Session WedAT1 Pegaso A Wednesday, October 10, 2012 ... - Lirmm

Session WedAT1 Pegaso A Wednesday, October 10, 2012, 08:30–09:30 

Pose Estimation 

Chair 

Co-Chair 

08:30–08:45 WedAT1.1 

A Flexible 3D Object Localization System for 

Industrial Part Handling 

Øystein Skotheim, Sigurd A. Fjerdingen 

SINTEF ICT, Trondheim, Norway 

Morten Lind, Pål Ystgaard 

SINTEF Raufoss Manufacturing AS, Trondheim, Norway 

• A flexible system is presented that can 

scan and localize work pieces in 3D for 

assembly and pick and place operations 

• The system includes software that 

recognizes and localizes objects based on 

an acquired 3D point cloud and a CAD 

model of the objects to search for 

• The method is based on oriented point 

pairs and a Hough-like voting method 

• An industrial prototype work cell for 

recognizing, grasping and packaging chair 

parts in card board boxes is presented as 

an example application of the system 

Vision and scanning robot and 

result of scanning and recognition 


3D Pose Estimation of Daily Objects Using an 

RGB-D Camera 

Changhyun Choi and Henrik I. Christensen 

College of Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA 

• An 6-DOF object pose estimation exploiting both depth and color 

information 

• Do not rely on the table-top assumption 

• Estimate pose of a target object in heavy clutter. 

• Define a color point pair feature which is employed in a voting scheme 

• Exploiting color information significantly enhances the performance of 

the voting process in terms of both time and accuracy 

• Extensive quantitative results of comparative experiments between our 

approach and a state-of-the-art are shown. 


6D pose estimation of textureless shiny objects 

using random ferns for bin-picking 

Jose Rodrigues, João Xavier, Pedro Aguiar 

Institute for Systems and Robotics, Instituto Superior Tecnico, UTL, Portugal 

Jun-Sik Kim, Takeo 

Kanade 

Robotics Institute, CMU, USA 

• Multi-light imaging system: Image color 

changes with surface normal, enabling 

efficient pose estimation from patches. 

• Data-driven method for 6D pose 

estimation: Random ferns map patches into 

pose hypotheses votes. 

• No need for object-specific tuning of 

parameters for various objects 

• Fast and Robust: Recognition runs within 

0.5 sec with 99.6% accuracy. 100 sequential 

picking tests involves strong occlusions, 

shadows, and inter-reflections. 

2012 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems 

–119– 

Makoto Furukawa 

Honda Engineering Co., Ltd., Japan 

Recognition of 2 distinct 

textureless shiny objects. 


Multi-Camera Based Real-Time Configuration 

Estimation of Continuum Robots 

Bernhard Weber and Paul Zeller 

Institute of Automatic Control Engineering, TU München, Germany 

Kolja Kühnlenz 

Institute for Advanced Study, TU München, Germany 

• Novel concept for configuration estimation 

of a continuum robot using a camera array 

• Robot parameters and scene coordinates 

are estimated optimally and 

simultaneously 

• Real-time capability is provided by fast 

feature matching and special treatment of 

sparse structure 

• Robot parameters have a known but 

arbitrary relation to camera parameters 

Continuum robot with attached 

camera array

Session WedAT2 Fenix 2 Wednesday, October 10, 2012, 08:30–09:30 

Physical Human-Robot Interaction I 

Chair Yasuhisa Hirata, Tohoku Univ. 

Co-Chair Dongheui Lee, Tech. Univ. of Munich 

08:30–08:45 WedAT2.1 

Wire-type Human Support System 

Controlled by Servo Brakes 

Yasuhisa Hirata, Yuki Tozaki and Kazuhiro Kosuge 

Department of Bioengineering and Robotics, Tohoku University, Japan 

• This paper presents a wire-type motion 

support system controlled by servo 

brakes. 

• This paper focuses on the feasible braking 

force region of the system. 

• We proposes the conditions for realizing 

the system with a large feasible braking 

force region, even if we do not use a large 

number of brake units. 

• We conduct path-following experiments 

considering table tennis as an example of 

sports training. 

Sport Training by using Wire-type 

Motion Support System 

09:00–09:15 WedAT2.3 

Elastic Strips 

Implementation on a Physical Humanoid Robot 

Jinsung Kwon and Oussama Khatib 

Stanford University, USA 

Taizo Yoshikawa 

Honda Research Institute USA, inc., USA 

• The Elastic Strip framework is a reactive motion modification 

approach for high d.o.f. robot tasks under real-time conditions. 

• The approach is implemented and tested on a humanoid 

robot. 

• The humanoid robot is able to reach a goal position by 

following the elastic strip path which is updated in real-time. 

08:45–09:00 WedAT2.2 

Real-time Estimate of Period Derivatives using Adaptive 

Oscillators: Application to Impedance-Based Walking Assistance 

R. Ronsse 1 , S.M.M. De Rossi 2 , N. Vitiello 2 , T. Lenzi 2 , B. Koopman 3 , 

H. van der Kooij 3 , M.C. Carrozza 2 , and A.J. Ijspeert 4 

1 Institute of Mechanics, Materials and Civil Engineering, 

Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium 

2 BioRobotics Institute, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Italy 

3 Biomechanical Engineering Laboratory, University of Twente, The 

Netherlands 

4 Biorobotics Laboratory, EPFL, Switzerland 

• New approach to infer velocity and 

acceleration from a noisy quasi-periodic 

position signal. 

• Using adaptive oscillators. 

• Measurement noise is filtered out AND 

estimates are delay-free with respect to 

the actual derivatives. 

• Validation with an impedance-based 

strategy for assisting human walking in the 

LOPES device. 

• Intrinsically stable method. 

Knee velocity and acceleration during 

walking. Black: actual kinematics; blue: 

Kalman filter; red: new approach. 

09:15–09:30 WedAT2.4 

6D Workspace Constraints 

for Physical Human-Robot Interaction using 

Invariance Control with Chattering Reduction 

Melanie Kimmel Martin Lawitzky Sandra Hirche 

Institute of Automatic Control Engineering 

Technische Universität München, Germany 


–120–

Session WedAT3 Pegaso B Wednesday, October 10, 2012, 08:30–09:30 

Field Robotics I 

Chair Urbano Nunes, Univ. de Coimbra 

Co-Chair Marcel Bergerman, Carnegie Mellon Univ. 

08:30–08:45 WedAT3.1 

Natural Feature Based Localization 

in Forested Environments 

Meng Song, Fengchi Sun 

College of Software, Nankai University, China 

Karl Iagnemma 

Department of Mechanical Engineering, MIT, USA 

• A new feature based 

scan matching method 

for solving full 6D 

localization problem in 

forested environments. 

• Tree trunks are directly 

utilized as high-level 

features for registration. 

• The registration result is 

independent of the initial 

poses of the scans. 

09:00–09:15 WedAT3.3 

Electro-hydraulically actuated forestry 

manipulator: Modeling and Identification 

Pedro La Hera 

Forest Technology, SLU, Sweden 

Bilal Ur Rehman and Daniel Ortiz Morales 

Applied Physics, Umeå University, Sweden 

• We consider the problem of 

modeling dynamics of a electrohydraulic 

forestry manipulator. 

• Results of simulation tests show a 

significant correspondence of the 

model to the recorded data 

• Such models are to be used 

further for model based design. 

Experimental setup 

08:45–09:00 WedAT3.2 

A Practical Obstacle Detection System 

for Autonomous Orchard Vehicles 

Gustavo Freitas 

Dept. of Electrical Eng., Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil 

Bradley Hamner, Marcel Bergerman and Sanjiv Singh 

Field Robotics Center, Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, USA 

• Goal: An obstacle detection system for 

autonomous orchard vehicle navigation 

between rows of trees 

• Key requirement: To be affordable to 

growers, the system should not add to the 

hardware cost of the vehicle 

• Our approach: Detect people and bins 

using a laser-scanner, a low-cost inertial 

measurement unit, and steering and wheel 

encoders 

• Results: Field experiments in apple 

orchards show the system reliably detects 

the target obstacles, and to an extent 

small and moving ones 


–121– 

Person detected during field 

tests. The perceived obstacle is 

marked with a black star. 

09:15–09:30 WedAT3.4 

Rocker-Pillar : Design of the Rough Terrain 

Mobile Robot Platform with Caterpillar and 

Rocker Bogie Mechanism 

Dongkyu Choi, Jeong R Kim, Sunme Cho, Seungmin Jung, 

and Jongwon Kim 

School of Mechanical Engineering, 

Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea 

• Mobile robot platform with caterpillar on 

front of the rocker-bogie mechanism 

• High maneuverable on urban environment 

by using caterpillars 

• High stability on rough terrain in a high 

speed with rocker-bogie mechanism 

• Experiments are performed on rough 

terrain (rugged terrain, holes, steps, and 

stairs ) 

r ugged t er r ai n 

hol e 

s t ep s t ai r


Humanoid Robots II 

Chair Paul Y. Oh, Drexel Univ. 

Co-Chair 

08:30–08:45 WedAT4.1 

p ref i 

Online Walking Pattern Generation for Push 

Recovery and Minimum Delay to Commanded 

Change of Direction and Speed 

Junichi Urata 1 , Koichi Nshiwaki 2 , Yuto Nakanishi 1 , 

Kei Okada 1 , Satoshi Kagami 2 and Masayuki Inaba 1 

1 Department of Mechano-Informatics, The University of Tokyo, Japan 

2 National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) 

• New online walking pattern generation method 

• Direction and speed change with minimum delay 

• Push recovery while walking 

x,x’ 

Original P ref 

p ref 

Modification 

(p i ,x i ) 

LIPM 

State Error without 

Offset 

x 

ZMP-CoM Loop 

M 

CoM 

Generation 

HPF 

t 

Delay 

y 

Full Body 

Dynamics 

Compensation 

Error 

t 

+ - 

Real World 

Model 

Error 

K 

External Force 

Stabilizer 

09:00–09:15 WedAT4.3 

Applying Human Motion Capture to Design Energyefficient 

Trajectories for Miniature Humanoids 

Kiwon Sohn and Paul Oh 

Mechanical Engineering and Mechanics, Drexel University, USA 

• Reinforcement Learning based Approach 

to Optimize Motions for Humanoids 

• Optimize the Trajectories with respect to 

Energy Consumption and Similarity to a 

Human’s Natural Motion 

• Energy Cost is Estimated by a Dynamic 

Model(Propac), and Validated using 

System Identification(SID) 

• With a Mocap, Human Motions were 

Collected and Produced Another Cost for 

Optimization 

08:45–09:00 WedAT4.2 

Humanoid Full-body Controller 

Adapting Constraints in Structured Objects 

through Updating Task-level Reference Force 

Shunichi Nozawa, Iori Kumagai, Yohei Kakiuchi, 

Kei Okada and Masayuki Inaba 

Department of Mechano-Infomatics, The University of Tokyo, Japan 

• Force-control-based Humanoid 

Manipulation of Structured Objects 

• Update of Hand’s Reference Forces based 

on Movable Direction to Adapt to 

Operational Force Change 

• Experiments for Five Different Structured 

Objects 

Opening a Door and Going through It 


–122– 

Object Velocity Command 

Reference Force 

Update 


Force-based 

Humanoid Controller 

Joint Angles 

Real Robot 

Structured Object 

Humanoid’s Controller 

based on Update of 


- 

+ 

Reaction Force 

09:15–09:30 WedAT4.4 

Trajectory Design and Control of 

Edge-landing Walking of a Humanoid for 

Higher Adaptability to Rough Terrain 

Koichi Nishiwaki and Satoshi Kagami 

Digital Human Research Center, AIST, Japan 

JST, CREST, Japan 

• Online decision of stepping position, 

landing edge, and step timing for the 

balance maintenance of walking is 

presented. 

• Unknown roughness along forward 

direction is explicitly considered. 

• Inclined sole landing is used for estimating 

the decrease of the support region. 

• The effect of multi-body dynamics is also 

considered when deciding the stepping 

position.

Session WedAT5 Gemini 2 Wednesday, October 10, 2012, 08:30–09:30 

Kinematic Modeling 

Chair 

Co-Chair 

08:30–08:45 WedAT5.1 

Constant curvature continuum kinematics 

as fast approximate model for the 

Bionic Handling Assistant 

Matthias Rolf and Jochen J. Steil 

Research Institute for Cognition and Robotics (CoR-Lab), 

Bielefeld University, Germany 

• The Bionic Handling Assistant is a lightweight 

continuum robot actuated pneumatically 

• We evaluate the use of a constant curvature 

approach in order to simulate its kinematics 

• We provide a new, elegant and parameterless 

method to deal with the geometric singularity 

• The model is compared to ground truth motion 

data recorded on the robot 

• Result: only 1% relative prediction error 

• Computationally very fast method with 

measured 47900Hz on a single CPU core 

• Open source implementation of kinematics 

and 3D visualization 1 

1 http://www.cor-lab.de/software-continuum-kinematics-simulation 

Kinematic structure and model 

(background) of the 

Bionic Handling Assistant 

09:00–09:15 WedAT5.3 

Forward Kinematic Model for Continuum 

Robotic Surfaces 

Jessica Merino and Ian D. Walker 

Electrical & Computer Engineering, Clemson University, USA 

Anthony L. Threatt and Keith E. Green 

School of Architecture, Clemson University, USA 

• Continuum robotic two-dimensional 

surfaces have received little attention in 

the realm of robotic research. 

• Such surfaces hold potential use in many 

unusual applications that rigid link robots 

cannot afford. 

• We introduce novel kinematic models for 

these continuum robotic surfaces. 

• We then compare the kinematic models to 

physical continuum surfaces and validate 

their performance. 

08:45–09:00 WedAT5.2 

Fast Inverse Kinematics Algorithm for Large DOF 

System with Decomposed Gradient Computation 

Based on Recursive Formulation of Equilibrium 

Ko Ayusawa and Yoshihiko Nakamura 

Department of Mechano-Informatics, The University of Tokyo, Japan 

• Fast inverse kinematics method for Large 

DOF system is proposed. 

• The method utilizes nonlinear programing 

techniques that require the gradient of 

cost function. 

• The gradient is computed from static 

equilibrium by the recursive Newton-Euler 

algorithm. 

• The method is tested on a large-DOF 

manipulator and a human musculoskeletal 

model. 


–123– 

Conceptual diagram of the 

proposed method 

09:15–09:30 WedAT5.4 

A Method for Measuring the Upper Limb Motion and 

Computing a Compatible Exoskeleton Trajectory 

Nathanael Jarrassé and Vincent Crocher and Guillaume Morel 

Pierre et Marie Curie University 

Institute for Intelligent Systems and Robotics, CNRS - UMR 7222 

Paris – France 

Emails : {jarrasse, crocher, morel}@isir.upmc.fr 

- This paper deals with the problem of 

computing trajectories for an exoskeleton 

that match a motion recorded on a given 

subject. 

- Direct mapping of human joint posture to 

the exoskeleton joint space can not give 

good reproduction results without complex 

models of the robot and the human limb. 

- Thanks to passive fixation mechanisms, 

and the dual property of isostaticity in the 

coupling, we were able to compute 

kinematically compatible postures for 4 DoF 

exoskeleton with several interaction points 

with an acceptable error (10mm), and 

without requiring any model of subject arm. 

Subject wearing the two splints 

with optical markers and 

performing a pointing task without 

robot, during the record phase


Mapping I 

Chair 

Co-Chair 

08:30–08:45 WedAT6.1 

IPJC: The Incremental Posterior Joint 

Compatibility Test for Fast Feature Cloud 

Matching 

Yangming Li 

Institute of Intelligence Machines, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China 

Edwin Olson 

Computer Science and Engineering, University of Michigan, USA 

• We propose a new 

probabilistic data association 

method for feature clouds. 

• Dramatically faster than 

JCBB, while mathematically 

equivalent in linear case. 

• Better false positive/true 

positive performance than 

JCBB in non-linear case. 

09:00–09:15 WedAT6.3 

Patch Map: A Benchmark for Occupancy Grid 

Algorithm Evaluation 

Rehman S. Merali and Timothy D. Barfoot 

University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies, Canada 

• Traditional occupancy grid (OG) mapping 

makes two assumptions for computational 

efficiency 

• We present the full Bayesian solution for 

OG mapping, which makes no assumptions 

• The full solution cannot be computed for 

realistic 2D (or 3D) maps, so we introduce 

(a) Traditional occupancy grid mapping 

a novel patch map algorithm 

• The patch map is shown to approximate the 

full solution in a simple 1D test case, 

whereas traditional OG mapping does not 

• The patch map is shown to work on realistic 

2D data, where the full solution cannot be 

computed 

• The patch map is a suitable benchmark to 

quantify/optimize future online OG mapping (b) Patch map algorithm 

algorithms 

Patch map algorithm better approximates 

the true information in the map. 

08:45–09:00 WedAT6.2 

Fast Incremental Clustering and Representation 

of a 3D Point Cloud Sequence with Planar Regions 

Francesco Donnarumma 

Istituto di Scienze e Tecnologie della Cognizione, CNR, Italy 

Vincenzo Lippiello 

Dipartimento di Informatica e Sistemistica, 

Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, Italy 

Matteo Saveriano 

Institute of Automatic Control Engineering, 


• An incremental clustering technique to 

partition 3D points into planar regions is 

presented 

• Incremental PCA and a compact 

geometrical representation (concavehull) 

for computational efficiency 

• The algorithm works in real-time on 

unknown and noisy data 

• Validated both on synthetic and real 

(interior of a building) datasets 

09:15–09:30 WedAT6.4 

Independent Markov Chain Occupancy Grid Maps 

for Representation of Dynamic Environments 

Jari Saarinen 

Automation and Systems Technology, Aalto University, Finland 

Henrik Andreasson, Achim J. Lilienthal 

Center of Applied Autonomous Sensor Systems, Örebro University, Sweden 

� Each cell is an independent Markov chain 

(iMac) 

• The state transition parameters are 

modeled as two Poisson processes 

• Online learning of parameters 

• Model estimates both the expected 

occupancy as well as behavior of 

dynamics on a cell level (static, dynamic 

and shades of semi-static) 

• Approach is evaluated with a long-term 

dataset taken from an AGV in production 

use. 


–124– 

Evolution of model parameters

Session WedAT7 Vega Wednesday, October 10, 2012, 08:30–09:30 

Multiple Mobile Robot Planning I 

Chair Ronald Arkin, Georgia Tech. 

Co-Chair 

08:30–08:45 WedAT7.1 

Combining Classification and Regression for 

WiFi Localization of Heterogeneous Robot 

Teams in Unknown Environments 

Benjamin Balaguer, Gorkem Erinc, and Stefano Carpin 

School of Engineering, University of California, Merced, U.S.A. 

• Solves the problem of robot localization 

with wireless signals using data-driven 

machine learning classification and 

regression techniques. 

• Implementation of six classification 

algorithms, compared and evaluated on 

two different datasets. 

• Novel regression algorithm builds upon the 

best classification algorithms. 

• End-to-end algorithm exploits robots’ 

odometry with Monte Carlo Localization. 

• Algorithm works in completely unknown 

environments, builds maps efficiently, and 

localizes in real-time. 

Localization traces (SLAM, WiFi 

MCL, and Ground Truth) for an 

indoor exploration scenario 

09:00–09:15 WedAT7.3 

A Bio-Inspired Developmental Approach to 

Swarm Robots Self-Organization 

Yan Meng 

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Stevens Institute of 

Technology, USA 

Hongliang Guo 

Almende Organizing Networks, Netherlands 

• Inspired by biological morphogensis, a 

developmental approach, i.e., network motifs 

based gene regulatory network model (NM- 

GRN), is proposed for self-organization of 

swarm robots to autonomously generate 

dynamic patterns to adapt to uncertain 

environments 

• First, a general GRN model is proposed with 

predefined network motifs as building blocks, 

then covariance matrix adaptation evolution 

strategy is applied to evolve the structure 

and parameters of the general GRN model 

to build up the NM-GRN 

• Experimental results demonstrate the 

efficiency and robustness of the NM-GRN 

model. 

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Swarm robots traverse uncertain 

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08:45–09:00 WedAT7.2 

Distributed Coordination of a Formation of 

Heterogeneous Agents with Individual Regrets 

and Asynchronous Communications 

Nicolas Carlési 

LIRMM, Univ. Montpellier 2, France 

Pascal Bianchi 

Institut Télécom / Télécom Paris-Tech, CNRS – LTCI, France 

• Objective: a distributed algorithm able 

to coordinate heterogeneous agents to 

perform various missions. 

• Proposed approach: each agent 

minimizes a regret function which takes 

into account natural motion constraints 

and individual objectives in order to find 

its control variables. 

• Simulations: comparison of the agents’ 

behavior for different communication 

scenarios. 


–125– 

The trajectories of the agents 

09:15–09:30 WedAT7.4 

Real-time Optimization of Trajectories that 

Guarantee the Rendezvous of Mobile Robots 

Sven Gowal and Alcherio Martinoli 

DISAL, EPFL, Switzerland 

• The decentralized rendezvous of 

differential-wheeled robots is 

investigated. 

• The individual trajectories are 

optimized according to a userdefined 

cost function using receding 

horizon control. 

• Mathematical guarantees on the 

convergence of the robots to a 

common rendezvous location are 

given. 

Trajectories of 4 real Khepera III 

robots performing the rendezvous


Dynamics and Control I 

Chair 

Co-Chair 

08:30–08:45 WedAT8.1 

Contribution to the modeling of Cablesuspended 

Parallel Robot hanged on the four 

points 

Mirjana Filipovic,Mihajlo Pupin Institute, University of Belgrade, Serbia, 

Ana Djuric,Wayne State University , Detroit, MI 48202, U.S.A., 

Ljubinko Kevac,School of Electrical Engineering, The University of Belgrade, 

Serbia 

• The kinematic and dynamic model of the 

Cable-suspended Parallel Robot - CPR 

system is generated via Jacobi matrix. 

• The dynamical model is calculated by 

mapping the resultant forces which are 

acting on the shaft of each motor and 

forces acting on a camera carrier by the 

Jacobi matrix. 

• The software packages AIRCAMA has 

been used to verify the selection of motors 

for any size of workspace, any weight or 

desired velocity of a camera carrier, and 

so on. 

z 

y 

O 

wall anchor 

contour of the workspace 

y 

x 

. O 

z x 

A 

motorized winch 4 

of fiber-optic kablae 

fiber-optic cable 

camera platform 

winch 4 

motor 4 

winch 3 

motor 3 

motorized 

winch-1 

CPR, a) in 3D b) top view 

winch 1 

camera platform 

motor 1 

contour of the workspace 

motor 2 

winch 2 

s 

pulleys 

v 

motorized 

winch-2 

θ 2 

θ 3 

θ 1 motorized 

winch-3 

09:00–09:15 WedAT8.3 

Planning Trajectories on Uneven Terrain using 

Optimization and Non-Linear Time Scaling 

Techniques 

Arun. K. Singh + , K. Madhava Krishna + and Srikanth Saripalli ++ 

+ Robotics Research Centre IIIT-Hyderabad, India 

++ ASTRIL Arizona State University, U.S.A 

• A path is computed in terms of some 

parametric functions in terms of some 

variable u 

• A transformation from the variable u to 

time t is done through a scaling function 

h(u) 

• A novel scaling function in the form h(u) = 

a*exp(b*u) is proposed. 

• Framework for choosing appropriate a and 

b is proposed. 

• The resulting velocity and acceleration 

through scaling function satisfy stability 

constraints. 

pulleys 

k 

n 

k 

wall anchor 

n 

d 

a) 

b) 

h 

m 

θ 4 

h 

Vehicle evolving on Uneven 

terrain along a stable path 

m 

08:45–09:00 WedAT8.2 

Modeling and Control of a Flying Robot 

for Contact Inspection 

Matteo Fumagalli and Raffaella Carloni and Stefano Stramigioli 

Robotics And Mechatronics, University of Twente, The Netherlands 

Roberto Naldi and Alessandro Macchelli and Lorenzo Marconi 

CASY, University of Bologna, Italy 

Analysis of the Interaction 

of 

Quadrotor UAV enhanced 

with 

a multi-DoF Manipulator, 

with 

a R emote Environment 

• Modeling of the Flying Robot 

• Control of a floating base 

manipulation system for 

physical interaction 

• E xperimental Validation 

09:15–09:30 WedAT8.4 

Distributed Voronoi partitioning for multi-robot 

systems with limited range sensors 

K.R. Guruprasad 

Department of Mechanical Engineering, National Institute of Technology 

Karnataka, Surathkal, India 

Prithviraj Dasgupta 

Department of Computer Science, University of Nebraska, Omaha, USA 

• Each robot constructs the 

corresponding range constrained 

Voronoi cell in a distributed 

manner. 

• Only the positional information 

about the robots within 

communication range is used. 

• Communication range should be at 

least twice that of the sensor 

range. 

• Relative position in polar 

coordinate system is used. 

• Structured and efficient 

computation of Voronoi cells. 


–126– 

Range constrained Voronoi cell 

constructed using the proposed algorithm


Medical Robotics I 

Chair Fumihito Arai, Nagoya Univ. 

Co-Chair Jake Abbott, Univ. of Utah 

08:30–08:45 WedAT9.1 

Control Strategies of an Assistive Robot 

Using a Brain-Machine Interface 

Andrés Úbeda, Eduardo Iáñez, Javier Badesa, 

Ricardo Morales, José M. Azorín, Nicolás García 

Biomedical Neuroengineering Group, 

Miguel Hernández University of Elche, Spain 

• An assistive application has been 

designed combining a BMI and a 

pneumatic planar robot 

• The application consists of 

performing movements of the 

robot to reach several targets 

• The non-invasive spontaneous 

BMI is based on the correlation of 

EEG maps 

• Two control protocols are 

compared: a hierarchical control 

protocol and a directional control 

protocol 

09:00–09:15 WedAT9.3 

Optical Encoding of Catheter Motion Capture for 

Quantitative Evaluation in Endovascular Surgery 

Hirokatsu Kodama, Carlos Tercero, Katsutoshi Ooe, 

Chaoyang Shi, Seiichi Ikeda and Toshio Fukuda 

Micro-Nano Syatems Engineering, Nagoya University, Japan 

Fumihito Arai 

Mechanical Science and Engineering, Nagoya University, Japan 

Makoto Negoro 

Neurosurgery, Fujita Health University, Japan 

Ikuo Takahashi 

Neurosurgery, Anjo Kosei Hospital, Japan 

Guiryong Kown 

Product Division, Terumo Clinical Supply, Japan 

• Optical Encoding of linear and 

rotational motion of the catheter 

• Quantitative evaluation of human skills 

with the Cyber-physical system 

• Comparison of catheter manipulation 

skills between novice users and 

medical doctor 

Cyber-Physical System for 

technical skill evaluation 

08:45–09:00 WedAT9.2 

Non-ideal Behaviors of Magnetically Driven 

Screws in Soft Tissue 

Arthur W. Mahoney¹, Nathan D. Nelson², Erin M. Parsons² 

and Jake J. Abbott² 

¹ School of Computing, ² Dept. of Mech. Engineering, University of Utah, USA 

• Untethered, magnetically driven 

screws have been studied for the 

delivery of biomedical payloads 

through human tissue. 

• We present magnetic 

phenomena that cause non-ideal 

screw behavior while operating in 

soft tissue. 

• The undesired phenomena 

harms screw stability and control 

during normal operation, and 

must be accounted for in closedloop 

control. 

• We demonstrate our results with 

an artificial tissue phantom. 


–127– 

While steering, magnetic torque will always 

cause a magnetic screw to yaw perpendicular 

to the desired direction. (Image sequence) 

09:15–09:30 WedAT9.4 

A Voice-Coil Actuated Ultrasound Micro-Scanner 

for Intraoral High Resolution Impression Taking 

Thorsten Vollborn, Daniel Habor, Simon Junk, 

Klaus Radermacher and Stefan Heger 

Chair of Medical Engineering, RWTH Aachen University, Germany 

• Silicone based impression-taking of 

prepared teeth is well-established but 

error-prone and inefficient for CAD/CAM of 

dental prosthetics 

• We designed an intraoral ultrasonic device 

for micrometer resolution scanning 

• We used a 2-DOF high-frequency concept 

based on voice-coil technology for precise 

& highly dynamic scanning 

• In this contribution, we describe the set-up 

and investigate the dependency of the 

lateral displacement of the micro-scanners 

end-effector from the oscillation rate using 

laser triangulation

Session WedAT10 Lince Wednesday, October 10, 2012, 08:30–09:30 

Skill Learning – Dynamics 

Chair Rüdiger Dillmann, KIT Karlsruhe Inst. for Tech. 

Co-Chair 

08:30–08:45 WedAT10.1 

Autonomous Online Learning of Velocity 

Kinematics on the iCub: a Comparative Study 

Alain Droniou, Serena Ivaldi, Vincent Padois and Olivier Sigaud 

Institut des Systèmes Intelligents et de Robotique - CNRS UMR 7222, 

Université Pierre et Marie Curie 

• Incremental and autonomous online 

learning of velocity kinematics, from 

scratch and in a limited time 

• Visual servoing task with general target 

and end-effector (unknown tool) 

• Three contexts: reaching the target in one 

or two different workspaces; tracking a 

target moving unpredictably by a human 

• Comparison of three ML algorithms: 

LWPR, XCSF and ISSGPR 

• Testing generalization capabilities, velocity 

in learning and robustness of parameters 

• ISSGPR performs better in all studied 

criteria 

The learning contexts 


Learning Concurrent Motor Skills in Versatile 

Solution Spaces 

Christian Daniel, Gerhard Neumann and Jan Peters 

FG Intelligent Autonomous Systems, TU Darmstadt, Germany 

Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, Germany 

• Many interesting motor skill tasks 

have several distinct solutions. 

• Representing multiple solutions 

ensures operability of the robot 

even if the environment changes 

and can in addition lead to faster 

learning. 

• We present a hierarchical policy 

search method which can 

simultaneously learn multiple 

motor skills to solve complex 

tasks. 


Online Learning of Inverse Dynamics via 

Gaussian Process Regression 

Joseph Sun de la Cruz 

National Instruments, USA 

Bill Owen Dana Kulić 

University of Waterloo, Canada 

• On-line learning of the inverse dynamics of a robot manipulator with 

Gaussian Process Regression 

• Model is trained on a sparse subset of the observed data, with incremental 

updates to both the model and the hyper-parameters 

• Investigate the impact of full or partial prior information on the convergence 

• Comparison to existing approaches shows improved accuracy and reduced 

computational requirements 

Computation Time Required for a Single Prediction 


Learning Robot Dynamics with 

Kinematic Bézier Maps 

Stefan Ulbrich, Michael Bechtel, 

Tamim Asfour and Rüdiger Dillmann 

Humanoids and Intelligence Systems Lab 

Institute for Anthropomatics at the Karlsruhe Institute for Technology 

• Novel model-based machine 

learning algorithm 

• Tailored to efficiently learn the 

inverse dynamics 

• Based on the Kinematic Bézier 

Maps algorithm 

• Exact encoding of the equations of 

motion 

• Batch and incremental (online) 

learning 


–128– 

Plot of the Coriolis and centripetal 

forces on a robot joint

Session WedBT1 Pegaso A Wednesday, October 10, 2012, 09:30–10:30 

Sensor Fusion 

Chair Reid Simmons, Carnegie Mellon Univ. 

Co-Chair Magnus Jansson, KTH Royal Inst. of Tech. 

09:30–09:45 WedBT1.1 

Ground Plane Feature Detection in Mobile 

Vision-Aided Inertial Navigation 

Ghazaleh Panahandeh, Nasser Mohammadiha, Magnus Jansson 

KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden 

• The hardware of the mobile system consists of a monocular camera 

mounted on an inertial measurement unit (IMU). 

