Publications | Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems

24 results (View BibTeX file of all listed publications)

2016

Steering control of a water-running robot using an active tail

Kim, H., Jeong, K., Sitti, M., Seo, T.

In Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2016 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on, pages: 4945-4950, October 2016 (inproceedings)

Abstract

Many highly dynamic novel mobile robots have been developed being inspired by animals. In this study, we are inspired by a basilisk lizard's ability to run and steer on water surface for a hexapedal robot. The robot has an active tail with a circular plate, which the robot rotates to steer on water. We dynamically modeled the platform and conducted simulations and experiments on steering locomotion with a bang-bang controller. The robot can steer on water by rotating the tail, and the controlled steering locomotion is stable. The dynamic modelling approximates the robot's steering locomotion and the trends of the simulations and experiments are similar, although there are errors between the desired and actual angles. The robot's maneuverability on water can be improved through further research.

DOI [BibTex]

2016

pi Kim, H., Jeong, K., Sitti, M., Seo, T. Steering control of a water-running robot using an active tail In Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2016 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on, pages: 4945-4950, October 2016 (inproceedings)

DOI [BibTex]

Targeting of cell mockups using sperm-shaped microrobots in vitro

Khalil, I. S., Tabak, A. F., Hosney, A., Klingner, A., Shalaby, M., Abdel-Kader, R. M., Serry, M., Sitti, M.

In Biomedical Robotics and Biomechatronics (BioRob), 2016 6th IEEE International Conference on, pages: 495-501, July 2016 (inproceedings)

Abstract

Sperm-shaped microrobots are controlled under the influence of weak oscillating magnetic fields (milliTesla range) to selectively target cell mockups (i.e., gas bubbles with average diameter of 200 μm). The sperm-shaped microrobots are fabricated by electrospinning using a solution of polystyrene, dimethylformamide, and iron oxide nanoparticles. These nanoparticles are concentrated within the head of the microrobot, and hence enable directional control along external magnetic fields. The magnetic dipole moment of the microrobot is characterized (using the flip-time technique) to be 1.4×10-11 A.m2, at magnetic field of 28 mT. In addition, the morphology of the microrobot is characterized using Scanning Electron Microscopy images. The characterized parameters and morphology are used in the simulation of the locomotion mechanism of the microrobot to prove that its motion depends on breaking the time-reversal symmetry, rather than pulling with the magnetic field gradient. We experimentally demonstrate that the microrobot can controllably follow S-shaped, U-shaped, and square paths, and selectively target the cell mockups using image guidance and under the influence of the oscillating magnetic fields.

DOI [BibTex]

pi Khalil, I. S., Tabak, A. F., Hosney, A., Klingner, A., Shalaby, M., Abdel-Kader, R. M., Serry, M., Sitti, M. Targeting of cell mockups using sperm-shaped microrobots in vitro In Biomedical Robotics and Biomechatronics (BioRob), 2016 6th IEEE International Conference on, pages: 495-501, July 2016 (inproceedings)

DOI [BibTex]

Analysis of the magnetic torque on a tilted permanent magnet for drug delivery in capsule robots

Munoz, F., Alici, G., Zhou, H., Li, W., Sitti, M.

In Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics (AIM), 2016 IEEE International Conference on, pages: 1386-1391, July 2016 (inproceedings)

Abstract

In this paper, we present the analysis of the torque transmitted to a tilted permanent magnet that is to be embedded in a capsule robot to achieve targeted drug delivery. This analysis is carried out by using an analytical model and experimental results for a small cubic permanent magnet that is driven by an external magnetic system made of an array of arc-shaped permanent magnets (ASMs). Our experimental results, which are in agreement with the analytical results, show that the cubic permanent magnet can safely be actuated for inclinations lower than 75° without having to make positional adjustments in the external magnetic system. We have found that with further inclinations, the cubic permanent magnet to be embedded in a drug delivery mechanism may stall. When it stalls, the external magnetic system's position and orientation would have to be adjusted to actuate the cubic permanent magnet and the drug release mechanism. This analysis of the transmitted torque is helpful for the development of real-time control strategies for magnetically articulated devices.

DOI [BibTex]

pi Munoz, F., Alici, G., Zhou, H., Li, W., Sitti, M. Analysis of the magnetic torque on a tilted permanent magnet for drug delivery in capsule robots In Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics (AIM), 2016 IEEE International Conference on, pages: 1386-1391, July 2016 (inproceedings)

DOI [BibTex]

Patches, Planes and Probabilities: A Non-local Prior for Volumetric 3D Reconstruction

Ulusoy, A. O., Black, M. J., Geiger, A.

