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!