A Practical Study of Intelligent Image-Based Mobile Robot for Tracking Colored Objects

Object tracking is one of the major tasks for mobile robots in many real-world applications.Also,artificial intelligence and automatic control techniques play an important role in enhancing the performance of mobile robot navigation.In contrast to previous simulation studies,this paper presents a new intelligent mobile robot for accomplishing multi-tasks by tracking red-green-blue(RGB)colored objects in a real experimental field.Moreover,a practical smart controller is developed based on adaptive fuzzy logic and custom proportional-integral-derivative(PID)schemes to achieve accurate tracking results,considering robot command delay and tolerance errors.The design of developed controllers implies some motion rules to mimic the knowledge of experienced operators.Twelve scenarios of three colored object combinations have been successfully tested and evaluated by using the developed controlled image-based robot tracker.Classical PID control failed to handle some tracking scenarios in this study.The proposed adaptive fuzzy PID control achieved the best accurate results with the minimum average final error of 13.8 cm to reach the colored targets,while our designed custom PID control is efficient in saving both average time and traveling distance of 6.6 s and 14.3 cm,respectively.These promising results demonstrate the feasibility of applying our developed image-based robotic system in a colored object-tracking environment to reduce human workloads.

A review:On path planning strategies for navigation of mobile robot

This paper presents the rigorous study of mobile robot navigation techniques used so far.The step by step investigations of classical and reactive approaches are made here to understand the development of path planning strategies in various environmental conditions and to identify research gap.The classical approaches such as cell decomposition(CD),roadmap approach(RA),artificial potential field(APF);reactive approaches such as genetic algorithm(GA),fuzzy logic(FL),neural network(NN),firefly algorithm(FA),particle swarm optimization(PSO),ant colony optimization(ACO),bacterial foraging optimization(BFO),artificial bee colony(ABC),cuckoo search(CS),shuffled frog leaping algorithm(SFLA)and other miscellaneous algorithms(OMA)are considered for study.The navigation over static and dynamic condition is analyzed(for single and multiple robot systems)and it has been observed that the reactive approaches are more robust and perform well in all terrain when compared to classical approaches.It is also observed that the reactive approaches are used to improve the performance of the classical approaches as a hybrid algorithm.Hence,reactive approaches are more popular and widely used for path planning of mobile robot.The paper concludes with tabular data and charts comparing the frequency of individual navigational strategies which can be used for specific application in robotics.

Current trends in three-dimensional visualization and real-time navigation as well as robot-assisted technologies in hepatobiliary surgery

With the continuous development of digital medicine,minimally invasive precision and safety have become the primary development trends in hepatobiliary surgery.Due to the specificity and complexity of hepatobiliary surgery,traditional preoperative imaging techniques such as computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging cannot meet the need for identification of fine anatomical regions.Imaging-based three-dimensional(3D)reconstruction,virtual simulation of surgery and 3D printing optimize the surgical plan through preoperative assessment,improving the controllability and safety of intraoperative operations,and in difficult-to-reach areas of the posterior and superior liver,assistive robots reproduce the surgeon’s natural movements with stable cameras,reducing natural vibrations.Electromagnetic navigation in abdominal surgery solves the problem of conventional surgery still relying on direct visual observation or preoperative image assessment.We summarize and compare these recent trends in digital medical solutions for the future development and refinement of digital medicine in hepatobiliary surgery.

Reactive fuzzy controller design by Q-learning for mobile robot navigation

In this paper a learning mechanism for reactive fuzzy controller design of a mobile robot navigating in unknown environments is proposed. The fuzzy logical controller is constructed based on the kinematics model of a real robot. The approach to learning the fuzzy rule base by relatively simple and less computational Q-learning is described in detail. After analyzing the credit assignment problem caused by the rules collision, a remedy is presented. Furthermore, time-varying parameters are used to increase the learning speed. Simulation results prove the mechanism can learn fuzzy navigation rules successfully only using scalar reinforcement signal and the rule base learned is proved to be correct and feasible on real robot platforms.

