Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Michigan – Dearborn
In the past couple of years, I have been posting news and research updates on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/srawashdeh/recent-activity/all/
I no longer use the blog side of my website to post updates. The remaining content on this website is relatively up-to-date (publications, biography, published software projects, etc).
We are grateful for the support from the National Science Foundation to acquire this Humanoid Robot to support research and teaching at the University of Michigan – Dearborn. The proposal writing, design, and development involved numerous faculty colleagues and students at UM-Dearborn. We are also grateful for the excellent engineers and designers at Sundberg-Ferar who designed the torso and head and worked on general integration of the robot components.
Over the summer, the robot was completed and we have started developing the software framework to support projects. We are using the Robot Operating System (ROS), and developing the software nodes to control the various components. Also, we are developing a simulation model of the robot to be able to try out algorithms in simulation before deploying them onto the actual (expensive) robot. Below are screenshots and a video of our early efforts developing a perception algorithm to detect objects on a work surface and the robot arm path planning to avoid collisions and move the hands to the object.
A quick note: the robot moves very slowly in the video for safety reasons.
We have some exciting results. Below is a brief demonstration of our recent success with visual odometry. Using stereo cameras, the camera motion and pose are tracked over time, along with depth sensing (stereo disparity map) and point cloud generation.
Publications, currently in preparation and expected this summer, will discuss our approach.
I am happy to share that we had a good run at the Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition this weekend which took place at the Oakland University campus.
The vehicle uses a LIDAR system for obstacle avoidance, GPS for Navigation and real-time image processing for lane detection.
Of over 30 teams participating, the Dearborn team came in third overall, with 3rd fastest speed on the basic navigation course, and tying on the advanced navigation course in terms of performance but at a longer time, earning 2nd place. Below are some photos and a short video of what the advanced course is like. Prizes total $3k and a trophy.
The team of primarily undergraduate students from the Intelligent Systems Club did very well and deserve thanks and congratulations. The team inclued Michael Bowyer, Erik Aitken, Saad Pandit, Cristian Adam, Matthew Abraham, Siddharth Mahimkar, Emmanuel Obi, Brendan Ferracciolo, Angelo Bertani, and others from the club.
We are excited to be presenting our research on Obstacle Avoidance for Drones at the IEEE SEM 2015 Fall Conference, 5-6PM, Nov 17. The talk is titled
“Obstacle Detect, Sense, and Avoid for Unmanned Aerial Systems”
Abstract:
Drones, or Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS), are expected to be adopted for a wide range of commercial applications and become an aspect of everyday life. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regulates airspace access of unmanned systems and has put forward a road map for UAS adoption for commercial use. It is expected that vehicles flying outside line-of-sight be capable of sensing and avoiding other aircraft and obstacles. Whether the UAS is autonomous or remotely piloted, it is expected that drones become capable of safe flight without depending on communication links which are susceptible. Therefore, sensor technologies and real-time processing and control approaches are required on board unmanned aircraft to provide situational awareness without depending on remote operation or inter-aircraft communication. This talk overviews some research activities at the University of Michigan Dearborn to address this challenges. We are developing a stereo-vision system for obstacle detection on aerial vehicles. Using stereo video (3D video), a depth map can be generated and used to detect approaching objects that need to be avoided. We are also developing a visual navigation approach to enable drones to navigate in GPS denied environments, such as between buildings or indoors. Also, a virtual “bumper” system is being developed to over-ride commands being given by an in-experienced pilot in the case of an impending crash. Such a system could help prevent incidences such as the video drone crash at the last US Open Tennis Championships.
Conference Time and Venue:
Tuesday Evening, November 17, 2015, From 4:00 PM to 9:00 PM
More information on conference agenda can be found at the main page, and in this flyer.
We are developing wearable motion capture devices using inertial measurement units (IMUs). Our focus is on shoulder health, specifically monitoring stresses and providing feedback to the user in order to help prevent injury. Another application is in physical therapy guidance. The following two videos illustrate how the device can capture the arm’s orientation as a function of time.
The subject is performing four repetitions of an external rotation with the arm elevated to 90 degrees. The second video shows the three-axis accelerometer and gyroscope measurements, along with a replay of the arm’s orientation (shown as the device’s three orthogonal axes).
A Senior Design project with our lab developing a sensor package for aerial river monitoring has recently concluded. The team, consisted of Ali Berjaoui, Mohamad Farhat, Mustapha Hammoud, Mohamad Hoteit. The following video highlights a test flight of their project (no river for now).
A Senior Design project with our lab developing a sensor package for aerial river monitoring has recently concluded. The team, consisted of Ali Berjaoui, Mohamad Farhat, Mustapha Hammoud, Mohamad Hoteit. The following video highlights a test flight of their project (no river for now).
I will be presenting at the CubeSat Workshop on August 8th, part of the annual conference on Small Satellites on the campus of Utah State University, in Logan, UT. The presentation is about our design of a miniature star camera for small satellites and CubeSats in particular. The goal is to build a camera and develop image processing algorithms to implement a star imager at the scale of modern smart-phone cameras, which will enable the use of an array of cameras on a CubeSat.
The Workshop and Conference schedules can be found here.
The University of Michigan Dearborn team placed in 3rd place at the Autonomous Aerial Vehicle Competition (AAVC) held on April 28, 2015, in Dayton, OH. The competition challenges university teams to develop drones that can fly and navigate indoors to locate and image a target. The University of Michigan Dearborn team placed in 3rd place and won $2,600, out of eight entries. The vehicle was designed by engineering undergraduate students consisting of members of the Intelligent Systems Club and professor Samir Rawashdeh’s research group. The students built and tested the vehicle (a quad-copter), developed algorithms for autonomous navigation, and developed image processing algorithms to detect the target.
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