Date of Award

6-5-1998

Document Type

Thesis (Undergraduate)

Department or Program

Department of Computer Science

First Advisor

Daniela Rus

Abstract

Our goal is to manipulate and guide an object across an unknown environment toward a goal in a known location in space. Our tools include a system of manipulation robots, which are "blind" and one mobile scout robot who relies on a series of sonar sensors for information about the environment. Previous solutions to this problem have taken a simultaneous guiding and manipulating approach, moving the whole system under the scout's guidance. My approach, however, presents a separate scouting algorithm that can return a series of coordinates through which the manipulation system can safely pass to reach the goal in a static environment. This new approach produces more optimal paths to the goal, as well as evading the concern of what actions to take should the entire system reach a dead end. In this paper I will present both the algorithm and the experimental results I obtained when I built the scouting system.

Comments

Originally posted in the Dartmouth College Computer Science Technical Report Series, number PCS-TR98-336.

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