Description
In this talk I will introduce the robotics research we have been conducting to develop cleaning facilities for train carriages. These are the outcomes of two research projects funded by Rail Safety and Standards Board (RSS) in the last few years.The first project aimed at developing a prototype of cab front cleaning robot in order to prove that the cab front cleaning can be automated by designing, developing and controlling a custom made robotic system.
-Conventional and off-the-shelf robot manipulators would not fit to the purpose; therefore we designed and developed a custom robotic manipulator specifically for cleaning the cab fronts.
-Vision based control of the manipulator, would not be feasible due to the imprecision of position information with vision and lack of 3D models in practice. Therefore, we developed a force/torque sensing based control algorithm that imitates the feeling and action of humans when they clean the cab front with a brush.
-We proved the working of the principles of concept by demonstrating with a 1/8 scale robotic system.
The second project aimed at developing a waste collection robot under and around the seats in train carriages. The challenges in this project were:
-How to detect the waste items?
-How to manage autonomous collection from a confined space, typically from beneath the seats?
To address these:
-We developed a Deep Learning Convolutional Neural Network and trained this network with various and typical waste items found in train carriages.
-We designed a collection mechanism, namely with rotating brushes, that can fit onto a wheeled mobile robot and allows reaching at confined places under the seats.
-We integrated those onto a wheeled robotic system and demonstrated with laboratory experiments using an actual train seat that the robot was capable of autonomously detecting waste items and collecting them under the seat.
| Period | 14 Nov 2024 |
|---|---|
| Event title | Rolling Stock Maintenance & Depot Innovation Europe 2024 |
| Event type | Conference |
| Location | London, United KingdomShow on map |