Bernardo Cunha

Promoting Independent Task Performance by Persons with Severe Developmental Disabilities through a New Computer-Aided System:

This study involved two experiments. In Experiment 1, a computer-aided system for promoting task performance by 6 persons with severe developmental disabilities was compared with a card system. The computer-aided system was portable and presented pictorial task instructions (one instruction per step) and prompts. In Experiment 2, the same systemwas used, but the number of instruction occasions was reduced. In one condition, the system presented all the instructions used in Experiment 1 but mostly in clusters rather than individually. In another, the system presented part of the Experiment 1 instructions. Three Experiment 1 participants also served in Experiment 2. Experiment 1 results indicated all 6 participants had higher percentages of correct steps with the computer system and preferred it to the card system. Experiment 2 results indicated that the condition in which the instructions were clusteredwas more effective for maintaining correct task performance. Implications of the findings were discussed.

Vital-Jacket ® : A wearable wireless vital signs monitor for patients' mobility in cardiology and sports

The Vital Jacket® (VJ) is a wearable vital signs monitoring system that joins textiles with microelectronics. After several years of development within the university lab, it has been licensed to a start-up company. Its evolutions have focused on cardiology and sports and scaled down from a jacket to a single T-shirt. The VJ manufacturing process has recently been certified to comply with the standards ISO9001 and ISO13485 and the cardiology version was approved as a Medical Device for the European market compliant with the MDD directive 42/93/CE, holding the CE1011 mark. The authors intend to wear VJs during the days of the congress to demonstrate its usefulness in first hand and will exemplify the different scenarios of use of this innovative wearable intelligent garment.

VICAID: Development and evaluation of a palmtop‐based job aid for workers with severe developmental disabilities

The development of technologies to assist people with severe and profound developmental disabilities to engage in constructive activity without constant support from carers may assist such persons to participate fully in vocational and other occupational activities. We describe the development, evaluation and use of VICAID, a system based on a radically simplified palmtop computer. The VICAID system enables a person with a developmental disability to access pictorial instructions designed to help him or her in the accurate completion of tasks. It also provides reminders to access the instructions, and/or alerts a job coach or supervisor should the workers interaction with the system suggest that they are having difficulty with a task. Evaluative studies show that (1) the system is more effective than alternative supports (pictorial instructions presented in booklets) in maintaining accurate task performance, (2) that the system is preferred to such booklets by most users with severe disabilities, and (3) that it can be used in real work settings. Future development of the system will require attention to be paid to issues of training job-coaches and support workers in its setting-up and maintenance.

Obtaining the Inverse Distance Map from a Non-SVP Hyperbolic Catadioptric Robotic Vision System

The use of single viewpoint catadioptric vision systems is a common approach in mobile robotics, despite the constraints imposed by those systems. A general solution to calculate the robot centered distances map on non-SVP catadioptric setups, exploring a back-propagation ray-tracing approach and the mathematical properties of the mirror surface is discussed in this paper. Results from this technique applied in the robots of the CAMBADA team (Cooperative Autonomous Mobile Robots with Advanced Distributed Architecture) are presented, showing the effectiveness of the solution.

Hierarchical distributed architectures for autonomous mobile robots: A case study

Robots are becoming commonplace in unstructured and dynamic environments, ranging from homes to offices, public sites, catastrophe sites, military scenarios. Achieving adequate performance in such circumstances requires complex control architectures, mixing adequately deliberative and reactive capabilities. This mixing needs to be properly addressed from both the software and hardware architectures point of view and, particularly, the mapping of the former onto the latter, in order to reduce mutual interference between concurrent behaviors and support the desired coordination with adequate level of reactivity. This paper discusses the benefits of using hierarchical distributed hardware architectures and presents the case study of the CAMBADA soccer robots developed at the University of Aveiro, Portugal. These robots use a distributed hardware architecture with a central computer to carry out vision sensing, global coordination and deliberative functions and a low-level distributed sensing and actuation system based on a set of simple microcontroller nodes interconnected with a Controller Area Network (CAN).

CAMBADA Soccer Team: from Robot Architecture to Multiagent Coordination

Robotic soccer is nowadays a popular research domain in the area of multi-robot systems. RoboCup is an international joint project to promote research in artificial intelligence, robotics and related fields. RoboCup chose soccer as the main problem aiming at innovations to be applied for socially relevant problems. It includes several competition leagues, each one with a specific emphasis, some only at software level, others at both hardware and software, with single or multiple agents, cooperative and competitive. In the context of RoboCup, the Middle Size League (MSL) is one of the most challenging. In this league, each team is composed of up to 5 robots with a maximum size of 50cm× 50cm, 80cm height and a maximumweight of 40Kg, playing in a field of 18m× 12m. The rules of the game are similar to the official FIFA rules, with minor changes required to adapt them for the playing robots CAMBADA, Cooperative Autonomous Mobile roBots with Advanced Distributed Architecture, is the MSL Soccer team from the University of Aveiro. The project started in 2003, coordinated by the Transverse Activity on Intelligent Robotics group of the Institute of Electronic and Telematic Engineering of Aveiro (IEETA). This project involves people working on several areas for building the mechanical structure of the robot, its hardware architecture and controllers (Almeida et al., 2002; Azevedo et al., 2007) and the software development in areas such as image analysis and processing (Caleiro et al., 2007; Cunha et al., 2007; Martins et al., 2008; Neves et al., 2007; 2008), sensor and information fusion (Silva et al., 2008; 2009), reasoning and control (Lau et al., 2008), cooperative sensing approach based on a Real-Time Database (Almeida et al., 2004), communications among robots (Santos et al., 2009; 2007) and the development of an efficient basestation. The main contribution of this chapter is to present the new advances in the areas described above involving the development of an MSL team of soccer robots, taking the example of the CAMBADA team that won the RoboCup 2008 and attained the third place in the last edition of the MSL tournament at RoboCup 2009. CAMBADA also won the last three editions

