Humanoid robots used for surveillance
ABSTRACT
Today is a world of new scientific invention. As
this paper includes the use of humanoid robots in
the field of security. There is a wide range of use of
robot like in restaurant, in spying; in medical .our
main objective is to bring this humanoid robot in
the field of surveillance. My paper will give
immense use to the army personnel those who are
survellancing in the remote areas of the India. Now
question arises why only humanoid robots used for
the surveillance purpose? Now for this answer take
the example of Mumbai terror attack the terrorist
have done the damage for 72 hrs.now the N.S.G
doesn’t know how many terrorist are there in hotel
Taj .for this reason the robots are designed in a such
a way to counter such terror activities . In my paper
I have presented some modification in the robot i.e.
to use the metal detector, infrared cameras for
sensing in the very dim light or no light
.temperature detector for detecting the human inside
the building. In my paper I have used 10 mega pixel
camera 360 rotation to get the clear cut view of the
inside building .so this will help the army personnel
to counter strike with the terrorist. There will be
fewer casualties to army as well as human being.
My motive for bringing this paper to you that there
is a great scope of enhancement in the field of
robotics for the security inside the country. The
robot will also carry insurgency operation in
country for countering terrorism. Human-Robot has
recently received considerable attention in the
academic community, in labs, in technology
companies, and through the media. Because of this
attention, it is desirable to present a survey of HR to
serve as a tutorial to people outside the field and to
promote discussion of a unified vision of HR within
the field. The goal of this review is to present a
unified treatment of HR-related problems, to
identify key themes, and discuss challenge
problems that are likely to shape the field in the
near future. Although the review follows a survey
structure, the goal of presenting a coherent "story"
of HR means that there are necessarily some well-
written, intriguing, and influential papers that are
not referenced. Instead of trying to survey every
paper, we describe the HR story from multiple
perspectives with an eye toward identifying themes
that cross applications. The survey attempts to
include papers that represent a fair cross section of
the universities, government efforts, industry labs,
and countries that contribute to HR, and a cross
section of the disciplines that contribute to the field,
such as human, factors, robotics, cognitive
psychology, and design. in the field of defense it is
widely used for searching and surveillance purpose
because it decreases the human casualties and other
hindrance for the army personnel.
INTRODUCTION
Before Da Vinci there was Al-Jazari – the
Engineering genius of the Islamic world in the
middle Ages. He designed and built a number of
automatas including the first programmable
humanoid robot. He is also invented the Crank-
shank. A 13th Century Programmable Robot team
from the USA history channel was on campus last
month in the Faculty of Engineering to talk about
some very old robots. They were there to film a
replica of the mechanism for al-Jazari’s drinking
boat; a boat full of musical automata first
constructed in 1206. Professor Noel Sharkey from
Computer Science built the core of the device
–”bogged it together from a pile of rubbish”, he
says – to demonstrate how it could have been
programmed. The previous claim for the world’s
oldest programmable automata is for a machine
built by Leonardo da Vinci in 1478.
Al-Jazari’s machine was originally a boat with four
automatic musicians that floated on a lake to
entertain guests at royal drinking parties. It had two
drummers, a harpist and a flautist. Professor
Sharkey’s machine has just the one drummer with a
drum, cymbals, bells and no body. The flautist is
replaced with an Irish penny whistle. He says he
wouldn’t risk taking this to any drinking parties
round here.
The heart of the mechanism is a rotating cylindrical
beam with pegs (cams) protruding from it. These
just bump into little levers that operate the
percussion. The point of the model is to
demonstrate that the drummer can be made to play
different rhythms and different drum patterns if the
pegs are moved around. In other words it is a
programmable drum machine.
“Whether or not al-Jazari dynamically programmed
his machines is an intriguing question”, he says, “it
is quite likely that he used this method, at the very
least, for fine tuning the rhythm of the musicians”.
