The field of robot vision guidance is developing rapidly. The benefits of sophisticated vision technology include savings, improved quality, reliability, safety and productivity. Robot vision is used for part identification and navigation. Vision applications generally deal with finding a part and orienting it for robotic handling or inspection before an application is performed. Sometimes vision guided robots can replace multiple mechanical tools with a single robot station. A combination of vision algorithms, calibration, temperature software, and cameras provide the vision ability. Calibration of robot vision system is very application dependent. They can range from a simple guidance application to a more complex application that uses data from multiple sensors. Algorithms are consistently improving, allowing for sophisticated detection. Many robots are now available with collision detection, allowing them to work alongside other robots without the fear of a major collision. They simply stop moving momentarily if they detect another object in their motion path. This book presents the latest research in the field from around the world.

This is the first and only book of portraits of android and humanoid robots. The robots in these photographs by Max Aguilera-Hellweg, a photojournalist for 40 years whose work has appeared in Life, NYT Magazine, Rolling Stone, Discover, Scientific American, Time, and National Geographic, are some of the most well known in the world of humanoid robotics. The photographs explore the many ways scientists and engineers are creating robots with human attributes, qualities, and abilities, and the means by which the robots engage us in what is known as human-robot interaction. The relationship of humans to robots can be as subtle as nonverbal communication; as intuitive as whether you should pass someone on the left or pass on the right to avoid sidewalk salsa; as intimate as developing an affectionate personal relationship with a machine, or as never before conceived of, but now as important as life and death—autonomous robots programmed for ethical decision making in the battlefield. Author and photographer Max Aguilera-Hellweg has embarked on a journey through Japan and the United States to explore the turning point in the evolution of robot science, where robots are becoming more like humans, crossing the great divide between data processing and sentience. Humanoid's breathtaking photographs present android robots designed to look and act like a human, beyond the imaginary Data from the TV series Star Trek, Pris, the replicant (played by Daryl Hannah) in the movie Blade Runner, or the "synths" of the hit TV series Humans. Some of the humanoid robots portrayed in this profound book, such as Bina48, Joey Chaos, and Geminoid-F have humanlike skin, hair, hands, even fingernails—they have been created to resemble with extreme accuracy an actual human being. Other humanoids are devoid of such external attributes but replicate the anatomy of a human—arms, legs, torso, a head and eyes—like, for example, the Terminator, not as Arnold Schwarzenegger but when he is all machine. Some of Aguilera-Hellweg's photographs reveal the different ways robot scientists approach the same engineering and design problem. BioBiped1, for instance, a humanoid based on biomimetics, comprised of a torso and pair of legs, has joints and moving parts modeled on human biology and systems, harnessing what nature has solved. Another such humanoid, aptly named Vocal Robot, consists of a pair of artificial lungs and a vocal chord from which it speaks. During the creation of many of these photos, an hour-long documentary, Au Couer des Robots (In the Heart of Robots), was shot. The English-language version is in postproduction and will soon seek distribution here and internationally. Max Aguilera-Hellweg's astonishing, gorgeous photography open our eyes to this brave new world in which humanoid robots—exciting, thrilling, frightening to some, strange to others, controversial, lifesaving—will change our lives in countless ways.

Four undocumented Mexican American students, two great teachers, one robot-building contest . . . and a major motion picture
In 2004, four Latino teenagers arrived at the National Underwater Robotics Competition at the University of California, Santa Barbara. They were born in Mexico but raised in Phoenix, Arizona, where they attended an underfunded, beat-up public high school. No one had ever suggested to Oscar, Cristian, Luis, or Lorenzo that they might amount to much--but two inspiring science teachers had convinced them that four impoverished, undocumented kids from the desert who had never even seen the ocean should try to build an underwater robot.
And build a robot they did. Their robot wasn't pretty, especially compared to the competition. They were going up against some of the best collegiate engineers in the country, including a team from MIT backed by a $10,000 grant from ExxonMobil. The Phoenix teenagers had scraped together less than $1,000 and built their robot out of scavenged parts. This was never a level competition--and yet, against all odds . . . they won
But this is just the beginning for these four, whose story--which became a key inspiration to the DREAMers movement--will go on to include first-generation college graduations, deportation and bean-picking in Mexico, and service in Afghanistan.
Joshua Davis's "Spare Parts "is a story about overcoming insurmountable odds and four young men who proved they were among the most patriotic and talented Americans in this country--even as the country tried to kick them out.

