The Robotics Institute

RI | Centers | CFR | Seminar

Foundations of Robotics Seminar, October 6, 2009
Time and Place | Seminar Abstract



ICRA 2009 Practice Talks

 

Generating Gaits for Snake Robots by Annealed Chain Fitting and Keyframe Wave Extraction

Ross Hatton

Carnegie Mellon University - Robotics Institute


A Multi-Hypothesis Topological SLAM Approach for Loop Closing on Edge-Ordered Graphs

Steve Tully

Carnegie Mellon University - Robotics Institute


 

 

 

Time and Place

NSH 1507
Talk 4:30 pm

Abstract

 

Generating Gaits for Snake Robots by Annealed Chain Fitting and Keyframe Wave Extraction

 

Snake robots have many degree of freedom. This makes them both extremely versatile and complex to control. In this paper, we address this complexity by introducing two algorithms. Annealed chain fitting efficiently maps a continuous backbone curve to a set of joint angles for a snake robot. Keyframe wave extraction takes joint angles fit to a sequence of backbone curves and identifies parameterized functions which produce those sequences. We validate the algorithms by using them to produce rolling gaits for crawling and climbing.

 

A Multi-Hypothesis Topological SLAM Approach for Loop Closing on Edge-Ordered Graphs

 

We present a method for topological SLAM that specifically targets loop closing for edge-ordered graphs. Instead of using a heuristic approach to accept or reject loop closing, we propose a probabilistically grounded multi-hypothesis technique that relies on the incremental construction of a map/state hypothesis tree. Loop closing is introduced automatically within the tree expansion, and likely hypotheses are chosen based on their posterior probability after a sequence of sensor measurements. Careful pruning of the hypothesis tree keeps the growing number of hypotheses under control and a recursive formulation reduces storage and computational costs. Experiments are used to validate the approach.

 


The Robotics Institute is part of the School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University.