Mobile manipulators have been used for inspection, maintenance and repair tasks over the years, but there are some key limitations. Stability concerns typically require mobile platforms to be large in order to handle far-reaching manipulators, or for the manipulators to have drastically reduced workspaces to fit onto smaller mobile platforms. Therefore we propose a combination of two widely-used robots, the Clearpath Jackal unmanned ground vehicle and the Kinova Gen3 six degree-of-freedom manipulator. The Jackal has a small footprint and works well in low-clearance indoor environments. Extensive testing of localization, navigation and mapping using LiDAR sensors makes the Jackal a well developed mobile platform suitable for mobile manipulation. The Gen3 has a long reach with reasonable power consumption for manipulation tasks. A wrist camera for RGB-D sensing and a customizable end effector interface makes the Gen3 suitable for a myriad of manipulation tasks. Typically these features would result in an unstable platform, however with a few minor hardware and software modifications, we have produced a stable, high-performance mobile manipulation platform with significant mobility, reach, sensing, and maneuverability for indoor inspection tasks, without degradation of the component robots' individual capabilities. These assertions were investigated with hardware via semi-autonomous navigation to waypoints in a busy indoor environment, and high-precision self-alignment alongside planar structures for intervention tasks.
Language-Guided Grasping under Partial Observation for Mobile Manipulation in Field Inspection and Maintenance
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Federal University of Uberlândia（联邦大学伯南迪利亚机械工程系）；Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of São Paulo（圣保罗大学机械工程系）；Graduate School of Information Sciences, Tohoku University（东北大学信息科学研究生院）；Faculdade Israelita de Ensino e Pesquisa Albert Einstein, Hospital Israelita Albert Einstein（艾伯特·爱因斯坦以色列教学与研究学院，艾伯特·爱因斯坦医院）
Construction spaces are constantly evolving, dynamic environments in need of continuous surveying, inspection, and assessment. Traditional manual inspection of such spaces proves to be an arduous and time-consuming activity. Automation using robotic agents can be an effective solution. Robots, with perception capabilities can autonomously classify and survey indoor construction spaces. In this paper, we present a novel identification-on-the-fly approach for coarse classification of indoor spaces using the unique signature of clutter. Using the context granted by clutter, we recognize common in…
Developing Smart MAVs for Autonomous Inspection in GPS-denied Constructions
College of Engineering, South China Agriculture University（华南农业大学工程学院）；College of Civil Aviation, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics（南京航空航天大学民航学院）；College of Mechatronics and Control Engineering, Shenzhen University（深圳大学机电与控制工程学院）
State Key Laboratory of Nuclear Power Safety Monitoring Technology and Equipment, China Nuclear Power Engineering Co.,Ltd（国家核电安全监控技术与装备重点实验室，中国核电工程有限公司）；School of Automation Science and Engineering, South China University of Technology（华南理工大学自动化科学与工程学院）；South-tech Information Technology Co.,LTD（南方科技信息技术有限公司）
Visible light positioning (VLP) is widely believed to be a cost-effective answer to the growing demanded for robot indoor positioning. Considering that some extreme environments require robot to be equipped with a precise and radiation-resistance indoor positioning system for doing difficult work, a novel VLP system with high accuracy is proposed to realize the long-playing inspection and intervention under radiation environment. The proposed system with sufficient radiation-tolerance is critical for operational inspection, maintenance and intervention tasks in nuclear facilities. Firstly, we …
UAVs have been widely used in visual inspections of buildings, bridges and other structures. In either outdoor autonomous or semi-autonomous flights missions strong GPS signal is vital for UAV to locate its own positions. However, strong GPS signal is not always available, and it can degrade or fully loss underneath large structures or close to power lines, which can cause serious control issues or even UAV crashes. Such limitations highly restricted the applications of UAV as a routine inspection tool in various domains. In this paper a vision-model-based real-time self-positioning method is …
MIRA-PRM: Mission-Informed Reusable Roadmap Planning for Mobile Gas-Sensing Inspection
Aerospace Information Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院空天信息创新研究院）；University of Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院大学）；Nanjing University of Science and Technology（南京理工大学）；Nanjing Normal University（南京师范大学）；North University of China（中北大学）；University of Glasgow（格拉斯哥大学）；Universiti Malaysia Perlis（马来西亚玻璃市大学）
Applications of mobile ground robots demand high speed and agility while navigating in complex indoor environments. These present an ongoing challenge in mobile robotics. A system with these specifications would be of great use for a wide range of indoor inspection tasks. This paper introduces Ascento, a compact wheeled bipedal robot that is able to move quickly on flat terrain, and to overcome obstacles by jumping. The mechanical design and overall architecture of the system is presented, as well as the development of various controllers for different scenarios. A series of experiments with t…
Autonomous UAV Pipeline Near-proximity Inspection via Disturbance-Aware Predictive Visual Servoing
School of Automation, Key Laboratory of Measurement and Control of CSE, Ministry of Education, Southeast University（自动化学院、CSE测量与控制重点实验室、教育部、东南大学）；Department of Aeronautical and Automotive Engineering, Loughborough University（航空与汽车工程系、罗汉布大学）；Research Centre for Low Altitude Economy and the Department of Aeronautical and Aviation Engineering, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University（低空经济研究中心和航空与航空工程系、香港理工大学）
The past years have shown a remarkable growth in use-cases for micro aerial vehicles (MAVs). Conceivable indoor applications require highly robust environment perception, fast reaction to changing situations, and stable navigation, but reliable sources of absolute positioning like GNSS or compass measurements are unavailable during indoor flights. We present a high-performance autonomous inventory MAV for operation inside warehouses. The MAV navigates along warehouse aisles and detects the placed stock in the shelves alongside its path with a multimodal sensor setup containing an RFID reader a…
Autonomous mobile robots, including unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), have received significant attention for their applications in construction. These platforms have great potential to automate and enhance the quality and frequency of the required data for many tasks such as construction schedule updating, inspections, and monitoring. Robust localization is a critical enabler for reliable deployments of autonomous robotic platforms. Automated robotic solutions rely mainly on the global positioning system (GPS) for outdoor localization. However, GPS signals are denied indoors, and pre-built env…
