Juan A. Pastor

Robots in radioactive environments

With improving technology and the growing perception of the need to keep human workers away from high radiation areas, more competitive robotic systems are increasingly becoming available. This article describes our ten years of experience in developing telerobotic systems for maintenance operations in the Spanish nuclear industry. It also describes a teleoperation platform that can be used with standard robots or with specially designed service robots. The modular architecture of this teleoperation platform has allowed the reuse of software components designed for very different applications and drastically reduce development lead time.

Integrating aspects in software architectures: PRISMA applied to robotic tele-operated systems

Aspect-Oriented Software Development (AOSD) has emerged as a new approach to develop software systems by improving their structure, reuse, maintenance and evolution properties. It is being applied to all stages of the software life cycle. In this paper, we present the PRISMA approach, which introduces AOSD in software architectures. PRISMA is characterized by integrating aspects as first-order citizens of software architectures. This paper shows how the PRISMA methodology is applied to develop a case study of the tele-operation system domain. We illustrate how the PRISMA approach can improve the development and maintenance processes of these kinds of industrial systems.

Introducing Safety Requirements Traceability Support in Model-Driven Development of Robotic Applications

Requirements traceability is a technique intended to help determine the impact of changes in software design, support their integration, preserve knowledge, and assure the quality and correctness of the overall system. This paper presents an approach that considers traceability of safety requirements in the context of model-driven development of teleoperated services robots. The combination of the model-driven approach with safety requirements traceability makes it possible to construct systems using techniques for automatically identifying, managing, and mitigating risks so that these systems are safe enough to work in a particular environment. To secure the advantages of these mechanisms, we have developed a tool that provides users with traceability reports after applying model transformations. These reports enable developers to determine whether or not all safety requirements have been considered, the impact of changing a safety requirement, and how they are considered both in architectural decisions and code implementations.

A cost-effective robotic solution for the cleaning of ships' hulls

Hull cleaning before repainting is a key operation in the maintenance of ships. For more than a decade, a means to improve this operation has been sought through robotization and the use of different techniques such as grit blasting and ultra high pressure water jetting. Despite this, it continues to be standard practice in shipyards that this process is carried out manually. This paper presents a family of robots that aims to offer important improvements to the process as well as satisfying, to a great extent, all the operative requirements of efficiency, security, and respect for the environment that shipyards nowadays demand. It is described the family of devices with emphasis on the mechanical design. This set consists of two vertical robotic towers and a robot climber. In addition, it is shown the control architecture of the global system. Finally, operative results are presented together with a comparison between the performance achieved in shipyards through the use of these robots and those obtained with a manual process.

Software Architecture for a Robot Teleoperation System

Abstract The success of certain applications heavily depends on its capability to be modified and adapted to different operations and environments. This paper presents the main issues in the development of a robot teleoperation system whose main goal is to operate a robot that performs maintenance activities in nuclear plants. The capability to adapt its operation to different jobs and operational environments is one of the most important requirements. The approach taken is based on the development of a generic software architecture for this kind of systems. A domain analysis was performed for identifying the most commonly used components in these applications. The resulting architecture was implemented integrating code written in different languages (Ada and C) and commercial tools. The resulting architecture has been successfully tested. The robot controller (which is the most important subsystem) has been reused for implementing specialized mechanical robot tools.

Ship shape in Europe: cooperative robots in the ship repair industry

This paper presents a robotic system for hull grit blasting that achieves high-quality surface preparation while drastically reducing waste with zero emissions to the environment. This technology is integrated in a fully automated, low-cost blasting system. This paper also reports on the development of an Environmental Friendly and Cost-effective Technology for Coating Removal System by a European consortium, which brings together shipyards, equipment manufacturers and research centers.

Robots for hull ship cleaning

A critical operation for ship maintenance is periodical hull blasting before re-painting. Up to date some partial solutions exist like blasting turbines for vertical surfaces or water blasting units for striping. This paper presents the EFTCoR family of robots, designed by DSIE, that represent an integral solution for hull blasting that achieves the efficiency, safety and environmental requirements of shipyards. The paper also shows the results of the tests performed under real working conditions and a brief summary of the architectural framework for the robotic systems development.

An architectural framework for modeling teleoperated service robots

Teleoperated robots are used to perform tasks that human operators cannot carry out because of the nature of the tasks themselves or the hostile nature of the working environment. Though many control architectures have been defined for developing these kinds of systems reusing common components, none has attained all its objectives because of the high variability of system behaviors. This paper presents a new architectural approach that takes into account the latest advances in robotic architectures while adopting a component-oriented approach. This approach provides a common framework for developing robotized systems with very different behaviors and for integrating intelligent components. The architecture is currently being used, tested and improved in the development of a family of teleoperated robots which perform cleaning of ship-hull surfaces.

Web-based activities around a digital model railroad platform

This paper describes a laboratory equipped for the teaching of advanced courses in computer engineering, computer science, information systems, and software engineering. Other related work areas include computer vision, real-time systems, programming languages, and computer architectures. The laboratory has been built around a digital model railroad platform controlled by a client-server system using an object-oriented language. The characteristics of this laboratory are suitable for implementing Web activities for educational purposes. The paper also includes an overview of the system in which most of these topics have been considered and a summary of the relationship with the most relevant international curricula in computing.

A reference control architecture for service robots implemented on a climbing vehicle

Teleoperated robots are used to perform hazardous tasks that human operators cannot carry out. The purpose of this paper is to present a new architecture (ACROSET) for the development of these systems that takes into account the current advances in robotic architectures while adopting the component-oriented approach. The architecture is currently being used, tested and improved in the development of an heterogeneous family of robots in the context of the EFTCoR project. It is also presented the Ada’95 implementation of ACROSET for a climbing robot.