Elizabeth City State University adds Qs to its lab

The Aviation Science Program at the Elizabeth City State University’s Department of Technology is the only four-year collegiate aviation program in the State of North Carolina. Its uniqueness is now underlined by the latest additions of “Qs” to the department’s lab: that is, of Quanser Qball quadrotor and Qbot autonomous robot.

Setting up the Quanser UVS Lab at
the Elizabeth City State University

With these devices and a set of twelve NaturalPoint OptiTrack cameras, Dr. Rawat, Associate Professor and Department Chair can set up a complete unmanned multi-vehicle indoor lab and expand the Control Systems, Mechatronic System Design and Reconfigurable Computing courses, as well as undergraduate capstone projects. Plus the Quanser's Unmanned Vehicle Systems (UVS) lab  will be used for three new courses, begining in the fall 2014: Introduction to Autonomous Mobile Robotics, Advanced Mobile Robotics and Aerial Robotics.

The lab will be also used for research in areas such as sensor fusion, multi-agent collision avoidance and SLAM localization. Using twelve cameras, as opposed to a standard setup with six, allows for a larger workspace and makes it possible to expand the number of agents.

Thanks to the complete turn-key solution with controllers included, and on-site setup assistance from Quanser engineer, Dr. Rawat and his students could start their work right away. While all the sensors needed to cover topics of five courses using the unmanned vehicle lab are already on board, the open architecture design of the lab allows for addition of other sensors in the future.

 

Collaborative mission: first tests of Quanser Qball quadrotor and Qbot unmanned robot
at the Elizabeth City State University

Dr. Rawat also appreciates comprehensive documentation and courseware that come with the systems – that way he doesn’t have to develop all the course materials from scratch, but can reuse materials developed by Quanser. The supplied open-architecture controllers can also be modified for his educational and research needs, saving him time he would have to spend building controllers.

Dr. Rawat also hopes the demonstration of the cutting-edge unmanned technology will help his university attract high school students and excite them for a career in engineering.

Quanser Qball Starring on TV

Click here to watch the CTV News video

The news of the retail giant Amazon planning to deliver orders using flying robots within the next five years spread quickly around the world. CTV News brought the story to its viewers surrounded by the Quanser "drones" - or unmanned aerial vehicles, as we prefer to call them: Qball-X4.

Visiting Concordia University in Montreal, the reporter discussed the feasibility of Amazon's plans with the experts from the  Diagnosis, Flight Control and Simulation and Networked Autonomous Vehicles Lab. Their work is focused on development of the fault-tolerant flight control systems, as well as cooperative UAV systems with increased reliability in severe environments. Quanser unmanned systems, such as Qball-X4 quadrotor and Qbot ground vehicle help the team, allowing them to develop and test their control strategies in the controlled environment of the lab.

To learn more about Quanser autonomous systems for research and teaching, visit our website.

Seven Professors Around The Globe Tell Us How They Conduct UVS Research

Why did Professor Rastko Selmic of Louisiana Tech University choose Quanser when it came to building his unmanned vehicle laboratory? His rationale was straightforward.  “The system is easy to operate”, he says, “offers rapid prototyping and testing of algorithms, and can be used in a variety of teaching and research setups.” 

Professor Selmic’s reasons are echoed by professors around the world who are studying the control of unmanned air and ground vehicles.  Many of them have told us they value the efficiency of Quanser technology in general and our UVS Lab in particular. Others have added they appreciate how Quanser can help them build a fully-functioning indoor UVS lab that is safe, reliable and accurate.

With that in mind, here’s a look at just some labs currently using Quanser UVS technology.

The Naval Postgraduate School, San Diego, California

The Quanser control lab at Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) supports all control-related courses in NPS’s Graduate School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (GSEAS). “All our School of Engineering (SE), Mechanical and Astronautical  (MAE) and Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) students take basic control classes, says Professor Oleg Yakimenko, “with some going on to take further (modern) control classes.”