Hack your ride! In this volume of Make:, you'll find a 21-page special section on connected cars. You'll also see the world's cutest go-kart, DIY electric vehicles, 12 bike mods, and learn about custom dashboard computing. And if you can't wait for the upcoming movie, build yourself a working, Star Wars-inspired, BB-8 droid! This issue also features skill builders on spray paint, choosing the right battery, and working with sheet metal and rivets. On top of that, you'll find 40 projects, including: A 3D-printed RC race car The million-color flashlight Water balloon cannon

Aerial Robotic Workers: Design, Modeling, Control, Vision and Their Applications provides an in-depth look at both theory and practical applications surrounding the Aerial Robotic Worker (ARW). Emerging ARWs are fully autonomous flying robots that can assist human operations through their agile performance of aerial inspections and interaction with the surrounding infrastructure. This book addresses all the fundamental components of ARWs, starting with the hardware and software components and then addressing aspects of modeling, control, perception of the environment, and the concept of aerial manipulators, cooperative ARWs, and direct applications. The book includes sample codes and ROS-based tutorials, enabling the direct application of the chapters and real-life examples with platforms already existing in the market.

The primary aim of this volume is to provide researchers and engineers from both academic and industry with up-to-date coverage of new results in the field of robotic welding, intelligent systems and automation. The book is mainly based on papers selected from the 2019 International Workshop on Intelligentized Welding Manufacturing (IWIWM'2019) in USA. The articles show that the intelligentized welding manufacturing (IWM) is becoming an inevitable trend with the intelligentized robotic welding as the key technology. The volume is divided into four logical parts: Intelligent Techniques for Robotic Welding, Sensing of Arc Welding Processing, Modeling and Intelligent Control of Welding Processing, as well as Intelligent Control and its Applications in Engineering.

Rehabilitation Robotics gives an introduction and overview of all areas of rehabilitation robotics, perfect for anyone new to the field. It also summarizes available robot technologies and their application to different pathologies for skilled researchers and clinicians. The editors have been involved in the development and application of robotic devices for neurorehabilitation for more than 15 years. This experience using several commercial devices for robotic rehabilitation has enabled them to develop the know-how and expertise necessary to guide those seeking comprehensive understanding of this topic. Each chapter is written by an expert in the respective field, pulling in perspectives from both engineers and clinicians to present a multi-disciplinary view. The book targets the implementation of efficient robot strategies to facilitate the re-acquisition of motor skills. This technology incorporates the outcomes of behavioral studies on motor learning and its neural correlates into the design, implementation and validation of robot agents that behave as 'optimal' trainers, efficiently exploiting the structure and plasticity of the human sensorimotor systems. In this context, human-robot interaction plays a paramount role, at both the physical and cognitive level, toward achieving a symbiotic interaction where the human body and the robot can benefit from each other's dynamics.

Distributed Coordination Theory for Robot Teams develops control algorithms to coordinate the motion of autonomous teams of robots in order to achieve some desired collective goal. It provides novel solutions to foundational coordination problems, including distributed algorithms to make quadrotor helicopters rendezvous and to make ground vehicles move in formation along circles or straight lines. The majority of the algorithms presented in this book can be implemented using on-board cameras. The book begins with an introduction to coordination problems, such as rendezvous of flying robots, and modelling. It then provides a solid theoretical background in basic stability, graph theory and control primitives. The book discusses the algorithmic solutions for numerous distributed control problems, focusing primarily on flying robotics and kinematic unicycles. Finally, the book looks to the future, and suggests areas discussed which could be pursued in further research. This book will provide practitioners, researchers and students in the field of control and robotics new insights in distributed multi-agent systems.

