Towards control and sensing for an autonomous mobile robotic assistant navigating assembly lines
There exists an increasing demand to incorporate mobile interactive robots to assist humans in repetitive, non-value added tasks in the manufacturing domain. Our aim is to develop a mobile robotic assistant for fetch-and-deliver tasks in human-oriented assembly line environments. Assembly lines pres...
| Main Authors: | , , , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | en_US |
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Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
2017
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/106655 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4530-189X https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4097-3339 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1338-8107 |
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| author | Boerkoel, James C. Bix, Johannes Bartscher, Stefan Unhelkar, Vaibhav Vasant Perez, Jorge I. Shah, Julie A |
| author2 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory |
| author_facet | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory Boerkoel, James C. Bix, Johannes Bartscher, Stefan Unhelkar, Vaibhav Vasant Perez, Jorge I. Shah, Julie A |
| author_sort | Boerkoel, James C. |
| collection | MIT |
| description | There exists an increasing demand to incorporate mobile interactive robots to assist humans in repetitive, non-value added tasks in the manufacturing domain. Our aim is to develop a mobile robotic assistant for fetch-and-deliver tasks in human-oriented assembly line environments. Assembly lines present a niche yet novel challenge for mobile robots; the robot must precisely control its position on a surface which may be either stationary, moving, or split (e.g. in the case that the robot straddles the moving assembly line and remains partially on the stationary surface). In this paper we present a control and sensing solution for a mobile robotic assistant as it traverses a moving-floor assembly line. Solutions readily exist for control of wheeled mobile robots on static surfaces; we build on the open-source Robot Operating System (ROS) software architecture and generalize the algorithms for the moving line environment. Off-the-shelf sensors and localization algorithms are explored to sense the moving surface, and a customized solution is presented using PX4Flow optic flow sensors and a laser scanner-based localization algorithm. Validation of the control and sensing system is carried out both in simulation and in hardware experiments on a customized treadmill. Initial demonstrations of the hardware system yield promising results; the robot successfully maintains its position while on, and while straddling, the moving line. |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T15:10:19Z |
| format | Article |
| id | mit-1721.1/106655 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| language | en_US |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T15:10:19Z |
| publishDate | 2017 |
| publisher | Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/1066552022-09-29T13:11:00Z Towards control and sensing for an autonomous mobile robotic assistant navigating assembly lines Boerkoel, James C. Bix, Johannes Bartscher, Stefan Unhelkar, Vaibhav Vasant Perez, Jorge I. Shah, Julie A Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics Unhelkar, Vaibhav Vasant Perez, Jorge I. Shah, Julie A There exists an increasing demand to incorporate mobile interactive robots to assist humans in repetitive, non-value added tasks in the manufacturing domain. Our aim is to develop a mobile robotic assistant for fetch-and-deliver tasks in human-oriented assembly line environments. Assembly lines present a niche yet novel challenge for mobile robots; the robot must precisely control its position on a surface which may be either stationary, moving, or split (e.g. in the case that the robot straddles the moving assembly line and remains partially on the stationary surface). In this paper we present a control and sensing solution for a mobile robotic assistant as it traverses a moving-floor assembly line. Solutions readily exist for control of wheeled mobile robots on static surfaces; we build on the open-source Robot Operating System (ROS) software architecture and generalize the algorithms for the moving line environment. Off-the-shelf sensors and localization algorithms are explored to sense the moving surface, and a customized solution is presented using PX4Flow optic flow sensors and a laser scanner-based localization algorithm. Validation of the control and sensing system is carried out both in simulation and in hardware experiments on a customized treadmill. Initial demonstrations of the hardware system yield promising results; the robot successfully maintains its position while on, and while straddling, the moving line. 2017-01-27T16:57:36Z 2017-01-27T16:57:36Z 2014-10 Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/ConferencePaper 978-1-4799-3685-4 http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/106655 Unhelkar, Vaibhav V. et al. “Towards Control and Sensing for an Autonomous Mobile Robotic Assistant Navigating Assembly Lines.” 2014 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 31 May-7 Junes, 2014, Hong Kong, China. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4530-189X https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4097-3339 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1338-8107 en_US http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/ICRA.2014.6907464 Proceedings of the 2014 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ application/pdf Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) MIT web domain |
| spellingShingle | Boerkoel, James C. Bix, Johannes Bartscher, Stefan Unhelkar, Vaibhav Vasant Perez, Jorge I. Shah, Julie A Towards control and sensing for an autonomous mobile robotic assistant navigating assembly lines |
| title | Towards control and sensing for an autonomous mobile robotic assistant navigating assembly lines |
| title_full | Towards control and sensing for an autonomous mobile robotic assistant navigating assembly lines |
| title_fullStr | Towards control and sensing for an autonomous mobile robotic assistant navigating assembly lines |
| title_full_unstemmed | Towards control and sensing for an autonomous mobile robotic assistant navigating assembly lines |
| title_short | Towards control and sensing for an autonomous mobile robotic assistant navigating assembly lines |
| title_sort | towards control and sensing for an autonomous mobile robotic assistant navigating assembly lines |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/106655 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4530-189X https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4097-3339 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1338-8107 |
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