This thesis investigates the issues of creating a publicly accessible Web interface to a remote autonomous robot: the Bradford Robotic Telescope. The robot is situated on Mount Teide, on the island of Tenerife, Spain. Its mission is to provide interactive access to the stars to people who would otherwise not be able to appreciate the wonders of the night sky due to light pollution. Whenever weather and darkness permits, the robot processes the observation requests submitted by users via the Internet, operating all the hardware including the dome, telescope mount and cameras. The question of how to enable a content rich high quality dialogue between one robot and thousands of users is explored and divided into seven areas of research. How to design a Web site enabling high quality interaction with the user, how to enable users to request service from a robot, how to store and manage all the user and robot generated data, how to enable communication between the Web interface and the robot, how to schedule many observation requests in the best order, how to support a constant dialogue between the robot and users to engage users in the robot's work, and how to present and display users' completed observations. These seven areas of research are investigated; solutions are presented and their implementations examined and evaluated for their suitability and performance with the Bradford Robotic Telescope, and for how they might perform for any job-based remote robot.

Robotic surgery procedures may include long, thin flexible instruments that are inserted by the robot into the patient. As the robot inserts these devices, due to their geometry, they are prone to buckling failure. To mitigate buckling failure, a support system is needed on the robot. This system supports the device but also adapts to the varying ex vivo length of the device as it is inserted. This work presents four collapsible support systems designed to mitigate buckling failure of long, thin instruments while accounting for changing length. The Ori-Guide is an origami-inspired system that has enabled a part reduction from traditional rigid systems with over 70 parts to 3 parts. This system was enabled through the development of a novel origami pattern that integrates both actuation and support into the same pattern. This system was made from PET and performed as well as a rigid system. The PET used in the Ori-Guide was thermo-processed to hold a folded shape. The heat treatment put the Ori-Guide into tension and enabled a stiffer support system. Work was done to investigate the effect of thermo-processing on PET films used in origami-inspired engineering applications. It was discovered that there is a strong correlation between crystallization and the stiffness of a crease in the polymer film. The Zipper-Tube Reinforcement (ZTR) was developed to provide constant support along the entire length of the device, something that no other support device provides. This enables higher loads on the device and thinner and more flexible devices. It was developed as a tube that envelopes the device and zips to provide a tube to support the device then unzips to lay flat rolled about a mandrel for storage. The Wires in Tension concept was developed by focusing on adding tension to the support system. It provided support to the device but required high levels of force on the robot arm so the Orthogonal Beams was developed. The Orthogonal Beams employs geometry as the primary support rather than tension and therefore could provide higher support with less force on the robot. These systems all proved effective ways to support flexible devices. The concepts could also find application in other fields. The merits of each system are discussed in detail, including a discussion on other possible applications.

The aim of this thesis is to advance the control and estimation schemes for multirotors, and more specifically the Aerial Robotic Worker, in order to progress towards the necessary control and estimation performance for robust control, cooperation and collaboration. Towards this envisioned aim, this Licentiate thesis will present the following main research contributions: a) a singularity-free attitude controller for the attitude problem has been established, that does not have the inherent drawbacks of Euler angle or Direction Cosine Matrix based approaches, b) a generalized estimation scheme for attitude, position and parameter estimation will be presented that has the merit of low computational footprint, while it is robust towards magnetic disturbances and able to identify key parameters in the model of an Aerial Robotic Worker, c) an method for estimating the induced vibration frequencies on the multirotor’s frame, and the respective amplitudes, that relies on notch filtering for attenuating the induced vibrations, and d) a theoretical establishment, as well as an experimental development and evaluation of a variable pitch propeller model to add additional degrees of freedom and increase the robustness of an Aerial Robotic Worker. In the first part of this thesis the main contributions of the previous research approaches will be highlighted, while in the second part of the thesis the corresponding and in full detail articles will be presented.

As robots have become more pervasive in our everyday life, social aspects of robots have attracted researchers' attention. Because emotions play a key role in social interactions, research has been conducted on conveying emotions via speech, whereas little research has focused on the effects of non-speech sounds on users' robot perception. We conducted a within-subjects exploratory study with 40 young adults to investigate the effects of non-speech sounds (regular voice, characterized voice, musical sound, and no sound) and basic emotions (anger, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise) on user perception. While listening to the fairytale with the participant, a humanoid robot (Pepper) responded to the story with a recorded emotional sound with a gesture. Participants showed significantly higher emotion recognition accuracy from the regular voice than from other sounds. The confusion matrix showed that happiness and sadness had the highest emotion recognition accuracy, which aligns with the previous research. Regular voice also induced higher trust, naturalness, and preference compared to other sounds. Interestingly, musical sound mostly showed lower perceptions than no sound. A further exploratory study was conducted with an additional 49 young people to investigate the effect of regular non-verbal voices (female voices and male voices) and basic emotions (happiness, sadness, anger, and relief) on user perception. We also further explored the impact of participants' gender on emotion and social perception toward robot Pepper. While listening to a fairy tale with the participants, a humanoid robot (Pepper) responded to the story with gestures and emotional voices. Participants showed significantly higher emotion recognition accuracy and social perception from the voice + Gesture condition than Gesture only conditions. The confusion matrix showed that happiness and sadness had the highest emotion recognition accuracy, which aligns with the previous research. Interestingly, participants felt more discomfort and anthropomorphism in male voices compared to female voices. Male participants were more likely to feel uncomfortable when interacting with Pepper. In contrast, female participants were more likely to feel warm. However, the gender of the robot voice or the gender of the participant did not affect the accuracy of emotion recognition. Results are discussed with social robot design guidelines for emotional cues and future research directions. / Master of Science / As robots increasingly appear in people's lives as functional assistants or for entertainment, there are more and more scenarios in which people interact with robots. More research on human-robot interaction is being proposed to help develop more natural ways of interaction. Our study focuses on the effects of emotions conveyed by a humanoid robot's non-speech sounds on people's perception about the robot and its emotions. The results of our experiments show that the accuracy of emotion recognition of regular voices is significantly higher than that of music and robot-like voices and elicits higher trust, naturalness, and preference. The gender of the robot's voice or the gender of the participant did not affect the accuracy of emotion recognition. People are now not inclined to traditional stereotypes of robotic voices (e.g., like old movies), and expressing emotions with music and gestures mostly shows a lower perception. Happiness and sadness were identified with the highest accuracy among the emotions we studied. Participants felt more discomfort and human-likeness in the male voices than in female voices. Male participants were more likely to feel uncomfortable when interacting with the humanoid robot, while female participants were more likely to feel warm. Our study discusses design guidelines and future research directions for emotional cues in social robots.

