CLAWAR 2012 – present status and future trend of mobile robots

Citation

Azad, A.K.M. (2013), "CLAWAR 2012 – present status and future trend of mobile robots", Industrial Robot, Vol. 40 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/ir.2013.04940caa.001

CLAWAR 2012 – present status and future trend of mobile robots

Article Type: Viewpoint From: Industrial Robot: An International Journal, Volume 40, Issue 3

Throughout our recent history, robotics has inspired humanity and filmmakers to materialize this fascination in the production of remarkable fiction movies. Although the general population visualizes robots as something humanoid in their physical makeup, the initial commercially developed robots were stationary in nature and resembled nothing like a human. However, they revolutionize our industrial manufacturing process and established their presence permanently.

With the advent of innovative technology, exponentially increasing computing power, and emerging control algorithms have provide academics and researchers with the power to bring the robots from industry to within our society. Robots now have mobility and have started to roam around us in different shapes and forms. These are known as climbing and walking robots, more commonly mobile robots; they can walk, run, and climb. Most of these developments are demand driven and developed through the realization of scientists’ imaginations. The areas benefited from mobile robots are medicine and surgery, elderly and disabled care, office assistance, emergency rescue, defense, and household assistance. In medicine, they are used for surgery; daVinci developed a surgical system for robotically assisted surgery. The daVinci system provides a minimally invasive surgery, even for complex surgical procedures, and its acceptability and use is increasing rapidly. With a growing elderly population, mobile robots have found use for elderly care as mobile servants as well as for personal assistance and rehabilitation. Mobile robots are extensively used in emergency services after a natural disaster like earthquakes, building collapse, fire rescues, and homeland security (dealing with terrorists and bomb diffusing). One of the areas of mobile robotics that is developing very fast but without much notice is their use in defense, mainly to assist soldiers in carrying out logistics reconnaissance around the front line. Most developed nations are putting a significant effort into this area, with the USA in the lead.

Despite all these developments, there are two shortcomings that hinder the progress of mobile robotics. These are safety standards and modularity in design. During the 1970s, robot standards were developed with the consideration that the robots would be operating within their own workspace. However, the current scenario of shared workspace for mobile robots with humans and lack of needed robot safety standards has become a barrier for powerful but safe critical mobile robots to enter the market. Considering this CLAWAR Association Ltd, along with its academic partners, is acting as a catalyst for developing major robot standards. Another area of concern is the lack of modularity in the design of mobile robots. Most of the mobile robotic developments are customized, and each system needs to be developed from scratch just as if reinventing the wheel. An effective modularity concept in designs (hardware and software) would open an emerging market of mobile robots.

CLAWAR conferences sponsored by the CLAWAR Association are one of the major platforms for climbing and walking robots. CLAWAR 2012 the 15 in a series of international conferences on Climbing and Walking Robots and the Support Technologies for Mobile Machines. This was the first CLAWAR Conference in the USA and took place at the Johns Hopkins University at Baltimore and was a joint effort between a number of US universities and a US Government Organization; Johns Hopkins University, Northern Illinois University, Loyola University Maryland, University of Maryland, and National Institute of Standards and Technology. Industrial Robot Journal sponsored a best paper award for industrial robot innovation. The conference brought together leading scientists and engineers from 26 countries throughout the five continents, and they focused on solving the problems of mobility in the natural world. They presented approximately 110 technical articles that covered assistive robots, service robots, autonomous robots, biologically inspired robots, innovative designs in climbing and walking robots, modeling and simulation, locomotion, perception and sensor fusion, planning and control, and standardization. There were two special sessions: throwing your weight around: using appendage inertia and robot standardization and ethics. In addition, there were five prominent plenary speakers, four from the USA and one from Europe. The US ones are Robert Full from the University of California (Berkeley), Jessy W. Grizzle from University of Michigan, Daniel Koditschek from University of Pennsylvania, and Marc Raibert from Boston Dynamics. The European speaker was Dirk Lefeber from Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium. Robert Full discussed the design of biologically inspired legged robots with redundancy. Jessy Grizzle presented feedback control methods for achieving very robust dynamic balance in bipedal robots. Daniel Koditschek discussed the need and explore the prospects for transitional task specification formalism. Mark Raibert provided a status report on AlphaDog and other dynamic mobile robots that are being developed at Boston Dynamics. When Dirk Lefeber presented an overview of compliant actuator technologies with few applications in prosthetics and rehabilitation robotics.

Abul K.M. AzadBased at Department of Technology, Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, Illinois, USA