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Cooperative Robotic Systems in Agriculture
Published in Dan Zhang, Bin Wei, Robotics and Mechatronics for Agriculture, 2017
Considering the advantages, a smartweed treatment heterogeneous multi-agent system was designed (Kazmi et al., 2011) to investigate technological challenges of guiding and estimating a heterogeneous multi-agent system. A decentralized control structure was adapted to control two unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) and an unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) equipped with advanced vision sensors as shown in Fig. 2. A Weed detection process was achieved by processing images obtained by a Multispectral camera and Time-of-Flight camera. Its data exchange process allowed each agent to evaluate the overall task and handle their sub-tasks individually. The communication range limitation affected the data exchange process among the fleet, since UAS has a wider but distanced observation while UGV has a closer but narrow inspection. It was concluded that having heterogeneous multi-agent is more complex but has a better flexibility towards wider ranges of applications and more customized solutions.
Robots Supporting Care for Elderly People
Published in Pedro Encarnação, Albert M. Cook, Robotic Assistive Technologies, 2017
Sandra Bedaf, Claire Huijnen, Renée van den Heuvel, Luc de Witte
The European ACCOMPANY (Acceptable robotiCs COMPanions for AgeiNg Years) Project (http://accompanyproject.eu/) was a 3-year robotic project that aimed to prolong independent living of elderly people by means of a service robot developed by a multidisciplinary consortium.1 The project made use of an existing service robot, the Care-O-bot® (http://www.care-o-bot.de/de/care-o-bot-3.html) (Figure 9.3), with the aim to further develop its functionalities to assist older people to carry out relatively difficult daily tasks on their own again. This robot has an omnidirectional platform with three laser scanners for navigation. A sensor head includes a stereo rig and a three-dimensional (3-D) time-of-flight camera. The sensor head is mounted on an axis that allows it to move back and forth. The robot torso is on a manipulator with 4 degrees of freedom (DOF), providing more flexibility to position the cameras and enabling the robot to perform body gestures for a more natural interaction with persons. The Care-O-bot also features a 7-DOF robotic manipulator with a dexterous hand with an additional 7 DOF. Interaction with the user is mainly done through a tray for carrying objects. A retractile touch screen is included in the tray. For safety, the robot arm is only used to place and take objects from the tray when no person is detected in the vicinity of the robot.
Potential applications of connected vehicles in pavement condition evaluation: a brief review
Published in Road Materials and Pavement Design, 2023
Maryam Samie, Amir Golroo, Donya Tavakoli, Mohammadsadegh Fahmani
Various tools are used to gather data from the pavement surface, such as digital cameras, line scanners, 3D laser imaging, 3D-imaging technologies, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV), and infrared thermography. In addition, to measure road roughness, accelerometers and ultrasonic sensors can be utilised (Y. Du et al., 2016; Peraka & Biligiri, 2020). If 2D images are needed, a Digital Camera is one of the techniques in distress detection that takes two-dimension pictures in the visible spectrum of light with a digital photosensitive sensor CCD (Charge-Coupled Devices). The other detector is the line-scan camera which has high acquisition rates and high resolution. To create a 2D image of the pavement, a terrestrial vehicle moves the camera perpendicular to the line of pixels (Gavilán et al., 2011). A high frame rate of the camera allows the vehicle to reach a speed of 90 km/h, but in post processing and distress detection phase, it can increase the cost and be time-consuming (Coenen & Golroo, 2017; Quintana et al., n.d.; Ragnoli et al., 2018). Since surface distresses on roads are three-dimensional (3D), 3D-imaging methods are required for pavement condition assessment (Mathavan et al., 2015). There are various available methods in this field, such as 3D Laser imaging, terrestrial laser scanner, stereo imaging, photometric stereo, laser scanning, interferometry, time-of-flight camera systems, and flash LIDAR (Premachandra et al., 2015).