Study on the Mobility of Service Robots

Authors

  • Hwan-Joo Kwak
  • Gwi-Tae Park

Keywords:

mobile robot, mobility, service robot, bipedal robot, humanoid, wheeled robot

Abstract

The major characteristics of robots can be divided into several categories ranging from mobility to autonomy. The mobility of service robots is essential and fundamental to commercial and scientific progress. The rapid development of practical service robots depends on our decision which are the most efficient and affordable kinds of locomotion. The selection of the best locomotion, however, is not simple and easy, since the boundaries of robot working areas cannot always be defined clearly. This study emphasizes the usefulness of humanoid type service robots as general service robots, and concentrates on finding the most appropriate means of locomotion for a particular workspace. Several forms of robot locomotion were considered in three types of workspaces, and compared analytically. The results showed that three/four-wheeled robots were best suited to work in a large office or factory. Bipedal robots were suited to work in a small office or home, and quadruped robots were suited to work in outdoors. As a general alternative, bipedal locomotion seems to be the most adaptable form of locomotion for general service robots.

References

M. Prats, P. J. Sanz, A. P. del Pobil, E. Martínez and R. Marín, "Towards multipurpose autonomous manipulation with the UJI service robot," Robotica, vol. 25, pp. 245-256, 2007.

J. Pransky, "AIBO - the No. 1 selling service robot," An International Journal, vol. 28, pp. 24-26, 2001.

J-Y. Sung, L. Guo, R. E. Grinter, and H. I. Christensen, "“My Roomba Is Rambo”: Intimate Home Appliances," Proc. UbiComp'07, 2007, pp. 145-162.

“SuperDroid Robots Inc.,” http://www.superdroidrobots.com, June 4, 2012.

S. Kang, C. Cho, C. Park, J. Lee, D. Ryu, and M. Kim, "ROBHAZ-DT2: Passive double-tracked mobile manipulator for explosive ordinance disposal," Springer Tracts in Advanced Robotics, vol. 24 , pp. 355-364, 2006.

“Octavia, an MDS Robot,” http://www.nrl.navy.mil/aic/iss/aas/octavia.php, June 4, 2012.

“TiaLinx Launches Mini-Robot with a Long Standoff Capability to Detect Motion and Breathing Inside a Compound,” http://www.army-guide.com/eng/article/article.php?forumID=2099, June 4, 2012.

F. Vohr, and T. May, “Robot hardware design in the DESIRE project,” Springer Tracts in Advanced Robotics, vol. 76, pp. 11-18, 2012.

T. Breuer, G.R. Giorgana Macedo, R. Hartanto, N. Hochgeschwender, D. Holz, F. Hegger, Z. Jin, C. Müller, J. Paulus, and M. Reckhaus, et al., “Johnny: An autonomous service robot for domestic environments,” Journal of Intelligent and Robotic Systems: Theory and Applications, vol. 66, pp. 245-272, Apr. 2012.

J. Miura, Y. Shirai, N. Shimada, Y. Makihara, M. Takizawa, and Y. Yano, "Development of a Personal Service Robot with User-Friendly Interfaces," Field and Service Robotics, vol. 24, pp. 427-436, 2006.

K. Sakai, Y. Yasukawa, Y. Murase, S. Kanda, and N. Sawasaki, "Developing a Service Robot with Communication Abilities," Proc. IEEE International Workshop on Robot and Human Interactive Communication, 2005, pp. 91-96.

G-C. Luh and W-W. Liu, "Motion planning for mobile robots in dynamic environments using a potential field immune network," Proc. IMechE, Part I: J. Systems and Control Engineering, vol. 221, pp. 1033-1046, 2007.

J-M. Lee, B-S. Park, Y-S. Lee, and J-S. Ahn, "The Development of The Robot Manipulator for an Intelligent Service Robot," International Joint Conference on SICE-ICASE, Oct. 2006, pp. 282-287.

K-T. Song and C-C. Chien, "Visual tracking of a moving person for a home robot," Proc. IMechE, Part I: J. System and Control Engineering, vol. 219, pp. 259-269, 2005.

