Ultrasonic Navigation and Obstacle Avoidance – Systems, Robotics & Vision Group

Navigation and Obstacle Avoidance in Troublesome Scenarios Using Ultrasonic Sensors

Project type: PhD project

Period: -0001 - -0001

Focus Area: Development of navigation strategies allowing a robot to navigate safely avoiding obstacles in unstructured and dynamic environments. Consequently, a special emphasis is put on architecture reactivity, and, thus, on control architectures requiring minimum amounts of computation and memory storage. Main results of this research are the T 2 navigation strategies and the NemoCAT simulator.

By means of the application of the Traversability and Tenacity principles, T2 strategies solve the well-known local minima problem of potential-field-based control methods. On the basis of these two principles, a new family of geometric algorithms for sensor- based motion planning has been proposed: random-T2 , bug-T2 , and connectivity-T2.

NEMOCAT (Navigational Environment MOdeller, Control and Architecture Tester) is a 3D object-oriented simulator developed to validate and tune reactive and hybrid AUVs control architectures based on schema theory and potential fields.

Project Leader

Javier Antich Tobaruela

Project Collaborators

Alberto Ortiz Rodriguez

Related Publications

A Dynamic Window Approach to Navigate in Complex Scenarios using Low-Cost Sensors for Obstacle Detection

Technical Report A-04-2007, Dep. Mathematics and Computer Science (UIB)

Authors: Javier Antich Tobaruela; Alberto Ortiz Rodriguez.
Category: Conferences Date: December, 2007
Reactive Robotics: A Paradigm Not Limited to Simple Tasks

Authors: Javier Antich Tobaruela.
Category: Reports Date: December, 2006
Behaviour-based Control of an Underwater Cable Tracker

Technical Report A-04-2003, Dep. Mathematics and Computer Science (UIB)

Authors: Javier Antich Tobaruela; Alberto Ortiz Rodriguez.
Category: Conferences Date: December, 2003
T2: An Approach to Robotic Navigation in Unknown and Dynamic Enviroments

Technical Report A-03-2004, Dep. Mathematics and Computer Science (UIB)

Authors: Javier Antich Tobaruela; Alberto Ortiz Rodriguez.
Category: Conferences Date: December, 2004
Reactive Navigation in Troublesome Environments: T2 Strategies

Instrumentation Viewpoint

Authors: Javier Antich Tobaruela; Alberto Ortiz Rodriguez.
Category: Journals Date: December, 2007
Bayesian Visual Tracking for Inspection of Undersea Power and Telecommunication Cables

Journal of Maritime Research (JMR)

Authors: Alberto Ortiz Rodriguez; Javier Antich Tobaruela.
Category: Journals Date: December, 2009
Pipe and cable inspection in the AIRSUB project context

Instrumentation Viewpoint

Authors: Gabriel Oliver Codina; Javier Antich Tobaruela; Alberto Ortiz Rodriguez.
Category: Journals Date: December, 2005
Development of the Control Architecture of a Vision-guided Underwater Cable Tracker

International Journal of Intelligent Systems

Authors: Javier Antich Tobaruela; Alberto Ortiz Rodriguez.
Category: Journals Date: December, 2005
A PFM-based Control Architecture for a Visually Guided Underwater Cable Tracker to Achieve Navigation in Troublesome Scenarios

Journal of Maritime Research

Authors: Javier Antich Tobaruela; Alberto Ortiz Rodriguez; Gabriel Oliver Codina.
Category: Journals Date: December, 2005

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Reactive control of a visually guided underwater cable tracker

Robotics and Automation in the Maritime Industries

Authors: Javier Antich Tobaruela; Alberto Ortiz Rodriguez; Gabriel Oliver Codina.
Category: Chapters Date: December, 2006
Traversabillity and tenacity: Two new concepts improving the navigation capabilities of reactive control systems

Robotics and Automation in the Maritime Industries

Authors: Javier Antich Tobaruela; Alberto Ortiz Rodriguez.
Category: Chapters Date: December, 2006
A Bayesian Approach for Tracking Undersea Narrow Telecommunication Cables

MTS/IEEE Oceans

Authors: Alberto Ortiz Rodriguez; Javier Antich Tobaruela; Gabriel Oliver Codina.
Category: Conferences Date: December, 2009
Experimental Evaluation of a Particle Filter-based Approach for Visually Tracking Undersea Cables

IFAC Conference on Manoeuvring and Control of Marine Craft (MCMC)

Authors: Alberto Ortiz Rodriguez; Javier Antich Tobaruela; Gabriel Oliver Codina.
Category: Conferences Date: December, 2009
A Bug-Inspired Algorithm for Efficient Anytime Path Planning

IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS)

Authors: Javier Antich Tobaruela; Alberto Ortiz Rodriguez; Javier Mínguez.
Category: Conferences Date: December, 2009
ABUG: A Fast Bug-derivative Anytime Path Planner with Provable Suboptimality Bounds

IEEE International Conference on Advanced Robotics (ICAR)

Authors: Javier Antich Tobaruela; Alberto Ortiz Rodriguez; Javier Mínguez.
Category: Conferences Date: December, 2009
A Rapid Anytime Path Planner with Incorporated Range Sensing to Improve Control on Solution Quality

International Conference on Intelligent Autonomous Systems (IAS)

Authors: Javier Antich Tobaruela; Alberto Ortiz Rodriguez.
Category: Conferences Date: December, 2010
A Convergent Dynamic Window Approach with Minimal Computational Requeriments

International Conference on Intelligent Autonomous Systems (IAS)

Authors: Javier Antich Tobaruela; Alberto Ortiz Rodriguez.
Category: Conferences Date: December, 2008
Learning by Example: Reinforcement Learning Techniques for Real Autonomous Underwater Cable Tracking

IEEE/IFAC International Conference on Informatics in Control, Automation and Robotics (ICINCO)

Authors: Andres El-Fakdi; Marc Carreras; Javier Antich Tobaruela; Alberto Ortiz Rodriguez.
Category: Conferences Date: December, 2008
A Goal-directed Reactive Obstacle Avoidance Strategy with Global Proofs

IFAC Symposium on Intelligent Autonomous Vehicles (IAV)

Authors: Javier Antich Tobaruela; Alberto Ortiz Rodriguez.
Category: Conferences Date: December, 2007
Underwater Cable Tracking by Visual Feedback

First Iberian Conference on Pattern Recognition and Image Analysis (IbPRIA, LNCS 2652)

Authors: Javier Antich Tobaruela; Alberto Ortiz Rodriguez.
Category: Conferences Date: December, 2003
Experimental Evaluation of the Control Architecture of an Underwater Cable Tracker

IFAC Conference on Manoeuvring and Control of Marine Craft (MCMC)

Authors: Javier Antich Tobaruela; Alberto Ortiz Rodriguez.
Category: Conferences Date: December, 2003
A Behaviour-based Control Architecture for Visually Guiding an Underwater Cable Tracker

First IFAC Workshop on Guidance and Control of Underwater Vehicles (GCUV)

Authors: Javier Antich Tobaruela; Alberto Ortiz Rodriguez.
Category: Conferences Date: December, 2003
Evolutionary Tuning of the Control Architecture of an Underwater Cable Tracker

Catalan Conference on Artificial Intelligence (CCIA, Artificial Intelligence Research and Development, vol. 100 - IOS Press)

Authors: Javier Antich Tobaruela; Alberto Ortiz Rodriguez.
Category: Conferences Date: December, 2003
An Underwater Simulation Environment for Testing Autonomous Robot Control Architectures

IFAC Conference on Control Applications in Marine Systems (CAMS)

Authors: Javier Antich Tobaruela; Alberto Ortiz Rodriguez.
Category: Conferences Date: December, 2004
Testing the Control Architecture of a Visually Guided Underwater Cable Tracker by using a UUV Prototype

IFAC Symposium on Intelligent Autonomous Vehicles (IAV)

Authors: Javier Antich Tobaruela; Alberto Ortiz Rodriguez; Marc Carreras; Pere Ridao.
Category: Conferences Date: December, 2004
Bug-based T2: A New Globally Convergent Approach to Reactive Navigation

Catalan Conference on Artificial Intelligence (CCIA, Artificial Intelligence Research and Development, vol. 131 - IOS Press)

Authors: Javier Antich Tobaruela; Alberto Ortiz Rodriguez.
Category: Conferences Date: December, 2005
Extending the Potential Fields Approach to Avoid Trapping Situations

IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS)

Authors: Javier Antich Tobaruela; Alberto Ortiz Rodriguez.
Category: Conferences Date: December, 2005
A Control Strategy for Fast Obstacle Avoidance in Troublesome Scenarios: Application in Underwater Cable Tracking

IFAC Conference on Manoeuvring and Control of Marine Craft (MCMC)

Authors: Javier Antich Tobaruela; Alberto Ortiz Rodriguez; Gabriel Oliver Codina.
Category: Conferences Date: December, 2006
Bug-based T2: A New Globally Convergent Potential Field Approach to Obstacle Avoidance

IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS)

Authors: Javier Antich Tobaruela; Alberto Ortiz Rodriguez.
Category: Conferences Date: December, 2006