In IEEE Conf. on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), June 2016 (inproceedings)

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a non-local structured prior for volumetric multi-view 3D reconstruction. Towards this goal, we present a novel Markov random field model based on ray potentials in which assumptions about large 3D surface patches such as planarity or Manhattan world constraints can be efficiently encoded as probabilistic priors. We further derive an inference algorithm that reasons jointly about voxels, pixels and image segments, and estimates marginal distributions of appearance, occupancy, depth, normals and planarity. Key to tractable inference is a novel hybrid representation that spans both voxel and pixel space and that integrates non-local information from 2D image segmentations in a principled way. We compare our non-local prior to commonly employed local smoothness assumptions and a variety of state-of-the-art volumetric reconstruction baselines on challenging outdoor scenes with textureless and reflective surfaces. Our experiments indicate that regularizing over larger distances has the potential to resolve ambiguities where local regularizers fail.

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YouTube pdf poster suppmat Project Page [BibTex]

avg ps Ulusoy, A. O., Black, M. J., Geiger, A. Patches, Planes and Probabilities: A Non-local Prior for Volumetric 3D Reconstruction In IEEE Conf. on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), June 2016 (inproceedings)

YouTube pdf poster suppmat Project Page [BibTex]

Semantic Instance Annotation of Street Scenes by 3D to 2D Label Transfer

Xie, J., Kiefel, M., Sun, M., Geiger, A.

In IEEE Conf. on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), June 2016 (inproceedings)

Abstract

Semantic annotations are vital for training models for object recognition, semantic segmentation or scene understanding. Unfortunately, pixelwise annotation of images at very large scale is labor-intensive and only little labeled data is available, particularly at instance level and for street scenes. In this paper, we propose to tackle this problem by lifting the semantic instance labeling task from 2D into 3D. Given reconstructions from stereo or laser data, we annotate static 3D scene elements with rough bounding primitives and develop a probabilistic model which transfers this information into the image domain. We leverage our method to obtain 2D labels for a novel suburban video dataset which we have collected, resulting in 400k semantic and instance image annotations. A comparison of our method to state-of-the-art label transfer baselines reveals that 3D information enables more efficient annotation while at the same time resulting in improved accuracy and time-coherent labels.

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pdf suppmat Project Page Project Page [BibTex]

avg ps Xie, J., Kiefel, M., Sun, M., Geiger, A. Semantic Instance Annotation of Street Scenes by 3D to 2D Label Transfer In IEEE Conf. on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), June 2016 (inproceedings)

pdf suppmat Project Page Project Page [BibTex]

Sperm-shaped magnetic microrobots: Fabrication using electrospinning, modeling, and characterization

Khalil, I. S., Tabak, A. F., Hosney, A., Mohamed, A., Klingner, A., Ghoneima, M., Sitti, M.

In Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2016 IEEE International Conference on, pages: 1939-1944, May 2016 (inproceedings)

Abstract

We use electrospinning to fabricate sperm-shaped magnetic microrobots with a range of diameters from 50 μm to 500 μm. The variables of the electrospinning operation (voltage, concentration of the solution, dynamic viscosity, and distance between the syringe needle and collector) to achieve beading effect are determined. This beading effect allows us to fabricate microrobots with similar morphology to that of sperm cells. The bead and the ultra-fine fiber resemble the morphology of the head and tail of the sperm cell, respectively. We incorporate iron oxide nanoparticles to the head of the sperm-shaped microrobot to provide a magnetic dipole moment. This dipole enables directional control under the influence of external magnetic fields. We also apply weak (less than 2 mT) oscillating magnetic fields to exert a magnetic torque on the magnetic head, and generate planar flagellar waves and flagellated swim. The average speed of the sperm-shaped microrobot is calculated to be 0.5 body lengths per second and 1 body lengths per second at frequencies of 5 Hz and 10 Hz, respectively. We also develop a model of the microrobot using elastohydrodynamics approach and Timoshenko-Rayleigh beam theory, and find good agreement with the experimental results.

DOI [BibTex]

pi Khalil, I. S., Tabak, A. F., Hosney, A., Mohamed, A., Klingner, A., Ghoneima, M., Sitti, M. Sperm-shaped magnetic microrobots: Fabrication using electrospinning, modeling, and characterization In Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2016 IEEE International Conference on, pages: 1939-1944, May 2016 (inproceedings)

DOI [BibTex]