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Thesis (M.S.)--Rochester Institute of Technology, 1991. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.S.)--Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1987. / Vita. Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 63-72). Also available via the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2000. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 97-104).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 1994. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 194-207).

Thesis (M. App. Sc.)--Carleton University, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 113-118). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

One of the solutions to the world's industrial and economic recovery and survivability is "Flexible Automation," wherein vision is the key to its cost-effective flexibility. Vision gives the robot a measure of environmental intelligence. The majority of present vision systems are patterned after the human eye, but this is not a requirement. It has been shown that the multi-aperture insect eye cannot image an object. The physiology of an insect eye is fundamentally different than that of the human eye in that it is not binocular by multioccular in nature. In order to study multi-aperture optics and indirectly the functioning of the insect eye an extremely high resolution robot system, resembling in some respects an insect eye was constructed. This system provided a wide field of view, and an excellent resolution with no need for optical alignment. An individual eyelet of the vision system consists of a Gradient Index (GRIN) lens, and seven optical fibers which transfer the incident light on the lens to individual detectors. Each detector or pixel, integrates the intensity over the unique region that it sees, and gives a voltage as a function of that intensity. A uniform white sphere was chosen as a test object in order to reduce five degrees of freedom (x, y, z, θ, ф) into three, namely x, y, z. It was experimentally shown that each set of voltage outputs produced by a set of detectors was unique when the object was placed at exact coordinate points, in a cube of 5X5X10 cm. The voltage readings were cataloged in a data file. Identification of the coordinates of the object was possible by a simple comparison of input voltages to the cataloged values. Also, a mathematical model for this system was developed.

Over the past few decades the use of industrial robots has increased the efficiency as well as competitiveness of many companies. Despite this fact, in many cases, robot automation investments are considered to be technically challenging. In addition, for most small and medium sized enterprises (SME) this process is associated with high costs. Due to their continuously changing product lines, reprogramming costs are likely to exceed installation costs by a large margin. Furthermore, traditional programming methods for industrial robots are too complex for an inexperienced robot programmer, thus assistance from a robot programming expert is often needed.  We hypothesize that in order to make industrial robots more common within the SME sector, the robots should be reprogrammable by technicians or manufacturing engineers rather than robot programming experts. In this thesis we propose a high-level natural language framework for interacting with industrial robots through an instructional programming environment for the user.  The ultimate goal of this thesis is to bring robot programming to a stage where it is as easy as working together with a colleague.In this thesis we mainly address two issues. The first issue is to make interaction with a robot easier and more natural through a multimodal framework. The proposed language architecture makes it possible to manipulate, pick or place objects in a scene through high level commands. Interaction with simple voice commands and gestures enables the manufacturing engineer to focus on the task itself, rather than programming issues of the robot. This approach shifts the focus of industrial robot programming from the coordinate based programming paradigm, which currently dominates the field, to an object based programming scheme.The second issue addressed is a general framework for implementing multimodal interfaces. There have been numerous efforts to implement multimodal interfaces for computers and robots, but there is no general standard framework for developing them. The general framework proposed in this thesis is designed to perform natural language understanding, multimodal integration and semantic analysis with an incremental pipeline and includes a novel multimodal grammar language, which is used for multimodal presentation and semantic meaning generation. / robot colleague project

This programme of research was supported by NEI Parsons Ltd. who sought a robotic means of polishing mechanical components. A study of the problems associated with robot controlled surface processing is presented. From this evolved an approach consistent with the formalisation of the demands of workpiece manipulation which included the adoption of the Hybrid robot control scheme capable of simultaneous force and position control. A unique 3 axis planar experimental manipulator was designed which utilized combined parallel and serial drives. A force sensing wrist was used to measure contact force. A variant of the Hybrid control 'scheme was successfully implemented on a twin computer control system. A number of manipulator control programs are presented. The force control aspect is shown both experimentally and analytically to present control problems and the research has concentrated on this aspect. A general analysis of the dynamics of force control is given which shows force response to be dependent on a number' of important parameters including force sensor, environment and manipulator dynamics. The need for a robust or adaptable force controller is discussed. A series of force controlled manipulator experiments is described and the results discussed in the context of general analyses and specific single degree of freedom simulations. Improvements to manipulator force control are suggested and some were implemented. These are discussed together with their immediate application to the improvement of robot controlled surface processing. This work also lays important foundations for long term related research. In particular the new techniques for actively controlled assembly and force control under 'fast' operation.

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