows us to avoid the pitfall of regression-based trajectory estimation, in which there is an infinite state space for the output trajectory points. Environment sensing is performed using a 40-channel mechanical LiDAR sensor, fused with an inertial measurement unit and wheels odometry for state estimation. The experiments are performed both in simulation and real-life, using our own developed GridSim simulator and RovisLab’s Autonomous Mobile Test Unit platform. We evaluate the predictions of OctoPath in different driving scenarios, both indoor and outdoor, while benchmarking our system against a baseline hybrid A-Star algorithm and a regression-based supervised learning method, as well as against a CNN learning-based optimal path planning method.

Autonomous Dam Surveillance Robot System Based on Multi-Sensor Fusion

Dams are important engineering facilities in the water conservancy industry. They have many functions, such as flood control, electric power generation, irrigation, water supply, shipping, etc. Therefore, their long-term safety is crucial to operational stability. Because of the complexity of the dam environment, robots with various kinds of sensors are a good choice to replace humans to perform a surveillance job. In this paper, an autonomous system design is proposed for dam ground surveillance robots, which includes general solution, electromechanical layout, sensors scheme, and navigation method. A strong and agile skid-steered mobile robot body platform is designed and created, which can be controlled accurately based on an MCU and an onboard IMU. A novel low-cost LiDAR is adopted for odometry estimation. To realize more robust localization results, two Kalman filter loops are used with the robot kinematic model to fuse wheel encoder, IMU, LiDAR odometry, and a low-cost GNSS receiver data. Besides, a recognition network based on YOLO v3 is deployed to realize real-time recognition of cracks and people during surveillance. As a system, by connecting the robot, the cloud server and the users with IOT technology, the proposed solution could be more robust and practical.

Improved Omnidirectional Odometry for a View-Based Mapping Approach

This work presents an improved visual odometry using omnidirectional images. The main purpose is to generate a reliable prior input which enhances the SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping) estimation tasks within the framework of navigation in mobile robotics, in detriment of the internal odometry data. Generally, standard SLAM approaches extensively use data such as the main prior input to localize the robot. They also tend to consider sensory data acquired with GPSs, lasers or digital cameras, as the more commonly acknowledged to re-estimate the solution. Nonetheless, the modeling of the main prior is crucial, and sometimes especially challenging when it comes to non-systematic terms, such as those associated with the internal odometer, which ultimately turn to be considerably injurious and compromise the convergence of the system. This omnidirectional odometry relies on an adaptive feature point matching through the propagation of the current uncertainty of the system. Ultimately, it is fused as the main prior input in an EKF (Extended Kalman Filter) view-based SLAM system, together with the adaption of the epipolar constraint to the omnidirectional geometry. Several improvements have been added to the initial visual odometry proposal so as to produce better performance. We present real data experiments to test the validity of the proposal and to demonstrate its benefits, in contrast to the internal odometry. Furthermore, SLAM results are included to assess its robustness and accuracy when using the proposed prior omnidirectional odometry.