• Exploiting the complementary nature of the IMU-camera sensor fusion 

system for estimating the camera translation and rotation, the developed 

algorithm consists of two parts: 

I. Homography-based outlier rejection 

II. Normal-based outlier rejection 

10:00–10:15 WedBT1.3 

IEEE/RSJ IROS 2012 Digest Template 

Gaussian Process for lens distortion modeling 

Pradeep Ranganathan and Edwin Olson 


Contributions: 

• Incorporate a GP model into a factor 

graph inference framework optimized for 

Gaussian factor potentials. 

• Model evaluation based on test image set. 

• GP distortion models achieve accuracy 

comparable to the best parametric model. 

• GP models provide an implicit but rigorous 

framework for automatically determining 

distortion model complexity. 

09:45–10:00 WedBT1.2 

Sensor Fusion for 

Human Safety in Industrial Workcells 

Paul Rybski, Peter Anderson-Sprecher, Daniel Huber, 

Chris Niessl, and Reid Simmons 

The Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, USA 

• We present a sensor-based approach 

for ensuring safety of people in 

proximity to robots. 

• Our approach fuses data from multiple 

3D sensors into an evidence grid. 

• People and robots are surrounded by a 

safety and danger zone, respectively. 

• Impending intersections between safety 

and danger zones are identified and the 

robot is stopped. 


–129– 

The person’s position is registered by the 

3D sensors (shown in green) and is 

compared against the 3D volume filled by 

the robot (shown in red). 


Distributed Altitude and Attitude Estimation 

from Multiple Distance Measurements 

Maximilian Kriegleder, Raymond Oung and Raffaello D’Andrea 

Institute for Dynamic Systems and Control, ETH Zurich, Switzerland 

• Distance sensors are attached to 

known positions on a rigid body. 

• Attitude and altitude may be 

estimated directly when sensors are 

centrally measurable. 

• For distributed sensor networks, this 

approach is modified to a scalable, 

distributed scheme. 

• In the limit of sharing information 

between sensor nodes, the 

estimates approach those 

obtainable in a centralized system. 

Each module of the Distributed Flight Array 

obtains a distance measurement and 

communicates with its neighbours.

Session WedBT2 Fenix 2 Wednesday, October 10, 2012, 09:30–10:30 

Physical Human-Robot Interaction II 

Chair Yasuhisa Hirata, Tohoku Univ. 


09:30–09:45 WedBT2.1 

Human-Humanoid Haptic Joint Transportation 

Case Study 

Antoine Bussy André Crosnier 

Université Montpellier 2-CNRS LIRMM, France 

Abderrahmane Kheddar François Keith 

CNRS-AIST Joint Robotics Laboratory, Japan 

• Study of a Human-Human Joint 

Transportation Task 

• Task Decomposition in Motion Primitives 

to estimate the leader's intentions 

• Trajectory-based Impedance Control 

• Experiments with our humanoid robot 

HRP2 to assess our approach 

HRP2 carrying a table with a 

human partner 


Feedback Motion Planning and Learning from 

Demonstration in Physical Robotic Assistance: 

Differences and Synergies 

Martin Lawitzky Jose Ramon Medina 

Dongheui Lee Sandra Hirche 



• Goal-directed physical assistance behavior 

generated through 

• Feedback Motion Planning (SNG) 

• Learning from Demonstration (tHMM) 

• Is exploitation of complementary strengths 

possible through fusion? 

• Three fusion methods proposed: 

• Hierarchical multi-criterion optimization 

• Virtual demonstration from planning 

• Uncertainty-based blending 

• Evaluation in 2-DoF VR and in 6-DoF on 

highly integrated mobile manipulator 

• Fusion outperforms individual algorithms 


Disagreement-Aware Physical Assistance 

Through Risk-Sensitive Optimal Feedback 

Control 

J.R. Medina, T. Lorenz, D. Lee and S. Hirche 



• Goal: intuitive proactive physical robotic 

assistance � requires human haptic 

behavior model for anticipation 

• Challenge: robot predictions might 

disagree with real human intentions 

• Method: probabilistic model based 

anticipation using risk –sensitive control 

with online disagreement estimation 

• Result: adaptive robot role allocation 

depending on estimated disagreement and 

prediction uncertainty. Psychological 

experiments indicate higher helpfulness 

and decreased human effort. 



Paper Title in One or Two Lines 

Han Pang Huang*, Tzu-Hao Huang, Ching-An Cheng, 

Jiun-Yih Kuan, Po-Ting Lee, Shih-Yi Huang 

Department of Mechanical Engineering, National Taiwan University, Taiwan 

• Design concept of BTSA: backdrivable 

torsion spring actuator is constructed 

using a simple torsion spring, bevel gears, 

and an actuator. 

• A human-robot interaction model is 

proposed to investigate the dynamic 

properties of the system. 

• Hybrid control that switches between 

direct EMG biofeedback control and 

zero impedance control is proposed to 

provide a new rehabilitation training and 

walking assistance mechanism for 

rehabilitation. 

• Both simulations and experiments are 

conducted to show some desired 

properties of the proposed BTSA and 

hybrid control system. 


–130– 

Design Concept of BTSA & 

Hybrid Control of direct EMG 

biofeedback control and zero 

impedance control

Session WedBT3 Pegaso B Wednesday, October 10, 2012, 09:30–10:30 

Field Robotics II 

Chair Urbano Nunes, Univ. de Coimbra 

Co-Chair Marcel Bergerman, Carnegie Mellon Univ. 

09:30–09:45 WedBT3.1 

Monocular Visual Navigation of an Autonomous 

Vehicle in Natural Scene Corridor-like Environments 

Ji Zhang, George Kantor, 

Marcel Bergerman, and Sanjiv Singh 

The Robotics Institute 

Carnegie Mellon University, USA 

• Goal: Autonomous vehicle row following in 

modern orchards using a monocular camera 

• Approach: 

I. Reconstruct tree rows based on 

structure from motion while 

minimizing variance of vehicle lookahead 

point 

II. Motion estimation is obtained from 

monocular camera and wheel 

encoders only 

• Results: 1.7 km of successful autonomous 

driving in a variety of orchards with different 

environmental conditions 


Piecewise Affine Control for Fast Unmanned 

Ground Vehicles 

André Benine-Neto and Christophe Grand 

Institute of Intelligent Systems and Robotics (ISIR), 

University Pierre et Marie Curie, France 

• Steering control of Unmanned Ground 

Vehicle taking using steering angles and 

independent wheels torque 

• Nonlinear behavior of lateral forces taken 

into account in control synthesis through a 

Piecewise Affine approach. 

• Control synthesis through optimization 

problem involving Linear Matrix 

Inequalities. Stability ensured by 

Piecewise Quadratic Lyapunov function 

• Enhanced performance verified through 

simulations on nonlinear vehicle model 

Unmanned Ground Vehicle 


The AmphiHex: a Novel Amphibious Robot with 

Transformable Leg-flipper Composite 

Propulsion Mechanism 

Xu Liang, Min Xu, Lichao Xu, Peng Liu, Xiaoshuang Ren, 

Ziwen Kong, Jie Yang, Shiwu Zhang 

Department of Precision Machinery and Precision Instrumentation, 

University of Science and Technology of China, China 

• The detailed structure design of the 

transformable leg-flipper propulsion 

mechanism and its drive module is 

introduced. 

• A preliminary theoretical analysis is 

conducted to study the interaction between 

the elliptic leg and transitional environment 

such as granular medium. 

• An orthogonal experiment is designed to 

study the leg locomotion in the sandy and 

muddy terrain with different water content. 

• Basic propulsion experiments of 

AmphiHex-I are launched to verify that the 

locomotion capability on land and 

underwater. 


Tube-type Active Scope Camera 

with High Mobility and Practical Functionality 

Hiroaki Namari, Kazuhito Wakana, 

Michihisa Ishikura, Masashi Konyo and Satoshi Tadokoro 

Graduate School of Information Scienses, Tohoku University, Japan 

• A tube-type active scope camera 

enhanced mobility and functionality for 

search and rescue was developed 

• A smart structure to mount vibration 

motors on a long tubular cable without 

any rigid projections was designed 

• An auditory communication and gravity 

direction indication systems were 

mounted for practical use 

• High performance was confirmed at a 

training site for first responders 


–131– 

Integrated system and running 

experiment included the rubbles


Humanoid Robots III 

Chair Paul Y. Oh, Drexel Univ. 

Co-Chair 

09:30–09:45 WedBT4.1 

Design Methodology for the Thorax and Shoulder of 

Human Mimetic Musculoskeletal Humanoid Kenshiro 

-A Thorax structure with Rib like Surface - 

Toyotaka Kozuki,Hironori Mizoguchi,Yuki Asano,Masahiko Osada, 

Takuma Shirai,Urata Junichi,Yuto Nakanishi,Kei Okada,Masayuki Inaba 

Univ.of Tokyo, Japan 

• Design concept of Detailed 

Musculoskeletal Humanoid 

Kenshiro’s Upper limb 

• Joint Structure 

• Muscle Arrangement 

• Range of Motion 

• Mechanical Key Points 

of the Upper Limb 

• Rib like Thorax 

• Planar muscle 

• Muscle Cushion 

• Open Sphere Joint 

Prototype of Human Mimetic 

Musculoskeletal Humanoid 

“Kenshiro” Upper Limbs 


Dynamic motion imitation of two articulated systems 

using nonlinear time scaling of joint trajectories 

Karthick Munirathinam, Sophie Sakka, Christine Chevallereau 

IRCCyN, Robotics Team, Ecole centrale de nantes, 

Nantes, France 

• An approach for motion imitation of 

articulated systems with balance and 

physical constraints using optimization. 

• We modify the temporal evolution of joint 

motion rather than the traditional way of 

formulating on geometric evolution of joint 

motion of the imitating system. 

• Time scaling based imitation has an 

immanent advantage of tracking the joint 

trajectory of the reference system by 

compromising on joint velocity and 

acceleration. 

• Simulations are carried out to validate our 

proposed method. 

Model: Foot connected to n-serial 

links(n=4) 


State Estimation of a Walking 

Humanoid Robot 

Xinjilefu and Christopher G. Atkeson 

Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, USA 

• We compare two approaches to designing 

Kalman filters for walking systems. 

• One design uses LIPM dynamics, the 

other uses more complete Planar 

dynamics. 

• LIPM design is more robust to modeling 

error 

• Planar design estimates COM height and 

joint velocities, and tracks horizontal COM 

translation more accurately. 

• We also investigate different ways of 

handling contact states and force sensing 

in state estimation. 


–132– 

The Sarcos Humanoid Robot 


The Anatomy of a Fall: Automated Real-time 

Analysis of Raw Force Sensor Data from 

Bipedal Walking Robots and Humans 

Petar Kormushev, Luca Colasanto, 

Nikolaos G. Tsagarakis, and Darwin G. Caldwell 

Advanced Robotics, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Italy 

Barkan Ugurlu 

Control Systems, Toyota Technological Institute, Japan 

• Algorithms for automated analysis 

of ground reaction force data 

• Automatically detect single, double 

support, and swing phases, heel 

strikes, phase transitions, etc. 

• Detect early indications of 

instability that could lead to a fall. 

• Approach: generic, model-free, 

parameter-free, robust, efficient 

• Three experiments on: compliant 

humanoid robot COMAN, stiff robot 

HOAP-2, and a human subject

Session WedBT5 Gemini 2 Wednesday, October 10, 2012, 09:30–10:30 

Identification, Modeling and Motion Control 

Chair kiminao kogiso, Nara Inst. of Science and Tech. 

Co-Chair 

09:30–09:45 WedBT5.1 

Identification Procedure for 

McKibben Pneumatic Artificial Muscle Systems 

Kiminao Kogiso Kenta Sawano and Kenji Sugimoto 

Graduate School of Information Science, NAIST, Japan 

Takashi Itto 

Mitsui Chemicals, Inc., Japan 

• Present how to model a McKibben 

pneumatic artificial muscle (PAM) that 

vertically suspends mass, in hybrid form. 

• Analyze the hybrid PAM model to clarify 

dominant parameters in steady-state and 

transient behaviors, respectively. 

• Propose a novel procedure for identifying 

the parameters, which can be used to get 

mass-continuously-parameterized models. 

• Conclude the proposed procedure is 

experimentally validated by using steadystate 

and transient responses. 

PAM system to be modeled and 

experimental validation results. 


Dynamic Model of Three Wheeled Narrow Tilting 

Vehicle and Corresponding Experiment Verification 

Hiroki Furuichi and Toshio Fukuda 

Dept. Micro-Nano Systems Engineering, Nagoya University, Japan 

Jian Huang 

Dept. Control Science and Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and 

Technology, China 

Takayuki Matsuno 

Natural Science and Technology, Okayama University, Japan 

• A new switching dynamical model 

considering several Narrow Tilting Vehicle 

(NTV) running states are proposed. 

• The simulation platform is establish to 

simulate the control of NTV. 

• Verification for the effectiveness of 

proposed model and simulation platform is 

performed through comparison of 

simulations and experiments. 

Picture of NTV 


The Cubli: A Cube That Can Jump up and Balance 

Mohanarajah Gajamohan, Michael Merz, Igor Thommen, and 

Raffaello D'Andrea 

Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering, ETH Zurich, Switzerland 

• The paper introduces the concept of the 

Cubli, a cube that will be able to jump up, 

using an impact based strategy, and 

balance on a corner. 

• Design and control of the 1D prototype 

(three of which will be combined in the 

final prototype) is presented with 

experimental results. 

(a) (b) 

The Cubli jump-up strategy: (a) Flat to Edge: Lying flat 

on its face, the Cubli jumps up to stand on its edge. 

(b) Edge to Corner: The Cubli goes from balancing about 

an edge to balancing on a corner. 


An Energy-Based State Observer for Dynamical 

Subsystems with Inaccessible state Variables 

Islam S. M. Khalil * , Asif Sabanovic ** 

and Sarthak Misra * 

* MIRA—Institute for Biomedical Technology and Technical Medicine 

University of Twente, The Netherlands 

** Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences, Sabanci University, Turkey 

• Effort and flow variables are 

considered as natural feedback 

from dynamical subsystems with 

inaccessible outputs 

• State variables of subsystems 

with inaccessible outputs can be 

estimated by an energy-based 

state observer 

• Stability margins of the energybased 

state observer are 

investigated 


–133– 

Lumped mass-spring system with 4 degrees-offreedom. 

We presume that subsystem P has 

inaccessible outputs for measurement

Session WedBT7 Vega Wednesday, October 10, 2012, 09:30–10:30 

Multiple Mobile Robot Planning II 

Chair Ronald Arkin, Georgia Tech. 

Co-Chair 

09:30–09:45 WedBT7.1 

Goal Assignment using Distance Cost 

in Multi-Robot Exploration 

Jan Faigl Miroslav Kulich Libor Přeučil 

Department of Cybernetics 

Czech Technical University in Prague, Czech Republic 

• Multi-robot exploration strategies 

• Performance evaluation of: (1) greedy 

assignment; (2) iterative assignment; (3) 

Hungarian algorithm; and (4) multiple traveling 

salesman (MTSP) approaches 

• MTSP based assignment with (cluster first, 

route second) 

• Clustering of the goal candidates preserving 

geodesic distances 


Finding Graph Topologies for Feasible 

Multirobot Motion Planning 

Pushkar Kolhe, Henrik I. Christensen 

•For a Kiva-like warehousing 

scenario: 

1.Where should I place n robots? 

2.Can we ensure 

deadlock/collision free motion 

planning from these n places? 

•An Integer Programming formulation 

to find a graph for solving multirobot 

motion planning problems 

Goal Nodes 

Robot Nodes 


Multi-Agent Generalized Probabilistic 

RoadMaps (MAGPRM) 

Sandip Kumar and Suman Chakravorty 

Texas A&M University, College Station, USA 

MAGPRM is a sampling based method for 

planning the motion of multiple agents under 

process uncertainty, workspace constraints, 

and non-trivial dynamics 

MAGPRM utilizes the GPRM, a sampling based 

method for planning the motion of a single agent 

under process uncertainty, and a Multiple 

Traveling Salesman Problem (MTSP) solver. 

MAGPRM guarantees performance in terms of 

a maximum allowable probability of failure for 

the agents 


Dynamic Positioning of Beacon Vehicles for 

Cooperative Underwater Navigation 

Alexander Bahr and Alcherio Martinoli 

Distributed Intelligent Systems and Algorithms Lab, EPFL, Switzerland 

John J. Leonard 

Department of Mechanical Engineering, MIT, USA 

• Beacon vehicles serve as navigation aids 

for submerged AUVs 

• Our algorithm optimizes the beacon 

vehicles’ position to improve the AUVs’ 

navigation accuracy 

• No a-priori information, such as the AUVs’ 

mission plan, required 

• Distributed algorithm adapts to group size 

and connectivity 


–134–

Session WedBT8 Gemini 1 Wednesday, October 10, 2012, 09:30–10:30 

Dynamics and Control II 

Chair 

Co-Chair 

09:30–09:45 WedBT8.1 

Exploiting Redundancy in Cartesian Impedance 

Control of UAVs Equipped with a Robotic Arm 

Vincenzo Lippiello and Fabio Ruggiero 

Dipartimento di Informatica e Sistemistica, Università degli studi di Napoli 

Federico II, Italy 

• A Cartesian impedance control for UAVs 

equipped with a robotic arm is presented. 

• A dynamic relationship between external 

forces acting on the structure and the 

system motion, specified in terms of 

Cartesian space coordinates, is provided. 

• Through a suitable choice of such 

variables it is possible to exploit the 

redundancy of the system to perform 

some useful subtasks. 

• The hovering control of a quadrotor, 

equipped with a 3-DOF robotic arm and 

subject to contact forces and external 

disturbances is tested in a simulated case 

study. 

UAV/Arm system illustration with 

the related reference frames. 


A hybrid particle/grid wind model for realtime 

small UAV flight simulation 

Adam Harmat and Inna Sharf 

Mechanical Engineering, McGill University, Canada 

Michael Trentini 

DRDC-Suffield, Canada 

• Fast vortex particle method for approximate wind dynamics 

• Integrated with Gazebo robot simulator as a plug-in 

• Qualitative comparison to high-fidelity CFD test cases 

• Small UAV flight over a building, comparison to simpler wind model 


Modeling and Motion Analysis of Fixed-pitch Coaxial 

Rotor Unmanned Helicopter 

Satoshi Suzuki 

Young Researchers Empowerment Center , Shinshu University, Japan 

Takahiro Ishii 

Graduate School of Science and Technology, Shinshu University, Japan 

Gennai Yanagisawa and Yasutoshi Yokoyama 

GEN Corporation, Japan 

Kazuki Tomita 

Engineering System, Japan 

• Fixed-pitch co-axial rotor unmanned 

helicopter with specific mechanisms is 

proposed. 

• Precise mathematical model of the 

helicopter is derived using multi-body 

dynamics technique. 

• Motion analysis is performed to 

establish the relation between the 

motion and mechanical parameters. 


–135– 

Fixed-pitch co-axial rotor 

unmanned helicopter 


Parallel Force-Position Control Mediated by 

Tactile Maps for Robot Contact Tasks 

Simone Denei, Fulvio Mastrogiovanni and Giorgio Cannata 

University of Genova, Italy 

• Tactile maps prove to be 

a good representation 

structure for defining 

contact trajectories. 

• This concept is further extended for 

embedding additional information that are 

local with respect to a specific robot 

body area. 

• Augmented maps provides a good way to 

associate references, such as forces or 

contact motion velocities, to areas on the 

robot skin. 

An example of augmented tactile 

map (on the right) of the skin 

placed on a robot forearm (on the 

left). A polygon divides it into 

an inner region (in yellow) and 

an outside region (in grey) 

associated to different force 

references. 

• The contact centroid is reported on the maps and used to extract the 

references to fed to the Parallel Force-Position Control moving the 

robot in contact.


Medical Robotics II 

Chair Fumihito Arai, Nagoya Univ. 

Co-Chair Jake Abbott, Univ. of Utah 

09:30–09:45 WedBT9.1 

Space-Time Localization and Registration on the 

Beating Heart 

Nathan Wood, Kevin Waugh, Tian Yu Liu, Cameron Riviere 

The Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, USA 

Marco Zenati 

BHS Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery, Harvard Medical School, USA 

• The HeartLander Robot adheres to 

and moves over the surface of the 

heart. 

• The heart deforms periodically due to 

the physiological cycles of heartbeat 

and respiration. 

• Instead of rejecting the deformations 

as noise, the periodic motion can be 

used to aid in localization. 

• Particle filter framework is used to 

estimate the pose of the robot on the 

heart and the cardiac phase, as well 

as the pose of the heart. 


Catheter Navigation Based on Probabilistic Fusion 

of ElectromagneticTracking and Physically-Based 

Simulation 

Alessio Dore 1 , Gabrijel Smoljkic 2 , Emmanuel Vander Poorten 2 , 

Mauro Sette 2,3 , Jos Vander Sloten 2 , and Guang-Zhong Yang 1 

1 Hamlyn Centre, Imperial College London, UK 

2 Department of Mechanical Engineering, KU Leuven, Belgium 

3 Institute of Mechatronic Systems, ZHAW, Switzerland 

• Reduced use of fluoroscopy and better 

visualization are key point to improve the 

safety of catheter-based endovascular 

procedures.. 

• A catheter navigation approach is 

proposed based on the use of 

electromagnetic tracking and physicallybased 

catheter insertion simulation. 

• Catheter shape and position are estimated 

and registered to the pre-operative model 

to provide improved visualization. 

• The approach has been tested on a 2D 

mockup obtaining an average localization 

error of 2mm. 

Example of 3D localization 

performed in an aortic arch 

silicon phantom 


Reliable Planning and Execution of a Human- 

Robot Cooperative System Based on 

Noninvasive BCI with Uncertainty 

Wenchuan Jia, Huayan Pu, Xin Luo, Xuedong Chen 

State Key Laboratory of Digital Manufacturing Equipment and Technology, 

Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China. 

Dandan Huang, Ou Bai 

EEG&BCI Laboratory, Virginia Commonwealth University, US 

• Three cooperative modes is 

proposed to trade-off of 

robot’s autonomy and user’s 

flexibility. 

• Look-ahead visual feedback is 

applied to achieve continuous 

motion. 

• The user can adjust the 

intention and/or actively 

correct extraction error of the 

BCI before the robot reaches 

current path node. 


Organ-explanted Bionic Simulator (OBiS) : 

Concurrent Microcardiovascular Anastomosis of Chick Embryo 

1 Hirofumi Owaki, 1 Taisuke Masuda, 2 Tomohiro Kawahara, 1 Natsuki Takei, 

1 Keiko Miwa-Kodama, 3 Kota Miyasaka, 3 Toshihiko Ogura, and 1 Fumihito Arai 

1 Graduate School of Engineering, Nagoya University, Japan 

2 Kyusyu Instutute of Technology, Japan as well as Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA 

3 Department of Developmental Neurobiology, Tohoku University, Japan 

• Organ-explanted Bionic Simulator 

(OBiS) is newly proposed. 

• A heart isolated from chick embryo is 

used for OBiS. 

• Suction-induced vascular fixation 

(SVF) method is proposed for 

concurrent microcardiovascular 

anastomosis. 

• Dual-arm micromanipulator system is 

developed for assisting the vascular 

anastomosis. 

• 4 blood vessels led to the chick’s heart 

can be concurrently connected with 

the alginate tubes by SVF method. 


–136– 

Monitoring 

/ Control unit 

Mechanical stimulus 

Pump 

Electrical stimulus 

Chemical stimulus 

CO2 / Heater 

Culture 

Microfluidic chip 

Shape 

(Dynamic) 

Laser displacement 

sensor 

Explanted organ 

Shape 

(Static / Dynamic) 

Image sensor 

The concept of 

bionic simulator system 

pH 

O2 Temp. 

Patch-clamp 

Electrical sensor

Session WedBT10 Lince Wednesday, October 10, 2012, 09:30–10:30 

Visual Learning I 

Chair 

Co-Chair 

09:30–09:45 WedBT10.1 

Bag of Multimodal Hierarchical Dirichlet Processes: 

Model of Complex Conceptual Structure 

for Intelligent Robots 

Tomoaki Nakamura and Takayuki Nagai 

The University of Electro-Communications, Japan 

Naoto Iwahashi 

NICT Knowledge Creating Communication Research Center, Japan 

• A novel framework for concept 

formation 

• Various models are formed by 

multimodal HDP-based categorization 

with varying parameters 

Bag of Multimodal HDP models 

• Word meanings are grounded in 

formed categories through the 

interaction between users and the 

robot 

• The interaction works as model 

selection for Bag of Multimodal HDP 

• Complex structure is visualized by 

Multidimensional scaling 

Observation of 

objects 

Categorization of 

multimodal 

information 

Word grounding and model selection 

This is “yellow” 

“maraca”. 

Maraca 

10:00–10:15 WedBT10.3 

Learning a Projective Mapping to Locate 

Animals in Video Using RFID 

Pipei Huang Rahul Sawhney 

Daniel Walker 

Aaron Bobick Tucker Balch 

Robotics and Intelligent Machines 

School of Interactive Computing 

Georgia Institute of Technology, USA 

• Goal is to annotate video with correct 

locations and IDs of multiple moving 

animals wearing active RFID tags. 

• Challenges include noisy position data and 

integration with camera calibration. 

• Approach: 

• Filtering and outlier removal improves 

RFID reported position. 

• Use Machine Learning-based 

approach to map from RFID (x,y,z) to 

image plane. 

• Learn mapping of offset from best-fit 

standard camera calibration model. 

Reduces data needed, 

• Improves performance and reduces 

calibration effort. 

Kim Wallen 

Dept. of 

Psychology 

Emory Univ., USA 

Shiyin Qin 

Yello 

w 

School of Automation 

Science and Elec Eng 

Geihang Univ, China 

09:45–10:00 WedBT10.2 

Robust and Fast Visual Tracking Using Constrained 

Sparse Coding and Dictionary Learning 

Tianxiang Bai, Y.F. Li, and Xiaolong Zhou 

Department of Mechanical and Biomedical Engineer, City Univ. of Hong Kong, 

Hong Kong SAR, China 

• The visual appearance is represented 

and modeled by sparse 

representation and online dictionary 

learning. 

• A sparsity consistency constraint is 

defined to unify sparse representation 

and online dictionary learning. 

• An elastic-net constraint is enforced 

to capture the local appearances 

during dictionary learning stage. 

• The proposed appearance model is 

integrated with particle filter to form a 

robust tracking algorithm. 


–137– 

Proposed Appearance Model 

10:15–10:30 WedBT10.4 

A Discriminative Approach for Appearance 

Based Loop Closing 

Thomas Ciarfuglia, Gabriele Costante, Paolo Valigi and Elisa Ricci 

Departement of Information and Electronic Engineering, University of Perugia, 

Italy 

• Bag of Visual Words is a common 

paradigm for loop closing, but has 

limitations 

• We propose a novel optimization 

approach to compute visual word 

weights for loop closing 

• More discriminative words are 

emphasized, while less one are 

de-emphasized 

• This Place Recognition approach 

yields competitive results with state-of- 

the-art approaches 

Learned weights enhance visual words 

which increase the similarity score 

between images of the same place while 

keeping away images from different 

classes.

Session WedBVT6 Gemini 3 Wednesday, October 10, 2012, 09:30–10:30 

Mapping II 

Chair Edwin Olson, Univ. of Michigan 

Co-Chair 

09:30–09:45 WedBVT6.1 

Variable reordering strategies for SLAM 

• We have evaluated existing 

reordering strategies on standard 

SLAM datasets. 

Pratik Agarwal and Edwin Olson 

Computer Science and Engineering, 

University of Michigan, USA 

• We propose an easy to implement 

reordering algorithm called BHAMD 

which yields competitive performance. 

• We provide evidence showing that 

few gains remain with respect to 

variants of minimum degree ordering. 

Reorder and solve time for 

different reordering algorithms 

10:00–10:15 WedBVT6.3 

Planar Polygon Extraction and Merging from 

Depth Images 

Joydeep Biswas and Manuela Veloso 

School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University, USA 

We introduce an approach to building 3D 

maps of indoor environments modelled as 

planar surfaces using depth cameras. 

•Neighborhoods of plane filtered points are 

extracted from each observed depth image 

and fitted to convex polygons. 

•The polygons from each frame are 

matched to existing map polygons using 

OpenGL accelerated ray casting. 

•Matched polygons are then merged over 

time using sequential update and merging of 

the scatter matrix of observed polygons. 

The polygon extraction and merging 

algorithms take on an average 2.5 ms for 

each depth image of size 640x480 pixels. 

Plane Filtered and fitted convex polygons 

shown in blue from each frame (top) are 

merged across successive frames to 

generate complete map (bottom). 


2D PCA-based Localization for Mobile Robots 

in Unstructured Environments 

Fernando Carreira (1) , Camilo Christo (2) , Duarte Valério (2) , 

Mário Ramalho (2) , Carlos Cardeira (2) , João Calado (1,2) 

and Paulo Oliveira (3) 

(1) ADEM / ISEL, Polytechnic Institute of Lisbon, Portugal 

(2) IDMEC / IST, Technical University of Lisbon, Portugal 

(3) ISR / IST, Technical University of Lisbon, Portugal 

• Self-localization system for mobile 

robots to operate in indoor 

environment, with only onboard 

sensors 

• The database of images stored 

onboard is of reduced size, when 

compared with acquired images 

• No hypothesis is made about specific 

features in the environment 

• The localization system estimates in 

real time the position and slippage 

with global stable error dynamics. 

Results of stability tests considering 

wrong initial position and attitude 

09:45–10:00 WedBVT6.2 

An Object-Based Semantic World Model for Long- 

Term Change Detection and Semantic Querying 

• RGB-D based mapping 

aboard a localized robot 

• Uniquely weak perceptual 

assumptions 

• Scales to large (1600 m 2 ), 

long-term (six weeks) 

operation 

• Supports change detection 

and semantic querying 

• 326 GB dataset available! 

Julian Mason and Bhaskara Marthi 

Duke University and Willow Garage 


–138– 

Example of semantic query for 

“medium-sized things in the cafeteria.” 


Reconfigurable Intelligent Space, R+iSpace, 

and Mobile Module, MoMo 

JongSeung Park 

Graduate School of Sci. and Eng, Ritsumeikan University, Japan 

Joo-Ho Lee 

College of Information Sci. and Eng, Ritsumeikan University, Japan 

• In this video and paper, the new concept 

of Intelligent space, ‘R+iSpace’ is 

introduced. 

• The whole devices in the R+iSpace can 

rearrange themselves automatically 

according to situation. 

• To achieve R+iSpace in real environment, 

we propose a mobile module, ‘MoMo’. 

• The devices can move on the wall and the 

ceiling through mounting on the MoMo. 

The R+iSpace system 

and The MoMo 


Deformable Soft Wheel Robot using 

Hybrid Actuation 

Je-sung Koh, Dae-young Lee, Seung-won Kim 

and Kyu-jin Cho 

Dept. Mechanical and Aerospace Eng., Seoul National University, South Korea 

• Multimodal motion ; Three driving modes 

for penetrating obstacles. 

• Caterpillar motion : passing through 

the gap 

• Wheel driving : fast movement on the 

ground 

• Legged wheel motion : climbing the 

stair 

• Hybrid actuation system 

• Deformable wheel : Shape memory 

alloy coil spring actuator 

• Wheel driving : DC motor 

Three driving modes of 

Deformable wheel robot

Session WedCT1 Pegaso A Wednesday, October 10, 2012, 11:00–12:30 

Object Detection and Tracking 

Chair 

Co-Chair 

11:00–11:15 WedCT1.1 

Reliable Object Detection 

and Segmentation using Inpainting 

Ji Hoon Joung 1 , M. S. Ryoo 2 

Sunglok Choi 3 and Sung-Rak Kim 1 

1 Robotics Research Department, Hyundai Heavy Industries, South Korea 

2 Mobility and Robotic Systems Section, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, USA 

3 Robot Research Department, ETRI, South Korea 

• This paper presents a novel object detection and segmentation method 

utilizing an inpainting algorithm. We newly utilize inpainting to judge 

whether an object candidate region includes the foreground object or not. 