Nowadays, more and more flexible and efficient processes are required in modern industrial applications. In this field, robots are a key technoligy. In this paper a application is considered, where a 6-axis-industrial robot has to pick-and-place objects time efficiently in a constantly changing environment. Therefore, a concept for automated motion planning is presented, which is composed of two steps which are path planning and trajectory generation. In this paper suitable and established model-based methods are analyzed and chosen. Eventually, the suitability of the presented concept for the considered task is shown by implementing the concept in Matlab and applying it to a 6-axis articulated robot arm.

This thesis book represents an exploration of the relationship between architecture and robotics, tailored to meet the requirements of both architecture students and professionals and any other creative user. The investigation encompasses three distinct robotic arm applications for architecture students, introduces and evaluates an innovative 3D printing application with robotic arms, and presents projects focused on the design of human-robot interaction techniques and their system development. Furthermore, the thesis showcases the development of a more intuitive human-robot interaction system and explores various user interaction methods with robotic arms for rapid prototyping and fabrication. Each experiment describes the process, level of interaction, and key takeaways. The narrative of the thesis unfolds as a journey through different applications of robotic fabrication, emphasizing the creative human as the focal point of these systems. This thesis underscores the significance of user experience research and anticipates future innovations in the evolving landscape of the creative field. The discoveries made in this exploration lay a foundation for the study and design of interfaces and interaction techniques, fostering seamless collaboration between designers and robotic systems. Keywords: Robotic Fabrication - Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) - Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) - User Experience Research - Human-Centered Design - Architecture - Art - Creative Application / Master of Architecture

This thesis describes a change to the Physiocomimetics Robotic Swarm Control framework that implements communication constraints into swarm behavior. These constraints are necessary to successfully implement theoretical applications in the real world. We describe the basic background of swarm robotics, the Physiocomimetics framework and methods that have attempted to implement communications constraints into robotic swarms. The Framework is changed by the inclusion of different virtual particles at a global and local scale that only cause a force on swarm elements if those elements are disconnected from a swarm network. The global particles introduced are a point of known connectivity and a global centroid of the swarm. The local particles introduced are the point of last connectivity and a local centroid. These particles are tested in various simulations and the results are discussed. The global particles are very effective at insuring the communication constraints of the swarm, but the local particles only have partial success. Additionally, some observations are made about swarm formations and the effect of the communication range used during swarm formation.

Soft robotic sensors (SRSs) are a class of pliable, passive sensors which vary by some electrical characteristic in response to changes in geometry. The properties of SRSs make them excellent candidates for use in wearable motion analysis technology. Wearable technology is a fast-growing industry, and the improvement of existing human motion analysis tools is needed. Prior research has proven the viability of SRSs as a tool for capturing motion of the foot-ankle complex; this work covers extensive effort to improve and ruggedize a lab tool utilizing this technology. The improved lab tool is validated against a camera-based motion capture system to show either improvement or equivalence to the previous prototype while introducing enhanced data throughput, reliability, battery life, and durability.

This thesis presents a novel framework for the collection and evaluation of data around e-learning. It shows how e-learning can play a positive role in empowering teachers in reflective practice through accessible statistical methods, as part of an evidence-based approach. Within this new framework data generated by pupils’ actions in three levels of pedagogical activity: declarative content based, functional tools based and social functional are aligned with three levels of evaluation: satisfaction, learning and behavioural changes. The framework is evaluated using the e-learning system for the Bradford Robotic Telescope. Analysis and assessment of the data by using the tools and concepts of statistics are performed. The first group of 78 clusters, mean size of 25.6 pupils, are examined to determine the effect of contextual factors. Pupils responded consistently to the same learning design across a range of contexts. National indicators for social/economic, academic achievement and group size are examined for bias. Suitable measurements for interpretation by simple Gaussian distributions are identified: satisfaction through the frequency of use with a probability of P>0.05, learning through formative assessment (P>0.3) and behavioural changes through engagement with higher order activities (P>0.2). The second group of 168 clusters, mean cluster size 25.9, demonstrates a meaningful effect size for a change in approach within the e-learning system in the areas of satisfaction, learning and behavioural changes with a probability of P<0.01.

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