rahe.populus.ch west switzerland univ. of appl. sc., yverdon-les-bains lara - laboratory for...

rahe.populus.ch

West Switzerland Univ. of Appl. Sc., Yverdon-les-Bains

RH2-Y: LaRa andRH2-Y: LaRa and

LaRA - Laboratory for Robotics and AutomationJean-Daniel Dessimoz 11th June 2007

RH2-Y, West Switzerland Univ. of Appl. Sc., Yverdon-les-Bains, Robocup @ Home 2007, Atlanta-USA2

LaRA and Robocup at Home

Introduction

Service Robots

RH2-Y Robot

RH2-Y Team

Specific Tests & Open Challenge

Concept for the future

More information


Introduction

RoboCup@Home is a new league inside the RoboCup competitions (1st year officially - Atlanta ‘07; 2nd year effectively - re Bremen ‘06)

Focuses on real-world applications and human-machine interaction with autonomous robots.

The aim is to foster the development of useful robotic applications that can assist humans in everyday life.

RH2-Y is our project and team in the context of RoboCup@Home experience, season 2, i.e. for Atlanta 2007.

We intend, in a house environment, to

Participate in specific tests : « follow and guide a human », « manipulate » an object, « navigate » in the home, learn from a human (« copycat ») and possibly find out « who is who)

participate in the « open challenge », in Atlanta, USA.


Mobile Robots for Services

Some of LaRA activities aim at developing novel solutions for mobile and autonomous robots, cooperating with humans with the goal to assist them.

This is well in line with what is proposed in Robocup-at-Home initiative (RAH).

Our team has taken part in Robocup 2006 (RAH, Bremen , Germany) and is currently upgrading our robot (RH2-Y) for the next meeting and competition in July in Atlanta-USA (Robocup 2007)


RH2-Y Robot (1 of 4)

New (with respect to picture on right): arm, hand, FiveCo controllers,, wireless micro and headphone, loudspeaker



RH2-Y Robot inherits a lot of the functionnalities of our other autonomous robots. Its architecture is as follows: - a laptop runs the software, - a Beckhoff API manages input output

signals, - a TCP/IP AXIS camera provides low-

level vision to our robot, - a two axis motor controller ensures

adequate robot motion, - an Ethernet switch provides

communication between those elements.

Real-time interaction and supervision is programmed in a proprietary multiagent environment, named Piaget. Novel contributions for Robocup-at-Home application include the integration of vocal communication (analysis and synthesis), wireless remote control ("chat" mode), as well as map and trajectory management.


RH2-Y Team

The members of the team are currently mainly the following ones: Pierre-François Gauthey, Arvind Singh Gautam,

Ajit Pratap Singh, Parul Dubey, Prof. Dr. Jean-Daniel Dessimoz , Samuel Jabès, Pierre Boucher, Michel Brisseaux (re. fig.)

A significant help has also been brought by Varuj « Ben » Sukhsevi and Veerapot« Mike » Kitcharoen, RH1-y team, other students, through their contributions to our ARY robotic platform, as well as by members of the the technical services.


Specific test: Follow and Guide a Human

Phase 1: K ~170’000 Lin; E~100’000Lin/s Min. requirements: K~400Lin, E~=400/5min~1 Lin/s

Phase 2: not specified


Specific test: Navigate

Phase 1: K ~150’000 Lin; E~75’000 Lin/s



Specific test: Manipulate

Phase 1: K ~50 Lin; E~50’000 Lin/s



Specific test: CopyCat

Phase 1: K ~16’000 Lin; E~100’000 Lin/s



Specific test: Who is Who?