• The key idea is that if we erase a certain region from an image, the 

inpainting algorithm is expected to recover the erased image only when it 

belongs a background area. 

• We illustrate how our 

inpainting-based detection / 

segmentation approach 

benefits the object detection 

using two different pedestrian 

datasets 

Concept of the proposed method 

11:30–11:45 WedCT1.3 

Exploiting and modeling local 3D structure for 

predicting object locations 

Alper Aydemir and Patric Jensfelt 

Center for Autonomous Systems, KTH, Sweden 

• We propose the use of local 3D shape 

around objects in everyday scenes as a 

strong indicator of the placement of these 

objects. We call this the 3D context of an 

object. 

• We propose a conceptually simple and 

effective method to capture this 

information. 

• Our results show that 3D contextual 

information is a strong indicator of object 

placement in everyday scenes. 

• An RGB-D data set from five different 

countries in Europe was collected and 

used for evaluation. 

Top figure shows a kitchen 

scene, and the bottom figure the 

method’s response for the object 

cup. 

12:00–12:15 WedCT1.5 

Fast High Resolution 3D Laser Scanning 

by Real-Time Object Tracking and Segmentation 

Jens T. Thielemann, Asbjørn Berge, Øystein Skotheim 

and Trine Kirkhus 

SINTEF ICT, Norway 

E-mail: {jtt,trk,asbe,osk}@sintef.no 

• This paper presents a real-time contour tracking and object 

segmentation algorithm for 3D range images. The algorithm 

is used to control a novel micro-mirror based imaging laser 

scanner, which provides a dynamic trade-off between 

resolution and frame rate. The micro-mirrors are 

controllable, enabling us to speed up acquisition 

significantly by only sampling on the object that is tracked 

and of interest. As the hardware is under development, we 

benchmark our algorithms on data from a SICK LMS100- 

10000 laser scanner mounted on a tilting platform. We find 

that objects are tracked and segmented well on pixel-level; 

that frame rate/resolution can be increased 3-4 times 

through our approach compared to scanners having static 

scan trajectories, and that the algorithm runs in 30 

ms/image on a Intel Core i7 CPU using a single core. 

11:15–11:30 WedCT1.2 

3D Textureless Object Detection and Tracking: 

An Edge-based Approach 

Changhyun Choi and Henrik I. Christensen 

College of Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA 

Example frames from our detection and tracking results 

• An approach to textureless object detection and tracking of the 3D pose 

• Detection and tracking schemes are coherently integrated in a particle 

filtering framework on the SE(3) 

• For object detection, an efficient chamfer matching is employed 

• A set of coarse poses is estimated from the chamfer matching results 

• Particles are initialized from the coarse pose hypotheses by randomly 

drawing based on costs of the matching 

• To ensure the initialized particles are at or close to the global optimum, an 

annealing process is performed after the initialization 

• Comparative results for several image sequences with clutter are shown 

to validate the effectiveness of our approach 

11:45–12:00 WedCT1.4 

Birth Intensity Online Estimation in GM-PHD 

Filter for Multi-Target Visual Tracking 

Xiaolong Zhou, Y.F. Li, Tianxiang Bai and Yazhe Tang 

Dept. of MBE, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China 

Bingwei He 

Dept. of Mechanical Engineering and Automation, Fuzhou University, China 

• A multi-target visual tracking system that 

combines object detection and GM-PHD 

filter is developed 

• An improved measurement-dependent 

birth intensity online estimation method 

that based on the entropy distribution and 

the coverage rate is proposed 

• Entropy distribution based birth intensity 

update is proposed to remove those 

Gaussian components like noises within 

the birth intensity which are irrelevant with 

the birth measurements 

• Coverage rate based birth intensity update 

is proposed to further eliminate the noises 


–139– 

Tracking results comparison for 

data sets PETS 2000 and 

CAVIAR. (a) Detection results. (b) 

Tracking results with birth process 

proposed in [13]. (c) Tracking 

results with birth process proposed 

in this paper. 

12:15–12:30 WedCT1.6 

A Heteroscedastic Approach to Independent 

Motion Detection for Actuated Visual Sensors 

Carlo Ciliberto, Sean Ryan Fanello, Lorenzo Natale 

and Giorgio Metta 

Robotics Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Italy 

• A compositional framework is presented to 

perform real-time independent motion 

detection for applications in Robotics. 

• The algorithm can be easily adapted to a 

wide range of robotic platforms thanks to 

the flexibility granted by its modular 

structure. 

• The proposed method overcomes the 

shortcomings of the current state of the art 

approaches by exploiting the known robot 

kinematics to predict egomotion rather 

than relying on vision alone. 

• A heteroscedastic learning layer is 

employed to tune the egomotion predictive 

capabilities of the system. 

Experiments were conducted on 

the iCub humanoid robot.

Session WedCT2 Fenix 2 Wednesday, October 10, 2012, 11:00–12:30 

Human Performance Augumentation 

Chair Yasuhisa Hasegawa, Univ. of Tsukuba 

Co-Chair 

11:00–11:15 WedCT2.1 

Full-body Exoskeleton Robot Control 

for Walking Assistance by 

Style-phase Adaptive Pattern Generation 

Takamitsu Matsubara 1,2 , Akimasa Uchikata 1,2 

and Jun Morimoto 1 

1. Department of Brain Robot Interface, ATR-CNS, Japan 

2. Graduate School of Information Science, NAIST, Japan 

• Propose an adaptive walking assistance 

strategy using an coupled oscillator 

model for full-body exoskeleton robot 

control. 

• Consider the diversity of user motions 

and the interactions among a user, a 

robot, and an environment. 

• Adapt to time-varying user walking 

spatiotemporally by style-phase 

adaptive pattern generation. 

• Demonstrate that the necessary torque 

for the simulated user walking was 

reduced around 40% by using our 

method. 

Schematic diagram of our adaptive 

walking assistance strategy. 

11:30–11:45 WedCT2.3 

Synergy–based Optimal Design of Hand Pose 

Sensing 

Matteo Bianchi, Paolo Salaris and Antonio Bicchi 

Interdept. Research Center “Enrico Piaggio”, University of Pisa, Italy. 

Antonio Bicchi 

Department of Advanced Robotics, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Italy. 

• This paper investigates the optimal design 

of low-cost gloves for hand pose sensing; 

• The cost constraints may limit both the 

number and the quality of sensor and 

technologies used; 

• We exploit the knowledge on how humans 

most frequently use their hands in 

grasping tasks ; 

• We study how and where to place sensors 

on the glove in order to get the maximum 

information about the actual hand posture. 

• Experiments validate the proposed optimal 

design. 

12:00–12:15 WedCT2.5 

Pinching Force Accuracy Affected by Thumb 

Sensation in Human Force Augmentation 

Yasuhisa Hasegawa, Tetsuri Ariyama and Kiyotaka Kamibayashi 

Department of Intelligent Interaction Technologies, 

University of Tsukuba, Japan 

• Confirmed contribution of thumb sensation 

to pinching force accuracy when it is 

augmented by an exoskeleton. 

• Proposed an exoskeleton structure to 

achieve high precision force control based 

on human sensation. 

• The structure transmits an assistive force 

to a grasping object through two paths at 

fixed distribution ratio. 

Pinching with force assistance 

and exoskeleton structure for 

accurate force control 

11:15–11:30 WedCT2.2 

Development and Evaluation of Add-On 

End-Effector for Linear Power Assist Unit 

with Variable Assist Gain 

Marina Kaneko, Taishi Kitano, Takahiro Wakatabe, 

Norihiro Kamamichi and Jun Ishikawa 

Department of Robotics and Mechatronics, Tokyo Denki University, Japan 

• Linear power assist unit easy to be 

designed by using an add-on end-effector 

• Robustly worked against human and 

environmental perturbations achieving an 

assisting bandwidth of 1 to 3 Hz 

• Online adjusting of the assist gain 

available so that the system can be easyto-use 

for various applications 

• Could be helpful in rehabilitations by 

tuning the load depending on the degree 

of recovery 


–140– 

Proposed power assist system 

using add-on end-effector 

11:45–12:00 WedCT2.4 

Demonstration-Based Control of Supernumerary 

Robotic Limbs 

Baldin Llorens-Bonilla and Federico Parietti 

Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA 

H. Harry Asada 

Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA 

• This system, called the Supernumerary 

Robotic Limbs (SRL), consists of two 

additional robotic arms worn through a 

backpack-like harness. 

• The SRL performs movements closely 

coordinated with the user and exhibit 

human-like dynamics, thus extend the 

worker’s range of available skills and 

manipulation possibilities. 

• Demonstration data of two workers are 

analyzed and, through the use of System 

Identifications, a state estimation 

algorithm is extracted. 

12:15–12:30 WedCT2.6 

Implementation of Force Sensing in a Haptic 

Musical Instrument Without Additional Sensors 

Mark Havryliv and Fazel Naghdy 

Faculty of Informatics, University of Wollongong, Australia 

Greg Schiemer 

School of Sound and Music Design, University of Technology, Australia 

• A haptic system for simulating the forcefeedback 

of a centuries-old carillon. 

• Our prototype device will allow performers 

to rehearse in private. 

• A single linear actuator for each key 

provides force-feedback in an admittance 

control scheme. 

• The control loop is closed by sensing force 

based on current being supplied to the 

actuator, therefore requiring no additional 

force sensors. 

• The current is filtered using Kalman 

estimation for precise and quick forcefeedback. 

The keyboard of the National 

Carillon, Canberra, Australia.

Session WedCT3 Pegaso B Wednesday, October 10, 2012, 11:00–12:30 

Sensors, Sensor Networks and Networked Robots 

Chair 

Co-Chair 

11:00–11:15 WedCT3.1 

Semi-Autonomous Visual Inspection of Vessels 

Assisted by an Unmanned Micro Aerial Vehicle 

Francisco Bonnin-Pascual, Emilio Garcia-Fidalgo 

and Alberto Ortiz 

Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, 

University of Balearic Islands, Spain 

• Semi-autonomous approach to 

the vessel inspection problem 

making use of an autonomous 

Micro Aerial Vehicle 

• The vehicle provides the 

surveyors with images of the 

areas of the hull to be inspected 

• Supplied images can be 

processed by corrosion and 

crack detection algorithms 

based on texture, colour and 

morphology 

• Experimental results are 

provided, which show that the 

approach fulfils the application 

requirements 

11:30–11:45 WedCT3.3 

Prioritized Multi-Task Motion Control of 

Redundant Robots under Hard Joint Constraints 

Fabrizio Flacco Alessandro De Luca 

DIAG, Università di Roma “La Sapienza”, Italy 

Oussama Khatib 

Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Stanford University, USA 

• Extension to multiple prioritized tasks of 

our recent SNS (Saturation in the Null 

Space) algorithm for acceleration-level 

control of redundant robots 

• Hard bounds on joint range, velocity, and 

acceleration/torque are always satisfied 

• A multi-task least scaling strategy is 

integrated in the SNS, when some of the 

original tasks turn out to be unfeasible 

• Efficient preemptive approach: A task of 

higher priority uses at best all the robot 

capabilities needed; lower priority tasks 

exploit the residual capabilities, without 

interfering with higher priority tasks 

A KUKA LWR robot cycles through 

Cartesian points, with self-motion 

damping as the secondary task and 

while satisfying all joint constraints 

12:00–12:15 WedCT3.5 

Entropy-aware Cluster-based Object Tracking 

for Camera Wireless Sensor Networks 

Alberto De San Bernabé, Jose Ramiro Martinez-de Dios and 

Anibal Ollero 

Robotics, Vision and Control Group, University of Seville, Spain 

• Entropy-based mechanisms for energy 

efficiency and robustness to transmission 

errors in object tracking systems are 

presented. 

• Activation/deactivation of camera-nodes 

using an active sensing method based on 

cost-gain analyses to reduce energy 

consumption. 

• Method that dynamically selects the 

cluster head using entropies and 

transmission error rates. 

• The proposed methods have been tested 

in experiments carried out in the CONET 

Robot-WSN Testbed (http://conet.us.es) 

Picture of one experiment in the 

CONET Robot-WSN Testbed 

11:15–11:30 WedCT3.2 

Web Mining Driven Object Locality Knowledge 

Acquisition for Efficient Robot Behavior 

Kai Zhou, Michael Zillich and Markus Vincze 

Automation and Control Institute (ACIN), Vienna University of Technology, Austria 

Hendrik Zender 

Language Technology Lab, German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), Germany 

• Probabilistic conceptual knowledge that 

represents the relations of object and its 

situated environments is obtained online. 

• More accurate quantification is achieved 

by fusing search engine query data and 

professional robotic database. 

• Diverse localities including various 

supporting surfaces and room categories 

have been investigated to find the 

dominant location of object. 

• Multiple objects search task has been 

performed using the discovered 

probabilistic knowledge. 

• Plentiful experimental results (200+ 

objects/furniture, 3 surfaces, 7 rooms) 

validate the intuition of discovering object 

locality knowledge online. 


–141– 

Example scenario and object 

search task 

11:45–12:00 WedCT3.4 

Optical-Inertial Tracking with Active Markers and 

Changing Visibility 

Florian Steidle and Andreas Tobergte 

and Gerd Hirzinger 

Robotics and Mechatronics Center, 

German Aerospace Center, Germany 

• Extended Kalman Filter to fuse low latency measurements of inertial 

measurement unit with 2D marker measurements 

• Markers, identificated by individual activation, are subsequently locally 

tracked in the image pane 

• Robust with respect 

to temporary marker 

occlusions 

• Real time 

implementation and 

verification with 

experiments 

12:15–12:30 WedCT3.6 

Intelligent Sensor-Scheduling for 

Multi-Kinect-Tracking 

Florian Faion, Simon Friedberger, Antonio Zea, 

and Uwe D. Hanebeck 

Institute for Anthropomatics, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) 

• Scenario: target tracking with a Multi- 

Kinect-sensor-network 

• Challenge: high bandwidth, computational 

cost, interference 

• Idea: measuring the target exclusively with 

best available sensor 

• Contribution: uncertainty minimizing 

scheduling algorithm, stochastic Kinect 

sensor model, Kinect IR-projector 

modification


Humanoid Robots IV 

Chair Kyungshik Roh, Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd 

Co-Chair Christian Ott, German Aerospace Center (DLR) 

11:00–11:15 WedCT4.1 

Development of the Lower Limbs 

for a Humanoid Robot 

Joohyung Kim, Younbaek Lee, Sunggu Kwon, Keehong Seo, 

Hoseong Kwak, Heekuk Lee, and Kyungshik Roh 

Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology, South Korea 

• We Present an overview of developing a 

novel biped walking machine for a 

humanoid robot Roboray. 

• Torque sensors are integrated at each 

joint of 6-DOF legs. 

• A new tendon type joint module is used 

in a pitch joint drive module, which is 

highly back-drivable. 

• Control system is decentralized using 

small controller boards named Smart 

Driver. 

Roboray and its lower limbs 

without cover. 

11:30–11:45 WedCT4.3 

Optimal Gait Primitives for Dynamic 

Bipedal Locomotion 

Bokman Lim, Jusuk Lee, Joohyung Kim, Minhyung Lee, 

Hoseong Kwak, Sunggu Kwon, Heekuk Lee, 

Woong Kwon, and Kyungshik Roh 

Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology, Korea 

• A movement generation framework for 

dynamic bipedal locomotion is proposed. 

• A set of parametric gait primitives is first 

constructed using the dynamics-based 

movement optimization algorithm. 

• Dynamic walking to follow the arbitrary 

path is then generated online via 

sequentially composing primitive motions. 

• Proposed method is applied to a torque 

controlled robot platform, Roboray. 

• Results show that dynamic gaits are 

humanlike and efficient compared to the 

conventional knee bent walkers. 

Roboray 

12:00–12:15 WedCT4.5 

Robust Descriptors for 3D Point Clouds using 

Geometric and Photometric Local Feature 

Hyoseok Hwang, Seungyong Hyung, Sukjune Yoon and 

Kyungshik Roh 

Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology 

Samsung Electronics 

Republic of Korea 

• We propose robust descriptors called 

GPLF(Geometric and Photometric Local 

Feature) for object recognition and pose 

estimation 

• The proposed descriptors simultaneously 

use geometric and photometric features of 

point clouds from RGB-D camera 

• GPLF has robust discriminative ability 

regardless of characteristics such as 

shapes or appearances of objects. 

• The experimental results show the 

recognition accuracy of the proposed 

descriptors is higher than other 

approaches which use a single feature 

The proposed descriptors of 

3D point clouds 

11:15–11:30 WedCT4.2 

On-board Odometry Estimation 

for 3D Vision-based SLAM of Humanoid Robot 

SungHwan Ahn, Sukjune Yoon, Seungyong Hyung, 

Nosan Kwak and Kyung Shik Roh 

Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology (SAIT), 

Samsung Electronics, Korea 

• Vision-based 3D motion estimation 

method for dynamic walking robots 

accompanying large swaying motion and 

uncertainty in camera movement. 

• On-board odometry filter fuses kinematic 

odometry, visual odometry, and raw IMU 

data. 

• Vision-based SLAM utilizes the fused 

odometry, and it improves the SLAM 

estimates by compensating motion errors. 

• Experiments verifies the method with the 

biped humanoid robot, Roboray, designed 

by Samsung. 

11:45–12:00 WedCT4.4 

Towards Natural Bipedal Walking: Virtual Gravity 

Compensation and Capture Point Control 

Keehong Seo, Joohyung Kim, Kyungshik Roh 

Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology, South Korea 

• A pose controller is proposed that 

compensates Cartesian pose errors for a 

bipedal robot. 

• Virtual gravity compensation (VGC) is 

developed to convert 6-dof Cartesian force 

to joint torques in the legs. 

• A walking algorithm using VGC and 

capture point control produces natural 

and robust walking gait. 

• Tested with Roboray, humanoid from 

Samsung Electronics, to balance on 

slopes, to walk over bumps, and to 

recover from pushes while walking. 

• Resulting gait shows clear heel-landing 

and toe-off motions as humans do. 


–142– 

Figure caption is optional, 

use Arial Narrow 20pt 

12:15–12:30 WedCT4.6 

Active Stabilization of a Humanoid Robot for 

Impact Motions with Unknown Reaction Forces 

Seung-Joon Yi and Daniel D. lee 

GRASP Lab, University of Pennsylvania, USA 

Byoung-Tak Zhang 

BI Lab, Seoul National University, Korea 

Dennis Hong 

RoMeLa Lab, Virginia Tech, USA 

• Humans utilize whole body impact 

motions to generate large forces 

• Uncertainty in the ensuing reaction 

forces can lead robot to instability 

• A hierarchical push recovery 

controller is used along with 

simple robot model to reactively 

stabilize the robot against 

unknown reaction force 

• Implemented and tested on the 

DARwIn-OP small humanoid robot

Session WedCT5 Gemini 2 Wednesday, October 10, 2012, 11:00–12:30 

Force Control 

Chair 

Co-Chair 

11:00–11:15 WedCT5.1 

“Open Sesame!” - Adaptive Force/Velocity 

Control for Opening Unknown Doors 

Yiannis Karayiannidis, Christian Smith, Francisco E. Viña, 

Petter Ögren, and Danica Kragic 

Centre for Autonomous Systems, KTH, Sweden 

• This paper proposes a method that can 

open doors in real time without prior 

knowledge of the door kinematics. 

• The method uses force measurements 

and estimates of the radial direction based 

on adaptive estimates of the position of 

the door hinge. 

• We supply theoretical proof for stability 

and convergence, along with simulation 

and experimental evaluation of the 

method. 

11:30–11:45 WedCT5.3 

A New Hybrid Actuator Approach for Force- 

Feedback Devices 

Carlos Rossa, José Lozada, and Alain Micaelli 

CEA, France 

• The contribution proposes a novel hybrid 

actuator approach for haptic devices, 

which is based on a MR brake, a DC 

motor and a freewheel mechanism. 

• Since the brake can exert a resistive 

force only in a defined direction, the 

system enables the brake and the motor 

to be engaged at the same time. 

• The system is able to combine a 

powerful brake with a small DC motor to 

provide stability and high force density. 

• The control laws allow this actuation 

approach to be adaptable to many 

different haptic applications. 

Hybrid haptic interface based on 

an unidirectional MR brake: The 

handle is linked to a DC motor 

and its axis is linked to a MR 

brake through a freewheel 

mechanism. 

12:00–12:15 WedCT5.5 

On the role of load motion compensation in 

high-performance force control 

Thiago Boaventura, Michele Focchi, Marco Frigerio, Jonas Buchli, 

Claudio Semini, Gustavo A. Medrano-Cerda, Darwin G. Caldwell 

Department of Advanced Robotics, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT), Italy 

• A high-performance torque source allows 

to use model-based control techniques 

and also to control robot/environment 

interaction 

• An intrinsic load motion feedback is 

present in the force dynamics 

• This feedback is independent of the 

actuation technology 

• Compensating this load motion feedback 

improves the force tracking performance 

• Both electric and hydraulic actuators of 

the HyQ robot demonstrate the 

effectiveness of this approach 

HyQ – A fully torque-controlled 

hydraulic quadruped robot 

11:15–11:30 WedCT5.2 

Control of Contact Forces: the Role of 

Tactile Feedback for Contact Localization 

Andrea Del Prete, Francesco Nori, 

Giorgio Metta and Lorenzo Natale 

Robotics Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Italy 

• This paper investigates the role of 

precise contact point estimation in 

force control 

• We find the analytical expression of 

the error in contact force that is 

induced by an hypothetic error in 

contact point estimation 

• We see how errors in contact 

localization affect the performance 

of parallel force/position control on 

iCub 

• We do not use any model of robot 

or environment but we exploit tactile 

sensors and force/torque sensors 


–143– 

The iCub humanoid robot making contact 

with an external object using parallel 

force/position control 

11:45–12:00 WedCT5.4 

A locally adaptive on-line grasp control strategy 

using array sensor force feedback 

Michael Stachowsky, Medhat Moussa and Hussein Abdullah 

School of Engineering, University of Guelph, Canada 

• Predicting grip force is critical for grasping 

unfamiliar objects 

• A novel strategy for grasping free-form 

objects without prior object knowledge is 

presented 

• It is capable of adapting the desired grip 

force on-line using biologically inspired 

algorithms 

• Experimental results show adaptation can 

take place within 50ms, and results in a 

stable grasp 

The Titan prototype hand, used in 

the experiments 

12:15–12:30 WedCT5.6 

A Set-Point-Generator for Indirect-Force-Controlled 

Manipulators Operating Unknown Constrained 

Mechanisms 

Ewald Lutscher and Gordon Cheng 

Institute for Cognitive Systems, Technische Universität München, Germany 

� Joint space set-point selection based 

on local estimation of the 

constrained trajectory 

� Consideration of applied interaction 

forces 

� No model or external sensors 

required 


� Manipulating various mechanisms without parameter tuning

Session WedCT7 Vega Wednesday, October 10, 2012, 11:00–12:30 

Robot Interaction with the Environment and Humans 

Chair Li-Chen Fu, National Taiwan Univ. 

Co-Chair Jan Peters, Tech. Univ. Darmstadt 

11:00–11:15 WedCT7.1 

A Brain-Robot Interface for Studying Motor 

Learning after Stroke 

Timm Meyer 1 , Jan Peters 1,2 , Doris Brötz 3 , 

Thorsten O. Zander 1 , Bernhard Schölkopf 1 , 

Surjo R. Soekadar 3 , Moritz Grosse-Wentrup 1 

1 Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, Germany 

2 Intelligent Autonomous Systems Group, 

Technische Universität Darmstadt, Germany 

3 Institute of Medical Psychology and Behavioural Neurobiology, 

University of Tübingen, Germany 

• System: 

Combining robotics and EEG to study 

neural correlates of motor learning after 

stroke 

• Pilot study: 

Virtual 3D reaching movements with 

stroke patients 

• Results: 

Pre-trial bandpower in contralesional 

sensorimotor areas may be a neural 

correlate of motor learning. 

Subject wearing an EEG-cap while 

being attached to the robot arm 

11:30–11:45 WedCT7.3 

Haptic Classification and Recognition of Objects 

Using a Tactile Sensing Forearm 

Tapomayukh Bhattacharjee, James M. Rehg, and 

Charles C. Kemp 

Center for Robotics and Intelligent Machines, 


• Method: 

- PCA on concatenated time series 

- k-NN on top components 

• Leave-one-out cross-validation accuracy 

- Fixed vs. Movable: 91% 

- 4 Categories: 80% 

•(Fixed, Movable) X (Soft, Rigid) 

- Recognize which of 18 objects: 72% 

• Limitations 

- Stereotyped motion of the arm 

- Single contact region 

12:00–12:15 WedCT7.5 

Using a Minimal Action Grammar for 

Activity Understanding in the Real World 

Douglas Summers-Stay, Ching L. Teo, Yezhou Yang, Cornelia 

Fermuller and Yiannis Aloimonos 

Commputer Science, University of Maryland College Park, USA 

• We have built a system to 

automatically build an activity tree 

structure from observations of an actor 

performing complex manipulation 

activities 

• We created a dataset of these 

activities using Kinect RGBD and 

SR4000 time-of -light cameras. 

• The grammatical structure used to 

understand these actions may provide 

insight into a connection between 

action and language understanding 

• Activities recognized include 

assembling a machine, making a 

sandwich, creating a valentine card, 

etc… 

By noting key moments when 

objects come together, we build a 

tree for activity recognition 

11:15–11:30 WedCT7.2 

A brain-machine interface to navigate mobile 

robots along human-like paths amidst obstacles 

Abdullah Akce, James Norton 

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA 

Timothy Bretl 


• We present an interface that 

allows a human user to specify a 

desired path with noisy binary 

inputs obtained from EEG 

• Desired paths are assumed to be 

geodesics under a cost function, 

which is recovered from existing 

data using structured learning 

• An ordering between all (local) 

geodesics is defined so that users 

can specify paths optimally 

• Results from human trials 

demonstrate the efficacy of this 

approach when applied to a 

simulated robotic navigation task 


–144– 

The interface provides feedback by displaying 

an estimate of the desired path. The user gives 

left/right inputs based on “clockwise” ordering 

of the desired path to the estimated path. 

11:45–12:00 WedCT7.4 

Proactive premature intention estimation for 

intuitive human-robot collaboration 

Muhammad Awais and Dominik Henrich 

Chair for Applied Computer Science III, 

University of Bayreuth, Germany 

• Proactive premature intention 

estimation by determining the 

• Earliest possible trigger state 

in a Finite State Machine 

representing the human 

intention 

• Selecting the most probable 

intention prematurely for more 

than one ambiguous human 

intentions 

• Selection of trigger state is based 

on common state transition 

sequence 

• Premature intention recognition 

by the weights of the transition 

condition 

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Proactive premature intention 

recognition. Top: earliest possible 

trigger state selection for 

proactive intention recognition. 

Bottom: Premature intention 

recognition 

12:15–12:30 WedCT7.6 

On-Line Human Action Recognition by Combining 

Joint Tracking and Key Pose Recognition 

E-Jui Weng and Li-Chen Fu 

Department Name, University Name, Country 

• Propose a boosting approach by 

combining the pose estimation and the 

upper body tracking to recognize human 

actions. 

• Our method can recognize human poses 

and actions at the same time. 

• Apply the action recognition results as a 

feedback to the pose estimation process 

to increase its efficiency and accuracy. 

• Present an on-line spotting scheme based 

on the gradients of the hidden Markov 

models probabilities. 

System overview


Sensing in Medical Robotics 

Chair M. Cenk Cavusoglu, Case Western Res. Univ. 

Co-Chair 

11:00–11:15 WedCT9.1 

Scanning the surface of soft tissues with a 

micrometer precision thanks to endomicroscopy 

based visual servoing 

Benoît Rosa, Mustapha Suphi Erden, Jérôme Szewczyk, and 

Guillaume Morel 

ISIR, Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris, France 

Tom Vercauteren 

Mauna Kea Technologies, Paris, France 

• Probe-based confocal endomicroscopy is a 

promising imaging modality for performing 

optical biopsies 

• Problem: tissue deformation while scanning for 

getting wide field of view mosaics 

• Solution proposed: visual servo control using 

the confocal images as a measurement of 

probe/tissue displacement 

• Ex vivo validation on different tissues and 

trajectories using a precision robot 

• Further work: in vivo trial with a dedicated 

laparoscopic instrument 

Mosaics from raster scans on 

liver tissue. Up: without visual 

servo control (light line is the 

robot trajectory). Down: using 

visual servo control. 

11:30–11:45 WedCT9.3 

Internal Bleeding Detection Algorithm Based on 

Determination of Organ Boundary by Low- 

Brightness Set Analysis 

Keiichiro Ito, Shigeki Sugano, Fellow IEEE 

Creative Science and Engineering, Waseda University, Japan 

Hiroyasu Iwata, Member IEEE 

Waseda Institute for Advanced Study, Waseda University, Japan 

• This paper proposes an organ 

boundary determination method for 

detecting internal bleeding. 

• We developed method for extracting 

low-brightness areas and 

determining algorithms of organ 

boundaries by low-brightness set 

analysis, and we detect internal 

bleeding by combining these two 

methods. 

• Experimental results based on 

clinical US images of internal 

bleeding between Liver and Kidney 

showed that proposed algorithms 

had a sensitivity of 77.8% and 

specificity of 95.7%. 

Kidney 

Liver 

Gap between the organs 

(Internal bleeding) 

Internal Bleeding Detection Algorithm 

12:00–12:15 WedCT9.5 

Heart motion measurement with three dimensional 

sonomicrometry and acceleration sensing 

Tetsuya Horiuchi and Ken Masamune 

Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, University of Tokyo, 

Japan 

Eser Erdem Tuna and Murat Cenk Çavuşoğlu 

Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Case Western 

Reserve University, USA 

• Point of Interest for Coronary 

artery bypass graft surgery. 

• Estimation by particle filter with 

position and acceleration sensor 

which has uncertain incline. 

• New estimation method, 

“Differential Probability Method”, 

which enhanced particle filter. 

• Reduce 27.2% RMS error from 

Conventional method. 

Overview of the system 

11:15–11:30 WedCT9.2 

Preliminary Evaluation of a Micro-Force Sensing 

Handheld Robot for Vitreoretinal Surgery 

Berk Gonenc, Marcin A. Balicki 

Russell H. Taylor and Iulian Iordachita 

ERC for Computer Integrated Surgery, Johns Hopkins University, USA 

James Handa and Peter Gehlbach 

Wilmer Eye Institute, The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, USA 

Cameron N. Riviere 


• A 2-DOF force sensing hook is 

integrated with a handheld robot, 

Micron, for superior performance 

in membrane peeling operations. 

• FBG based force sensing 

instrument could directly inform 

the surgeon of the extremely 

delicate peeling forces. 

• Preliminary tests were done on 

bandage phantom and inner shell 

membrane of raw chicken eggs. 

• The peeling forces were kept 

below 7 mN with a significant 

reduction in 2-20 Hz oscillations. 

