@incollection{BrooksMakarenkoKauppetal., author = {Brooks, Alex and Makarenko, Alexei and Kaupp, Tobias and Williams, Stefan and Durrant-Whyte, Hugh}, title = {Implementation of an indoor active sensor network}, series = {Experimental Robotics IX: The 9th International Symposium on Experimental Robotics ; Springer Tracts in Advanced Robotics (STAR,volume 21)}, booktitle = {Experimental Robotics IX: The 9th International Symposium on Experimental Robotics ; Springer Tracts in Advanced Robotics (STAR,volume 21)}, publisher = {Springer}, address = {Berlin, Heidelberg}, isbn = {978-3-540-28816-9}, doi = {10.1007/11552246_38}, pages = {397 -- 406}, abstract = {This paper describes an indoor Active Sensor Network, focussing on the implementation aspects of the system, including communication and the application framework. To make the system description more tangible we describe the latest in a series of indoor experiments implemented using ASN. The task is to detect and map motion of people (and robots) in an office space using a network of 12 stationary sensors. The network was operational for several days, with individual platform coming on and off line. On several occasions the network consisted of 39 components. The paper includes a section on the lessons learned during the project's design and development which may be applicable to other heterogeneous distributed systems with data-intensive algorithms.}, language = {en} } @incollection{BrooksKauppMakarenkoetal., author = {Brooks, Alex and Kaupp, Tobias and Makarenko, Alexei and Williams, Stefan and Oreb{\"a}ck, Anders}, title = {Orca: A component model and repository}, series = {Software engineering for experimental robotics ; Springer Tracts in Advanced Robotics (STAR,volume 30)}, booktitle = {Software engineering for experimental robotics ; Springer Tracts in Advanced Robotics (STAR,volume 30)}, editor = {Brugali, Davide}, publisher = {Springer}, address = {Berlin, Heidelberg}, isbn = {978-3-540-68949-2}, doi = {10.1007/978-3-540-68951-5_13}, pages = {231 -- 251}, abstract = {This Chapter describes Orca: an open-source project which applies Component-Based Software Engineering principles to robotics. It provides the means for defining and implementing interfaces such that components developed independently are likely to be inter-operable. In addition it provides a repository of free re-useable components. Orca attempts to be widely applicable by imposing minimal design constraints. This Chapter describes lessons learned while using Orca and steps taken to improve the framework based on those lessons. Improvements revolve around middleware issues and the problems encountered while scaling to larger distributed systems. Results are presented from systems that were implemented.}, language = {en} } @inproceedings{KauppMakarenkoKumaretal., author = {Kaupp, Tobias and Makarenko, Alexei and Kumar, Suresh and Upcroft, Ben and Williams, Stefan}, title = {Operators as information sources in sensor networks}, series = {2005 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems}, booktitle = {2005 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems}, publisher = {IEEE}, doi = {10.1109/IROS.2005.1545015}, pages = {936 -- 941}, abstract = {This paper presents an approach of integrating human operators into a sensor network formed by a heterogeneous team of unmanned air and ground vehicles. Several objectives of human-network interaction are identified. The main focus of this work is on human-to-network information flow, i.e. human operators are regarded as information sources. It is argued that operators should make raw observations which are converted into the sensor network's common representation by a probabilistic model. The concepts are discussed in the context of an outdoor sensor network under development. Human operators contribute geometric feature information in the form of range and bearing observations. Visual feature properties are specified via meaningful class labels. A sensor model, represented as a Bayesian network, translates label observations into the system's representation. The model is also used to classify features as observed by robotic sensors.}, language = {en} } @inproceedings{KauppMakarenko, author = {Kaupp, Tobias and Makarenko, Alexei}, title = {Measuring human-robot team effectiveness to determine an appropriate autonomy level}, series = {2008 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation}, booktitle = {2008 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation}, publisher = {IEEE}, doi = {10.1109/ROBOT.2008.4543524}, pages = {2146 -- 2151}, abstract = {This paper proposes a methodology to measure the effectiveness of a human-robot team as part of an adjustable autonomy system. The effectiveness measure is aimed at determining an appropriate autonomy level prior to the system's deployment. Two competing goals need to be traded off: maximising robot performance while minimising the amount of human input. The relative importance of the two goals depend on the mission priorities and constraints which are taken into account. The proposed methodology is applied to a human-robot communication system developed for task- oriented information exchange. The robot uses a decision- theoretic framework to act autonomously and to decide when to request input from human operators. The latter is achieved by computing the value-of-information an operator is able to provide which is compared to the cost of obtaining the information. For our system, the cost parameter represents the autonomy level to be determined. We demonstrate how an appropriate autonomy level can be found experimentally using a navigation task. In our experiment, the robot navigates through a set of simulated worlds with human input being generated by a software component. The results are used to find appropriate autonomy levels for three example missions and a subsequent user study.