e-Laboratorio de robótica: un sistema multirobot distribuido

Fiabilidad, simplicidad y bajo coste son tres requisitos difíciles de combinar en Robótica. A pesar de ello, esta combinación tiene un gran interés para las instituciones educativas. Nuestro trabajo se dirige hacia el desarrollo de un sistema multirobot basado en plataforma de bajo coste. Tomando como base los simples robots de LEGO©, estos son mejorados agregándoles un módulo de expansión para superar sus principales limitaciones, y que permite integrarlo en un sistema de programación externo al robot (“off-board”). A partir de esta plataforma, se ha implementado un e-laboratorio organizado en cuatro niveles de procesamiento distribuidos, que permiten a los usuarios gestionar, controlar y programar un sistema multirobot a través de Internet.La realización de este trabajo está financiada por el Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia a través del proyecto CYCIT TSI2004-05165-C02-02

A visually-guided position control method, in underwater conditions, using an inexpensive remotely operated vehicle

Peer Reviewe

MiniCERNBot Educational Platform: Antimatter Factory Mock-up Missions for Problem-Solving STEM Learning

Mechatronics and robotics appeared particularly effective in students’ education, allowing them to create non-traditional solutions in STEM disciplines, which have a direct impact and interaction with the world surrounding them. This paper presents the current state of the MiniCERNBot Educational Robotic platform for high-school and university students. The robot provides a comprehensive educative system with tutorials and tasks tuned for different ages on 3D design, mechanical assembly, control, programming, planning, and operation. The system is inspired to existing robotic systems and typical robotic interventions performed at CERN, and includes an education mock-up that follows the example of a previous real operation performed in CERN’s Antimatter Factory. The paper describes the learning paths where the MiniCERNBot platform can be used by students, at different ages and disciplines. In addition, it describes the software and hardware architecture, presenting results on modularity and network performance during education exercises. In summary, the objective of the study is improving the way STEM educational and dissemination activities at CERN Robotics Lab are performed, as well as their possible synergies with other education institutions, such as High-Schools and Universities, improving the learning collaborative process and inspiring students interested in technical studies. To this end, a new educational robotic platform has been designed, inspired on real scientific operations, which allows the students practice multidisciplinary STEM skills in a collaborative problem-solving way, while increasing their motivation and comprehension of the research activities

PFC: Los dos lados del espejo. Proyectista – Director ¿Una visión compartida?

La realización de un Proyecto Final de Carrera (PFC) se ha ido consolidando como una de las actividades formativas de mayor importancia en una titulación universitaria. En el PFC el estudiante tiene que poner en práctica los conocimientos y habilidades adquiridos durante su formación. Con la realización del PFC se espera que el estudiante aborde una tarea de cierta complejidad en la que sea necesario combinar los conceptos adquiridos en las diferentes asignaturas. La complejidad, extensión y carácter integrador de diferentes conocimientos, es lo que diferencia el PFC de las tradicionales prácticas de asignaturas. En la realización de un PFC destacan dos actores principales, el/la estudiante en su papel de proyectista, y el profesor/a en su papel de director/a o facilitador/a. Esta ponencia estudia la visión que estudiantes y profesores tienen de lo que es un PFC en el ámbito de las Ingenierías Informáticas, sus objetivos, su realización y resultados. A partir de las experiencias recogidas y una reflexión conjunta, profesor-estudiante, vamos a destacar aquellos aspectos en los que las dos visiones son más parecidas y más alejadas

Towards automatic hole detection of a net for fish farms by means of robotic intelligence

In the last decades fish farms became one of the most important sources of seafood. This industry is facing complex and costly problems like net holes, especially due to unexpected situations, such as depredators and storm effects. This is a complex problem because fishes can escape from the fish farms containers or a depredator can enter in the container. To solve this problem divers are needed, but this solution is difficult and sometimes can be dangerous for the diver. The main objective of this work is to present the current state of a system where an underwater robot can detect holes in the net of a fish farm. Once the robot detects the hole it will proceed to manipulate it. This task is bordered using convolutional neural networks and the BlueROV2 platform with the Newton Gripper from BlueRobotics, which will be upgraded in a second stage to perform preliminary net repairs. This work contributes in the area of aquaculture, computer vision, underwater inspection and manipulation.Peer Reviewe

Further teleoperated experiments with an underwater mobile manipulator via acoustic modem: modem characterization

In this study, we conducted preliminary experiments to characterize an acoustic sonar [1][2] for underwater communication. We carried on image transmission experiments and attempted to reduce reflections using insulating cork. Moving the buoy along the surface revealed the central area of the tank to have the best communication with Girona. We plan to conduct further experiments with the acoustic modem in a realistic environment. In addition, we are also testing Visible Light Communication (VLC) [3] optical modems, which yielded better results than the acoustic modem. We aim to develop a multimodal system for improved communication under different environmental conditions.Peer Reviewe

