Det finns flera fördelar med robotiserad bågsvetsning jämfört med manuell bågsvetsning. När det gäller produktivitet och repeterbarhet är robot överlägsen människa, vilket gör att produkterna håller jämnare kvalitet. I slutet av 80-talet började offline-programmering att tillämpas. Att programmera en robot offline innebär att utföra programmeringen med dator utan direkt tillgång till roboten. Genom simulering visualiseras ett robotprogram i en grafisk modell av den fysiska robotcellen utan att den fysiska roboten behöver tas ur produktion. För att systemet för offline-programmering (OLP) ska vara effektivt, måste dess modellers kinematik överensstämma med dess fysiska motsvarigheter. En virtuell modell av en cell skiljer sig dock alltid något från verkligheten. Därför krävs kalibrering När simuleringsprogrammet är färdigt och kalibreringen är utförd, ska programmet översättas till ett för roboten specifikt programspråk. Detta görs genom en så kallad translator. Denna rapport har skrivits på uppdrag av Delfoi. Delfoi har i flera år använt sig av DELMIA IGRIP för offline-programmering av bågsvetsningsrobotar. DELMIA har nu gett ut en ny generation program i den gemensamma plattformen V5. Plattformen innehåller bland annat DELMIA V5 Robotics och CATIA V5. Området för bågsvetsning har varit relativt outforskat. Därför vill företaget undersöka hur långt V5 Robotics har utvecklats inom detta område. Syftet är att undersöka om utvecklingen av V5 Robotics kommit tillräckligt långt för att kunna säljas till kund för offline-programmering av bågsvetsning. Arbetet påbörjades genom att kartlägga den arbetsmetodik som Delfoi använder sig av vid bågsvetsning i IGRIP. Detta har skett i programvaran UltraArc, som innehåller IGRIP’s applikation för bågsvetsning. Dessutom gjordes en kartläggning av användandet av AMP, Arc weld Macro Programming, vid offline-programmering av bågsvetsning. Nästa del var att ta fram en metodik för bågsvetsning i V5 Robotics. De båda programmen och dess metodik har sedan jämförts, för att ta reda på om V5 Robotics är tillräckligt utvecklat för att migrera från IGRIP till V5 Robotics. Demonstrationer av arbetssättet i V5 Robotics har genomförts på Delfoi samt hos en av Delfois kunder, BT Industries i Mjölby. Författarnas slutsats är att V5 Robotics är redo att användas för OLP av bågsvetsning. För de företag som använder sig av CATIA V5 finns det stora fördelar med att starta migrationen från IGRIP till V5 Robotics. Metodiken mellan de båda mjukvarorna har stora likheter, men vissa delar har utvecklats till det bättre i V5 Robotics. Dock kan den nya programvaran behöva testas i verkliga projekt för att säkerställa att hela programmeringsprocessen fungerar tillfredsställande innan bytet genomförs. / There are several advantages in robotic arc welding, compared to manual arc welding. When it comes to productivity and repeatability, robot is superior to man, which generates more even quality in products. In the end of the 1980’s, offline programming was put into practice. To program a robot offline means to perform the programming on a computer with no direct access to the robot. Through simulation, the robot program is visualized as a graphic model of the actual workcell, without having to take the actual robot out of production. For the offline programming system (OLP) to be efficient, the kinematics of the models need to correspond to its physical counterpart. A virtual model is always slightly different from the reality. That is why calibration is necessary. When the simulation program is complete and the calibration is done, the program needs to be translated to the language of the target robot. This is done through a post processor. This thesis was written as an assignment from the company Delfoi. Delfoi has been using DELMIA IGRIP for offline programming of robotic arc welding for several years. DELMIA now has released a new generation of programs in the common platform V5. The platform includes for example DELMIA V5 Robotics and CATIA V5. The area of arc welding has been relatively unexplored. That is why the company wants to investigate how far V5 Robotics has developed in this area. The purpose is to investigate if the development of V5 Robotics has come far enough for V5 Robotics to be taken to customers for OLP of arc welding. The work was begun by surveying the methodology used by Delfoi in arc welding in IGRIP. This has been done in the software UltraArc, which consists of the arc welding application from IGRIP. There was also a surveillance of the application of AMP, Arc weld Macro Programming, in offline programming of arc welding. The next step was to evolve a methodology for arc welding in V5 Robotics. The two softwares and their methodologies were then compared to find out whether or not V5 is enough developed for migration from IGRIP to V5 Robotics. Demonstrations of the method of working in V5 Robotics were held on Delfoi and on BT Industries in Mjölby, which is one of Deloi’s clients. The conclusion of the writers is that V5 Robotics is ready to be used in OLP of arc welding. For companies using CATIA V5, there are great advantages in migrating from IGRIP to V5 Robotics. The methodoldgies of the softwares show great similarities, but some parts have been developed to the better in V5 Robotics. Though, the new software needs to be tested in real projects to assure that the entire process of programming functions satisfying before the change is completed.

