Reconfigurable Autonomy
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Southampton
Department Name: Faculty of Engineering & the Environment
Abstract
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Organisations
- University of Southampton (Lead Research Organisation)
- Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Co-funder)
- Sellafield (United Kingdom) (Co-funder)
- Schlumberger (United Kingdom) (Co-funder)
- United Kingdom Space Agency (Co-funder)
- Network Rail (Co-funder)
- BAE Systems (United Kingdom) (Co-funder)
- National Nuclear Laboratory (Collaboration)
People |
ORCID iD |
| Sandor Veres (Principal Investigator) |
Publications
Veres, SM
(2012)
Commercial software tools for intelligent autonomous systems
in CogPrints
Veres, S M
(2013)
An open source reconfigurable rational agent architecture
Tantrairatn, S
(2015)
A rational agent framework for adaptive flight control of UAVs
Qu H
(2016)
Verification of logical consistency in robotic reasoning
in Robotics and Autonomous Systems
Lincoln N
(2013)
Autonomous Asteroid Exploration by Rational Agents
in IEEE Computational Intelligence Magazine
Lincoln N
(2012)
Natural Language Programming of Complex Robotic BDI Agents
in Journal of Intelligent & Robotic Systems
Izzo Paolo
(2016)
A stochastically verifiable autonomous control architecture with reasoning
in arXiv e-prints
Dennis L
(2014)
Reconfigurable Autonomy
in KI - Künstliche Intelligenz
| Description | By the end of May 2016 the following has been achieved: 1. Architecture solutions for reconfigurable rational agent architecture has been defined under the ROS/C++ system using a specific BDI cognitive agent architecture similar to but modified relative to the Jason agent programming language. 2. Architecture has been defined under a sEnglish based algorithmic description of agent programming for embedded applications and is to be made open source and publicly available . By 2018 the applicability of the reasoning methodology has been demonstrated to Sellafield Ltd in terms of a robot arm setup at their Workington Inactive Lab: autonomous waste-object selection, decision making what to do with it, handling and packing it without human intervention. In 2018 new results have been developed on the integration of the theory of degradation, adaptation and self-reconfiguration of autonomous robots, currently being published in journals. |
| Exploitation Route | Carried out work with industrial collaborators on demonstration scenarios: 1. NNL/Sellafield : autonomous robot arms reconfiguration for nuclear decommissioning operations with radioactive waste. 2. Mapping out an area with 3D geometric and functional models using a fleet of cooperative quadrotor vehicles . 3. Methods to be applied in the new EPSRC RAIN Hub until March 2021. |
| Sectors | Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software),Environment,Manufacturing, including Industrial Biotechology,Retail,Transport |
| URL | https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/acse/research/groups/asrg/acl/project2 |
| Description | Academic impact: ROS based self reconfiguring algorithmic system has been published (IFAC World Congress 2014, leading to journal publications). In 2018 we published paper in the IEEE Intelligent System Journal on the application of our techniques developed in this project to autonomous nuclear robotics. Since the close of the project we continued working towards a joint theory of degradation, adaptation and self-reconfiguration of autonomous robots.This research is also a significant input and starting point of several research activities in the new EPSRC RAIN Hub started in October 2017, part of which is Sheffield as funded partner. |
| Sector | Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software),Energy |
| Impact Types | Cultural,Societal |
| Description | EPSRC: Robotics Capital Funding |
| Amount | £1,000,000 (GBP) |
| Organisation | Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 03/2014 |
| End | 04/2017 |
| Description | NNL: autonomous robots for the nuclear industry |
| Organisation | National Nuclear Laboratory |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Public |
| PI Contribution | Under our Reconfigurable Autonomy EPSRC project we have been working on robustly operating autonomous robot arms for sorting and segregating radioactive materials. The methods have been demonstrated in the laboratories of the Department of ACSE at Sheffield. The challenge is to make these arms to need little servicing, which is expensive in an active environment. The methods we developed will enable long term operation of the robots to self-recofigure and maintain themselves thereby providing much needed continuous productivity. The methods we developed are of key importance to the future profitability and ultimately the survival of the UK's nuclear decommissioning industry. |
| Collaborator Contribution | They enables us to understand the problems of the industry. They provided us case study for our research in the form of the sort and segregate problem of nuclear materials. Currently there is £30k on offer from Sellafield/NNL to transfer our methods onto concrete industrial arms at Workington. |
| Impact | We have produced methodology demonstrators with the help of this collaboration, which we recorded in videos. We have written as series of academic papers on our robot self-reconfiguration methodologies, where we refer to the applicability and importance of our methods for the nuclear industry. |
| Start Year | 2015 |