Automated human tracking in real time has been applied in many areas such as security, surveillance, traffic control, and robots. In this paper, an improvement of the Camshift human tracking algorithm based on deep learning and the Kalman filter is proposed. To detail an approach by using YOLOv4-tiny to detect a human in real time, Camshift is used to track a particular person and the Kalman filter is applied to enhance the performance of this algorithm in case of occlusion, noise, and different light conditions. The experiments show that the combination of YOLOv4-tiny and the improved Camshift algorithm raises the standard of speed as well as robustness. The proposed algorithm is suitable for running in real time and adapts well to the same color and different light conditions.

Van-Truong Nguyen

Duc-Tuan Chu

Dinh-Hieu Phan

Ngoc-Tien Tran

An Improvement of the Camshift Human Tracking Algorithm Based on Deep Learning and the Kalman Filter

Efficient and accurate state detection of transmission cables is an important means to ensure reliable transmission. Aiming to realize fast and efficient transmission cable state analysis with the help of a binocular vision tool on a loop dismantling robot, this paper proposes a transmission cable state recognition method combining motion control and image segmentation technology. In this method, the fuzzy <svg xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" style="vertical-align:-0.0498209pt" id="M1" height="8.68572pt" version="1.1" viewBox="-0.0498162 -8.6359 22.2955 8.68572" width="22.2955pt"><g transform="matrix(.013,0,0,-0.013,0,0)"><path id="g113-81" d="M600 480C600 590 528 650 384 650H143L137 622C222 614 225 607 210 531L130 127C113 41 106 36 23 28L17 0H294L300 28C204 36 195 42 212 127L243 284L314 263C327 263 339 263 352 264C465 271 600 337 600 480ZM508 481C508 351 402 304 329 304C289 304 265 311 250 317L295 559C302 594 310 606 323 611C335 616 350 619 367 619C455 619 508 573 508 481Z"/></g><g transform="matrix(.013,0,0,-0.013,7.243,0)"><path id="g113-74" d="M405 650H141L135 622C222 616 230 610 215 535L133 116C118 41 113 33 29 28L23 0H289L295 28C209 33 205 40 219 116L298 535C312 609 317 616 399 622L405 650Z"/></g><g transform="matrix(.013,0,0,-0.013,12.158,0)"><path id="g113-69" d="M743 375C743 570 607 650 407 650H136L130 622C214 612 220 606 204 526L125 122C110 43 105 36 24 27L17 0H250C382 0 482 23 571 76C680 141 743 248 743 375ZM644 379C644 188 520 36 305 36C277 36 249 38 229 46C205 55 202 71 212 126L293 553C300 588 306 600 317 606C330 613 356 617 390 617C547 617 644 537 644 379Z"/></g></svg> control method is adopted to ensure that the wire removal robot can realize high-precision and rapid response control and effectively improve the collection quality of the cable image sample set. Meanwhile, aiming to achieve faster and more efficient data acquisition and state analysis, the state analysis model is sunk to the edge side, and the cable state detection and recognition model is constructed based on the fast RCNN model at the edge of the network to realize the in-depth extraction of feature information, enhance the transmission cable state recognition effect of the state detection model, and improve the response analysis speed of the model. The simulation results show that the accuracy of the proposed method is 97.54%, and its calculation time is 1.034 s, which can effectively realize the analysis and research of transmission cable state under complex working conditions.

Zheng Lu

Jiazhen Duan

Xiaoqiang Chen

Yang Chen

Transmission Line Condition Monitoring Method Based on Binocular Vision and Edge Computing for Line Changing Robot

The control performance of the fixed-depth motion is related to the performance of the underwater vehicle. Due to the complex and changing environment underwater and various potential risks, the variety of underwater operations, and the variability of the structural parameters and environmental parameters of the underwater vehicle, the control performance is compromised when performing constant depth motion. It is of much significance to study the control method of the fixed-depth motion to improve the performance of the underwater vehicle. The transfer function of underwater vehicle’s depth-setting motion was established, and the fuzzy-PID controller was established for simulating the control of depth-setting movements of underwater vehicles. The interaction law between PID initial parameters and controller performance was studied, and the interaction law between the change of underwater vehicle mass and the hydrodynamic coefficient and controller performance was also studied. The results show that the fuzzy-PID controller can realize the control of the underwater vehicle’s depth-setting motion, and the control effect was independent of the initial PID parameters, thus avoiding the dependence of the formulation of PID parameters on manual control experience. When the mass and hydrodynamic coefficient of the underwater vehicle change, the fuzzy-PID controller can still maintain good control performance and has strong adaptive ability.

