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Detta examensarbete har genomförts hos Weda AB gällande deras bottensug B600. Syftet med projektet har varit att åstadkomma en ökning av robotens automationsgrad för att eliminera behovet av övervakning och samtidigt minska robotens operationstid per rengöringscykel. För att öka automationsgraden har en kursavvikelse, som uppkommer i samband med robotens övergång från poolens djupa del till dess grunda del, undersökts. Fokus har legat på att minska denna avvikelse genom att ta fram ett mekaniskt tillbehör som enkelt kan monteras på roboten. Två stycken iterationer av prototypen har tillverkats och testats. Den andra iterationen kunde inte validera lösningen på grund av oförutsedda problem. En tredje iteration har som resultat av detta teoretiskt föreslagits med syfte att lösa dessa problem för att kunna validera konceptets verkan. Fortsatt testning av den tredje iterationen kommer därmed att vara avgörande för ifall konceptet som helhet fungerar som tänkt. / This thesis has been carried out at Weda AB regarding their bottom suction robot B600. The purpose of the project has been to achieve an increase in the robot's degree of automation to eliminate the need for monitoring and at the same time reduce the robot's operating time per cleaning cycle. To increase the degree of automation, a deviation of the course that occurs in connection with the robot's transition from the deep part of the pool to its shallow part has been investigated. The focus has been on reducing this deviation by developing a mechanical accessory that can be easily mounted on the robot. Two iterations of the prototype have been manufactured and tested. The second iteration could not validate the solution due to unforeseen problems. As a result, a third iteration has been theoretically proposed with the aim of solving these problems. Continued testing of the third iteration will thus be decisive for whether the concept as a whole will work as intended.

This project seeks to design and construct a track-driven radio controlled vehicle and controller. The purpose is to research if radio can be effectively used to control the robot remotely, as well as research to what extent a tracked design increases the mobility when compared to a wheel-design. The prototype consists of two parts: Vehicle and controller. The vehicle is track-driven with two DC-engines connected by H-bridge. A receiver is fitted to the vehicle. The controller consists of two joysticks, a linear potentiometer as well as a transmitter. Testing was performed by driving the vehicle on different terrain.The results show that it is possible to control via RC and that the vehicle had increased mobility compared to wheeled designs. Two problems were identified: Firstly, the tracks used lacks friction, causing the vehicle to glide when attempting to climb certain objects. Secondly, due to the design of the chassis, objects contact the chassis body instead of the tracks. Causing the vehicle to stall. / Detta projekt menar att designa samt konstruera ett banddrivet radiostyrt fordon och tillhörande kontroll. Syftet med detta är att forska om radiostyrning kan effektivt användas för fjärrstyrning och för att undersöka om band-drift ökar fordonets rörlighet jämfört med hjuldrivna motsvarigheter. Prototypen består av två delar; fordon och kontroll. Fordonet är band-drivet med två DC-motorer med högt drivmoment kopplade till en H-brygga. En mottagare är monterad på fordonet. Kontrollen består av två joysticks, en linjärpotentiometer samt en sändare. Testen genomfördes genom att låta fordonet köra över olika terräng. Resultaten av testerna visade att det är möjligt att fjärrstyra med RC samt att fordonet hade ökad rörlighet jämfört med hjuldrivna motsvarigheter. Två problem identifierades under testen. Banden saknar friktion och glider ibland i stället för att klättra över hinder. På grund av chassits form kolliderade ibland objekt med chassit före banden vilket stoppade fordonet.

Robot manipulators are commonly used in today's industrial applications. In this report a 3D-printed anthropomorphic robot arm with three degrees of freedom was constructed. The robot arm operates with the use of a microcontroller and servomotors. Through utilizing the Denavit-Hartenberg method and inverse kinematics the robot’s end effector is able to reach a specified point in space. This report has found that the accuracy of the constructed robotic manipulator reaching a specific coordinate depends on the distance of the end effector from its base. The relative error of the constructed robot’s positioning falls within 1.3- 6.9%, with a 99% confidence. / Robotmanipulatorer är idag vanligt förekommande i industriella applikationer. I denna rapport konstrueras en 3D-printad antropomorf robotarm med tre frihetsgrader. Robotarmen styrs med hjälp av en mikrokontroller och servomotorer. Baserat på DenavitHartenberg metoden och inverskinematik kan robotens ändpunkt ta sig till en specificerad punkt i rummet. Vidare har rapporten funnit att den konstruerade robotens exakthet beror på avståndet emellan robotens manipulator och dess bas. Det relativa felet av robotens positionering ligger inom intervallet 1.3-6.9% med en 99% konfidens.

Robotic automation has evolved to be an irreplaceable part of production lines. Orderly operation of the robots is a key factor. Yet robots often have to deal with unpredictable factors including human beings or possible failures that lead to unexpected behaviours. Collision avoidance mechanisms are therefore of outmost importance to prevent injuries and damage. A major challenge in the creation of a dependable collision avoidance system is the sensory system that could cover relevant parts of the robot and capacitive sensors are a promising solution. The burden is to overcome the nonlinearity and other limitations of the capacitive sensors and harness their potential to this end. It is cumbersome to estimate the proximity of surfaces of the robot from its environment (which could include other robots) from the capacitive readings, so a novel sensing approach is proposed in this thesis. For industrial applications where the motions are well-defined, a pre-recorded capacitive signature can be used to monitor for unexpected changes. In this thesis the capacitive signature of one or more robotic arms will be used to predict and prevent collisions in a robotic workcell. A short training cycle is used to create a signature that is used at runtime to monitor the robot operation. Capacitive electrodes are placed on strategic locations on the robot arms and the surrounding environments and a supervisor computer uses the readings to cease the operation in case of any abnormality. This thesis describes the details of generating the signature from the training data and the runtime software. The supervisor computer provides a pause and/or go signal to the robot(s). The native controller of each arm is kept in place and the only change needed is the ability of each controller to pause the arm at command when a collision is detected and continue from this paused state. This approach requires minimum changes to the existing robotic equipments and programmes. These hardware requirements are widely available on existing controllers. Signature creation is the process of finding the normal pattern of the capacitance readings from all sensors as well as some expected limits allowing for the variations that are to be expected. The algorithms, reasoning, and experimental data are provided throughout the text. The system is tested on a robotic workcell that includes an actively controlled robot and a passive revolute joint. While the algorithm is universal, the suggested hardware has been shown to provide sampling times of down to 20ms, and positional accuracies of ±2mm or better are achieved for the test setup. The thesis also proposes methods to expand the measurement hardware for increased protection and fault tolerance. / Thesis / Master of Applied Science (MASc)

