This work presents design rules and methods used to optimize mobile ground robots early in the design process. The focus ranges from the general geometric considerations for the overall size of a robot, to the optimization of size and control of three sources of hybrid power for specific ground robots. The geometric analysis includes study of the platform’s performance requirements for climbing...

The power, size, and weight constraints of micro air vehicles (MAVs) limit their on-board sensing and computational resources. Ground vehicles have less mobility than MAVs, but relaxed size constraints, and typically more computing power. These specializations present many opportunities for robot-robot cooperation. In this work, we demonstrate cooperative target-seeking between a 13 gram ornith...

This paper describes a methodology for validating a ground-based, hardware-in-theloop, space-robot simulation facility. This facility, called ‘‘SPDM task verification facility,’’ is being developed by the Canadian Space Agency for the purpose of verifying the contact dynamics performance of the special purpose dexterous manipulator (SPDM) performing various maintenance tasks on the Internationa...

This paper describes the design and construction of a cooperative, heterogeneous robot group comprised of one semi-autonomous aerial robot and two autonomous ground robots (Pioneer ATs). The robots are designed to perform automated surveillance and reconnaissance of an urban outdoor area using onboard sensing. The ground vehicles have GPS, sonar for obstacle detection and avoidance, and a simpl...

Collecting ground truth-data for real-world applications is a non-trivial but very important task. In order to evaluate new algorithmic approaches or to benchmark system performance, they are inevitable. This is particularly true for robotics applications. In this paper we present our data collection for the biped humanoid robot Nao. Reflective markers were attached to Nao’s body, and the posit...

Hand gestures are one of the natural forms of communication in human-robot interaction scenarios. They can be used to delegate tasks from a human to a robot. To facilitate human-like interaction with robots, a major requirement for advancing in this direction is the availability of a hand gesture dataset for judging the performance of the proposed algorithms. We present details of the Innsbruck...

Augmented Reality (AR) can assist humans in understanding complex robot information, and improve Human and Robot Interaction (HRI). However, many restrictions are imposed by the underlying technology used and thus have limited current AR systems to operate in controlled or modified robot environments. This hinders the wide spread use of AR for different robot applications. This paper presents a...

gait rehabilitation using body weight support on a treadmill is a recommended rehabilitation technique for neurological injuries, such as spinal cord injury. in this paper, a new robotic orthosis is presented for treadmill training. in the presented design the criteria such as low inertia of robot components, backdrivability, high safety and degrees of freedom based on human walking are conside...