Browsing Theses by Subject "Robotics"
Now showing items 1-20 of 23
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Axon: A Middleware for Robotics
(University of Waterloo, 2012-08-28)The area of multi-robot systems and frameworks has become, in recent years, a hot research area in the field of robotics. This is attributed to the great advances made in robotic hardware, software, and the diversity of ... -
Constrained Shortest Paths in Terrains and Graphs
(University of Waterloo, 2009-10-28)Finding a shortest path is one of the most well-studied optimization problems. In this thesis we focus on shortest paths in geometric and graph theoretic settings subject to different feasibility constraints that arise in ... -
Development of a Mobile Modular Robotic System, R2TM3, for Enhanced Mobility in Unstructured Environments
(University of Waterloo, 2012-12-12)Limited mobility of mobile ground robots in highly unstructured environments is a problem that inhibits the use of such robots in applications with irregular terrain. Furthermore, applications with hazardous environments ... -
Development of a Social Robot for the Study of Robot Roles in Robot-Assisted Language Learning
(University of Waterloo, 2024-04-25)The objective of this thesis encompasses both the development of a novel social robot, named ”Maple,” and the examination of its effectiveness in various roles within the context of education and Human-Robot Interaction ... -
Engineering Social Learning Mechanisms for Multi-Agent Interaction
(University of Waterloo, 2021-09-14)This thesis is strongly inspired by literature on animal social learning, applying it to multi-robot as well as human-robot interaction scenarios, Social learning, which can include complex or simple social mechanisms, ... -
Experimental Evaluation of Affordance Detection Applied to 6-DoF Pose Estimation for Intelligent Robotic Grasping of Household Objects
(University of Waterloo, 2021-11-22)Recent computer vision research has demonstrated that deep convolutional neural networks can be trained on real images to add context to object parts for simultaneous object detection and affordance segmentation. However, ... -
Fast Nonlinear Model Predictive Control of Quadrotors: Design and Experiments
(University of Waterloo, 2020-01-21)Quadrotor (or quadcopter) is a type of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). Due to the quadrotors simple and inexpensive design, they have become popular platforms. This thesis proposes a computationally fast scheme for ... -
Informed Data Selection For Dynamic Multi-Camera Clusters
(University of Waterloo, 2018-08-13)Traditional multi-camera systems require a fixed calibration between cameras to provide the solution at the correct scale, which places many limitations on its performance. This thesis investigates the calibration of dynamic ... -
Modelling and Control of Small-Scale Helicopter on a Test Platform
(University of Waterloo, 2008-05-23)The helicopter is a Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) system with highly coupled characteristics, which increases the complexity of the system dynamics. In addition, the system dynamics of the helicopter are ... -
Multi-frame Measurement Fusion for State Estimation
(University of Waterloo, 2007-09-27)Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) is a technique used by robots and autonomous vehicles to build up a map while operating in an unknown environment, while at the same time keeping track of a current position ... -
A Neurocomputational Model of Smooth Pursuit Control to Interact with the Real World
(University of Waterloo, 2014-01-24)Whether we want to drive a car, play a ball game, or even enjoy watching a flying bird, we need to track moving objects. This is possible via smooth pursuit eye movements (SPEMs), which maintain the image of the moving ... -
Nonprehensile Manipulation via Multisensory Learning from Demonstration
(University of Waterloo, 2018-12-04)Dexterous manipulation problem concerns control of a robot hand to manipulate an object in a desired manner. While classical dexterous manipulation strategies are based on stable grasping (or force closure), many human-like ... -
Path Following for Mechanical Systems Applied to Robotic Manipulators
(University of Waterloo, 2010-10-01)Many applications in robotics require faithfully following a prescribed path. Tracking controllers may not be appropriate for such a task, as there is no guarantee that the robot will stay on the path. The objective of ... -
Realtime Motion Planning for Manipulator Robots under Dynamic Environments: An Optimal Control Approach
(University of Waterloo, 2013-04-19)This report presents optimal control methods integrated with hierarchical control framework to realize real-time collision-free optimal trajectories for motion control in kinematic chain manipulator (KCM) robot systems ... -
Relative Pose Estimation Using Non-overlapping Multicamera Clusters
(University of Waterloo, 2014-01-17)This thesis considers the Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) problem using a set of perspective cameras arranged such that there is no overlap in their fields-of-view. With the known and fixed extrinsic calibration ... -
Robot Patrolling for Stochastic and Adversarial Events
(University of Waterloo, 2015-09-25)In this thesis, we present and analyze two robot patrolling problems. The first problem discusses stochastic patrolling strategies in adversarial environments where intruders use the information about a patrolling path to ... -
Robotic Path Planning for High-Level Tasks in Discrete Environments
(University of Waterloo, 2018-04-10)This thesis proposes two techniques for solving high-level multi-robot motion planning problems with discrete environments. We focus on an important class of problems that require an allocation of spatially distributed ... -
Robust Spline Path Following for Redundant Mechanical Systems
(University of Waterloo, 2015-05-20)Path following controllers make the output of a control system approach and traverse a pre-specified path with no a priori time-parametrization. The first part of the thesis implements a path following controller for a ... -
Scalable Human-Machine Interaction System for Real-Time Care in the Internet of Health Things
(University of Waterloo, 2020-08-28)The rise in numbers of individuals with weak immunity around the world and the aging of populations put an ever-growing pressure on healthcare and inevitably increases its cost. This phenomenon leads to larger portions of ... -
Scan Registration Using the Normal Distributions Transform and Point Cloud Clustering Techniques
(University of Waterloo, 2013-04-23)As the capabilities of autonomous vehicles increase, their use in situations that are dangerous or dull for humans is becoming more popular. Autonomous systems are currently being used in several military and civilian ...