PID Control with Intelligent Compensation for Exoskeleton Robots explains how to use neural PD and PID controls to reduce integration gain, and provides explicit conditions on how to select linear PID gains using proof of semi-global asymptotic stability and local asymptotic stability with a velocity observer. These conditions are applied in both task and joint spaces, with PID controllers compensated by neural networks. This is a great resource on how to combine traditional PD/PID control techniques with intelligent control. Dr. Wen Yu presents several leading-edge methods for designing neural and fuzzy compensators with high-gain velocity observers for PD control using Lyapunov stability. Proportional-integral-derivative (PID) control is widely used in biomedical and industrial robot manipulators. An integrator in a PID controller reduces the bandwidth of the closed-loop system, leads to less-effective transient performance and may even destroy stability. Many robotic manipulators use proportional-derivative (PD) control with gravity and friction compensations, but improved gravity and friction models are needed. The introduction of intelligent control in these systems has dramatically changed the face of biomedical and industrial control engineering.

A comprehensive review of the principles and dynamics of robotic systems Dynamics and Control of Robotic Systems offers a systematic and thorough theoretical background for the study of the dynamics and control of robotic systems. The authors--noted experts in the field--highlight the underlying principles of dynamics and control that can be employed in a variety of contemporary applications. The book contains a detailed presentation of the precepts of robotics and provides methodologies that are relevant to realistic robotic systems. The robotic systems represented include wide range examples from classical industrial manipulators, humanoid robots to robotic surgical assistants, space vehicles, and computer controlled milling machines. The book puts the emphasis on the systematic application of the underlying principles and show how the computational and analytical tools such as MATLAB, Mathematica, and Maple enable students to focus on robotics' principles and theory. Dynamics and Control of Robotic Systems contains an extensive collection of examples and problems and: Puts the focus on the fundamentals of kinematics and dynamics as applied to robotic systems Presents the techniques of analytical mechanics of robotics Includes a review of advanced topics such as the recursive order N formulation Contains a wide array of design and analysis problems for robotic systems Written for students of robotics, Dynamics and Control of Robotic Systems offers a comprehensive review of the underlying principles and methods of the science of robotics.

Nonlinear Control Techniques for Electro-Hydraulic Actuators in Robotics Engineering meets the needs of those working in advanced electro-hydraulic controls for modern mechatronic and robotic systems. The non-linear EHS control methods covered are proving to be more effective than traditional controllers, such as PIDs. The control strategies given address parametric uncertainty, unknown external load disturbance, single-rod actuator characteristics, and control saturation. Theoretical and experimental validations are explained, and examples provided. Based on the authors' cutting-edge research, this work is an important resource for engineers, researchers, and students working in EHS.

Robot Love presents a highly topical theme: what does it mean to be human and to love in the context of robotics and Artificial Intelligence (AI)? How do we preserve certain distinctive qualities while we are merging with machines? Will we outsource love and affection to robots? There is already a tendency to see ourselves as quantitative machines. Meanwhile, in order to become human aware, robots need to incorporate typical human qualities - qualities such as emotion, intuition, and most of all love. Now that human-like machines are entering the domestic sphere, AI may act as a mirror allowing us to delve deeper into ourselves and the current state of society. Robot Love, combining art, neuroscience, robotics and ethics, is like a force from the future we cannot yet grasp, but urges us to ask: can we learn from robots about love? This lavishly illustrated book accompanies the Robot Love exhibition at the Niet Normaal Foundation throughout 2018. presenting the work of 60 international artists working at the cutting edge of art, technology and social change, including Matthew Barney, Roger Hiorns, Hito Steyerl, Philippe Parreno and LA Raeven. Renowned scientists and authors such as Margaret Atwood, Reza Negarestani, Katarina Kolozova and Tobias Revell contribute with exploratory and persuasive essays. They make us aware of science fiction becoming science fact.

