O. Reinoso, A. Gil, L. Payá and M. Juliá
This paper aims to present a teleoperation system that allows one to control a group of mobile robots in a collaborative manner. In order to show the capabilities of the…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to present a teleoperation system that allows one to control a group of mobile robots in a collaborative manner. In order to show the capabilities of the collaborative teleoperation system, it seeks to present a task where the operator collaborates with a robot team to explore a remote environment in a coordinated manner. The system implements human‐robot interaction by means of natural language interfaces, allowing one to teleoperate multiple mobile robots in an unknown, unstructured environment. With the supervision of the operator, the robot team builds a map of the environment with a vision‐based simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) technique. The approach is well suited for search and rescue tasks and other applications where the operator may guide the exploration of the robots to certain areas in the map.
Design/methodology/approach
In opposition with a master‐slave scheme of teleoperation, an exploration mechanism is proposed that allows one to integrate the commands expressed by a human operator in an exploration task, where the actions expressed by the human operator are taken as an advice. In consequence, the robots in the remote environment choose their movements that improve the estimation of the map and best suit the requirements of the operator.
Findings
It is shown that the collaborative mechanism presented is suitable to control a robot team that explores an unstructured environment. Experimental results are presented that demonstrate the validity of the approach.
Practical implications
The system implements human‐robot interaction by means of natural language interfaces. The robots are equipped with stereo heads and are able to find stable visual landmarks in the environment. Based on these visual landmarks, the robot team is able to build a map of the environment using a vision‐based SLAM technique. SONAR proximity sensors are used to avoid collisions and find traversable ways. The robot control architecture is based on common object request broker architecture technology and allows one to operate a group of robots with dissimilar features.
Originality/value
This work extends the concept of collaborative teleoperation to the exploration of a remote environment using a team of mobile robots.
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Rafael Molina-Carmona, María Luisa Pertegal-Felices, Antonio Jimeno-Morenilla and Higinio Mora-Mora
Spatial ability is essential for engineers’ professional performance. Several studies describe it as a skill that can be enhanced using new technologies. Virtual reality (VR) is…
Abstract
Spatial ability is essential for engineers’ professional performance. Several studies describe it as a skill that can be enhanced using new technologies. Virtual reality (VR) is an emerging technology that is proving very useful for training different skills and improving spatial perception. In this chapter, the authors firstly present some previous works that use VR to train students, mainly in the area of engineering studies, and which demonstrate that VR can improve some aspects of the spatial perception. This study took a group of engineering students who used VR technologies to carry out learning activities designed to improve their spatial perception, which was measured with a widely used spatial ability test. The results obtained confirm that the use of VR technologies can improve students’ spatial perception. This proposal is easily transferable to other educational contexts. On the one hand, it could be implemented to improve spatial ability in other engineering studies, and on the other hand, with simple adaptation, it could be used to enhance other skills.
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Yanzhang Yao, Wei Wang, Yue Qiao, Zhihang He, Fusheng Liu, Xuelong Li, Xinxin Liu, Dehua Zou and Tong Zhang
The purpose of this paper is to describe the design and development of a novel series-parallel robot, which aims to climb on the transmission tower.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to describe the design and development of a novel series-parallel robot, which aims to climb on the transmission tower.
Design methodology approach
This study introduces a hybrid robot, which consists of adsorption and two 3-degree of freedom (DOF) translation parallel legs connected by a body linkage. The DOF of the legs ensures that the robot can move on the climbing plane, also contribute to a compact design of the robot. An electromagnet is used to adsorb onto the transmission tower, simplifying the overall structure. Based on the robot design, this paper further defines its climbing gait and adopt the 6th B-spline curves for climbing trajectory planning under different working environments.
Findings
The developed prototype that implements the design of the robot, which was used in simulation and experiments, showing that the robot is capable of climbing in the test environments with the planned climbing gait.
Originality value
The hybrid robot is able to climb under varying degrees of inclinations and cross the obstacles, and the magnetic attraction can ensure stable climbing.
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Servet Soyguder and Tayfun Abut
This study attempts to control the movement of industrial robots with virtual and real-time variable time delay. The improved variable wave method was used for analyzing position…
Abstract
Purpose
This study attempts to control the movement of industrial robots with virtual and real-time variable time delay. The improved variable wave method was used for analyzing position tracking performance and stability of the system.
Design/methodology/approach
This study consists of both theoretical and real-time operations. Teleoperation systems that provide information about point or environment that people cannot reach and are one of the important robotic works that include the human–machine interaction technology were used to obtain the necessary data. Robots, as the simulated virtual environment to achieve real behaviors, were found to be important for the identification of damage that may occur during the tests performed by real robots and then in terms of prevention of errors identified in algorithm development stages.
