Download presentation
1
Robotics Research at CCNY
John (Jizhong) Xiao Robotics and Intelligent Systems Lab Department of Electrical Engineering City College of New York Tel: Website:
2
Current Projects NSF MII Planning Project: Wall-climbing Robot project
Center of Perceptual Robotics and Intelligent Systems (PRISM Center at CCNY) Funding Agency: NSF Minority Institutional Infrastructure Program Wall-climbing Robot project Funding Agency: Army Research Office Smart Brain project Funding Agency: NSF Major Research Instrument Program
3
Wall-climbing Robot Project
Project Title: Cooperative Wall-climbing Robots in 3D Environments for Surveillance and Target Tracking The objective: develop a modular, re-configurable, wall-climbing robotic system and to investigate intelligent control methods and vision algorithms to control and coordinate a team of such robots to perform various defense, security, and inspection missions. Principle Investigators: John Xiao (EE), Zhigang Zhu (CS) Ali Sadegh (ME)
4
Wall-climbing Robot Project
Dream: transform the present 2-D world of mobile rovers into a new 3-D universe. move on ground, climb walls, walk on ceilings, transit between surfaces. Applications: Urban warfare applications: surveillance and reconnaissance, weapon delivery, guiding perimeter around a building, etc Security and counter-terrorist applications: intelligence gathering about a hostile situation within a building, etc. Inspection and maintenance applications: routine inspection of buildings, nuclear containment domes, and other hard-to-reach places, inspection of aircraft, sand blasting of ship hulls, etc. Other Civilian applications: assistance in firefighting, search and rescue operations, etc.
5
Wall-climbing Robot Project
Challenges: Adhesive mechanism strong attraction force on various wall surfaces (brick, wood, glass, stucco, plaster, and metal) without sacrificing mobility Transition Mechanism wheeled robot to achieve quick motion articulated structure for smooth transition modular design combine two Control/coordination of multiple robot modules Vision research for surveillance applications
6
Existing Technologies and Robots
magnetic attraction devices vacuum suction techniques biologically inspired gecko foot limbed devices aerodynamics attraction vortex attraction technique attraction generated by propeller
7
Existing Technologies and Robots
CMU gecko inspired climber Existing wall-climbers: JPL-Stanford rock climber MSU “Flipper” & “Crawler” Avionic Instruments Inc. Vortex attraction technique iRobot’s Mecho-Gecko
8
Wall Climber: Adhesive Mechanism
Design alternatives: vacuum pumps (MSU climber) vortex attraction device vacuum rotor package
9
Wall Climber: Vacuum Chamber Seal
Inflated Tube Skirt Seal Flexible Bristle Skirt Seal attraction force is so strong that it anchored the device to wall surfaces trade-off between sealing and mobility
10
Wall Climber: Selected Design
vacuum rotor package flexible bristle skirt seal differential drive pressure force isolation rim (re-foam) improves mobility, & enhances sealing by reducing the deformation of the skirt
11
Wall Climber: Transition Mechanism
Modular Design Four wall-climber modules are configured to form a larger wall-climbing robot which can carry heavy payload
12
DSP-based Control System
Actuator and sensor suite TMS320F2812 DSP from Texas Instruments Inc. 32-bit Processor Target for control applications
13
Wall Climber: Software Structure
14
CCNY Wall Climber Prototypes
Prototype I, vortex attraction Prototype II, inflated tube seal Prototype III, vacuum rotor package Prototype II, flexible bristle skirt seal
15
CCNY Wall Climber Prototypes
Video
16
Smart Brain Project Project Title: The objective:
Smart Re-configureable Miniature Robot Systems Based on System on Programmable Chip Technology NSF MRI Instrument Development The objective: to develop highly-adaptive computation module based on SoPC technology (FPGA) for ultra-small robots to realize onboard sensor processing, advanced motion control, and reliable wireless communication Principle Investigators: Umit Uyar (EE), John Xiao (EE)
17
Project Overview FPGA technology FPGA Device Features
programmable logic programmable systems integrate FPGA logic, embedded high-performance processors, digital signal processor (DSP) blocks, and multi-gigabit transceivers, making FPGA a versatile technology for high-end research and commercial products. FPGA Device Features Xilinx Virtex-II Pro family FPGA device two 32-bit IBM PowerPC 405 cores FPGA logic, DSP blocks 10M of block RAM, off-chip memory as a gap-stop measure Xilinx Intellectual Property (IP) Core library
18
Project Overview Benefits flexibility, reconfigureability
hardware reconfigureable, software reprogrammable hardware/software partitioning high-speed logic implementation in FPGA fabric & high-flexibility software code in Power PC IP core library to achieve basic robotic functions pre-verified, reusable satisfy the requirements for control, communication, and onboard vision processing capability of miniature robots
19
FPGA-based Multiprocessor
A processor-centric architecture FPGA fabric is used for custom logic and interfaces. Single board FPGA-based multiprocessor for robotics applications processor-centric architecture, where one PowerPC core is used to realize vision functions, another one is used for control and communication, and the FPGA fabric is used for custom logic and interfaces. (high-speed logic implementation in FPGA fabric and high-flexibility software code in Power PC)
20
Recent Progress Logic design for motor control (PWM, encoder reading)
Demonstration of virtual backbone concept for reliable server pooling Virtex-II Pro ML300 Evaluation board
21
Thank you!
Similar presentations
© 2025 SlidePlayer.com Inc.
All rights reserved.