Robots para los ancianos

Producción CientíficaLos avances tecnológicos de los últimos años están favoreciendo la aparición de robots capaces de interaccionar con los humanos siguiendo reglas y comportamientos sociales, tal y como explica el artículo de National Geographic. El desarrollo de sistemas mecatrónicos con alta capacidad gestual, sistemas de reconocimiento de voz, agentes conversacionales y sistemas perceptivos basados en aprendizaje profundo hacen que cada vez estemos más cerca de relacionarnos con las máquinas de forma similar a como lo hacemos con otras personas. No obstante, los robots sociales aún tienen limitaciones, principalmente carencias perceptivas y cognitivas. Además, mientras que cualquier otro tipo de robot puede desarrollarse y validarse en el laboratorio, los robots sociales deben hacerlo en un entorno con humanos. La solución requiere la experimentación intensiva en entornos controlados, acotando inicialmente la funcionalidad para luego ir ampliando progresivamente el campo de aplicación. Una de sus funcionalidades más deseables es que contribuyan a combatir la soledad de los mayores y les ayuden a mantenerse activos física y mentalmente

Review of Display Technologies Focusing on Power Consumption

Producción CientíficaThis paper provides an overview of the main manufacturing technologies of displays, focusing on those with low and ultra-low levels of power consumption, which make them suitable for current societal needs. Considering the typified value obtained from the manufacturer’s specifications, four technologies—Liquid Crystal Displays, electronic paper, Organic Light-Emitting Display and Electroluminescent Displays—were selected in a first iteration. For each of them, several features, including size and brightness, were assessed in order to ascertain possible proportional relationships with the rate of consumption. To normalize the comparison between different display types, relative units such as the surface power density and the display frontal intensity efficiency were proposed. Organic light-emitting display had the best results in terms of power density for small display sizes. For larger sizes, it performs less satisfactorily than Liquid Crystal Displays in terms of energy efficiency.Junta de Castilla y León (Programa de apoyo a proyectos de investigación-Ref. VA036U14)Junta de Castilla y León (programa de apoyo a proyectos de investigación - Ref. VA013A12-2)Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad (Grant DPI2014-56500-R

Optimization and improvement of a robotics gaze control system using LSTM networks

Producción CientíficaGaze control represents an important issue in the interaction between a robot and humans. Specifically, deciding who to pay attention to in a multi-party conversation is one way to improve the naturalness of a robot in human-robot interaction. This control can be carried out by means of two different models that receive the stimuli produced by the participants in an interaction, either an on-center off-surround competitive network or a recurrent neural network. A system based on a competitive neural network is able to decide who to look at with a smooth transition in the focus of attention when significant changes in stimuli occur. An important aspect in this process is the configuration of the different parameters of such neural network. The weights of the different stimuli have to be computed to achieve human-like behavior. This article explains how these weights can be obtained by solving an optimization problem. In addition, a new model using a recurrent neural network with LSTM layers is presented. This model uses the same set of stimuli but does not require its weighting. This new model is easier to train, avoiding manual configurations, and offers promising results in robot gaze control. The experiments carried out and some results are also presented.Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades (project TI2018-096652-B-I00)Junta de Castilla y León - Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (grant VA233P18

Dynamic Facial Emotion Recognition Oriented to HCI Applications

Producción CientíficaAs part of a multimodal animated interface previously presented in [38], in this paper we describe a method for dynamic recognition of displayed facial emotions on low resolution streaming images. First, we address the detection of Action Units of the Facial Action Coding System upon Active Shape Models and Gabor filters. Normalized outputs of the Action Unit recognition step are then used as inputs for a neural network which is based on real cognitive systems architecture, and consists on a habituation network plus a competitive network. Both the competitive and the habituation layer use differential equations thus taking into account the dynamic information of facial expressions through time. Experimental results carried out on live video sequences and on the Cohn-Kanade face database show that the proposed method provides high recognition hit rates.Junta de Castilla y León (Programa de apoyo a proyectos de investigación-Ref. VA036U14)Junta de Castilla y León (programa de apoyo a proyectos de investigación - Ref. VA013A12-2)Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad (Grant DPI2014-56500-R

A bellboy robot: Study of the effects of robot behaviour on user engagement and comfort

Producción CientíficaThis paper provides the results of various trial experiments in a hotel environment carried out using Sacarino, an interactive bellboy robot. We analysed which aspects of the robot design and behaviour are relevant in terms of user engagement and comfort when interacting with our social robot. The experiments carried out focused on the influence over proxemics, duration and effectiveness of the interaction taking into account three dichotomous factors related with the robot design and behaviour: robot embodiment (with/without robotic body), status of the robot (awake/asleep) and who starts communication (robot/user). Results show that users tend to maintain a personal distance when interacting with an embodied robot and that embodiment engages users in maintaining longer interactions. On the other hand, including a greeting model in a robot is useful in terms of engaging users to maintain longer interactions, and that an active-looking robot is more attractive to the participants, producing longer interactions than in the case of a passive-looking robot.Junta de Castilla y León (Programa de apoyo a proyectos de investigación-Ref. VA036U14)Junta de Castilla y León (Programa de apoyo a proyectos de investigación-Ref. VA013A12-2)Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad (Grant DPI2014-56500-R

