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Areas of Interest
Cellula has been working in the area of
ground-engaging robots, both terrestrial and subsea, since the end of
2000. Most of this work has been in
the area rock-cutting, and the rock strengths have varied from 20MPa to 230
MPa.
Cellula has direct experience in using various types
of cutters, e.g. pick-drum cutters, disc cutters, multi-disc cutters, and
roller-button cutters. This
experience includes extensive instrumented performance testing of these
various types of cutters.
Robots are ideal as delivery platforms for mechanical
cutting systems. The fact that they
are unmanned removes the operators from the vicinity of the rock face. The lack of a local operator allows the
machine to be custom-designed to fit into tight slots or trenches. Furthermore, the onboard controllers can
control the mechanical impedance of the cutter against the ground, thereby
improving cutter life and cutter efficiency.
Recently, Cellula has started to work in the area of
geophysical coring in subsea environments.
Autonomy is a
measure of supervision. Different
work tasks require different levels of supervision based on their degrees
of freedom, their bandwidth, and their uncertainty.
A
paper-weight is an autonomous robot with zero degrees of freedom and zero
bandwidth. How well it performs its
task is a function of the uncertainty in the definition of the task. E.g. if the paper-weight is subjected to
unpredicted forces, e.g. bumping, high winds, or tipping, it won’t do
its job properly.
Hierarchical
controllers are a general solution to the design of autonomous robotic
systems. The work task can usually
be broken down into a hierarchy, and the various levels in the hierarchy
can be addressed by nested controllers.
Cellula has
extensive experience in the design, development, and testing of autonomous
robot control systems, and it uses its own established approaches to solve
these problems.
View
Cellula's collection of white papers.
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