Autonomous Configuration of Parameters in Robotic Digital Cameras

In the past few years, the use of digital cameras in robotic applications has been increasing significantly. The main areas of application of these robots are the industry and military, where these cameras are used as sensors that allow the robot to take the relevant information of the surrounding environment and making decisions. To extract information from the acquired image, such as shapes or colors, the configuration of the camera parameters, such as exposure, gain, brightness or white-balance, is very important. In this paper, we propose an algorithm for the autonomous setup of the most important parameters of digital cameras for robotic applications. The proposed algorithm uses the intensity histogram of the images and a black and a white area, known in advance, to estimate the parameters of the camera. We present experimental results that show the effectiveness of our algorithms. The images acquired after calibration show good properties for further processing, independently of the initial configuration of the camera.

RoboCup MSL : history, accomplishments, current status and challenges ahead

The RoboCup Middle-Size League (MSL) is one of the founding leagues of the annual RoboCup competition. Ever since its birth it has been a league where development of hard- and software happens simultaneously in a real-world decentralized multi-robot soccer setting. Over the years the MSL achieved scientific results in robust design of mechatronic systems, sensor-fusion, tracking, world modelling and distributed multi-agent coordination. Because of recent rule changes which actively stimulate passing, matches in RoboCup MSL have become increasingly appealing to a general audience. Approximately five thousand spectators were present during last years final match. In this paper we present our plan to build on this momentum to further boost scientific progress and to attract new teams to the league. We also give a historical overview and discuss the current state of the MSL competition in terms of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.

Self-calibration of Colormetric Parameters in Vision Systems for Autonomous Soccer Robots

Vision is an extremely important sense for both humans and robots, providing detailed information about the environment. In the past few years, the use of digital cameras in robotic applications has been significantly increasing. The use of digital cameras as the main sensor allows the robot to capture the relevant information of the surrounding environment and take decisions. A robust vision system should be able to reliably detect objects and present an accurate representation of the world to higher-level processes, not only under ideal light conditions, but also under changing lighting intensity and color balance. To extract information from the acquired image, shapes or colors, the configuration of the colormetric camera parameters, such as exposure, gain, brightness or white-balance, among others, is very important. In this paper, we propose an algorithm for the self-calibration of the most important parameters of digital cameras for robotic applications. The algorithms extract some statistical information from the acquired images, namely the intensity histogram, saturation histogram and information from a black and a white area of the image, to then estimate the colormetric parameters of the camera. We present experimental results with two robotic platforms, a wheeled robot and a humanoid soccer robot, in challenging environments: soccer fields, both indoor and outdoor, that show the effectiveness of our algorithms. The images acquired after calibration show good properties for further processing, independently of the initial configuration of the camera and the type and amount of light of the environment, both indoor and outdoor.

A modular real-time vision system for humanoid robots

Robotic vision is nowadays one of the most challenging branches of robotics. In the case of a humanoid robot, a robust vision system has to provide an accurate representation of the surrounding world and to cope with all the constraints imposed by the hardware architecture and the locomotion of the robot. Usually humanoid robots have low computational capabilities that limit the complexity of the developed algorithms. Moreover, their vision system should perform in real time, therefore a compromise between complexity and processing times has to be found. This paper presents a reliable implementation of a modular vision system for a humanoid robot to be used in color-coded environments. From image acquisition, to camera calibration and object detection, the system that we propose integrates all the functionalities needed for a humanoid robot to accurately perform given tasks in color-coded environments. The main contributions of this paper are the implementation details that allow the use of the vision system in real-time, even with low processing capabilities, the innovative self-calibration algorithm for the most important parameters of the camera and its modularity that allows its use with different robotic platforms. Experimental results have been obtained with a NAO robot produced by Aldebaran, which is currently the robotic platform used in the RoboCup Standard Platform League, as well as with a humanoid build using the Bioloid Expert Kit from Robotis. As practical examples, our vision system can be efficiently used in real time for the detection of the objects of interest for a soccer playing robot (ball, field lines and goals) as well as for navigating through a maze with the help of color-coded clues. In the worst case scenario, all the objects of interest in a soccer game, using a NAO robot, with a single core 500Mhz processor, are detected in less than 30ms. Our vision system also includes an algorithm for self-calibration of the camera parameters as well as two support applications that can run on an external computer for color calibration and debugging purposes. These applications are built based on a typical client-server model, in which the main vision pipe runs as a server, allowing clients to connect and distantly monitor its performance, without interfering with its efficiency. The experimental results that we acquire prove the efficiency of our approach both in terms of accuracy and processing time. Despite having been developed for the NAO robot, the modular design of the proposed vision system allows it to be easily integrated into other humanoid robots with a minimum number of changes, mostly in the acquisition module.