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Howard, Ayanna M.

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Author: Seraji, Homayoun × Author: Tunstel, Edward × End date: 2009 × Start date: 2000 ×

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Now showing 1 - 5 of 5
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    Rule-based reasoning and neural network perception for safe off-road robot mobility
    (Georgia Institute of Technology, 2002-09) Tunstel, Edward ; Howard, Ayanna M. ; Seraji, Homayoun
    Operational safety and health monitoring are critical matters for autonomous field mobile robots such as planetary rovers operating on challenging terrain. This paper describes relevant rover safety and health issues and presents an approach to maintaining vehicle safety in a mobility and navigation context. The proposed rover safety module is composed of two distinct components: safe attitude (pitch and roll) management and safe traction management. Fuzzy logic approaches to reasoning about safe attitude and traction management are presented, wherein inertial sensing of safety status and vision-based neural network perception of terrain quality are used to infer safe speeds of traversal. Results of initial field tests and laboratory experiments are also described. The approach provides an intrinsic safety cognizance and a capacity for reactive mitigation of robot mobility and navigation risks.
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    Terrain-Based Navigation of Planetary Rovers: A Fuzzy Logic Approach
    (Georgia Institute of Technology, 2001-06) Seraji, Homayoun ; Howard, Ayanna M. ; Tunstel, Edward
    This paper presents a new strategy for autonomous navigation of eld mobile robots on hazardous natural terrain using a fuzzy logic approach and a novel mea- sure of terrain traversability. The navigation strategy is comprised of three simple, independent behaviors: seek-goal, traverse-terrain, and avoid-obstacle. The recommendations from these three behaviors are com- bined through appropriate weighting factors to gen- erate the nal steering and speed commands that are executed by the robot. The weighting factors are pro- duced by fuzzy logic rules that take into account the current status of the robot. This navigation strategy requires no a priori information about the environ- ment, and uses the on-board traversability analysis to enable the robot to select relatively easy-to-traverse paths autonomously. Field test results obtained from implementation of the proposed algorithms on the commercial Pioneer AT rover are presented. These results demonstrate the real-time capabilities of the terrain assessment and fuzzy logic navigation algorithms.
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    Safe Navigation on Hazardous Terrain
    (Georgia Institute of Technology, 2001-05) Seraji, Homayoun ; Howard, Ayanna M. ; Tunstel, Edward
    This paper presents a new strategy for autonomous navigation of field mobile robots on hazardous natural terrain using a fuzzy logic approach and a measure of terrain traversability. The navigation strategy comprises three simple, independent behaviors: seek-goal, traverse-terrain, and avoid-obstacle. The recommendations from these three behaviors are combined through appropriate weighting factors to generate the final steering and speed commands that are executed by the robot. The weighting factors are produced by fuzzy logic rules that take into account the current status of the robot. This navigation strategy requires no a priori information about the environment, and uses the on-board traversability analysis to enable the robot to select relatively easy-to-traverse paths autonomously. Field test results obtained from implementation of the proposed algorithms on the commercial Pioneer All Terrain rover are presented. These results demonstrate the real-time capabilities of the terrain assessment and fuzzy logic navigation algorithms.
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    Fuzzy Rule-Based Reasoning for Rover Safety and Survivability
    (Georgia Institute of Technology, 2001-05) Tunstel, Edward ; Howard, Ayanna M. ; Seraji, Homayoun
    Operational safety and health monitoring are critical matters for autonomous field mobile robots such as planetary rovers operating on challenging terrain. The paper describes relevant rover safety and health issues and presents an approach to maintaining vehicle safety in a navigational context. The proposed rover safety module is composed of two distinct components: safe attitude (pitch and roll) management and safe traction management. Fuzzy logic approaches to reasoning about safe attitude and traction management are presented, wherein sensing of safety status and perception of terrain quality are used to infer safe speeds of traversal. Results of field tests and laboratory experiments are also described. The approach provides an intrinsic safety cognizance and a capacity for reactive mitigation of navigation risks.
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    A Rule-Based Fuzzy Traversability Index for Mobile Robot Navigation
    (Georgia Institute of Technology, 2001-05) Howard, Ayanna M. ; Seraji, Homayoun ; Tunstel, Edward
    This paper presents a rule-based fuzzy traversability index that quantifies the ease-of-traversal of a terrain by a mobile robot based on real-time measurements of terrain characteristics retrieved from imagery data. These characteristics include, but are not limited to slope, roughness, hardness, and discontinuity. The proposed representation of terrain traversability incorporates an intuitive, linguistic approach for expressing terrain characteristics that is robust with respect to imprecision and uncertainty in the terrain measurements. The terrain assessment method is tested and validated with a set of real-world imagery data. These tests demonstrate the capability of the terrain classification algorithm for perceiving hazards associated with terrain traversal.