Timed-Elastic Bands for Manipulation Motion Planning

© 2019 IEEE. Motion planning is one of the main problems studied in the field of robotics. However, it is still challenging for the state-of-the-art methods to handle multiple conditions that allow better paths to be found. For example, considering joint limits, path smoothness and a mixture of Cartesian and joint-space constraints at the same time pose a significant challenge for many of them. This letter proposes to use timed-elastic bands for representing the manipulation motion planning problem, allowing to apply continuously optimized constraints to the problem during the search for a solution. Due to the nature of our method, it is highly extensible with new constraints or optimization objectives. The proposed approach is compared against state-of-the-art methods in various manipulation scenarios. The results show that it is more consistent and less variant, while performing in a comparable manner to that of the state of the art. This behavior allows the proposed method to set a lower-bound performance guarantee for other methods to build upon

ESROCOS: a robotic operating system for space and terrestrial applications

ESROCOS (http://www.h2020-esrocos.eu) is a European Project in the frame of the PERASPERA SRC, (http://www.h2020-peraspera.eu/), targeting the design of a Robot Control Operating Software (RCOS) for space robotics applications. The goal of the ESROCOS project is to provide an open-source framework to assist in the development of flight software for space robots, providing adequate features and performance with space-grade Reliability, Availability, Maintainability and Safety (RAMS) properties. This paper presents the ESROCOS project and summarizes the approach and the current status

The ARROWS project: Adapting and developing robotics technologies for underwater archaeology

ARchaeological RObot systems for the World's Seas (ARROWS) EU Project proposes to adapt and develop low-cost Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) technologies to significantly reduce the cost of archaeological operations, covering the full extent of archaeological campaign. ARROWS methodology is to identify the archaeologists requirements in all phases of the campaign and to propose related technological solutions. Starting from the necessities identified by archaeological project partners in collaboration with the Archaeology Advisory Group, a board composed of European archaeologists from outside ARROWS, the aim is the development of a heterogeneous team of cooperating AUVs capable of comply with a complete archaeological autonomous mission. Three new different AUVs have been designed in the framework of the project according to the archaeologists' indications: MARTA, characterized by a strong hardware modularity for ease of payload and propulsion systems configuration change; U-C AT, a turtle inspired bio-mimetic robot devoted to shipwreck penetration and A-Size AUV, a vehicle of small dimensions and weight easily deployable even by a single person. These three vehicles will cooperate within the project with AUVs already owned by ARROWS partners exploiting a distributed high-level control software based on the World Model Service (WMS), a storage system for the environment knowledge, updated in real-time through online payload data process, in the form of an ontology. The project includes also the development of a cleaning tool for well-known artifacts maintenance operations. The paper presents the current stage of the project that will lead to overall system final demonstrations, during Summer 2015, in two different scenarios, Sicily (Italy) and Baltic Sea (Estonia

Delphinidin diminishes in vitro interferon-γ and interleukin-17 producing cells in patients with psoriatic disease

The anthocyanidin delphinidin reduces psoriasiform lesions and inflammatory mediators in human cell culture systems. Its role in psoriatic disease has not yet been investigated. We assessed delphinidin’s in vitro immunomodulatory effect on ex vivo stimulated peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) from 50 individuals [26 with psoriasis, 10 with psoriatic arthritis (PsA) and 14 healthy controls (HCs)]. Cells were either left untreated or stimulated with PMA plus ionomycin in the presence or absence of delphinidin. Intracellular production of interferon-γ (IFNγ), interleukin-17A (IL-17A), and interleukin-10 (IL-10) was measured flow cytometrically. Delphinidin dose-dependently reduced IFNγ+ T cells from patients and HCs. The mean IFNγ decrease in CD4+ T subpopulations was 42.5 ± 28% for psoriasis patients, 51.8 ± 21.5% for PsA patients and 49 ± 17% for HCs (p < 0.001 for all). Similarly, IFNγ reduction in CD8+ T cells was 34 ± 21.6% for psoriasis patients, 47.1 ± 22.8% for PsA and 44.8 ± 14.3% for HCs (P < 0.001 for all). An inhibitory effect of delphinidin was also noted in IFNγ producing NKs and NKTs from psoriasis individuals. Delphinidin also significantly decreased IL-17+ CD4+ T cells in all tested subjects, with marginal effect on the increase of IL-10-producing T regulatory subsets. In conclusion, delphinidin exerts a profound in vitro anti-inflammatory effect in psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis by inhibiting IFNγ+ innate and adaptive cells and T helper (Th) 17 cells. If this effect is also exerted in vivo, delphinidin may be regarded as a nutraceutical with immunosuppressive potential. © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature

The ARROWS Project: Robotic technologies for underwater archaeology

The paper summarizes the main results achieved during the three-year European FP7 ARROWS project (ARchaeological RObot systems for the Worlds Seas). ARROWS concluded at the end of August 2015 and proposed to adapt and develop low-cost Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) technologies to reduce the operational cost of typical underwater archaeological campaigns. The methodology used by ARROWS researchers identified archaeologists requirements for all the phases of a campaign. These were based on guidelines issued by the project Archaeology Advisory Group (AAG), which comprised of many European archaeologists belonging to the consortium. One of the main goals of the ARROWS project was the development of a heterogeneous team of cooperating AUVs; these comprised of prototypes developed in the project and commercially available vehicles. Three different AUVs have been built and tested at sea: MARTA, characterized by flexible hardware modularity for easy adaption of payload and propulsion systems, U-CAT, a turtle inspired bio-mimetic robot devoted to shipwreck penetration and A-Size AUV, a small light weight vehicle which is easily deployable by a single person. The project also included the development of a cleaning tool for well-known artefacts and maintenance operations. Results from the official final demonstrations of the project, held in Sicily and in Estonia during Summer 2015, are presented in the paper as an experimental proof of the validity of the developed robotic tools