Advanced sensing and control in service robotics with wave energy application

In this proposal, the applicant aims to explore novel ideas, develop advanced sensing and control techniques for service robots with wave energy applications. Sensing based control techniques are highly desired in the field of service robotics, power systems, industrial environment, battlefield surveillance, exploration, and rehabilitation. Major challenges facing service robotics applications are how to systematically fuse all the sensor data together, and how to control the service robots under sensor uncertainty. To deal with those issues, the applicant and others have applied various different approaches to synthesis the rich information provided by multiple sensors and have applied adaptive control method to effectively control the robots.With master students, PhD candidates, the applicant plans to focus research work in the area of robotics sensing and adaptive control for mobile robot and robotic manipulators. The objectives are given as follows:For short-term objectives, the applicant and his research associates are going to do modeling of multiplesensors, i.e., pan-tilt camera, ultrasonic sensor, GPS sensor, IMU navigation sensor, infrared sensor, forcesensor and laser scanners to develop efficient fusion algorithms for mobile robot localization and roboticmanipulator trajectory tracking in general, and to develop adaptive control schemes for service robots inparticular and to apply developed algorithms to practical system with either known or unknown dynamics , i.e., power system for wave energy application.Our long-term objective is to develop a unified robust sensing and control technology for both mobile robots and robot manipulator using multiple sensors, which will be implemented onto our B21r mobile robot, PA10 robotic arm and newly developed power generator prototype for wave energy application. In conjunction with the industrial and international collaboration, results of proposed research will demonstrate the significance of the work on real physical systems such as surgical robots, wheeled robots, and power generators.