Pushing with a quadrupedal robot: A proof of concept regarding stable pushing by a quadrupedal robot

Quadrupedal robots possess the ability to move freely in the world and perform a variety of actions that would be unsafe or impractical for humans to perform. In the SNOW project, a quadrupedal robot is tasked with aiding firefighters in rescue missions during house fires by locating humans and assessing their health. Pushing away obstacles that...

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...

Memristor-based Neuromorphic Computing: Design and simulation of a Neural Network based on Memristor technology

During the whole history of Computer Science as we know it, the end goal has been to solve problems faster and more efficiently than us humans. Computers came to be to perform repetitive tasks we do not want to or do not have time to perform ourselves. At some of them, such as simple mathematical calculations, they were and they are indeed...

Autonomous Coverage Path Planning For AUVs Considering Location Uncertainty

Autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) are unmanned vehicles that operate underwater. These vehicles can be used for various operations, including scanning the ocean floor in order to search for objects. In such operations, the AUV navigates close to the ocean floor, using its sonar systems to map this ocean floor. Before an AUV is launched on a...

Distributed Kalman filtering using Broadcast Gossip

For many processes it is required to have a reliable view of an environment of interest. One way to achieve this is by performing a distributed Kalman filter. In this thesis, three distribution methods from different research backgrounds are implemented and evaluated using multiple metrics for use in a Gossip based wireless sensor network:...