11:45–12:00 WedCT9.4 

A Cyber-Physical System for Strain 

Measurements in the Cerebral Aneurysm Models 

Chaoyang Shi, Masahiro Kojima, Carlos Tercero, Seiichi Ikeda, 

Toshio Fukuda, Fumihito Arai 

Micro-Nano Systems Engineering, Nagoya University, Japan 

Makoto Negoro and Keiko Irie 

Department of Neurosurgery, Fujita Health University, Japan 

� Build a novel in-vitro 

experimental platform for the 

dynamic deformation measurements 

on the aneurysm 

� Justify a link between robotic 

technologies and this cyberphysical 

systems for the 

aneurysm diagnosis and 

prognosis 

� Realize the high resolution 

analysis by observing an 

enlarged silicone membrane 

aneurysm model under the 

microscope 

� Combine CFD (Computational 

Fluid Dynamics) simulation 

with experiments for validation 


–145– 

Experimental setup including the pump for 

blood flow simulation pump, the cerebral 

aneurysm model and vision system 

12:15–12:30 WedCT9.6 

Surface Texture and Pseudo Tactile Sensation 

Displayed by a MEMS-Based Tactile Display 

Junpei Watanabe, Hiroaki Ishikawa, and Arouette Xavier 

Department of Mechanical Engineering, Keio University, Japan 

Norihisa Miki 

Department of Mechanical Engineering, Keio University, Japan 

and 

JST PRESTO, Japan 

• We demonstrate display of artificial tactile 

feeling using large displacement MEMS 

actuator arrays. 

• We investigated the artificial tactile feeling 

projected onto the fingertip in contact with 

the display. 

• The actuator arrays could successfully 

display “rough” and “smooth” tactile feeling 

distinctly. 

• We experimentally deduced the conditions 

when the pseudo tactile sensation was 

generated. 

Schematic view of a tactile display

Session WedCT10 Lince Wednesday, October 10, 2012, 11:00–12:30 

Visual Learning II 

Chair Edwin Olson, Univ. of Michigan 

Co-Chair 

11:00–11:15 WedCT10.1 

Clustering-based Discriminative Locality 

Alignment for Face Gender Recognition 

Duo Chen 

College of Communication Engineering, Chongqing University, China 

Jun Cheng 

Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, CAS, China 

The Chinese University of Hong Kong 

Dacheng Tao 

Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology, University of Technology 

Sydney, Australia 

• To facilitate human-robot interactions, 

human gender information is very 

important. 

• It is essential to develop a simple and fast 

way based on dimensional reduction to 

recognize gender. 

• Both global geometry and local geometry 

of data are essential to estimate the lower 

dimensional projection. 

• CDLA exploits global geometry, local 

geometry and discriminative information. 

p1 

A 

B 

p2 

CDLA makes the connected 

points in the k1 nearest graph 

closer. By k-means clustering 

(taking the global geometry into 

count), it avoids making the far 

away points connected. 


A System of Automated Training Sample 

Generation for Visual-based Car Detection 

Chao Wang, Huijing Zhao and Hongbin Zha 

Key Lab of Machine Perception (MOE), Peking Univ., China 

Franck Davoine 

CNRS and LIAMA Sino French Laboratory, Beijing, China 

• This paper presents a system to automatically 

generate car image sample dataset. 

• The dataset contains multi-view car image 

samples with car’s pose information. 

• A system of detecting and tracking onroad 

vehicles using multiple single-layer 

lasers is developed. 

• Multi-view car samples are generated 

based on the tracking results and multiview 

camera data. 

Car samples divided into 8 subcategories 


On-line semantic perception using uncertainty 

Roderick de Nijs, Juan Sebastian Ramos Pachón, Kolja Kühnlenz 

Institute of Automatic Control Engineering, Technische Universität München, 

Germany 

Gemma Roig, Xavier Boix, Luc van Gool 

Computer Vision Laboratory, ETH Zurich, Switzerland 

Can a semantic labeling algorithm 

benefit from uncertainty? 

• Buffer of images for on-line semantic 

segmentation 

• Perturb-and-MAP random fields to 

compute uncertainty 

• Spend more computation time on 

uncertain regions 

Above: Urban scene 

Below: Class undertainty 



Incorporating Geometric Information into Gaussian 

Process Terrain Models from Monocular Images 

Tariq Abuhashim and Salah Sukkarieh 

Australian Centre for Field Robotics 

The University of Sydney 

NSW 206, Australia 

• This paper presents a novel approach to 

incorporate differential geometry into 

depth estimation from monocular images 

that is based on the Gaussian Process 

Derivative Observations (GDP) 

formulation. 

• Experimental results are presented using 

synthesized examples and real monocular 

images captured from an Unmanned 

Aerial Vehicle (UAV). 

• Results show improvement in depth 

estimation over standard Gaussian 

Process Regression (GPR). 


–146– 

Ground and aerial robotics used 

to reconstruct 3D maps 


Learning and Recognition of Objects Inspired by 

Early Cognition 

Maja Rudinac and Pieter Jonker 

Biorobotics Lab, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands 

Gert Kootstra and Danica Kragic 

Computer Vision and Active Perception lab, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, 

Sweden 

• We present a unifying approach for learning 

and recognition of objects in unstructured 

environments through exploration. We 

establish 4 principles for object learning. 

• First, early object detection is based on an 

attention mechanism detecting salient parts in 

the scene. 

• Second, motion of the object allows more 

accurate object localization, 

• Next, acquiring multiple observations of the 

object through manipulation allows a more 

robust representation of the object. 

• And last, object recognition benefits from a 

multi-modal representation. 

• This approach shows significant improvement 

of the system when multiple observations are 

acquired from active object manipulation. 

Cognitive model for object 

learning and recognition 


A High-Accuracy Visual Marker 

Based on a Microlens Array 

Hideyuki Tanaka, Yasushi Sumi, and Yoshio Matsumoto 

Intelligent Systems Research Institute, AIST, Japan 

• ArrayMark: A novel AR marker utilizing a 2-D moiré pattern 

based on a microlens array 

• Accurate pose estimation (

Session WedCVT6 Gemini 3 Wednesday, October 10, 2012, 11:00–12:30 

SLAM II 

Chair Seth Hutchinson, Univ. of Illinois 

Co-Chair 

11:00–11:15 WedCVT6.1 

CurveSLAM: An approach for Vision-based 

Navigation without Point Features 

Dushyant Rao, Soon-Jo Chung and Seth Hutchinson 

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL, USA 

• Many existing SLAM methods use feature 

points without exploiting structure. 

• We perform stereo vision-based SLAM 

using cubic Bézier curves to represent 

landmarks. 

• Curve parameters are extracted without 

any point-based stereo matching. 

• The proposed algorithm can perform 

SLAM using only path edges as curve 

structures. 

11:30–11:45 WedCVT6.3 

Realizing, Reversing, Recovering: 

Incremental Robust Loop Closing 

over time using the iRRR algorithm 

Yasir Latif, César Cadena and José Neira 

University of Zaragoza, Spain 

• We consider the problem of false positive 

loop closures that any place recognition 

system will eventually provide. 

• We propose an incremental algorithm to 

realize that the place recognition system 

has generated wrong constraints, remove 

them if necessary, and recompute the 

state estimation. 

• We demonstrate the performance of our 

algorithm in multiple real cases, in multisession 

experiments and compared 

against the state of the art in robust backends. 

12:00–12:15 WedCVT6.5 

Towards Persistent Indoor Localization, 

Mapping and Navigation using CAT-Graph 

Will Maddern, Michael Milford and Gordon Wyeth 

School of EE&CS, Queensland University of Technology, Australia 

• We present CAT-Graph, an approach to 

topo-metric appearance-based SLAM with 

constant computational and memory 

requirements in a fixed-size environment. 

• Loop closures are calculated using a 

particle filter constrained to edges on the 

topological graph for fixed computation 

time. 

• Nodes are pruned using a local 

information content metric based on visual 

saliency to limit total map size. 

• We present results on a 7 day indoor 

experiment demonstrating constant 

update rate and map size, high recall with 

zero false positives and reliable 

topological path planning within 20% of the 

optimal metric path which improves over 

time. 

Graphical representation of 

continuous topology. Nodes 

represent visual observations and 

edges store local odometry 

11:15–11:30 WedCVT6.2 

Seamless Aiding of Inertial-SLAM using Visual 

Directional Constraints from a Monocular Vision 

Usman Qayyum and Jonghyuk Kim 

Research School of Engineering, Australian National University, Australia 

• The concept of visual directional 

constraint is proposed to resolve 

the scale ambiguity problem in 

monocular visual-inertial systems 

• Direct integration of visual 

directional vectors to the inertial 

system which enable aiding at high 

rates 

• 3D map being still used to constrain 

the drifts but in a relaxed way. 


–147– 

Fig. 1: Multiple loop aiding architecture. 

11:45–12:00 WedCVT6.4 

Location and Orientation Estimation with an 

Electrosense Robot 

Yonatan Silverman, Yang Bai 

Mechanical Engineering, Northwestern University, USA 

James Snyder and Malcolm A. MacIver 

Biomedical Engineering, Northwestern University, USA 

• Model uses voltage perturbations as a sensor modality from a 

generated electric field 

• To solve this RO-SLAM problem, orientation must be estimated from 

only orientation dependent range metrics 

• We determined the correct state of a robot using experimental data 

from an electrosensing robot. 

• The estimate of the state improved greatly when the robot rotated as 

well as translated. 

Electric Field without objects 

Electric Field with lateral wall 

Electric Field with front wall 

12:15–12:20 WedCVT6.6 

IEEE/RSJ IROS 2012 

Pedestrian Detection in Industrial Environments: 

Seeing around corners. 

Paulo Borges, Ash Tews, Dave Haddon 

Autonomous Systems Lab- ICT Centre - CSIRO 

� We propose a safety system which integrates a vision-based offboard 

pedestrian tracking subsystem with an onboard localisation and navigation 

subsystem. 

� This combination enables warnings to be communicated and effectively 

extends the vehicle controller’s field of view to include areas that would 

otherwise be blind spots. 

� A simple flashing light interface in the vehicle cabin provides a clear and 

intuitive interface to alert drivers of potential collisions. 

� We implemented and tested the proposed solution on an automated 

industrial vehicle to verify the applicability for both human drivers and under 

autonomous operation.


SLAM II 

Chair Seth Hutchinson, Univ. of Illinois 

Co-Chair 

12:20–12:25 WedCVT6.7 

ISRobotCar: The Autonomous 

Electric Vehicle Project 

Marco Silva, Fernando Moita, Urbano Nunes, Luís Garrote, 

Hugo Faria, and João Ruivo Paulo 

Institute of Systems and Robotics, University of Coimbra, Portugal 

• Autonomous vehicles can be decisive in 

order to reduce road accidents. 

• The adressed video shows an overview of 

the ISRobotCar, an experimental 

autonomous electric vehicle moving 

autonomously in a parking-like area as 

well as its main hardware and control 

modules. 

• The ISRobotCar main purpose is to serve 

as a platform for experimental testing of 

algorithms required for autonomous 

navigation and cooperative navigation in 

urban environments. 

The ISRobotCar 

12:25–12:30 WedCVT6.8 

Autonomy for Mobility on Demand Systems 

Z.J.Chong, B.Qin, M.H.Ang Jr., D.Hsu, 

NUS, Singapore 

T.Bandyopadhyay, T.Wongpiromsarn, B.Rebsamen, S.Kim, P.Dai 

S.M.A.R.T, Singapore 

E. Frazzoli, D. Rus 

MIT, Cambridge 

• Mobility on Demand (MoD) systems are 

becoming important in current urban 

transportation systems 

• We present a minimalistic autonomous 

platform for our MoD system 

• 

• We show the challenges of urban driving 

encountered by our system and approach 

taken to address the issues. 

• We demonstrate a complete service cycle 

utilizing the system in NUS campus under 

real conditions 


–148– 

A minimalistic autonomous 

platform is designed for our 

mobility on demand system


Soft Robots 

Chair Sungchul Kang, Korea Inst. of Science & Tech. 

Co-Chair Barbara Mazzolai, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia 

11:00–11:15 WedCVT8.1 

Innovative Soft Robots Based on Electro- 

Rheological Fluids 

Ali Sadeghi 1,2 , Lucia Beccai 1 and Barbara Mazzolai 1 

1- Center for Micro-BioRobotics@SSSA, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Italy 

2- BioRobotics Institute, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna,Italy 

• Control over the flexibility of soft robots 

bodies by controlling the ER fluid flow in 

soft elements of robot body 

• Electro-rheological (ER) fluids are smart 

fluids which can transform into solid-like 

phase by applying an electric field 

• Simplifying the hydraulic circuits in 

hydraulic based soft robots due to the 

simple design of ER valves 

• Using ER based hydraulic actuators for 

soft robotics applications 

Rubber bellows 

Rubber bellows 

ER Valves 

Backward ERF flow 

Forward ERF flow 

11:30–11:45 WedCVT8.3 

ER valves 

Tendon 

s 

bellows 

Design of a Tubular Snake-like Manipulator with 

Stiffening Capability by Layer Jamming 

Yong-Jae Kim 

Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology, Samsung Electronics Co., Korea 

Shanbao Cheng 

Direct Drive Systems, FMC Technologies, USA 

Sangbae Kim, and Karl Iagnemma 

Mechanical Engineering Dept., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA 

• Design of a hollow snake-like 

manipulator using layer jamming 

mechanism having tunable stiffness 

capability. 

• The proposed layer jamming 

mechanism is composed of multiple 

layers of thin film which make use of 

amplified friction between the films 

by applying vacuum pressure. 

• It has highly flexible and underactuated 

properties without vacuum; 

however, it becomes highly stiff 

when a vacuum is applied. 

Layer Jamming 

Manipulator having 

Stiffening Capability 

Actuation and 

Transmission System 

Hollow Snake-like Manipulator 

Closed up View of Tubular Shape 

12:00–12:15 WedCVT8.5 

Design of Soft Robotic Actuators Using Fluid- 

Filled Fiber-Reinforced Elastomeric Enclosures 

in Parallel Combinations 

Joshua Bishop-Moser, Girish Krishnan and Sridhar Kota 

Mechanical Engineering, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA 

Charles Kim 

Mechanical Engineering, Bucknell University, USA 

• Fiber-Reinforced Elastomeric Enclosures 

(FREEs) that can perform translation, 

bending, rotation, and screw motions. 

• Mobility for all single and parallel 

combinations determined from geometry. 

• Experimental verification of predicted 

actuation directions. 

• Provides a key building block for soft 

robots and dexterous manipulators. 

Deformation of a parallel FREE under 

multiple actuation permutations 

11:15–11:30 WedCVT8.2 

Detailed Dynamics Modeling of BioBiped’s 

Monoarticular and Biarticular Tendon-Driven 

Actuation System 

Katayon Radkhah, Thomas Lens, and Oskar von Stryk 

Department of Computer Science, TU Darmstadt, Germany 

• Detailed mathematical models of the 

active and passive, mono- and biarticular 

structures of the BioBiped1 robot 

• Enable a systematic analysis of the design 

space and characteristic curves 

• Basis to study the effects of the 

musculoskeletal actuation system 

• Evaluation of actuator models by MBS 

dynamics simulations for 1D hopping with 

regard to various performance criteria 

11:45–12:00 WedCVT8.4 

Adaptive Bipedal Walking through Sensory-motor 

Coordination Yielded from Soft Deformable Feet 

Dai Owaki and Hiroki Fukuda 

Research Institute of Electrical Communication, Tohoku University, Japan 

Akio Ishiguro 

Research Institute of Electrical Communication, Tohoku University, Japan 

CREST, The Japan Science and Technology Agency, Japan 

• Adaptive bipedal walking control that 

exploits sensory information stemming 

from “soft deformable” feet. 

• An unconventional CPG-based control that 

exploits local force feedback generated 

from such deformation. 

• Remarkably adaptive walking ability in 

response to a change in walking velocity 

and external perturbations. 

• Deformation of robot’s body plays a pivotal 

role in the emergence of “sensory-motor 

coordination”. 


–149– 

Bipedal robot with soft 

deformable feet 

12:15–12:20 WedCVT8.6 

Intrinsically Elastic Robots: The Key to Human- 

Like Performance 

S. Haddadin, F. Huber, K. Krieger, R. Weitschat, A. Albu-Schäffer, S. 

Wolf, W. Friedl, M. Grebenstein, F. Petit, J. Reinecke, R. Lampariello 

Robotics and Mechatronics Center 

• Exploiting inherent capabilities for 

dynamic motions of VSA robots based on 

temporary energy storage 

• Come closer to human-like performance 

in terms of speed, robustness, and safety 

• Model based approaches for optimal 

excitation and explicit use of elastic 

energy tanks 

• Framework for generating dynamic nearoptimal 

motions in real-time 

• Framework can be used not only for 

explosive or cyclic motion, but also for 

classical tracking or reaching tasks. 

Safe interaction Cyclic manipulation 

Explosive motions 

Optimality in real-time


Soft Robots 

Chair Sungchul Kang, Korea Inst. of Science & Tech. 

Co-Chair Barbara Mazzolai, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia 

12:20–12:25 WedCVT8.7 

“Can ants inspire robots?“ 

Self-organized decision making in robotic swarms 

Arne Brutschy, Eliseo Ferrante, Marco Dorigo, Mauro Birattari 

IRIDIA, CoDE, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium 

Alexander Scheidler 

Fraunhofer Institute for Energy System Technology, Germany 

� The k-unanimity rule allows a group to find 

the shortest among several actions 

� The method is based solely on local 

interactions 

� Robots observe the opinion of other robots 

and change their own if necessary 

� The opinion of the group converges with a 

high probability to the shortest action 

� No teams need to be formed and the 

accuracy of the decision can be adjusted 

� The video shows an experiment with a 

swarm of 10 robots 

12:25–12:30 WedCVT8.8 

A Single Motor Actuated Miniature Steerable 

Jumping Robot 

Jianguo Zhao, Ning Xi 

Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Michigan State University, USA 

Fernando J. Cintrón, Matt W. Mutka, and Li Xiao 

Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering, Michigan State University, USA 

• A miniature steerable jumping robot is 

designed and developed. 

• The robot can jump, steer, and self-right 

using a single motor; 

• The robot has a maximum length 6.5cm 

and weighs 23.5 grams with battery; 

• Experimental results show the robot can 

jump 90cm in height; 

• The robot has wide applications ranging 

from search and rescue in disasters, 

environmental monitoring, to military 

surveillance. 


–150– 

Jumping robot in action

Session WedDT1 Pegaso A Wednesday, October 10, 2012, 14:00–15:00 

Omnidirectional Vision and Aerial Robotics I 

Chair Friedrich Fraundorfer, ETH Zurich 

Co-Chair Vincenzo Lippiello, Univ. di Napoli Federico II 

14:00–14:15 WedDT1.1 

Full Scaled 3D Visual Odometry from a Single 

Wearable Omnidirectional Camera 

Daniel Gutiérrez-Gómez, Luis Puig and J.J. Guerrero 

Departamento de Informática e Ingeniería de Sistemas (DIIS) - 

Instituto de Investigación en Ingeniería de Aragón (I3A), 

Universidad de Zaragoza, Spain 

• Monocular SLAM present an scale 

ambiguity due to depth unobservability. 

• In SLAM with a helmet-mounted 

omnidirectional camera, head oscillations 

during walking are visible. 

• Extracting the frequency of oscillation, the 

walking speed can be approximated. 

• Knowing the walking speed, scale factor 

and true scaled 3D motion estimation can 

be computed. 

Our approach is able to cope with 

scale drift. 

14:30–14:45 WedDT1.3 

Topological segmentation of indoors/outdoors 

Sequences of spherical views 

Alexandre Chapoulie and Patrick Rives 

INRIA Sophia Antipolis, France 

David Filliat 

ENSTA-ParisTech, France 

• New approach for topological mapping of 

indoors/outdoors environments. 

• Online segmentation of sequences of 

spherical views. 

• Use of a global GIST descriptor for 

encoding the spherical view content. 

• Real-time change-point detection based 

algorithm 

• Experimental validation on indoors and 

outdoors datasets 

14:15–14:30 WedDT1.2 

3-line RANSAC for Orthogonal Vanishing 

Point Detection 

Jean-Charles Bazin and Marc Pollefeys 

Computer Vision and Geometry Laboratory 

ETH Zurich, Switzerland 

• Vanishing points (VPs) are useful for 

rotation estimation, robot stabilization, 

3D reconstruction, etc… 

• Orthogonal VPs constitute an important 

information but the orthogonality 

constraint is hard to impose 

• A new approach to generate a model of 

orthogonal VPs from three lines 

• Procedure incorporated in RANSAC for 

robust and fast estimation 


–151– 

Example of line clustering and 

vanishing point estimation 

14:45–15:00 WedDT1.4 

Wall Inspection Control of a VTOL Unmanned 

Aerial Vehicle Based on a Stereo Optical Flow 

Vincenzo Lippiello and Bruno Siciliano 

Dipartimento di Informatica e Sistemistica 

Università di Napoli Federico II – Italy 

• An autonomous wall inspection control, 

which employs the information provided by 

a stereo camera system to generate a 

virtual stereo OF is proposed. 

• A virtual spherical camera is considered at 

the center of gravity of the UAV. 

• An iterative algorithm is used to lead the 

acquisition process of the stereo pair 

generating both the stereo optical flow and 

the estimation of the 3D planar surface 

parameters (orientation and relative 

distance). 

• An average translational OF is employed 

to estimate the absolute vehicle velocity. 

Virtual spherical camera (top) 

and Stereo optical flow

Session WedDT2 Fenix 2 Wednesday, October 10, 2012, 14:00–15:00 

Physical Human-Robot Interaction III 

Chair Chris Melhuish, BRL 

Co-Chair Alessandro De Luca, Univ. di Roma 

14:00–14:15 WedDT2.1 

Kinematic synthesis, optimization and 

analysis of a non-anthropomorphic 2-DOFs 

wearable orthosis for gait assistance 

Fabrizio Sergi 

MEMS Department, Rice University, USA 

Dino Accoto, Nevio Luigi Tagliamonte, Giorgio Carpino, 

Simone Galzerano, Eugenio Guglielmelli 

CIR, Università Campus Bio-Medico di Roma, Italy 

• AIM: This paper describes the optimization of 

a planar wearable active orthosis for hip and 

knee assistance during walking 

• METHODS: A systematic enumeration 

algorithm is used to derive the whole set of 

admissible solutions and optimization is 

carried out to reduce actuators torque 

requirements. 

• RESULTS: The optimized design allows to 

conveniently re-distribute mechanical power 

in the actuated joints and to modulate 

apparent inertia, relative to the 

anthropomorphic designs 

• CONCLUSIONS: This paper gives a first 

preliminary evidence of the advantages of a 

non-anthropomorphic design in terms of 

actuation requirements. 

Figure: (A) Optimized torque profiles 

required to robot actuators, vs. torques 

applied to human joints. (B) Validation 

of the position-control scheme for the 

optimized design, through both 

simulations and experiments 

14:30–14:45 WedDT2.3 

Counteracting Modeling Errors for Sensitive 

Observer-Based Manipulator Collision Detection 

Vahid Sotoudehnejad, Amir Takhmar, 

Mehrdad R. Kermani and Ilia G. Polushin 

Electrical and Computer Engineering, The University of Western Ontario, 

Canada 

• Modeling errors responsible for 

deficiencies in sensorless 

collision detection of robotic 

systems are studied. 

• A time-variant threshold for 

observer residues in joint space 

is presented for the purpose of 

collision detection. 

• Simulation results using real-life 

collision forces on PUMA 560 

and experiments on the 

Phantom Omni device show that 

the time-variant threshold works 

better than constant thresholds. 

A 

B 

14:15–14:30 WedDT2.2 

Investigation of Safety in HRI for a Series 

Elastic, Tendon-Driven Robot Arm 

Thomas Lens and Oskar von Stryk 

Department of Computer Science, Technische Universität Darmstadt, Germany 

• Elastic tendon actuation in all four joints of 

the BioRob arm reduces link weights to a 

minimum 

• Design enables end-effector velocities up 

to 7 m/s 

• Analytic worst case safety estimation of 

dynamic impact peak forces and static 

clamping forces 

• Experimental validation of maximum peak 

forces, maximum clamping forces, and 

danger potential of energy stored in the 

springs 


–152– 

Impact and clamping experiment 

with the BioRob-X4 arm. 

14:45–15:00 WedDT2.4 

When Shared Plans go Wrong: From Atomic- to 

Composite Actions and Back 

Alexander Lenz 1 , Stephane Lallee 2 , Sergey Skachek 1 , 

Anthony G. Pipe 1 , Chris Melhuish 1 and Peter Ford Dominey 2 

1 Bristol Robotics Laboratory, Bristol, UK 

2 Stem Cell and Brain Research Institute, INSERM U846, Bron, France 

� HRI: cognitive system with composite actions, as a sequence of atomic 

actions. 

� Shared plans between human and robot (BERT2) consisting of 

composite actions. 

• Graceful recovery from 'behavioural faults' during shared plan execution 

guided by human using error codes. 

• Plan expansion into atomic action allows robot to skip or repeat 

interrupted atomic action. 

Human behaviour stops the execution of the shared plan: (a) human stop gesture; 

(b) human turns away from robot (lack of attention); (c) close human-robot proximity 

during robot motion.

Session WedDT3 Pegaso B Wednesday, October 10, 2012, 14:00–15:00 

Outdoor, Search and Rescue Robotics I 

Chair Robin Murphy, Texas A&M 

Co-Chair Shigeo Hirose, Tokyo Inst. of Tech. 

14:00–14:15 WedDT3.1 

LineScout Power Line Robot: Characterization of 

a UTM-30LX LIDAR for Obstacle Detection 

Nicolas Pouliot, Pierre-Luc Richard, and Serge Montambault 

Hydro-Québec’s Research Institute (IREQ), Canada 

• Although popular, LIDAR obstacle 

detection was never before applied 

for Power Line Robot applications 

• Before its introduction onto 

LineScout plateform, formal 

characterization of the Hokuyo 

UTM-30LX LIDAR is realized 

• LIDAR’s performances while 

scanning cylindrical objects and 

power line cable samples are also 

assessed. 

• Preliminary analysis and detection 

criteria appear as promising 

14:30–14:45 WedDT3.3 

Vehicle Localization in Mountainous 

Gravelled Paths 

Yoichi Morales and Takashi Tsubouchi 

Systems and Information Engineering University of Tsukuba, Japan 

Shigeru Sarata 

Field Systems Research, Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, Japan 

• Vehicle localization in real mountainous 

non-paved roads of a quarry 

• For 3D elevation map elaboration using 

data from dead reckoning, RTK-GPS and 

a laser sensor 

• Terrain traversability analysis is performed 

and scan points are voted in an elevation 

map which is probabilistically updated 

• Localization experiments were evaluated 

towards RTK-GPS used as ground truth. 

Localization in Mountainous 

Gravelled Paths 

14:15–14:30 WedDT3.2 

Mobile Robotic Fabrication on Construction 

Sites: dimRob 

Volker Helm, Selen Ercan, Fabio Gramazio, and Matthias Kohler 

Architecture and Digital Fabrication, ETH Zürich, Switzerland 

• In dimRob (ECHORD - European Clearing 

House for Open Robotics Development, 

7 th Framework Programme) viable 

applications for mobile robotic units on 

construction sites are explored. 

• The aim is also to build upon innovative 

man-machine interaction paradigms via 

the cooperation of the precision of 

machine with innate cognitive human 

skills. 

• dimRob is intended as a first step in the 

evolution of mobile robotics for 

architecture on construction sites. 


–153– 

The fabrication unit of dimRob: 

An industrial robot, ABB IRB 

4600, mounted on a compact 

mobile track system that is 

designed to fit through a standard 

door frame on construction sites 

14:45–15:00 WedDT3.4 

Casting Device for Search and Rescue 

Aiming Higher and Faster Access in Disaster Site 

Hideyuki Tsukagoshi, Eyri Watari, Kazutaka Fuchigami, 

and Ato Kitagawa Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan 

• As a new tool for rescue 

operation in dangerous 

buildings, a method for casting 

and fixing a tube to collect 

information is proposed. 

• To realize it, a deformable 

anchor ball, a retrieving 

device, and a gondola robot 

are introduced.

Session WedDT4 Fenix 3 Wednesday, October 10, 2012, 14:00–15:00 

Humanoid Robots V 

Chair 

Co-Chair 

14:00–14:15 WedDT4.1 

Humanoid Push Recovery 

with Robust Convex Synthesis 

Jiuguang Wang 

Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University 

robot@cmu.edu 

• Humanoid full-body push recovery 

• Robust control design – model bounded 

external disturbances 

• Simultaneously search for a controller and 

the associated domain of attraction using 

convex optimization 

• The controller guarantees stabilization 

under bounded disturbances as well as 

physical constraints on the robot 

14:30–14:45 WedDT4.3 

Lower Thigh Design of 

Detailed Musculoskeletal Humanoid “Kenshiro” 

Yuki Asano*, Hironori Mizoguchi**, Toyotaka Kozuki**, 

Yotaro Motegi**, Masahiko Osada**, Junichi Urata**, 

Yuto Nakanishi**, Kei Okada** and Masayuki Inaba** 

*Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies, Univ.of Tokyo, Japan 

**Dept. of Mechano-Informatics, Univ.of Tokyo, Japan 

• Design concept of Detailed 

Musculoskeletal Humanoid “Kenshiro” 

• Body Configuration 

• Joint Structure 

• Muscle Arrangement 

• Biomimetic Design of the Knee Joint 

• Kneecap 

• Cruciate Ligament 

• Screw-Home Mechanism 

• Detailed Muscle Arrangement Imitating 

Human 

• Experiment of Knee Rotation on the 

Ground 

Detailed musculoskeletal humanoid 

“Kenshiro”. Knee rotation experiment 

and muscle arrangemant of leg 

14:15–14:30 WedDT4.2 

Appearance-Based Traversability 

Classification in Monocular Images Using 

Iterative Ground Plane Estimation 

Daniel Maier and Maren Bennewitz 

Department of Computer Science, University of Freiburg, Germany 

• Traversability estimation from monocular 

camera images for robot navigation 

• Learning appearance-based classifiers for 

fast and dense classification of images 

• Classifiers are updated online in a selfsupervised 

fashion 

• Iterative detection and matching of sparse 

features on the ground plane under the 

homography constraint 

• Classified images are integrated into an 

occupancy grid map 

• Experiments with a real humanoid robot 

show high classification rates and robust 

obstacle detection 


–154– 

Top: Sparse Floor Features 

Bottom: Dense Classification 

14:45–15:00 WedDT4.4 

Optimization-based generation and experimental 

validation of walking trajectories for biped robots 

Alexander Werner, Roberto Lampariello and Christian Ott 

Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics, Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und 

Raumfahrt (DLR), Germany 

• Generation of energy-optimal step 

trajectories through non-linear 

programming with full rigid-body robot 

model 

• Stability(ZMP), collisions and joint limits 

are respected 

• Efficient fixed-based calculation of the 

constraints and the cost function 

• Analysis and avoidance of global minima 

• Experimental testing and evaluation of the 

trajectories 

• Significant gain (55%) in the cost function 

with respect to capture-point based 

controller 

Optimal Walking Trajectories

Session WedDT5 Gemini 2 Wednesday, October 10, 2012, 14:00–15:00 

Human-Machine Interfaces 

Chair Fabio Paolo Bonsignorio, Heron Robots srl Univ. Carlos III de Madrid 

Co-Chair 

14:00–14:15 WedDT5.1 

Novel Equilibrium-Point Control of Agonist- 

Antagonist System with Pneumatic Artificial Muscles: 

II. Application to EMG-based Human-machine 

Interface for an Elbow-joint System 

Yohei Ariga, Daisuke Maeda, Hang T. T. Pham, 

Mitsunori Uemura, Hiroaki Hirai and Fumio Miyazaki 

Graduate School of Engineering Science, Osaka University, Japan 

• An EMG-based HMI for the agonist-antagonist system with 

pneumatic artificial muscles (PAMs) is proposed. 

