27-08-2013, 02:46 PM
Networked Robotics Cameras A short seminar
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ABSTRACT
The technological development of the last decade in robots, computing and communications has led to envisage the design of robotic and automation systems consisting of networked vehicles, sensors, actuators and communication devices. These developments enable researchers and engineers to design new robotic systems that can interact with human beings and other robots in a cooperative way. This new technology has being denominated ‘‘Network Robot Systems’’ (NRS).
This seminar discuss about the robots which have their vision sensors that is cameras connected via internetwork. Networked robotic cameras are becoming popular in remote observation applications such as natural observation, surveillance, and distance learning. Equipped with a high optical zoom lens and agile pan-tilt mechanisms, a networked robotic camera can cover a large region with various resolutions. Many viewers simultaneously observe events in a common, but remote, environment in applications ranging from scientific observation, journalism, distance education, security, and inspection to entertainment.
Such “collaborative observation” can be achieved with an emerging class of networked robotic cameras. And a primary challenge is to resolve contention for control of camera motion.
The study of networked robots and networked robotics cameras will help us to understand the existing system, the problems, the need and the ways that can be adopted to make future robots more useful, reliable and advanced.
If we compare non networked robots and networked robots , we can easily see the difference, non-networked robots have limits, there is difficulty in testing the robot in all areas, changing its functions and behaviour at any instant, only some people present around the robot can observe it and its difficult to embed the robot with artificial intelligence. On the other hand networked robots or the robots having networked cameras can be used , operated if the controllers or observers are far away. It's easy to observe, change and modify the robots actions, functions at any time. And thus it's relatively easy to embed artificial intelligence in these robots.
HISTORY
The name Networked Robots (NR) was created in May 2004within the IEEE RAS Technical Committee, as a consequence of the preliminary work on Internet-based teleoperated robots initiated in 2001, and its expansion to reflect a broader set of problems and applications.
But the use of internet with robot has been started far before that.
The hypertext transfer protocol developed at CERN in 1992 provides a low-cost and publicly available network interface. In 1994, public access to a teleoperated robot via the Internet started.
LITERATURE SURVEY
In recent years there has been an increased interested in visual based navigation and it is accepted as being more robust and reliable than other sensor based navigation systems.
Vision feedback is one of the most important sensing methods for navigation based tasks. It is essential for a vision based navigation system to incorporate within it some knowledge of its environment. There are two different approaches to utilizing this visual information, based on open-loop and closed-loop challenges in the collaborative observation, as described below:
• Open Loop Control:
Extraction of image information and control of a robot are two identifiable separate tasks where the image capture and processing is performed first followed by the generation of a control sequence.
• Closed Loop Control:
Vision Sensing and control are both done simultaneously. A sensor (camera) monitors the output (position of the image) and feeds the data to a system which continuously adjusts the control input as necessary to keep the control error to a minimum (to maintain the desired speed or position ) ,referred as visual servoing .
Humans are not capable of positioning themselves in an absolute way, yet are able to reach a goal position with remarkable accuracy by repeating a ‘look at the target and move’ type of strategy. They are apt at actively extracting relevant features of the environment through a somewhat inaccurate vision process and relating these to necessary movement commands, using a mode of operation called ‘visual servoing’ in robotics.
DETAILS
To overcome navigation issues in an unknown environment whilst avoiding obstacles requires a reliable and robust architecture and also a powerful sensing strategy. A simpler definition was proposed by a European study group ‘‘Research Atelier on Network Robot Systems’’.
The definition is the following: ‘‘A Network Robot System is a group of artificial autonomous systems that are mobile and that make important use of wireless communications among them or with the environment and living systems in order to fulfil their tasks’’. The topic Network Robot Systems transcends ‘‘conventional’’ robotics, in the sense that there exists, for these type of distributed heterogeneous systems, an interrelation among a community of robots, environment sensors and humans. Applications include network robot teams (for example to play soccer), human-robot networked teams (for example a community of robots that assist people), robots networked with the environment (for example for tasks on urban settings or in space applications) or geminoid robots(a replication of a human with own autonomy and being partiallytele-operated through the network).
CASE STUDY
This is a project from Team Stark presented at wordpress.com. It is a remote-operated mobile surveillance system which uses an IP camera for monitoring. An internet protocol (IP) camera is a type of digital video camera, generally employed for surveillance which can send and receive data via a computer network and internet.
The project is divided into various sections like camera control, log in database, mechanical and physical design, installer and network set up. It is powered by two batteries; one for the circuit and another for the motors. The robot can be controlled through any computer while the video can be controlled through internet, adhoc, WAN or LAN. It can be operated remotely at ease within a range of 800m. Camera incorporated is Tomtop IP camera which can tilt 180 degree and pan 110 degree. PIC microcontroller is used for control which is programmed in MikroC PRO. IC MAX232 is used at the interface of computer with both the microcontroller and the camera. Overall, 4 PCBs are involved in the whole system, 3 at the robot’s end and 1 at the controller’s end.
CONCLUSIONS
Visual sensing will be essential for mobile robots to progress in the direction of increased robustness, reduced cost, and reduced power consumption.Moreover, if robots can make use of computationally efficient algorithms and off-the-shelf cameras with minimal setup (e.g., no calibration), then the opportunity exists for robots to be widely deployed (e.g., multiple inexpensive coordinating robots). A novel visual based navigation system will be an important step in this direction.
There is need to design coding/decoding algorithms (codec) to allow efficient storage and on-demand content delivery. Till now the system that are implemented and extensively tested our design in real world applications including natural observation, public surveillance, and building construction monitoring. Experiments suggest that the models are efficient and that our on-demand video delivery can satisfy a variety of spatiotemporal queries efficiently in terms of computation time communications bandwidth. In the future, selection models should concentrate on expanding to multiple cameras. Camera motion scheduling and path planning problem is also an interesting problem to investigate. There is also an important human robot interaction/human-computer interaction problem such as how different frame selection models would impact user