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- Offer Profile
- Mobile Multirobot Systems
Mobile Robots
Underwater Robotics
Inverse Kinematics and Redundant Manipulators
Identification and Control of Industrial Robots
Cooperative Manipulators
Interaction Control
Product Portfolio
Mobile Multi-robot Systems
- The field of cooperation and coordination of multi-robot systems has been
object of considerable research efforts in the last years. The basic idea is
that multi-robot systems can perform tasks more efficiently than a single
robot or can accomplish tasks not executable by a single one. Moreover,
multi-robot systems have advantages like increasing tolerance to possible
vehicle fault, providing flexibility to the task execution or taking
advantage of distributed sensing and actuation. The use of a platoon of
vehicles is of interest in many applications, such as exploration of an
unknown environment, navigation and formation control, demining, object
transportation, up to playing team games (e.g., soccer); these may involve
grounded, aerial, underwater or surface vehicles. A behavior-based, namely
the Null-Space-based Behavioral approach (NSB), aimed at guiding a mobile
robots platoon has been developed. The approach, using a hierarchy based
logic to combine multiple conflicting tasks, is able to fulfill or partially
fulfill each task according to their position in the hierarchy. The NSB has
been extensively studied and simulated for different kind of vehicles (i.e.
mobile robots, underwater robots and surface vessels) while achieving
several formation control missions. Moreoveo, it has been implemented to
control a platoon of autonomous grounded vehicles made up of 7 Khepera II
mobile robots (manufactured by K-Team).
Mobile Robots
- Experiments concerning the application of a real-time trajectory planning
algorithm to an unicycle-like mobile robot Magellan-pro (manufactured by
I-Robot) have been conducted. In the respect of the kinematic constraints
(limited velocity and acceleration), the desired path has to be kept as long
as possible. A fuzzy inference system handles path information in order to
give to the vehicle safe behaviors such as slowing down when approaching a
narrow band. Experiments concernig
odometry calibration based on the least-squares technique have been conduced
both with a mobile robot Magellan-pro and a mobile robot Khepera II
(manufactured by K-team).
Underwater Robotics
- Underwater robotics is a challenging task since it implies control of a
non-linear system in an unstructured environment. In case of the presence of
a manipulator, the system redundancy has to be taken into account. Kinematic
control, dynamic control and interaction control of underwater robotic
systems have been object of our research. A software package for simulation
of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUV) systems have been developed. Several
experiments (in the ASL Lab) of AUV dynamic control and fault tolerance
control have been carried out. Moreover, a navigation system for real-time
path planning and obstacle avoidance of a real AUV has been devised.
Inverse Kinematics and Redundant Manipulators
- Robot control actions are naturally executed in the joint space while robot
motions are specified in the task space. It is then necessary to solve an
inverse kinematics problem; namely, given the end-effector trajectory, find
the corresponding joint trajectories. A number of Inverse Kinematics
algorithm have been studied and experimentally validated (in the PRISMA Lab)
coping with redundant and non-redundant applications, kinematic joint
limits, singularities, underwater applications, different orientation
representations, a singularity-robust task-priority redundancy resolution
for real-time kinematic control of robot manipulators has been proposed.
Identification and
Control of Industrial Robots
- To improve the efficieny of the conventional controllers of industrial
robots, i.e., the decentralized PD joint controllers, a number of
theoretical and experimental studies (in COMAU Robotica Lab, in the PRISMA
Lab and in the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Division PMA) have been
realized in order to test advanced control schemes. Identification
techniques for the estimation of the robot's dynamic and the payload
parameters have been implemented for industrial robots.
Cooperative Manipulators
- Coordination of multiple manipulators' systems can provide enhanced
capabilities over single arm designs. Theoretical investigations and
experimental tests (in the PRISMA Lab) of kinematic control and operational
space control have been conducted.
Interaction Control
- Interaction of the robot end-effector with the environment is of interest in
real manipulation tasks. Theoretical and experimental work (in the PRISMA
Lab) has been conducted leading to the formulation of the parallel control
approach.
Mobile Ad-hoc NETworks (MANET)
- The NSB has been recently extended to the control of a
Mobile Ad-hoc NETwork (MANET), that is, the using of a platoon of mobile
robots to carry a number of repeater antennas in order to guarantee a
constant communication between a rescue operator (human or robot) and a
fixed base station. These mobile antennas suitably moves to dynamically
ensure a multihop communication link and this in spite of the presence of
obstacles, signal fading area and managing failure situations (e.g., the
fault of one or more mobile antennas).
Other Activities
- To solve the problem of voltage waveform regulation in power system, it is
necessary to take into account that power system operating conditions
continuously and unpredictably change, due to variations of generations and
loads, and of the network topology. An efficient solution to this problem
consists in designing the voltage regulator by adopting an adaptive
control-based approach in which Kalman filtering techniques, different
identification procedures and pole assignment control are studied and
implemented for different power systems operating conditions.