An architecture for the integration of robots and sensors for the care of the elderly in an ambient assisted living environment

Producción CientíficaIn this paper, the development of an assistance system for the elderly that combines robots with a network of sensors and actuators is described. The architecture was developed with the aim of interaction. With this reason, the system incorporates particular solutions that are adaptable to the needs of the user, such as a pyramid interaction system, a telepresence robot, a biometric bracelet, and others. In the software, the system is composed of two servers: local and web. The local server is in charge of different modules that interact with direct users and their needs. The web server provides different facilities to external users to access the system remotely. A use case is analyzed where the proposed system is validated.Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades - Programa Retos Investigación (project. RTI2018-096652-B-I00)Junta de Castilla y León y FEDER - Programa de Apoyo a Proyectos de Investigación (project VA233P18

Jornadas de Robótica Educación y Bioingeniería 2022

Producción CientíficaEn este artículo se presenta el desarrollo de un robot de cables para la limpieza de ventanas. El sistema está compuesto por una cesta con rodillo escamoteable, sistema pulverizador de agua y escurridor. La cesta está suspendida mediante dos grúas motorizadas que permiten posicionar la cesta en cualquier ubicación de una fachada. El sistema está programado sobre tres controladores Esp32 que se comunican de forma inalámbrica mediante protocolo ESPNOW. El manejo se realiza mediante un mando a distancia que permite el movimiento y accionamiento de la cesta de forma manual y programar trayectorias mediante comandos GCODE

Design of a Realistic Robotic Head based on Action Coding System

Producción CientíficaIn this paper, the development of a robotic head able to move and show di erent emotions is addressed. The movement and emotion generation system has been designed following the human facial muscu- lature. Starting from the Facial Action Coding System (FACS), we have built a 26 actions units model that is able to produce the most relevant movements and emotions of a real human head. The whole work has been carried out in two steps. In the rst step, a mechanical skeleton has been designed and built, in which the di erent actuators have been inserted. In the second step, a two-layered silicon skin has been manu- factured, on which the di erent actuators have been inserted following the real muscle-insertions, for performing the di erent movements and gestures. The developed head has been integrated in a high level be- havioural architecture, and pilot experiments with 10 users regarding emotion recognition and mimicking have been carried out.Junta de Castilla y León (Programa de apoyo a proyectos de investigación-Ref. VA036U14)Junta de Castilla y León (programa de apoyo a proyectos de investigación - Ref. VA013A12-2)Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad (Grant DPI2014-56500-R

Long-Term Assessment of a Service Robot in a Hotel Environment

Producción CientíficaThe long term evaluation of the Sacarino robot is presented in this paper. This study aimed to improve the robot`s capabilities as a bellboy in a hotel; walking alongside the guests, providing information about the city and the hotel and providing hotel-related services. The paper establishes a three-stage assessment methodology based on the continuous measurement of a set of metrics regard- ing navigation and interaction with guests. Sacarino has been automatically collecting information in a real hotel environment for long periods of time. The acquired information has been analyzed and used to improve the robot's opera- tion in the hotel through successive re nements. Some interesting considerations and useful hints for the researchers of service robots have been extracted from the analysis of the results.Junta de Castilla y León (Programa de apoyo a proyectos de investigación-Ref. VA036U14)Junta de Castilla y León (programa de apoyo a proyectos de investigación - Ref. VA013A12-2)Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad (Grant DPI2014-56500-R

Crack detection in concrete tunnels using a gabor filter invariant to rotation

Producción CientíficaIn this article, a system for the detection of cracks in concrete tunnel surfaces, based on image sensors, is presented. Both data acquisition and processing are covered. Linear cameras and proper lighting are used for data acquisition. The required resolution of the camera sensors and the number of cameras is discussed in terms of the crack size and the tunnel type. Data processing is done by applying a new method called Gabor filter invariant to rotation, allowing the detection of cracks in any direction. The parameter values of this filter are set by using a modified genetic algorithm based on the Differential Evolution optimization method. The detection of the pixels belonging to cracks is obtained to a balanced accuracy of 95.27%, thus improving the results of previous approaches.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad under project Ref. IPT-2012-0980-370000Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación, research project Ref. DPI2014-56500Junta de Castilla y León Ref. VA036U14