Category: News

Student degree project at UNIZAR on December 2020 in the framework of COMMANDIA:
“Autonomous navigation of mobile manipulator robot with camera and laser in the ROS environment” by David Barrera.

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In this work we have used the environment ROS (Robot Operating System) to develop the autonomous navigation of a mobile manipulator robot. The navigation has been carried out in simulation and in real environments. The mobile platform is a robot known as robot Campero, that it is a prototype of the commercial robot RB-EKEN (Robotnik). The sensors used for the navigation are laser and vision. We have developed several programs for different types of navigation and the experiment results have been analyzed.

The BiTS D INNOVATION is a dissemination conference, organized by INESCOP on 17^th December 2020, with the objective of bringing some of the results and technological advances obtained in 2020 closer to the footwear sector, through R+D+I activities.

“Pieces” of innovation on “Sustainability”, “Comfort and Health” and “Advanced Manufacturing”, in an entertaining and very demonstrative format.

In the area of Advanced Manufacturing, Jose Maria Gutierrez from INESCOP presented the talk “Multi-robot manipulation for the cut-floor joint operation”.

At COMMANDIA, INESCOP works together with 4 European universities, in the automation of the joining operation between the shoe cut, and a deformable object such as the floor. The manipulation of deformable objects is one of the main current challenges of robotization.

This union operation takes place after the adhesive has been applied on the floor, and consists of collecting the sole of a tape with a robot, and with the help of a second robot, run accurately on a cut that is prefixed. For this union, we have a 3D vision system that will tell us at all times the relative position between the elements and the necessary actions of the robots to proceed properly. The use of two robots allows us to correctly handle the floor even though it is flexible, and to be able to use this factor in our favor if necessary.

The different partners of the project presented their advances in the meeting of the COMMANDIA consortium in a virtual meeting on December 16, 2020.

Ignacio Cuiral-Zueco presented the work “Dynamic occlusion handling for real time object perception” at the 5th International Conference on Robotics and Automation Engineering
(ICRAE 2020). His oral presentation was awarded as the best one of the session “Robot Design and Development”.

Today we have successfully celebrated the online live session of the workshop on Robotic Manipulation of Deformable Objects (ROMADO). This workshop is organized in conjunction with the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2020). The number of attendees to the online session was more than forty people. We thank all the attendees for their participation and especially to the guest speakers for their involvement in the success of this workshop.

J. F. Gómez, J. M. Gutiérrez, J. Arregui and M. D. Fabregat from INESCOP published the article “Footwear assembly by robots” within the topic of “manufacturing and materials innovation” in journal World footwear, in issue four, volume 14, 2020.

The industry in general, and the footwear industry in particular, are going through a digital transformation in every sense. With the arrival of the new industrial revolution, known as Industry 4.0, the existing concepts and technologies that were to come and that were going to change the manufacturing and sales processes of products were identified.

INESCOP participated in the online conference “Transformación digital en calzado” which was held on October 6^th, 2020. In this conference on “Digital Transformation in Footwear”, we will be able to see those challenges and opportunities that digitalization offers us, from the initial stages of product definition, through manufacturing and production management to the possibilities offered to us to reach the end consumer thanks to new technologies based on the cloud and online sales.

We are preparing a workshop on Robotic Manipulation of Deformable Objects (ROMADO) at IROS 2020. Notice that IROS 2020 will not be held in-person due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead, the contents of the conference will be provided on the IROS On-Demand platform. This platform will be used to present the contents of this workshop.

This year the access to all the conference contents is free, check details at IROS 2020 web.

More details about the workshop with the list of invited speakers and contributed papers can be found in the workshop web. In the meanwhile, take a look to this introduction video of the workshop ROMADO:

Newsletter 2020-09

Brayan Stiven Zapata Impata (University of Alicante, Linkedin) is going to defend his PhD Thesis on the topics of COMMANDIA under the supervision of Professor Pablo Gil. The dissertation is planned on September, 17th, 2020 in Alicante, Spain.

Author: Brayan Stiven Zapata Impata
Supervisor: Pablo Gil Vazquez
Dissertation date: September 17th, 2020.
Title: Robotic manipulation based on visual and tactile perception.
Abstract: In this thesis, we provide solutions for various challenges in robotic manipulation. Applying visual perception, a robotic assistant could find grasps on unknown objects. With the use of tactile perception, the robot could predict whether the grasp is stable and even identify in which direction might be slipping the grasped object. As a result, the robot could trigger strategies for keeping the object stable. Finally, integrating our tactile data generation system with the rest of the modules, the assistive robot could feel the grasps before actually moving itself, so less objects would be dropped due to visually stable grasps that are actually slippery.