}, language = {en} } @inproceedings{MakarenkoKauppGrocholskyetal., author = {Makarenko, Alexei and Kaupp, Tobias and Grocholsky, Ben and Durrant-Whyte, Hugh}, title = {Human-robot interactions in active sensor networks}, series = {Proceedings 2003 IEEE International Symposium on Computational Intelligence in Robotics and Automation. Computational Intelligence in Robotics and Automation for the New Millennium (Cat. No. 03EX694)}, volume = {1}, booktitle = {Proceedings 2003 IEEE International Symposium on Computational Intelligence in Robotics and Automation. Computational Intelligence in Robotics and Automation for the New Millennium (Cat. No. 03EX694)}, doi = {10.1109/CIRA.2003.1222097}, pages = {247 -- 252}, abstract = {This paper considers the modes of interaction between one or several human operators and an active sensor network-a fully decentralized network of sensors some or all of which have actuators and are in that sense active. The primary goal of this study is to investigate the conditions under which the human involvement will not jeopardize scalability of the overall system. Two aspects of human-robot interaction are considered: the ways in which the global view of the system may be conveyed to the operators, and how the operators may influence the behavior of the system during the course of its operation. The results of analysis favor peer-to-peer environment-centric interactions between the operators and the network whereby the humans act as extended sensors and communication nodes of the network itself. Experiments on an indoor active sensor network are described.}, language = {en} } @inproceedings{KauppMakarenko, author = {Kaupp, Tobias and Makarenko, Alexei}, title = {Decision-theoretic human-robot communication}, series = {Proceedings of the 3rd ACM/IEEE international conference on Human robot interaction}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the 3rd ACM/IEEE international conference on Human robot interaction}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.1145/1349822.1349835}, pages = {89 -- 96}, abstract = {Humans and robots need to exchange information if the objective is to achieve a task cooperatively. Two questions are considered in this paper: what type of information to communicate, and how to cope with the limited resources of human operators. Decision-theoretic human-robot communication can provide answers to both questions: the type of information is determined by the underlying probabilistic representation, and value-of-information theory helps decide when it is appropriate to query operators for information. A robot navigation task is used to evaluate the system by comparing it to conventional teleoperation. The results of a user study show that the developed system is superior with respect to performance, operator workload, and usability.}, language = {en} } @inproceedings{BiggsMakarenkoBrooksetal., author = {Biggs, Geoffrey and Makarenko, Alexei and Brooks, Alex and Kaupp, Tobias and Moser, Michael}, title = {Gearbox: Truly reusable robot software (Poster)}, series = {IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, IROS 2008}, booktitle = {IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, IROS 2008}, language = {en} } @inproceedings{BrooksMakarenkoKauppetal., author = {Brooks, Alex and Makarenko, Alexei and Kaupp, Tobias and Durrant-Whyte, Hugh and Dellaert, Frank}, title = {Decentralised Data Fusion with Dynamic Topologies-A Graphical Model Approach}, series = {IFAC Proceedings Volumes}, volume = {42}, booktitle = {IFAC Proceedings Volumes}, number = {20}, pages = {222 -- 227}, language = {en} } @inproceedings{MakarenkoBrooksKaupp, author = {Makarenko, Alexei and Brooks, Alex and Kaupp, Tobias}, title = {On the benefits of making robotic software frameworks thin}, series = {International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems - Workshop for Measures and Procedures for the Evaluation of Robot Architectures and Middleware at IROS'07}, volume = {2}, booktitle = {International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems - Workshop for Measures and Procedures for the Evaluation of Robot Architectures and Middleware at IROS'07}, abstract = {Today's reusable robotics software is provided by several self-contained open-source projects with virtually no software reuse between them. Such partitioning leads to problems with software quantity, quality, ease of evaluation and, ultimately, to poor end user experience. By reviewing several of the projects we observe that all of them contain a mix of three types of software: 1) driver and algorithm implementations, 2) communication middleware, and 3) robotic software framework. We show that more than half of the combined code base contains software which could be highly reusable but only a small fraction of it actually is. We argue that formal separation of the three groups in the existing and future software projects would offer several potential advantages. Availability of framework-independent code would enable community-wide library-based software reuse in addition to the existing framework-wide component- based reuse. Another important benefit is related to evaluation procedures. The three software types are very different and should be evaluated separately, using different criteria. The first two types allow quantitative comparisons which are well documented in the literature. The last one is largely qualitative and, therefore, more subjective. Practically, we recommend today's projects to refactor and eject the driver and algorithm implementation code and focus on the task of software integration. Thin frameworks can be numerous, increasing the diversity of options available to robotics practitioners. Finally, we discuss distribution options for the refactored framework-independent code including the option of creating a Common Robotic Project.}, language = {en} } @inproceedings{KauppMakarenkoRamosetal., author = {Kaupp, Tobias and Makarenko, Alexei and Ramos, Fabio and Upcroft, Ben and Williams, Stefan and Durrant-Whyte, Hugh}, title = {Adaptive human sensor model in sensor networks}, series = {2005 7th International Conference on Information Fusion}, volume = {1}, booktitle = {2005 7th International Conference on Information Fusion}, publisher = {IEEE}, doi = {10.1109/ICIF.2005.1591929}, abstract = {This paper presents the design of a probabilistic model of human perception as an integral part of a decentralized data fusion system. The system consists of a team of human operators and robotic platforms, together forming a heterogeneous sensor network. Human operators are regarded as information sources submitting raw observations. The observations are converted into a probabilistic representation suitable for fusion with the system's belief. The conversion is performed by a human sensor model (HSM). The initial HSM is built offline based on an average of multiple human subjects conducting a calibration experiment. Since individual human operators may vary in their performance, an online adaptation of the HSM is required. The network estimate is used for adaptation because the true feature state is unknown at runtime. Results of an outdoor calibration experiment using range and bearing observations are presented. Simulations show the feasibility of efficient online adaptation.}, language = {en} }