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Ivana Palunko

Publications and source records attributed to Ivana Palunko.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

Entanglement Definitions for Tethered Robots: Exploration and Analysis

In this article we consider the problem of tether entanglement for tethered mobile robots. One of the main risks of using a tethered connection between a mobile robot and an anchor point is that the tether may get entangled with the obstacles present in the environment or with itself. To avoid these situations, a non-entanglement constraint can be considered in the motion planning problem for tethered robots. This constraint is typically expressed as a set of specific tether configurations that must be avoided. However, the literature lacks a generally accepted definition of entanglement, with existing definitions being limited and partial in the sense that they only focus on specific instances of entanglement. In practice, this means that the existing definitions do not effectively cover all instances of tether entanglement. Our goal in this article is to bridge this gap and to provide new definitions of entanglement, which, together with the existing ones, can be effectively used to qualify the entanglement state of a tethered robot in diverse situations. The new definitions find application in motion planning for tethered robots, where they can be used to obtain more safe and robust entanglement-free trajectories.

cs.RO

Recovering the 3D UUV Position using UAV Imagery in Shallow-Water Environments

In this paper we propose a novel approach aimed at recovering the 3D position of an UUV from UAV imagery in shallow-water environments. Through combination of UAV and UUV measurements, we show that our method can be utilized as an accurate and cost-effective alternative when compared to acoustic sensing methods, typically required to obtain ground truth information in underwater localization problems. Furthermore, our approach allows for a seamless conversion to geo-referenced coordinates which can be utilized for navigation purposes. To validate our method, we present the results with data collected through a simulation environment and field experiments, demonstrating the ability to successfully recover the UUV position with sub-meter accuracy.

cs.RO

Two-Channel Extended Kalman Filtering with Intermittent Measurements

We consider two nonlinear state estimation problems in a setting where an extended Kalman filter receives measurements from two sets of sensors via two channels (2C). In the stochastic-2C problem, the channels drop measurements stochastically, whereas in 2C scheduling, the estimator chooses when to read each channel. In the first problem, we generalize linear-case 2C analysis to obtain -- for a given pair of channel arrival rates -- boundedness conditions for the trace of the error covariance, as well as a worst-case upper bound. For scheduling, an optimization problem is solved to find arrival rates that balance low channel usage with low trace bounds, and channels are read deterministically with the expected periods corresponding to these arrival rates. We validate both solutions in simulations for linear and nonlinear dynamics; as well as in a real experiment with an underwater robot whose position is being intermittently found in a UAV camera image.

eess.SY