Proceedings of the NATO Advanced Research Workshop on Highly Redundant Sensing in Robotic Systems held in Il Ciocco, Italy, May 16-20, 1988

Design of intelligent robots is one of the most important endeavors in robotics research today. The key to intelligent robot design lies in sensory systems for robotic control and manipulation. In an unstructural environment, robotic sensing translates measurements and characteristics of the environment and working objects into useful information. A robotic system is usually equipped with a variety of sensors to perform redundant sensing and achieve data fusion. This book contains revised versions of papers presented at a NATO Advanced Research Workshop held in Florida in September 1989 within the activities of the NATO Special Programme on Sensory Systems for Robotic Control. The fundamental issues addressed in this volume were: - Theory and techniques, including knowledge-based systems, geometrical fusion, Boolean fusion, probabilistic fusion, feature-based fusion, error-estimation approach, and Markov process modeling. - General concepts, including microscopic redundancy at the sensory element level, macroscopic redundancy at the sensory system level, parallel redundancy, and standby redundancy. - Implementation and application, including robotic control, sensory technology, robotic assembly, robot fingers, sensory signal processing, sensory system integration, and PAPIA architecture. - Biological analogies, including neural nets, pattern recognition, low-level fusion, and motor learning. Front Matter....Pages I-X Front Matter....Pages 1-1 A Knowledge-based System for Redundant and Multi Sensing in Intelligent Robots....Pages 3-20 An Overview of Visual and Tactile Sensor Technology....Pages 21-31 Front Matter....Pages 33-33 Highly Redundant Sensing in Robotics — Analogies From Biology: Distributed Sensing and Learning....Pages 35-42 Front Matter....Pages 43-43 The multisensory system of the KAMRO robot....Pages 45-54 Multi-Sensor Integration for Fine Manipulation....Pages 55-66 Hierarchical Robot Multi-Sensor Data Fusion System....Pages 67-86 A Phenomenological Approach to Thermal and Visual Sensor Fusion....Pages 87-101 Tools for Multisensor Data Fusion in Autonomous Robots....Pages 103-125 High Speed Trinocular Stereo for Mobile-Robot Navigation....Pages 127-146 Front Matter....Pages 147-147 Using VLSI Circuits for Optimal Signal Handling in Multisensorial Robotic Systems....Pages 149-156 Compact Pyramidal Architectures....Pages 157-174 Front Matter....Pages 175-175 On the Phenomenon of High Redundancy in Robotic Perception....Pages 177-250 Self-Organizing Sensory Systems....Pages 251-262 Structural Solution of Highly Redundant Sensing in Robotic Systems....Pages 263-275 Control Concepts for Industrial Robots Equipped with Multiple and Redundant Sensors....Pages 277-291 A Variable Structure Control Algorithm for Robot Manipulators Using Acceleration Feedback....Pages 293-309 A Multi-Sensor Distributed System for a Flexible Assembly Cell....Pages 311-320 Back Matter....Pages 321-325