Improving Local Symmetry Estimations in RGB-D Images by Fitting Superquadrics

[Abstract] Real-time manipulation tasks rely on finding good candidates for apprehension points which, in turn, usually requires the computation of local symmetries. When RGB-D images are used as input information, these local symmetries can be deduced from segmenting these images and computing geometric moments for each cluster of points. This approach gives a rough approximation because it does not take into account that the considered points lie on a surface. In this paper, to improve the quality of the symmetry estimations, we propose a simple refinement process that takes as input the estimation obtained using moments and then fits a superquadric to the considered set of points. We evaluate our approach on data collected using a Microsoft's Kinect 2 sensor. The obtained experimental results demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed approach.This work has been partially supported by by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness under projects DPI2014-57220-C2-2-P and DPI2014-57746-C3https://doi.org/10.17979/spudc.978849749808

Merbots project: overal description, multisensory autonomous perception and grasping for underwater robotics interventions

[Abstract] The MERBOTS project is, at the moment of writing the present article, in its third year, and have already obtained most of the expected results, from both lab and sea field trials. The project is being coordinated by the Jaume I University (i.e. IRS Lab), jointly with the University of Girona (i.e. CIRS Lab), and University of Balearic Island (i.e. SRV Group). Recent results demonstrate the viability to perform semi-autonomous cooperative interventions in underwater scenarios for archaeological applications. In this paper, first of all an overall description of the project is given, and then some results belonging to the UJI subproject are explained in more detail, such as communications and, in a more detailed manner, the autonomous perception and grasping modules.Ministerio of Economía y Competitividad; DPI2014-57746-C3-1-RGeneralitat Valenciana; GVA-PROMETEO/2016/066Universitat Jaume I; P1-1B2015-6