Bricoleur, digitala varelser och brus utgör tre viktiga noder, runt vilka mitt konstnärliga arbete rör sig. Parallellt med ett antal av mina verk beskrivs dessa begrepp kortfattat. / Bricoleur, digital beings and noise are three important nodes, making up cornerstones of my artistic work. These ideas are explained briefly parallel to a selection of my artworks.

Automation in manufacturing has come far by using industrial robots. However, industrial robots require tremendous efforts in static calibration due to their lack of senses. Force and vision are the most useful sensing capabilities for a robot system operating in an unknown or uncalibrated environment [4]and by integrating sensors in real-time with industrial robot controllers, dynamic processes need far less calibration which leads to reduced lead time. By using robot systems which are more dynamic and can perform complex tasks with simple instructions, the production efficiency will rise and hence also the profit for companies using them. Although much research has been presented within the research community, current industrial robot systems have very limited support for external sensor feedback, and the state-of-the-art robots today have generally no feedback loop that can handle external force- or position controlled feedback. Where it exists, feedback at the rate of 10 Hz is considered to berare and is far from real-time control. A new system where the feedback control can be possible within a real-time behavior, developed at Lund Institute of Technology, has been implemented and deployed at Linköping Institute of Technology. The new system for rapid feedback control is a highly complex system, possible to install in existing robot cells, and enables real-time (250 Hz) sensor feedback to the robot controller. However, the system is not yet fully developed, and a lot of issues need to be considered before it can reach the market in other than specific applications. The implementation and deployment of the new interface at LiTH shows that the potential for this system is large, since it makes production with robots exceedingly flexible and dynamic, and the fact that the system works with real- time feedback makes industrial robots more useful in tasks for manufacturing.

Controlling systems with multiple robots is quickly becoming the next large hurdle that must be overcome for groups of robots to successfully function as a team. An agent oriented approach for this problem is presented in this thesis. By using an agent oriented method, the robots can act independently yet still work together. To be able to establish communities of robots, a basic agent oriented control system for each robot must first be implemented. This thesis introduces a novel method to create Physical Robot Agents, promoting a separation of cognitive and reactive behaviours into a two layer system. These layers are further abstracted into key subsections that are required for the Physical Robot Agents to function. To test this architecture, experiments are performed with physical robots to determine the feasibility of this approach. <br /><br /> A real-time implementation of a Physical Robot Agent would greatly expand its field of use. The speed of internal communication is analyzed to validate the application of this architecture to real-time tasks. <br /><br /> It is concluded that the Physical Robot Agents are well suited for multiple robot systems and that real-time applications are feasible.

Teams of mobile robots have numerous applications, such as space exploration, underground mining, warehousing, and building security. Multi-robot teams can provide a number of practical benefits in such applications, including simultaneous presence in multiple locations, improved system performance, and greater robustness and redundancy compared to individual robots. This thesis addresses three aspects of coordination and navigation for teams of mobile robots: localization, the estimation of the position of each robot in the environment; motion planning, the process of finding collision-free trajectories through the environment; and task allocation, the selection of appropriate goals to be assigned to each robot. Each of these topics are investigated in the context of many robots working in a common environment. A particle-filter based system for cooperative global localization is presented. The system combines the sensor data from three robots, including measurements of the distances between robots, to cooperatively estimate the global position of each robot in the environment. The method is developed for a single triad of robots, then extended to larger groups of robots. The algorithm is demonstrated in a simulation of robots equipped with only simple range sensors, and is shown to successfully achieve global localization of robots that are unable to localize using only their own local sensor data. Motion planning is investigated for large teams of robots operating in tunnel and corridor environments, where coordinated planning is often required to avoid collision or deadlock conditions. A complete and scalable motion planning algorithm is presented and evaluated in simulation with up to 150 robots. In contrast to popular decoupled approaches to motion planning (which cannot guarantee a solution), this algorithm uses a multi-phase approach to create and maintain obstacle-free paths through a graph representation of the environment. The resulting plan is a set of collision-free trajectories, guaranteeing that every robot will reach its goal. The problem of task allocation is considered in the same type of tunnel and corridor environments, where tasks are defined as locations in the environment that must be visited by one of the robots in the team. To find efficient solutions to the task allocation problem, an optimization approach is used to generate potential task assignments, and select the best solution. The multi-phase motion planner is applied within this system as an efficient method of evaluating potential task assignments for many robots in a large environment. The algorithm is evaluated in simulations with up to 20 robots in a map of large underground mine. A real-world implementation of 3 physical robots was used to demonstrate the implementation of the multi-phase motion planning and task allocation systems. A centralized motion planning and task allocation system was developed, incorporating localization and time-dependent trajectory tracking on the robot processors, enabling cooperative navigation in a shared hallway environment.