• We introduce the novel concepts of agonist-antagonist 

muscle-pair ratio (A-A ratio) and agonist-antagonist 

muscle-pair activity (A-A activity). 

• These concepts enable us to linearly 

translate the equilibrium point of 

the human muscle system into that 

of the PAM system, linking these two 

systems in a simple way. 

EMG Signal 

14:30–14:45 WedDT5.3 

I’ll Keep You in Sight: Finding a Good Position 

to Observe a Person 

Jens Kessler and Daniel Iser and Horst-Michael Gross 

Neuroinformatics and Cognitive Robotics Lab, Ilmenau University of 

Technology, Germany 

• Hard and soft criteria are 

combined to find a good position 

(e.g. visibility, sensor distance) 

• Particle swarm optimization is 

used to find the position 

• A very computational expensive 

3D approach is reduced to an 

efficient 2D approach 

• First experiments show stable 

results in both cases 

Valid search space from hard criteria and 

the person occupancy distribution 

14:15–14:30 WedDT5.2 

Benchmarking Shared Control for Assistive 

Manipulators: From Controllability to the Speed- 

Accuracy Trade-Off 

Martin F. Stoelen, Virginia F. Tejada, 

Alberto Jardón Huete and Carlos Balaguer 

Roboticslab, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M), Spain 

Fabio Bonsignorio 

UC3M and Heron Robots, Genova, Italy 

• Shared control for assistive manipulators 

• Predict intent and assist disabled user 

• So far mainly wheelchairs/mobile platf. 

• Benchmarking/experiments important 

• High-DOF human-robot systems 

• Sharing and replication of results 

• System models and metrics proposed 

• Controllability from user’s perspective 

• Speed-accuracy trade-off 

• Case study on adaptive shared control 

showed improvement in both metrics 


–155– 

Experimental setup used for case 

study on adaptive shared control 

14:45–15:00 WedDT5.4 

Embedding Imperceptible Codes into Video 

Projection and Applications in Robotics 

Jingwen Dai and Ronald Chung 

Department of Mechanical and Automation Engineering, 

The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong 

• A novel system of embedding 

imperceptible structured codes 

into normal projection. 

• In coding end: noise-tolerant 

schemes (specifically designed 

shapes and large hamming 

distance) are employed. 

• In decoding end: pre-trained 

primitive shape detectors are used 

to detect and identify the weakly 

embedded codes. 

• Some potential applications to a 

robotic system are demonstrated.


Mapping III 

Chair 

Co-Chair 

14:00–14:15 WedDT6.1 

Sensor Fusion for Flexible Human-Portable 

Building-Scale Mapping 

Maurice F. Fallon, Hordur Johannsson, 

Jonathan Brookshire, Seth Teller, John J. Leonard 

Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, MIT, USA 

• Man-portable sensor rig for 

Biohazard Site Assessment teams 

• LIDAR based multi-floor mapping 

algorithm using iSAM 

• Re-localization using visual 

appearance 

• Floor tracking using a pressure 

sensor 

14:30–14:45 WedDT6.3 

Efficient Map Merging Using a Probabilistic 

Generalized Voronoi Diagram 

Sajad Saeedi ♦ , Liam Paull ♦ , Michael Trentini ♦♦ , Mae Seto ♦♦ and 

Howard Li ♦ 

♦ Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of New Brunswick, Canada 

♦♦ Defence Research and Development Canada, Canada 

• One of the problems for multi-robot SLAM 

is that the robots only know their positions 

in their own local coordinate frames, so 

fusing map data can be challenging. 

• In this research, a probabilistic version of 

the Generalized Voronoi Diagram (GVD), 

called the PGVD, is used to determine the 

relative transformation between maps and 

fuse them. 

• The new method is effective for finding 

relative transformations quickly and 

reliably. In addition, the novel approach 

accounts for all map uncertainties in the 

fusion process. 

Probabilistic GVD of two partial 

maps which are used for map 

fusion 

14:15–14:30 WedDT6.2 

Fast Voxel Maps with Counting Bloom Filters 

Julian Ryde and Jason J. Corso 

Computer Science and Engineering, University at Buffalo, USA 

• Bloom filters applied to accelerate look up 

speed of voxel occupancy in maps for 

mobile robots 

• Probabilistic data structure 

•Small probability of false positive 

•False negatives always correct 

• Fast sparse voxel occupancy lookup 

•3 times faster than efficient hash table 

•Within 10% speed of dense array 

• Tested for 3D SLAM with point cloud data 

and no impact on mapping accuracy 

observed 

• Works with very large maps that do not fit 

in computer RAM 

14:45–15:00 WedDT6.4 

A Pipeline for Structured Light Bathymetric 

Mapping 

Gabrielle Inglis, Clara Smart, Ian Vaughn and Chris Roman 

Department of Ocean Engineering, University of Rhode Island, USA 

• A method for creating micro-bathymetric 

maps using structured light imaging is 

presented 

• Algorithms for segmentation of the laser 

image and in-situ calibration of the 

imaging sensor are developed 

• Sub-map based simultaneous localization 

and mapping (SLAM ) is adapted to solve 

for navigation 

• High resolution maps meet or exceed 

standards of state of the art acoustic 

methods 


–156– 

Archaeological structured light 

survey gridded at 1 cm.

Session WedDT7 Vega Wednesday, October 10, 2012, 14:00–15:00 

Motion and Path Planning VI 

Chair Songhwai Oh, Seoul National Univ. 

Co-Chair 

14:00–14:15 WedDT7.1 

Sampling-based Nonholonomic Motion Planning in Belief 

Space via Dynamic Feedback Linearization-based FIRM 

Ali-akbar Agha-mohammadi 1 , Suman Chakravorty 2 , 

Nancy M. Amato 1 

1 Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering, Texas A&M University, USA 

2 Dept. of Aerospace Engineering, Texas A&M University, USA 

• Sampling-based motion planning 

in belief space for nonholonomic 

systems with FIRM (Feedbackbased 

Information RoadMap) 

• Using a Dynamic Feedback 

Linearization-based controller 

along with a stationary Kalman 

filter to perform belief stabilization 

• Robust feedback motion planning 

in belief space with real-time 

replanning capabilities 

Feedback solution in belief 

space obtained by DFL-based 

FIRM in a simple environment 

Unicycle 

14:30–14:45 WedDT7.3 

Task-oriented Design of Concentric Tube Robots 

using Mechanics-based Models 

Luis G. Torres and Ron Alterovitz 

Department of Computer Science, UNC-Chapel Hill, USA 

Robert J. Webster III 

Department of Mechanical Engineering, Vanderbilt University, USA 

• New task-oriented approach for designing 

concentric tube robots on a surgery- and 

patient-specific basis 

• Uses mechanics-based kinematic model 

for more accuracy than prior design 

methods 

• Combines search in design space with 

motion planning in configuration space for 

probabilistic completeness in design space 

• Leverages design coherence to accelerate 

design process 

• Applied design method to medically 

motivated bronchial surgery scenario 

A concentric tube robot designed 

by our method reaching two 

surgical targets in the lung 

14:15–14:30 WedDT7.2 

Local Randomization in Neighbor Selection 

Improves PRM Roadmap Quality 

Troy McMahon, Sam Jacobs, Bryan Boyd and Nancy M. Amato 

Parasol Lab, Dept of Computer Science and Engineering, 

Texas A&M University, USA 

Lydia Tapia 

Dept of Computer Science, University of New Mexico, USA 

• Proposes a candidate neighbor 

selection policy, LocalRand(k,k’), 

which identifies k’ local nodes then 

selects k of those nodes at random. 

• LocalRand yields many benefits 

associated with randomized methods 

while maintaining the advantages 

inherent to a localized method like kclosest. 

• Experimental evaluation shows that 

LocalRand produces better roadmaps 

than k-closest at a comparable cost. 

14:45–15:00 WedDT7.4 

Sampling-Based Sweep Planning to Exploit 

Local Planarity in the Inspection of Complex 3D 

Structures 

Brendan Englot and Franz S. Hover 

Department of Mechanical Engineering, 

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 

USA 

• Hybrid algorithm for planning a fullcoverage 

inspection of complex 3D 

structures 

• Rectangular, back-and-forth sweep paths 

cover the open, planar areas 

• Randomized configurations cover the 

confined, occluded areas 

• Used to plan ship hull inspection routes for 

an autonomous underwater vehicle 

• Back-and-forth sweep paths are seeded 

through random sampling 

• We show probabilistic completeness and 

fast algorithm convergence 


–157– 

A full-coverage AUV inspection 

route for a ship’s stern using both 

regularized and randomized 

configurations


Space Robotics 

Chair Paolo Fiorini, Univ. of Verona 

Co-Chair Kazuya Yoshida, Tohoku Univ. 

14:00–14:15 WedDT8.1 

Emulating Self-reconfigurable Robots 

- Design of the SMORES System 

Jay Davey and Ngai Ming Kwok 

School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, 

University of New South Wales, Australia 

Mark Yim 

Mechanical Engineering and Applied Science, 

University of Pennsylvania, USA 

• S.M.O.R.E.S. - Self-assembling 

MOdular Robot for Extreme 

Shape-shifting) 

• Development of a Universal robot 

• Emulation of existing selfreconfigurable 

modular robots 

• Utilizing chain, lattice and mobile 

self-reconfiguration strategies 

• Self-assembly 

SMORES 

14:30–14:45 WedDT8.3 

Impedance-Based Contact Control of a Free- 

Flying Space Robot with a Compliant Wrist for 

Non-cooperative Satellite Capture 

Naohiro Uyama, Kenji Nagaoka, and Kazuya Yoshida 

Department of Aerospace Engineering, Tohoku University, Japan 

Hiroki Nakanishi 

Innovative Technology Research Center, JAXA, Japan 

• Impedance-based contact control method 

from a viewpoint of coefficient of restitution 

is presented. 

• The dominant contact dynamics 

parameters are approximated by wrist’s 

spring and damper elements. 

• Impedance parameter tuning method is 

proposed utilizing the coefficient of 

restitution. 

• Experimental verification concludes the 

validity and availability of the proposed 

method. 

Proposed impedance parameter 

tuning method from desired 

coefficient of restitution 

14:15–14:30 WedDT8.2 

Slope Traversability Analysis of 

Reconfigurable Planetary Rovers 

Hiroaki Inotsume, Masataku Sutoh, 

Kenji Nagaoka, Keiji Nagatani, and Kazuya Yoshida 

Department of Aerospace Engineering, Tohoku University, Japan 

• Effect of attitude changes 

of a reconfigurable rover 

on its slippages over 

sandy slopes is analyzed 

• Wheel-soil interaction is 

modeled based on 

terramechanics 

• Slope-traversing 

experiments and 

numerical simulations are 

conducted 

14:45–15:00 WedDT8.4 

Tracking complex targets for space rendezvous 

and debris removal applications 

Antoine Petit 

Lagadic Team, INRIA Rennes, France 

Eric Marchand 

Lagadic Team, IRISA, Université Rennes 1, France 

Keyvan Kanani 

Astrium, Toulouse, France 

• A generic 3D model-based tracking 

method to fully localize space targets. 

• It processes in real time the complete 3D 

model of complex objects, avoiding any 

manual redesign of the model. 

• Model projection performed through GPU 

rendering. 

• Extraction of both salient geometrical 

edges and textures edges from the 

rendered scene. 

• Classical edge-based tracking and pose 

estimation techniques. 

• Better robustness with a multiple 

hypothesis tracking solution. 


–158– 

Some experimental results, on 

real and synthetic images

Session WedDT10 Lince Wednesday, October 10, 2012, 14:00–15:00 

Tactile Exploration 

Chair Shinichi Hirai, Ritsumeikan Univ. 

Co-Chair 

14:00–14:15 WedDT10.1 

Online Spatio-Temporal Gaussian Process 

Experts with Application to Tactile Classification 

Harold Soh, Yanyu Su and Yiannis Demiris 

Personal Robotics Laboratory, 

Imperial College London, United Kingdom 

• Problem: Learning and Predicting 

Multivariate Time-series (e.g. sensor data). 

• Proposed Solution: STORK-GP, Sparse 

Online GP with novel Recursive Kernel 

based on relevance detection. 

• Application: Tactile classification. 

• Benefits: Method creates new models 

“on-the-fly” and refines existing models. 

• Experiments: High Accuracy comparable 

to extensively-optimised offline classifiers. 

• Download STORKG-GP: 

www.haroldsoh.com 

Online Tactile Classifier using 

STORK-GP Online Experts 


3D Surface Reconstruction for Robotic Body 

Parts with Artificial Skins 

Philipp Mittendorfer and Gordon Cheng 

Institute for Cognitive Systems, Technische Universität München, Germany 

www.ics.ei.tum.de 

• We only utilize a-priori knowledge given by the elemental skin unit cell 

• We calculate relative positions and orientations of all unit cells in a patch 

• We utilize network relationships and gravity measurements in ≥ 2 poses 

• We only depend on sensor skin features ⇒ transferable between robots 


Experimental Investigation of Surface 

Identification Ability of a Low-Profile Fabric 

Tactile Sensor 

Van Anh Ho, Masaaki Makikawa and Shinichi Hirai 

Department of Robotics, Ritsumeikan University, Japan 

Takahiro Araki 

Research and Development Department, Okamoto Corp., Japan 

• Design a fabric sensor with loops on the 

surface to enhance the slip detection, as 

well as to capture stck-slip events during 

sliding motion. 

• Three methods have been employed to 

evaluate recognition ability of the sensor 

over several typical texture. 

• Results show that ANN-based 

classification using Discrete Wavelet 

Transformation (DWT) of sensor’s 

signal outperformed the others. 


–159– 

Sensor’s construction and DWT 

signals over textures 


A Novel Dynamic Slip Prediction and Compensation 

Approach Based on Haptic Surface Exploration 

Xiaojing Song, Hongbin Liu, Joao Bimbo, Kaspar Althoefer 

and Lakmal D Seneviratne 

Department of Informatics, King’s College London, UK 

• Efficient haptic surface 

exploration to identify friction 

properties of object surfaces. 

• Slip threshold is predicted 

online based on identified 

friction property. 

• Slip compensator is 

implemented to prevent 

slippage during a dynamic 

grasping.

Session WedDVT9 Fenix 1 Wednesday, October 10, 2012, 14:00–15:00 

Range Sensing 

Chair Kazunori Umeda, Chuo Univ. 

Co-Chair 

14:00–14:15 WedDVT9.1 

Construction of a Compact Range Image Sensor 

Using a Multi-slit Laser Projector 

Suitable for a Robot Hand 

Kazuya Iwasaki 

Course of Precision Engineering, Chuo University, Japan 

Kenji Terabayashi and Kazunori Umeda 

Department of Precision Mechanics, Chuo University, Japan 

• A compact range image sensor used for 

short-range (100-300mm) measurements 

is constructed 

• The sensor consists of a multi-slit laser 

projector and a small CMOS camera 

• 1800 measurement points, 15fps, 

measurement in a dynamic environment 

(experiments for 300mm/s moving object) 

• The sensor is compact enough (weight: 

40g) to be attached to a robot's hand 

A compact range image sensor 

using a multi-slit laser projector 

14:30–14:45 WedDVT9.3 

Fast Incremental 3D Plane Extraction from a 

Collection of 2D Line Segments for 3D Mapping 

Su-Yong An, Lae-Kyoung Lee, and Se-Young Oh 

Electrial Engineering, POSTECH, Korea 

• 2D line segments 

are extracted from 

every scan slice 

and then clustered 

according to their 

orientation 

• A 3D plane is 

modeled by a set 

of these line 

segments 

Plane extraction results 

• Reduced the number of scan points that are actually accessed 

• Compared with state of the art methods 

14:50–14:55 WedDVT9.5 

An Autonomous 9-DOF Mobile-manipulator 

System for in situ 3D Object Modeling 

Liila Torabi and Kamal Gupta 

Engineering Science, Simon Fraser University, Canada 

• The system consists of a mobile base 

with a 6-DOF arm mounted on it. 

Both the arm, and the mobile base are 

equipped with a line-scan range sensor. 

• The task is to autonomously build 

3D model of an object in situ. 

• The system assumes no knowledge 

of either the object or the rest of the 

workspace of the robot. 

• The overall planner integrates two next best view 

(NBV) algorithms, one for modeling and the other 

for exploration, along with sensor-based path planner. 

14:15–14:30 WedDVT9.2 

Fast Nearest Neighbor Search using 

Approximate Cached k-d Tree 

Won-Seok Choi and Se-Young Oh 

Electrical Engineering, the Pohang university of Science and 

TECHnology(POSTECH), KOREA 

• Key idea: ‘cache’ and ‘approximate’ 

• The search starts from the cached leaf 

node, not the root node. 

• Suitable for low dimensional data 

• The Indexing sequence implies a clue of 

the cached node 

• Property I : If the indexes of two 

query points are close, these are 

likely close to each other 

• Property II: If the indexes of a query 

point and a model point are close, 

these are likely close to each other 


–160– 

… 

… 

… 

… … 

… … 

… 

(a) the standard k-d tree 

… 

… 

… … 

… … 

(b) the proposed algorithm 

Figure. Search traversal path 

14:45–14:50 WedDVT9.4 

Thermal 3D Modeling of Indoor Environments 

For Saving Energy 

Dorit Borrmann, Hassan Afzal, Jan Elseberg, 

and Andreas Nüchter 

School of Engineering and Science, Jacobs University Bremen, Germany 

• Heat and air conditioning 

losses lead to a large amount 

of wasted energy 

• A complete 3D model of heat 

distribution enables one to 

detect sources of wasted 

energy 

• Architects can use this model 

to modify buildings to reach 

energy savings 

• This video presents our approach to 

automatically generate 3D models from 

laser range images, thermal images, and 

photos 

3D model enhanced with thermal, 

color, and reflectance information 

14:55–15:00 WedDVT9.6 

Collision Avoidance of Industrial Robot Arms 

using an Invisible Sensitive Skin 

Tin Lun Lam, Hoi Wut Yip, Huihuan Qian and Yangsheng Xu 

Mechanical and Automation Engineering, The Chinese University of Hong 

Kong, Hong Kong 

• Cost-effective invisible sensitive 

skin 

• Cover a large area without utilizing 

a large number of sensors 

• Built inside the robot arm 

• Collision avoidance of a 6-DOF 

industrial robot arm by 5 

contactless capacitive sensors and 

specially designed antennas

Session WedET1 Pegaso A Wednesday, October 10, 2012, 15:00–16:00 

Omnidirectional Vision and Aerial Robotics II 

Chair Friedrich Fraundorfer, ETH Zurich 

Co-Chair Vincenzo Lippiello, Univ. di Napoli Federico II 

15:00–15:15 WedET1.1 

Vision-only estimation of wind field strength and 

direction from an aerial platform 

Richard J. D. Moore, Saul Thurrowgood 

and Mandyam V. Srinivasan 

Queensland Brain Institute, University of Queensland, Australia 

• Novel method for estimating wind 

field strength and direction from a 

moving airborne platform using only 

visual information. 

• Iterative optimisation allows wind 

field properties to be determined 

from successive measurements of 

aircraft ground track and heading 

direction. 

• Results from simulated and realworld 

flight tests demonstrate 

accuracy and robustness of 

proposed approach and practicality 

for measuring wind in real-world 

environments. 

Attitude, heading, and ground track are 

estimated from omnidirectional visual 

input. Relationship between ground track 

and heading direction is used to compute 

wind field strength and direction. 

15:30–15:45 WedET1.3 

Vision-Based Autonomous Mapping and 

Exploration Using a Quadrotor MAV 

Friedrich Fraundorfer, Lionel Heng, Dominik Honegger, 

Gim Hee Lee, Lorenz Meier, Petri Tanskanen, Marc Pollefeys 

Computer Vision and Geometry Lab, ETH Zürich, Switzerland 

• We show vision-based autonomous 

mapping and exploration with our MAV in 

unknown environments. 

• A downward looking optical flow camera 

and a front looking stereo camera are the 

main sensors. 

• All algorithms necessary for autonomous 

mapping and exploration run on-board the 

MAV. 

• Off-board large scale pose-graph SLAM 

and loop closure with images transmitted 

via Wi-Fi to ground-station. 

Visualization of obstacle map and path 

planning planning along a corridor 

15:15–15:30 WedET1.2 

Predicting Micro Air Vehicle Landing Behaviour 

from Visual Texture 

John Bartholomew, Andrew Calway and Walterio Mayol-Cuevas 

Computer Science, University of Bristol, UK 

• Motivation: Predicting landing 

behaviour enables autonomous 

choice of landing site. 

• Characteristics of motion during 

touch-down on different surfaces are 

found experimentally. 

• General Regression is used to 

predict motion for new surfaces, from 

training data. 

• We test a known texture descriptor 

on challenging imagery from the 

MAV. 

15:45–16:00 WedET1.4 

A Geometrical Approach For Vision Based Attitude And 

Altitude Estimation For UAVs In Dark Environments 

Ashutosh Natraj 1,3 

1 MIS Lab & Le2i Lab, University of Picardie Jules Verne 

Peter Sturm 2 , Cedric Demonceaux 3 & Pascal Vasseur 4 

2 INRIA Rhone Alpes, Grenoble, France, 

3 Le2i Lab, University of Bourgogne, France, 

4 Litis Lab, University of Rouen, France. 

• We present a single fish-eye 

camera-laser projector system on a 

fixed base line to estimate altitude & 

attitude of UAVs as in fig 1. 

• Our system is cheap, light weight 

and computationally less expensive 

compared over commercial sensors. 

Applications: 

• Altitude and attitude estimation of 

UAVs for vertical take off and landing 

(VTOL) and maneuvering in the low 

light to dark indoor/outdoor, GPS 

deficient unknown environment with 

no prebuilt map as shown in figure 2. 


–161– 

Fig 1. Our setup on the UAV-Pelican. 

Fig 2. An application in low light-dark 

indoor GPS insufficient environment.

Session WedET2 Fenix 2 Wednesday, October 10, 2012, 15:00–16:00 

Emotion Detection and Expression 

Chair C. S. George Lee, Purdue Univ. 

Co-Chair Ren Luo, National Taiwan Univ. 

15:00–15:15 WedET2.1 

An NARX-Based Approach for Human Emotion 

Identification 

Rami Alazrai and C.S. George Lee 

School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Purdue University, U.S.A 

• Propose an NARX-based approach to 

capture the spatial and temporal dynamics 

of facial expressions. 

• Temporal phases of facial expressions are 

identified using the proposed MIBDIA 

algorithm. 

• The proposed human-emotion recognition 

system achieved 91.5% average 

recognition rate over the CK+ dataset. 

15:30–15:45 WedET2.3 

Development of Expressive Robotic Head 

for Bipedal Humanoid 

Robot 

Tatsuhiro Kishi, Takuya Otani, Nobutsuna Endo, 

Przmyslaw Kryczka, Kenji Hashimoto, Kei Nakata 

and Atsuo Takanishi 

Faculty of Science and Engineering, Waseda University, Japan 

• Robotic head was developped to increase 

the facial expression ability of bipedal 

humanoid robot. 

• Representative facial expressions for 6 

basic emotion were designed by 

cartoonists. 

• Compact Mechanisms were developped to 

build the robotic head as small as 

Japanese female’s head. 

• Evaluations with pictures and videos show 

that the robotic head has extensive facial 

expression ability. 

15:15–15:30 WedET2.2 

A Design Methodology for 

Expressing Emotion on Robot Faces 

Mohammad Shayganfar, Charles Rich and Candace L. Sidner 

Computer Science Dept 

Worcester Polytechnic Institute, USA 

• Methodology is grounded in the 

psychological literature (Ekman FACS) 

• Four steps: (i) assign action units to robot 

DOF, (ii) apply mapping from basic action 

units to emotions, (iii) predict confusions, 

(iv) add optional action units and cartoon 

ideas to reduce confusion 

• Demonstrated and evaluated by applying 

methodology to a recent humanoid robot 

(see figure) 

• The experimentaly observed emotion 

confusion matrix agrees qualitatively with 

the predictions of the methodology 

15:45–16:00 WedET2.4 

Confidence Fusion Based Emotion Recognition 

of Multiple Persons for Human-Robot Interaction 

Ren C. Luo, Pei Hsien Lin, Li Wen Chang 

Center for Intelligent Robotics and Automation Research, National Taiwan University 

• We propose an integrated system which 

has the ability to track multiple users at one 

time, to recognize their facial expressions, 

and to identify the indoor ambient 

atmosphere. 

• In our facial expression recognition 

scheme, we fuse Feature Vectors based 

Approach (FVA) and Differential-Active 

Appearance Model Features based 

Approach (DAFA) to obtain not only 

apposite positions of feature points, but 

also more information about texture and 

appearance. 

• With our system, our intelligent robot with 

vision systems are able to acquire the 

ambient atmosphere information and 

interacts with people properly. 


–162– 

A surprise situation of humanrobot 

interaction

Session WedET3 Pegaso B Wednesday, October 10, 2012, 15:00–16:00 

Outdoor, Search and Rescue Robotics II 

Chair Robin Murphy, Texas A&M 

Co-Chair Shigeo Hirose, Tokyo Inst. of Tech. 

15:00–15:15 WedET3.1 

Design and Calibration of Large Microphone 

Arrays for Robotic Applications 

Florian Perrodin, Janosch Nikolic, Joël Busset and 

Roland Siegwart 

Autonomous System Lab, ETH Zürich, Switzerland 

• Presentation of a modular design 

for large embedded microphone 

arrays, example of a 64-elements 

microphone array. 

• Automatic shape calibration 

algorithm for 2D or 3D arrays in 

non-controlled (reverberant) 

conditions. 

• Application in precise acoustic 

imaging as well as high-gain 

sound amplification. 

• Robotics applications include 

search and rescue, complex 

acoustic scenes understanding 

and sound-based multi-user 

interface. 

Design of 64-elements 

planar microphone array 

15:30–15:45 WedET3.3 

Crank-wheel: 

A Brand New Mobile Base for Field Robots 

Hisami Nakano and Shigeo Hirose 

Dept. of Mechano-Aerospace Engineering, 

Tokyo Institute of Technoloty, Japan 

• We propose crank-wheel mechanism , 

which is simple and has high mobility on 

rough terrain. 

• The coupler link is connected to front-rear 

wheel by revolute joints. 

• We developed the prototype 

• Basic performance of the prototype is 

discussed 

Crank-wheel robot 

15:15–15:30 WedET3.2 

Development of Multi-wheeled Snake-like 

Rescue Robots with Active Elastic Trunk 

Kousuke Suzuki, Atsushi Nakano, Gen Endo and Shigeo Hirose 

Dept. of Mechano-Aerospace Engineering, 

Tokyo Institute of Technoloty, Japan 

• We propose multi-wheeled snake-like 

rescue robots with active elastic trunk 

• The trunk driven by cables satisfies both 

active bending motion and passive 

compliance 

• We developed three prototypes “Souryu- 

VII”, “Souryu-VIII” and “Souryu-IX” 

• Basic performance of each prototype is 

compared and discussed 


–163– 

Souryu-VII, VIII and IX 

15:45–16:00 WedET3.4 

Initial Deployment of a Robotic Team 

A Hierarchical Approach Under Communication 

Constraints Verified on Low-Cost Platforms 

Micael S. Couceiro, David Portugal and Rui P. Rocha 


Carlos M. Figueiredo and Nuno M. F. Ferreira 

Dep. of Electrical Engineering, Engineering Institute of Coimbra, Portugal 

• Systematic method for hierarchically deploying swarm agents in an 

unknown scenario under communication constraints 

• Extension of the TraxBot platforms to support the transportation of 5 

eSwarBots 

• Despite odometry errors, 

eSwarBots turn out to be 

uniformly deployed within the 

test scenario 

Experimental setup with 1 

TraxBot and 5 eSwarBots

Session WedET4 Fenix 3 Wednesday, October 10, 2012, 15:00–16:00 

Control of Bio-Inspired Robots II 

Chair Giorgio Metta, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT) 

Co-Chair 

15:00–15:15 WedET4.1 

Iterative Learning Control for a Musculoskeletal Arm: 

Utilizing Multiple Space Variables to Improve the Robustness 

Kenji Tahara, Yuta Kuboyama and Ryo Kurazume 

Kyushu University, Japan 

• Proposing a new iterative learning 

control method which is composed of 

multiple space variables 

• Conducting numerical simulations to 

show the theoretical validity of 

proposed method 

• Performing experiments to 

demonstrate the practical usefulness 

of the controller 

Experimental setup of the two-link six-muscle 

wire-driven planar arm system 

15:30–15:45 WedET4.3 

Biologically Inspired Reactive Climbing Behavior 

of Hexapod Robots 

Dennis Goldschmidt, Frank Hesse, 

Florentin Wörgötter and Poramate Manoonpong 

III Physikalisches Institut - Biophysik, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, 

Germany 

• A biologically-inspired reactive climbing 

controller is presented. It is composed of 

three neural modules: Backbone Joint 

Control (BJC), Leg Reflex Control (LRC), 

and Neural Locomotion Control (NLC). 

• The BJC and LRC control climbing key 

behavior while basic walking behavior 

including omnidirectional walking is 

achieved by NLC. 

• Experimental results show that the 

developed controller allows the robot to 

surmount obstacles with a maximum 

height of 13 cm which equals 75% of its 

leg length. 

Control architecture of the robot AMOS II (top) 

and the comparison of the climbing behavior 

of a cockroach and the robot (bottom) 

15:15–15:30 WedET4.2 

A Generic Software Architecture for Control of 

Parallel Kinematics Designed for Reduced 

Computing Hardware 

Franz Dietrich, Sven Grüner and Annika Raatz 

Institute of Machine Tools and Production Technology (IWF), 

TU Braunschweig, Germany 

• An object oriented software architecture 

dedicated to lean microcontrollers, highly 

scalable, versatile and powerful enough to 

control parallel kinematics 

• Adopts a variety of kinematics, actuators, 

sensors and communication interfaces as 

well as advanced functionalities and 

control concepts 

• A case study demonstrates the 

architecture’s deployment for a 

miniaturized five-bar robot, designed for 

biotech lab automation 

15:45–16:00 WedET4.4 

Embodied hyperacuity from Bayesian perception: 

Shape and position discrimination 

with an iCub fingertip sensor 

1 1 1 1 

2 

1 

N Lepora, U Martinez, H Barron, M Evans, G Metta, T Prescott 

1) University of Sheffield, UK; 2) Italian Institute of Technology, Italy 

• First demonstration of hyperacuity with a 

tactile sensor, in that the accuracy is finer 

than the taxel spacing 

• Simultaneous classification of shape and 

position, which are useful percepts for 

grasping and manipulation 

• Fingertip-object relative position to submillimeter 

resolution (over 16mm range), 

compared with 4mm taxel spacing 

• Rod diameter to less than 2mm resolution 

(over 4-12 mm range) 

• Bayesian perception methodology based on 

models of animal perception in neuroscience 

• Novel testing rig using a Cartesian robot for 

systematic testing of sensing capabilities 


–164– 

Test Fingertip 

. objects 

geometry

Session WedET5 Gemini 2 Wednesday, October 10, 2012, 15:00–16:00 

Personal Robots II 

Chair Adriana Tapus, ENSTA-ParisTech 

Co-Chair 

15:00–15:15 WedET5.1 

Semantic Object Maps for Robotic Housework – 

Representation, Acquisition and Use 

Dejan Pangercic¹, Moritz Tenorth², Benjamin Pitzer¹, Michael Beetz³ 

Robert Bosch LLC-USA¹, IRC ATR-Japan², University of Bremen-Germany³ 

� End-to-end system for autonomous 

building of Semantic Object Maps (SOMs) 

for service robots operating in household 

environments 

� SOMs store functional properties of 

objects, articulation models and textured 

3D meshes 

� SOMs are represented as symbolic 

knowledge bases with facts about the 

objects in the environment 

� SOMs are expressive and powerful 

resource of knowledge for service robots 

� Tested on PR2 robot + Kinect 

15:30–15:45 WedET5.3 

Playmate Robots That Can Act 

According to a Child's Mental State 

Kasumi Abe, Akiko Iwasaki, Tomoaki Nakamura 

and Takayuki Nagai 

Department of Mechanical Engineering and Intelligent Systems, 

The University of Electro-Communications, Japan 

Ayami Yokoyama, Takayuki Shimotomai, 

Hiroyuki Okada and Takashi Omori 

Department of Electrical Engineering, Tamagawa University, Japan 

•We propose a playmate robot that 

can play with a child. 