Professor Sharkey is currently looking at a much
older mobile automaton device by Heron of
Alexandria, 1st Century AD, which he now suspects
may also have been programmable. [8]
HUMANOID ROBOT
Today in modern era of development of robot has
come in great extent. ROBOT means servant. The
word has been derived from word ROBOTA.
A humanoid robot is a robot with its
overall appearance, based on that of the human
body, allowing interaction with made-for-human
tools or environments. In general humanoid robots
have a torso with a head, two arms and two legs,
although some forms of humanoid robots may
model only part of the body, for example, from the
waist up. Some humanoid robots may also have a
'face', with 'eyes' and 'mouth'. Androids are
humanoid robots built to aesthetically resemble a
human. A humanoid robot is an autonomous robot
because it can adapt to changes in its environment
or itself and continue to reach its goal. This is the
main difference between humanoid and other kinds
of robots. In this context, some of the capacities of a
humanoid robot may include, among others:
• self-maintenance (like recharging itself)
• autonomous learning (learn or gain new
capabilities without outside assistance,
adjust strategies based on the surroundings
and adapt to new situations)
• avoiding harmful situations to people,
property, and itself
• safe interacting with human beings and the
environment
Like other mechanical robots, humanoid refer to the
following basic components too: Sensing, Actuating
and Planning and Control. Since they try to simulate
the human structure and behavior and they are
autonomous systems, most of the times humanoid
robots are more complex than other kinds of robots.
This complexity affects all robotic scales
(mechanical, spatial, time, power density, system
and computational complexity), but it is more
noticeable on power density and system complexity
scales. In the first place, most current humanoids
aren’t strong enough even to jump and this happens
because the power/weight ratio is not as good as in
the human body. The dynamically balancing Dexter
can jump, but poorly so far. On the other hand,
there are very good algorithms for the several areas
of humanoid construction, but it is very difficult to
merge all of them into one efficient system (the
system complexity is very high). Nowadays, these
are the main difficulties that humanoid robots
development has to deal with. Humanoid robots are
created to imitate some of the same physical and
mental tasks that humans undergo daily. Scientists
and specialists from many different fields including
engineering, cognitive science, and linguistics
combine their efforts to create a robot as human-like
as possible. Their creators' goal for the robot is that
one day it will be able to both understand human
intelligence, reason and act like humans. If
humanoids are able to do so, they could eventually
work in cohesion with humans to create a more
productive and higher quality future. Another
important benefit of developing androids is to
understand the human body's biological and mental
processes, from the seemingly simple act of walking
to the concepts of consciousness and spirituality.
Right now they are used for welding. In the future
they can greatly assist humans by welding and
mining for coal. There are currently two ways to
model a humanoid robot. The first one models the
robot like a set of rigid links, which are connected
with joints. This kind of structure is similar to the
one that can be found in industrial robots. Although
this approach is used for most of the humanoid
robots, a new one is emerging in some research
works that use the knowledge acquired on
biomechanics. In this one, the humanoid robot's
bottom line is a resemblance of the human skeleton.
Enon was created to be a personal assistant. It is
self-guiding and has limited speech recognition and
synthesis. It can also carry things.
Humanoid robots are used as a research tool in
several scientific areas.
Researchers need to understand the human body
structure and behavior (biomechanics) to build and
study humanoid robots. On the other side, the
attempt to simulate the human body leads to a better
understanding of it.
Human cognition is a field of study which is
focused on how humans learn from sensory
information in order to acquire perceptual and
motor skills. This knowledge is used to develop
computational models of human behavior and it has
been improving over time.
It has been suggested that very advanced robotics
will facilitate the enhancement of ordinary humans.
Although the initial aim of humanoid research was
to build better orthosis and prosthesis for human
beings, knowledge has been transferred between
both disciplines. A few examples are: powered leg
prosthesis for neuromuscular impaired, ankle-foot
orthosis, biological realistic leg prosthesis and
forearm prosthesis.