Model-based control strategies for robot manipulators can present numerous performance advantages when an accurate model of the system dynamics is available. In practice, obtaining such a model is a challenging task which involves modeling such physical processes as friction, which may not be well understood and difficult to model. Furthermore, uncertainties in the physical parameters of a system may be introduced from significant discrepancies between the manufacturer data and the actual system. Traditionally, adaptive and robust control strategies have been developed to deal with parametric uncertainty in the dynamic model, but often require knowledge of the structure of the dynamics. Recent approaches to model-based manipulator control involve data-driven learning of the inverse dynamics relationship, eliminating the need for any a-priori knowledge of the system model. Locally Weighted Projection Regression (LWPR) has been proposed for learning the inverse dynamics function of a manipulator. Due to its use of simple local, linear models, LWPR is suitable for online and incremental learning. Although global regression techniques such as Gaussian Process Regression (GPR) have been shown to outperform LWPR in terms of accuracy, due to its heavy computational requirements, GPR has been applied mainly to offline learning of inverse dynamics. More recent efforts in making GPR computationally tractable for real-time control have resulted in several approximations which operate on a select subset, or sparse representation of the entire training data set. Despite the significant advancements that have been made in the area of learning control, there has not been much work in recent years to evaluate these newer regression techniques against traditional model-based control strategies such as adaptive control. Hence, the first portion of this thesis provides a comparison between a fixed model-based control strategy, an adaptive controller and the LWPR-based learning controller. Simulations are carried out in order to evaluate the position and orientation tracking performance of each controller under varied end effector loading, velocities and inaccuracies in the known dynamic parameters. Both the adaptive controller and LWPR controller are shown to have comparable performance in the presence of parametric uncertainty. However, it is shown that the learning controller is unable to generalize well outside of the regions in which it has been trained. Hence, achieving good performance requires significant amounts of training in the anticipated region of operation. In addition to poor generalization performance, most learning controllers commence learning entirely from `scratch,' making no use of any a-priori knowledge which may be available from the well-known rigid body dynamics (RBD) formulation. The second portion of this thesis develops two techniques for online, incremental learning algorithms which incorporate prior knowledge to improve generalization performance. First, prior knowledge is incorporated into the LWPR framework by initializing the local linear models with a first order approximation of the prior information. Second, prior knowledge is incorporated into the mean function of Sparse Online Gaussian Processes (SOGP) and Sparse Pseudo-input Gaussian Processes (SPGP), and a modified version of the algorithm is proposed to allow for online, incremental updates. It is shown that the proposed approaches allow the system to operate well even without any initial training data, and further performance improvement can be achieved with additional online training. Furthermore, it is also shown that even partial knowledge of the system dynamics, for example, only the gravity loading vector, can be used effectively to initialize the learning.

Although many researchers have pointed out that educational robots can motivate student learning, learning motivation inevitably declines over time. The sustainability of learning motivation is closely related to instructional strategies. In other words, appropriate instructional strategies are still essential to sustain a learner's learning motivation in robot-assisted instructions. The ARCS model provides systematic guidelines for enhancing and sustaining learning motivation; however, it provides very limited instructional practices in the model. Recent development in educational robot grows rapidly. A humanoid robot, which has a tangible and attractive body and limbs, is able to perform movements and gestures and to interact with its users. This study aims to develop instructional strategies and activities based on the ARCS model and the specific features of the robot teaching assistant (RTA) to enhance and sustain motivation in learning English reading skills. A quasi experiment and a survey were conducted to evaluate the effects of the designed strategies and activities. The results showed that the design of the RTA-based activities following the ARCS model for learning English reading skills was positively and significantly contributed to students¡¦ learning motivation, learning performance and continuance intention.

