Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dzt6s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-15T00:55:58.815Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Tether monitoring for entanglement detection, disentanglement and localisation of autonomous robots

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 July 2014

Vishnu Arun Kumar Thumatty Rajan ,
Arjun Nagendran ,
Abbas Dehghani-Sanij  and
Robert C. Richardson
Vishnu Arun Kumar Thumatty Rajan*
Affiliation:
European Commission (EUROSTAT), Luxembourg, Sweden
Arjun Nagendran
Affiliation:
Institute for Simulation and Training, University of Central Florida, Orlando, Florida, USA: E-mail: arjun@cs.ucf.edu
Abbas Dehghani-Sanij
Affiliation:
School of Mechanical Engineering, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK E-mail: a.dehghani@leeds.ac.uk, R.C.Richardson@leeds.ac.uk
Robert C. Richardson
Affiliation:
School of Mechanical Engineering, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK E-mail: a.dehghani@leeds.ac.uk, R.C.Richardson@leeds.ac.uk
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: trvishnuarunkumar@yahoo.com
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Summary

Tethered mobile robots are ideal for electrically noisy environments and for time-consuming tasks that require robust data communication and uninterrupted power delivery. However, tethers may become entangled in cluttered environments, leading to immobilisation and consequent mission failure. This work addresses real-time monitoring of tethers to detect tether entanglement, perform disentanglement through tether following and localise within line of sight. Experimental hardware is proposed to implement the tether monitoring techniques. Experiments are performed for single and dual mobile robots to search a target environment and entanglement detection is shown to be successful using quantitative metrics such as mean localization error.