SENSOR-BASED MOTION CONTROL USING ADAPTIVE NAVIGATION RULES IN THE DYNAMIC ENVIRONMENT FOR MOBILE ROBOT

In the multi-robots system, it's important for a robot to acquire adaptivenavigation rules for reaching the goal and avoiding other robots and obstacles and in the real-timeenvironment. An efficient approach to collision-avoidance in multi-robots system is suggested . Itis based on velocity information of moving objects and the distances between the robots and theobstacles in three specified directions and makes the robot navigate adaptively without collisionwith each other in a complicated situation. The effectiveness of algorithm is proved by the severalsimple examples in the physical world.

On-line real-time path planning of mobile robots in dynamic uncertain environment

A new path planning method for mobile robots in globally unknown environment with moving obstacles is pre- sented. With an autoregressive (AR) model to predict the future positions of moving obstacles, and the predicted position taken as the next position of moving obstacles, a motion path in dynamic uncertain environment is planned by means of an on-line real-time path planning technique based on polar coordinates in which the desirable direction angle is taken into consideration as an optimization index. The effectiveness, feasibility, high stability, perfect performance of obstacle avoidance, real-time and optimization capability are demonstrated by simulation examples.

Web-based GIS System for Real-time Field Data Collection Using Personal Mobile Phone

Recently, use of mobile communicational devices in field data collection is increasing such as smart phones and cellular phones due to emergence of embedded Global Position System GPS and Wi-Fi Internet access. Accurate timely and handy field data collection is required for disaster management and emergency quick responses. In this article, we introduce web-based GIS system to collect the field data by personal mobile phone through Post Office Protocol POP3 mail server. The main objective of this work is to demonstrate real-time field data collection method to the students using their mobile phone to collect field data by timely and handy manners, either individual or group survey in local or global scale research.

Scheduling transactions in mobile distributed real-time database systems

A DMVOCC-MVDA （distributed multiversion optimistic concurrency control with multiversion dynamic adjustment） protocol was presented to process mobile distributed real-time transaction in mobile broadcast environments. At the mobile hosts, all transactions perform local pre-validation. The local pre-validation process is carried out against the committed transactions at the server in the last broadcast cycle. Transactions that survive in local pre-validation must be submitted to the server for local final validation. The new protocol eliminates conflicts between mobile read-only and mobile update transactions, and resolves data conflicts flexibly by using multiversion dynamic adjustment of serialization order to avoid unnecessary restarts of transactions. Mobile read-only transactions can be committed with no-blocking, and respond time of mobile read-only transactions is greatly shortened. The tolerance of mobile transactions of disconnections from the broadcast channel is increased. In global validation mobile distributed transactions have to do check to ensure distributed serializability in all participants. The simulation results show that the new concurrency control protocol proposed offers better performance than other protocols in terms of miss rate, restart rate, commit rate. Under high work load （think time is ls） the miss rate of DMVOCC-MVDA is only 14.6%, is significantly lower than that of other protocols. The restart rate of DMVOCC-MVDA is only 32.3%, showing that DMVOCC-MVDA can effectively reduce the restart rate of mobile transactions. And the commit rate of DMVOCC-MVDA is up to 61.2%, which is obviously higher than that of other protocols.

OBSTACLE-AVOIDANCE NAVIGATION OF MULTIPLE MOBILE ROBOTS

In the context of robot soccer, the robots have to select actions to achieve individual and team goals in the dynamic environment. It is important for a robot to acquire navigation behaviors for avoiding other robots and obstacles in the real time environment. This paper suggested an efficient approach to collision avoidance in multi robot system. This approach is based on velocity information of moving objects and the distance between robot and obstacle in three specified directions. The main contribution of this paper is that it provides a method for robots with decreased computational cost and makes the robot navigate without collision with each other in a complicated environment.

The investigation of an autonomous intelligent mobile robot system for indoor environment navigation

The autonomous mobile robotics system designed and implemented for indoor environment navigation is a nonholonomic differential drive system with two driving wheels mounted on the same axis driven by two PID controlled motors and two caster wheels mounted in the front and back respectively. It is furnished with multiple kinds of sensors such as IR detectors, ultrasonic sensors, laser line generators and cameras, constituting a perceiving system for exploring its surroundings. Its computation source is a simultaneously running system composed of multiprocessor with multitask and multiprocessing programming. Hybrid control architecture is employed on the mobile robot to perform complex tasks. The mobile robot system is implemented at the Center for Intelligent Design, Automation and Manufacturing of City University of Hong Kong.