Yes / This paper proposes a robot navigation scheme using wireless visual sensors deployed in an environment. Different from the conventional autonomous robot approaches, the scheme intends to relieve massive on-board information processing required by a robot to its environment so that a robot or a vehicle with less intelligence can exhibit sophisticated mobility. A three-state snake mechanism is developed for coordinating a series of sensors to form a reference path. Wireless visual sensors communicate internal forces with each other along the reference snake for dynamic adjustment, react to repulsive forces from obstacles, and activate a state change in the snake body from a flexible state to a rigid or even to a broken state due to kinematic or environmental constraints. A control snake is further proposed as a tracker of the reference path, taking into account the robot’s non-holonomic constraint and limited steering power. A predictive control algorithm is developed to have an optimal velocity profile under robot dynamic constraints for the snake tracking. They together form a unified solution for robot navigation by distributed sensors to deal with the kinematic and dynamic constraints of a robot and to react to dynamic changes in advance. Simulations and experiments demonstrate the capability of a wireless sensor network to carry out low-level control activities for a vehicle. / Royal Society, Natural Science Funding Council (China)

Planetary rovers are robots that need to perform autonomous navigation, because of the long delay communication and no human assistance. Furthermore, they need to perform the optimal estimation of its position in order to have a good performance on its navigation system. The need for good performance filters for estimating the actual position of mobile robots of this kind is needed, due to the fact that sensors are noisy and that information is of vital importance for a planetary rover’s mission. Besides, good accurate sensors for the matter, are not easy to find for space application. Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) and Unscented Kalman Filter (UKF) were implemented to analyze a data set of a 4-wheel robot, and later used for comparison on accuracy in the estimation of its pose. The analysis will give the possibility to know the right combination of sensors, recognize some issues during the trajectory. Furthermore, this study has been made with aims to give the reader knowledge of state of the art in planetary rovers, their constraints and consideration while developing them. The robot used for the research has been developed for an international competition of field robot automation. The main goal is to navigate autonomously through flowerpots performing different tasks as flowerpot collection, distance traveled and robustness on localization and navigation algorithms. / <p>Validerat; 20120822 (anonymous)</p>

Vid tillverkning av plåtdetaljer kräver ytbehandlingsmetoden pulverlackering att detaljen maskeras, något som är tidskrävande. I dagsläget sker detta med hjälp av silikonplugg som monteras för hand, vilket är en enformig arbetsuppgift med avseende på de stora produktionsvolymerna. Syftet med denna studie är att utforska lämpliga maskeringsmetoder för pulverlackering utöver den nuvarande samt möjligheterna till automatisering av maskeringsprocessen. Arbetet ska utgöra grunden för framtida implementationer vilket medför att lösningsförslag ska utvecklas i form av konceptuella CAD-modeller. Forskningsplanen byggde på designprocessen Design Research Methodology i tre steg med delmoment från designverktyget Getting Design Right invävt. Resultatet av studien blev att den nuvarande maskeringsmetoden lämpar sig bäst för automatisering. Det lämpligaste alternativet för automatisering var en robotbaserad lösning. Svaren på studiens frågeställningar användes för att utveckla ett koncept för en automatiserad maskeringsprocess med robotar som kan utgöra grunden för framtida implementationer. Dock är detta en första iteration och kan därför förbättras i många avseenden.

With the advancement in technology, modern autonomous vehicles are required to perform more complex tasks and navigate through challenging terrains. Thus, the amount of computation resources to accurately accomplish those tasks have exponentially grown in the last decade. With growing computational intensity and limited computational resources on embedded devices, schedulers are necessary to manage and fully optimize computational loads between the GPU and CPU as well as reducing the power consumption to maximize time in the field. Thus far, it has been proven the effectiveness of schedulers and path planners on computational load on embedded devices through numerous bench testing and simulated environments. However, there have not been any significant data collection in the real-world with all hardware and software combined. This thesis focuses on the implementation of various computational loads (i.e. scheduler, path planner, RGB-D camera, object detection, depth estimation, etc.) on the NVIDIA Jetson AGX Xavier and real-world experimentation on the Clearpath Robotics Jackal. We compare the computation response time and effectiveness of all systems tested in the real-world versus the same software and hardware architecture on the bench. / Master of Science / Modern autonomous vehicles are required to perform more complex tasks with limited computational resources, power and operating frequency. In recent past, the research around autonomous vehicles have been focused on proving the effectiveness of using software-based programming on embedded devices with integrated GPU to improve the overall performance by speeding up task completion. Our goal is to perform real-world data collection and experimentation with both hardware and software frameworks onboard the Clearpath Robotics Jackal. This will validate the efficiency and computational load of the software framework under multiple varying environments.