T. Nishida, Y. Takemura, Y. Fuchikawa, S. Kurogi, S. Ito, M. Obata, N. Hiratsuka, H. Miyagawa, Y. Watanabe, T. Suehiro, Y. Kawamura, and F. Ohkawa, "Development of a sensor system for outdoor service robot," International Joint Conference on SICE-ICASE, Oct. 2006, pp. 2687-2691.

S.Y. Okita and D.L. Schwartz, "Young children's understanding of animacy and entertainment robots," International Journal of Humanoid Robotics, vol. 3, pp. 303-412, Sep. 2006.

J.L. Jones, "Robots at the tipping point - The road to the iRobot roomba," IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine, vol. 13, no. 1, pp. 76-78, 2006.

H. Zhang, J. Zhang, G. Zong, W. Wang, and R. Liu, "Sky Cleaner 3: a real pneumatic climbing robot for glass-wall cleaning," IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine, vol. 13, pp. 32-41, 2006.

“Boston Dynamics,” http://www.bostondynamics.com, June 4, 2012.

H.G. Nguyen, J. Morrell, K. Mullens, A. Burmeister, S. Miles, N. Farrington, K. Thomas, and D. W. Gagee, "Segway Robotic Mobility Platform," Mobile Robots XVII, vol. 5609, pp. 207-220, 2004.

Y. Kusuda, " Tmsuk/Microsoft collaboration on robotic software," Industrial Robot: An International Journal, vol. 35, pp. 202-205, 2008.

J. Behan and D.T. O'Keeffe, "The development of an autonomous service robot. Implementation: “Lucas”-The library assistant robot," Intelligent Service Robotics, vol. 1, pp. 73-89, Jan. 2008.

Y. Wang, S.E. Butner, and A. Darzi, "The Developing Market for Medical Robotics," Proceedings of the IEEE, vol. 94, pp. 1763-1771, Sep. 2006.

E. Gambao, C. Balaguer, and F. Gebhart, "Robot assembly system for computer-integrated construction," Automation in Construction, vol. 9, pp. 479-487, Sep. 2000.

S. Hirose, S. Yokota, A. Torii, M. Ogata, S. Suganuma, K. Takita, and K. Kato, "Quadruped Walking Robot Centered Demining System - Development of TITAN-IX and its Operation-," Proc. IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, 2005, pp. 1284-1290.

Y. Sakagami, R. Watanabe, C. Aoyama, S. Matsunaga, N. Higaki, and K. Fujimura, "The intelligent ASIMO: System overview and integration," Proc. IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and System, vol. 3, 2002, pp. 2478-2483.

K. Kaneko, F. Kanehiro, S. Kajita, H. Hirukawa, T. Kawasaki, M. Hirata, K. Akachi, and T. Isozumi, "Humanoid Robot HRP-2," Proc. IEEE International Conference on Robotics & Automation, Apr. 2004, pp. 1083-1090.

V. Kaznov, and M. Seeman, “Outdoor navigation with a spherical amphibious robot,” Proc. IEEE/RSJ 2010 International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2010), Oct. 2010, pp. 5113-5118.

K.M. Tsui, M. Desai, H.A. Yanco, and C. Uhlik, "Exploring use cases for telepresence robots," Proc. 6th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI 2011), Mar. 2011, pp. 11-18.

J.S. Mehling, P. Strawser, L. Bridgwater, W.K. Verdeyen, and R. Rovekamp, "Centaur: NASA’s Mobile Humanoid Designed for Field Work," Proc. IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, Apr. 2007, pp. 2928-2933.

T. Inamura, K. Okada, M. Inaba, and H. Inoue, "HRP-2W: A Humanoid Platform for Research on Support Behavior in Daily life Environments," Proc. 9th International Conference on Intelligent Autonomous Systems, Mar. 2006, pp. 732-739.

