Contributions to Autonomous Mobile Systems

1 Introduction.- 2 Modeling and Control of Robotic Manipulators.- 2.1 Modeling of robotic manipulators.- 2.2 Control of robotic manipulators in joint space.- 2.3 Control of robotic manipulators in cartesian space.- 2.4 Force control of robotic manipulators.- 2.5 References.- 3 Estimation of Structure and Relative Motion from Stereo Image Sequences.- 3.1 Introduction.- 3.2 Problem statement.- 3.3 Kinematics of relative point-movements.- 3.4 Representation of relative pose and object-structure.- 3.5 Processing stereo images.- 3.6 Estimation process.- 3.7 Results.- 3.8 References.- Appendix A: Proof of elementary theorems.- Appendix B: Representation of rotations by unit quaternions.- Appendix C: Algorithm for stereo matching by 3D-line segment chaining.- 4 Dynamic 3D Vision: The Visually Controlled Robot.- 4.1 Introduction.- 4.2 Statement of the problem.- 4.3 Theory of relative pose control.- 4.4 Results.- 4.5 References.- 5 Endeffector Force Approximation.- 5.1 Introduction.- 5.2 Observers for endeffector forces.- 5.3 Nonlinear state space observation.- 5.4 Approximative endeffector force observation.- 5.5 Conclusions.- 5.6 References.- 6 Ultrasonic Modeling.- 6.1 Foundations of industrial airborne ultrasonic modeling.- 6.2 Airborne ultrasonic phased-arrays.- 6.3 Ultrasonic environment modeling for mobile robots.- 6.3.1 Modeling using an phased-array-sensor.- 6.3.2 Modeling by different time of flight measurements.- 6.4 Experimental results.- 6.4.1 Results with the phased-array.- 6.4.2 Results with the time of flight measurements.- 6.5 References.- 7 Lane Recognition and Following.- 7.1 Introduction.- 7.2 Indirect edge detection by texture analysis.- 7.2.1 Feature extraction.- 7.2.2 Classification.- 7.2.3 Results.- 7.3 Direct edge detection, the PDAF.- 7.3.1 The PDAF-algorithm.- 7.3.2 Adaption to the practical situation.- 7.3.3 Results.- 7.3.4 Extension of the approach.- 7.4 References.- 8 Concept of a Multi-Transputer-System and its Application to Parallel Processing.- 8.1 Introduction.- 8.2 Requirements of an AMS's appropriate computer architecture.- 8.3 Key issues of parallel processing and architectural models.- 8.3.1 The level of concurrency.- 8.3.2 Partitioning.- 8.3.3 Scheduling.- 8.3.4 Synchronization and communication.- 8.3.5 Memory access and organization.- 8.3.6 Configuration and power of processing elements.- 8.3.7 Review of a few architectural concepts.- 8.4 The Transputer as a building block for a multiprocessor-system.- 8.5 Applications and programming hints.- 8.5.1 Speedup investigation concerning an implemented image processing algorithm.- 8.5.2 PDAF implementation.- 8.5.3 Obstacle detection by using image sequences.- 8.6 References.