Besides the research, humanoid robots are being
developed to perform human tasks like personal
assistance, where they should be able to assist the
sick and elderly, and dirty or dangerous jobs.
Regular jobs like being a receptionist or a worker of
an automotive manufacturing line are also suitable
for humanoids. In essence, since they can use tools
and operate equipment and vehicles designed for
the human form, humanoids could theoretically
perform any task a human being can, so long as
they have the proper software. However, the
complexity of doing so is deceptively great.
They are becoming increasingly popular for
providing entertainment too. For example, Ursula, a
female robot, sings, dances, and speaks to her
audiences at Universal Studios. Several Disney
attractions employ the use of animatrons, robots that
look, move, and speak much like human beings, in
some of their theme park shows. These animatrons
look so realistic that it can be hard to decipher from
a distance whether or not they are actually human.
Although they have a realistic look, they have no
cognition or physical autonomy.[9]
Humanoid robots, especially with artificial
intelligence algorithms, could be useful for future
dangerous and/or distant space exploration
missions, without having the need to turn back
around again and return to Earth once the mission is
completed
THEORY SENSORS
A sensor is a device that measures some attribute of
the world. Being one of the three primitives of
robotics (besides planning and control), sensing
plays an important role in robotic paradigms.
Sensors can be classified according to the physical
process with which they work or according to the
type of measurement information that they give as
output. In this case, the second approach was used.
Proprioceptive Sensors
Proprioceptive sensors sense the position, the
orientation and the speed of the humanoid's body
and joints. In human beings inner ears are used to
maintain balance and orientation. Humanoid robots
use accelerometers to measure the acceleration,
from which velocity can be calculated by
integration; tilt sensors to measure inclination; force
sensors placed in robot's hands and feet to measure
contact force with environment; position sensors,
that indicate the actual position of the robot (from
which the velocity can be calculated by derivation)
or even speed sensors.
Exteroceptive Sensors
Exteroceptive sensors give the robot information
about the surrounding environment allowing the
robot to interact with the world. The exteroceptive
sensors are classified according to their
functionality.
Proximity sensors are used to measure the relative
distance (range) between the sensor and objects in
the environment. They perform the same task that
vision and tactile senses do in human beings. There
are other kinds of proximity measurements, like
laser ranging, the usage of stereo cameras, or the
projection of a colored line, grid or pattern of dots
to observe how the pattern is distorted by the
environment. To sense proximity, humanoid robots
can use sonars and infrared sensors, or tactile
sensors like bump sensors, whiskers (or feelers),
capacitive and piezoresistive sensors.
Arrays of tactels can be used to provide data on
what has been touched. The Shadow Hand uses an
array of 34 tactels arranged beneath its polyurethane
skin on each finger tip.[2] Tactile sensors also
provide information about forces and torques
transferred between the robot and other objects.
Vision refers to processing data from any modality
which uses the electromagnetic spectrum to produce
an image. In humanoid robots it is used to recognize
objects and determine their properties. Vision
sensors work most similarly to the eyes of human
beings. Most humanoid robots use CCD cameras as
vision sensors. Sound sensors allow humanoid
robots to hear speech and environmental sounds,
and perform as the ears of the human being.
Microphones are usually used for this task.[7]
ACTUATORS
Actuators are the motors responsible for motion in
the robot. Humanoid robots are constructed in such
a way that they mimic the human body, so they use
actuators that perform like muscles and joints,
though with a different structure. To achieve the
same effect as human motion, humanoid robots use
mainly rotary actuators. They can be electric,
pneumatic, hydraulic, piezoelectric or ultrasonic.
Hydraulic and electric actuators have a very rigid
behavior and can only be made to act in a compliant
manner through the use of relatively complex
feedback control strategies. While electric coreless
motor actuators are better suited for high speed and
low load applications, hydraulic ones operate well
at low speed and high load applications.
Piezoelectric actuators generate a small movement
with a high force capability when voltage is applied.