UWSim, an underwater robotic simulator on the cloud as educational tool

[ES] La creciente demanda social de nuevas aplicaciones de la robótica, desde robots domésticos a coches autónomos, confirma la conveniencia de utilizar dicha tecnología como factor motivante en el contexto educacional. Así, el presente trabajo analiza cómo canalizar esta motivación hacia fines productivos, poniendo el énfasis en las posibilidades que ofrecen los simuladores de robots submarinos. En particular, se propone un entorno de aprendizaje en la nube con un simulador capaz de evaluar al alumno como eje central del sistema. Utilizando este tipo de herramientas tan solo es necesario un dispositivo capaz de acceder a Internet a través de un navegador para alcanzar una cantidad virtualmente ilimitada de recursos. Como caso de estudio, se detallan las mejoras implementadas, en una aplicación de seguimiento de tuberías submarinas, creando un entorno de comparación en la nube que permite a los alumnos competir por obtener el mejor resultado posible. Finalmente, es importante destacar que se aporta una primera experiencia de aplicación en un contexto de enseñanza real de la herramienta propuesta, demostrándose la viabilidad e idoneidad de la misma para el aprendizaje de robótica y ROS.[EN] Due to the introduction of robotic applications in the modern society, such as service robots or self-driving cars, it is possible to use this trend as motivating factor in the learning process of robotics. Several possibilities about how to use this motivation to increase learning rate are analysed, focusing on underwater robotic simulators. Moreover, a cloud learning environment able to evaluate the students with a robotic simulator is proposed as key element of the system. These kinds of tools can be used with just an Internet-capable system through a web browser, reaching a virtually unlimited amount of resources. The implemented features are used in a underwater pipe following application, creating a comparison environment on the cloud that immerse students in a competition to reach the best possible result. Finally, a first experience in a real educational environment using the proposed tool is detailed, demonstrating the viability and suitability of the proposed tool.Este trabajo ha sido parcialmente financiado por el Ministerio de Econom´ıa y competitividad, codigo de proyecto DPI2014-57746-C3 (proyecto MERBOTS), por la Generalitat Valenciana GVA, con el codigo de proyecto PROMETEO/2016/066 y por la Universidad Jaume I,proyecto MASUMIA, becas PREDOC/2012/47 y PREDOC/2013/46.Pérez, J.; Fornas, D.; Marín, R.; Sanz, PJ. (2017). UWSim, un simulador submarino conectado a la nube como herramienta educacional. Revista Iberoamericana de Automática e Informática industrial. 15(1):70-78. https://doi.org/10.4995/riai.2017.8827OJS7078151Bale, K., 2012. osgocean.Blasco, X., García-Nieto, S., Reynoso-Meza, G., 2012. Control autónomo del seguimiento de trayectorias de un vehículo cuatrirrotor. simulación y evaluación de propuestas. Revista Iberoamericana de Automática e Informática Industrial RIAI 9 (2), 194-199. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.riai.2012.01.001Center, U. D. C.-S., 2015. Roboblockly. URL: http://roboblockly.ucdavis.edu/Cerezo, F., Sastrón, F., 2015. Laboratorios virtuales y docencia de la automática en la formación tecnológica de base de alumnos preuniversitarios. Revista Iberoamericana de Automática e Informática Industrial RIAI 12 (4), 419-431. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.riai.2015.04.005Cervera, E., Martinet, P., Marin, R., Moughlbay, A. A., del Pobil, A. P., Alemany, J., Esteller, R., Casa˜n, G., 2016. The robot programming network. Journal of Intelligent & Robotic Systems 81 (1), 77-95. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10846-015-0201-7Cook, D., Vardy, A., Lewis, R., 2014. A survey of auv and robot simulators for multi-vehicle operations. En: 2014 IEEE/OES Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUV). IEEE, pp. 1-8. https://doi.org/10.1109/AUV.2014.7054411Coumans, E., 2012. Bullet physics engine.Craighead, J., Murphy, R., Burke, J., Goldiez, B., 2007. A survey of commercial & open source unmanned vehicle simulators. En: Proceedings 2007 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation. IEEE, pp. 852-857. https://doi.org/10.1109/ROBOT.2007.363092Eguchi, A., 2016. Robocupjunior for promoting stem education, 21st century skills, and technological advancement through robotics competition. Robotics and Autonomous Systems 75, 692-699. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.robot.2015.05.013Foundation, O. S. R., 2015. Cloudsim.García, J. C., Sanz, P. J., Cervera, E., 11/2011 2011. Using humanoids for teaching robotics and artificial intelligence issues. the uji case study. En: III Workshop de robótica: robótica experimental. Sevilla (Spain).Gómez-Estern, F., Ló0pez-Martínez, M., de la Pe-a, D. M., 2010. Sistema de evaluación automática víaweb en asignaturas prácticas de ingeniería. Revista Iberoamericana de Automática e Informática Industrial RIAI 7 (3), 111- 119.Haynes, C., Edwards, J., 2015. First robotics competition [competitions]. Robotics & Automation Magazine, IEEE 22 (1), 8-10. https://doi.org/10.1109/MRA.2014.2385560Kalwa, J., Pascoal, A., Ridao, P., Birk, A., Eichhorn, M., Brignone, L., Caccia, M., Alvez, J., Santos, R., 2012. The european r&d-project morph: Marine robotic systems of self-organizing, logically linked physical nodes. IFAC Proceedings Volumes 45 (5), 349-354.Lane, D. M., Maurelli, F., Kormushev, P., Carreras, M., Fox, M., Kyriakopoulos, K., 2012. Persistent autonomy: the challenges of the pandora project. IFAC Proceedings Volumes 45 (27), 268-273. https://doi.org/10.3182/20120919-3-IT-2046.00046LLC, M. S., 2006. Rovsim.Matsebe, O., Kumile, C., Tlale, N., 2008. A review of virtual simulators for autonomous underwater vehicles (auvs). IFAC Proceedings Volumes 41 (1), 31-37.Osfield, R., Burns, D., et al., 2004. Open scene graph.Pavin, A., Inzartsev, A., Eliseenko, G., Lebedko, O., Panin, M., 2015. A reconfigurable web-based simulation environment for auv. En: OCEANS 2015- MTS/IEEE Washington. IEEE, pp. 1-7. https://doi.org/10.23919/OCEANS.2015.7404470Pérez, J., Sales, J., Marín, R., Cervera, E., Sanz, P. J., 09/2014 2014. Configuración y ejecución de benchmarks de intervención robótica submarina en uwsim mediante herramientas web. En: XX Jornadas de Automática 2014.Perez, J., Sales, J., Penalver, A., Fornas, D., Javier Fernandez, J., Garcia, J. C., Sanz, P. J., Marin, R., Prats, M., 2015. Exploring 3-d reconstruction techniques: A benchmarking tool for underwater robotics. Robotics & Automation Magazine, IEEE 22 (3), 85-95. https://doi.org/10.1109/MRA.2015.2448971Pérez, J., Sales, J., Prats, M., Martí, J. V., Fornas, D., Marín, R., Sanz, P. J., 2013. The underwater simulator uwsim-benchmarking capabilities on autonomous grasping. En: ICINCO (2). pp. 369-376.Prats, M., Pérez, J., Fernández, J., Sanz, P., 2012. An open source tool for simulation and supervision of underwater intervention missions. En: Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2012 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on. pp. 2577-2582. https://doi.org/10.1109/IROS.2012.6385788Quigley, M., Conley, K., Gerkey, B., Faust, J., Foote, T., Leibs, J., Wheeler, R., Ng, A. Y., 2009. Ros: an open-source robot operating system. En: ICRA workshop on open source software. Vol. 3. Kobe, p. 5.Tellez, R., 2017. A thousand robots for each student: Using cloud robot simulations to teach robotics. En: Robotics in Education. Springer, pp. 143-155. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-42975-5_1

