Theses and Dissertations
This collection includes both ASU Theses and Dissertations, submitted by graduate students, and the Barrett, Honors College theses submitted by undergraduate students.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 24
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- All Subjects: robotics
- Creators: Yang, Yezhou
Description
Traditional Reinforcement Learning (RL) assumes to learn policies with respect to reward available from the environment but sometimes learning in a complex domain requires wisdom which comes from a wide range of experience. In behavior based robotics, it is observed that a complex behavior can be described by a combination of simpler behaviors. It is tempting to apply similar idea such that simpler behaviors can be combined in a meaningful way to tailor the complex combination. Such an approach would enable faster learning and modular design of behaviors. Complex behaviors can be combined with other behaviors to create even more advanced behaviors resulting in a rich set of possibilities. Similar to RL, combined behavior can keep evolving by interacting with the environment. The requirement of this method is to specify a reasonable set of simple behaviors. In this research, I present an algorithm that aims at combining behavior such that the resulting behavior has characteristics of each individual behavior. This approach has been inspired by behavior based robotics, such as the subsumption architecture and motor schema-based design. The combination algorithm outputs n weights to combine behaviors linearly. The weights are state dependent and change dynamically at every step in an episode. This idea is tested on discrete and continuous environments like OpenAI’s “Lunar Lander” and “Biped Walker”. Results are compared with related domains like Multi-objective RL, Hierarchical RL, Transfer learning, and basic RL. It is observed that the combination of behaviors is a novel way of learning which helps the agent achieve required characteristics. A combination is learned for a given state and so the agent is able to learn faster in an efficient manner compared to other similar approaches. Agent beautifully demonstrates characteristics of multiple behaviors which helps the agent to learn and adapt to the environment. Future directions are also suggested as possible extensions to this research.
ContributorsVora, Kevin Jatin (Author) / Zhang, Yu (Thesis advisor) / Yang, Yezhou (Committee member) / Praharaj, Sarbeswar (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021
Description
The increasing availability of data and advances in computation have spurred the development of data-driven approaches for modeling complex dynamical systems. These approaches are based on the idea that the underlying structure of a complex system can be discovered from data using mathematical and computational techniques. They also show promise for addressing the challenges of modeling high-dimensional, nonlinear systems with limited data. In this research expository, the state of the art in data-driven approaches for modeling complex dynamical systems is surveyed in a systemic way. First the general formulation of data-driven modeling of dynamical systems is discussed. Then several representative methods in feature engineering and system identification/prediction are reviewed, including recent advances and key challenges.
ContributorsShi, Wenlong (Author) / Ren, Yi (Thesis advisor) / Hong, Qijun (Committee member) / Jiao, Yang (Committee member) / Yang, Yezhou (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
Description
The need for robust verification and validation of automated vehicles (AVs) to ensure driving safety grows more urgent as increasing numbers of AVs are allowed to operate on open roads. To address this need, AV developers can present a safety case to regulators and the public that provides an evidence-based justification of their assertion that an AV is safe to operate on open roads. This work aims to describe the development of a scenario-based testing methodology that contributes to this safety case. A high-level definition of this test selection and scoring methodology (TSSM) is first presented, along with an outline of its scope and key ideas. This is followed by a literature review that details the current state of the art in AV testing, including the driving performance metrics and equations that provide a basis for the TSSM. A chart-based method for quantifying an AV’s operational design domain (ODD) and behavioral competency portfolio is then described that provides the foundation for a scenario generation and filtration process. After outlining a method for the AV to progress through increasingly robust test methods based on its current technology readiness level (TRL), the generation and filtration of two sets of scenarios by the TSSM is outlined: a standardized set that can be used to compare the performance of vehicles with identical ODD and behavioral competency portfolios, and a set containing high-relevance scenarios that is partially randomized to ensure test integrity. A related framework for incorporating testing on open roads is subsequently specified. An equation for an overall AV driving performance score is then defined that quantifies the aggregate performance of the AV across all generated scenarios. The TSSM continues according to an iterative process, which includes a method for exploring edge and corner scenarios, until a stopping condition is achieved. Two proofs of concept are provided: a demonstration of the ability of the TSSM to pare scenarios from a preexisting database, and an example ODD and behavioral competency portfolio specification form. Finally, this work concludes by evaluating the TSSM and its proofs of concept and outlining possible future work on the methodology.
