Design of intelligent robots is one of the most important endeavors in robotics research today. The key to intelligent robot design lies in sensory systems for robotic control and manipulation. In an unstructural environment, robotic sensing translates measurements and characteristics of the environment and working objects into useful information. A robotic system is usually equipped with a variety of sensors to perform redundant sensing and achieve data fusion. This book contains revised versions of papers presented at a NATO Advanced Research Workshop held in Florida in September 1989 within the activities of the NATO Special Programme on Sensory Systems for Robotic Control. The fundamental issues addressed in this volume were: - Theory and techniques, including knowledge-based systems, geometrical fusion, Boolean fusion, probabilistic fusion, feature-based fusion, error-estimation approach, and Markov process modeling. - General concepts, including microscopic redundancy at the sensory element level, macroscopic redundancy at the sensory system level, parallel redundancy, and standby redundancy. - Implementation and application, including robotic control, sensory technology, robotic assembly, robot fingers, sensory signal processing, sensory system integration, and PAPIA architecture. - Biological analogies, including neural nets, pattern recognition, low-level fusion, and motor learning.

Inhalt

I General Theory and Overview.- A Knowledge-based System for Redundant and Multi Sensing in Intelligent Robots.- An Overview of Visual and Tactile Sensor Technology.- II Biological Aspects.- Highly Redundant Sensing in Robotics - Analogies from Biology: Distributed Sensing and Learning.- III Specific Data Fusion Approaches and Examples.- The Multisensory System of the KAMRO Robot.- Multi-Sensor Integration for Fine Manipulation.- Hierarchical Robot Multi-Sensor Data Fusion System.- A Phenomenological Approach to Thermal and Visual Sensor Fusion.- Tools for Multisensor Data Fusion in Autonomous Robots.- High Speed Trinocular Stereo for Mobile-Robot Navigation.- IV Circuits and System Design.- Using VLSI Circuits for Optimal Signal Handling in Multisensorial Robotic Systems.- Compact Pyramidal Architectures.- V Control Concepts.- On the Phenomenon of High Redundancy in Robotic Perception.- Self-Organizing Sensory Systems.- Structural Solution of Highly Redundant Sensing in Robotic Systems.- Control Concepts for Industrial Robots Equipped with Multiple and Redundant Sensors.- A Variable Structure Control Algorithm for Robot Manipulators Using Acceleration Feedback.- A Multi-Sensor Distributed System for a Flexible Assembly Cell.- List of Lecturers and Participants.