An Integrated Prototyping Environment For Programmable AutomationMeshDynamics
Â
We are implementing a rapid prototyping environment for robotic systems, based on tenets of modularity,
reconfigurability and extendibility that may help build robot systems "faster, better and cheaper". Given a task
specification, (e.g. repair brake assembly), the user browses through a library of building blocks that include both
hardware and software components. Software advisors or critics recommend how blocks may be "snapped" together to
speedily construct alternative ways to satisfy task requirements. Mechanisms to allow "swapping" competing modules
for comparative test and evaluation studies are also included in the prototyping environment. After some iterations, a
stable configuration or "wiring diagram" emerges. This customized version of the general prototyping environment still
contains all the hooks needed to incorporate future improvements in component technologies and to obviate unplanned obsolescence...
Distributed robotics has been the focus of attention in recent years. The idea of using a group of robots instead of a single one to execute a task came from the necessity of accomplishing a task that is too complex for a single robot. The use of multiple processing units lead to a distributed system within a single robot. Modern robotics systems are increasingly distributed, heterogeneous, and collaborative and can involve challenging computational tasks. A distributed approach can offer desirable advantages such as improved performance. This paper presents an introduction to distributed robots. Matthew N. O. Sadiku | Uwakwe C. Chukwu | Abayomi Ajayi-Majebi | Sarhan M. Musa "Distributed Robotics: A Primer" Published in International Journal of Trend in Scientific Research and Development (ijtsrd), ISSN: 2456-6470, Volume-6 | Issue-4 , June 2022, URL: https://www.ijtsrd.com/papers/ijtsrd50026.pdf Paper URL: https://www.ijtsrd.com/engineering/mechanical-engineering/50026/distributed-robotics-a-primer/matthew-n-o-sadiku
UBCâs Cloud Innovation Centre (CIC) invites students to our AWS RoboMaker webinar and live lab on Thursday, July 22 from 1:00 to 3:30 pm PST. In this session, special guest Alex Coqueiro, will introduce you to AWS Robomaker, a service that makes it easy to develop, test, and deploy intelligent robotics applications at scale. We walk through the features of integrating key components into robotics, deploying a single solution, and discuss the uniquely designed models that allow for optimized robots use cases to get you to production fast. We will cover use cases, implementation, simulation, and deployment. Demos will be implemented using Python.
An Integrated Prototyping Environment For Programmable AutomationMeshDynamics
Â
We are implementing a rapid prototyping environment for robotic systems, based on tenets of modularity,
reconfigurability and extendibility that may help build robot systems "faster, better and cheaper". Given a task
specification, (e.g. repair brake assembly), the user browses through a library of building blocks that include both
hardware and software components. Software advisors or critics recommend how blocks may be "snapped" together to
speedily construct alternative ways to satisfy task requirements. Mechanisms to allow "swapping" competing modules
for comparative test and evaluation studies are also included in the prototyping environment. After some iterations, a
stable configuration or "wiring diagram" emerges. This customized version of the general prototyping environment still
contains all the hooks needed to incorporate future improvements in component technologies and to obviate unplanned obsolescence...
Distributed robotics has been the focus of attention in recent years. The idea of using a group of robots instead of a single one to execute a task came from the necessity of accomplishing a task that is too complex for a single robot. The use of multiple processing units lead to a distributed system within a single robot. Modern robotics systems are increasingly distributed, heterogeneous, and collaborative and can involve challenging computational tasks. A distributed approach can offer desirable advantages such as improved performance. This paper presents an introduction to distributed robots. Matthew N. O. Sadiku | Uwakwe C. Chukwu | Abayomi Ajayi-Majebi | Sarhan M. Musa "Distributed Robotics: A Primer" Published in International Journal of Trend in Scientific Research and Development (ijtsrd), ISSN: 2456-6470, Volume-6 | Issue-4 , June 2022, URL: https://www.ijtsrd.com/papers/ijtsrd50026.pdf Paper URL: https://www.ijtsrd.com/engineering/mechanical-engineering/50026/distributed-robotics-a-primer/matthew-n-o-sadiku
UBCâs Cloud Innovation Centre (CIC) invites students to our AWS RoboMaker webinar and live lab on Thursday, July 22 from 1:00 to 3:30 pm PST. In this session, special guest Alex Coqueiro, will introduce you to AWS Robomaker, a service that makes it easy to develop, test, and deploy intelligent robotics applications at scale. We walk through the features of integrating key components into robotics, deploying a single solution, and discuss the uniquely designed models that allow for optimized robots use cases to get you to production fast. We will cover use cases, implementation, simulation, and deployment. Demos will be implemented using Python.