Connecting theory with numerical techniques using MATLAB (R), this practical textbook equips students with the tools required to solve finite element problems. This hands-on guide covers a wide range of engineering problems through nine well-structured chapters including solid mechanics, heat transfer and fluid dynamics; equilibrium, steady state and transient; and 1-D, 2-D and 3-D problems. Engineering problems are discussed using case study examples, which are solved using a systematic approach, both by examining the steps manually and by implementing a complete MATLAB (R)code. This topical coverage is supplemented by discourse on meshing with a detailed explanation and implementation of 2-D meshing algorithms. Introducing theory and numerical techniques alongside comprehensive examples this text increases engagement and provides students with the confidence needed to implement their own computer codes to solve given problems.

A Systematic Approach to Learning Robot Programming with ROS provides a comprehensive, introduction to the essential components of ROS through detailed explanations of simple code examples along with the corresponding theory of operation. The book explores the organization of ROS, how to understand ROS packages, how to use ROS tools, how to incorporate existing ROS packages into new applications, and how to develop new packages for robotics and automation. It also facilitates continuing education by preparing the reader to better understand the existing on-line documentation. The book is organized into six parts. It begins with an introduction to ROS foundations, including writing ROS nodes and ROS tools. Messages, Classes, and Servers are also covered. The second part of the book features simulation and visualization with ROS, including coordinate transforms. The next part of the book discusses perceptual processing in ROS. It includes coverage of using cameras in ROS, depth imaging and point clouds, and point cloud processing. Mobile robot control and navigation in ROS is featured in the fourth part of the book The fifth section of the book contains coverage of robot arms in ROS. This section explores robot arm kinematics, arm motion planning, arm control with the Baxter Simulator, and an object-grabber package. The last part of the book focuses on system integration and higher-level control, including perception-based and mobile manipulation. This accessible text includes examples throughout and C++ code examples are also provided at https://github.com/wsnewman/learning_ros

This book comprises the proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Future Technologies in Manufacturing, Automation, Design and Energy 2020. The contents of this volume focus on recent technological advances in the field of manufacturing, automation, design and energy. Some of the topics covered include additive manufacturing, renewable energy resources, design automation, process automation and monitoring, etc. This volume will prove a valuable resource for those in academia and industry.

'If you want to see what that future might look like, Duncan's book is a fun place to start' NPR 'Intensely readable, downright terrifying, and surprisingly uplifting' Vanity Fair '5 books not to miss . . . A fascinating work of imaginative futurology' USA Today One of Time magazine's '32 Books You Need to Read This Summer' - 'a riveting read' One of David Baldacci and Elizabeth Acevedo's best summer reads, on USA Today's Today programme 'A refreshing variation on the will-intelligent-robots-bring-Armageddon genre . . . this colourful mixture of expert futurology and quirky speculation does not disappoint' Kirkus Reviews What robot and AI systems are being built and imagined right now? What do they say about us, their creators? Will they usher in a fantastic new future, or destroy us? What do some of our greatest thinkers, from physicist Brian Greene and futurist Kevin Kelly to inventor Dean Kamen, geneticist George Church, and filmmaker Tiffany Shlain, anticipate about our human-robot future? For even as robots and AI intrigue us and make us anxious about the future, our fascination with robots has always been about more than the potential of the technology - it's also about what robots tell us about being human. From present-day Facebook and Amazon bots to near-future 'intimacy' bots and 'the robot that swiped my job' bots, bestselling American popular science writer David Ewing Duncan's Talking to Robots is a wonderfully entertaining and insightful guide to possible future scenarios about robots, both real and imagined. Featured bots include robot drivers; doc bots; politician bots; warrior bots; sex bots; synthetic bio bots; dystopic bots that are hopefully just bad dreams; and ultimately, God Bot (as described by physicist Brian Greene). These scenarios are informed by discussions with well-known thinkers, engineers, scientists, artists, philosophers and others, who share with us their ideas, hopes and fears about robots. David spoke with, among others, Kevin Kelly, David Baldacci, Brian Greene, Dean Kamen, Craig Venter, Stephanie Mehta, David Eagleman, George Poste, George Church, General R. H. Latiff, Robert Seigel, Emily Morse, David Sinclair, Ken Goldberg, Sunny Bates, Adam Gazzaley, Tim O'Reilly, Tiffany Shlain, Eric Topol and Juan Enriquez. These discussions, along with some reporting on bot-tech, bot-history and real-time societal and ethical issues with robots, are the launch pads for unfurling possible bot futures that are informed by how people and societies have handled new technologies in the past. The book describes how robots work, but its primary focus is on what our fixation with bots and AI says about us as humans: about our hopes and anxieties; our myths, stories, beliefs and ideas about beings both real and artificial; and our attempts to attain perfection. We are at a pivotal moment when our ancient infatuation with human-like beings with certain attributes or superpowers - in mythology, religion and storytelling - is coinciding with our ability to actually build some of these entities.

