As the field of robotics evolves, robots become increasingly multi-functional and complex. Currently, there is a need for solutions that enhance flexibility and computational power without compromising real-time perfo...
详细信息
As the field of robotics evolves, robots become increasingly multi-functional and complex. Currently, there is a need for solutions that enhance flexibility and computational power without compromising real-time performance. The emergence of fog computing and cloud-native approaches addresses these challenges. In this paper, we integrate a microservice-based architecture with cloud-native fog robotics to investigate its performance in managing complex robotic systems and handling real-time tasks. Additionally, we apply model-based systems engineering (MBSE) to achieve automatic configuration of the architecture and to manage resource allocation efficiently. To demonstrate the feasibility and evaluate the performance of this architecture, we conduct comprehensive evaluations using both bare-metal and cloud setups, focusing particularly on real-time and machine-learning-based tasks. The experimental results indicate that a microservice-based cloud-native fog architecture offers a more stable computational environment compared to a bare-metal one, achieving over 20% reduction in the standard deviation for complex algorithms across both CPU and GPU. It delivers improved startup times, along with a 17% (wireless) and 23% (wired) faster average message transport time. Nonetheless, it exhibits a 37% slower execution time for simple CPU tasks and 3% for simple GPU tasks, though this impact is negligible in cloud-native environments where such tasks are typically deployed on bare-metal systems.
This work addresses the problem of online exploration and visual sensor coverage of unknown environments. We introduce a novel perception roadmap we refer to as the Active Perception Network (APN) that serves as a hie...
详细信息
This work addresses the problem of online exploration and visual sensor coverage of unknown environments. We introduce a novel perception roadmap we refer to as the Active Perception Network (APN) that serves as a hierarchical topological graph describing how to traverse and perceive an incrementally built spatial map of the environment. The APN state is incrementally updated to expand a connected configuration space that extends throughout as much of the known space as possible, using efficient difference-awareness techniques that track the discrete changes of the spatial map to inform the updates. A frontier-guided approach is presented for efficient evaluation of information gain and covisible information, which guides view sampling and refinement to ensure maximum coverage of the unmapped space is maintained within the APN. The updated roadmap is hierarchically decomposed into subgraph regions which we use to facilitate a non-myopic global view sequence planner. A comparative analysis to several state-of-the-art approaches was conducted, showing significant performance improvements in terms of total exploration time and surface coverage, and demonstrating high computational efficiency that is scalable to large and complex environments.
robotic mobile platforms are key building blocks for numerous applications and cooperation between robots and humans is a key aspect to enhance productivity and reduce labor cost. To operate safely, robots typically r...
详细信息
robotic mobile platforms are key building blocks for numerous applications and cooperation between robots and humans is a key aspect to enhance productivity and reduce labor cost. To operate safely, robots typically rely on a custom map of the environment that depends on the sensor configuration of the platform. In contrast, blueprints stand as an abstract representation of the environment. The use of both CAD and SLAM maps allows robots to collaborate using the blueprint as a common language, while also easing the control for non-robotics experts. In this work we present an adaptive system to project a 2D pose in the blueprint to the SLAM map and vice-versa. Previous work in the literature aims at morphing a SLAM map to a previously available map. In contrast, CAD2SLAM does not alter the internal map representation used by the SLAM and localization algorithms running on the robot, preserving its original properties. We believe that our system is beneficial for the control and supervision of multiple heterogeneous robotic platforms that are monitored and controlled through the CAD map. Finally, we present a set of experiments that support our claims as well as open-source implementation.
Navigation of drones is predominantly based on sensor fusion algorithms. Most of these algorithms make use of some form of Bayesian filtering with a majority employing an Extended Kalman Filter (EKF), wherein inertial...
详细信息
Navigation of drones is predominantly based on sensor fusion algorithms. Most of these algorithms make use of some form of Bayesian filtering with a majority employing an Extended Kalman Filter (EKF), wherein inertial measurements are fused with a Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS), and other sensors, in a kinematic framework to yield a navigation solution (position, velocity, attitude, and time). However, the long-term accuracy of this solution is exacerbated during the absence of satellite positioning, especially for small drones with low-cost MEMS inertial sensors. On the other hand, a recently proposed vehicle dynamic model (VDM)-based navigation system has shown significant improvement in positioning accuracy during the absence of a satellite positioning solution, although in a mostly offline setting. In this article, we present the softwarearchitecture of its real-time implementation using Robot Operating System (ROS) that separates and interfaces its core from a particular hardware. The presented implementation asynchronously handles different sensor data in a modular fashion and allows i) adapting the underlying aerodynamic model, ii) including complementary sensors, and iii) reducing the dimensionality of the EKF state space at run-time without compromising the navigation performance. The real-time performance of the proposed softwarearchitecture is evaluated during long GNSS absences of up to eight minutes and compared to that of inertial coasting.
We describe AOS, the first general-purpose system for model-based control of autonomous robots using AI planning that fully supports partial observability and noisy sensing. The AOS provides a code-based language for ...
详细信息
We describe AOS, the first general-purpose system for model-based control of autonomous robots using AI planning that fully supports partial observability and noisy sensing. The AOS provides a code-based language for specifying a generative model of the system, making model specification easier and model sampling efficient. It provides a language for specifying the relation between the model and the code, using which it auto-generates all required integration code. This allows Plug'n Play behavior, which facilitates incremental and modular system design. Extensive experiments on real and simulated robotic platforms demonstrate these advantages.
