Rodrigo Ventura

Immersive 3-D teleoperation of a search and rescue robot using a head-mounted display

This paper proposes an alternative approach to common teleoperation methods found in search and rescue (SAR) robots. Using a head mounted display (HMD) the operator is capable of perceiving rectified images of the robot world in 3-D, as transmitted by a pair of stereo cameras onboard the robot. The HMD is also equipped with an integrated head-tracker, which permits controlling the robot motion in such a way that the cameras follow the operators head movements, thus providing an immersive sensation to him. We claim that this approach is a more intuitive and less error prone teleoperation of the robot. The proposed system was evaluated by a group of subjects, and the results suggest that it may yield significant benefits to the effectiveness of the SAR mission. In particular, the users depth perception and situational awareness improved significantly when using the HMD, and their performance during a simulated SAR operation was also enhanced, both in terms of operation time and on successful identification of objects of interest.

CoBots: Collaborative robots servicing multi-floor buildings

In this video we briefly illustrate the progress and contributions made with our mobile, indoor, service robots CoBots (Collaborative Robots), since their creation in 2009. Many researchers, present authors included, aim for autonomous mobile robots that robustly perform service tasks for humans in our indoor environments. The efforts towards this goal have been numerous and successful, and we build upon them. However, there are clearly many research challenges remaining until we can experience intelligent mobile robots that are fully functional and capable in our human environments.

RAPOSA: Semi-Autonomous Robot for Rescue Operations

This work describes a semi-autonomous robot for rescue operations, nicknamed RAPOSA (FOX in English). The robot was designed and built to operate in outdoor environments hostile to the human presence, such as debris resulting from the collapse of built structures, and is targeted to the tele-operated detection of potential survivors using a set of specific sensors whose information is transmitted to a remote human operator. RAPOSAs mechanical structure is composed of a main body and a front body, whose locomotion is supported on tracked wheels, allowing motion even when the robot is upside down. The front body has variable tilting capabilities, providing means to overcome edges higher than the robot main body (e.g., when climbing a stair) and is also useful to grab the lower ground when only the main body has ground contact. This front body has one thermal camera and two web cameras installed. Additional sensors include gas, temperature and humidity sensors, Web cams, light diodes, microphone and loudspeaker. The robot uses wireless communications, with an option for tethered operation. The tether carries both power and communications, with an access point on its end, and can also be used to suspend the robot inside a deep hole. Docking and undocking the robot to the tether is accomplished remotely by the operator with the help of a camera located inside the robot, and represents the most innovative feature of RAPOSA

A search and rescue robot with tele‐operated tether docking system

Purpose – To describe a robot designed and built to operate in outdoor environments hostile to the human presence, such as debris resulting from the collapse of built structures, and targeted to the tele‐operated detection of potential survivors using a set of specific sensors whose information is transmitted to a remote human operator.Design/methodology/approach – RAPOSAs mechanical structure is composed of a main body and a front body, whose locomotion is supported on tracked wheels, allowing motion even when the robot is upside down. The front body has variable tilting capabilities, providing means to overcome edges higher than the robot main body (e.g. when climbing a stair) and is also useful to grab the lower ground when only the main body has ground contact. This front body has one thermal camera and two webcameras installed. Additional sensors include gas, temperature and humidity sensors, web cams, light diodes, microphone and loudspeaker. The robot uses wireless communications, with an option f...

A robotic platform for edutainment activities in a pediatric hospital

Social Robotics is a rapidly expanding field of research, but long-term results in real-world environments have been limited. The MOnarCH project has the goal of studying the long-term social dynamics of networked robot systems in human environments. In this paper, we present the MOnarCH robotic platform to the research community. We discuss the constraints involved in the design and operation of our social robots, and describe in detail the platform that has been built to accomodate the project goals while satisfying those restrictions. We also present some preliminary results of the navigation methodologies that are used to control the MOnarCH robotic platforms.