Professor Yakimenko and his team are currently working on developing "Detect-Sense-and-Avoid:” (DSA) technology/algorithms for indoor Qballs and Qbots that can easily be transferred to outdoor platforms.  They’re also working on collaborative missions for heterogenous unmanned formations (involving ground and aerial vehicles) that also can be transferred to and tested in a real-world environment.

In his lab at the Naval Postgraduate School, Prof. Yakimenko demonstrates four Qballs trying to maintain a formation while following a Qbot ground vehicle.

Professor Yakimenko has found that transitioning to a Quanser UVS Lab is fairly easy for NPS students, since Quanser experiments and QUARC software seamlessly integrate with MATLAB/Simulink for rapid controls prototyping and hard-in-the-loop testing.  

He also cites Quanser lab manuals as another reason NPS chose Quanser UVS solutions. “They support Quick Start operations and help things get going quickly.” In the end, he says, “the Quanser UVS Lab provides hands-on experience for a diverse group of students who have a wide range of different backgrounds.”

To view video of Dr. Yakimenko's work on "Detect-Sense-Avoid" technology using the Quanser UVS Lab, click here.  To learn more about Quanser's UVS Lab at NPS, click here.

University of Glasgow, Glasgow, Scotland

At the University of Glasgow’s School of Engineering in Scotland, Dr. David Anderson runs the SELEX Galileo Micro Air Systems Technology  (MAST) Laboratory. 

The MAST Lab includes Quanser unmanned ground and aerial vehicles (the Qbot and Qball), along with the Optitrack™ motion capture system that allows accurate tracking of multiple bodies and the subsequent studies of multi-agent control and navigation. 

Currently Professor Anderson and his team are using the Qball to conduct research into a number of areas. They are looking at designing cooperative flight and sightline controllers for practical laser wireless power transfer and, to that end, are building a laser transceiver to mount on the Qball and a ground based laser pointer. Another area they’re investigating is the use of a Qball to demonstrate the effectiveness of nonlinear flight stabilization controllers for constrained flight in atmospheric turbulence. 

Professor Anderson and his team say they appreciate Quanser UVS Systems for their flexibility and the ease of development provided by QUARC rapid control prototyping software.  To see the Quanser Qball in flight at MAST Lab, click here.  

Concordia University, Montreal, Canada

Professor Youmin Zhang and his team from Concordia University’s Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering have been working with Qbots and Qballs on fault tolerant formation and cooperative control. 

One area of their most recent research uses one Qball, one Qbot and two Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGV), while another is focusing on cooperative control of UGVs only.  

From a teaching perspective, Professor Zhang finds his students are more motivated to come to class and learn because the hands-on Quanser system helped them bridge the gap between theory and practical engineering practice. He also is very pleased with that the system was designed for safe, reliable indoor use.

To learn more about Professor Zhang's work in flight control and networked autonomous vehicles, click here.

Professor Zhang at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada uses his Quanser UVS  technology for  both teaching and research.  He finds the combination of latest technology and hands-on learning motivates students because it helps them link theory to practice.

UVS Academic Research, China

A number of universities in China are using Quanser Qbot UGVs and Qball UAVs, to investigate flight and multi-vehicle control.  They include:

Northeastern University:  Professor Dingyu Xue uses Quanser Qballs and Qbot to conduct research on coordinated control. 

Harbin Institute of Technology:   Professor Zhenkai Wange uses the Qball and Qbot for research work on flight control and multi-vehicle control.

Jiangnan University:   Professor Fei Liu, recently purchased two Qball UAVs and three Qbot UGVs to teach flight control and the more advanced control of the Internet of Things (IOT).

Besides citing the functional flexibility of the Quanser Unmanned Vehicle Lab System, all three professors have expressed appreciation for the high level of safety and convenience that Qbots and Qballs bring to the teaching of flight control. They also find that the equipment’s compatibility with the MATLAB®/Simulink® based solution is helpful in accelerating their research.