Findings
The position and speed controls of the real–virtual–real robots consist of the teleoperation system. Also, in this study, the virtual environment was created; variable time delay motion control with teleoperation was performed and applied in the simulation and real-time environment; and the performance results were analyzed.
Originality/value
The teleoperation system created in the laboratory consists of a six-degree-of-freedom (dof) master robot, six-dof industrial robot and six-dof virtual robot. A visual interface is designed to provide visual feedback of the virtual robot’s movements to the user.
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Chiara Ottolenghi, Simona D'Amico and Gennaro Iasevoli
The objective of this study is to investigate consumer motivations and purchase behaviors with respect to cookies with customized packaging and consumer interest in different…
Abstract
Purpose
The objective of this study is to investigate consumer motivations and purchase behaviors with respect to cookies with customized packaging and consumer interest in different types of customization in the Italian food industry.
Design/methodology/approach
The study was conducted by performing a quantitative analysis of 642 surveys collected via Google Forms. A repeated-measures ANOVA, univariate ANOVA, chi-squared test, correlation analysis and linear regression analysis were conducted using SPSS.
Findings
Customers buy cookies with customized packaging as personal gifts to someone they care about. The ability to insert their initials or a personalized phrase appears to increase customers’ positive attitudes toward buying cookies with customized packaging. Those interested in this type of customization are willing to pay more, regardless of the type of customization.
Research limitations/implications
In the survey, only some types of customization not previously extracted from a focus group are explored, and the analysis covers only the food industry and does not take a cross-sectional approach. In addition, we specifically refer to the Italian market, which means that results cannot be generalized.
Practical implications
From a managerial perspective, our results highlight that food industry companies should take advantage of the opportunity to segment the demand for customized packaging with respect to consumers’ attitudes and their motivation toward food products.
Originality/value
From a theoretical perspective, this study analyzes consumer attitudes and behaviors toward purchasing cookies with customized packaging. From a managerial perspective, the results of the study highlight interesting courses of action for companies in the food industry that would like to use the tool of customization by intervening in terms of the packaging rather than the product itself.
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Xiaolong Lu, Shiping Zhao, Deping Yu and Xiaoyu Liu
The purpose of this paper is to describe the design and development of “Pylon-Climber”, a pole climbing robot (PCR) for climbing along the corner columns of electricity pylon and…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to describe the design and development of “Pylon-Climber”, a pole climbing robot (PCR) for climbing along the corner columns of electricity pylon and assisting the electricians to complete maintenance tasks.
Design/methodology/approach
Introduces a PCR that is composed of a simple climbing mechanism and two novel grippers. The gripper consists of two angle-fixed V-blocks, and the size of V-block is variable. The clamping method of the angle bar meets the requirement of the force closure theorem. The whole design adopts symmetrical design ideas.
Findings
The developed prototype proved possibility of application of PCRs for inspection and maintenance of pylon. The novel gripper can provide enough adhesion force for climbing robot.
Practical implications
The robot is successfully tested on a test tower composed of different specification steel angles, oblique ledges and overlapping steel struts.
Originality/value
Design and development of a novel climbing assistive robot for pylon maintenance. The robot is able to climb along the column of electricity pylon and pass all obstacles. The gripper can reliably grasp the angle bar with different specification and overlapping steel struts from multiple directions.
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Ravinder Singh and Kuldeep Singh Nagla
An efficient perception of the complex environment is the foremost requirement in mobile robotics. At present, the utilization of glass as a glass wall and automated transparent…
Abstract
Purpose
An efficient perception of the complex environment is the foremost requirement in mobile robotics. At present, the utilization of glass as a glass wall and automated transparent door in the modern building has become a highlight feature for interior decoration, which has resulted in the wrong perception of the environment by various range sensors. The perception generated by multi-data sensor fusion (MDSF) of sonar and laser is fairly consistent to detect glass but is still affected by the issues such as sensor inaccuracies, sensor reliability, scan mismatching due to glass, sensor model, probabilistic approaches for sensor fusion, sensor registration, etc. The paper aims to discuss these issues.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper presents a modified framework – Advanced Laser and Sonar Framework (ALSF) – to fuse the sensory information of a laser scanner and sonar to reduce the uncertainty caused by glass in an environment by selecting the optimal range information corresponding to a selected threshold value. In the proposed approach, the conventional sonar sensor model is also modified to reduce the wrong perception in sonar as an outcome of the diverse range measurement. The laser scan matching algorithm is also modified by taking out the small cluster of laser point (w.r.t. range information) to get efficient perception.
