Einladung zum Vortrag im Kolloquium Technische Kybernetik

 Modular Machines - reconfigurable mobile robots for research and education

Univ.-Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Dr. Michael Hofbauer
Institut für Automatisierungs- und Regelungstechnik
Private Universität UMIT
Hall in Tirol, Österreich

    Zeit: Dienstag, 19.01.2010 · 16:00 Uhr
Ort: IST-Seminarraum 3.243 · Pfaffenwaldring 9 · Campus Stuttgart-Vaihingen

Abstract

The diverse applications of modern mobile robots lead to a wide variety of drive-geometries and drive-functionalities. To support this diversity for robotics research and education we propose a modular platform to quickly configure/reconfigure various robot drives and build reconfigurable multi-robot systems. To control such an adaptable robot drive we developed a novel model-programmed procedure for on-line kinematics reasoning. Being adaptable with respect to a drive's geometry is, however, only one advantage of our approach. Our kinematics reasoning and control scheme also captures the mobility-implications of operational modes and faults in the drive (e.g. a blocked steering actuator). As a consequence, we directly obtain a fault-tolerant control scheme that can reconfigure a robot drive to compensate for faults and also inform a higher-level control system (e.g. path- and task-planner) about changed mobility capabilities of a robot.

Biographical Information

Univ.-Prof. Dr. Michael Hofbaur is head of the new Institute of Automation and Control Engineering at the private University UMIT in Hall in Tyrol, Austria. He received his Ph.D. from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering at Graz University of Technology in 1999. From 2000 to 2001 he was appointed as visiting Assistant Professor at the MIT Artificial Intelligence and the MIT Space Systems Lab in Cambridge, USA. In 2004, Dr. Hofbaur received the venia docendi at Graz for the scientific field "Automation of Complex Systems" and was appointed as Associate Professor (Ao.Univ.-Prof) at the Institute for Automation and Control / Graz University of Technology until 09-2009. Prof. Hofbaur's research interests include model-based methods for estimation, diagnosis and control of complex hybrid systems, with applications in mechatronic systems,in particular, autonomous mobile and immobile robots.