C.C. Ward and K. Iagnemma, "A Dynamic-Model-Based Wheel Slip Detector for Mobile Robots on Outdoor Terrain," IEEE Transactions on Robotics, vol. 24, pp. 821-831, Aug. 2008.

A. Salerno and J. Angeles, "A new family of two-wheeled mobile robots: Modeling and controllability," IEEE Transactions on Robotics, vol. 23, pp. 169-173, Feb. 2007.

B. Vanderborght, B. Verrelst, R. V. Ham, and D. Lefeber, "Controlling a bipedal walking robot actuated by pleated pneumatic artificial muscles," Robotica, vol. 24, pp. 401-410, July 2006.

M.M. Dalvand and M.M. Moghadam, "Stair Climber Smart Mobile Robot (MSRox)," Autonomous Robots, vol. 20, pp. 3-14, Jan. 2006.

L. Jaulin, "Control of a wheeled stair-climbing robot using linear programming," Proc. IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, Apr. 2007, pp. 2600-2604.

A.I. Mourikis, N. Trawny, S.I. Roumeliotis, D.M. Helmick, and L. Matthies, "Autonomous Stair Climbing for Tracked Vehicles," The International Journal of Robotics Research, vol. 26, pp. 737-758, July 2007.

A. Crespi, A. Badertscher, A. Guignard, and A.J. Ijspeert, "Amphibot I: an amphibious snake-like robot," Robotics and Autonomous Systems, vol. 50, pp. 165-175, Mar. 2005.

P. Schoeneich, F. Rochat, O.T.-D. Nguyen, R. Moser, and F. Mondada, "TRIPILLAR: A miniature magnetic caterpillar climbing robot with plane transition ability," Robotica, vol. 29, pp. 1075-1081, Dec. 2011.

N. Motoi, T. Suzuki, and K. Ohnishi, "A Bipedal Locomotion Planning Based on Virtual Linear Inverted Pendulum Mode," Proc. IEEE International Conference on Industrial Technology, Dec. 2006, pp. 158-163.

H. Mo, P. Huang, and S. Wu, "Study on Dynamic Stability of a Tracked Robot Climbing over an Obstacle or Descending Stairs," Proc. IEEE International Workshop on Electronic Design, Test and Applications, Jan. 2006.

E. Yoshida, I. Belousov, C. Esteves, and J-P. Laumond, "Humanoid motion planning for dynamic tasks," Proc. IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots, Dec. 2005, pp. 1-6.

K. Harada, S. Kajita, H. Saito, F. Kanehiro, and H. Hirukawa, "Integration of manipulation and locomotion by a humanoid robot," Springer Tracts in Advanced Robotics, vol. 21, pp. 187-196, 2006.

F. Kanehiro, H. Hirukawa, K. Kaneko, S. Kajita, K. Fujiwara, K. Harada, and K. Yokoi, "Locomotion planning of humanoid robots to pass through narrow spaces," Proc. IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, Apr. 2004, pp. 604-609.

Y. Guan and K. Yokoi, "Reachable boundary of a humanoid robot with two feet fixed on the ground," Proc. IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, May 2006, pp. 1518-1523.

T. Takubo, T. Tanaka, K. Inoue, and T. Arai, "Emergent walking stop using 3-D ZMP modification criteria map for humanoid robot," Proc. IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, Apr. 2007, pp. 2676-2681.

Downloads

Published

2012-04-01

How to Cite

[1]
H.-J. Kwak and G.-T. Park, “Study on the Mobility of Service Robots”, Int. j. eng. technol. innov., vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 97–112, Apr. 2012.

Issue

Vol. 2 No. 2 (2012)

Section

Articles

License

Copyright Notice

 

Submission of a manuscript implies: that the work described has not been published before that it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere; that if and when the manuscript is accepted for publication. Authors can retain copyright in their articles with no restrictions. Also, author can post the final, peer-reviewed manuscript version (postprint) to any repository or website.

 

 

Since Jan. 01, 2019, IJETI will publish new articles with Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License, under Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) License.

The Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial (CC-BY-NC) License permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.