Moscow Aviation Institute, Moscow, Russia

Quanser recently visited the Moscow Aviation Institute (MAI) to install a UVS Lab in the Institute's Robotic and Intelligent Systems department.  MAI now has a complete Quanser UVS Lab with four Qballs and a Qbot.  To learn more about the research being planned, click here.

A Quanser UVS Lab in the process of being unpacked and installed at the Moscow Aviation Institute.

The fact that Quanser unmanned vehicle technology has attracted worldwide use indicates how well it is satisfying the needs of a diverse group of UVS researchers and teachers.  Stay tuned to the Quanser blog for more information on how Quanser UVS technology is helping advanced UVS research and teaching around the world.

To find out more about how Quanser's UVS Lab can assist your controls teaching or research, contact us at info@quanser.com.

Quanser UVS Lab Takes Flight at Moscow Aviation Institute

I have done a lot of traveling this year. Looking back, I realized recently that I spent pretty much a week per month out of the country from May until now. Quanser has customers in all sorts of far reaching and exciting parts of the world, and as an adopted associate member of the marketing team I’ve had opportunities to travel to some unique places this year. Of the places I’ve seen and universities I’ve visited, by far the most interesting and memorable was the Moscow Aviation Institute.

Peter Martin takes a moment to sit in the cockpit of a 20th century Russian jet while at the Moscow Aviation Institute (MAI) on a 21st century mission: installing a Quanser UVS Lab at MAI's Robotic and Intelligent Systems department.. 

The goal of our visit was to “commission” a UVS Lab, the latest addition to the Robotic and Intelligent Systems department. Commissioning trips are traditionally the most fun for engineers at Quanser because we get to interact with customers and show off their fancy new equipment. In this case the Moscow Aviation Institute (MAI) had acquired a complete UVS Lab with four Qballs and a Qbot. This gave us plenty of toys to play with. Additionally as a graduate of University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies (UTIAS) in Toronto, I was especially excited to experience the Russian equivalent of my alma mater.

Peter works with members of MAI's Robotic and Intelligent Systems department to ensure a smooth installation of the Quanser UVS Lab. 

The day began with a Christmas Day-esque box opening extravaganza with a whole room of boxes of various shapes and sizes to open. With that done, we moved on to setting up the OptiTrack™ System and various calibration and configuration tasks. After a delicious break for borscht and assorted Russian delicacies we moved on to the fun part - flight testing and cooperative autonomous missions. The UVS Lab comes with several preconfigured lab exercises and experimental missions. The most interesting of these are the cooperative missions which involve a Qball following a Qbot around the workspace. This offered some interesting challenges given the relatively small temporary workspace that was available at MAI, at one point resulting in the Qball landing on top of the Qbot.

A Qball and Qbot are put through their paces as part of the installation and flight testing process.  The research that the MAI team will tackle will be at the cutting edge of unmanned systems.

Despite the somewhat rough and ready interior of much of the university, an inheritance from the days of the Soviet Union, the research that the department will be tackling with the help of the UVS Lab will be at the cutting edge of unmanned systems. The team is planning to outfit their Qballs with several additional sensors, including GPS and additional sonar, to give them the ability to navigate independent of the motion tracking system. They then plan to use them as a dynamic team that can track both the ground vehicle and each other in a mobile workspace. I’m looking forward to following their progress in the months and years to come as their research takes our system above and beyond.

A final note: Russia is just the latest country where we've installed a UVS Lab for teaching and research. To find out what professors are doing with UVS Labs in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom and China, click here.

- Peter Martin

Peter Martin is a Curriculum Developer at Quanser 

Accuracy Soars, Research Costs Stay Grounded Using Quanser HIL Solution

Two of the most valuable benefits of Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL) development are increased research accuracy and dramatically decreased research costs. Recent work supervised by Professor Manfredi Maggiore of theDepartment of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Toronto amply underscore that fact. Professor Maggiore spoke with us recently after a visit to Quanser headquarters.

