Mechatronics and Machine Vision in Practice

Frank Nickols (auth.), John Billingsley, Robin Bradbeer (eds.)3540740260, 978-3-540-74026-1, 978-3-540-74027-8

From grading and preparing harvested vegetables to the tactile probing of a patient’s innermost recesses, mechatronics has become part of our way of life. The addition of senses and computing intelligence to blend with mechanical actuation gives rise to a breed of new machines with all the best attributes of a robot.

Here we find educational robots competing under water and dancing on land. Surgical robots drill precision holes in the skull while others direct radiation treatment or extract blood from an umbilical cord. Machine vision manages beer kegs and automated paint spraying, while controlling feral animals and the watering of cotton crops.

Although there is no shortage of theoretical and technical detail in these chapters, they have the common theme that they describe work that has been applied in practice. They are vital reading both for students of mechatronics and for engineers harnessing its power to create new products.

Table of contents :
Front Matter….Pages I-IX
Front Matter….Pages 1-1
Emergent Behaviour Real-time Programming of a Six-Legged Omni-Directional Mobile Robot Planning of Viennese Waltz Behaviour….Pages 3-15
The Hong Kong Underwater Robot Challenge….Pages 17-25
Dynamics and Control of a VTOL Quad-Thrust Aerial Robot….Pages 27-40
Project-oriented Low Cost Autonomous Underwater Vehicle with Servo-visual Control for Mechatronics Curricula….Pages 41-50
Coordination in Mechatronic Engineering Work….Pages 51-61
Front Matter….Pages 63-63
A Vision System for Depth Perception that Uses Inertial Sensing and Motion Parallax….Pages 65-75
Rate Shape Identification Based on Particle Swarm Optimization….Pages 77-85
Advanced 3D Imaging Technology for Autonomous Manufacturing Systems….Pages 87-97
Vision Based Person Tracking and Following in Unstructured Environments….Pages 99-109
Simple, Robust and Accurate Head-Pose Tracking Using a Single Camera….Pages 111-122
Front Matter….Pages 123-123
Machine Vision for Beer Keg Asset Management….Pages 125-137
Millimetre Wave Radar Visualisation System: Practical Approach to Transforming Mining Operations….Pages 139-165
An Underwater Camera and Instrumentation System for Monitoring the Undersea Environment….Pages 167-179
Visual Position Estimation for Automatic Landing of a Tail-Sitter Vertical Takeoff and Landing Unmanned Air Vehicle….Pages 181-191
Minutiae-based Fingerprint Alignment Using Phase Correlation….Pages 193-198
Front Matter….Pages 199-199
A Snake-like Robot for Inspection Tasks….Pages 201-208
Modelling Pneumatic Muscles as Hydraulic Muscles for Use as an Underwater Actuator….Pages 209-217
Automated Tactile Sensory Perception of Contact Using the Distributive Approach….Pages 219-228
Blind Search Inverse Kinematics for Controlling All Types of Serial-link Robot Arms….Pages 229-244
Front Matter….Pages 245-245
Distributive Tactile Sensing Applied to Discriminate Contact and Motion of a Flexible Digit in Invasive Clinical Environments….Pages 247-253
Front Matter….Pages 245-245
Intelligent Approach to Cordblood Collection….Pages 255-260
An Autonomous Surgical Robot Applied in Practice….Pages 261-266
Development of an Intelligent Physiotherapy System….Pages 267-273
Visual Prostheses for the Blind: A Framework for Information Presentation….Pages 275-287
Computer-based Method of Determining the Path of a HIFU Beam Through Tissue Layers from Medical Images to Improve Cancer Treatment….Pages 289-302
Front Matter….Pages 303-303
On-the-go Machine Vision Sensing of Cotton Plant Geometric Parameters: First Results….Pages 305-312
Robotics for Agricultural Systems….Pages 313-332
More Machine Vision Applications in the NCEA….Pages 333-343
Back Matter….Pages 345-348