Elisa Tosello

ROS-I Interface for COMAU Robots

The following paper presents the ROS-I interface developed to control Comau manipulators. Initially, the Comau controller allowed users to command a real robot thanks to motion primitives formulated through a Comau motion planning library. Now, either a ROS or a non ROS -compliant platform can move either a real or a virtual Comau robot using any motion planning library. Comau modules have been wrapped within ROS and a virtual model of a Comau robot has been created. The manufacturer controller has been innovatively used to drive both the real and the simulated automata.

WorkCellSimulator: a 3d simulator for intelligent manufacturing

This paper presents WorkCellSimulator, a software platform that allows to manage an environment for the simulation of robot tasks. It uses the most advanced artificial intelligence algorithms in order to define the production process, by controlling one or more robot manipulators and machineries present in the work cell. The main goal of this software is to assist the user in defining customized production processes which involve specific automated cells. It has been developed by IT+Robotics, a spin-off company of the University of Padua, founded in 2005 from the collaboration between young researchers in the field of Robotics and a group of professors from the Department of Information Engineering, University of Padua.

Cloud-Based Task Planning for Smart Robots

This paper proposes an Open Semantic Framework for knowledge acquisition of cognitive robots performing manipulation tasks. It integrates a Cloud-based Engine, which extracts discriminative features from the objects and generates their manipulation actions, and an Ontology, where the Engine saves data for future accesses. The Engine offloads robots by transferring computation on the Cloud. The Ontology favors knowledge sharing among manipulator robots by defining a common manipulation vocabulary. It extends the work proposed by the IEEE RAS Ontology for Robotics and Automation Working Group by covering the manipulation task domain. During ontological data insertion, data duplication is avoided by providing a novel efficient interlinking algorithm. During their retrieval, visual data processing is optimized by using a cascade hashing algorithm that intelligently accesses data. No training is required for object recognition and manipulation because of the adoption of a human-robot cooperation. The framework is based on the open-source Robot Operating System.

A Constraint Based Motion Optimization System for Quality Inspection Process Improvement

This paper presents a motion optimization system for an industrial quality inspection process where a vision device coupled with a manipulator robot arm is able to perform quality and completeness inspection on a complex solid part. In order to be deployed in an industrial production plant, the proposed system has been engineered and integrated as a module of an offline simulator, called WorkCellSimulator, conceived to simulate robot tasks in industrial environments. The novelty of the paper concerns the introduction of time constraints into the motion planning algorithms. Then, these algorithms have been deeply integrated with artificial intelligence techniques in order to optimize the inspection cycle time. This integration makes the application suitable for time-constrained processes like, e.g., autonomous industrial painting or autonomous thermo-graphic detection of cracks in metallic and composite materials.

Property investigation of chemical plume tracing algorithm in an insect using bio-machine hybrid system

In this study, we investigated an aspect of the chemical plume tracing behavior of an insect by using a bio-machine hybrid system. We implemented an experimental system by which an insect brain was connected to a robot body. We observed th neural responses to external disturbances and transitions at changes in the motor gain of the robot body. Based on the results of the experiments, we identified a simple control model for the angular velocity of the behavior. We subsequently investigated the effect of the rotational velocity by using information entropy in computer simulations.