Field and Service Robotics

Joe Engelberger, the pioneer of the robotics industry, wrote in his 1989 book Robotics in Service that the inspiration to write his book came as a reaction to an industry-sponsored forecast study of robot applications, which predicted that in 1995 applications of robotics outside factories - the traditional domain of industrial robots - would amount to less than 1% of total sales. Engelberger believed that this forecast was very wrong, and instead predicted that the non-industrial class of robot applications would become the largest class. Engelbergers prediction has yet to come to pass. However, he did correctly foresee the growth in non-traditional applications of robots. Robots are now beginning to march from the factories and into field and service applications. This book presents a selection of papers from the first major international conference dedicated to field and service applications of robotics. This selection includes papers from the leading research laboratories in the world together with papers from companies that are building and selling new and innovative robotic technology. It describes interesting aspects of robots in the field ranging from mining, agriculture, construction, cargo handling, subsea operations, removal of landmines, to terrestrial exploration. It also covers a diverse range of service applications, such as cleaning, propagating plants and aiding the elderly and handicapped, and gives considerable attention to the technology required to realise robust, reliable and safe robots.

Mobile Robots and Smart Cars.- Mobile Manipulators: Expanding the Frontiers of Robot Applications.- Robot Navigation Inspired by Principles of Insect Vision.- Behaviour-Based Robots for Dangerous and Difficult Environments.- Towards Useful Autonomous Robotic Systems for Field and Service Applications.- Intelligent Robotics ― Where Are We At and Where Are We Going.- Behaviour Programmable Machines for Field Construction Operations.- Map Building and Terrain-Aided Localisation in an Underground Mine.- 3D Perception for Mining Robotics.- The Numbat: A Remotely Controlled Mine Emergency Response Vehicle.- Motion Planning and Sensor-Guided Manoeuvre Generation for an Autonomous Vehicle.- Fault Detection in the Frequency Domain: Designing Reliable Navigation Systems.- Lessons from the Development and Deployment of Dante II.- Operating Nomad During the Atacama Desert Trek.- Some Details of the Development of Mobile Robot Platforms.- Field Experiments with the Ames Marsokhod Rover.- A Case Study in Machine Intelligence: Adaptive Autonomous Space Rovers.- Navigation Data Acquisition with an Experimental Test-Bed of Planetary Exploration Rover.- Town Robot: Toward Social Interaction Technologies of Robot Systems.- Towards Autonomous Excavation.- A Mobile Robot for Training Horses.- User-Friendly Interface of Service Robot: Knowledge Projection on Robot Task Environment.- Web Telerobotics ― Results and Issues.- Teleoperation of Autonomous Mobile Robot Under Limited Feedback Information.- Smart Man-Machine Interfaces by Means of Projective Virtual Reality.- Using Telerobots for Recreation.- Applying Telepresence and Augmented Reality Techniques in Teleoperation of Mobile Field Robots.- Memory-Based Navigation using Omni-View Sequence.- Automation of an Industrial Fork Lift Truck, Guided by Artificial Vision, Ultrasonic and Infrared Sensors in Open Environments.- Robot Cleaning: An Application of Distributed Planning and Real-Time Vision.- Autonomous Mobile Robot Navigation Including Door Opening Behaviour ― System Integration of Mobile Manipulator to Adapt Real Environment.- Coverage Path Planning: The Boustrophedon Cellular Decomposition.- Cooperation Between Intelligent Space and Mobile Robot: Physical Agent for Intelligent Space and Extended Sensor for Mobile Robot.- Map Learning of an Office Conversant Mobile Robot, JIJO-2, by Dialogue-Guided Navigation.- Robotic Sensing for the Guidance of the Visually Impaired.- Towards Terrain Aided Navigation of a Subsea Vehicle.- A Multiple-Hypothesis Approach to Concurrent Mapping and Localization for Autonomous Underwater Vehicles.- Design and Control of Underwater Wall Ranging Robot for Inspection of Nuclear Reactor.- Real Robots in an Artificial World.- An Adaptive Fuzzy-Potential Field Approach to Navigation in Dynamically Changing Environments for Practical Applications.- The GPS Aiding of INS for Land Vehicle Navigation.- The Use of Quaternions in a Low Cost Strapdown INS Unit.- The Design of a High Performance MMW Radar System for Autonomous Land Vehicle Navigation.- An Autonomous Shadow Vehicle.- Optimal Data Fusion in Decentralised Systems with Flexible Observation Rates: Estimation for a Land Vehicle.- A Gopher Robot.- Mobile Robotic Hand-Eye Co-ordination Platform: Designing and Modelling.- Monocular Vision Applied to Accurate Rov Localization.- Hunt and Gather Robotics.- Design and Implementation of Distributed Controller and its Operating System for Autonomous Mobile Robot Platform.- Vision-Based Navigation using Natural Landmarks.- On Continuous Path Tasks for a 6-DOF Manipulator Mounted on a Nonholonomic Mobile Platform.- Discrete Event Control for Mobile Robots.- Hierarchical Adaptive Fuzzy Control of Mobile Robot in Dynamic Environment.- Electric Field Based Obstacle Avoidance.- Shared Discrete Event Control of a Robotic Aid for the Blind.- Evaluation of Real-Time Robot Control Systems.- Identification of Load Sway in Quay-Cranes.- Path Design and Control Algorithms for Articulated Mobile Robots.- A Practical Trajectory Following of an Articulated Steering Type Vehicle.- An Autonomous Wheelchair with a Lonworks Network Based Distribution Control System.- Utility Fusion: Map-Based Planning in a Behaviour-Based System.- A New Collision Avoidance Methodology for Multi-Robot Systems Based on the Robots’ Dynamics.- Exploitation of Kinematic Redundancy in Torque-Controllable Manipulators via Multiple-Jacobian Superposition.- Toward Blind Groping: An Approach to Manipulation in Unknown Sensor-Hostile Environments.- Dynamic Simulation of Free-Flying Space Robots for Service and Exploration.- Smart End-Effector Sensing for Variable Object Handling.- Recruiting Swarm Robots Using Coded Odour Trails.- An Exploratory Robot Controller which Adapts to Unknown Environments and Damaged Sensors.- An Autonomous Blimp.- Omnidirectional Robots: New Challenges in Mobility, Vision and Tactics for Robot Soccer.- Versatility for Unknown Worlds: Mobile Sensors and Self-Reconfiguring Robots.- Design Concept and Realization of the Humanoid Service Robot HERMES.- What Can Robotics Researchers Learn from the Land Mine Problem?.- Anti-Personnel Mine Detection Manipulator.- Large Scale Sonarry Mapping using Multiple Connected Local Maps.- Rotating Sonar: Modelling and Application.- Recognising Landmarks with Ultrasonic Sensing for Autonomous Mobile Robot Navigation.- A High-Performance Camera Platform for Real-Time Active Vision.- User Interfaces for Robot Mobility Aids.- A Visual Interface for Human-Robot Interaction.