Systematic mapping literature review of mobile robotics competitions

This paper presents a systematic mapping literature review about the mobile robotics competitions that took place over the last few decades in order to obtain an overview of the main objectives, target public, challenges, technologies used and final application area to show how these competitions have been contributing to education. In the review we found 673 papers from 5 different databases and at the end of the process, 75 papers were classified to extract all the relevant information using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) method. More than 50 mobile robotics competitions were found and it was possible to analyze most of the competitions in detail in order to answer the research questions, finding the main goals, target public, challenges, technologies and application area, mainly in education.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Systematic Mapping Literature Review of Mobile Robotics Competitions

[EN] This paper presents a systematic mapping literature review about the mobile robotics competitions that took place over the last few decades in order to obtain an overview of the main objectives, target public, challenges, technologies used and final application area to show how these competitions have been contributing to education. In the review we found 673 papers from 5 different databases and at the end of the process, 75 papers were classified to extract all the relevant information using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) method. More than 50 mobile robotics competitions were found and it was possible to analyze most of the competitions in detail in order to answer the research questions, finding the main goals, target public, challenges, technologies and application area, mainly in education.S

TIRAMISU European Project: Design and Implementation of Tools for Humanitarian Demining

This paper presents the most relevant results of the work done within the framework of TIRAMISU European project (Toolbox Implementation for Removal of Anti-personnel Mines, Submunitions and UXO), by the Centre for Automation and Robotics CAR (CSIC-UPM). This project has been funded by European Union within the Seventh Framework Programme of R&D. In general, the works carried out during this project, currently in effect, have been the design and development of tools for training in search of landmines and other for locating anti-personnel landmines, such as: design and validation of e-tutors for land impact and non-Technical Survey tools, and landmines identification for training of trainee, who will collaborate in humanitarian demining tasks; design and implementation of a training tool to be used with compact metal detectors; design, implementation and evaluation of an intelligent prodder training tool for close-in detection of buried landmines; development of a semi-autonomous and teleoperated system for search and detection of anti-personnel mines, which consists of a hexapod robot and a scanning manipulator arm, that carries a metal detector at its end-effector.This project has been funded by European Union within the Seventh Framework Programme of R&D.Peer reviewe

Políticas de Copyright de Publicações Científicas em Repositórios Institucionais: O Caso do INESC TEC

A progressiva transformação das práticas científicas, impulsionada pelo desenvolvimento das novas Tecnologias de Informação e Comunicação (TIC), têm possibilitado aumentar o acesso à informação, caminhando gradualmente para uma abertura do ciclo de pesquisa. Isto permitirá resolver a longo prazo uma adversidade que se tem colocado aos investigadores, que passa pela existência de barreiras que limitam as condições de acesso, sejam estas geográficas ou financeiras. Apesar da produção científica ser dominada, maioritariamente, por grandes editoras comerciais, estando sujeita às regras por estas impostas, o Movimento do Acesso Aberto cuja primeira declaração pública, a Declaração de Budapeste (BOAI), é de 2002, vem propor alterações significativas que beneficiam os autores e os leitores. Este Movimento vem a ganhar importância em Portugal desde 2003, com a constituição do primeiro repositório institucional a nível nacional. Os repositórios institucionais surgiram como uma ferramenta de divulgação da produção científica de uma instituição, com o intuito de permitir abrir aos resultados da investigação, quer antes da publicação e do próprio processo de arbitragem (preprint), quer depois (postprint), e, consequentemente, aumentar a visibilidade do trabalho desenvolvido por um investigador e a respetiva instituição. O estudo apresentado, que passou por uma análise das políticas de copyright das publicações científicas mais relevantes do INESC TEC, permitiu não só perceber que as editoras adotam cada vez mais políticas que possibilitam o auto-arquivo das publicações em repositórios institucionais, como também que existe todo um trabalho de sensibilização a percorrer, não só para os investigadores, como para a instituição e toda a sociedade. A produção de um conjunto de recomendações, que passam pela implementação de uma política institucional que incentive o auto-arquivo das publicações desenvolvidas no âmbito institucional no repositório, serve como mote para uma maior valorização da produção científica do INESC TEC.The progressive transformation of scientific practices, driven by the development of new Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), which made it possible to increase access to information, gradually moving towards an opening of the research cycle. This opening makes it possible to resolve, in the long term, the adversity that has been placed on researchers, which involves the existence of barriers that limit access conditions, whether geographical or financial. Although large commercial publishers predominantly dominate scientific production and subject it to the rules imposed by them, the Open Access movement whose first public declaration, the Budapest Declaration (BOAI), was in 2002, proposes significant changes that benefit the authors and the readers. This Movement has gained importance in Portugal since 2003, with the constitution of the first institutional repository at the national level. Institutional repositories have emerged as a tool for disseminating the scientific production of an institution to open the results of the research, both before publication and the preprint process and postprint, increase the visibility of work done by an investigator and his or her institution. The present study, which underwent an analysis of the copyright policies of INESC TEC most relevant scientific publications, allowed not only to realize that publishers are increasingly adopting policies that make it possible to self-archive publications in institutional repositories, all the work of raising awareness, not only for researchers but also for the institution and the whole society. The production of a set of recommendations, which go through the implementation of an institutional policy that encourages the self-archiving of the publications developed in the institutional scope in the repository, serves as a motto for a greater appreciation of the scientific production of INESC TEC