Learning of robots by using & sharing the cloud computing techniquesEr. rahul abhishek
Â
Robots are shaping a new era in the technology, many
algorithms has been developed for their learning which
they can apply to find the solution for the problems that
they are facing. That is, we have tried to provide them a
basic intelligence (like recognition, collision avoidance,
etc.). But besides that basic intelligence we are interested
in developing an intelligent system in which robots will
use their experiences and share it with each other just like
humans, who have got all its intelligence by his
experience and imaginations and sharing it with each
other. To implement this intelligent system we can use a
local server (word interchangeable to database) that will
be restricted to a robot only and a Cloud (global) server
where the authorized robots can upload their experiences
which can be used by every robot (which is authorized to
that server) to solve their problems.
Swarm robotics : Design and implementationIJECEIAES
Â
This project presents a swarming and herding behaviour using simple robots. The main goal is to demonstrate the applicability of artiďŹcial intelligence (AI) in simple robotics that can then be scaled to industrial and consumer markets to further the ability of automation. AI can be achieved in many different ways; this paper explores the possible platforms on which to build a simple AI robots from consumer grade microcontrollers. Emphasis on simplicity is the main focus of this paper. Cheap and 8 bit microcontrollers were used as the brain of each robot in a decentralized swarm environment were each robot is autonomous but still a part of the whole. These simple robots donât communicate directly with each other. They will utilize simple IR sensors to sense each other and simple limit switches to sense other obstacles in their environment. Their main objective is to assemble at certain location after initial start from random locations, and after converging they would move as a single unit without collisions. Using readily available microcontrollers and simple circuit design, semi-consistent swarming behaviour was achieved. These robots donât follow a set path but will react dynamically to different scenarios, guided by their simple AI algorithm.
You are already the Duke of DevOps: you have a master in CI/CD, some feature teams including ops skills, your TTM rocks ! But you have some difficulties to scale it. You have some quality issues, Qos at risk. You are quick to adopt practices that: increase flexibility of development and velocity of deployment. An urgent question follows on the heels of these benefits: how much confidence we can have in the complex systems that we put into production? Letâs talk about the next hype of DevOps: SRE, error budget, continuous quality, observability, Chaos Engineering.
IJERA (International journal of Engineering Research and Applications) is International online, ... peer reviewed journal. For more detail or submit your article, please visit www.ijera.com
Re-Evaluating the Value and Market Positioning of Industrial CobotsLizzie Uhl
Â
As one of the largest integrators in the nation, JR Automation sees nearly every type of request for automation. Because of that, we have gained a unique perspective on what cobot features end consumers are actually asking for and are willing to spend money on.
This presentation focuses on where cobots are being applied, where they can bring the most value to a business, and how their value can be fully realized.
Journey from Monolith to a Modularized Application - Approach and Key Learnin...mfrancis
Â
OSGi Community Event 2017 Presentation by Emanoel Xavier (Intel) and Tim Ward (Paremus)
Open Security Controller (OSC) aims to increase the security of workloads running in cloud and data centers by orchestrating security virtual network functions (VNFs). To achieve that, one of the main design goals of OSC is to allow vendor customization while keeping its core code neutral. Additionally, as an open source project, another import design principal for OSC is code habitability. Evolving from a legacy monolithic application to a modularized one through OSGi has enabled OSC to implement these goals.
Bringing together a diverse group of security services and software defined network (SDN) providers was key to building the OSC community. This was possible due to the OSC plugin model using OSGi which allows specific vendors to integrate OSC with their existing solutions with minimum effort. Beyond its plugin model OSC also makes use of OSGi in its core components. This enables better extensibility, testability and overall maintainability of its code base. These aspects are key to OSC as it relates to the new and dynamic areas of SDN and security VNFs in cloud and data center environments and it must be able to easily adapt to the constantly changing requirements and technologies pertaining these fields.