•The playmate robot should sustain a 

child‘s interest in play and forge a 

good relationship between the robot 

and the child. 

•We observed child’s play with a 

kindergarten teacher. 

Action selection model 

•The robot estimates the child's inner 

state and select an appropriate action 

according to the model. 

model 

15:15–15:30 WedET5.2 

A framework for the design of person following 

behaviors for social mobile robots 

Consuelo Granata and Philippe Bidaud 

Institut des Systèmes Intelligents et 

Robotique , UPMC-CNRS UMR 7222 

• Framework architecture combining three 

layers: perception, decision and control 

layers. 

• Laser+camera based detector and 

estimation of person’s state by EKF 

• Decision-making engine exploiting fuzzy 

rules to define robot behavior when 

dealing with uncertainties 

• System experimented in everyday-life 

environments to test performance in 

different contexts 

15:45–16:00 WedET5.4 

Planar Segmentation from Depth Images using 

Gradient of Depth Feature 

Bashar Enjarini and Axel Gräser 

IAT Institute, Bremen University, Germany 

• Introducing Gradient of Depth Feature 

(GoD) used for segmenting planar 

regions. 

• The GoD feature is parameter-less 

• Implementing the GoD feature in robust 

algorithm for segmenting depth images. 

• The proposed algorithm is robust to 

parameter changes. 

• The proposed algorithm is able to 

segment planar regions from non-planar 

objects as well (bottles, cylinders) 

• The proposed algorithm meet the 

segmentation quality of other stat-of-art 

algorithms 


–165– 

Example of segmenting a 

clustered scene using the 

proposed algorithm


Mapping IV 

Chair 

Co-Chair 

15:00–15:15 WedET6.1 

What can we learn from 38,000 rooms? 

Reasoning about unexplored space in indoor 

environments 

Alper Aydemir, Patric Jensfelt and John Folkesson 

Center for Autonomous Systems, KTH, Sweden 

• Reasoning about unexplored space is a 

key part of spatial understanding 

• We report statistical properties of indoor 

environments by investigating the two floor 

plan data sets from different parts of the 

SHAFT 

world, namely the KTH and MIT datasets. 

• We present two methods for predicting 

indoor topologies given a partial map of 

the environment. 

• We make the KTH campus data set, our 

annotation tool and software library 

developed during this work publicly 

available at 

http://www.cas.kth.se/floorplans 

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15:30–15:45 WedET6.3 

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Creating and Using Probabilistic Costmaps from 

Vehicle Experience 

Liz Murphy, Steven Martin and Peter Corke 

CyPhy Lab, Queensland University of Technology, Australia 

• Probabilistic costmaps, unlike the 

predominant assumptive costmaps, allow 

a representation of the uncertainty in the 

robot's environment model to be used in 

path planning 

• We show how probabilistic costmaps can 

be learned in a self-supervised manner by 

robots navigating outdoors 

• Traversability estimates are garnered from 

onboard sensing 

• Gaussian processes are used to 

extrapolate sparse these sparse 

traversability estimates and account for 

heteroscedastic noise 

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15:15–15:30 WedET6.2 

Map Merging Using Hough Peak Matching 

Sajad Saeedi ♦ , Liam Paull ♦ , Michael Trentini ♦♦ , Mae Seto ♦♦ and 

Howard Li ♦ 

♦ Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of New Brunswick, Canada 

♦♦ Defence Research and Development Canada, Canada 

• One of the major problems for multi-robot 

SLAM is that the robots only know their 

positions in their own local coordinate 

frames, so fusing map data can be 

challenging. 

• In this research, map fusion is achieved by 

transforming individual maps into the 

Hough space where they are represented 

in an abstract form. 

• Properties of the Hough transform are 

used to find the common regions in the 

maps, which are then used to calculate 

the unknown transformation between the 

maps. 


–166– 

Three partial maps (a, b and c) 

are fused to generate a global 

map (d) using Hough peak 

matching 

15:45–16:00 WedET6.4 

Dynamic Visual Understanding of the Local 

Environment for an Indoor Navigating Robot 

Grace Tsai and Benjamin Kuipers 

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 

University of Michigan, Ann Arbor 

• Represent indoor environment by 

a set of meaningful planes – 

ground and walls. 

• Generate qualitatively distinct 3D 

structural hypotheses from image 

features incrementally. 

• Evaluate a set of qualitatively 

distinct hypotheses through a 

Bayesian filter while refining the 

quantitative precision of each 

hypothesis based on current 

observations. 

• Runs in real-time, without the 

need for prior training data or the 

Manhattan-world assumption.


Search and Rescue – Modeling 

Chair Pedro Lima, Inst. Superior Técnico - Inst. for Systems and Robotics 

Co-Chair 

15:00–15:15 WedET8.1 

Multi-sensor ATTenuation Estimation (MATTE): 

Signal-strength prediction for teams of robots 

Johannes Strom and Edwin Olson 

Computer Science and Engineering 

University of Michigan USA 

Attenuation estimate 

after exploration mission 

15:30–15:45 WedET8.3 

A Markov semi-supervised clustering approach 

and its application in topological map extraction 

Ming Liu and Francis Colas and Francois Pomerleau 

and Roland Siegwart 

Autonomous Systems Lab, ETH Zurich, Switzerlandr 

• Propose a semi-supervised 

clustering approach by k-NN 

reasoning 

• Compared with related semisupervised 

algorithms on two-ring 

dataset 

• Topological segmentation by 

human sparse input using the 

proposed clustering model 

15:15–15:30 WedET8.2 

Robust Acoustic Source Localization of 

Emergency Signals from Micro Air Vehicles 

Meysam Basiri 1,2 , Felix Schill 1 , Pedro Lima 2 and Dario Floreano 1 

1. Laboratory of Intelligent Systems, 

Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, Switzerland 

2. Institute for Systems and Robotics, 

Instituto Superior Técnico, Lisboa, Portugal 

• Sound source localization system for 

micro air vehicles capable of localizing 

narrow band sound sources on the 

ground. 

• Two types of acoustic information (Time 

delay of arrival and Doppler shift) and 

vehicle dynamics are used in a particle 

filter. 

• Potential application in search and 

rescue missions to locate people with 

emergency whistles or personal alarms is 

experimentally demonstrated to be 

feasible and effective. 

15:45–16:00 WedET8.4 

Search-theoretic and Ocean Models for 

Localizing Drifting Objects 

Joses Yau 

Oceanography Department, Naval Postgraduate School, USA 

Timothy H. Chung 

Systems Engineering Department, Naval Postgraduate School, USA 

• Improve the probability of detecting a 

near-surface, drifting object over time 

using a UAV 

• Integrate ocean models, i.e., idealized 

current flows, and search models, i.e., 

expanding area and discrete myopic 

search 

• Conduct experimental design for extensive 

simulation studies to identify significant 

factors for improved search 


–168– 

Simulated expanding area for 

search of a drifting object in 

idealized surface current flow

Session WedET10 Lince Wednesday, October 10, 2012, 15:00–16:00 

Multifingered Hands 

Chair Jianwei Zhang, Univ. of Hamburg 

Co-Chair 

15:00–15:15 WedET10.1 

Tactile Sensor Based Varying Contact Point 

Manipulation Strategy for Dexterous Robot Hand 

Manipulating Unknown Objects 

Yuan-Fei Zhang 

State Key Laboratory of Robotics and System, HIT, China 

Hong Liu 

Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics, DLR, Germany 

• A tactile sensor based varying contact 

point manipulation strategy is proposed; 

• This strategy utilizes the simple 

mathematical models based on the 

assumption of fixed contact points; 

• This strategy is proposed to manipulate 

unknown objects with rolling contact for 

dexterous robot hand; 

• Experimental results show that the 

strategy can effectively improve the 

manipulation performance. 

Experimental results of dexterous 

robot hand manipulating 

unknown objects 


Action Gist Based Automatic Segmentation for 

Periodic In-hand Manipulation Movement Learning 

Gang Cheng, Norman Hendrich and Jianwei Zhang 

Department of Informatics, University of Hamburg, Germany 

• A short introduction to the techniques of 

in-hand manipulation action gist 

• Based on the action gist extraction, a 

segmentation algorithm is proposed 

• The possibility of fusing the segmentation 

result with tactile information is discussed 

• Experiments are taken with respect to 

some practical cases, and then follows the 

corresponding analysis 

Periodic In-hand 

manipulation movement 

Data-glove Tactile Sensor 

Action gist 

techniques 

Segmentation 1 

Segmentation 2 

Overall Segmentation 


Card Manipulation using a High-speed Robot System 

with High-speed Visual Feedback 

Yuji Yamakawa and Masatoshi Ishikawa 

Dept. of Creative Informatics, Univ. of Tokyo, Japan 

Akio Namiki 

Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, Chiba Univ., Japan 

• We performed card flicking and card 

catching by using a high-speed robot 

system. 

• Card flicking was carried out by using the 

strain energy occurring with card 

deformation. And, we proposed a strategy 

(utilizing finger vibration) for flicking the 

card. 

• we suggested a high-speed visual 

feedback control method in order to catch 

the card flicked by the robot hand. 

• We analyzed the slip condition and the 

transition from the strain energy to the 

kinetic energy during card flicking. 


–169– 

Card flicking 


Development of a Low Cost Anthropomorphic 

Robot Hand with High Capability 

Ji-Hun Bae, Sung-Woo Park, Jae-Han Park, Moon-Hong Baeg 

Robot Convergence R&D Group, KITECH, Korea 

Doik Kim and Sang-Rok Oh 

Interaction and Robotics Research Center, KIST, Korea 

• Portable adaptive four-fingered robot hand 

• Light-weight anthropomorphic design 

• Back-drivable joint for compliant contact 

with objects 

• Capable of handling objects up to 1.5kg 

• Modular type structure for easy repair and 

modification 

• Low cost less than 10 thousand dollars 

KITECH Robotic Hand

Session WedEVT9 Fenix 1 Wednesday, October 10, 2012, 15:00–16:00 

Vision for Segmentation and Servoing 

Chair Aaron Bobick, Georgia Tech. 


15:00–15:15 WedEVT9.1 

Guided Pushing for Object Singulation 

Tucker Hermans James M. Rehg 

Aaron F. Bobick 

Robotics and Intelligent Machines 

School of Interactive Computing 


• Desire to separate and segment all 

objects in the scene 

• Accomplish through pushing 

• Object boundaries lie on image edges 

• Objects split at the vertical plane 

through the edge 

• Push parallel to thisedge through the 

predicted objectcentroid 

• Quantize candidate boundary 

orientations for each point cloud cluster 

• Stop pushing when all non-empty 

directions have been tested 

15:30–15:45 WedEVT9.3 

Robust Visual Servoing for Object Manipulation 

with Large Time-Delays of Visual Information 

Akihiro Kawamura, Kenji Tahara, Ryo Kurazume 

and Tsutomu Hasegawa 

• New visual servoing method for object 

manipulation robust to time-delays is proposed 

• That is robust to 


� Time-delay caused by low sampling rate 

� Time-delay caused by image processing 

and data transmission latency 

• Virtual object frame is utilized effectively 

• Usefulness is demonstrated by numerical 

simulations and experiments. 

Actual frame and virtual frame 

15:50–15:55 WedEVT9.5 

Ascending Stairway Modeling: A First Step 

Toward Autonomous Multi-Floor Exploration 

Jeffrey Delmerico, Jason Corso and Julian Ryde 

Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering, SUNY Buffalo, USA 

David Baran and Philip David 

US Army Research Laboratory, USA 

• Goal: autonomous multi-floor 

exploration by ground robots. 

• Discover stairways in environment 

during mapping and assess their 

traversability. 

• System will permit path planning to 

consider stairways among 

traversable terrain. 

• Robust detector and accurate 

modeling procedure; sufficient to 

determine step dimensions to 

within 2cm. 

Overview of stairway modeling system: stair 

detection in depth imagery, aggregation of 

extracted step edge point clouds, and 

generative model fitting. 

15:15–15:30 WedEVT9.2 

Segmentation of Unknown Objects 

in Indoor Environments 

A. Richtsfeld, T. Mörwald, J. Prankl, M. Zillich, M.Vincze 

Automation and Control Institute (ACIN), 

Vienna University of Technology, Austria 

• Learning segmentation of unknown 

objects from RGB-D images in a 

hierarchical data abstraction framework 

• Data abstraction of RGB-D images to 

parametric surface patches. 

• Learning of perceptual grouping rules with 

support vector machines (SVM) 

• Globally optimal segmentation using 

Graph-Cut on SVM predictions 

15:45–15:50 WedEVT9.4 

Tire Mounting on a Car Using the Real-Time 

Control Architecture ARCADE 

Thomas Nierhoff, Lei Lou, Vasiliki Koropouli, Martin Eggers, 

Timo Fritzsch, Omiros Kourakos, Kolja Kühnlenz 

Dongheui Lee, Bernd Radig, Martin Buss, Sandra Hirche 


• ARCADE architecture: 

- hard real-time scheduling, 

- asynchronous remote 

procedure call, 

- hardware-in-the-loop 

development 

• Increasing functional modules: 

- autonomous navigation, 

- haptic interaction/perception, 

- human-robot/multi-robot cooperation 

• Challenges for control: 

- stability of closed kinematic chains, transfer of human motions to robots 

• Challenges for perception 

- robust object detection in large rooms, whole environment perception 

15:55–16:00 WedEVT9.6 

Low cost MAV platform AR-drone in experimental verifications 

of methods for vision based autonomous navigation 

Martin Saska, Tomáš Krajník, Jan Faigl, Vojtěch Vonásek and Libor Přeučil 

Department of Cybernetics, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, 

Czech Technical University in Prague, Czech Republic. 

• Video: a sequence of various Micro Aerial 

Vehicle (MAV) applications and research 

experiments with AR-Drone playing the 

main role. http://imr.felk.cvut.cz/demos/videos/drone/ 

• The presented methods rely on visual 

navigation and localization using on-board 

cameras of the AR-drone employed in the 

control feedback. 

• The aim is to demonstrate flight performance 

of this platform in real world tasks. 

• Applications: 1) MAV-UGV teams for 

inspection of inaccessible areas; 2) Autonomous 

flight in outdoor environment with 

human-MAV interaction; 3) AR-Drone as 

an ad-hoc external localization unit for 

multi-robot applications; 4) MAV for 

verification of localization uncertainty 

decrease in an autonomous inspection 


–170– 

Mobile 

heliport 

UGV camera 

UAV 

UAV 

camera 

Autonomous inspection of inaccessible 

areas by MAV-UGV teams

Session WedFT1 Pegaso A Wednesday, October 10, 2012, 16:15–17:30 

Estimation and Sensor Fusion 

Chair Li-Chen Fu, National Taiwan Univ. 

Co-Chair 

16:15–16:30 WedFT1.1 

Contactless deflection sensing of concave and 

convex shapes assisted by soft mirrors 

Michal Karol Dobrzynski, Ionut Halasz, Ramon Pericet-Camara 

and Dario Floreano 

Laboratory of Intelligent Systems, 

Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, Switzerland 

• Deflection sensor capable of concave 

and convex shape estimation with no 

impact on the deflected substrate 

softness. 

• Dynamic range of 130° with 0.8° 

resolution and 400Hz data acquisition. 

• Analytical model in good agreement 

with measurements (average error of 

8%) 

• Novel quick manufacturing method for 

soft PDMS mirrors based 

on surface tension. 

Top: Sensor in standard configuration perceives 

concave deflections only; Middle and bottom: 

By attaching a customized mirror the range can 

be extended towards convex deflections. 

16:45–17:00 WedFT1.3 

Manipulator State Estimation with Low Cost 

Accelerometers and Gyroscopes 

Philip Roan and Nikhil Deshpande 

Robert Bosch LLC, USA and North Carolina State University, USA 

Yizhou Wang and Benjamin Pitzer 

University of California, Berkeley, USA and Robert Bosch LLC, USA 

• Estimate manipulator joint angles using 

triaxial accelerometers and uniaxial 

gyroscopes 

• Comparing three different compensation 

strategies: 

• Complementary Filter 

• Time Varying Complementary Filter 

• Extended Kalman Filter 

• Mean error of 1.3° over the joints 

estimated, resulting in end-effector errors 

of 6.1 mm or less 

A generic joint between two links 

showing how accelerometers and 

gyroscopes are mounted. 

17:15–17:30 WedFT1.5 

Sensor Fusion Based Human Detection and 

Tracking System for Human-Robot Interaction 

Kai Siang Ong, Yuan Han Hsu, and Li Chen Fu, Fellow, IEEE 

Department of Computer Science & Information Engineering, 

Department of Electrical Engineering 

National Taiwan University, Taiwan, R.O.C. 

• Integrating the information of laser 

range finder and that from vision 

sensor using Covariance 

Intersection algorithm 

• Propose a behavior-response 

system: 

(1) human behavior‘s inference 

(2) robot reaction 

• For Human Behavior Intention 

Inference, we take the proxemics 

framework into consideration. 

Public Space 

Interaction Space 

vlrf 

d 

f 

x f , y f 

θia , θ fd 

16:30–16:45 WedFT1.2 

Deformable Structure From Motion by Fusing 

Visual and Inertial Measurement Data 

Stamatia Giannarou, Zhiqiang Zhang, Guang-Zhong Yang 

Hamlyn Centre for Robotic Surgery, Imperial College London, UK 

• 3D reconstruction of a deforming surgical 

environment in MIS is important for intraoperative 

guidance. 

• A novel adaptive UKF parameterization 

scheme is proposed to fuse vision 

information with data from an Inertial 

Measurement Unit for accurate 3D 

reconstruction. 

• A direct application of the proposed 

framework is free-form deformation 

recovery to enable adaptive motion 

stabilization and visual servoing in 

robotically assisted laparoscopic surgery. 

17:00–17:15 WedFT1.4 

Vision-Aided Inertial Navigation 

Using Virtual Features 

Chiara Troiani and Agostino Martinelli 

INRIA Rhone Alpes, France 

• MAV equipped with a monocular camera 

and a laser pointer mounted on a fixed 

baseline and an IMU 

• Unique point feature used: laser spot 

projected on a planar surface and 

observed by the monocular camera 

• Analytical derivation of all the observable 

modes 

• Local decomposition and recursive 

estimation of the observable modes 

performed using an Extended Kalman 

Filter 


–171–

Session WedFT3 Pegaso B Wednesday, October 10, 2012, 16:15–17:30 

Intelligent Transportation Systems 

Chair Christian Laugier, INRIA Rhône-Alpes 

Co-Chair 

16:15–16:30 WedFT3.1 

Evaluating Risk at Road Intersections by 

Detecting Conflicting Intentions 

Stéphanie Lefèvre, Christian Laugier 

Inria Grenoble Rhône-Alpes, France 

Javier Ibañez-Guzmán 

Renault S.A.S., France 

• Risk assessment at road intersections by 

comparing driver intention with driver 

expectation: no need to predict the future 

trajectories of vehicles. 

• Intention and expectation are inferred from 

a probabilistic motion model incorporating 

contextual information. 

• Evaluation in simulation: analysis of the 

collision prediction horizon and of the 

potential impact on accident avoidance. 

Dangerous situation detected: 

priority violation at a road 

intersection 

16:45–17:00 WedFT3.3 

Driver Assistance System for Backward 

Maneuvers in Passive Multi-trailer Vehicles 

Jesús Morales, Anthony Mandow, 

Jorge L. Martínez and Alfonso J. García Cerezo 

Dpto. Ingeniería de Sistemas y Automática, 

Universidad de Málaga, Spain 

• Advanced driver assistance (ADAS). 

• Avoids jackknife and lack of visibility in 

backward multi-trailer driving. 

• In reverse, vehicle driven as from the back 

of the last trailer aided by rear camera. 

• Application of steering limitation method 

on virtual tractor. 

• Curvature limitations are felt through force 

feedback in steering-wheel. 

• Drive-by-wire controls & hitch angle 

sensors. 

• Case study: 2-trailer robotic vehicle. 

17:15–17:30 WedFT3.5 

Communication Coverage for Independently 

Moving Robots 

Stephanie Gil and Dan Feldman and Daniela Rus 

CSAIL, MIT, USA 

• We provide communication coverage over a 

group of sensing vehicles via placement of 

mobile base stations where 

• Sensors move over unknown trajectories 

• No assumed cooperation from sensors 

• Only sensor-base station or base stationbase 

station communication over distance 

< R is reliable 

• We develop provable exact and approximate 

(faster) algorithms for finding optimal base 

station locations 

q 

p 

t+1 

Communication network for 

mobile agents moving over 

unknown trajectories with 

changing network topology 

16:30–16:45 WedFT3.2 

Contextual Scene Segmentation of Driving 

Behavior based on Double Articulation Analyzer 

Kazuhito Takenaka and Takashi Bando 

Corporate R&D Div.3, DENSO CORPORATION, Japan 

Shogo Nagasaka and Tadahiro Taniguchi 

College of Information Science and Engineering, Ritsumeikan Univ., Japan 

Kentarou Hitomi 

Technical Research Division, Toyota InfoTechnology Center Co.,Ltd., Japan 

• Segment driving behavior into meaningful chunks for driving scene 

recognition 

• Double articulation analyzer is used in a similar manner to natural 

language processing 

• The result of the segmentation is closer to the driving scene produced by 

human recognition 

Overview of double articulation analyzer (A), and Nested Pitman-Yor Language Model (B) 

17:00–17:15 WedFT3.4 

Investigation of Personal Mobility Vehicle 

Stability and Maneuverability under Various 

Road Scinarios 

Jawad Masood and Matteo Zoppi 

PMARlab DIME, University of Genoa, Italy 

Rezia Molfino 

PMARlab DIME, University of Genoa, Italy 

• This paper investigates Stability and 

manuuverability of personal mobility 

vehicle. 

• Suspension design concept of personal 

mobility vehicle is based on accomodating 

different roads in city centers. 

• We have performed passive dynamic 

analysis of hydraulic suspensions in order 

to study the behaviour of the full scale 

vehicle inertia. 

• Multi-body dynamic simulations are 

created to study angular velocity, angular 

acceleration, pitch, yaw and roll variations. 


–172–

Session WedFT4 Fenix 3 Wednesday, October 10, 2012, 16:15–17:30 

Mechanism Design for Bio-Inspired Robots 

Chair Shigeki Sugano, Waseda Univ. 

Co-Chair Pål Liljebäck, SINTEF IKT 

16:15–16:30 WedFT4.1 

Reconsidering Inter- and Intra-limb Coordination 

Mechanisms in Quadruped Locomotion 

Takeshi Kano, Dai Owaki, and Akio Ishiguro 

Research Institute of Electrical Communication, Tohoku University 

Akio Ishiguro 

Japan Science and Technology Agency, CREST 

• We present an autonomous 

decentralized control scheme 

for quadruped locomotion 

wherein inter- and intra-limb 

coordination mechanisms are 

well coupled. 

• Simulation results show that the 

quadruped exhibits transitioning 

between walking and running 

and the ability to adapt to 

changes in body properties. 

Time 

Hind Fore 

(a) ω = 4 (b) ω = 12 

Flight 

phase 

16:45–17:00 WedFT4.3 

Harp plucking robotic finger 

Delphine Chadefaux, Jean-Loïc Le Carrou, Sylvère Billout and 

Laurent Quartier 

UPMC Univ Paris 06, UMR CNRS 7190, d'Alembert, Paris, France 

Marie-Aude Vitrani 

UPMC Univ Paris 06, UMR CNRS 7222, ISIR, Paris, France 

• Design of a configurable robotic finger to 

pluck harp string 

• Various silicone fingertips tested 

• Comparison with a real harpist 

performance 

• Validation through high-speed camera and 

vibrational measurements descriptors 

Robotic finger enhanced with a 

silicone fingertip while plucking a 

harp string. 

17:15–17:30 WedFT4.5 

A Modular and Waterproof Snake Robot Joint 

Mechanism with a Novel Force/Torque Sensor 

Pål Liljebäck* , **, Øyvind Stavdahl*, Kristin Y. Pettersen*, and 

Jan Tommy Gravdahl* 

* Dept. of Engineering Cybernetics, Norwegian University of Science and 

Technology, Norway 

** Dept. of Applied Cybernetics, SINTEF ICT, Norway 

• We present a waterproof and 

mechanically robust joint module for 

a snake robot. 

• The module contains a customdesigned 

force/torque sensor based 

on strain gauges. 

• The sensor will enable the snake 

robot to measure external contact 

forces from its environment. 

• Experimental results illustrate the 

performance of the force/torque 

sensor. 

16:30–16:45 WedFT4.2 

Materials and Mechanisms for 

Amorphous Robotic Construction 

Nils Napp and Jessica Wu and Radhika Nagpal 

Harvard University, MA, USA 

Olive R. Rappoli 

Worcester Polytechnic Institute, MA, USA 

• Amorphous materials conform to 

arbitrary obstacles and can be used 

to build in unstructured terrain 

• Biological systems successfully use 

many different types of amorphous 

materials to build in nature 

• Robotic mechanisms to deposit 

various types of amorphous materials 

are presented and compared 

• We compare material properties and 

evaluate them for use in research for 

autonomous robotic construction with 

amorphous materials 


–173– 

Small remote controlled robot 

building a foam ramp 

17:00–17:15 WedFT4.4 

Humanlike Shoulder Complex for 

Musculoskeletal Robot Arms 

Shuhei Ikemoto 1) , Fumiya Kannou 2) , and Koh Hosoda 1) 

1) Department of Multimedia Engineering, Osaka University, Japan 

2) Department of Adaptive Machine Systems, Osaka University, Japan 

• The approach of mimicking 

musculoskeletal systems of living 

organisms has attracted considerable 

attention in robotics. 

• The superior limb girdle is fundamental 

for the arm movements of humans. 

• In particular, the glenohumeral and 

scapulothoratic joints are difficult to 

mimic the shapes and functionalities. 

• We propose new designs of the two 

joints to develop a musculoskeletal 

robot arm. 

Developed musculoskeletal robot arm 

with humanlike shoulder complex

Session WedFT5 Gemini 2 Wednesday, October 10, 2012, 16:15–17:30 

Contact Modeling 

Chair Rui Cortesao, Univ. of Coimbra 

Co-Chair 

16:15–16:30 WedFT5.1 

Synthesis and Stabilization of Complex Behaviors 

through Online Trajectory Optimization 

Yuval Tassa, Tom Erez and Emanuel Todorov 

Computer Science & Engineering, University of Washington, USA 

• Online trajectory optimization 

method and software platform. 

• iterative-LQG trajectory optimizer. 

• Fast, in-house physics engine with 

novel contact models. 

• Full humanoid behavior generated in 

7 x slower than realtime, simpler 

problems already in real-time. 

• Nothing is precomputed, no heuristic 

approximations to the Value function 

are used. 

Humanoid getting up 

16:45–17:00 WedFT5.3 

Robust Sensing of Contact Information for 

Detection of the Physical Properties of an Object 

Takashi Takua, Ken Takamine, and Tatsuya Masuda 

Department of Electrical and Electronic Systems Engineering, 

Osaka Institute of Technology, Japan 

• Robust sensing that estimate the contact information, reaction force from 

the object and consequent joint displacement during pushing the object, is 

proposed 

• Using certain kinetic and kinematic relationships on 1-DoF joint 

mechanism and physical property of the McKibben pneumatic actuator, 

the relationships among magnitude of the force on the contact point, the 

joint angle, and the inner pressure of the actuator are derived. 

• The relationship is evaluated using 

physical 1-DoF joint mechanism, and, 

elasticity of the object is estimated by 

using the relationships. 

• Experiments show that the robust 

sensing of the contact information 

that avoids attaching the sensors on 

the contact point and the joint can be 

obtained, and that physical property 

of the object can be estimated. 

17:15–17:30 WedFT5.5 

Comparison of Position and Force-Based 

Techniques for Environment Stiffness 

Estimation in Robotic Tasks 

Fernanda Coutinho and Rui Cortesão 


• In this paper, we compare the results of position-based stiffness 

estimation algorithms with those obtained by COBA. 

• COBA is an online stiffness estimation algorithm based on force data 

only. 

• COBA avoids some problems that can negatively affect the 

performance of position-based algorithms. 

16:30–16:45 WedFT5.2 

Trajectory optimization for domains with contacts 

using inverse dynamics 

Tom Erez and Emanuel Todorov 

Computer Science, UW-Seattle, USA 

• Trajectory optimization in domains with contact (e.g., ground reaction 

forces) is notoriously hard due to the discontinuities at impact. 

• We use a soft contact model that can be used with both forward and 

inverse dynamics, thereby formulating a continuous optimization problem. 

• The algorithm was applied to a 3D simulated humanoid running domain 

with 31 degrees of freedom. After ~2500 Newton steps (~10 minutes on a 

standard desktop) a complex running gait emerges. 

• Almost all computation time is spent on finite-differencing the dynamics. 

Since this bottleneck is trivially parallelizable, our approach stands to 

benefit from Moore’s law and any other improvements in parallel CPU 

architecture. 

17:00–17:15 WedFT5.4 

Modeling and Simulation of Friction Forces during 

Needle Insertion Using Local Constraint Method 

Lijuan Wang, Zhongkui Wang, and Shinichi Hirai 

Department of Robotics, Ritsmeikan University, Japan 

• In the modern clinical practice, accurate 

orientation inside soft tissue is difficult to 

achieve, because of complicated tissue 

deformations and the interaction forces. 

• A dynamic model of needle insertion with 

friction forces is proposed based on the 

Finite Element Method (FEM). 

• The relative velocity and contact length are 

considered as the main factors of friction 

forces during needle insertion. 

• Simulations using Local Constraint Method 

(LCM) are proposed. Local constraints and 

friction forces are calculated and applied 

onto the tissue frame to avoid remeshing. 


–174– 

A series of Local Regions along 

the needle insertion path.


Navigation III 

Chair Rüdiger Dillmann, KIT Karlsruhe Inst. for Tech. 

Co-Chair Christian Pascal Connette, Fraunhofer IPA 

16:15–16:30 WedFT6.1 

On-line Road Boundary Estimation by Switching 

Multiple Road Models using Visual Features 

from a Stereo Camera 

Takeshi Chiku and Jun Miura 

Department of Computer Science and Engineering, 

Toyohashi University of Technology, Japan 

• On-line road boundary estimation for 

mobile robots. 

• Multiple road models to cope with a variety 

of road shapes. 

• Road model switching at the state 

transition step of particle filter-based 

estimation. 

• Use of multiple visual features (color, 

edge, height) from a stereo camera for 

robust estimation. 

• Applied to various road scenes in a 

campus environment. 

Estimated boundaries and 

road regions 

16:45–17:00 WedFT6.3 

Non-metric Navigation for Mobile Robot Using 

Optical Flow 

Yung Siang Liau, 

Department of ECE, National University of Singapore, Singapore 

Qun Zhang, Yanan Li 

Department of NGS, National University of Singapore, Singapore 

and Shuzhi Sam Ge 

IDMI and Department of ECE, National University of Singapore, Singapore 

• Mobile robot navigation using a single 

camera as the sole sensory device. 