Keywords

Tethered robotsRobot localisationEntanglement detectionCatenary curvesMulti-robot systems
Type
Articles
Information
Robotica , Volume 34 , Issue 3 , March 2016 , pp. 527 - 548
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1.Krishna, M., Bares, J. and Mutschler, E., “Tethering System Design for Dante-II,” Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, Vol. 2 Albuquerque, NM (Apr. 20–25, 1997) pp. 1100–1105.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2.Remley, K., Koepke, G., Messina, E., Jacoff, A. and Hough, G., “Standards Development for Wireless Communications for Urban Search and Rescue Robots,” Proceedings fo the International Symposium on Advanced Radio Technology, Boulder, Colorado, pp. 66–70 (Feb. 26–28, 2007).Google Scholar
3.Ferworn, A., Tran, N., Tran, J., Zarnett, G. and Sharifi, F., “Wifi Repeater Deployment for Improved Communication in Confined-Space Urban Disaster Search,” Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on System Engineering, San Antonio, TX (Apr. 16–18, 2007) pp. 1–5.Google Scholar
4.Fukushima, E. F., Kitamura, N. and Hirose, S., “A New Flexible Component for Field Robotic System,” Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, Vol. 3 (Apr. 24–28, 2000) pp. 2583–2588.Google Scholar
5.Sangik, N., Hyo-Sung, A., Yu-Cheol, L. and Wonpil, Y., “Navi-guider: An Intuitive Guiding System for the Mobile Robot,” Proceedings of the IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human interactive Communication (RO-MAN), Jeju (Aug. 26–29, 2007) pp. 228–233.Google Scholar
6.Kwan-Hoon, K., Jun-Uk, C. and Yun-Jung, L., “Steering-by-tether and Modular Architecture for Human-following Robot,” Proceedings of the International Joint Conference SICE-ICASE, Busan (Oct. 18–21, 2006) pp. 340–343.Google Scholar
7.Chen, Y. and Cartmell, M. P., “Multi- Objective Optimisation on Motorised Momentum Exchange Tether for Payload Orbital Transfer,” Proceedings of the IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation, Singapore (Sep. 25–28, 2007) pp. 987–993.Google Scholar
8.Berenji, H. R., Malkani, A. and Copeland, C., “Tether Control Using Fuzzy Reinforcement Learning,” Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Fuzzy Systems, Vol.3, Yokohama, Japan (Mar. 20–24, 1995) pp. 1315–1322.Google Scholar
9.Mori, O., Matunaga, S. and Waeda, N., “Research and Development of Tethered Satellite Cluster Systems,” Proceedings of the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, Vol. 3, Takamatsu, Japan, (Oct. 31–Nov. 5, 2000) pp. 1834–1840.Google Scholar
10.Perrin, D. P., Kwon, A. and Howe, R. D., “A Novel Actuated Tether Design for Rescue Robots Using Hydraulic Transients,” Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, Cambridge, 26 April - 1 May, New Orleans, USA (2004) pp. 3482–3487.Google Scholar
11.Yang, X., Voyles, R., Li, K. and Povilus, S., “Experimental Comparison of Robotics Locomotion with Passive Tether and Active Tether,” Proceedings of the IEEE International Workshop on Safety, Security and Rescue Robotics (2009).Google Scholar
12.Hert, S. and Lumelsky, V., “Motion Planning in R3 for Multiple Tethered Robots,” Proceedings of the IEEE Transactions on Robotics and Automation, Vol. 15, Grenoble, France (Sep. 7–11, 1999) pp. 623–639.Google Scholar
13.Iqbal, J., Heikkila, S. and Halme, A., “Tether Tracking and Control of ROSA Robotic Rover,” Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Control, Automation, Robotics and Vision, 2008, ICARCV 2008, IEEE (2008) pp. 689–693.Google Scholar
14.Abad-Manterola, P., “Axel rover tethered dynamics and motion planning on extreme planetary terrain,” Dissertation (Ph.D.), California Institute of Technology, (2012). Available on-line: http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechTHESIS:08312011-003358925.Google Scholar
15.Nagatani, K., Ishida, H., Yamanaka, S. and Tanaka, Y., “Three- Dimensional Localization and Mapping for Mobile Robot in Disaster Environments,” Proceedings of the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, Vol. 4, Las Vegas (Oct. 27–31, 2003) pp. 3112–3117.Google Scholar
16.Wettergreen, D., Thorpe, C. and Whittaker, R., “Exploring mount erebus by walking robot,” Robot. and Auton. Syst. 11 (3–4), 171–185 (1993).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
17.Hirose, S. and Fukushima, E., “Snakes and strings: New robotic components for rescue operations,” Int. J. Robot. Res. 23 (4/5), 341–349 (2004).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
18.Mumm, E., Farritor, S., Pirjanian, P., Leger, C. and Schenker, P., “Planetary cliff descent using cooperative robots,” Auton. Robots, 16, 259–272 (2004).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
19.Thrun, S., Fox, D., Burgard, W. and Dellaert, F., “Robust Monte Carlo localization for mobile robots,” Artif. Intell 128 (1), 99–141 (2001).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
20.Shang, W. and Sun, D., “Multi-sensory Fusion For Mobile Robot Self-Localization,” Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Mechatronics and Automation, Luoyang, Henan (Jun. 25–28, 2006) pp. 871–876.Google Scholar
21.Nüchter, A., Lingemann, K., Hertzberg, J., Surmann, H.et al., “Mapping of Rescue Environments with Kurt3D,” Proceedings of the International Workshop on Safety, Security and Rescue Robotics (SSRR `05), ISBN 0-7803-8946-8, Kobe, Japan (Jun. 2005) pp. 158–163.Google Scholar
22.Buckham, B. and Nahon, M., “Dynamics Simulation of Low Tension Tethers, OCEANS MTS/IEEE,” Proceedings of the Riding the Crest into the 21st Century OCEANS. Vol. 2, Seattle WA, USA (1999) pp. 757–766.Google Scholar
23.Vishnu Arun Kumar, T. R. and Richardson, R. C., “Entanglement Detection of a Swarm of Tethered Robots in Search and Rescue Applications,” Proceedings of Fourth International Conference on Informatics in Control, Automation and Robotics (ICINCO), Vol. 2, Angers, France (May 9–12, 2007) pp. 143–148.Google Scholar
24.Vishnu Arun Kumar, T. R. and Richardson, R. C., “Tether Monitoring Techniques for Environment Monitoring, Tether Following and Localization of Autonomous Mobile Robots,” Proceedings of IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), Nice (Sep. 22–26, 2008) pp. 2109–2114.Google Scholar
25.Van-Gessel, R., “The curve of a free hanging rope,” http://members.chello.nl/j.beentjes3/Ruud/catfiles/catenary.pdf Accessed 14 April 2011.Google Scholar
26.Abel, B. A., “Underwater Vehicle Tether Management Systems,” Proceedings of the OCEANS'94. 'Oceans Engineering for Today's Techn. and Tomorrow's Preservation.', Vol. 2 (1994), pp. II/495–II/500.Google Scholar
27.McKerrow, P. J. and Ratner, D., “The Design of a Tethered Aerial Robot,” Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (2007) pp. 355–360.Google Scholar