Autonomous excavator systems can alleviate the issues caused by the shortage of skilled labor forces and increasing labor costs. For autonomous excavation, real-time landscape estimation, excavation path generation, control, and precise landscape inspection are all essential. In this article, we propose and experimentally validate an integrated autonomous excavator system … [Read more...] about Towards Fully Integrated Autonomous Excavation: Autonomous Excavator for Precise Earth Cutting and Onboard Landscape Inspection
Inspection
Large-Scale Vine Robots for Industrial Inspection: Developing a New Framework to Overcome Limitations With Existing Inspection Methods
Industrial facilities such as chemical factories, gas terminals, and power plants can contain kilometers of piping that require meticulous inspection for leaks and defects prior to operation. This is a costly and time-consuming process that sometimes requires dismantling sections of pipe. While current internal inspection devices such as borescopes, “pipe inspection gadgets,” … [Read more...] about Large-Scale Vine Robots for Industrial Inspection: Developing a New Framework to Overcome Limitations With Existing Inspection Methods
Robotic Grape Inspection and Selective Harvesting in Vineyards: A Multisensory Robotic System With Advanced Cognitive Capabilities
Driven by the increasing food demand and the need for higher-quality cultivation, precision agriculture grows steadily during the last decade. It involves the application of mobile robots and intelligent robotic technologies in various agricultural field tasks, concerning a variety of crop types. Aiming at compensating for the lack of selective robotic harvesting solutions … [Read more...] about Robotic Grape Inspection and Selective Harvesting in Vineyards: A Multisensory Robotic System With Advanced Cognitive Capabilities
Safe and Effective Collaboration With a High-Payload Robot: A Framework Integrating Novel Hardware and Software Modules
Human–robot collaboration has demonstrated its potential to increase efficiency and productivity in industry. However, inherently safe collaborative robots offer limited payloads and are unsuitable for many heavy lifting and manipulation tasks that would benefit from collaboration. The use of high-payload robots in physical human–robot interaction poses significant safety and … [Read more...] about Safe and Effective Collaboration With a High-Payload Robot: A Framework Integrating Novel Hardware and Software Modules
Opportunistic (Re)planning for Long-Term Deep-Ocean Inspection: An Autonomous Underwater Architecture
Robots are increasingly used in subsea environments because of their positive impact on human safety and operational capabilities in the deep ocean. However, achieving full autonomy remains challenging because of the extreme conditions they encounter. In this context, we propose an autonomous underwater architecture for long-term deep-ocean inspection that robustly plans … [Read more...] about Opportunistic (Re)planning for Long-Term Deep-Ocean Inspection: An Autonomous Underwater Architecture