Design of a dynamic mock-up bench for testing robotic interventions

[Abstract] When a robotic intervention is required in hazardous facilities (e.g. particle accelerators or nuclear plants), it is commonly not possible to test the operation on-site in advance - a considerable challenge since robotic interventions usually require specific tasks for each location -, precluding the team from demonstrating the feasibility of the operation. It becomes mandatory to develop a particular mock-up for each operation, unsuitable for reusing it in future missions. To solve this problem, a general dynamic mock-up bench was designed, allowing to centre the testing of all remote handled tasks and to choose the best set of robots to perform them

Experiments on zebrafish using mini robot fish prototypes to identify stressors

This paper describes the behavioural tests carried out with real fish to study their behaviour and stress against the different prototypes of mini-robot fish with the aim of identifying stressors and reducing them when designing future robots for aquaculture.Peer Reviewe

The UJI online robot: a distributed architecture for pattern recognition, autonomous grasping and augmented reality

The thesis has been developed at the Intelligent Robotics Laboratory of the University Jaume I (Spain). The objectives are focused on the laboratory's interest fields, which are Telerobotics, Human-Robot Interaction, Manipulation, Visual Servoing, and Service Robotics in general.Basically, the work has consisted of designing and implementing a whole vision based robotic system to control an educational robot via web, by using voice commands like "Grasp the object one" or "Grasp the cube". Our original objectives were upgraded to include the possibility of programming the robot using high level voice commands as well as very quick and significant mouse interactions ("adjustable interaction levels"). Besides this, the User interface has been designed to allow the operator to "predict" the robot movements before sending the programmed commands to the real robot ("Predictive system"). This kind of interface has the particularity of saving network bandwidth and even being used as a whole task specification off-line programming interface. By using a predictive virtual environment and giving more intelligence to the robot supposes a higher level of interaction, which avoids the "cognitive fatigue" associated with many teleoperated systems.The most important novel contributions included in this work are the following:1. Automatic Object Recognition: The system is able to recognize the objects in the robot scenario by using a camera as input (automatic object recognition). This feature allows the user to interact with the robot using high level commands like "Grasp allen".2. Incremental Learning: Due to the fact that the object recognition procedure requires some kind of training before operating efficiently, the UJI Online Robot introduces the In-cremental Learning capability, that means the robot is always learning from the user in-teraction. It means the object recognition module performs better as time goes by.3. Autonomous Grasping: Once an object has been recognized in a scene, the following question is, how can we grasp it? The autonomous grasping module calculates the set of possible grasping points that can be used in order to manipulate an object according to the stability requirements.4. Non-Immersive Virtual Reality: In order to avoid the Internet latency and time-delay effects, the system offers a user interface based on non-immersive virtual reality. Hence, taken the camera data as input, a 3D virtual reality scenario is constructed, which allows specifying tasks that can be confirmed to the real robot in one step.5. Augmented Reality: The 3D virtual scenario is complemented with computer generated information that helps enormously to improve the human performance (e.g. projections of the gripper over the scene is shown, superposition of data in order to avoid robot occlusions, etc.). In some situations the user has more information by controlling the robot from the user interface (web based) than seeing the robot scenario directly.6. Task specification: The system permits specifying complete "Pick & Place" actions, which can be saved into a text file. This robot programming can be accomplished using both, the off-line and the on-line mode.7. Speech recognition/synthesis: To our knowledge this is the first online robot that allows the user to give high-level commands by using simply a microphone. Moreover, the speech synthesizer is integrated into the predictive display, in such a way that the robot re-sponds to the user and asks him/her for confirmation before sending the command to the real scenario.As explained at Chapter I, the novel contributions have been partially published in several sci-entific forums (journals, books, etc.). The most remarkable are for example the acceptance of two papers at the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation 2002, and the publication of an extended article at the Special Issue on web telerobotics of the International Journal on Robotics and Automation (November 2002).We have proved the worth of the system by means of an application in the Education and Training domain. Almost one hundred undergraduate students have been using the web-based interface in order to program "Pick and Place" operations. The results are really encouraging (refer to Chapter VII) for more details. Although we are referring to the project as "The UJI Online Robot", in the Educa-tion and Training domain "The UJI Telerobotic Training System" term has been used instead.Further work is planned to focus on applying Remote Visual Servoing techniques in order to improve the actual system performance. This would avoid having to spend long nights calibrating the robot and the cameras, as well extending the system capabilities to work on less structured environments