• Time-to-collision measure for qualitative 

depth information extraction based on 

optical flow divergence. 

• Heading decision making framework 

based on the proposed “Qualitative 

Visually Admissible Regions” which takes 

into account of goal-oriented navigation. 

• Behaviour based design for increased 

robustness under different obstacle 

configurations. 

Figure caption is optional, 

use Arial Narrow 20pt 

17:15–17:30 WedFT6.5 

Shop floor based programming of assembly 

assistants for pick-and-place applications 

Sven Dose 

Robert Bosch GmbH, CR/APA3, Germany 

Rüdiger Dillmann 

Institute of Anthropomatics, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany 

• Fast programming and commissioning of 

flexible assembly assistants without 

requiring expert knowledge 

• Intuitive operator guidance for leading 

inexperienced users efficiently through the 

hole programming process 

• Easy parameterization of pick-and-place 

actions including complex work piece 

detection sequences 

• Fast and precise teaching of robot and 

gripper movements for industrial 

manipulation applications 

Operational chain for 

programming assembly 

assistants 

16:30–16:45 WedFT6.2 

Robot Navigation with 

Model Predictive Equilibrium Point Control 

Jong Jin Park 

Mechanical Engineering, University of Michigan, USA 

Collin Johnson and Benjamin Kuipers 


• An autonomous vehicle intended 

to carry passengers must be able 

to generate trajectories on-line 

that are safe, smooth and 

comfortable. 

• We formulate local navigation in 

dynamic environments as a 

continuous, low-dimensional and 

unconstrained optimization 

problem which is easy to solve. 

• Proposed MPEPC framework 

depends on compact 

parameterization of closed loop 

trajectories and use of expected 

values in the cost definition. 


–175– 

MPEPC-based Navigation 

Top: A non-holonomic wheelchair robot 

and local trajectory evaluations. 

Bottom: Example navigation run in an 

open hall with multiple pedestrians 

17:00–17:15 WedFT6.4 

Singularity-Free State-Space Representation for 

Non-Holonomic, Omnidirectional Undercarriages 

by Means of Coordinate Switching 

Christian Connette, Martin Hägele, Alexander Verl 

Fraunhofer IPA, Stuttgart, Germany 

• Non-holonomic omnidirectional 

undercarriages promiss high flexibility and 

robustness at the same time 

• Such drive-chain kinematics are 

characterized by singular configurations 

and actuator concurrency 

• A state-space representation is proposed 

that allows to circumvene this hindrances 

by means of controller switching 

• W.r.t. this state-space a switching based 

controller for is implemented, validated 

and comparatively evaluated 

Prototype of undercarriage and 

switching borders in cart. and 

sph. State-space

Session WedFT7 Vega Wednesday, October 10, 2012, 16:15–17:30 

Motion Planning for Aerial Robotics 

Chair Paolo Robuffo Giordano, Max Planck Inst. for Biological Cybernetics 

Co-Chair 

16:15–16:30 WedFT7.1 

Cooperative Quadrocopter Ball Throwing and 

Catching 

Robin Ritz, Mark W. Müller, 

Markus Hehn and Raffaello D’Andrea 

Institute of Dynamic Systems and Control, ETH Zurich, Switzerland 

• Method to throw and catch balls 

using a net attached to a fleet of 

quadrocopters. 

• Dynamics and nominal inputs for 

all attached vehicles are derived. 

• Nonlinear trajectory generation 

for catching and throwing, 

respectively, is introduced. 

• Experimental results show validity 

of presented methods. 

Three quadrocopters throwing a ball 

16:45–17:00 WedFT7.3 

Aerial Grasping of a Moving Target with a 

Quadrotor UAV 

Riccardo, Spica 1 , Antonio Franchi 1 , Giuseppe Oriolo 2 

Heinrich H. Bülthoff 1,3 , and Paolo Robuffo Giordano 1 

1 Max Plank Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Germany 

2 Università di Roma La Sapienza, Italy 

3 Department of Brain and Cognitive Engineering, Korea University, Korea 

• Complete physical model in 6D 

(position/orientation) 

• Canonical maneuvers for a generic 

grasping (also non-hovering) taking 

into account the finite time needed 

for closing the gripper 

• Time-optimal concatenation of 

canonical maneuvers with spline 

trajectories under limited actuation 

for the UAV 

• Illustration of multiple 

pick&place operations 

Validation in a physically realistic 

simulation scenario 

17:15–17:30 WedFT7.5 

A New Utility Function for Smooth Transition 

Between Exploration and Exploitation of a Wind 

Energy Field 

Jen Jen Chung and Salah Sukkarieh 

Australian Centre for Field Robotics, The University of Sydney, Australia 

Miguel Angel Trujillo Soto 

Centre for Advanced Aerospace Technologies, Spain 

• Long endurance autonomous flight 

requires real-time energy capture. 

• In an unknown wind field this becomes an 

exploration-exploitation problem. 

• Our proposed utility function provides a 

continuous scale between exploration and 

exploitation. 

• Flight tests show a 47.7% reduction in 

loitering time compared to a pure 

information gain approach. 

The agent, Quad1, performs 

energy capture by circling above 

the energy source, Quad 2. 

16:30–16:45 WedFT7.2 

Real-Time Trajectory Generation 

for Interception Maneuvers with Quadrocopters 

Markus Hehn and Raffaello D’Andrea 

Institute for Dynamic Systems and Control, ETH Zurich, Switzerland 

• Optimality conditions for the interception maneuver that 

minimizes the time to rest after interception 

• Optimal interception maneuver is identical to timeoptimal 

maneuver to the position at which vehicle comes 

to rest after interception 

• Computationally efficient 

trajectory generation permits 

use as implicit feedback law 

• Experimental validation by 

intercepting balls mid-flight 

17:00–17:15 WedFT7.4 

Visual Tracking and Following of a 

Quadrocopter by another Quadrocopter 

Karl E. Wenzel, Andreas Masselli and Andreas Zell 

Chair of Cognitive System, University of Tübingen, Germany 

• Two autonomous quadrocopters of 

different types and configurations 

• Parrot AR.Drone as leader, 

controlled by an iPad 

• AscTec Hummingbird as follower, 

with low-cost 

onboard hardware 

• Our efficient solution of 

the perspective-3-point 

problem estimating 6DOF 

on a microcontroller 


–176– 

Leader (right) and follower (left) at a 

desired relative position of 2m


Tools for Robot Control Design 

Chair Sadao Kawamura, Ritsumeikan Univ. 

Co-Chair 

16:15–16:30 WedFT8.1 

Minimum Angular Acceleration Control for 

Atrticulated Body Dynamics 

16:45–17:00 WedFT8.3 

A Framework for Realistic Simulation of 

Networked Multi-Robot Systems 

Michal Kudelski, Marco Cinus, Luca Gambardella 

and Gianni A. Di Caro 

Dalle Molle Institute for Artificial Intelligence (IDSIA), Lugano,Switzerland 

• We propose an integrated simulation 

framework that allows for realistic 

simulation of networked robotic systems 

• The proposed framework integrates two 

simulators: a network simulator and a 

multi-robot simulator 

• Two implementations are presented, 

combining ARGoS with ns-2 and ns-3 

• An extensive evaluation and validation of 

the integrated simulation framework has 

been performed 

• We demonstrate a case study that 

compares realistic network simulation with 

simplified communication models 

The architecture of the integrated 

simulation framework 

17:15–17:30 WedFT8.5 

Extensive Analysis of Linear Complementarity Problem 

(LCP) Solvers Performance on Randomly Generated 

Rigid Body Contact Problems 

Evan Drumwright 

Computer Science Department, George Washington University, USA 

Dylan A. Shell 

Computer Science and Engineering, Texas A&M University, USA 

• We determined a method to generate multi-rigid body contact problems 

randomly 

• We evaluate solver performance on these problems with Lemke’s 

Algorithm, a primal-dual interior point method, an iterative SOR method, 

and PATH 

• We exhaustively search for best parameters for each solver 

• Which one fares best? Come to the talk and find out! 

16:30–16:45 WedFT8.2 

A New Feedback Robot Control Method 

based on Position/Image Sensor Integration 

Ryosuke Nishida and Sadao Kawamura 

Department of Robotics College of Science and Engineering, 

Ritsumeikan University, Japan 

• This paper proposes a new feedback control method 

based on simultaneous use of position/image sensors. 

• The proposed control method does not need parameter 

calibration of cameras and a robot. 

• The motion stability is mathematically prove. 

• Experimental results demonstrate the usefulness and 

the robustness of the proposed method. 

17:00–17:15 WedFT8.4 

MuJoCo: 

A physics engine for model-based control 

Emanuel Todorov 1,2 , Tom Erez 1 and Yuval Tassa 1 

Computer Science and Engineering 1 , Applied Mathematics 2 

University of Washington, USA 

• 500 times faster than real-time in a single 

thread (18 dof humanoid with 6 contacts) 

• dynamics can be evaluated in parallel for 

different states and controls, facilitating 

sampling and finite differences 

• multi-joint dynamics represented in joint 

coordinates 

• hard contacts simulated with new contact 

solvers; multiple solvers provided 

• both forward and inverse dynamics can be 

computed, even in the presence of 

contacts and equality constraints 

• modeling of tendons, muscles, slidercranks, 

pneumatic cylinders 


–177– 

applications of MuJoCo 

in trajectory optimization

Session WedFT10 Lince Wednesday, October 10, 2012, 16:15–17:30 

Manipulation and Navigation in Space Applications 

Chair 

Co-Chair 

16:15–16:30 WedFT10.1 

Experimental Results for Image-based 

Geometrical Reconstruction for Spacecraft 

Rendezvous Navigation with Unknown and 

Uncooperative Target Spacecraft 

Frank Schnitzer and Klaus Janschek 

Institute of Automation, Technische Universität Dresden, Germany 

Georg Willich 

Astrium GmbH, Germany 

• unknown and uncooperative target 

objects observed with a camera only 

vision system 

• the target's 3D structure is reconstructed 

from a sparse point cloud extracted from 

a rendezvous-SLAM algorithm 

• 3D model can be used in a feedback 

manner for enhancing visual navigation 

processing tasks 

• demonstrated by experiments with real 

image data from in-house laboratory 

spacecraft rendezvous simulator 


Launching Penetrator 

By Casting Manipulator System 

Hitoshi Arisumi 

Intelligent Systems Research Institute, AIST, Japan 

Masatsugu Otsuki and Shinichiro Nishida 

Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, JAXA, Japan 

• Proposal of a launching planner that 

compensates for the timing error of 

releasing a penetrator 

• Development of a system to launch the 

penetrator with keeping its orientation 

constant 

• Realization of the target motion with the 

hardware 

• Verification of the effectiveness of the 

proposed method by showing that the 

error of the landing position is less than 

3.6% of the launching distance through 

experiments 

Casting manipulator system 

to launch the penetrator 


A Grouser Spacing Equation for Determining 

Appropriate Geometry of Planetary Rover Wheels 

Krzysztof Skonieczny, Scott J. Moreland, 

and David S. Wettergreen 


• Wheel geometric and operating 

parameters are related, to predict 

minimum number of grousers 

• Wheels without enough grousers 

periodically induce forward soil 

flow ahead of the wheel 

• Forward soil flow is indicative of 

rolling resistance that reduces 

traction 

• Soil flow is observed through a 

glass sidewall and analyzed using 

computer vision 

Soil flow magnitude (top) and direction 

(bottom), showing periodic forward flow 


Accuracy Improvement of 

Delay Time Compensation Based on 

the Coefficient of Restitution for a Hybrid Simulator 

Y. Satake, S. Abiko, X. Jiang, and M. Uchiyama 

Department of Mechanical Systems and Design, Tohoku University, Japan 

A. Konno 

Division of System Science and Informatics, Hokkaido University, Japan 

• A hybrid simulator is effective method to 

examine the space robotic on the ground 

• This simulator suffers from a problem of 

energy increase due to delay times 

• The aim of this paper is to improve 

accuracy of delay time compensation 

• A collision experiment is carried out to 

validate the accuracy of the proposed 

compensation 


–178– 

Overview of the Hybrid Simulator 


Augmented Reality Environment with Virtual 

Fixtures for Robotic Telemanipulation in Space 

Tian Xia, Anton Deguet, Louis Whitcomb and Peter Kazanzides 

Laboratory for Computational Sensing and Robotics, 

Johns Hopkins University, USA 

Simon Leonard 

Children’s National Medical Center (Washington DC), USA 

• Developed an augmented reality 

framework that enables operator to design 

and implement assistive virtual fixtures for 

teleoperation with significant time delay 

• Validated technical approach for on-orbit 

satellite servicing tasks on ground 

simulation robotic platform 

• Approach reduces task completion time 

and eliminating manipulation error 

• Approach provides improved virtual 

telepresence for operator 

vf parameters 

modification Task Specific 

Virtual Fixture 

Models 

Task Specific 

Virtual Fixture 

Models 

Remote Sensing 

Operator 

constraints 

generation 

bi-directional communication 

model update delay 

constraints 

generation 

closed-loop 

control 

sensor 

data 

motion commands 

Master 

Controller 

motion commands 

Remote Slave 

Controller 

Remote 

Enviroment 

Figure: Virtual fixture for teleoperation 

system architecture 

Master Side 

Remote Side

Session WedFT11 Hidra Wednesday, October 10, 2012, 16:15–17:30 

Robots with Variable Impedance Actuation 

Chair Raffaella Carloni, Univ. of Twente 

Co-Chair Alin Albu-Schäffer, DLR - German Aerospace Center 

16:15–16:30 WedFT11.1 

A Simple Controller for a Variable Stiffness Joint 

with Uncertain Dynamics and Prescribed 

Performance Guarantees 

Efi Psomopoulou, Zoe Doulgeri and George A. Rovithakis 

Dept of Electrical & Computer Eng., Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece 

Nikos G. Tsagarakis 

Department of Advanced Robotics, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Italy 

• The CompAct-VSA joint is considered. 

• Transient and steady state performance 

for link q and stiffness motor position 

θ k is a priori specified and guaranteed. 

• A full state feedback tracking controller 

is proposed without requesting any 

knowledge of system nonlinearities. 

• Simulation results in a trajectory 

following task (figure) satisfy preset 

performance with reasonable control 

effort (max voltage 24 V) 

• The stiffness motor desired trajectory 

corresponds to a stiffness variation 

between the values of 170-582 Nm/rad. 

16:45–17:00 WedFT11.3 

Limit Cycles and Stiffness Control with Variable 

Stiffness Actuators 

Raffaella Carloni 

Dept. Electrical Engineering, University of Twente, Italy 

Lorenzo Marconi 

Dept. Electronics, Computer Science and Systems, University of Bologna, Italy 

• The inherent compliance of variable 

stiffness actuators is exploited to 

obtain a robust and energy-efficient 

behavior 

• The proposed control strategy 

guarantees a robust tracking of a limit 

cycle trajectory and of a desired 

stiffness for the actuator’s load 

• Experimental tests on the vsaUT-II 

validate the control design 

17:15–17:30 WedFT11.5 

Rigid vs. Elastic Actuation: Requirements & 

Performance 

S. Haddadin, N. Mansfeld, A. Albu-Schäffer 


This paper answers following questions 

1)How does geometric scaling (i.e. 

systematic mass variation) influence the 

performance of a rigid joint? 

2)What are the requirements for an elastic 

joint that consists of a smaller motor and 

an elastic transmission in order to reach at 

least the maximum velocity of the rigid 

manipulator with equivalent overall mass? 

16:30–16:45 WedFT11.2 

On the Control of Redundant Robots 

with Variable Stiffness Actuation 

Gianluca Palli and Claudio Melchiorri 

Dipartimento di Elettronica, Informatica e Sistemistica, Università di Bologna 

Viale Risorgimento 2, 40136 Bologna, Italy 

email: {gianluca.palli, claudio.melchiorri}@unibo.it 

• The control of redundant manipulator 

with variable stiffness actuation is 

discussed 

• An output-based control approach is 

adopted 

• The actuators dynamics is decoupled 

from the arm dynamics by means of 

a singular perturbation approach 

• The designed controller presents 

several advantages with respect to 

previously proposed state-feedback 

controllers 

• The theoretical results are valideted 

by simulation of a three DOF planar 

manipulator 


–179– 

Working principle scheme of a VSA. 

17:00–17:15 WedFT11.4 

On Impact Decoupling Properties of Elastic 

Robots and Time Optimal Velocity Maximization 

on Joint Level 

S. Haddadin, K. Krieger, N. Mansfeld, A. Albu-Schäffer 


This paper answers following questions 

1) What are suitable reflected stiffness and 

inertias for achieving impact decoupling and 

how is the maximum collision force affected 

by these? 

2) How does the most important real-world 

state constraint for elastic joints, the 

maximum deflection, affect the optimal 

excitation (execution of explosive motion) 

of the mechanism?

Session WedFVT2 Fenix 2 Wednesday, October 10, 2012, 16:15–17:30 

Telerobotics & Brain-Machine Interfaces 

Chair Susumu Tachi, Keio Univ. 

Co-Chair 

16:15–16:30 WedFVT2.1 

A Collaborative Control System for 

Telepresence Robots 

Douglas G. Macharet 

VeRLab, DCC, UFMG, Brazil 

Dinei Florêncio 

Microsoft Research, USA 

• A potential field based framework to 

facilitate the control of telepresence 

robots 

• Adjustable level of autonomy of the 

robot, giving it full control on mid-range 

navigation 

• Users had significantly fewer hits (none 

in most cases) and took less time to 

complete a given task 

• Most of the users agreed with the 

possible directions pointed out by the 

methodology 

16:45–17:00 WedFVT2.3 

Armrest Joystick 

-Mechanism Design and Basic Experiments- 

Hiroaki Ishida Tetsuo Hagiwara 

Koji Ueda and Shigeo Hirose 

Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, 

Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan 

• We propose a robot arm’s controller, 

“Armrest Joystick,” with high portability 

and operability. 

• The Armrest Joystick can operate 3DOF 

position, 3DOF posture and a gripper 

with force feedback. 

• We study a design of the Armrest 

Joystick in this paper. 

• We conducted some experiments to 

verify operability. 

Armrest Joystick 

17:15–17:20 WedFVT2.5 

Towards Robotic Re-Embodiment using 

a Brain-and-Body-Computer Interface 

Nikolas Martens, Robert Jenke, Mohammad Abu-Alqumsan, 

Angelika Peer, and Martin Buss 

Institute of Automatic Control Engineering, TUM, Germany 

Christoph Kapeller, Christoph Hintermüller, Christoph Guger 

Guger Technologies, Austria 

• 3 basic scenarios of a BBCI controlled 

robot avatar: pick&place, door-opening, 

and social interaction 

• Development of task-adapted interfaces 

for P300 and SSVEP paradigms 

• High-level intentions determine what the 

robot should execute 

• Low-level intentions describe how those 

commands are executed 

Task-adapted BCI for (a) pickand-place 

and (b) door-opening 

16:30–16:45 WedFVT2.2 

Design of TELESAR V for Transferring Bodily 

Consciousness in Telexistence 

Charith Lasantha Fernando, Masahiro Furukawa, Tadatoshi 

Kurogi, Sho Kamuro, Katsunari Sato, Kouta Minamizawa and 

Susumu Tachi 

Graduate School of Media Design, 

Keio University. Japan 

• A 52 DOF robot for performing 

telexistence operations. 

• Un-grounded Master cockpit. 

• Independent Spinal, Head, Arm, Hand 

movements 

• Wide Angle HD Head Mounted Display. 

• Fingertip Force (Shearing, Vertical) 

Sensation 

• Fingertip Thermal Sensation 

• Extend the bodily border up to robot 

17:00–17:15 WedFVT2.4 

Networked Teleoperation with Non-Passive 

Environment: Application to Tele-Rehabilitation 

S. Farokh Atashzar, Ilia G. Polushin 

Dept. of Electrical and Computer Eng., University of Western Ontario, Canada 

Rajni V. Patel 

Dept. Electrical and Computer Engineering and Dept. of Surgery , University of 

Western Ontario , Canada 

• The problem of design of a master-slave 

tele-rehabilitation system for 

assistive/resistive therapy is addressed. 

• During assistive therapy, the therapist 

supplies the power to the teleoperator 

system thus behaving as an active (nonpassive) 

network. 

• Dissipation of the power generated by the 

therapist would defeat the purpose of the 

assistive therapy. 

• A small-gain approach is designed to 

analyze/maintain the stability in both 

assistive and resistive mode. 

Top: Velocity of the patient’s hand vs. 

therapist’s hand 

Bottom: Energy generated by the therapist 

17:20–17:25 WedFVT2.6 

Rock-Paper-Scissors Prediction Experiments 

using Muscle Activations 

Giho Jang and Youngjin Choi* 

Electronic Systems Engineering, Hanyang University, South Korea 

Zhihua Qu 

EECS, University of Central Florida, USA 

• Initial experimental results for 

hand posture prediciton are 

presented in the video. 

• Property: initial burst part of 

muscle activation (EMG) is 

prior to the oneset of acutal 

movement by dozens to 

hundreds milliseconds. 

• Using this property, the proposed method makes the ternary choice 

prediction among rock-paper- scissors as soon as 10% motion variation 

of any finger is detected. 

• It is shown experimentally that the success rate of the proposed 

prediction method is over 95%. 


–180–


Telerobotics & Brain-Machine Interfaces 

Chair Susumu Tachi, Keio Univ. 

Co-Chair 

17:25–17:30 WedFVT2.7 

RobChair: Experiments Evaluating Brain- 

Computer Interface to Steer 

a Semi-autonomous Wheelchair 

Ana C. Lopes, Gabriel Pires and Urbano Nunes 

Institute for Systems and Robotics 

University of Coimbra, Portugal 

• Experiments with a semi-autonomous 

wheelchair controlled by means of a 

Brain-Computer Interface (BCI); 

• Assistive navigation system based on 

a collaborative controller; 

• User intents are decoded from 

electroencephalographic signals 

evoked by a visual P300-based 

paradigm; 

• Experiments carried out with 10 ablebodied 

participants and a cerebral 

palsy participant with motor disabilities 

showed the effectiveness of the 

proposed approaches. 

Snapshot taken during an experiment 

with a participant with motor disabilities 


–181–


Multi-modal Learning II 

Chair 

Co-Chair Shingo Shimoda, RIKEN 

16:15–16:30 WedFVT9.1 

Experimental study on haptic communication of 

a human in a shared human-robot collaborative 

task 

Julie Dumora, Franck Geffard, Catherine Bidard 

LIST, CEA, France 

Thibaut Brouillet Philippe Fraisse 

EPSYLON, Montpellier, France LIRMM, Montpellier, France 

• Robot assistances and operator intention 

detection proposed to overcome 

limitations of backdrivable robot in long 

objects manipulation 

• The solution of analysing haptic cues to 

tackle the rotation/translation ambiguity is 

proposed 

• Relationships between operator intention 

of motion and haptic measurements are 

highlighted 

• Wrench measurements are shown to be 

an incomplete information for detection of 

operator’s intention of motion 

Rotation/translation ambiguity 

in joint human-robot manipulation 

of a long object 

(view from top down) 

16:45–17:00 WedFVT9.3 

Maximally Informative Interaction 

Learning for Scene Exploration 

Herke van Hoof, Oliver Kroemer, Heni Ben Amor and Jan Peters 

FG Intelligent Autonomous Systems, TU Darmstadt, Germany 

Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, Germany 

• In dynamic environments, robots 

need to handle novel objects. 

• As annotated data is absent robots 

need to learn from the results of 

their actions. 

• Exploratory actions that maximize 

information gain allow more efficient 

learning. 

• This method allows a robot to 

efficiently learn with minimal prior 

information. 

17:15–17:20 WedFVT9.5 

Towards Robotic Calligraphy 

Nico Huebel, Elias Mueggler, Markus Waibel, 

and Raffaello D’Andrea 

Institute for Dynamic Systems and Control, 

ETH Zurich, Switzerland 

• We present a prototype of a robotic system that learns how to draw 

Chinese characters. 

• First, the context of the project is presented. 

• Then, the experimental setup and the overall approach is introduced. 

• Finally, experimental results are presented and discussed. 

This is the experimental setup of our prototype consisting of the 

KUKA Light Weight Robot, a Prosilica GC 655C camera, and a brush. 

16:30–16:45 WedFVT9.2 

Robots Move: Bootstrapping the Development of 

Object Representations using Sensorimotor 

Coordination 

Arren Glover and Gordon Wyeth 

Queensland University of Technology, Australia 

• This paper is concerned with the 

unsupervised generation of object 

models by fusing appearance and 

action 

• A FAB-MAP-based approach is 

combined with a partially 

observable semi-Markov decision 

process 

• Results indicate stronger bag-ofword 

object representations are 

formed under sensorimotor 

constraints 


–182– 

Representations are matched via 

self-motion prediction to become 

object specific 

17:00–17:15 WedFVT9.4 

Perceptual Development Triggered 

by its Self-Organization in Cognitive Learning 

Yuji Kawai, Yukie Nagai, and Minoru Asada 

Graduate School of Engineering, Osaka University, Japan 

• Our goal: To investigate the role of 

visual development triggered by selforganization 

in the visual space in a 

case of the mirror neuron system (MNS) 

• Key idea: The self-triggered visual 

development changes adaptively the 

developmental speed. 

• Result: The self-triggered development 

maintains a long enough period of 

immature vision which can inhibit selfother 

differences in observation. Thus 

the development enhances the 

acquisition of the association between 

self and other (i.e., the MNS). 

(a) Early stage 

of development 

(b) Later stage 

of development 

17:20–17:25 WedFVT9.6 

Learning Throwing and Catching Skills 

Jens Kober, Katharina Muelling, and Jan Peters 

AGBS, MPI for Intelligent Systems, Germany 

IAS, TU Darmstdat, Germany 

• Learning hitting skills by imitation and reinforcement 

learning 

• Generalizing hitting skills to catching skills 

• Learning to throw at targets 

• Combining throwing and catching skills to play catch 

A BioRob and a Barrett WAM playing catch.


Multi-modal Learning II 

Chair 

Co-Chair Shingo Shimoda, RIKEN 

17:25–17:30 WedFVT9.7 

NAO Walking Down a Ramp Autonomously 

Christian Lutz, Felix Atmanspacher, 

Armin Hornung, and Maren Bennewitz 

Dept. of Computer Science, University of Freiburg, Germany 

• We present a method to traverse 

ramps with humanoids using onboard 

vision and IMU sensors 

• Our NAO humanoid autonomously 

walks down a steep ramp of 2 m 

• Single statically stable steps on the 

ramp are learned with kinesthetic 

teaching 

• Start and end of the ramp are 

detected from straight lines in the 

camera image 

• The robot‘s orientation is inferred 

from the ramp inclination with roll 

and pitch angles of the IMU 

NAO on the ramp (top) and on-board camera 

images with detected lines (bottom) 


–183–

Session WedGT1 Pegaso A Wednesday, October 10, 2012, 17:30–18:30 

Stereo Vision 

Chair Il Hong Suh, Hanyang Univ. 

Co-Chair Andreas Zell, Univ. of Tübingen 

17:30–17:45 WedGT1.1 

A New Feature Detector and Stereo Matching 

Method for Accurate High-Performance Sparse 

Stereo Matching 

Konstantin Schauwecker and Andreas Zell 

Department Cognitive Systems, University of Tübingen, Germany 

Reinhard Klette 

Computer Science Department, The University of Auckland, New Zealand 

• Computationally efficient sparse stereo 

matching system, achieving processing 

rates above 200 frames per second on a 

commodity dual-core CPU. 

• Although features are matched sparsely, a 

dense consistency check is applied, which 

drastically decreases the number of false 

matches. 

• A new FAST-based feature detector is 

used, which has a less clustered feature 

distribution and leads to an improved 

matching performance. 

18:00–18:15 WedGT1.3 

Can Stereo Vision replace a Laser Rangefinder? 

M. Antunes, J.P. Barreto, C. Premebida and U. Nunes 

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering 

Institute of Systems and Robotics 

University of Coimbra, Portugal 

• We propose Stereo Rangefinding (SRF) 

for estimating depth along virtual scan 

planes 

• The SymStereo framework is used for 

quantifying the likelihood of pixel 

correspondences using induced symmetry 

• The depth estimates of SRF are compared 

against the data provided by a LRF 

• We show that passive stereo can be an 

alternative to LRF in certain robotic 

applications 

Our paper shows that it is 

possible to recover the profile cut 

(green) directly from two cameras 

17:45–18:00 WedGT1.2 

Real-time Velocity Estimation Based on 

Optical Flow and Disparity Matching 

Dominik Honegger, Pierre Greisen, Lorenz Meier, 

Petri Tanskanen and Marc Pollefeys 

ETH Zürich Switzerland 

• We present an image-based real-time 

metric velocity sensor for mobile robot 

navigation. 

• An FPGA-based stereo camera platform 

combines optical flow and disparity values 

at 127 fps and 376*240 resolution. 

• Radial undistortion, image rectification, 

disparity estimation and optical flow are 

performed on a single FPGA. 

• Suited for MAVs due to low-weight, lowpower 

and low-latency. 


–184– 

System Setup, Rectified Input 

Image, Disparity Map, 

Flow Field 

18:15–18:30 WedGT1.4 

Dependable Dense Stereo Matching by Both 

Two-layer Recurrent Process and Chaining 

Search 

Sehyung Lee, Youngbin Park and Il Hong Suh 

Department of Electronics and Computer Engineering, Hanyang University, 

Korea 

• We propose a recurrent two-layer process 

and chaining search for dense stereo 

matching. 

• The disparity map is calculated through 

the iterative integration of pixel and region 

layers. 

• To estimate the precise disparities in 

occluded regions, reliable disparities are 

propagated by the chaining search. 

• To test our algorithm, it was compared 

with two outstanding algorithms in 

Middlebury benchmark using Gaussian 

noisy images. 

The first row shows the images with 

varying PSNR. The second, third, and 

fourth rows show the results of the CVF, 

the DBP, and the proposed method.

Session WedGT2 Fenix 2 Wednesday, October 10, 2012, 17:30–18:30 

Telerobotics 

Chair Jordi Artigas, DLR - German Aerospace Center 

Co-Chair 

17:30–17:45 WedGT2.1 

Multi-Objective Optimization for Telerobotic 

Operations via the Internet 

Yunyi Jia 1 , Ning Xi 1,2 , Shuang Liu 2 , Huatao Zhang 1 and Sheng Bi 2 

1 Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, 

Michigan State University, USA 

2 Department of Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering, 

City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China 

• Study the influence of the 

teleoperation condition variables 

on the telerobotic operations, 

including the quality of 

teleoperator, task dexterity and 

network quality 

• investigate the method to online 

identify these condition variables 

and employ them to enhance the 

telerobotic operations with multiple 

objectives. 

• Implemented on a mobile 

manipulator and verified its 

effectiveness. 

System framework 

Experiment implementation 

18:00–18:15 WedGT2.3 

Network Unfoldment and Application to Wave 

Variables using measured Forces 

J. Artigas 

Institute of Robotics and Mechatronic, 

DLR - German Aerospace Center, Germany 

• General network based 

representation, analysis and design. 

• A solution to the ambiguity of the 

channel causality. 

• Time Delay Power Networks: A new 

haptic channel representation 

paradigm. 

• Energy consistent application of the 

wave variables framework using 

sensed forces at the environment. 

