TY - GEN
T1 - Odometry during object transport
T2 - The 12th Internatioanl Conference on Swarm Intelligence
AU - Alkilabi, Muhanad Hayder Mohammed
AU - Carletti, Timoteo
AU - Tuci, Elio
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2021, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
PY - 2021
Y1 - 2021
N2 - Object transport by a single robot or by a swarm of robots can be considered a very challenging scenario for odometry since wheel slippage caused by pushing forces exerted on static objects and/or by relatively frequent collisions with other robots (for the cooperative transport case) tend to undermine the precision of the position and orientation estimates. This paper describes two sets of experiments aimed at evaluating the effectiveness of different sensory apparatuses in order to support odometry in autonomous robots engaged in object transport scenarios. In the first set of experiments, a single robot has to track its position while randomly moving in a flat arena with and without an object physically attached to its chassis. In the second set of experiments, a member of a swarm of physical robots is required to track its position while collaborating with the group-mates to the collective transport of a heavy object. In both sets, odometry is performed with either wheel encoders or with an optic-flow sensor. In the second set of experiments, both methods are evaluated with and without gyroscope corrections for angular displacements. The results indicate that odometry based on optic-flow sensors is more precise than the classic odometry based on wheel encoders. In particular, this research suggests that by using an appropriate sensory apparatus (i.e., an optic-flow sensor with gyroscope corrections), odometry can be achieved even in extreme odometry conditions such as those of cooperative object transport scenarios.
AB - Object transport by a single robot or by a swarm of robots can be considered a very challenging scenario for odometry since wheel slippage caused by pushing forces exerted on static objects and/or by relatively frequent collisions with other robots (for the cooperative transport case) tend to undermine the precision of the position and orientation estimates. This paper describes two sets of experiments aimed at evaluating the effectiveness of different sensory apparatuses in order to support odometry in autonomous robots engaged in object transport scenarios. In the first set of experiments, a single robot has to track its position while randomly moving in a flat arena with and without an object physically attached to its chassis. In the second set of experiments, a member of a swarm of physical robots is required to track its position while collaborating with the group-mates to the collective transport of a heavy object. In both sets, odometry is performed with either wheel encoders or with an optic-flow sensor. In the second set of experiments, both methods are evaluated with and without gyroscope corrections for angular displacements. The results indicate that odometry based on optic-flow sensors is more precise than the classic odometry based on wheel encoders. In particular, this research suggests that by using an appropriate sensory apparatus (i.e., an optic-flow sensor with gyroscope corrections), odometry can be achieved even in extreme odometry conditions such as those of cooperative object transport scenarios.
KW - Cooperative transport
KW - Odometry
KW - Optic-flow sensor
KW - Swarm robotics
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85112099262&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/978-3-030-78811-7_9
DO - 10.1007/978-3-030-78811-7_9
M3 - Conference contribution
SN - 9783030788100
T3 - Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
SP - 92
EP - 101
BT - Advances in Swarm Intelligence - 12th International Conference, ICSI 2021, Proceedings
A2 - Tan, Ying
A2 - Shi, Yuhui
PB - Springer
Y2 - 17 July 2021 through 21 July 2021
ER -