| Most of the robots produced to date have been industrial robots. These robots have taken the place of human laborers in hazardous, boring, or otherwise dangerous manufacturing tasks. The number of robots being used in industrial production has grown significantly. In contrast, the use of personal robots, often called service robots, is still limited. Service robots perform tasks for people rather than serving an industrial manufacturer. Of late, the idea of service robotics has become a more interesting topic for both robotics researchers and the general public. The objective of this dissertation is to explore various concepts and applications in service robotics. This research is separated into three parts:; Binary robotic manipulators. Continuous actuators, such as motors, actuate most robotic manipulators. These actuators require complex and expensive control and sensor systems. In this study, Discretely Actuated Hyper-Redundant (DAHR) manipulators are shown to be viable candidates for use in many applications. This study consists of describing the DAHR concept, formulating and numerically implementing a new inverse kinematics algorithm for this type of robotic manipulator using only the “mean” of the workspace density function; constructing a prototype, and performing experiments with the prototype.; Robotic library systems. The robotic library system described here is a part of a unique robotics project called “Comprehensive Access to Printed Materials” (CAPM) at the Johns Hopkins University. The goal of the CAPM project is to design and build a prototype robotic library system for an off-site shelving facility of the JHU. The design, descriptions, and experimental results of a prototype mobile manipulator are reported.; Self-replicating robots. The concept of a self-replicating machine was introduced more than fifty years ago by John yon Neumann. However, prior to the work performed in this dissertation, a fully autonomous self-replicating mechanical system, such as a self-replicating robot, had yet to be implemented. In this study, a set of underlying principles of self-replicating robotic systems is introduced. A series of prototype designs and their experimental results is described in stages beginning with a remote-controlled replicating robotic system, a semi-autonomous replicating robotic system, and finally a fully autonomous self-replicating system. |