Ya Xie

Afei Zhu

Zhonghua Huang

Research on the Control Performance of Depth-Fixed Motion of Underwater Vehicle Based on Fuzzy-PID

The ability to track the trajectory or path on the sea surface remains a key measurement in the control system of an unmanned surface vehicle (USV). In this research, the designed algorithm defines the path and minimizes the disturbances to zero. Underactuated USVs are ships or boats, which operate on the water surface without a crew and the underactuated system has low actuators than its degree of freedom (DOF). The adaptive control strategy is applied to the unbounded system as the ocean due to its high performance, while the robust control system attains high performance in the bounded system. To consider the trajectory tracking of UUSV and provide an optimal control strategy for a ship in the presence of external disturbances, the study presents a controller-based on model reference adaptive control with an integrator (MRACI), which guarantees the stability of a closed-loop system. The vehicle experiences variations in the system response due to external disturbance. This abovementioned scheme reduces the variations to nearly equal to zero making the vehicle stable. First, use computer-based simulation to verify the proposed controller under two different scenarios. Then, simulation results show that the designed scheme lowers the errors and performs well.

Chandanlal Karnani

Syed Akhter Raza

Muhammad Asif

Muhammad Ilyas

Adaptive Control Algorithm for Trajectory Tracking of Underactuated Unmanned Surface Vehicle (UUSV)

Mobile robots are widely used in medicine, agriculture, home furnishing, and industry. Simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) is the working basis of mobile robots, so it is extremely necessary and meaningful for making researches on SLAM technology. SLAM technology involves robot mechanism kinematics, logic, mathematics, perceptual detection, and other fields. However, it faces the problem of classifying the technical content, which leads to diverse technical frameworks of SLAM. Among all sorts of SLAM, visual SLAM (V-SLAM) has become the key academic research due to its advantages of low price, easy installation, and simple algorithm model. Firstly, we illustrate the superiority of V-SLAM by comparing it with other localization techniques. Secondly, we sort out some open-source V-SLAM algorithms and compare their real-time performance, robustness, and innovation. Then, we analyze the frameworks, mathematical models, and related basic theoretical knowledge of V-SLAM. Meanwhile, we review the related works from four aspects: visual odometry, back-end optimization, loop closure detection, and mapping. Finally, we prospect the future development trend and make a foundation for researchers to expand works in the future. All in all, this paper classifies each module of V-SLAM in detail and provides better readability to readers. This is undoubtedly the most comprehensive review of V-SLAM recently.

Yong Dai

Jiaxin Wu

Duo Wang

A Review of Common Techniques for Visual Simultaneous Localization and Mapping

This paper proposes the optimal design and simulation analysis of a robot for tree-climbing, which has the ability to climb up the tree trunk to adapt to different tree diameter changes. In an unstructured forest environment, considering that the Tree-Climbing Robot (TCR) may collide with branches, reducing the success rate of tree climbing, the mechanical structure and movement strategy to avoid branches are predesigned. The presented TCR mimics several design principles that have been adapted to arboreal animals, including claw-hand grasping and climbing gait movements, and is optimally designed to achieve high manoeuvrability on irregularly shaped trees. Based on the D-H parameterization method, the kinematics model of the TCR is developed and its kinematic equations are solved. The accuracy of the kinematic equations is verified by MATLAB, and the reachable area of the working space of the manipulator of the TCR is determined. Using ADAMS to analyse the kinematics and dynamics of the climbing process of the TCR, the rationality of the gait planning of the robot is verified, and the time-varying characteristic curves of each physical quantity of each structural joint are derived and further simulated through numerical analysis, the results of which will profoundly validate the technical feasibility and design innovation of this presented TCR.

