Programming Manipulators by Instructions

We propose an instructions-based approach for robot programming where the programmer interacts with the robot by issuing simple commands in a scripting language, like python. Internally, these commands make use of pre-programmed motion and manipulation skills coordinated by a behaviour tree task controller. A knowledge graph keeps track of the state of the robot and the environment and of all the instructions given to the robot by the programmer. This allows to easily transform sequences of instructions into new skills that can be reused in the same or in other tasks. An advantage of this approach is that the programmer does not need to be located physically next to the robot, but can work remotely, either with a physical robot or with a digital twin. To demonstrate the concept, we show an interactive simulation of a robot manipulator in a pick and place scenario.

A Hybrid Method for Online Trajectory Planning of Mobile Robots in Cluttered Environments

This paper presents a method for online trajectory planning in known environments. The proposed algorithm is a fusion of sampling-based techniques and model-based optimization via quadratic programming. The former is used to efficiently generate an obstacle-free path while the latter takes into account the robot dynamical constraints to generate a time-dependent trajectory. The main contribution of this work lies on the formulation of a convex optimization problem over the generated obstacle-free path that is guaranteed to be feasible. Thus, in contrast with previously proposed methods, iterative formulations are not required. The proposed method has been compared with state-of-the-art approaches showing a significant improvement in success rate and computation time. To illustrate the effectiveness of this approach for online planning, the proposed method was applied to the fluid autonomous navigation of a quadcopter in multiple environments consisting of up to two hundred obstacles. The scenarios hereinafter presented are some of the most densely cluttered experiments for online planning and navigation reported to date. See video at https://youtu.be/DJ1IZRL5t1Q

Autonomous Navigation of MAVs in Unknown Cluttered Environments

This paper presents an autonomous navigation framework for reaching a goal in unknown 3D cluttered environments. The framework consists of three main components. First, a computationally efficient method for mapping the environment from the disparity measurements obtained from a depth sensor. Second, a stochastic method to generate a path to a given goal, taking into account field of view constraints on the space that is assumed to be safe for navigation. Third, a fast method for the online generation of motion plans, taking into account the robot's dynamic constraints, model and environmental uncertainty and disturbances. To highlight the contribution with respect to the available literature, we provide a qualitative and quantitative comparison with state of the art methods for reaching a goal and for exploration in unknown environments, showing the superior performance of our approach. To illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed framework, we present experiments in multiple indoors and outdoors environments running the algorithm fully on board and in real-time, using a robotic platform based on the Intel Ready to Fly drone kit, which represents the implementation in the most frugal platform for navigation in unknown cluttered environments demonstrated to date. See video at https://youtu.be/Wq0e7vF6nZM