Deformation Prediction and Autonomous Path Planning for Robot-Assisted Endovascular Interventions

Endovascular interventions, as emerging medical therapies, utilize blood vessels as conduits to access anatomically challenging regions deep within the body. Within endovascular interventions, one of the prominent challenges involves maneuvering the instrument tip by coordinating insertion, retraction, and torque actions at the proximal end of...

Model Predictive Path Planning of AGVs: Mixed Logical Dynamical Formulation and Distributed Coordination

Most of the existing path planning methods of automated guided vehicles (AGVs) are static. This paper proposes a new methodology for the path planning of a fleet of AGVs to improve the flexibility, robustness, and scalability of the AGV system. We mathematically describe the transport process as a dynamical system using an ad hoc mixed...

A self-guided approach for navigation in a minimalistic foraging robotic swarm

We present a biologically inspired design for swarm foraging based on ant’s pheromone deployment, where the swarm is assumed to have very restricted capabilities. The robots do not require global or relative position measurements and the swarm is fully decentralized and needs no infrastructure in place. Additionally, the system only requires...

Informative Path Planning in Random Fields via Mixed Integer Programming

We present a new mixed integer formulation for the discrete informative path planning problem in random fields. The objective is to compute a budget constrained path while collecting measurements whose linear estimate results in minimum error over a finite set of prediction locations. The problem is known to be NP-hard. However, we strive to...

IOC based trajectory generation to increase human acceptance of robot motions in collaborative tasks

Collaboration between humans and robots is an important aspect of Industry 4.0. It can be improved by incorporating human-like characteristics into robot motion planning. It is assumed that humans move optimal with respect to a certain objective or cost function. To find this function, also for a robot, we use an inverse optimal control...

Path planning for endovascular catheterization under curvature constraints via two-phase searching approach

Purpose: Planning a safe path for flexible catheters is one of the major challenges of endovascular catheterization. State-of-the-art methods rarely consider the catheter curvature constraint and reduced computational time of path planning which guarantees the possibility to re-plan the path during the actual operation. Methods: In this...

Integrated Task Assignment and Path Planning for Capacitated Multi-Agent Pickup and Delivery

Multi-agent Pickup and Delivery (MAPD) is a challenging industrial problem where a team of robots is tasked with transporting a set of tasks, each from an initial location and each to a specified target location. Appearing in the context of automated warehouse logistics and automated mail sortation, MAPD requires first deciding which robot is...