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Robotics department at Luleå University of Technology!
The research at the department is specialized on
telerobotics and models and algorithms for controlling the motion of robots
using geometrical sensors.
Robotics & Automation is a part of the department of Computer Science and
Electrical Engineering at Luleå University of Technology. This
multidiciplinary department has a wide competence in computer controlled
industrial processes and telecommunications.
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Optronic Feedback for a Robot Arm
The Robotics group at Luleå University is starting a
fairly large research and industry project on controlling a mobile hydraulic
arm using optronic feedback. The goal is direct feedback between the arm and
the objects in the work space. Participants and sponsors include, in
addition to the University, Holmhed Systems AB, Mobile Robotics AB, EU and
Volvo Research Foundation. The project for the year 98/99 will emphasize on
this EU project.
In this project we are to focus on telecommands for gripping, with tests
using an industrial robot. This robot arm is onboard a mobile robot and has
been used for tests with spray painting.
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Tele-Operation and Semi-Autonomous Robots
Except for some limited tasks, fully autonomous robots
are too difficult a problem to solve today. Therefor we concentrate our work
on semi-autonomous robots and teleoperated robots where a human operator
performs the difficult scene interpretation and makes the overall decisions
while the robot does the simpler lowlevel tasks. As our robots grow more
capable they can relieve the operator of more and more routine work. This
allows us to create working systems long before we have a fully autonomous
robot.
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A variant of Teleoperation where the operator instructs
another human on what to do rather than commanding a robot. We are
investigating technics were a computer controlled pointer allows the
instructor to point in the scene. Advantages is that live video rates are
not needed for efficient work, still images with supplemental information
can be sent over POTS channels.
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Range Camera Applications
Some of our projects has employed structured light for
range measurements. This is especially useful when the measurement unit has
to be small (say in a robot gripper) or rugged. It's less useful for mobile
robot navigation as the accuracy is best at short ranges. To be useful in an
industrial environment we make good models of the optical properties of the
environment - i.e. reflecting surfaces.
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Mobile Robot Navigation
Our work in mobile robot navigation started with the
laser-anglemeter equipped mobile robot "LTT" - the Luleå Turbo Turtle in the
eighties. This navigation system has become a major commercial success! We
have since continued with indoor navigation using scanning range measuring
lasers, the range weighted Hough transform and autonomous map generation.
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