Quanser: In terms of teaching and research, you’ve worked with Quanser experiments and solutions for a number of years. What is the recent high-level problem you were trying to solve or investigate?
Professor Manfredi Maggiore: My M.A.Sc. students, Farid Zare Seisan and Ashton Roza, have developed a method to control the position of a class of autonomous aerial vehicles (e.g., quadrotor and coaxial helicopters). We were particularly interested in testing this approach on a coaxial helicopter steered using a moving mass actuator.

A 3D representation of Professor Maggiore's concept helicopter
using QUARC's 3D visualization tools.

Quanser: What was the methodology you used to tackle the problem?
Prof. Maggiore: Developing helicopter prototypes is expensive and time-consuming. Additionally, significant discrepancies exist between the actual behaviour of the helicopter and that of its mathematical model. Such discrepancies are so relevant that they can invalidate a theoretical control design. One of the main causes of the above discrepancies is the uncertainty in the models of sensors and actuators.
Concerning sensors, it is well-known that the estimate of the helicopter attitude using IMU (inertial measurement unit) measurements and complementary filters is noisy and inaccurate. With regard to actuators, the aerodynamic models typically used to model the lift generated by propellers are overly simplified, and do not take into account the motor dynamics and a number of aerodynamic effects. For our coaxial helicopter, we imagined that the moving mass actuator would limit the performance of the closed-loop system, but we had no concrete idea of the extent of this limitation.
We wanted to test our controllers in a realistic scenario that would take into account sensor and actuator limitations, but without having to spend the time and money to develop a full helicopter prototype. We used the Quanser 3 DOF Gyroscope experiment to do a hardware-in-the-loop simulation of the coaxial helicopter.

Shown:  HIL rapid prototyping device consisting of Quanser's 3 DOF Gyroscope
retrofitted with Quanser's HiQ avionics sensor board.

This experiment works like this. A microcontroller with IMU is mounted on a plate placed at the centre of a fully actuated 3 DOF gyroscope. The gyroscope is driven by the Simulink simulation of the coaxial helicopter. In turn, the simulation receives inputs from real sensors and actuators. Specifically, the feedback in Simulink is implemented using actual IMU measurements, and the helicopter dynamics are affected by the actual displacement of the moving mass actuator, which is driven by the reference signals generated by the position controller in the Simulink diagram.

                                                                                                                      - Quanser Video 

Quanser: In using the hardware-in-the-loop platform to study the problem, did you discover anything about the problem that you would not have seen otherwise?
Prof. Maggiore: We realized that the moving mass actuator had a time delay of the order of 0.1 seconds which severely limited the stability and performance of the closed-loop system. This forced us to detune their controller to make it less aggressive. We also realized that although the sensor noise can be significant, it does not pose a stability problem. It only induces a steady-state error in the helicopter's position.
The moral of the story for us was that the design of a moving mass actuator is crucial, and it should be improved before trying to develop a prototype of a coaxial helicopter. The HIL scenario allowed us to do that quickly and without incurring major research costs.

Quanser: What benefits do you see for using this type of hardware-in-the-loop system in the classroom, undergraduate or graduate, or for research?
Prof. Maggiore: The hardware-in-the-loop system described above (the Quanser 3 DOF gyroscope with an external moving mass actuator) allowed us to take an intermediate step between a purely theoretical analysis and the full implementation of a coaxial helicopter with a moving mass actuator. Quanser’s real-time control software, QUARC, provides the ideal development tools to implement such a system from theoretical analysis to hardware-in-the-loop simulations, and even full hardware implementation.
On the research side, more work can be done to exploit this platform. For instance, one could include actual motors and propellers in the hardware-in-the-loop simulation to test the impact of the motor dynamics on the closed-loop system. On the teaching side, one could use the Quanser 3 DOF gyroscope to present an evocative simulation of a UAV, one in which certain practical issues are taken into account.