The authors' of this book focus on the latest developments in robot kinematics and motion planning. The first chapter seeks to identify the governing rules implemented in the central nervous system (CNS) to solve redundant mapping problems from an experimental observation approach. The novelty of this chapter is in the obtained motion planning results for a constraint elbow joint during reaching movements. The second chapter focuses on the problems that exist in the two-norm and infinity-norm and solutions to these problems involving bi-criteria (BC) motion planning schemes of different joint-level vectors. In the third chapter, trajectory generation methods for the application of thermal spraying processes are introduced. In the fourth chapter, an investigation on the robot kinematics is proposed to find the rules of motion in an application case. The results demonstrate the motion behavior of each axis in the robot that consequently permits the identification of the motion problems in the trajectory. In the fifth chapter, kinematic properties of a new planar parallel manipulator is investigated by means of the theory of screws.

This book contains seventeen contributions in the form of independent chapters, covering a broad range of topics related to human-robot interaction at physical and cognitive levels. Each chapter represents a novel piece of work presented during HFR 2022 by researchers in the different areas of robotics, where new theories, methodologies, technologies, challenges, and empirical and experimental studies are discussed. Additionally, this compilation is rich in viewpoints due to the multidisciplinary nature of its authors. Hence, this book represents an excellent opportunity for academics, researchers, and industry partners to get acquainted with the most recent work on human-robot interaction.

There has been an increasing interest in multi-disciplinary research on multisensor attitude estimation technology driven by its versatility and diverse areas of application, such as sensor networks, robotics, navigation, video, biomedicine, etc. Attitude estimation consists of the determination of rigid bodies' orientation in 3D space. This research area is a multilevel, multifaceted process handling the automatic association, correlation, estimation, and combination of data and information from several sources. Data fusion for attitude estimation is motivated by several issues and problems, such as data imperfection, data multi-modality, data dimensionality, processing framework, etc. While many of these problems have been identified and heavily investigated, no single data fusion algorithm is capable of addressing all the aforementioned challenges. The variety of methods in the literature focus on a subset of these issues to solve, which would be determined based on the application in hand. Historically, the problem of attitude estimation has been introduced by Grace Wahba in 1965 within the estimate of satellite attitude and aerospace applications. This book intends to provide the reader with both a generic and comprehensive view of contemporary data fusion methodologies for attitude estimation, as well as the most recent researches and novel advances on multisensor attitude estimation task. It explores the design of algorithms and architectures, benefits, and challenging aspects, as well as a broad array of disciplines, including: navigation, robotics, biomedicine, motion analysis, etc. A number of issues that make data fusion for attitude estimation a challenging task, and which will be discussed through the different chapters of the book, are related to: 1) The nature of sensors and information sources (accelerometer, gyroscope, magnetometer, GPS, inclinometer, etc.); 2) The computational ability at the sensors; 3) The theoretical developments and convergence proofs; 4) The system architecture, computational resources, fusion level.

This book offers a unique compendium of the authors own research on the use of theoretical stability analysis, showing how to take advantage of local stability design and ultimate boundedness for practical robot control. It addresses researchers and postgraduate students dealing with control theory, particularly with nonlinear systems. Thanks to the numerous worked examples, it could also be used as a textbook in postgraduate courses.