Coverage strategy for target location in marine environments using fixed-wing UAVs

In this paper, we propose a coverage method for the search of lost targets or debris on the ocean surface. The OSCAR data set is used to determine the marine currents and the differential evolution genetic filter is used to optimize the sweep direction of the lawnmower coverage and get the sweep angle for the maximum probability of containment. The position of the target is determined by a particle filter, where the particles are moved by the ocean currents and the final probabilistic distribution is obtained by fitting the particle positions to a Gaussian probability distribution. The differential evolution algorithm is then used to optimize the sweep direction that covers the highest probability of containment cells before the less probable ones. The algorithm is tested with a variety of parameters of the differential evolution algorithm and compared to other popular optimization algorithms.This research was funded by the European Commission: Innovation and Networks Executive Agency (INEA), through the European H2020 LABYRINTH project. Grant agreement H2020-MG-2019-TwoStages-861696

Extracting Semantic Information from Visual Data: A Survey

The traditional environment maps built by mobile robots include both metric ones and topological ones. These maps are navigation-oriented and not adequate for service robots to interact with or serve human users who normally rely on the conceptual knowledge or semantic contents of the environment. Therefore, the construction of semantic maps becomes necessary for building an effective human-robot interface for service robots. This paper reviews recent research and development in the field of visual-based semantic mapping. The main focus is placed on how to extract semantic information from visual data in terms of feature extraction, object/place recognition and semantic representation methods

A Semantic Labeling of the Environment Based on What People Do

In this work, a system is developed for semantic labeling of locations based on what people do. This system is useful for semantic navigation of mobile robots. The system differentiates environments according to what people do in them. Background sound, number of people in a room and amount of movement of those people are items to be considered when trying to tell if people are doing different actions. These data are sampled, and it is assumed that people behave differently and perform different actions. A support vector machine is trained with the obtained samples, and therefore, it allows one to identify the room. Finally, the results are discussed and support the hypothesis that the proposed system can help to semantically label a room.The research leading to these results has received funding from the RoboCity2030-III-CMproject (Robótica aplicada a la mejora de la calidad de vida de los ciudadanos. fase III; S2013/MIT-2748), funded by Programas de Actividades I+Den la Comunidad de Madrid and cofunded by Structural Funds of the EU and NAVEGASEAUTOCOGNAVproject (DPI2014-53525-C3-3-R), funded by Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad of Spain.The research leading to these results has received funding from the RoboCity2030-III-CMproject (Robótica aplicada a la mejora de la calidad de vida de los ciudadanos. fase III; S2013/MIT-2748), funded by Programas de Actividades I+Den la Comunidad de Madrid and cofunded by Structural Funds of the EU and NAVEGASEAUTOCOGNAVproject (DPI2014-53525-C3-3-R), funded by Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad of Spain

Object detection applied to indoor environments for mobile robot navigation

To move around the environment, human beings depend on sight more than their other senses, because it provides information about the size, shape, color and position of an object. The increasing interest in building autonomous mobile systems makes the detection and recognition of objects in indoor environments a very important and challenging task. In this work, a vision system to detect objects considering usual human environments, able to work on a real mobile robot, is developed. In the proposed system, the classification method used is Support Vector Machine (SVM) and as input to this system, RGB and depth images are used. Different segmentation techniques have been applied to each kind of object. Similarly, two alternatives to extract features of the objects are explored, based on geometric shape descriptors and bag of words. The experimental results have demonstrated the usefulness of the system for the detection and location of the objects in indoor environments. Furthermore, through the comparison of two proposed methods for extracting features, it has been determined which alternative offers better performance. The final results have been obtained taking into account the proposed problem and that the environment has not been changed, that is to say, the environment has not been altered to perform the tests.The research leading to these results has received funding from the RoboCity2030-III-CM project (Robótica aplicada a la mejora de la calidad de vida de los ciudadanos, fase III; S2013/MIT-2748), funded by Programas de Actividades I+D en la Comunidad de Madrid and co-funded by Structural Funds of the EU and NAVEGASE-AUTOCOGNAV project (DPI2014-53525-C3-3-R), funded by Ministerio de Economía y competitividad of Spain