Phase 1: K ~16’000 Lin; E~50’000 Lin/s Phase 2: not specified


Open Challenge - Go & Pick an Object (1 of 2)

Scenario: The user throws an object (re. playing with a dog)

The robot… detects and locates the object

Gets closer

Picks the object

Brings it back to starting position

The task requires : Vision/perception Locomotion/navigation Prehension/manipulation Communication Decision-making

Cognitic performance level: K ~16’000 Lin; E~100’000 Lin/s

Applicability Picking dropped objects for people having

reduced mobility

Encouraging light physical exercises and human-robot cooperation

Entertainment

Benchmarking and training for integrated capabilities


Open Challenge - Go & Pick an Object (2 of 2)

Cognitic performance level: K ~16’000 Lin; E~100’000 Lin/s


Concept for the future

Cognitics framework

Vocal dialogue

Agile strategic programming

Interactive guidance Conceptual improvements

Integrate past successful approaches Trajectory management, navigation paradigms

O3NEIDA approach (IEC 61’499) Robust holonomic basis 3D TOF distance vision

Cognitive agent

nin

nout *


Concept - Cognitics framework

Cognitics framework Cognitics is a domain which encompasses the science

and techniques of automated cognition

The MCS framework provides definitions and metrics for the quantitative assessment of cognitive entities

Expertise : E=K/∆t [lin/s]

« does it (right and) fast»

Cognitive agent

nin

nout *+time

Some consequences:

Work in small contexts

Use goal-oriented models

Systematically assess the quantities of cognitive entities and requirements

Beware of asymmetry in input-output constraints

Notice the importance of access operators


Concept - Agile strategic programming

Multiagents 100 ns granularity VAL-type

instructions Piaget environment Distributed control


Concept - Vocal dialogue

Ten word recognition

“Unlimited” speech synthesis

3 complementary agents

Word processing agent

Dialogue manager

Strategy enforcement agent

Interactive guidance possible (incl. current motion - stop, retry, cancel)

Beware of difficulties in normalisation of signal intensity and speaker specifics


Concept - Navigation paradigms

Deterministic

Probabilistic

Learning with modelling


Trajectories are typically defined as follows : - Select key points (x,y) on a map, - Interconnect them with linear sections - Resample the trajectory at regularly-spaced intervals - Smooth the trajectory, iteratively until some vehicle-related, maximum curvature constraint is met (reference for curvilinear smoothing) - Define local orientation (tangent angle) for each sample (x, y, theta) Trajectories are typically tracked as follows: - match vehicle position and orientation in terms of main structure - define relative position and orientation (transformation) of each wheel or limb (thereby superposing gait) - interpolation is made directly at individual wheel or limb level between so-defined successive positions along trajectory (reference for general trajectory definition and tracking):

Concept - Trajectory management


Concept - Robust holonomic basis (e.g.Festo)


Concept - 3D TOF distance vision (e.g. CSEM, IFM)


Concept - More advanced concepts yet

Improved controllers and elements (size, weight) Standards for virtual and real worlds (y c. URBI) Attitude, acceleration, world position sensors Locomotion with 4 articulated limbs Artificial skin Cultural engineering / robot education


Conclusion

Service Robots: assisting at home RH2-Y Robot: recent instance of ARY family robots RH2-Y Team: international (Canada, France, India, Switzerland ,Thailand) Four Specific Tests & Open Challenge Challenging concepts for next steps More information: re links


Acknowledgements

Many colleagues, engineers and students/alumni of iAi, as well as various network partners have contributed to or inspired our current solutions.


More information

Useful links : • More information on ARY and RH1-Y robots: descriptions and examples, pictures and videos : http://ary1.populus.ch, http://rahe.populus.ch • iAi : Industrial Automation Institute( "Institut d'Automatisation Industrielle »). Our team belongs to the LaRA (Laboratoire de Robotique et Automatisation) which is one section of the institute. • Robocup@Home : THE useful link, if you want to know more about this new league. The website is relevant about everything you need to know. • RoboCup2006: Dedicated to the "classic" RoboCup competition. Both of them (RoboCup & @Home) take place together (Bremen, Germany, June 2006). • Robocup2007: http://www.robocup-us.org/ (Atlanta, USA, July 2007)• (Swiss)Eurobot : a little bit off topic, but this competition is cool too. Each year some of our students participate to the challenge. • LaRA.heig-vd.ch : includes references and publications of our lab.

rahe.populus.ch west switzerland univ. of appl. sc., yverdon-les-bains lara - laboratory for...

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