Findings
The probability of the occupied cells w.r.t. the modified sonar sensor model becomes consistent corresponding to diverse sonar range measurement. The scan matching technique is also modified to reduce the uncertainty caused by glass and high computational load for the efficient and fast pose estimation of the laser sensor/mobile robot to generate robust mapping. These stated modifications are linked with the proposed ALSF technique to reduce the uncertainty caused by glass, inconsistent probabilities and high load computation during the generation of occupancy grid mapping with MDSF. Various real-world experiments are performed with the implementation of the proposed approach on a mobile robot fitted with laser and sonar, and the obtained results are qualitatively and quantitatively compared with conventional approaches.
Originality/value
The proposed ASIF approach generates efficient perception of the complex environment contains glass and can be implemented for various robotics applications.
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Hui Xiong, Youping Chen, Xiaoping Li, Bing Chen and Jun Zhang
The purpose of this paper is to present a scan matching simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) algorithm based on particle filter to generate the grid map online. It mainly…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to present a scan matching simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) algorithm based on particle filter to generate the grid map online. It mainly focuses on reducing the memory consumption and alleviating the loop closure problem.
Design/methodology/approach
The proposed method alleviates the loop closure problem by improving the accuracy of the robot’s pose. First, two improvements were applied to enhance the accuracy of the hill climbing scan matching. Second, a particle filter was used to maintain the diversity of the robot’s pose and then to supply potential seeds to the hill climbing scan matching to ensure that the best match point was the global optimum. The proposed method reduces the memory consumption by maintaining only a single grid map.
Findings
Simulation and experimental results have proved that this method can build a consistent map of a complex environment. Meanwhile, it reduced the memory consumption and alleviates the loop closure problem.
Originality/value
In this paper, a new SLAM algorithm has been proposed. It can reduce the memory consumption and alleviate the loop closure problem without lowering the accuracy of the generated grid map.
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K.M. Ibrahim Khalilullah, Shunsuke Ota, Toshiyuki Yasuda and Mitsuru Jindai
The purpose of this study is to develop a cost-effective autonomous wheelchair robot navigation method that assists the aging population.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to develop a cost-effective autonomous wheelchair robot navigation method that assists the aging population.
Design/methodology/approach
Navigation in outdoor environments is still a challenging task for an autonomous mobile robot because of the highly unstructured and different characteristics of outdoor environments. This study examines a complete vision guided real-time approach for robot navigation in urban roads based on drivable road area detection by using deep learning. During navigation, the camera takes a snapshot of the road, and the captured image is then converted into an illuminant invariant image. Subsequently, a deep belief neural network considers this image as an input. It extracts additional discriminative abstract features by using general purpose learning procedure for detection. During obstacle avoidance, the robot measures the distance from the obstacle position by using estimated parameters of the calibrated camera, and it performs navigation by avoiding obstacles.
Findings
The developed method is implemented on a wheelchair robot, and it is verified by navigating the wheelchair robot on different types of urban curve roads. Navigation in real environments indicates that the wheelchair robot can move safely from one place to another. The navigation performance of the developed method and a comparison with laser range finder (LRF)-based methods were demonstrated through experiments.
Originality/value
This study develops a cost-effective navigation method by using a single camera. Additionally, it utilizes the advantages of deep learning techniques for robust classification of the drivable road area. It performs better in terms of navigation when compared to LRF-based methods in LRF-denied environments.
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Kirti Nayal, Rakesh D. Raut, Maciel M. Queiroz, Vinay Surendra Yadav and Balkrishna E. Narkhede
This article aims to model the challenges of implementing artificial intelligence and machine earning (AI-ML) for moderating the impacts of COVID-19, considering the agricultural…
Abstract
Purpose
This article aims to model the challenges of implementing artificial intelligence and machine earning (AI-ML) for moderating the impacts of COVID-19, considering the agricultural supply chain (ASC) in the Indian context.
Design/methodology/approach
20 critical challenges were modeled based on a comprehensive literature review and consultation with experts. The hybrid approach of “Delphi interpretive structural modeling (ISM)-Fuzzy Matrice d' Impacts Croises Multiplication Applique'e à un Classement (MICMAC) − analytical network process (ANP)” was used.
Findings
The study's outcome indicates that “lack of central and state regulations and rules” and “lack of data security and privacy” are the crucial challenges of AI-ML implementation in the ASC. Furthermore, AI-ML in the ASC is a powerful enabler of accurate prediction to minimize uncertainties.
Research limitations/implications
This study will help stakeholders, policymakers, government and service providers understand and formulate appropriate strategies to enhance AI-ML implementation in ASCs. Also, it provides valuable insights into the COVID-19 impacts from an ASC perspective. Besides, as the study was conducted in India, decision-makers and practitioners from other geographies and economies must extrapolate the results with due care.
Originality/value
This study is one of the first that investigates the potential of AI-ML in the ASC during COVID-19 by employing a hybrid approach using Delphi-ISM-Fuzzy-MICMAC-ANP.