Funding a full UAV lab for teaching courses is a challenge for many professors, especially when you consider the maintenance involved in running such a lab and the safety precautions that would have to be adopted. All in all, we were extremely happy with the 3 DOF Gyroscope experiment, and we learned a great deal from it.

Quanser: Thank you, Professor Maggiore.


Dr. Manfredi Maggiore is an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Toronto, in Toronto, Canada.  He has been  associated with the University's Systems Control Group since September, 2000.

Quanser Helps a Client to Significantly Elevate UAV’s Performance

Recently a longtime Quanser client asked us to help them enhance the capabilities of the Hexakopter –XL, a third party unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) designed by Mikrokopter in Germany. Our Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) team received the Hexakopter –XL in kit form and quickly assembled it. While similar in some ways to our own Qball UAV, the Hexakopter, as its name implies, has six rotors, instead of the four on the Qball.

The client chose the 6-rotor Hexakopter because they needed a UAV that could carry heavier payloads than traditional four rotor aerial vehicles. This Hexakopter model is rated to carry a load of up to one kilogram. While many in the hobbyist market would adapt UAVs like this to perform aerial photography functions, our client’s mandate to us was to turn it into a heavy-lifting autonomous flying robot!

Quanser Systems and Control Engineer John Daly  performs a last-minute check
on the enhanced, third party, 6-rotor Hexakopter.

Once assembled, we put the Hexakopter through its paces to familiarize ourselves with its capabilities. Then we went to work enhancing it to suit the client’s needs. Our first task was to refine its controls. Thanks to QUARC real-time control prototyping software and Quanser’s data acquisition hardware, we outfitted the Hexakopter with a HiQ avionics board, just like the Qball. This allowed us to make use of much of the Qball’s control systems technology and fly the Hexakopter completely autonomously in an indoor environment.

We then proceeded to our second functional enhancement – enabling it to plot a destination. Off the shelf, the Hexakopter comes with the ability to stabilize its own attitude. This means it is able to ensure that it remains roughly level when it is flying, but it is not able to travel to a particular location. By using our own QUARC rapid prototyping control design software, we added this function to the Hexakopter. With this added destination-seeking capability, the Hexakopter will be turned into a fully autonomous flying vehicle that can travel from point A to point B to point C and so on.

A view of the Quanser HiQ avionics board that helped enhance the capabilities
of our client's Hexakopter.

Working with real-time control design available through QUARC software, and adapting aspects of our proprietary Qball hardware, Quanser control systems engineers played a key role in extending the functionality of the 6-rotor UAV. Our client’s Hexakopter now features advanced functionality and design that is able to satisfy their higher expectations. Who says every task has to begin with a blank sheet of paper! Check back with this blog in the near future when we tell you about our upcoming autonomous flight results.

- John Daly

John Daly is a Systems and Control Engineer at Quanser headquarters in Markham, Ontario, Canada

Partnership helped our engineers speed development

Partnerships are important factors in allowing us to develop leading edge teaching and research tools for engineering educators. Our partnership with MapleSoft is a prime example of this. A case in point occurred when we were developing the Qball-X4 unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), an experimental indoor platform for research in UAV control and design. Quanser engineers relied on MapleSim™ modeling and simulation software to explore the dynamics of the gyroscopic effects of the spinning parts of the QBall. They did so rigorously, and in a surprisingly short amount of time. Read more about how our engineers used MapleSim™ here.

Qball-X4 model developed using MapleSim.

Working closely with our partners and their products is something we do every day. National Instruments is another valued Quanser partner and their LabVIEW™ software is growing in popularity among the tools that our engineers use for controls development. We’ll reveal more about how LabVIEW is being used for controls development in upcoming issues of our monthly newsletter. Till then we tip our hat to MapleSoft, National Instruments and all our partners and look forward to working with them further to serve the needs of the engineering education community.