17:45–18:00 WedGT2.2 

A master-slave robotic simulator based on 

GPUDirect 

Jianying Li, Yu Guo, Heye Zhang and Yongming Xie 

Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, 

Chinese Academy of Sciences, China 

• Surgery robotic training simulation 

• CUDA and GPUDirect version 1 

• Virtual surgery data transfer using 

GPUDirect between three 

computers by InfiniBand card 

• 247% performance improvement in 

data transmission speed in our 

master-slave robotic simulator 

18:15–18:30 WedGT2.4 

Unimodal Asymmetric Interface for 

Teleoperation of Mobile Manipulators: 

A User Study 

Alejandro Hernandez Herdocia, Azad Shademan, 

and Martin Jägersand 

Department of Computing Science, University of Alberta, Canada 

• Different methods to command one-arm 

mobile manipulator were studied: 

• Workspace Clutching (manipulator) 

• Differential End-Zone (manipulator) 

• Position/Rate Switching (manipulator) 

• Rate Control (mobile base) 

• Evaluated pick & place performance with 

7 subjects solving a Towers of Hanoi 

puzzle 

• Two case studies were presented: 

• Large-displacement pick & place 

• Opening a door and exiting a room 


–185– 

Mobile manipulator 

(SEGWAY+WAM) with 

asymmetric and haptics-enabled 

master-slave configuration.

Session WedGT3 Pegaso B Wednesday, October 10, 2012, 17:30–18:30 

Home Automation and Personal Robots 

Chair Stefano Mazzoleni, Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna 

Co-Chair 

17:30–17:45 WedGT3.1 

Acquisition and Use of Transferable, 

Spatio-Temporal Plan Representations for 

Human-Robot Interaction 

Michael Karg 

Institute for Advanced Study, Technische Universität München, Germany 

Alexandra Kirsch 

Department of Computer Science, University of Tübingen, Germany 

• Generation of semantically 

annototated spatial model by 

combining motion tracking data 

with information from semantic 

maps 

• Automatic segmentation of 

motion tracking data using 

spatial model 

• Generation of transferable, 

general, spatio-temporal plan 

representations for different 

tasks 

• Application: Passive plan 

supervision in different 

environments based on plan 

patterns and durations at 

semantically annotated locations 

18:00–18:15 WedGT3.3 

Context-aware Home Energy Saving based on 

Energy-Prone Context 

Mao-Yung Weng, Chao-Lin Wu, Ching-Hu Lu, Hui-Wen Yeh 

and Li-Chen Fu 



• Energy-prone context (EPC) is an 

activity with associated energy 

consumption. 

• EPC contains information about the 

necessity of an energy consumption to 

an activity. 

• We propose a systematic method to 

determine energy saving (ES) service 

based on EPC. 

• The potential of EPC-based ES system 

is 25% more effective than a locationbased 

one. 

An Energy-Prone Context 

using WatchTV as an example 

Activity: Watch TV 

Location: Livingroom 

Explicit: 

TV_livingroom|on|120watt|1.0 

Implicit: 

AC_livingroom|on|3000watt|0.75 

waterheater_bathroom|on|4000watt| 

0.56 

xbox_livingroom|standby|2watt|0.98 

lamp_livingroom|off|0watt|0.96 

light_hallway|off|0watt|0.88 

light_kitchen|off|0watt|1.0 

lamp_bedroom|off|0watt|0.86 

light_bedroom|off|0watt|0.9 

….. 

Living Room Light: 

on, 60w, 0.82 

TV: 

on, 120w, 1.0 

A/C: 

on, 3kw, 0.75 

Watch 

TV 

Water Heater: 

on, 4kw, 0.56 

Explicit power consumption 

Implicit power consumption 

xBox: 

standby, 2w, 0.98 

17:45–18:00 WedGT3.2 

Hierarchical Generalized Context Inference 

for Context-aware Smart Homes 

Chao-Lin Wu, Mao-Yuan Weng, Ching-Hu Lu and Li-Chen Fu 



• Hierarchical generalized context 

inference helps improve the 

performance of multi-user 

activity recognition. 

• A generalized context (GC) is an 

abstracted context composed of 

several contexts with common 

features. 

• This mechanism treats multiple 

users as an aggregated entity 

and hierarchically group 

contexts as GC. 

• Context-aware smart homes 

based on this method can 

provide appropriate services as 

much as possible. 

Context Labels 

Model Construction 


–186– 

GC(1) 

C (1, 

1) 

C (i, 

1) 

Training 

Phase 

Hierarchical Context 

Generalization 

GC(0) 

C (0, C (0, C (0, C(0, C (0, 

1) 2) 3) 4) 

… 

j) 

GC(i) 

… 

C (1, 

2) 

C(i, 

2) 

… 

DBN DBN DBN 

GC(0) GC(1) 

C (1, 

3) 

… 

… 

… 

GC(i) 

C (1, 

k) 

… 

C(i, 

m) 

Testing 

Phase 

Features 

Generalized 

Context 

Inference 

C(i,1) C(i,2) C(i,3) … 

… 

C(1,1 

) 

C(0,1 

) 

… 

C(1,2 

) 

C(0,2 

) 

… 

C(1,3 

) 

C(0,3 

) 

… 

… 

Generalized Contexts 

Hierarchical Generalized Context Inference Engine 

18:15–18:30 WedGT3.4 

Complex Task Learning from 

Unstructured Demonstrations 

Unstructured Demonstrations 

Scott Niekum, Sarah Osentoski, George Konidaris, and Andrew G. Barto 

• We present a novel method for segmenting 

demonstrations, recognizing repeated skills, 

and generalizing complex tasks from 

unstructured demonstrations. 

• This method combines many of the 

advantages of recent automatic segmentation 

methods for learning from demonstration into 

a single principled, integrated framework. 

• Specifically, we use the Beta Process 

Autoregressive Hidden Markov Model and 

Dynamic Movement Primitives to learn and 

generalize a multi-step task on the PR2 

mobile manipulator and to demonstrate the 

potential of our framework to learn a large 

library of skills over time.

Session WedGT5 Gemini 2 Wednesday, October 10, 2012, 17:30–18:30 

Cooperating Robots 

Chair Mike Stilman, Georgia Tech. 

Co-Chair Pedro Lima, Inst. Superior Técnico - Inst. for Systems and Robotics 

17:30–17:45 WedGT5.1 

Weighted Synergy Graphs for Role Assignment 

in Ad Hoc Heterogeneous Robot Teams 

Somchaya Liemhetcharat and Manuela Veloso 

School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University, USA 

• In ad hoc scenarios, robot capabilities and 

interactions are initially unknown. 

• The Weighted Synergy Graph for Role 

Assignment (WeSGRA) models: 

• capabilities of robots at different roles; 

• interactions between robots using a 

weighted graph structure. 

• We learn the WeSGRA from training 

examples and use it to approximate the 

optimal role assignment. 

• We extensively evaluate the WeSGRA 

model and algorithms with the RoboCup 

Rescue simulator and with real robots. 

An example WeSGRA with 3 

agent types and 2 roles. 

18:00–18:15 WedGT5.3 

On Mission-Dependent Coordination of Multiple 

Vehicles under Spatial and Temporal Constraints 

Federico Pecora, Marcello Cirillo and Dimitar Dimitrov 

Center for Applied Autonomous Sensor Systems, 

Örebro University, Sweden 

� We propose a constraint-based, least-commitment approach for 

coordinating multiple non-holonomic autonomous ground vehicles 

� all decisions on vehicle trajectories are seen as temporal or spatial 

constraints on trajectories 

� trajectories are not committed to until execution time 

� vehicles account for tracking performance of other vehicles and 

posted constraints during execution 

Temporal and spatial constraints on a vehicle's trajectory 

17:45–18:00 WedGT5.2 

Multi-Robot Multi-Object Rearrangement in 

Assignment Space 

Martin Levihn and Takeo Igarashi 

JST ERATO IGARASHI Design Interface Project, Japan 

Mike Stilman 

Interactive Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA 

• We present Assignment Space 

Planning, a new efficient robot multiagent 

coordination algorithm 

• It yields optimal solutions for simple 

problems and novel emergent 

behavior for complex scenarios 

• Computation time is within seconds 

• We demonstrate results not just in 

simulation but also on real robot 

systems 


–187– 

Multiple robots push multiple 

objects to designated goals. 

18:15–18:30 WedGT5.4 

Multi-Robot Exploration and Rendezvous on 

Graphs 

Malika Meghjani and Gregory Dudek 

School of Computer Science, McGill University, Canada 

• We address the problem of multirobot 

rendezvous in an unknown 

bounded environment, starting at 

unknown locations, without any 

communication. 

• The goal is to meet in minimum 

time such that the robots can 

share resources to speed up 

global exploration. 

• We propose an energy efficient 

combination of exploration and 

rendezvous processes. 

• Our simulation results suggest a 

need for the energy efficient 

methods for much faster 

rendezvous time. 

Randomly generated 

environment and its 

performance with noisy 

robot sensors


Localization and Mapping III 

Chair Jun Miura, Toyohashi Univ. of Tech. 

Co-Chair 

17:30–17:45 WedGT6.1 

Efficient Search for Correct and Useful 

Topological Maps 

Collin Johnson and Benjamin Kuipers 

EECS, University of Michigan, USA 

• We present an algorithm for probabilistic 

topological mapping. 

• Perform a heuristic search of a tree of 

maps. 

• Runs online. 

• Never prunes consistent topological map 

hypotheses so correct map can always be 

found. 

Top: Topological map built by our 

algorithm 

Bottom: Hypotheses expanded 

by our algorithm vs. brute force 

18:00–18:15 WedGT6.3 

Accurate 3D maps from depth images and 

motion sensors via nonlinear Kalman filtering 

Thibault Hervier, Silvère Bonnabel, François Goulette 

Centre de Robotique - CAOR, MINES ParisTech, France 

• Use of depth images as localization 

sensors 

• Combined with ICP 

• Analysis of ICP results 

• Data fusion with non-linear filtering: 

Invariant Extended Kalman Filter 

• Natural, robust, handles SE3 

• Experiments with Kinect sensor and 

gyros shows improvement in accuracy 

of localization and map building 

Depth images 

ICP 

Localization 

& covariance 

Non linear Kalman 

filtering (IEKF) 

3D maps 


Motion data 

(gyros) 

17:45–18:00 WedGT6.2 

Accurate On-Line 3D Occupancy Grids 

Using Manhattan World Constraints 

Brian Peasley and Stan Birchfield 

Electrical and Computer Engineering Dept, Clemson University, USA 

Alex Cunningham and Frank Dellaert 

School of Interactive Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA 

• Large dense 3D occupancy grids 

are constructed from RGB-D data 

• Factor graphs are used to combine 

odometry and visual data 

constrained by a Manhattan World 

assumption 

• Manhattan World assumption 

removes rotational drift – no need 

for loop closure 

• Large 3D maps of environments 

efficiently stored using an octree 


–188– 

3D and 2D reconstruction of 

a large building environment 

18:15–18:30 WedGT6.4 

Fourier-based Registrations for Two-Dimensional 

Forward-Looking Sonar Image Mosaicing 

Natalia Hurtos, Xavier Cufí and Joaquim Salvi 

Computer Vision and Robotics Group, University of Girona, Spain 

Yvan Petillot 

Ocean Systems Laboratory, Heriot -Watt University, U.K. 

• Phase correlation method is used to 

address the registration of forward-looking 

sonar images. 

• Registrations from loop-closing situations 

and areas without abundant features are 

feasible. 

• By integrating the result of pairwise 

registrations into a pose-based graph 

optimization a consistent sonar mosaic is 

generated. 

• The vehicle motion in x,y and heading can 

be also estimated from the registrations.

Session WedGT7 Vega Wednesday, October 10, 2012, 17:30–18:30 

Mobile Manipulation 

Chair Masato Ishikawa, Osaka Univ. 

Co-Chair 

17:30–17:45 WedGT7.1 

Path Planning for Image-based Control of 

Wheeled Mobile Manipulators 

Moslem Kazemi, Kamal Gupta, Mehran Mehrandezh 

Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, USA 

Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, Canada 

University of Regina, Regina, Canada 

• Proposes a randomized kinodynamic 

planning approach for non-holonomic 

mobile manipulators 

• Accounts for visibility constraints 

(occlusion and field of view limits) 

• Coordinates the motion of the mobile base 

and on-board arm through weighted 

pseudo-inverse solutions and a null-space 

optimization technique 

• Proposes a decoupled trajectory tracking 

strategy: state feedback control of the 

mobile base + image-based control of the 

on-board arm 

18:00–18:15 WedGT7.3 

Modeling and Control 

of Cylindrical Mobile Robot 

Tetsurou Hirano, Masato Ishikawa and Koichi Osuka 

Dept. of Mech. Eng., Osaka Univ., Japan 

• Cylindrical mobile robot, driven by one 

eccentric rotor with single actuator 

• Two fundamental locomotion modes: edge 

rolling and lateral-side rolling 

• Modeled the robot using Lagrange’s 

E.O.M. and proposed control algorithm for 

the both modes 

• Achieved position control experiment only 

by internal sensor with a real cylindrical 

mobile robot 

Cylindrical Body 

Eccentric Rotor 

Cylindrical Mobile Robot 

17:45–18:00 WedGT7.2 

Mobile Manipulation Through 

An Assistive Home Robot 

Matei Ciocarlie, Kaijen Hsiao, and David Gossow 

Willow Garage Inc., USA 

Adam Leeper 

Willow Garage Inc., USA, and Stanford University, USA 

• We present a mobile manipulator operated by 

a motor-impaired person to perform varied 

and unscripted manipulation tasks 

• We describe the complete set of tools that 

enable the execution of complex tasks, and 

share the lessons learned from testing them 

in a real user’s home 

• In the context of grasping, we show how the 

use of autonomous sub-modules improves 

performance in complex, cluttered 

environments 


–189– 

A PR2 robot, operated by a motor-impaired 

user, performing a manipulation task in a 

real home 

18:15–18:30 WedGT7.4 

Sensor-based Redundancy Resolution for a 

Nonholonomic Mobile Manipulator 

Huatao Zhang, Yunyi Jia and Ning Xi 

Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, 

Michigan State University, USA 

• Provide a redundancy 

resolution method for online 

trajectory generation by using 

real-time sensor information. 

• Employs multi-objective 

functions to meet the 

constraints and requirements 

simultaneously. 

• Apply this method to a high 

DOF mobile manipulator, and 

the effectiveness is 

demonstrated by simulation 

results. 

System structure 

Simulation results


Control Design 

Chair Darwin G. Caldwell, Itituto Italiano di Tecnologia 

Co-Chair Carme Torras, CSIC - UPC 

17:30–17:45 WedGT8.1 

Redundant Inverse Kinematics:Experimental 

Comparative Review and Two Enhancements 

Adrià Colomé and Carme Torras 

Institut de Robòtica Industrial, UPC-CSIC, Barcelona, Spain 

• Review of Closed-Loop 

Inverse Kinematics 

algorithms (CLIK), pointing 

out their strengths and 

weaknesses. 

• New filtering of the Jacobian 

matrix that guarantees a 

good conditioning of the 

pseudoinverse. 

• New options to make CLIK algorithms smoother and robust, efficiently 

avoiding joint limits. 

18:00–18:15 WedGT8.3 

Internal Model Control for Improving the Gait 

tracking of a Compliant Humanoid Robot 

Luca Colasanto, Nikos G. Tsagarakis, 

Zhibin Li and Darwin G. Caldwell 

Department of Advanced Robotics, 

Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Italy 

• A 3-dimensional compliant model at 

the level of the Center of Mass of a 

compliant humanoid is presented and 

experimentally validated. 

• An Internal Model Controller is design 

and implemented on the COMAN 

robot. 

• Experimental results of dynamic 

walking performed using the control 

strategy are presented. 

COMAN robot 

17:45–18:00 WedGT8.2 

Hierarchical strategy for dynamic coverage 

C. Franco, G. Lopez-Nicolas and C. Sagues 

DIIS - I3A, Universidad de Zaragoza, Spain 

D. Paesa and S. Llorente 

BSH Electrodomésticos España, Spain 

• Hierarchical global strategy to perform 

dynamic coverage 

• Ordered coverage to reduce the path 

length 

• Combination of local gradient strategy with 

global hierarchical strategy to increase the 

efficiency avoiding local minima 

• Bounded actions imposed 

18:15–18:30 WedGT8.4 

Approximate Steering of a Plate-Ball System 

Under Bounded Model Perturbation Using 

Ensemble Control 

Aaron Becker 1 and Timothy Bretl 2 


1 Electrical and Computer Engineering, 2 Aerospace Engineering 

• Revisit classical plate-ball system 

and prove still open-loop 

controllable when we do not know 

sphere radius 

• Algorithm for approximate 

steering to arbitrary orientations 

and positions 

• Hardware validation with new 

plate-ball system based on 

magnetic actuation---system is 

easy to implement 

• Enables simultaneous 

manipulation of multiple balls with 

different radii 


–190– 

(a) ensemble plate-ball system 

magnet array 

y−axis 

(b) underlying mechanism 

Hardware platform capable of rolling 15 

different-sized spheres to arbitrary orientations

Session WedGT9 Fenix 1 Wednesday, October 10, 2012, 17:30–18:30 

Control of Wheeled Robots II 

Chair Franz Dietrich, Tech. Univ. Braunschweig 

Co-Chair 

17:30–17:45 WedGT9.1 

A Novel Approach For Steeringwheel 

Synchronization With Velocity/Acceleration 

Limits And Mechanical Constraints 

Ulrich Schwesinger, Cédric Pradalier and Roland Siegwart 

Autonomous Systems Lab, ETH Zurich, Switzerland 

• An algorithm for steeringwheel 

synchronization of over-actuated pseudoomnidirectional 

rovers is presented. 

• Constraints on velocity and acceleration of 

the steering units are taken into account. 

• The constraints are satisfied via a 

compliant control of the instantaneous 

center of rotation. 

• The performance of the synchronization 

algorithm is evaluated on a breadboard for 

the ExoMars mission. 

ExoMars rover - phase B1 

concept, source: ESA/Cluster 

18:00–18:15 WedGT9.3 

Disturbance Compensation in Pushing, Pulling, 

and Lifting for Load Transporting Control of a 

Wheeled Inverted Pendulum Type Assistant 

Robot Using The Extended State Observer 

Luis Canete and Takayuki Takahashi 

Graduate School of Symbiotic Systems Science, 

Fukushima University, Japan 

• The system is an Inverted 

PENdulum Type Assistant Robot 

(I-PENTAR). 

• The system is designed to use its 

balance to apply large torques and 

forces. 

• Uses the Extended State Observer 

to compensate for disturbances 

during performance of tasks. 

• Tests for impulse and step 

disturbances were applied to test 

the system robustness. 

• The robot is able to push and pull 

14kg loads up a ramp and lift up to 

7.5kg loads. 

I-PENTAR and the proposed 

pushing/pulling and lifting tasks 

17:45–18:00 WedGT9.2 

Wheeled Inverted-Pendulum-Type Personal Mobility Robot 

with Collaborative Control of Seat Slider and Leg Wheels 

Nobuyasu Tomokuni 

Department of Intelligent Mechanical Engineering, 

Faculty of Engineering, Kinki University, Japan. 

Motoki Shino 

Department of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Tokyo, Japan. 

• This paper describes a motion control that 

realizes more stability and comfortability 

for a personal mobility robot (PMR). 

• The PMR has a unique mechanism that 

consists of two independent leg wheels 

and a seat slider for inverted pendulum 

type mobility. 

• This mechanical features can achive more 

compactness and capacity to support both 

indoor and outdoor mobilities. 

• We propose whole body collaborative 

controler based on the linear-quadratic 

regulator from a three-dimensional 

kinematics model of the PMR. 


–191– 

Personal mobility robot (PMR) 

18:15–18:30 WedGT9.4 

A 3D Dynamic Model of a Spherical Wheeled 

Self-Balancing Robot 

Ali Nail İnal and Ömer Morgül 

Dept. of Electrical & Electronics Eng., Bilkent University, Turkey 

Uluç Saranlı 

Dept. of Computer Eng., Middle East Technical University, Turkey 

• A new coupled 3D Ballbot model capable 

of capturing significant yaw rotations is 

introduced 

• Equations of motion for the new model are 

derived, incorporating Ballbot specific 

constraints 

• New inverse-dynamics controllers for 

accurately controlling attitude variables are 

investigated in simulation 

• Relations between circular motions in 

attitude variables and associated motions 

in positional variables is investigated, 

exposing increased expressivity of the 

new model. 

The coupled 3D Ballbot model

Session WedGT10 Lince Wednesday, October 10, 2012, 17:30–18:30 

Safety, Failure Handling and Recovery II 

Chair Erwin Prassler, Bonn-Rhein-Sieg Univ. of Applied Sciences 

Co-Chair 

17:30–17:45 WedGT10.1 

Dual back-stepping observer to anticipate the rollover 

risk in under/over-steering situations. Application to 

ATVs in off-road context. 

Mathieu Richier, Roland Lenain and Christophe Debain 

IRSTEA, France 

Benoit Thuilot, 

Institut Pascal, France 

• Rollover prevention thanks to the 

computation of a stability metric and a 

predictive algorithm 

• Observers estimating on-line the grip 

conditions and the slope: application to 

off-road conditions 

• Limitation to a low cost sensing 

equipment: allowing a practical 

applicability 

MF400H, Massey 

Fergusson quad bike used 

for experiments. 


Psychological Experiments on Avoidance Action 

Characteristics for Estimating Avoidability 

of Harm to Eyes from Robots 

Takamasa Hattori 1 , Yoji Yamada 1 , Shuji Mori 2 , 

Shogo Okamoto 1 , and Susumu Hara 1 

1 Graduate School of Engineering, Nagoya University, Japan 

2 Faculty of Information Science and Electrical Engineering, 


• Psychological experiments are conducted 

to investigate harm-avoidance action 

characteristics in humans in close contact 

with robotic devices. 

• A situation is created in which the sharp 

end-effector tip of a robot suddenly 

approaches the eyes of a facing participant. 

• The results suggest that the reaction time 

on avoidance actions does not depend on 

the type of work being performed but on the 

initial distance between the human’s eyes 

and the approaching object. 

Participant 

Motion capture system 

Bearing 

End effector 

Robot 


Towards Learning of Safety Knowledge from 

Human Demonstrations 

P. Ertle 1 , M. Tokic 2,3 , R. Cubek 2 , H. Voos 4 , D. Söffker 1 

1 University of Duisburg-Essen 

2 University of Applied Sciences of Ravensburg-Weingarten 

3 University of Ulm 

4 University of Luxembourg 

• Future autonomous service robots shall 

operate in open and complex 

environments which implies complications 

ensuring safe operation. 

• Hazardous environmental object 

interactions can occur. 

• A safety procedure is described, learning 

safety knowledge from human 

demonstration . 

• Several supervised learning techniques 

are evaluated. 

• Results indicate that Decision Trees allow 

interesting opportunities. 


–192– 

Learned decision tree for safely 

handling an iron in an ironing task 


A truly safe robot has to know what injury it may 

cause 

S. Haddadin, S. Haddadin, A. Khoury, T. Rokahr, S. Parusel, 

R. Burgkart, A. Bicchi, and A. Albu-Schäffer 

Robotics and Mechatronics Center, DLR 

• Introduce soft-tissue injury classification 

to robotics 

• Generate missing medical data 

(mass,velocity,curvature)� injury via 

drop-testing 

• Associate primitive based decomposition 

of robot structure with drop-testing 

results 

• Take into account robot dynamics and 

curvature for biomechanically safe 

velocity control 

• Effect: even in case of unwanted collision 

with potentially dangerous curvatures the 

robot is not able to cause any harm 

• Relevance not only to robotics but also to 

medicine and biomechanics

Session WedGVT4 Fenix 3 Wednesday, October 10, 2012, 17:30–18:30 

Haptics, Force Sensing and Manipulation 

Chair Toshiaki Tsuji, Saitama Univ. 

Co-Chair 

17:30–17:45 WedGVT4.1 

A supervisory control system for a multi- ?fingered 

robotic hand using ?datagloves and a haptic device 

Youtaro Yoshimura and Ryuta Ozawa 

Department of Robotics, Ritsumeikan University, JAPAN 

• This paper proposes a supervisory control 

system for a multi-fingered robotic hand 

for grasping an object in a remote 

environment in several ways, manipulating 

it, and mimicking several non-grasping 

motions. 

• The proposed control system consists of a 

grasping selector in the master system 

and motion controllers and a controller 

selector in the slave system. 

• The grasping selector learns to detect 

motions using datagloves. 

• The controller selector determines the 

current command and awaits a transition, 

while the motion controllers stably realize 

the currently commanded motion. 

Object manipulation 

18:00–18:15 WedGVT4.3 

Whole-body Force Sensation by Force Sensor 

with End-effector of Arbitrary Shape 

Naoyuki Kurita, Toshiaki Tsuji 

Graduate School of Science and Engineering 

Saitama University, Japan 

• The contact location can be calculated by 

a force sensor 

• A method for estimating the contact point 

on an end-effector of arbitrary shape is 

proposed 

• The method utilizes the property that the 

external force direction changes when the 

end-effector has contact 

• Experimental results show availability for 

a non-convex shaped end-effector 

Experimental image 

18:20–18:25 WedGVT4.5 

Autonomous Construction of a Roofed 

Structure: Synthesizing Planning and Stigmergy 

on a Mobile Robot 

Stefan Wismer, Gregory Hitz, Stéphane Magnenat 

Autonomous Systems Lab, ETH Zürich, Switzerland 

Michael Bonani 

Mobsya, Lausanne, Switzerland 

Alexey Gribovskiy 

Mobots group, LSRO, EPFL, Switzerland 

• A mobile robot, according to a plan, builds a structure that it can enter. 

• The robot interacts with the construction using local sensing. 

• This synthesis of planning and stigmergy opens the way to new 

construction techniques using mobile robots. 

17:45–18:00 WedGVT4.2 

Experiments in Quasi-Static Manipulation 

of a Planar Elastic Rod 

Dennis Matthews 1 and Timothy Bretl 2 

1 Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering 

2 Department of Aerospace Engineering 

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 

• Equilibrium configurations of a planar 

elastic rod are solutions to a geometric 

optimal control problem. 

• We prove that the set of all solutions to 

this problem is a smooth 3-manifold that 

can be parameterized by a single chart. 

• This result leads to an algorithm for quasistatic 

manipulation planning that works 

well and is easy to implement. 

• Hardware experiments validate our 

approach when the “rod” is a thin, flexible 

strip of metal that has a fixed base and 

that is held at the other end by a robot. 


–193– 

Equilibrium configuration of a planar 

elastic rod, and its coordinates in a 

slice of the 3-manifold we derive 

18:15–18:20 WedGVT4.4 

Robots for Humanity: User-Assisted Design for 

Assistive Mobile Manipulation 

T. Chen, P. Grice, K. Hawkins, C. Kemp, C. King, H. Nguyen 

Dept. Of Biomedical Engineering, Georgia Tech, USA 

M. Ciocarlie, S. Cousins, K. Hsiao, A. Leeper, A. Paepcke, 

C. Pantofaru, L. Takayama 

Willow Garage Inc., USA 

D. Lazewatsky, W. Smart 

Oregon State University 

• We aim to enable people with motor impairments to interact with the world 

through mobile manipulators 

• The video shows our collaborator and pilot tester, Henry Evans, who is 

quadriplegic, using a PR2 to interact physically and socially 

• The user interfaces developed allowed 

Henry to shave, retrieve objects, open 

drawers, and give out candy at 

Halloween 

• These results illustrate the potential of 

robots to increase the independence of 

people with motor impairments 

Henry scratches his cheek with a PR2 

robot. 

18:25–18:30 WedGVT4.6 

Additional Manipulating Function for Limited 

Narrow Space with Omnidirectional Driving Gear 

Kenjiro TADAKUMA 1) , Riichiro TADAKUMA 2) , 

Kyohei IOKA 2) , Takeshi KUDO 2) , 

Minoru TAKAGI 2) , Yuichi TSUMAKI 2) 

Mitsuru HIGASHIMORI 1) and Makoto KANEKO 1) 

1)Department of Mechanical Engineering, Osaka University, Japan 

2)Department of Mechanical Systems Engineering, Yamagata University, 

Japan 

• Manipulating function is added 

to the end effector with 

omnidirectional driving gear. 

• This manipulating function can 

be useful especially for limited 

narrow space. 

• The input gear mechanisms 

with passive rollers for 

smooth power transmission 

were examined. 

Parallel gripper with omnidirectional gear

Session WedGJT11 Hidra Wednesday, October 10, 2012, 17:30–18:30 

Jubilee Videos I 

Chair T. J. Tarn, Washington Univ. 

Co-Chair Hong Zhang, Univ. of Alberta 

17:30–17:40 WedGJT11.1 

Telexistence — from 1980 to 2012 

Susumu Tachi, Kouta Minamizawa, 

Masahiro Furukawa and Charith Fernando 

Graduate School of Media Design, Keio University, Japan 

• Telexistence allows a human 

being to experience a realtime 

sensation of being in a 

place other than his/her 

actual location and to interact 

with the remote environment, 

which may be real, virtual, or 

a combination of both. 

• Telexistence in the real 

environment through a virtual 

environment is possible. 

• 32 years of telexistence 

development are historically 

reviewed in this jubilee video. 

17:50–18:00 WedGJT11.3 

The Birth of the Brain-Controlled Wheelchair 

Tom Carlson, Robert Leeb, Ricardo Chavarriaga 

and José del R. Millán 

Chair in Non-Invasive Brain Machine Interface, 

École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland 

• We have striven to push BCI technology 

out of the lab, into the real world 

• We describe the evolution of BCI 

applications from cursors to games, 

telepresence robots and wheelchairs 

• Coupling BCIs with shared control 

reduces workload and results in safe 

and reliable control 

• We culminate with the first patient trial 

of a motor-imagery based BCI 

wheelchair 

18:10–18:20 WedGJT11.5 

A Decade of Rescue Robots 

Robin R. Murphy 

Center for Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue, Texas A&M, USA 

• Land, marine and aerial robotics have 

been reported at 26 disasters, starting with 

2001 World Trade Center through the 

Tohoku Tsunami and Fukushima Nuclear 

Event 

• Used for: searching for victims, 

reconnaissance and mapping, inspection 

of building and bridges 

• Very successful though have not found 

any living survivors 

• Open research questions in: human-robot 

interaction, mobile manipulation, reliable 

wireless networks, and obstacle avoidance 

for small UAVs and UMVs 

One of the 26 deployments: Use 

of UMVs for Tohoku Tsunami 

17:40–17:50 WedGJT11.2 

The Dynamo Project: 

The World’s First Robot Soccer Players 

Alan K. Mackworth 

Computer Science, University of British Columbia, Canada 

• Video showing the world’s first autonomous robot soccer players 

• Outcomes of experiments using small scale radio controlled trucks and 

cars to play robot soccer 

• Pioneering work carried out over the period 1992-1994 in the Dynamo 

project at the UBC Laboratory for Computational Intelligence 

• Precursors to the RoboCup robot soccer competitions that started in 1997 

18:00–18:10 WedGJT11.4 

CoBots: Collaborative Robots 

Servicing Multi-Floor Buildings 

Manuela Veloso, Joydeep Biswas, Brian Coltin, 

Stephanie Rosenthal, Tom Kollar, Cetin Mericli, 

Mehdi Samadi, and Susana Brandao 

School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University, United States 

Rodrigo Ventura 

ECE Department, Instituto Superior Tecnico, Portugal 

• CoBots (Collaborative Robots) perform 

service tasks for humans indoors 

• Building on the past 25 years of robotics 

research, this video showcases research 

with CoBot, including: 

• A visitor-companion robot & tour guide 

• Wifi and kinect localization 

• Navigation and obstacle avoidance 

• Telepresence and simulation 

• Symbiotic autonomy and using the web 

• Sending message and making 

deliveries for humans 

• Riding the elevator with human help 


–194–

Session WedAT1 Pegaso A Wednesday, October 10, 2012 ... - Lirmm

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