Pedro Sousa

Integrating manufacturing systems using ISO 10303 (STEP): An overview of UNINOVA projects

This paper presents an historical review of the tools developed and the experience acquired by UNINOVA, the Institute for the Development of New Technologies, during the last eight years, integrating manufacturing systems using ISO 10303-STEP, in the scope of international industrial projects. The integration of commercial applications and standards has been one of the principal concerns of the work done. To promote open and scaleable solutions towards an advanced product data management supporting product life-cycle activities, a general architecture and a toolkit able to handle the standard and aid the integration tasks, was designed, developed and improved throughout those years by UNINOVA, and this provides the required mechanisms. The scope of the case studies presented here covers the furniture and road construction industries through four European projects: CIMTOFI, RoadRobot, funStep and ECOS, where the integration of the companys internal (manufacturing) and external (business) aspects are considered. The global information system architecture based on standard models is presented, as well the implementation aspects of the developments for industry. The steps followed to integrate the systems, and the results obtained in these manufacturing environments are also described and commented on.

Architecture and Message Protocol Proposal for Robot’s Integration in Multi-Agent Surveillance System

Nowadays, surveillance systems are less dependent of humans’ interactions, mostly in event’s detection. However, there still are tasks to be performed by humans that could be delegated to autonomous robots. The integration of an autonomous service robot, as an agent, in a multi-agent surveillance system can reduce even more humans’ dependency. This paper proposes a new architecture and a communication protocol that integrates ServRobot’s autonomous robot into DVA’s surveillance system. This integration allows the DVA’s system to use the robot as a mobile unit for validation of triggered events, to perform surveillance missions and to gather sensors information.

Review on Context Classification in Robotics

In this paper a review on context and environment classification is presented with focus on autonomous service robots. A comprehensive research was made in order to classify the most relevant techniques, models and frameworks in use today, as well as to present possible future applications for these previous works. Most of the work done in this area has been focused in a general classification. In this sense a new possible application scenario is described and the corresponding supporting architecture.