In this talk we will explore the journey for turning OSC into a modularized application using OSGi, highlighting some of the achieved results, key learned lessons and the next steps for this work.
https://www.opensecuritycontroller.org/
To some extent comparing Android and Apple in this regard is misleading. Android OS is software, designed to run on a multitude of compliant, but separate, hardware. iOS is both the software and the hardware of the iPhone. The two are inseparable. This difference cannot be overstated and its ramifications are what truly separates Apple from other computer corporations, for better and worse.
Learning of robots by using & sharing the cloud computing techniquesEr. rahul abhishek
Â
Robots are shaping a new era in the technology, many
algorithms has been developed for their learning which
they can apply to find the solution for the problems that
they are facing. That is, we have tried to provide them a
basic intelligence (like recognition, collision avoidance,
etc.). But besides that basic intelligence we are interested
in developing an intelligent system in which robots will
use their experiences and share it with each other just like
humans, who have got all its intelligence by his
experience and imaginations and sharing it with each
other. To implement this intelligent system we can use a
local server (word interchangeable to database) that will
be restricted to a robot only and a Cloud (global) server
where the authorized robots can upload their experiences
which can be used by every robot (which is authorized to
that server) to solve their problems.
Swarm robotics : Design and implementationIJECEIAES
Â
This project presents a swarming and herding behaviour using simple robots. The main goal is to demonstrate the applicability of artiďŹcial intelligence (AI) in simple robotics that can then be scaled to industrial and consumer markets to further the ability of automation. AI can be achieved in many different ways; this paper explores the possible platforms on which to build a simple AI robots from consumer grade microcontrollers. Emphasis on simplicity is the main focus of this paper. Cheap and 8 bit microcontrollers were used as the brain of each robot in a decentralized swarm environment were each robot is autonomous but still a part of the whole. These simple robots donât communicate directly with each other. They will utilize simple IR sensors to sense each other and simple limit switches to sense other obstacles in their environment. Their main objective is to assemble at certain location after initial start from random locations, and after converging they would move as a single unit without collisions. Using readily available microcontrollers and simple circuit design, semi-consistent swarming behaviour was achieved. These robots donât follow a set path but will react dynamically to different scenarios, guided by their simple AI algorithm.
You are already the Duke of DevOps: you have a master in CI/CD, some feature teams including ops skills, your TTM rocks ! But you have some difficulties to scale it. You have some quality issues, Qos at risk. You are quick to adopt practices that: increase flexibility of development and velocity of deployment. An urgent question follows on the heels of these benefits: how much confidence we can have in the complex systems that we put into production? Letâs talk about the next hype of DevOps: SRE, error budget, continuous quality, observability, Chaos Engineering.
IJERA (International journal of Engineering Research and Applications) is International online, ... peer reviewed journal. For more detail or submit your article, please visit www.ijera.com
Re-Evaluating the Value and Market Positioning of Industrial CobotsLizzie Uhl
Â
As one of the largest integrators in the nation, JR Automation sees nearly every type of request for automation. Because of that, we have gained a unique perspective on what cobot features end consumers are actually asking for and are willing to spend money on.
This presentation focuses on where cobots are being applied, where they can bring the most value to a business, and how their value can be fully realized.
Journey from Monolith to a Modularized Application - Approach and Key Learnin...mfrancis
Â
OSGi Community Event 2017 Presentation by Emanoel Xavier (Intel) and Tim Ward (Paremus)
Open Security Controller (OSC) aims to increase the security of workloads running in cloud and data centers by orchestrating security virtual network functions (VNFs). To achieve that, one of the main design goals of OSC is to allow vendor customization while keeping its core code neutral. Additionally, as an open source project, another import design principal for OSC is code habitability. Evolving from a legacy monolithic application to a modularized one through OSGi has enabled OSC to implement these goals.
Bringing together a diverse group of security services and software defined network (SDN) providers was key to building the OSC community. This was possible due to the OSC plugin model using OSGi which allows specific vendors to integrate OSC with their existing solutions with minimum effort. Beyond its plugin model OSC also makes use of OSGi in its core components. This enables better extensibility, testability and overall maintainability of its code base. These aspects are key to OSC as it relates to the new and dynamic areas of SDN and security VNFs in cloud and data center environments and it must be able to easily adapt to the constantly changing requirements and technologies pertaining these fields.