Formation Flying For Drones - How Far Has It Progressed?

Defence and Security organizations see unmanned air vehicles, or drones, as a great tool for a variety of surveillance applications. Technology currently being developed will allow drones to be linked into formations and survey vast amount of territory, assist in search and rescue missions and operate in conflict situations while achieving the same level of efficiency as manned aircraft. But before the drone formations can be deployed and operate with minimal human intervention, real-time control schemes must be developed and tested.

In their previous work, Defence Research and Development Canada (DRDC) scientists Dr. C.A. Rabbath and Dr. N. Levin focused on passivity-based formation control, developing the theory for controller design, and verifying it using numerical simulations. Now they have teamed with Dr. Jacob Apkarian, Quanser's founder and Chief Technological Officer, to implement the controller on an actual physical system and perform the experimental validation of the passivity-based formation control concept. At the recent 2011 AIAA Guidance, Navigation and Control Conference they presented a paper outlining the experimental results they achieved.

Using an indoor experimental test-bed consisting of Quanser's Qball-X4 unmanned quadrotor helicopters and Qbot ground vehicles, the researchers created a drone team consisting of followers and a leader. Key tests included autonomous drone formation coordination and mixed mobile robot - drone formation teaming. The results of the experiments indicate that a passivity-based formation control scheme produces cohesive formation motion and can be seamlessly integrated with a commercial off-the-shelf drone autopilot.

Click here to read the full paper titled "Experiments with a Passivity-based Formation Control System for Teams of Small Robotic Drones".

You can also visit Quanser's website to learn more about the Unmanned Vehicle Systems Lab, an indoor platform for teaching and research used in engineering departments worldwide.

Quanser Innovation on View at ASEE 2011

For the second straight year, Quanser had the honor of hosting the Innovation Hub - a showcase of the cutting-edge technology that's becoming a part of the ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition. This year at ASEE 2011 in Vancouver, BC, we demonstrated a prototype of our brand new unmanned ground vehicle platform called QGV - the Quanser Ground Vehicle. The QGV allows the study of advanced unmanned systems technologies by operating an easy-to-use platform that can be integrated into research as well as undergraduate curriculum.

In this video you can see how the QGV uses its on-board sensors to perform a basic search and retrieve mission:

The QGV in action at the Innovation Hub at ASEE 2011.

The QGV platform is one of the latest examples of Quanser technology that's designed to give engineering students a deeper and more immediate experience with engineering technology. By using hands-on platforms like the QGV, universities around the world can give their students a better, well-rounded engineering education - one that delivers richer understanding of engineering technologies and better prepares their students to enter the workforce, with the practical skills that today's employers require.

If you want to learn more about Quanser's unmanned platforms, visit our website or email us.

Quanser's Workshop at the AIS 2011 Conference

Unmanned Vehicle Systems (UVS) are growing in popularity across a broad spectrum of applications in such fields as search and rescue, the military, mining, and environmental surveillance. Likewise, the UVS research community is growing and there is an increasing demand for novel hardware and software platforms on which to develop and test UVS algorithms and controllers.

The delegates at this year's Conference on Autonomous and Intelligent Systems (AIS 2011) in Burnaby, BC, will have an excellent opportunity to learn about Quanser's latest technologies for unmanned vehicle systems teaching and research. Cameron Fulford, Engineering Manager of Quanser's Systems & Control Group, will present these technologies and show them in action via 3D visualization at a workshop entitled Tools for Teaching Autonomous Unmanned Vehicle Systems on Wednesday, June 22 at 4.30 pm.