Broadcast Scheduling Strategy Based on the Priority of Real-Time Data in a Mobile Environment

Data broadcast is an important data dissemination approach in mobile environment. On broadcast channel, scalability and efficiency of data transmission are satisfied. In a mobile environment, there exists a kind of real-time database application in which both the transactions and data can have their timing constraints and priorities of different levels. In order to meet the requirement of real-time data disseminating and retrieving, a broadcast scheduling strategy HPF-ED F (Highest Priority First with Earlier Deadline and Frequency) is proposed under the BoD (Broadcast on Demand) model. Using the strategy, data items are scheduled according to their priority the transaction imposed on them or system set for them. The strategy also considers other characteristics of data items such as deadline and popularity of data. The extensive simulation experiments have been conducted to evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithm. Results show that it can achieve excellent performance compared with existing strategies.

Localization and navigation using a novel artificial landmark for indoor mobile robots

This paper presents a practical topological navigation system for indoor mobile robots, making use of a novel artificial landmark which is called MR code. This new kind of paper-made landmarks earl be easi- ly attached on the ceilings or on the walls, lmealization algorithms for the two cases are given respective- ly. A docking control algorithm is also described, which a robot employs to approach its current goal. A simple topological navigation algorithm is proposed. Experiment results show the effectiveness of the method in real environment.

Investigation on mobile robot navigation based on Kinect sensor

Mobile robot navigation in unknown environment is an advanced research hotspot.Simultaneous localization and mapping(SLAM)is the key requirement for mobile robot to accomplish navigation.Recently,many researchers study SLAM by using laser scanners,sonar,camera,etc.This paper proposes a method that consists of a Kinect sensor along with a normal laptop to control a small mobile robot for collecting information and building a global map of an unknown environment on a remote workstation.The information(depth data)is communicated wirelessly.Gmapping(a highly efficient Rao-Blackwellized particle filer to learn grid maps from laser range data)parameters have been optimized to improve the accuracy of the map generation and the laser scan.Experiment is performed on Turtlebot to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Probabilistic Fuzzy Control of Mobile Robots for Range Sensor Based Reactive Navigation

In this paper, a probabilistic fuzzy approach is proposed for mobile-robot reactive navigation using range sensors. The primary motivation is an integrated reactive navigation control system with good real-time performance under uncertainty. To accomplish this aim, a probabilistic fuzzy logic system (PFLS) is introduced to range measurement and reactive navigation in local environments. PFLS is first adopted to handle the fuzzy and stochastic uncertainties in range sensors and to provide more precise distance information in unknown environments. Consequently these sensor data are sent to a probabilistic fuzzy rule-based inference system with reactive behaviors for local navigation. The feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed approach are verified by simulation and the experiments on a real mobile robot.

Effects of reconfiguration on the performance of mobile navigation robot

An irmovative mobile robot that has reconfigurable loeomotion chassis and reconfigurable bionic wheels has been developed to meet the needs of different payload and different terrain. Several prototypes have been achieved by the recortfiguration. By modeling relative comparison coefficients, these prototypes are analyzed in terms of geometrical parameter of trafficability, static stability and maneuverability. The effects of reconfiguration on these indices of robot performance can be compared, i.e. the variable height of chassis h has the biggest effect, the variable length of chassis 1 is the second, then is the camber angle β and the caster angle α. Some principles for reconfiguration are proposed.

Real-Time Air Monitoring of Trichloroethylene and Tetrachloroethylene Using Mobile TAGA Mass Spectrometry

