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1. Risk Vector-based Near miss Obstacle Avoidance for Autonomous Surface Vehicles

   https://doi.org/10.1109/IROS45743.2020.9341105  

   Jeong, Mingi; Li, Alberto Quattrini (October 2020, 2020 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS))

   null (Ed.)

   This paper presents a novel risk vector-based near miss prediction and obstacle avoidance method. The proposed method uses the sensor readings about the pose of the other obstacles to infer their motion model (velocity and heading) and, accordingly, adapt the risk assessment and take corrective actions if necessary. Relative vector calculations allow the method to perform in real-time. The algorithm has 1.68 times faster computation performance with less change of motion than other methods and it enables a robot to avoid 25 obstacles in a congested area. Fallback behaviors are also proposed in case of faulty sensors or situation changes. Simulation experiments with parameters inferred from experiments in the ocean with our custom-made robotic boat show the flexibility and adaptability of the proposed method to many obstacles present in the environment. Results highlight more efficient trajectories and comparable safety as other state-of-the-art methods, as well as robustness to failures. 

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2. Motion Planning and Iterative Learning Control of a Modular Soft Robotic Snake

   https://doi.org/10.3389/frobt.2020.599242  

   Luo, Ming; Wan, Zhenyu; Sun, Yinan; Skorina, Erik H.; Tao, Weijia; Chen, Fuchen; Gopalka, Lakshay; Yang, Hao; Onal, Cagdas D. (December 2020, Frontiers in Robotics and AI)

   Snake robotics is an important research topic with a wide range of applications, including inspection in confined spaces, search-and-rescue, and disaster response. Snake robots are well-suited to these applications because of their versatility and adaptability to unstructured and constrained environments. In this paper, we introduce a soft pneumatic robotic snake that can imitate the capabilities of biological snakes, its soft body can provide flexibility and adaptability to the environment. This paper combines soft mobile robot modeling, proprioceptive feedback control, and motion planning to pave the way for functional soft robotic snake autonomy. We propose a pressure-operated soft robotic snake with a high degree of modularity that makes use of customized embedded flexible curvature sensing. On this platform, we introduce the use of iterative learning control using feedback from the on-board curvature sensors to enable the snake to automatically correct its gait for superior locomotion. We also present a motion planning and trajectory tracking algorithm using an adaptive bounding box, which allows for efficient motion planning that still takes into account the kinematic state of the soft robotic snake. We test this algorithm experimentally, and demonstrate its performance in obstacle avoidance scenarios. 

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3. A Sampling-based Motion Planning Framework for Complex Motor Actions

   Sobti, S.; Shome, R.; Chaudhuri, S.; Kavraki, L.E. (July 2021, 2021 the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems)

   null (Ed.)

   We present a framework for planning complex motor actions such as pouring or scooping from arbitrary start states in cluttered real-world scenes. Traditional approaches to such tasks use dynamic motion primitives (DMPs) learned from human demonstrations. We enhance a recently proposed state of- the-art DMP technique capable of obstacle avoidance by including them within a novel hybrid framework. This complements DMPs with sampling-based motion planning algorithms, using the latter to explore the scene and reach promising regions from which a DMP can successfully complete the task. Experiments indicate that even obstacle-aware DMPs suffer in task success when used in scenarios which largely differ from the trained demonstration in terms of the start, goal, and obstacles. Our hybrid approach significantly outperforms obstacle-aware DMPs by successfully completing tasks in cluttered scenes for a pouring task in simulation. We further demonstrate our method on a real robot for pouring and scooping tasks. 

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4. Motion Attribute-based Clustering and Collision Avoidance of Multiple In-water Obstacles by Autonomous Surface Vehicle

   https://doi.org/10.1109/IROS47612.2022.9981226  

   Jeong, Mingi; Quattrini Li, Alberto (October 2022, 2022 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS))

   Navigation and obstacle avoidance in aquatic en-vironments for autonomous surface vehicles (ASVs) in high-traffic maritime scenarios is still an open challenge, as the Convention on the International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea (COLREGs) is not defined for multi-encounter situations. Current state-of-the-art methods resolve single-to-single encounters with sequential actions and assume that other obstacles follow COLREGs. Our work proposes a novel real-time non-myopic obstacle avoidance method, allowing an ASV that has only partial knowledge of the surroundings within the sensor radius to navigate in high-traffic maritime scenarios. Specifically, we achieve a holistic view of the feasible ASV action space able to avoid deadlock scenarios, by proposing (1) a clustering method based on motion attributes of other obstacles, (2) a geometric framework for identifying the feasible action space, and (3) a multi-objective optimization to determine the best action. Theoretical analysis and extensive realistic experiments in simulation considering real-world traffic scenarios demonstrate that our proposed real-time obstacle avoidance method is able to achieve safer trajectories than other state-of-the-art methods and that is robust to uncertainty present in the current information available to the ASV. 

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5. Improving Control Precision and Motion Adaptiveness for Surgical Robot with Recurrent Neural Network

   Li, Yangming; Li, Shuai; Caballero, David; Miyasaka, Muneaki; Lewis, Andrew; Hannaford, Blake (September 2017, Proceedings of the ... IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems)

   Surgical robot research is driven by the desire of improving surgical outcomes. This paper proposed a Recurrent Neural Network based controller to address two problems: 1) improving control precision, 2) increasing adaptiveness for robot motion (explained in Section I). RNN was adopted in this work mainly because 1) the problem formulation naturally matches RNN structure, 2) RNN has advantages as an biologi- cally inspired method. The proposed method was explained in detail and analysis shows that the proposed method is able to dynamically regulate outputs to increase the adaptiveness and the control precision. This paper uses Raven II surgical robot as an example to show the application of the proposed method, and the numeral simulation results from the proposed method and three other controllers show that the proposed method has improved precision, improved high robustness against noise and increased movement smoothness, and it keeps the manipulator links as far away as possible from physical boundaries, which potentially increases surgical safety and leads to improved surgical outcomes. 

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