UWSim, un simulador submarino como herramienta educacional

[Resumen] Debido a la creciente presencia de la robótica en los medios de comunicación se abren oportunidades a la educacón utilizando este auge como factor motivador. En este trabajo se hace un análisis de las distintas formas de canalizar la motivación de los estudiantes para iniciar una carrera de futuro haciendo énfasis en las posibilidades de los simuladores. Además se propone un entorno de aprendizaje con un simulador con capacidades de benchmarking como eje central del sistema destacando las ventajas de este tipo de herramientas en el autoaprendizaje. Por último se detallan mejoras al sistema propuesto con un simulador online integrando programación con blockly para un entorno aún más amigable.Este trabajo ha sido parcialmente financiado por el Ministerio de Economía y competitividad, código de proyecto DPI2014-57746-C3 (proyecto MERBOTS) y por la Universidad Jaume I, becas PREDOC/2012/47 y PREDOC/2013/46Universidad Jaume I; PREDOC/2012/47Universidad Jaume I; PREDOC/2013/46https://doi.org/10.17979/spudc.978849749808

Fitting primitive shapes in point clouds: a practical approach to improve autonomous underwater grasp specification of unknown objects

This article presents research on the subject of autonomous underwater robot manipulation. Ongoing research in underwater robotics intends to increase the autonomy of intervention operations that require physical interaction in order to achieve social benefits in fields such as archaeology or biology that cannot afford the expenses of costly underwater operations using remote operated vehicles. Autonomous grasping is still a very challenging skill, especially in underwater environments, with highly unstructured scenarios, limited availability of sensors and adverse conditions that affect the robot perception and control systems. To tackle these issues, we propose the use of vision and segmentation techniques that aim to improve the specification of grasping operations on underwater primitive shaped objects. Several sources of stereo information are used to gather 3D information in order to obtain a model of the object. Using a RANSAC segmentation algorithm, the model parameters are estimated and a set of feasible grasps are computed. This approach is validated in both simulated and real underwater scenarios.This research was partly supported by Spanish Ministry of Research and Innovation DPI2011-27977-C03 (TRITON Project), by Foundation Caixa Castelló Bancaixa PI-1B2011-17, by Universitat Jaume I PhD grants PREDOC/2012/47 and PREDOC/ 2013/46, and by Generalitat Valenciana PhD grant ACIF/2014/298