As part of the workshop, Cameron will review how Louisiana Tech University, Concordia University and the University of Regina have integrated autonomous unmanned systems into their teaching and research programs using this state-of-the-art rapid controls prototyping framework and open-architecture data acquisition hardware designed for unmanned systems. The workshop will also cover the basics of using QUARC, Quanser's real-time control software, which allows novice and advanced users alike to rapidly develop and deploy powerful, extensible systems using simple to use, open-architecture Simulink toolsets. More advanced comcepts will be introduced with a specific focus on tools for autonomous unmanned vehicle systems.

Unmanned Vehicle Systems Research at Quanser

The unmanned systems research at Quanser has not stopped with the introduction of the Unmanned Vehicle Systems Lab, a research and teaching platform already adopted by many universities around the world. Recently, our engineering team experimented with a new unmanned ground vehicle nicknamed QGV (with Q as in Quanser). QGV is a mobile robot equipped with a five degree-of-freedom articulated arm. The mobility of the vehicle, plus the dexterity of the arm enable the robot to reach remote and/or hazardous environments and to interact with its surroundings. The applications of such platforms include warehouse automation, search and rescue missions and land surveying , as well as military uses such as bomb and mine defusal and even combat tasks.

Unmanned vehicles can operate in two distinct modes. In the first mode, teleoperation, the vehicle is controlled by a human operator via a communication link. The operator receives feedback from on-board sensors and sends the appropriate commands back to the vehicle. In the second mode, the vehicle acts as an autonomous robot and chooses commands based on the collected sensory information, using control algorithm running on the vehicle.

To demonstrate the abilities of the Quanser Unmanned Ground Vehicle, the robot is programmed to perform a search and object collection mission. Sensors on-board, including a camera and infra-red range sensors, are utilized to scan the environment for the target objects, while avoiding colliding with the perimeters as well as the obstacles. After finding the specific colored object, the vehicle approaches it and attempts to pick it up, using the articulated arm on the vehicle. Infra-red sensors are used to measure the distance between the vehicle and the target in order to place the arm in the right position. The target is then collected and the vehicle moves on to the next target of the specified color.

Watch a short demo here and visit Quanser's Innovation Hub at ASEE 2011 and ACC 2011 conferences to see it live.

Coming Soon: A New Robotic System That Gives Research and Training A Hand

In the not-too-distant future, robotics research and teaching will take a significant step forward thanks to some new R&D work currently underway in Quanser's robotics division. The research involves having a prototype of a future Quanser product - a small Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGV) - being tele-operated through a gesture-sensing glove linked to a magnetic tracking system.

This will open up new and better possibilities for robotic control research and teaching. Researchers, instructors and students can expect a deeper, more intuitive experience as well as a significantly shorter learning curve. Essentially, this new system will extend the capability of our UGVs for research and teaching by adding a new layer of gesture-based functionality.

Click below to view the tele-operation in action. As you will see, the kinematics and Jacobian of the arms are solved. The hand motion and gestures are calculated, mapped in a global frame, and transmitted wirelessly to the UGV rover. The arm is clutched with the operator's thumb and his index finer controls the gripper.

At the macro level, here's how the system and glove "fit" together: a magnetic motion tracking system and the gesture-sensing glove have been integrated into QUARC control software functionalities. This high resolution tracking system computes the translation and rotation motions, i.e., roll, pitch and yaw, in a pre-defined Cartesian frame. The data is used to compute a transformation matrix and conveys sufficient information about the operator's hand motion. The glove itself contains strain gauges that capture the operator's hand gestures.

Using QUARC communication blocks, the transformational matrix and the glove data are transmitted to the Gumstix processor onboard the small UGV. Infrared sensors and an RGB camera are some of the other devices onboard the UGV. The QUARC program receives the motion commands from the station PC.

The kinematics and Jacobian mapping motions of the robotic arm are computed and the commanded motions are translated into joint level PWM inputs for the arm. The PWM commands are applied to the servos using HiQ. (The latter is a data acquisiton board specially designed and manufactured by Quanser to be used onboard unmanned aerial vehicles and small unmanned ground vehicles.)