Trichloroethylene (TCE) is a chlorinated liquid that is commonly used for metal degreasing, household and industrial dry cleaning, and in paints and glues. Tetrachloroethylene, also known as perchloroethylene (PCE), is an excellent solvent for organic materials. PCE is volatile, highly stable, non-flammable and widely used in dry cleaning. A new method has been developed for measuring TCE and PCE in ambient air in real-time. Based upon the chemical fingerprinting and concentration levels, the method was able to isolate the source of the emissions to the responsible facility. Real-time monitoring was accomplished by utilizing a low pressure chemical ionization source (LPCI) interfaced to a tandem mass spectrometer (TAGA). Monitoring the response of specific parent/daughter ion pairs, the TAGA was used to measure concentrations of TCE and PCE. By optimizing various TAGA parameters, detection limits (DL) as low as 0.5 μg/m3 was achieved for TCE and PCE. Unlike methods using cartridge sampling and GC/MS analysis, this new method provides a real time measurement for a wide range of TCE and PCE concentrations. This unique method was applied in 2000 and 2002 to measure TCE emitted from a manufacturer of stainless steel tubing in Eastern Ontario. The maximum half-hour average concentration of TCE measured downwind of the facility was 1300 μg/m3 and the maximum instantaneous level was measured at 115,000 μg/m3. The information collected by the TAGA unit was used by the Standard Development Branch of Ontario Ministry of the Environment to adopt the half-hour Point of Impingement (POI) standard of TCE to be 36 μg/m3 in 2010. This method successfully identified and simultaneously measured TCE and PCE during a 2011 air monitoring survey of a hazardous waste disposal and treatment facility in Southern Ontario.

Indoor monocular mobile robot navigation based on color landmarks

A robot landmark navigation system based on monocular camera was researched theoretically and experimentally.First the landmark setting and its data structure in programming was given;then the coordinates of them getting by robot and global localization of the robot was described;finally experiments based on Pioneer III mobile robot show that this system can work well at different topographic situation without lose of signposts.

Real-Time Monitoring and Forecast of Active Population Density Using Mobile Phone Data

Real-time monitoring and forecast of large scale active population density is of great significance as it can warn and prevent possible public safety accident caused by abnormal population aggregation.Active population is defined as the number of people with their mobile phone powered on.Recently,an unfortunate deadly stampede occurred in Shanghai on December 31th 2014 causing the death of 39 people.We hope that our research can help avoid similar unfortunate accident from happening.In this paper we propose a method for active population density real-time monitoring and forecasting based on data from mobile network operators.Our method is based solely on mobile network operators existing infrastructure and barely requires extra investment,and mobile devices play a very limited role in the process of population locating.Four series forecasting methods,namely Simple Exponential Smoothing(SES),Double exponential smoothing(DES),Triple exponential smoothing(TES)and Autoregressive integrated moving average(ARIMA)are used in our experiments.Our experimental results suggest that we can achieve good forecast result for 135 min in future.

Mobile Robot Indoor Autonomous Navigation with Position Estimation Using RF Signal Triangulation

In the mobile robotic systems a precise estimate of the robot pose (Cartesian [x y] position plus orientation angle theta) with the intention of the path planning optimization is essential for the correct performance, on the part of the robots, for tasks that are destined to it, especially when intention is for mobile robot autonomous navigation. This work uses a ToF (Time-of-Flight) of the RF digital signal interacting with beacons for computational triangulation in the way to provide a pose estimative at bi-dimensional indoor environment, where GPS system is out of range. It’s a new technology utilization making good use of old ultrasonic ToF methodology that takes advantage of high performance multicore DSP processors to calculate ToF of the order about ns. Sensors data like odometry, compass and the result of triangulation Cartesian estimative, are fused in a Kalman filter in the way to perform optimal estimation and correct robot pose. A mobile robot platform with differential drive and nonholonomic constraints is used as base for state space, plants and measurements models that are used in the simulations and for validation the experiments.

A survey of real-time rendering on Web3D application

Background In recent years, with the rapid development of mobile Internet and Web3D technologies, a large number of web-based online 3D visualization applications have emerged. Web3D applications, including Web3D online tourism, Web3D online architecture, Web3D online education environment, Web3D online medical care, and Web3D online shopping are examples of these applications that leverage 3D rendering on the web. These applications have pushed the boundaries of traditional web applications that use text, sound, image, video, and 2D animation as their main communication media, and resorted to 3D virtual scenes as the main interaction object, enabling a user experience that delivers a strong sense of immersion. This paper approached the emerging Web3D applications that generate stronger impacts on people's lives through “real-time rendering technology”, which is the core technology of Web3D. This paper discusses all the major 3D graphics APIs of Web3D and the well-known Web3D engines at home and abroad and classify the real-time rendering frameworks of Web3D applications into different categories. Results Finally, this study analyzed the specific demand posed by different fields to Web3D applications by referring to the representative Web3D applications in each particular field. Conclusions Our survey results show that Web3D applications based on real-time rendering have in-depth sectors of society and even family, which is a trend that has influence on every line of industry.