Autonomous Underwater Docking: Towards vertical docking of an autonomous underwater vehicle to an unmanned surface vehicle in rough seas

The offshore industry is adopting Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs), to decrease the costs associated with surveying underwater sites. Despite requiring less human supervision, AUVs still depend on costly servicing from a vessel, before and after deployment. Combining an AUV with an Unmanned Surface Vessel (USV), a survey vessel that...

Direct sensor integration for optimization fabrics

Autonomous robots hold great potential for positive impacts on society by applying them to tasks that are hazardous, repetitive, or complex and difficult for humans to perform. To achieve these tasks, autonomous robots require the ability to perceive environmental changes and create corresponding motion plans, which involve a combination of...

Fleet Design for Last-Mile OnDemand Logistics

The simultaneous rapidly increasing demand for home delivery of goods and on-demand expectancy of customers over the past years leaves a tough challenge for the logistical branch. They have to keep up with this increasing demand and simultaneously they are obliged to satisfy consumer service level demands to preserve their customers. On the...

Raybot: Design and control of an underwater quay wall inspection vehicle

Quay walls are important structures that keep the water in harbours and canals within their bounds, and accommodate large infrastructure like roads or ship-handling structures on top of them. Due to their importance it is critical that they do not fail or collapse. Inspections are done to prevent this, as a better knowledge of the state of quay...

Towards Mobile Robot Deployments with Goal Autonomy in Search-and-Rescue: Discovering Tasks and Constructing Actionable Environment Representations using Situational Affordances

In this work, we address the challenges of employing robots in the Search-and-Rescue (SAR) domain, where they can benefit rescue workers to quickly obtain Situational Awareness (SA). Missions with autonomous mobile robots are heavily dependent on environmental representations. Representations have been steadily increasing in the richness that...

Teaching Robots How to Grasp Like Humans by Humans: An Interactive Approach

Grasping objects in a smooth humanlike motion, instead of the more typical pick-and-place approach, includes multiple aspects that need to be performed correctly for a successful grasp. These aspects involve moving the end-effector such that its surface makes and retains contact with the object while also coordinating the movement of the gripper...

A semi-analytical approach to simulate strains in load sensing bearings using FEA

The advancements in driver assistance systems in cars and the development of autonomous vehicles require more states of the car to be known than the conventional sensors can accurately determine. Load sensing bearings (LSBs) are under development that measure the wheel forces under dynamic load. Through sensor fusion, the addition of this sensor...

Evaluating SLAM in an urban dynamic environment

Simultaneous Localization And Mapping (SLAM) algorithms provide accurate localization for autonomous vehicles and provide essential information for the path planning module. However, SLAM algorithms as- sume a static environment in order to estimate a location. This assumption influences the pose estimation in dynamic urban environments. The...