They can be used for ultra-precise positioning and
for generating and handling high forces or pressures
in static or dynamic situations.
Ultrasonic actuators are designed to produce
movements in a micrometer order at ultrasonic
frequencies (over 20 kHz). They are useful for
controlling vibration, positioning applications and
quick switching.[6]
Pneumatic actuators operate on the basis of gas
compressibility. As they are inflated, they expand
along the axis, and as they deflate, they contract. If
one end is fixed, the other will move in a linear
trajectory. These actuators are intended for low
speed and low/medium load applications. Between
pneumatic actuators there are: cylinders, bellows,
pneumatic engines, pneumatic stepper motors and
pneumatic artificial muscles.
PLANNING AND CONTROL
In planning and control the essential difference
between humanoids and other kinds of robots (like
industrial ones) is that the movement of the robot
has to be human-like, using legged locomotion,
especially biped gait. The ideal planning for
humanoid movements during normal walking
should result in minimum energy consumption, like
it happens in the human body. For this reason,
studies on dynamics and control of these kinds of
structures become more and more important.
To maintain dynamic balance during the walk, a
robot needs information about contact force and its
current and desired motion. The solution to this
problem relies on a major concept, the Zero
Moment Point (ZMP).
Another characteristic about humanoid robots is that
they move, gather information (using sensors) on
the "real world" and interact with it, they don’t stay
still like factory manipulators and other robots that
work in highly structured environments. Planning
and Control have to focus about self-collision
detection, path planning and obstacle avoidance to
allow humanoids to move in complex
environments.
There are features in the human body that can’t be
found in humanoids yet. They include structures
with variable flexibility, which provide safety (to
the robot itself and to the people), and redundancy
of movements, i.e., more degrees of freedom and
therefore wide task availability. Although these
characteristics are desirable to humanoid robots,
they will bring more complexity and new problems
to planning and control.
LEARNING AND UNDERSTANDING
BIMANUAL MOVEMENTS
Scientists at Dublin City University have researched
a subset of human movements called bimanual
movements. At different stages of this research they
have approached the problems from the novel
points of view. They believe that many machine
learning problems can accommodate neuroscience
and perceptual aspects of human movements for
learning and recognizing human behaviors.
Learning and recognizing human movements have
been given great attention of researchers around the
world in the recent years. A broad range of
applications from medicine to surveillance and
security can benefit from this technology. Learning
hand movements and recognizing gestures are
significant components of such technologies.
Bimanual movements in general form a large subset
of hand movements in which both hands move
simultaneously in order to do a task or imply a
meaning. Clapping, opening a bottle, typing on a
keyboard and drumming are some usual bimanual
movements. Sign Languages also use bimanual
movements to accommodate sets of gestures for
communication.
Due to the involvement of both hands,
understanding bimanual movements requires not
only computer vision and pattern recognition
techniques but also neuroscientific studies as a
background to perceive the movements.
A cognitive system for bimanual movements
learning and understanding entails three
fundamental components (see Figure 1): low-level
image processing to deal with sensory data,
intelligent hand tracking to recognize the left hand
from the right hand, and machine learning for
understanding the movements.
A bimanual movement recognition
system.
The recognition system.
Using a monochrome surveillance CCD camera the
hands are extracted based on the hand grey-levels
within the high contrast images. The second
component is hand tracking, which is a significant
problem due to the presence of hand-hand
occlusion. When one hand covers the other partially
or completely, they must be re-acquired correctly at
the end of the occlusion period. [5]
Studies in neuroscience show that the two hands are
temporally and spatially coordinated in bimanual
movements. In addition, the components of one
hand are temporally coordinated too. These
coordination’s form the basis of our algorithm to
track the hands in bimanual movements.
We have taken a general view of the tracking
problem to cover many challenging problems in this
area. For example, from a pure pattern recognition
point of view a movement can be understood
differently when it is seen from different camera
view directions. By defining a general set of
movement models independent of view angle we
have developed the tracking algorithm so that it
covers almost every camera view direction. It is
trained in just one direction and can be used in other
directions. This makes the algorithm independent of
the position of the visual system.