ContributorsO'Malley, Gavin (Author) / Wishart, Jeffrey (Thesis advisor) / Zhao, Junfeng (Thesis advisor) / Yang, Yezhou (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023
Description
In recent years, there has been a growing emphasis on developing automated systems to enhance traffic safety, particularly in the detection of dilemma zones (DZ) at intersections. This study focuses on the automated detection of DZs at roundabouts using trajectory forecasting, presenting an advanced system with perception capabilities. The system utilizes a modular, graph-structured recurrent model that predicts the trajectories of various agents, accounting for agent dynamics and incorporating heterogeneous data such as semantic maps. This enables the system to facilitate traffic management decision-making and improve overall intersection safety. To assess the system's performance, a real-world dataset of traffic roundabout intersections was employed. The experimental results demonstrate that our Superpowered Trajectron++ system exhibits high accuracy in detecting DZ events, with a false positive rate of approximately 10%. Furthermore, the system has the remarkable ability to anticipate and identify dilemma events before they occur, enabling it to provide timely instructions to vehicles. These instructions serve as guidance, determining whether vehicles should come to a halt or continue moving through the intersection, thereby enhancing safety and minimizing potential conflicts. In summary, the development of automated systems for detecting DZs represents an important advancement in traffic safety. The Superpowered Trajectron++ system, with its trajectory forecasting capabilities and incorporation of diverse data sources, showcases improved accuracy in identifying DZ events and can effectively guide vehicles in making informed decisions at roundabout intersections.
ContributorsChelenahalli Satish, Manthan (Author) / Yang, Yezhou (Thesis advisor) / Lu, Duo (Committee member) / Farhadi, Mohammad (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023
Description
Enabling robots to physically engage with their environment in a safe and efficient manner is an essential step towards human-robot interaction. To date, robots usually operate as pre-programmed workers that blindly execute tasks in highly structured environments crafted by skilled engineers. Changing the robots’ behavior to cover new duties or handle variability is an expensive, complex, and time-consuming process. However, with the advent of more complex sensors and algorithms, overcoming these limitations becomes within reach. This work proposes innovations in artificial intelligence, language understanding, and multimodal integration to enable next-generation grasping and manipulation capabilities in autonomous robots. The underlying thesis is that multimodal observations and instructions can drastically expand the responsiveness and dexterity of robot manipulators. Natural language, in particular, can be used to enable intuitive, bidirectional communication between a human user and the machine. To this end, this work presents a system that learns context-aware robot control policies from multimodal human demonstrations. Among the main contributions presented are techniques for (a) collecting demonstrations in an efficient and intuitive fashion, (b) methods for leveraging physical contact with the environment and objects, (c) the incorporation of natural language to understand context, and (d) the generation of robust robot control policies. The presented approach and systems are evaluated in multiple grasping and manipulation settings ranging from dexterous manipulation to pick-and-place, as well as contact-rich bimanual insertion tasks. Moreover, the usability of these innovations, especially when utilizing human task demonstrations and communication interfaces, is evaluated in several human-subject studies.
ContributorsStepputtis, Simon (Author) / Ben Amor, Heni (Thesis advisor) / Baral, Chitta (Committee member) / Yang, Yezhou (Committee member) / Lee, Stefan (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021
Description
Autonomous Vehicles (AV) are inevitable entities in future mobility systems thatdemand safety and adaptability as two critical factors in replacing/assisting human
drivers. Safety arises in defining, standardizing, quantifying, and monitoring requirements
for all autonomous components. Adaptability, on the other hand, involves
efficient handling of uncertainty and inconsistencies in models and data. First, I address
safety by presenting a search-based test-case generation framework that can be
used in training and testing deep-learning components of AV. Next, to address adaptability,
I propose a framework based on multi-valued linear temporal logic syntax and
semantics that allows autonomous agents to perform model-checking on systems with
uncertainties. The search-based test-case generation framework provides safety assurance
guarantees through formalizing and monitoring Responsibility Sensitive Safety
(RSS) rules. I use the RSS rules in signal temporal logic as qualification specifications
for monitoring and screening the quality of generated test-drive scenarios. Furthermore,
to extend the existing temporal-based formal languages’ expressivity, I propose
a new spatio-temporal perception logic that enables formalizing qualification specifications
for perception systems. All-in-one, my test-generation framework can be
used for reasoning about the quality of perception, prediction, and decision-making
components in AV. Finally, my efforts resulted in publicly available software. One
is an offline monitoring algorithm based on the proposed logic to reason about the
quality of perception systems. The other is an optimal planner (model checker) that
accepts mission specifications and model descriptions in the form of multi-valued logic
and multi-valued sets, respectively. My monitoring framework is distributed with the
publicly available S-TaLiRo and Sim-ATAV tools.
