Effect of force feedback on a bulldozer-type robot
Utilizing remote-controlled robots in damage restoration activities in disaster-affected areas such as those affected by a debris avalanche or an earthquake has significantly increased. Various types of remote-controlled robots have been successfully used along with construction machines in damage restoration activities in disaster-affected areas. Recently, a bulldozer-type robot removed the earth and sand deposited over a wide area because of a debris avalanche. To enable prompt damage restoration activities in disaster-affected areas, an efficient remote operation using robots is required. We study a remote-controlled bulldozer-type robot that moves objects using a system wherein the status of the stress applied on the bulldozer blade is provided as a force feedback to the operator. After conducting evaluation experiments, we could verify that the operating system providing force feedback to the operator shortened the operation time compared with the one that displayed visual information only on the operating screen.
Robotic autonomous systems for earthmoving in military applications
Abstract Along with increasing innovations in frontier engineering sciences, the advancement in Robotic Autonomous Systems (RAS) has brought about a new horizon in earthmoving processes for construction. In the military domain, there is also an increasing interest in utilising RAS technologies. In particular, ground-based forces are frequently called upon to conduct earthmoving tasks as part of military operations, tasks which could be partially or fully aided by the employment of RAS technologies. There have been rapid developments in military construction automation using high-mobility ground-based platforms, human-machine and machine-machine interfaces, teleoperation and control systems, data transmission systems, machine perception and manipulation capabilities, as well as advances in networked robotics and cyberphysical systems. Given these developments it is timely to undertake a comprehensive overview on the topic of interest to the research community and the authority. This paper presents an overview of the RAS development for platform-centric earthworks together with an analysis of the technical feasibility, maturity, key technical challenges, and future directions for the application of RAS technologies to earthmoving tasks of interest to the army.
Design of a low power viterbi decoder for wireless communication applications
In this paper, a novel low-power Viterbi decoder with soft decision is proposed. For the branch metric of the Viterbi decoder, our design employs a soft-decision method to improve its correction capability. In order to find the survivor path efficiently, we modify the classical Viterbi decoding algorithm into a new one. This new algorithm is similar to the register-exchange method with lower latency, but using RAM instead of register banks for recording the output bit-stream of the survivor path. Hence, our design can provide a low-power design. Finally, the chip of this design consumes about 28.6K gates using TSMC 0.18 μm CMOS technology. The power consumption of our chip is about 19.5mW at 100MHz.