The Norwegian research programme on advanced robotic systems

Abstract

The Norwegian research programme on advanced robot systems has been focused on sensory control of robots for industrial applications and telerobotics for underwater operations. This paper gives an overview of experimental work and ongoing research. An exciting area in sensory control is visual servoing where camera images at video rate are used to grasp moving objects. Also compliant motion in partially unknown environments is a research topic. New robot control systems have been developed to apply sensory control to robotic manipulators at an acceptable sampling rate. In telerobotics the main work has been on the combination of remote control and local sensory loops in the manipulator. Also in this case visual servoing anti force control are important. The generation and updating of a world model used in a graphic display of the worksite using sensory information has been tested in combination with large delay times in the communication channel. The use of visual and acoustic data for the control of remotely operated vehicles and autonomous underwater vehicles is studied for use in robotic systems. Light-weight robot manipulators with redundant degrees of freedom and high performance joints are being designed for mobile robot applications.