In this talk we will explore the journey for turning OSC into a modularized application using OSGi, highlighting some of the achieved results, key learned lessons and the next steps for this work.
https://www.opensecuritycontroller.org/
To some extent comparing Android and Apple in this regard is misleading. Android OS is software, designed to run on a multitude of compliant, but separate, hardware. iOS is both the software and the hardware of the iPhone. The two are inseparable. This difference cannot be overstated and its ramifications are what truly separates Apple from other computer corporations, for better and worse.
5 Dysfunctions of a DevOps Team - Velocity Ignite 2014 - ScriptRockCloudCheckr
Â
DevOps is a human problem and a leadership problem. Building a DevOps culture requires more than giving developers root, installing a configuration management tool, using a source code repository, and proclaiming âyes, weâre a DevOps shop.â At the end of the day all aspects of the people, process, technology continuums get impacted by DevOps. Patrick Lencioniâs "Five Dysfunctions of a TeamâA Leadership Fable" is an outstanding business book that uses a model of 5 dysfunctions of a team that affect team performance.
Patrick Lencioniâs "Five Dysfunctions of a TeamâA Leadership Fable" is an outstanding business book that uses a model of 5 dysfunctions of a team that affect team performance. They are:
1. Absence of Trust
2. Fear of Conflict
3. Lack of Commitment
4. Avoidance of Accountability
5. Inattention to Results
Cloud and DevOps are independent but mutually reinforcing strategies for delivering business value through IT. However, the pace of disruption is accelerating.
If cloud is an instrument, then DevOps is the conductor that plays it. DevOps principles are transforming the way leading enterprises are shortening work cycles, increasing delivery frequency, and helping them adopt an attitude of continual experimentation.
These slides were used in a recent webcast featuring Kevin Behr, co-author of The Phoenix Project and VisibleOps Handbook and Mike Baukes, co-founder of ScriptRock who explored key aspects of how cloud computing can be leveraged to deliver ideas to market faster by activating DevOps principles in your IT Enterprise.
The live webcast can be found at http://info.scriptrock.com/devops_webinar_022714
DevOps unquestionably is one of the most transformational movements to happen to IT and is helping IT deliver to ideas to market faster. But where does one start? What should we focus on first. This infographic explores what are the critical success factors for ensure success with DevOps. A related eBook is available for download at http://info.scriptrock.com/prerequisites-for-devops-success.
ScriptRock is the easiest to use configuration testing platform. Used as a mechanism to test the underlying configuration state of applications and infrastructure, ScriptRock allows administrators the ability to guarantee the configuration state of complex enterprise systems easily.
1. Welcome Our Robot Overlords
By Stephen Cossell
Configuration Testing on a Fleet of Unmanned Ground Vehicles
Up until now, most of our discussion at ScriptRock has been on configuration testing in an
enterprise context.
Googleâs Driverless Car
And why not? These systems are complex, touched by many people, and they can be critical in
the day-to-day runnings of a large company. This post, however, is about changing out of our
suits and ties, and putting on a lab coat to look a little closer into the toys current academics
play with, called robots. Robotics systems are becoming more mainstream, and put into more
and more industrial and public-facing situations (military, mining, space exploration, deep sea
exploration, Googleâs driverless car), and will continue to become more mainstream for the
foreseeable future. The US military have their attack drones. Australia is a world leader in
autonomous mining (yes, those big trucks with wheels the size of a human are being driven
2. around mining sites autonomously). NASA is sending more and more awesome rovers to Mars,
and they plan on exploring Jupiter and Saturnâs moons with similar probes.
I, for one, welcome our new robotic overlords.
However, robotics systems will likely be just as complex, or even more so, in the coming years.
Ignoring the materials science, the mechanical design, and electrical hardware and the circuitry
that goes into a robotic system, and while just focusing on the networking and software
components, robots are complex machines. They will continue to grow in complexity as they are
made to function in more specific environments and adhere to strict safety regulations.
When a system goes down in the enterprise world it can cost companies hundreds of thousands
or even millions of dollars, maybe a few customers, and a bit of a bruised ego. When robotic
systems are unleashed into an industrial context and misbehave, they can cause real physical
destruction of objects, or even cost lives.
Industrial robotics engineers are going to have to adhere to very high standards in the coming
years. Unlike current software, any minor mishap with a robotics system could snowball into
public distrust and set the young industry back a number of years. Imagine the potential public
reaction to the Google car autonomously, but accidentally, running over and killing a person and
the public image of driverless cars everywhere. Compare that to a human accidentally running
over a person and killing themâŚ
Public facing robotics systems are going to have be designed, built, and maintained at the
highest standard and one of the most overlooked parts of this quality comes down to knowing
the state of your software environment and being able to validate it, at will.