A wearable robot should know its environment and its location in order to help its operator. Wearable robots are becoming more feasible with the development of more powerful and smaller computing devices and cameras. The main aim of this research is to build a wearable robot with a low cost stereo camera system which explores a room sized unknown environment online and automatically. To achieve 3D localization and map building for the wearable robot, a consistent visual-SLAM algorithm is implemented by using point features in the environment and Extended Kalman Filter for state estimation. The whole system includes camera models and calibration, feature extraction, depth measurement and Extended Kalman Filter algorithm. Moreover, a map management algorithm is developed. This algorithm keeps the number of features spatially uniform in the scene and adds new features when feature number decreases in a frame. Furthermore, a user-interface is presented so that the location of the camera,the features and the constructed map are visualized online. Most importantly, the system is conducted by a low-cost stereo system.

The recent advancement of robotic technology brings robots closer to assisting us in our everyday spaces, providing support for healthcare, cleaning, entertaining and other tasks. In this dissertation, I refer to these robots as everyday robots. Scholars argue that the key to successful human acceptance lies in the design of robots that have the ability to blend into everyday activities. A challenge remains; robots are an autonomous technology that triggers multi-faceted interactions: physical, intellectual, social and emotional, making their presence visible and even obtrusive. These challenges need more than technological advances to be resolved; more human-centered approaches are required in the design. However to date, little is known about how to support that human-centered design of everyday robots. In this thesis, I address this gap by introducing an initial set of design guidelines for everyday robots. These guidelines are based on four empirical studies undertaken to identify how people live with robots in the home. These studies mine insights about what interaction attributes of everyday robots elicit positive or negative user responses. The guidelines were deployed in the development of one type of everyday robot: a senior-care robot called HomeMate. It shows that the guidelines become useful during the early development process by helping designers and robot engineers to focus on how social and emotional values of end-users influence the design of the technical functions required. Overall, this thesis addresses a question how we can support the design of everyday robots to become more accepted by users. I respond to this question by proposing a set of design guidelines that account for lived experiences of robots in the home, which ultimately can improve the adoption and use of everyday robots.

<p>This master thesis was made at the Institute of Technology Stockholm and is a part of a robot hand project called 10-X with the aim to develop a low-cost robot hand that is light and strong.</p><p>The project specification is to further improve the ability to control the robot hand in a user friendly way. This has been done by implementing a controller, earlier used and developed at KTH, which is intuitive and easy to customize after the needs in different kinds of grasps. To make the controller easy to use an user interface has been made.</p><p>Before the implementation of the controller was made on the real hand it was tested and development on a simulation created in MATLAB/simulink with help from a graphic physics engine called GraspIt! The movement of the robot finger is effected of the force from a leaf spring and a tendon that bends the finger. Also the finger is exposed of contact forces and all these components had to be modeled in the simulation to make the finger act properly.</p> / <p>Detta examensarbete är genomfört på KTH Stockholm och är en del av ett projekt, kallat 10-X, vars syfte är att utveckla och ta fram en robothand som är lätt och stark samtidigt som den är billig.</p><p>Projektets målsättning är att vidare förbättra och utveckla möjligheten att kontrollera robothanden på ett användarvänligt sätt. Detta har gjorts genom att implementera en regulator, tidigare utvecklad och använd på KTH, som är instruktiv och lätt att anpassa efter olika typer av grepp. För att göra regulatorn enkel att använda har ett användargränssnitt skapats.</p><p>Innan regulatorn implementerades på den riktiga robothanden utvecklades och testades den på en simuleringsmodell, skapad i MATLAB/simulink med hjälp av en grafisk fysikmotor GraspIt! Rörelsen hos ett robotfinger påverkas av krafter från en bladfjäder och den lina som böjer fingret. Fingret utsätts också för kontaktkrafter och alla dessa komponenter blev modellerade i simulatorn för att få fingret att bete sig korrekt.</p>