A Novel Metric for Bone Marrow Cells Chromosome Pairing

Karyotyping is a set of procedures, in the scope of the cytogenetics, that produces a visual representation of the 46 chromosomes observed during the metaphase step of the cellular division, called mitosis, paired and arranged in decreasing order of size. Automatic pairing of bone marrow cells is a difficult task because these chromosomes appear distorted, overlapped, and their images are usually blurred with undefined edges and low level of detail. In this paper, a new metric is proposed to compare this type of chromosome images toward the design of an automatic pairing algorithm for leukemia diagnostic purposes. Besides the features used in the traditional karyotyping procedures, a new feature, based on mutual information , is proposed to increase the discriminate power of the G-banding pattern dissimilarity between chromosomes and improve the performance of the classifier. The pairing algorithm is formulated as a combinatorial optimization problem where the distances between homologous chromosomes are minimized and the distances between nonhomologous ones are maximized. The optimization task is solved by using an integer programming approach. A new bone marrow chromosome dataset-Lisbon-K1 (LK1) chromosome dataset with 9200 chromosomes---was build for this study. These chromosomes have much lower quality than the classic Copenhagen, Edinburgh, and Philadelphia datasets, and its classification and pairing is therefore more difficult. Experiments using real images from the LK1 and Grisan et al. datasets based on a leave-one-out cross-validation strategy are performed to test and validate the pairing algorithm.

Social interaction with robots and agents: Where do we stand, where do we go?

Robots and agents are becoming increasingly prominent in everyday life, taking on a variety of roles, including helpers, coaches, and even social companions. A core requirement for these social agents is the ability to establish and maintain long-term trusting and engaging relationship with their human users. Much research has already been done on the prerequisites for these types of social agents and robots, in affective computing, social computing and affective HCI. A number of disciplines within psychology and the social sciences are also relevant, contributing theories, data and methods relevant for the emerging areas of social robotics, and social computing in general. However, the complexity of the task of designing these social agents, and the diversity of the relevant disciplines, can be overwhelming. This paper presents a summary of a special session at ACII 2009 whose purpose was to provide an overview of the state-of-the-art in social agents and robots, and to explore some of the fundamental questions regarding their development, and the evaluation of their effectiveness.

A Functional Architecture for a Team of Fully Autonomous Cooperative Robots

A three-level functional architecture for a team of mobile robots is described in detail, including the definition of the role assigned to each level, the main concepts involved, and the corresponding implementation for each individual robot. The architecture is oriented towards teams of fully autonomous cooperative robots, able to carry out different types of cooperative tasks. Complexity is reduced by the decomposition of team strategies into individual behaviors, which in turn are composed of primitive tasks. Relationships among robots of the team are modeled upon the joint intentions framework. An application to Robotic Soccer and some of its preliminary results are presented.

From pixels to objects: Enabling a spatial model for humanoid social robots

This work adds the concept of object to an existent low-level attention system of the humanoid robot iCub. The objects are defined as clusters of SIFT visual features. When the robot first encounters an unknown object, found to be within a certain (small) distance from its eyes, it stores a cluster of the features present within an interval about that distance, using depth perception. Whenever a previously stored object crosses the robots field of view again, it is recognized, mapped into an egocentrical frame of reference, and gazed at. This mapping is persistent, in the sense that its identification and position are kept even if not visible by the robot. Features are stored and recognized in a bottom-up way. Experimental results on the humanoid robot iCub validate this approach. This work creates the foundation for a way of linking the bottom-up attention system with top-down, object-oriented information provided by humans.

Emotion-based control systems

The relevance of the model presented to the control and the supervision of systems lies in the fact that, in this context, it is very important to respond quickly and efficiently to unexpected situations, by learning associations between current situations and control strategies. The inputs and the state variables of a system can be considered as stimuli to feed a double processing system. The cognitive image can be considered as the set of values collected in a time frame. On the other hand, the perceptual image can result from the determination of certain characteristics such as overshoot, rate of variation of state variables, and so on. The next step is to establish a basic set of associations in order to allow the system to respond to urgent situations (solely based on the perceptual image). As the supervisor starts marking cognitive images with perceptual ones (a basic mechanism of learning), it becomes able to anticipate those situations (this is what humans apparently do when using the somatic marker). On the other hand, the matching of a certain configuration with one previously stored in memory can be assessed in terms of the positiveness or negativeness of the present situation by consulting the cognitive/perceptual mark. The control and supervision of large scale, non-linear, and non time-invariant systems ought to incorporate planning and decision making mechanisms together with low-level controllers, integrated in such a way that performance (both in terms of learning, quality of response, and efficiency) is ensured.