SHI, CHENJIE (2021) Theory of Self-maintaining Robots. MPhil thesis, University of Sheffield.
Abstract
This thesis proposes a theory for robotic systems that can be fully self-maintaining. The presented design principles focus on functional survival of the robots over long periods of time without human maintenance. Self-maintaining semi-autonomous mobile robots are in great demand in nuclear disposal sites from where their removal for maintenance is undesirable due to their radioactive contamination. Similar are requirements for robots in various defence tasks or space missions. For optimal design, modular solutions are balanced against capabilities to replace smaller components in a robot by itself or by help from another robot. Modules are proposed for the basic platform, which enable self-maintenance within a team of robots helping each other. The primary method of self-maintenance is replacement of malfunctioning modules or components by the robots themselves. Replacement necessitates a robot team’s ability to diagnose and replace malfunctioning modules as needed. Due to their design, these robots still remain manually re-configurable if opportunity arises for human intervention. A system reliability model is developed to describe the new theory. Depending on the system reliability model, the redundancy allocation problem is presented and solved by a multi objective algorithm. Finally, the thesis introduces the self-maintaining process and transfers it to a multi robot task allocation problem with a solution by genetic algorithm.
Metadata
Supervisors: | Veres, Sandor |
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Keywords: | Robot Intelligence, Self-maintenance, Reliability theory, Redundancy allocation problem, Multi robots task allocation |
Awarding institution: | University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Engineering (Sheffield) > Automatic Control and Systems Engineering (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Mr CHENJIE SHI |
Date Deposited: | 13 Dec 2021 09:27 |
Last Modified: | 13 Dec 2021 09:27 |
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