Using the temporal coordination’s both between
limbs (the two hands) and within a limb (a hand and
the fingers) the algorithm tracks the hands
independent of the hand shapes even in movements
where the shapes change. This is especially
important from the processing speed point of view.
Since processing and understanding the hands
shapes is usually a time consuming process, as a
component of an integrated real-time recognition
system, the tracking algorithm must be fast enough
to leave enough room for the other components.
The view-direction and hand-shape independence
naturally lends itself to extending the concept of
tracking towards mobile vision environments (eg
active vision in robotics). We have developed a
model to make the algorithm independent from the
actual position and velocities. Consequently, it can
be used in applications where the visual system (the
camera) moves or turns. For example, assuming that
the camera is installed on a humanoid robot, the
algorithm tracks the hands of a subject while the
robot walks.[3]
The third component of the system is the
recognizer. As a hierarchical cognitive system, it
analyses the hand shapes at the bottom level, learns
the individual partial movement of each hand at the
intermediate level, and combines them at the top
level to recognize the whole movement (see Figure
2). Statistical and spatio-temporal pattern
recognition methods such as Principal Component
Analysis and Hidden Markov Models form the
bottom and intermediate levels of the system. A
Bayesian inference network at the top level
perceives the movements as a combination of a set
of recognized partial hands movements.
The recognizer has been developed so that it learns
single movements and recognizes both single and
concatenated periodic bimanual movements. The
concatenated periodic bimanual movements are
used particularly in Virtual Reality simulators for
interacting with virtual environments. A virtual
spacecraft controlled by bimanual gestures is an
example. In all parts of this research we have
looked at the problems from the general point of
view and developed general solutions. The tracking
algorithm can be employed in a wide range of
applications including recognition, Virtual Reality,
and surveillance/security systems. The recognizer
can be used in recognizing both single and
concatenated periodic bimanual movements.
Our plan for the future is to make the recognition
component independent from the camera view
direction. This will result in a system that can
recognize the movements from the view directions
that has not been trained for. Results of the ongoing
research in this area will open significant doors
towards the general learning and understanding of
human movements.
COMPONENT ASSEMBLED IN ROBOT
WEB CAM: This web cam will be mounted on the
top of the robot and it is free to rotate in 360
degrees in any direction. Webcams typically include
a lens, an image sensor, and some support
electronics.
Various lenses are available, the most common in
consumer-grade webcams being a plastic lens that
can be screwed in and out to set the camera's focus.
Fixed focus lenses, which have no provision for
adjustment, are also available. As a camera system's
depth of field is greater for small imager formats
and is greater for lenses with a large f-number
(small aperture), the systems used in webcams have
sufficiently large depth of field that the use of a
fixed focus lens does not impact image sharpness
much. Image sensors can be CMOS or CCD, the
former being dominant for low-cost cameras, but
CCD cameras do not necessarily outperform
CMOS-based cameras in the low cost price range.
Most consumer webcams are capable of providing
VGA-resolution video at a frame rate of 30 frames
per second. Many newer devices can produce video
in multi-megapixel resolutions, and a few can run at
high frame rates such as the PlayStation Eye, which
can produce 320×240 video at 120 frames per
second.[4]
2) METAL DETECTOR: metal detector is mounted
on the lower part of robot so that it can detect all the
guns and other unwanted metals used by the
terrorist in the process of hostages etc.
CONCLUSION
Now today is the day of safety. Every country wants
to be safe in all modes of terror attack inside or
outside the country. My aim for presenting this
paper is to tell you about how good these humanoid
robots can carry their task without any harm to the
human. It decreases the human effort and carries
their job in very best manner. I would like to take
notice of terror attack that has occurred in
Mumbai .the N.S.G commandos has suffered great
set back in their operation as all the operation is
performed manually by the commandoes.
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