This project is the result of coordinated research and contributions from the Quanser Robotics Team. Amin Abdossalami, R&D Engineer, was responsible for the controls, kinematics and tele-operations. Cameron Fulford, Engineering Manager, Systems & Control, designed the hardware interface and made it a module inside QUARC. Don Gardner did the final assembly of the robot and shot the video demonstration.

The small UGV with glove tele-operation functionality will join the fleet of Quanser unmanned systems in the near future. We're very excited about its ability to offer researchers and students a better tool with which to work and learn.

Attracting Students with the Cutting-Edge Technology

Research interests of Dr. Youmin Zhang, Associate Professor at the Concordia University's Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering spin around avionics, guidance, navigation and flight control of unmanned aerial vehicles. And acquiring Quanser's Qball-X4, an unmanned aerial vehicle system with the OptiTrack camera system and a ground station PC, allowed Dr. Zhang to effectively continue his research in these areas. But Dr. Zhang is also passionate about teaching and sharing the latest research results with his students. With the support of his department, he introduced his undergraduate and graduate students to this cutting-edge technology.

In the fall of 2010, students enrolled in the Flight Control Systems Course were able to use the Qball-X4 for the first time. The Qball system was also used in a newly offered graduate course Fault Diagnosis and Fault Tolerant Control Systems. Concordia University thus became the first academic institution in the world to use such a cutting-edge physical UAV system to teach a flight control course. Dr. Zhang brought his latest research results to the classroom and gave students a chance to get hands-on experience with the unmanned aerial technology. Students could implement a control algorithm they designed on a real unmanned aerial vehicle and test it - something they did not have the chance to do before.

UVS Lab at Concordia University. Image courtesy of Dr. Youmin Zhang.

Using cutting-edge and industry-relevant technologies in the labs help professors to attract the brightest students and motivate them to continue in their engineering career. Quanser systems allow professors to perform their research, as well as to teach various control concepts and theories. Contact our academic solutions advisors at info@quanser.com to learn more.

Engineering Lab Attracts and Motivates Students

One of the items that I love about my work at Quanser is the opportunity to visit very exciting research and teaching labs at universities and colleges throughout the US and Canada. Each one has something interesting to show – an interesting engineering teaching lab, an advanced research project, or both. One recent trip took me to Colorado and I can’t help but share my amazement with the University of Colorado at Boulder’s Integrated Teaching & Learning Lab (ITL Lab). It’s a perfect example of hands-on, engaging learning - the kind Quanser has been preaching schools to adopt.

Derek Reamon, co-director of the ITL Lab, discussed with me the 34,000 square-foot facility dedicated to engineering. It felt like visiting a science center. Equipped with cutting-edge technology – Quanser’s SRV02-based rotary experiments among them - the lab serves students from the first year to sophomore level, and courses from design and build, invention and innovation to senior design projects. Using a highly effective system, each engineering department can order experiments for their courses from an online catalogue and book a time to work with the selected experiments. The ordered system can be easily wheeled to workstations – at the ITL Lab or anywhere on campus – and ITL Lab’s staff is available to set it up.

The ITL Lab is one of the most attractive features of the engineering school at the UC Boulder. Plus, the university saves space and financial resources, as the same equipment is not duplicated in the labs of each engineering department. The novel approach to learning gained the ITL Lab awards and recognition from the National Academy of Engineering as well as from industry leaders such as Boeing and Hewlett Packard.

My notion of the ITL Lab similarity to a science center is not just co-incidental: every year, thousands of K-12 students and teachers visit to participate in hands-on, ears-on and minds-on K-12 engineering camps, events and workshops. The staff of the ITL Lab also visits schools in the area to talk and demonstrate science and engineering and spark the interest of the future generation in these subjects.

Many other universities adopted the concept of the integrated multi-disciplinary labs serving several engineering departments. If you are looking for the inspiration, let us know – we can put you in touch with one close to you.

- Leor Grebler