Eduard Clotet

Vineyard Yield Estimation Based on the Analysis of High Resolution Images Obtained with Artificial Illumination at Night

This paper presents a method for vineyard yield estimation based on the analysis of high-resolution images obtained with artificial illumination at night. First, this paper assesses different pixel-based segmentation methods in order to detect reddish grapes: threshold based, Mahalanobis distance, Bayesian classifier, linear color model segmentation and histogram segmentation, in order to obtain the best estimation of the area of the clusters of grapes in this illumination conditions. The color spaces tested were the original RGB and the Hue-Saturation-Value (HSV). The best segmentation method in the case of a non-occluded reddish table-grape variety was the threshold segmentation applied to the H layer, with an estimation error in the area of 13.55%, improved up to 10.01% by morphological filtering. Secondly, after segmentation, two procedures for yield estimation based on a previous calibration procedure have been proposed: (1) the number of pixels corresponding to a cluster of grapes is computed and converted directly into a yield estimate; and (2) the area of a cluster of grapes is converted into a volume by means of a solid of revolution, and this volume is converted into a yield estimate; the yield errors obtained were 16% and −17%, respectively.

Assistant Personal Robot (APR): Conception and Application of a Tele-Operated Assisted Living Robot.

This paper presents the technical description, mechanical design, electronic components, software implementation and possible applications of a tele-operated mobile robot designed as an assisted living tool. This robotic concept has been named Assistant Personal Robot (or APR for short) and has been designed as a remotely telecontrolled robotic platform built to provide social and assistive services to elderly people and those with impaired mobility. The APR features a fast high-mobility motion system adapted for tele-operation in plain indoor areas, which incorporates a high-priority collision avoidance procedure. This paper presents the mechanical architecture, electrical fundaments and software implementation required in order to develop the main functionalities of an assistive robot. The APR uses a tablet in order to implement the basic peer-to-peer videoconference and tele-operation control combined with a tactile graphic user interface. The paper also presents the development of some applications proposed in the framework of an assisted living robot.

Measuring Gas Concentration and Wind Intensity in a Turbulent Wind Tunnel with a Mobile Robot

This paper presents the measurement of gas concentration and wind intensity performed with a mobile robot in a custom turbulent wind tunnel designed for experimentation with customizable wind and gas leak sources. This paper presents the representation in different information layers of the measurements obtained in the turbulent wind tunnel under different controlled environmental conditions in order to describe the plume of the gas and wind intensities inside the experimentation chamber. The information layers have been generated from the measurements gathered by individual onboard gas and wind sensors carried out by an autonomous mobile robot. On the one hand, the assumption was that the size and cost of these specialized sensors do not allow the creation of a net of sensors or other measurement alternatives based on the simultaneous use of several sensors, and on the other hand, the assumption is that the information layers created will have application on the development and test of automatic gas source location procedures based on reactive or nonreactive algorithms.

Design, Implementation and Validation of the Three-Wheel Holonomic Motion System of the Assistant Personal Robot (APR)

This paper presents the design, implementation and validation of the three-wheel holonomic motion system of a mobile robot designed to operate in homes. The holonomic motion system is described in terms of mechanical design and electronic control. The paper analyzes the kinematics of the motion system and validates the estimation of the trajectory comparing the displacement estimated with the internal odometry of the motors and the displacement estimated with a SLAM procedure based on LIDAR information. Results obtained in different experiments have shown a difference on less than 30 mm between the position estimated with the SLAM and odometry, and a difference in the angular orientation of the mobile robot lower than 5° in absolute displacements up to 1000 mm.

Development of a High Mobility Assistant Personal Robot for Home Operation

This paper presents the development of an Assistant Personal Robotic (APR) designed with the objective of creating a high reliable robot that can be used in several home applications such as: home safety, elder people supervision and remote assistance, remote presence, etc. In this proposal the APR is remotely controlled by a smartphone or portable tablet with Wi-Fi connectivity. The APR design has taken into consideration safety factors, mobility and physical restrictions of an average home; including opened doors, tight turns, and narrow corridors. The APR design includes several onboard sensors in order to protect the robot and avoid collisions with fixed or moving surrounding objects.

First characterization results obtained in a wind tunnel designed for indoor gas source detection

This paper presents the preliminary characterization results of a custom wind tunnel for designed for performing experiments on locating a volatile gas source with a mobile robot. Such experiments require a previous characterization of the wind tunnel as well as the definition of the configurable agents which are present during the experiments. This paper presents the experimental data gathered from the real environments. This paper shows the behavior of the evolution and diffusion of the gas depending on the gas injection rate, the mobile robot position, and the wind force. The mobile robot is equipped with a LIDAR for self localization, with a photo ionization detector (PID) for gas measurement, and with an anemometer for wind measurement. This paper shows the results obtained in static and dynamic experiments.

A Proposal of a Multi-agent System Implementation for the Control of an Assistant Personal Robot

This paper proposes a control system design for a mobile robot assistant based on a multi-agent architecture. The robotic platform used in this paper is a second generation Assistant Personal Robot (APR-02) with an own design. The control implementation is distributed among different agents in which each one is designed to fulfill a specific functionality such as localization, navigation, task managing, vision, hearing, communications, and environmental supervision. In addition, a set of shared memory instances are implemented to ensure the cohesion among all the agents while working together. The proposed methodology provides robustness and effectiveness by assigning each agent on a single CPU thread.

Collision Avoidance System with Deceleration Control Applied to an Assistant Personal Robot

This paper presents the implementation of a dynamic collision avoidance system with deceleration control designed for Assistant Personal Robots based on the use of a LIDAR sensor.

Outdoor Robotic Companion Based on a Google AndroidTM Smartphone and GPS Guidance

This paper presents an outdoor mobile robotic companion that is guided by GPS. The robotic companion is a wheeled mobile robot that uses a Google Android smartphone as a central processing unit. The mobile robot takes advantage of the integrated smartphone features such as wireless connectivity, USB interface for external electronic boards, and the GPS sensor. Moreover, the mobile robot companion can be controlled by another smartphone in order to define companion behaviors such as “go to location”, “follow me”, and “keep close” all of them based on the use of GPS information. The mobile robot has been tested as in long walks in order to evaluate the effectiveness of the artificial companion effect.

A proposal of low-cost and low-power embedded wireless image sensor node for IoT applications.

Abstract This paper proposes the design of a low-cost, low-power and small size image acquisition device to be used in Internet of Things (IoT) applications which collects, processes and sends image data through a 2.4GHz Wi-Fi connection. The proposed processing unit is a low-cost high-performance STM32F7 microcontroller which is able to acquire and transfer images at full rate keeping the core idle to do image processing. The device is supported by a 1.3 Megapixel CMOS camera sensor, and a low consumption Wi-Fi module. This setup allows to create a very compact image sensor device with a built-in processing algorithm for a specific functionality in IoT. In this work, the device hardware architecture is described and discussed, and a comparison with alternative hardware solutions are presented.