Zhe Wu

Xigui Wang

Zhiqin Zhang

Numerical Analysis of a TCR Adaptive to Different Tree Diameters for Unstructured Forest Environment: A TCR of Variable Diameter with Different Tree Diameters

This document proposes a control scheme applied to delayed bilateral teleoperation of the forward and turn speed of a biped robot against asymmetric and time-varying delays. This biped robot is modeled as a hybrid dynamic system because it behaves as a continuous system when the leg moves forward and discrete when the foot touches the ground generating an impulsive response. It is proposed to vary online the damping according to the time delay present in the communication channel, and the walking cycle time using an optimization criterion, to decrease the teleoperation system errors. To accomplish this, a three-phase cascade calibration process is used, and their benefits are evidenced in a comparative simulation study. The first phase is an offline calibration of the inverse dynamic compensation and also the parameters of the bilateral controller. The second phase guarantees the bilateral coordination of the delayed teleoperation system, using the Lyapunov–Krasovskii stability theory, by changing the leader damping and the equivalent follower damping together. The third phase assures a stable walk of the hybrid dynamics by controlling the walking cycle time and the real damping to move the eigenvalues of the Poincaré map, numerically computed, to stable limit cycles and link this result with an equivalent continuous system to join both phases. Additionally, a fictitious force was implemented to detect and avoid possible collisions with obstacles. Finally, an intercontinental teleoperation experiment of an NAO robot via the Internet including force and visual feedback is shown.

Viviana Moya

Emanuel Slawiñski

Vicente Mut

Danilo Chávez

Bernardo Wagner

Stable Bilateral Teleoperation Control Method for Biped Robots with Time-Varying Delays

With the rapid development of the Internet of Things (IoT), the logistics and transportation industry is booming. At the same time, with the advancement of AI technology, intelligent logistics is also gradually emerging, and the purpose of intelligent logistics is to use different types of automatic guided transport machines to replace people to handle and move products. At the same time, with the help of big data, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, sensor technology, and other technologies, we can achieve logistics automation. However, the current logistics robot creation platforms are diverse, which makes intelligent logistics robots diverse in variety and wide in application and also makes the creation and use of robots more challenging. Robot Operating System (ROS) is an open-source software platform that supports programming in multiple languages and has excellent adaptability. In addition, most of the currently used path planning focuses on a single target point, which is insufficient to support the current needs of multitasking in intelligent logistics. Therefore, this paper aimed to design an intelligent logistics management system based on ROS robot and proposed to use the A-star algorithm to calculate the shortest path of the robot so as to achieve the optimal path. In the simulation experiment, 20 ROS robots were selected and divided into two groups. In the logistics warehouse of different transportation nodes, 20 ROS robots were set up to transport goods of different weights in the experiment, and the transportation data were collected at last. The final simulation results have shown that the power consumption and response delay performance of the ROS robot are good, and the logistics transportation speed is significantly improved. In addition, compared with the traditional transportation method, the daily transportation weight of each robot is up to 310.1% and the monthly profit is up to 171%, which shows that the intelligent logistics management system designed in this paper is more efficient in logistics and transportation and can bring more profits.

Ruijie Wu

Optimization Path and Design of Intelligent Logistics Management System Based on ROS Robot

Based on the Hedge Algebras (HA) methodology, this paper presents a method for managing the trajectory of a delta robot. This technique is easily applied to existing devices in the process control domain. In the proposed control method, the semantically quantitative mapping may replace the verbal values of the fundamental rule in an analogous manner (SQM). Consequently, the basic rule may be represented as a three-dimensional numerical grid with linear interpolations. Compared to the Fuzzy Logic controller, it reduces the controller’s complexity. In addition, when the control strategy is applied in reality, the system’s response time is decreased. The simulation results indicate that the proposed technique is more exact than previous approaches. The experimental results reveal that the proposed technique is effective for robot trajectory tracking difficulties.

Thanh-Lam Bui

Thanh-Hung Nguyen

Xuan-Thuan Nguyen

A Controller for Delta Parallel Robot Based on Hedge Algebras Method

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Journal of Robotics publishes original research articles as well as review articles on all aspects of automated mechanical devices, from their design and fabrication, to testing and practical implementation.

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Chief Editor&nbsp;Professor Yangmin Li is based at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong. His research interests include robotics, mechatronics, control and automation.

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Journal of Robotics - Table of contents 2023

title

Journal of Robotics publishes original research articles as well as review articles on all aspects of automated mechanical devices, from their design and fabrication, to testing and practical implementation.

Journal of Robotics