Visually-Guided Manipulation Techniques for Robotic Autonomous Underwater Panel Interventions

The long term of this ongoing research has to do with increasing the autonomy levels for underwater intervention missions. Bearing in mind that the speci c mission to face has been the intervention on a panel, in this paper some results in di erent development stages are presented by using the real mechatronics and the panel mockup. Furthermore, some details are highlighted describing two methodologies implemented for the required visually-guided manipulation algorithms, and also a roadmap explaining the di erent testbeds used for experimental validation, in increasing complexity order, are presented. It is worth mentioning that the aforementioned results would be impossible without previous generated know-how for both, the complete developed mechatronics for the autonomous underwater vehicle for intervention, and the required 3D simulation tool. In summary, thanks to the implemented approach, the intervention system is able to control the way in which the gripper approximates and manipulates the two panel devices (i.e. a valve and a connector) in autonomous manner and, results in di erent scenarios demonstrate the reliability and feasibility of this autonomous intervention system in water tank and pool conditions.This work was partly supported by Spanish Ministry of Research and Innovation DPI2011-27977-C03 (TRITON Project) and DPI2014-57746-C3 (MERBOTS Project), by Foundation Caixa Castell o-Bancaixa and Universitat Jaume I grant PID2010-12, by Universitat Jaume I PhD grants PREDOC/2012/47 and PREDOC/2013/46, and by Generalitat Valenciana PhD grant ACIF/2014/298. We would like also to acknowledge the support of our partners inside the Spanish Coordinated Projects TRITON and MERBOTS: Universitat de les Illes Balears, UIB (subprojects VISUAL2 and SUPERION) and Universitat de Girona, UdG (subprojects COMAROB and ARCHROV)

Integración de una cámara pan-tilt subacuática para detección de objetos y guiado de un ROV submarino

Resumen] En este documento se expone un sistema adaptativo y semiautónomo, el cual genera una interfaz de alto nivel para facilitar el trabajo de supervisión humana, capaz de detectar un objeto de interés, con la finalidad de trackear su posición y guiar a un Remote Operated Vehicle (ROV) haciendo uso de una cámara pan-tilt submarina, mediante la utilización de herramientas conocidas de visión por computador, y a través del middleware Robot Operating System (ROS). El trabajo se ha llevado a cabo en el contexto del proyecto coordinado MERBOTS (www.irs.uji.es/merbots), para mejorar la realimentación visual en intervenciones reales submarinas.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad; DPI2014-57746-C3Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad; DPI2017-86372-C3-1-RUniversitat Jaume I; P1-1B2015-68Generalitat Valenciana; PROMETEO/2016/06

Transcriptome innovations in primates revealed by single-molecule long-read sequencing