Ocean covers 70.8% of the Earth's surface, and it plays an important role in supporting all life on Earth. Nonetheless, more than 80% of the ocean's volume remains unmapped, unobserved and unexplored. In this regard, Underwater Sensor Networks (USNs), which offer ubiquitous computation, efficient communication and reliable control, are emerging as a promising solution to understand and explore the ocean. In order to support the application of USNs, accurate position information from sensor nodes is required to correctly analyze and interpret the data sampled. However, the openness and weak communication characteristics of USNs make underwater localization much more challenging in comparison to terrestrial sensor networks. In this book, we focus on the localization problem in USNs, taking into account the unique characteristics of the underwater environment. This problem is of considerable importance, since fundamental guidance on the design and analysis of USN localization is very limited at present. To this end, we first introduce the network architecture of USNs and briefly review previous approaches to the localization of USNs. Then, the asynchronous clock, node mobility, stratification effect, privacy preserving and attack detection are considered respectively and corresponding localization schemes are developed. Lastly, the book's rich implications provide guidance on the design of future USN localization schemes. The results in this book reveal from a system perspective that underwater localization accuracy is closely related to the communication protocol and optimization estimator. Researchers, scientists and engineers in the field of USNs can benefit greatly from this book, which provides a wealth of information, useful methods and practical algorithms to help understand and explore the ocean.

A revolutionary new framework that draws on insights from ecology for the design and analysis of long-duration robots Robots are increasingly leaving the confines of laboratories, warehouses, and manufacturing facilities, venturing into agriculture and other settings where they must operate in uncertain conditions over long timescales. This multidisciplinary book draws on the principles of ecology to show how robots can take full advantage of the environments they inhabit, including as sources of energy. Magnus Egerstedt introduces a revolutionary new design paradigm-robot ecology-that makes it possible to achieve long-duration autonomy while avoiding catastrophic failures. Central to ecology is the idea that the richness of an organism's behavior is a function of the environmental constraints imposed by its habitat. Moving beyond traditional strategies that focus on optimal policies for making robots achieve targeted tasks, Egerstedt explores how to use survivability constraints to produce both effective and provably safe robot behaviors. He blends discussions of ecological principles with the development of control barrier functions as a formal approach to constraint-based control design, and provides an in-depth look at the design of the SlothBot, a slow and energy-efficient robot used for environmental monitoring and conservation. Visionary in scope, Robot Ecology presents a comprehensive and unified methodology for designing robots that can function over long durations in diverse natural environments.

This book comprises select proceedings of the international conference ETAEERE 2020. This volume covers latest research in advanced approaches in automation, control based devices, and adaptive learning mechanisms. The contents discuss the complex operations and behaviors of different systems or machines in different environments. Some of the areas covered include control of linear and nonlinear systems, intelligent systems, stochastic control, knowledge-based systems applications, fault diagnosis and tolerant control, and real-time control applications. The contents of this volume can be useful for researchers as well as professionals working in control and automation.

The Intelligent Systems Series encompasses theoretical studies, design methods, and real-world implementations and applications. It publishes titles in three core sub-topic areas: Intelligent Automation, Intelligent Transportation Systems, and Intelligent Computing. Titles focus on professional and academic reference works and handbooks. This volume, Advances in Artificial Transportation Systems and Simulation, covers hot topics including driver assistance systems; cooperative vehicle-highway systems; collision avoidance; pedestrian protection; image, radar and lidar signal processing; and V2V and V2I communications. The readership for the series is broad, reflecting the wide range of intelligent systems interest and application, but focuses on engineering (in particular automation, control, mechatronics, robotics, transportation, automotive, aerospace), electronics and electronic design, and computer science.

Copyright (c)2015 Zhejiang University Press, Published by Elsevier Inc. Household Service Robotics is a collection of the latest technological advances in household service robotics in five main areas: robot systems, manipulation, navigation, object recognition, and human-robot interaction. The book enables readers to understand development s and apply them to their own working areas, including: Robotic technologies for assisted living and elderly care Domestic cleaning automation Household surveillance Guiding systems for public spaces Service robotics is a highly multidisciplinary field, requiring a holistic approach. This handbook provides insights to the disciplines involved in the field as well as advanced methods and techniques that enable the scale-up of theory to actual systems. It includes coverage of functionalities such as vision systems, location control, and HCI, which are important in domestic settings.