ContributorsHekmatnejad, Mohammad (Author) / Fainekos, Georgios (Thesis advisor) / Deshmukh, Jyotirmoy V (Committee member) / Karam, Lina (Committee member) / Pedrielli, Giulia (Committee member) / Shrivastava, Aviral (Committee member) / Yang, Yezhou (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021
Description
Floating trash objects are very commonly seen on water bodies such as lakes, canals and rivers. With the increase of plastic goods and human activities near the water bodies, these trash objects can pile up and cause great harm to the surrounding environment. Using human workers to clear out these trash is a hazardous and time-consuming task. Employing autonomous robots for these tasks is a better approach since it is more efficient and faster than humans. However, for a robot to clean the trash objects, a good detection algorithm is required. Real-time object detection on water surfaces is a challenging issue due to nature of the environment and the volatility of the water surface. In addition to this, running an object detection algorithm on an on-board processor of a robot limits the amount of CPU consumption that the algorithm can utilize. In this thesis, a computationally low cost object detection approach for robust detection of trash objects that was run on an on-board processor of a multirotor is presented. To account for specular reflections on the water surface, we use a polarization filter and integrate a specularity removal algorithm on our approach as well. The challenges faced during testing and the means taken to eliminate those challenges are also discussed. The algorithm was compared with two other object detectors using 4 different metrics. The testing was carried out using videos of 5 different objects collected at different illumination conditions over a lake using a multirotor. The results indicate that our algorithm is much suitable to be employed in real-time since it had the highest processing speed of 21 FPS, the lowest CPU consumption of 37.5\% and considerably high precision and recall values in detecting the object.
ContributorsSyed, Danish Faraaz (Author) / Zhang, Wenlong (Thesis advisor) / Yang, Yezhou (Committee member) / Turaga, Pavan (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021
Description
Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) have the potential to significantly evolve transportation. AVs are expected to make transportation safer by avoiding accidents that happen due to human errors. When AVs become connected, they can exchange information with the infrastructure or other Connected Autonomous Vehicles (CAVs) to efficiently plan their future motion and therefore, increase the road throughput and reduce energy consumption. Cooperative algorithms for CAVs will not be deployed in real life unless they are proved to be safe, robust, and resilient to different failure models. Since intersections are crucial areas where most accidents happen, this dissertation first focuses on making existing intersection management algorithms safe and resilient against network and computation time, bounded model mismatches and external disturbances, and the existence of a rogue vehicle. Then, a generic algorithm for conflict resolution and cooperation of CAVs is proposed that ensures the safety of vehicles even when other vehicles suddenly change their plan. The proposed approach can also detect deadlock situations among CAVs and resolve them through a negotiation process. A testbed consisting of 1/10th scale model CAVs is built to evaluate the proposed algorithms. In addition, a simulator is developed to perform tests at a large scale. Results from the conducted experiments indicate the robustness and resilience of proposed approaches.
ContributorsKhayatian, Mohammad (Author) / Shrivastava, Aviral (Thesis advisor) / Fainekos, Georgios (Committee member) / Ben Amor, Heni (Committee member) / Yang, Yezhou (Committee member) / Lou, Yingyan (Committee member) / Iannucci, Bob (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021
Description
Visual navigation is a useful and important task for a variety of applications. As the prevalence of robots increase, there is an increasing need for energy-efficient navigation methods as well. Many aspects of efficient visual navigation algorithms have been implemented in the literature, but there is a lack of work on evaluation of the efficiency of the image sensors. In this thesis, two methods are evaluated: adaptive image sensor quantization for traditional camera pipelines as well as new event-based sensors for low-power computer vision.The first contribution in this thesis is an evaluation of performing varying levels of sensor linear and logarithmic quantization with the task of visual simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM). This unconventional method can provide efficiency benefits with a trade off between accuracy of the task and energy-efficiency. A new sensor quantization method, gradient-based quantization, is introduced to improve the accuracy of the task. This method only lowers the bit level of parts of the image that are less likely to be important in the SLAM algorithm since lower bit levels signify better energy-efficiency, but worse task accuracy. The third contribution is an evaluation of the efficiency and accuracy of event-based camera intensity representations for the task of optical flow. The results of performing a learning based optical flow are provided for each of five different reconstruction methods along with ablation studies. Lastly, the challenges of an event feature-based SLAM system are presented with results demonstrating the necessity for high quality and high resolution event data. The work in this thesis provides studies useful for examining tradeoffs for an efficient visual navigation system with traditional and event vision sensors. The results of this thesis also provide multiple directions for future work.
ContributorsChristie, Olivia Catherine (Author) / Jayasuriya, Suren (Thesis advisor) / Chakrabarti, Chaitali (Committee member) / Yang, Yezhou (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
Description
Simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) has traditionally relied on low-level geometric or optical features. However, these features-based SLAM methods often struggle with feature-less or repetitive scenes. Additionally, low-level features may not provide sufficient information for robot navigation and manipulation, leaving robots without a complete understanding of the 3D spatial world. Advanced information is necessary to address these limitations. Fortunately, recent developments in learning-based 3D reconstruction allow robots to not only detect semantic meanings, but also recognize the 3D structure of objects from a few images. By combining this 3D structural information, SLAM can be improved from a low-level approach to a structure-aware approach. This work propose a novel approach for multi-view 3D reconstruction using recurrent transformer. This approach allows robots to accumulate information from multiple views and encode them into a compact latent space. The resulting latent representations are then decoded to produce 3D structural landmarks, which can be used to improve robot localization and mapping.
ContributorsHuang, Chi-Yao (Author) / Yang, Yezhou (Thesis advisor) / Turaga, Pavan (Committee member) / Jayasuriya, Suren (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023