In this paper, the development of a 3-dimensional odometry system for wheeled robots on loose soil in an application of planetary exploration is described. When a wheeled robot operates in a slippery environment, visual odometry, which is used to obtain flow-images of the ground with a CCD camera, is effective for the measurement of motion because it is a non-contact method. However, in the tar...

A new type of spherical robot, called KisBot, is presented that includes arms and two types of driving mode: rolling and wheeling. In the rolling mode, the robot uses its arms as pendulums and works like a pendulum-driven robot, while in the wheeling mode, it extends its arms to the ground and works like a one-wheel car. The basic design idea of KisBot is introduced and a prototype is implement...

Cerebellar models have long been advocated as viable models for robot dynamics control. Building on an increasing insight in and knowledge of the biological cerebellum, many models have been greatly refined, of which some computational models have emerged with useful properties with respect to robot dynamics control. Looking at the application side, however, there is a totally different picture...

In this paper a new type of sensor data input for mobile robot localisation is proposed. Sensor images are taken from two ground-facing cameras mounted on either side of the robot. The affine transformations between image pairs, computed using the phase correlation method, are used to estimate the motion of the robot. Results on a plain coloured carpeted surface, show that the proposed method p...

Three single-valued upper boundary functions for velocity, acceleration and deceleration of a wheeled mobile robot (WMR) are defined as closed mathematical forms over its entire spatial path. The limits deal with mechanical, kinematic and dynamic characteristics of the robot and with task and operating matters. These boundary functions can be computed making use of any robot model, as complex a...

This study focuses on the passive dynamic walking to enable a biped robot on level ground to walk efficiently with simple mechanisms. To build an efficient bipedal robot, utilizing the dynamical property of the robot system is a useful approach. McGeer studied passivedynamic walking, and showed a biped robot without actuators and controllers can walk stably down a shallow slope in simulations a...

Our goal is to give our robot the perceptual abilities it needs to actively resolve ambiguity in its environment, when the passive vision algorithms it uses fail. A key example of this is figure/ground separation [2]. By equipping our robot with a camera with a narrow, controllable depth of field, the robot can bring a questionable edge into focus and blur out distracting background. By giving ...

This paper describes the development of a mobile robot capable of clearing such obstacles as counterweights, anchor clamps, and torsion tower. The mobile robot walks on overhead ground wires in 500KV power tower. Its ultimate purpose is to automate to inspect the defect of power transmission line. The robot with 13 motors is composed of two arms, two wheels, two claws, two wr...

The focus of this work is a systematic study of the passive gait of a compass-like, planar, biped robot on inclined slopes. The robot is kinematically equivalent to a double pendulum, possessing two kneeless legs with point masses and a third point mass at the "hip" joint. Three parameters, namely, the ground-slope angle and the normalized mass and length of the robot describe its gait. We show...

In this paper, we describe on our developed mobile robot with 6 crawlers Abstract. which can change its form. The robot has some features. It can move both of on flat ground and on rubble efficiently by changing the form of crawlers. The robot has a multi-sensor head on the top of a 5-degrees of freedom manipulator. It will be enable to detect the information of victim because the sensor head c...