John (Jizhong) Xiao

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Robotics Research at CCNY

• John (Jizhong) Xiao
• Robotics and Intelligent Systems Lab
• Department of Electrical Engineering
• City College of New York
• Tel [phone]
• Email jxiao_at_ccny.cuny.edu
• Website http//134.74.16.73

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Current Projects

• NSF MII Planning Project
• Center of Perceptual Robotics and Intelligent
  Systems (PRISM Center at CCNY)
• Funding Agency NSF Minority Institutional
  Infrastructure Program
• Wall-climbing Robot project
• Funding Agency Army Research Office
• Smart Brain project
• Funding Agency NSF Major Research Instrument
  Program

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Wall-climbing Robot Project

• Project Title
• Cooperative Wall-climbing Robots in 3D
  Environments for Surveillance and Target Tracking
• The objective
• develop a modular, re-configurable, wall-climbing
  robotic system and to investigate intelligent
  control methods and vision algorithms to control
  and coordinate a team of such robots to perform
  various defense, security, and inspection
  missions.
• Principle Investigators
• John Xiao (EE), Zhigang Zhu (CS)
• Ali Sadegh (ME)

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Wall-climbing Robot Project

• Dream
• transform the present 2-D world of mobile rovers
  into a new 3-D universe.
• move on ground, climb walls, walk on ceilings,
  transit between surfaces.
• Applications
• Urban warfare applications surveillance and
  reconnaissance, weapon delivery, guiding
  perimeter around a building, etc
• Security and counter-terrorist applications
  intelligence gathering about a hostile situation
  within a building, etc.
• Inspection and maintenance applications routine
  inspection of buildings, nuclear containment
  domes, and other hard-to-reach places, inspection
  of aircraft, sand blasting of ship hulls, etc.
• Other Civilian applications assistance in
  firefighting, search and rescue operations, etc.

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Wall-climbing Robot Project

• Challenges
• Adhesive mechanism
• strong attraction force on various wall surfaces
  (brick, wood, glass, stucco, plaster, and metal)
• without sacrificing mobility
• Transition Mechanism
• wheeled robot to achieve quick motion
• articulated structure for smooth transition
• modular design combine two
• Control/coordination of multiple robot modules
• Vision research for surveillance applications

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Existing Technologies and Robots

• Existing Technologies
• magnetic attraction devices
• vacuum suction techniques
• biologically inspired
• gecko foot
• limbed devices
• aerodynamics attraction
• vortex attraction technique
• attraction generated by propeller

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Existing Technologies and Robots
CMU gecko inspired climber

• Existing wall-climbers

MSU Flipper Crawler
JPL-Stanford rock climber
Avionic Instruments Inc. Vortex attraction
technique
iRobots Mecho-Gecko
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Wall Climber Adhesive Mechanism

• Design alternatives
• vacuum pumps (MSU climber)
• vortex attraction device
• vacuum rotor package

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Wall Climber Vacuum Chamber Seal

• Inflated Tube Skirt Seal
• Flexible Bristle Skirt Seal

attraction force is so strong that it anchored
the device to wall surfaces
trade-off between sealing and mobility
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Wall Climber Selected Design

• Selected Design
• vacuum rotor package
• flexible bristle skirt seal
• differential drive
• pressure force isolation rim (re-foam)
• improves mobility, enhances sealing by reducing
  the deformation of the skirt

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Wall Climber Transition Mechanism

• Transition Mechanism

• Modular Design

Four wall-climber modules are configured to form
a larger wall-climbing robot which can carry
heavy payload
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DSP-based Control System

• Actuator and sensor suite
• TMS320F2812 DSP from Texas Instruments Inc.
• 32-bit Processor
• Target for control applications

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Wall Climber Software Structure
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CCNY Wall Climber Prototypes
Prototype II, inflated tube seal
Prototype I, vortex attraction
Prototype III, vacuum rotor package
Prototype II, flexible bristle skirt seal
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CCNY Wall Climber Prototypes

• Video

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Smart Brain Project

• Project Title
• Smart Re-configureable Miniature Robot Systems
  Based on System on Programmable Chip Technology
• NSF MRI Instrument Development
• The objective
• to develop highly-adaptive computation module
  based on SoPC technology (FPGA) for ultra-small
  robots
• to realize onboard sensor processing, advanced
  motion control, and reliable wireless
  communication
• Principle Investigators
• Umit Uyar (EE), John Xiao (EE)

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Project Overview

• FPGA technology
• programmable logic ? programmable systems
• integrate FPGA logic, embedded high-performance
  processors, digital signal processor (DSP)
  blocks, and multi-gigabit transceivers, making
  FPGA a versatile technology for high-end research
  and commercial products.
• FPGA Device Features
• Xilinx Virtex-II Pro family FPGA device
• two 32-bit IBM PowerPC 405 cores
• FPGA logic, DSP blocks
• 10M of block RAM, off-chip memory as a gap-stop
  measure
• Xilinx Intellectual Property (IP) Core library

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Project Overview

• Benefits
• flexibility, reconfigureability
• hardware reconfigureable, software reprogrammable
• hardware/software partitioning
• high-speed logic implementation in FPGA fabric
  high-flexibility software code in Power PC
• IP core library to achieve basic robotic
  functions
• pre-verified, reusable
• satisfy the requirements for control,
  communication, and onboard vision processing
  capability of miniature robots

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FPGA-based Multiprocessor

• A processor-centric architecture
• FPGA fabric is used for custom logic and
  interfaces.
• Single board FPGA-based multiprocessor for
  robotics applications

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Recent Progress

• Logic design for motor control (PWM, encoder
  reading)
• Demonstration of virtual backbone concept for
  reliable server pooling

Virtex-II Pro ML300 Evaluation board
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Thank you!