Head and neck cancers are the seventh most common cancers worldwide, with squamous cell carcinoma being the most prevalent histologic subtype. Surgical resection is a primary treatment modality for many patients with ...
详细信息
Head and neck cancers are the seventh most common cancers worldwide, with squamous cell carcinoma being the most prevalent histologic subtype. Surgical resection is a primary treatment modality for many patients with head and neck squamous cell carcinoma, and accurately identifying tumor boundaries and ensuring sufficient resection margins are critical for optimizing oncologic outcomes. This letter presents an innovative autonomous system for tumor resection (ASTR) and conducts a feasibility study by performing supervised autonomous midline partial glossectomy for pseudotumor with millimeter accuracy. The proposed ASTR system consists of a dual-camera vision system, an electrosurgical instrument, a newly developed vacuum grasping instrument, two 6-DOF manipulators, and a novel autonomous control system. The letter introduces an ontology-based research framework for creating and implementing a complex autonomous surgical workflow, using the glossectomy as a case study. Porcine tongue tissues are used in this study, and marked using color inks and near-infrared fluorescent (NIRF) markers to indicate the pseudotumor. ASTR actively monitors the NIRF markers and gathers spatial and color data from the samples, enabling planning and execution of robot trajectories in accordance with the proposed glossectomy workflow. The system successfully performs six consecutive supervised autonomous pseudotumor resections on porcine specimens. The average surface and depth resection errors measure 0.73 +/- 0.60 mm and 1.89 +/- 0.54 mm, respectively, with no positive tumor margins detected in any of the six resections. The resection accuracy is demonstrated to be on par with manual pseudotumor glossectomy performed by an experienced otolaryngologist.
Mobile manipulation tasks in unstructured environments remain challenging for autonomous robots. The need to employ a diverse set of software and hardware components to solve the various subtasks inevitably increases ...
详细信息
Mobile manipulation tasks in unstructured environments remain challenging for autonomous robots. The need to employ a diverse set of software and hardware components to solve the various subtasks inevitably increases system complexity. Knowledge exchange among such diverse components renders them highly coupled, reduces communication efficiency, and makes the knowledge less accessible. To overcome these challenges, we propose AIMM-WM, a central world model as a single source of truth having an abstracted geometric tree structure. Despite its concise, efficient state representation, AIMM-WM is able to provide a wide range of information from low-level geometries to highly abstracted symbols and is interfaced with diverse components for navigation, motion planning, perception, decision-making, and mission control. We evaluate the performance of AIMM-WM from the real use case of our Lightweight Rover Unit during the four-week Moon-analogue demo mission on Mt. Etna, Italy.
This letter describes Fields2Cover, a novel open source library for coverage path planning (CPP) for agricultural vehicles. While there are several CPP solutions nowadays, there have been limited efforts to unify them...
详细信息
This letter describes Fields2Cover, a novel open source library for coverage path planning (CPP) for agricultural vehicles. While there are several CPP solutions nowadays, there have been limited efforts to unify them into an open source library and provide benchmarking tools to compare their performance. Fields2Cover provides a framework for planning coverage paths, developing novel techniques, and benchmarking state-of-the-art algorithms. The library features a modular and extensible architecture that supports various vehicles and can be used for a variety of applications, including farms. Its core modules are: a headland generator, a swath generator, a route planner and a path planner. An interface to the Robot Operating System (ROS) is also supplied as an add-on. In this letter, the functionalities of the library for planning a coverage path in agriculture are demonstrated using 8 state-of-the-art methods and 7 objective functions in simulation and field experiments.
For a robot to interact with humans in a given environment, a key need is to understand its environment in terms of the objects composing it, the other agents acting in it, and the relations between all of them. This ...
详细信息
For a robot to interact with humans in a given environment, a key need is to understand its environment in terms of the objects composing it, the other agents acting in it, and the relations between all of them. This capability is often called the geometrical situation assessment and is mainly related to spatial reasoning in time. In this letter, we present Overworld, a novel lightweight and open-source framework, merging the key features of a decade of research in the domain. It permanently maintains a geometric state of the world from the point of view of the robot by aggregating perceptual information from several sources and reasoning on them to create a coherent world. Furthermore, Overworld implements perspective-taking by emulating the humans' ability to perceive to estimate the state of the world from their perspective. Finally, thanks to a strong link with an ontology framework, it ensures knowledge coherence in the whole roboticarchitecture. This work is part of a broader effort to develop a complete, stable, and shareable decisional roboticarchitecture for Human-Robot Interaction.
The Robot Operating System 2 (ROS 2) is the second generation of ROS representing a step forward in the robotic framework. Several new types of nodes and executor models are integral to control where, how, and when in...
详细信息
The Robot Operating System 2 (ROS 2) is the second generation of ROS representing a step forward in the robotic framework. Several new types of nodes and executor models are integral to control where, how, and when information is processed in the computational graph. This letter explores and benchmarks one of these new node types - the Component node - which allows nodes to be composed manually or dynamically into processes while retaining separation of concerns in a codebase for distributed development. Composition is shown to achieve a high degree of performance optimization, particularly valuable for resource-constrained systems and sensor processing pipelines, enabling distributed tasks that would not be otherwise possible in ROS 2. In this work, we briefly introduce the significance and design of node composition, then our contribution of benchmarking is provided to analyze its impact on robotic systems. Its compelling influence on performance is shown through several experiments on the latest Long Term Support (LTS) ROS 2 distribution, Humble Hawksbill.
暂无评论