Letâs step into the lab and have a look at a pretty simple robotics platform relative to industrial
public facing robots out there:
The team of engineers and researchers in the Mechatronics group at UNSW use a fleet of
UGVs (Unmanned Ground Vehicles) for teaching and research purposes[1][2].
3. UNSW Unmanned Ground Vehicle
The robots are designed to autonomously explore a large urban area and generate a 3D
virtualized representation of that area back on a base station computer.
Looking under the hood, each robot has a number of sensors that enable it to sense the world
around it. These include webcams, laser range finders, an IMU (Inertial Measurement Unit),
wheel turn and speed readers on the onboard DMC (Digital Motion Controller), and an Xbox
Kinect. In addition the robot has a number of actuators that allow it to move and interact with its
surroundings. These cover the drive and steering motors for the wheels as well as other motors
that assist some of the sensors in being able to sense with a greater field of view. A pretty
standard rig for ground vehicle applications.
Hereâs where we get to the complexity in the system: each sensor and each actuator has a
specific software module designed to interface with each piece of hardware. The system also
has many other small software modules, which handle data processing and decision making. At
the center of it all is a circular database system called Possum[4], which allows data to flow
between modules and auto-replicates data between robots and the base station computer.
Each of these software modules on each of the robots and base station computer have one or
more configuration files associated with them. Each machine has a set of startup scripts that
make sure the correct programs are started for a particular scenario, and that these programs
are started in the correct order.
4. Each hardware and non-hardware related software module relies on certain system settings to
be in place such as correct IP addresses, subnets, and gateways being set. Some of the older
sensors still make use of COM ports, so these need to be validated between the operating
system and configuration files.
For the team of engineers who maintain this robotic system, configuration errors are the most
frequent, ongoing problem. When a piece of software misbehaves, this functional error can be
identified and fixed permanently. Configuration errors, however, re-occur due to the system
being used in different contexts, and therefore requiring different configurations, on a regular
basis. A constantly changing configuration makes it difficult to confidently know which state the
system is set up for and manually validating a configuration is a time consuming process.
At the recent Australasian Conference on Robotics and Automation we presented work that
showed time taken to troubleshoot configuration problems on this system. In short, we created a
chaos script similar to Netflixâs Chaos Monkey, which was used to break a random, but critical,
configuration item within the system. An experienced engineer was then asked to diagnose the
problem using any resource they would normally have access to. On every second attempt the
engineer was additionally allowed access to a ScriptRock test package that covered the entire
configuration space of the robotic system. This test was run 50 times over 111 configuration
items. The time taken for the engineer to diagnose and solve the problem is shown by the graph
below[4]:
5. Red crosses indicate test attempts without the aid of the ScriptRock test package, while blue
circles indicate tests attempts where ScriptRock was allowed to be used. For those of you
playing at home, a total of around 5.5 hours was taken over 25 attempts under normal
conditions, compared to 45 minutes with the use of ScriptRock over the same number of
attempts.
Although this post has discussed how ScriptRock can greatly assist in validating a robotâs
software configuration for troubleshooting purposes, it is also being used as part of routine pre-
experiment checks, and to validate software environments of new robots that join the fleet.
Follow ScriptRock on Twitter
References:
[1] J. Guivant, S. Cossell, M. Whitty and J. Katupitiya, âInternet-based operation of autonomous
robots: The role of data replication, compression, bandwidth allocation and
visualizationâ, Journal of Field Robotics, Vol. 29, No. 5, pp. 793-818, September/October 2012.
(DOI: 10.1002/rob.21432)
[2] M. Whitty, S. Cossell, K. S. Dang, J.Guivant and J. Katupitiya, âAutonomous Navigation
using a real-time 3D point cloudâ, Australasian Conference on Robotics and Automation,
Brisbane, Australia, December 2010.
[3] J. Guivant, âPossum robotâ, http://www.possumrobot.com, 2012.
[4] S. Cossell, âA novel approach to automated systems engineering on a multi-agent robotics
platform using enterprise grade configuration testing softwareâ, Australasian Conference on
Robotics and Automation, Wellington, New Zealand, December, 2012.