Transcriptomic diversity greatly contributes to the fundamentals of disease, lineage-specific biology, and environmental adaptation. However, much of the actual isoform repertoire contributing to shaping primate evolution remains unknown. Here, we combined deep long- and short-read sequencing complemented with mass spectrometry proteomics in a panel of lymphoblastoid cell lines (LCLs) from human, three other great apes, and rhesus macaque, producing the largest full-length isoform catalog in primates to date. Around half of the captured isoforms are not annotated in their reference genomes, significantly expanding the gene models in primates. Furthermore, our comparative analyses unveil hundreds of transcriptomic innovations and isoform usage changes related to immune function and immunological disorders. The confluence of these evolutionary innovations with signals of positive selection and their limited impact in the proteome points to changes in alternative splicing in genes involved in immune response as an important target of recent regulatory divergence in primates. changes in alternative splicing in genes involved in immune response as an important target of recent regulatory divergence in primates.This work was supported by the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (XDB31020000); National Key R&D Program of China (China's Ministry of Science and Technology [MoST]) grant 2018YFC1406901; the International Partnership Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (no. 152453KYSB20170002); the Carlsberg Foundation (CF16-0663); the Villum Foundation (no. 25900) to G.Z.; and the La Caixa Foundation (ID 100010434) Fellowship Code LCF/BQ/DE16/11570011 (L.F.-P.). The Center for Genomic Regulation (CRG) / Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF) Proteomics Unit is part of the Spanish Infrastructure for Omics Technologies (National Map of Unique Scientific and Technical Infrastructures [ICTS] OmicsTech) and a member of the ProteoRed PRB3 Consortium, which is supported by grant PT17/0019 of the PE I + D + i 2013–2016 from the Instituto de Salud Carlos III (ISCIII), European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), and “Secretaria d'Universitats i Recerca del Departament d'Economia i Coneixement de la Generalitat de Catalunya” (2017SGR595). T.M.-B. is supported by funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement no. 864203), BFU2017-86471-P (MINECO/FEDER, UE); “Unidad de Excelencia María de Maeztu,” funded by the Agencia Estatal de Investigación (AEI) (CEX2018-000792-M); Howard Hughes International Early Career; National Institutes of Health 1R01HG010898-01A1; and Secretaria d'Universitats i Recerca and Centres de Recerca de Catalunya (CERCA) Programme del Departament d'Economia i Coneixement de la Generalitat de Catalunya (GRC 2017 SGR 880)

Transcriptome innovations in primates revealed by single-molecule long-read sequencing

Transcriptomic diversity greatly contributes to the fundamentals of disease, lineage-specific biology, and environmental adaptation. However, much of the actual isoform repertoire contributing to shaping primate evolution remains unknown. Here, we combined deep long- and short-read sequencing complemented with mass spectrometry proteomics in a panel of lymphoblastoid cell lines (LCLs) from human, three other great apes, and rhesus macaque, producing the largest full-length isoform catalog in primates to date. Around half of the captured isoforms are not annotated in their reference genomes, significantly expanding the gene models in primates. Furthermore, our comparative analyses unveil hundreds of transcriptomic innovations and isoform usage changes related to immune function and immunological disorders. The confluence of these evolutionary innovations with signals of positive selection and their limited impact in the proteome points to changes in alternative splicing in genes involved in immune response as an important target of recent regulatory divergence in primates

Aplicación de la visión artificial a la manipulación robótica en el contexto de la intervención subacuática

En esta tesis se describe un sistema integral para la manipulación de objetos guiada por visión en escenarios subacuáticos en el contexto de la arqueología. El sistema propuesto consiste en la reconstrucción en 3D del entorno, el modelado geométrico aproximado del escenario y los objetos que rodean al robot, la especificación y supervisión del agarre utilizando métodos de Interación Humano-Robot y la ejecución del agarre. Se ha demostrado el uso de los diferentes componentes en simulación y en entornos reales de dificultad creciente. Así, se han realizado experimentos en el laboratorio Interactive and Robotic Systems Lab en un tanque de agua dulce, pruebas de integración en la piscina del Centro de Investigación en Robótica Submarina y experimentos de campo en el mar dentro del puerto de Sant Feliu de Guíxols.This thesis describes an integral framework for visually guided manipulation of objects in underwater scenarios in the archaeology case of use. The proposed framework is used to perform the reconstruction of a 3D point cloud from the robot environment, compute the geometric model of the objects and background of the scene, specify and supervise the grasping through Human-Robot Interaction, and execute the grasping. The different components have been validated in simulation and in increasingly complex real scenarios. Experiments have been performed in the water tank of the Interactive and Robotic Systems Lab, in the pool of the Centro de Investigación en Robótica Submarina with the integration of the vehicle and in seawater at the harbour of Sant Feliu de Guíxols.Programa de Doctorat en Informàtic