SCORPION (Safe COntrol of mobile Robots for Productive Industrial OperatioNs)
Authors/ Researchers: Giovanni Buizza Avanzini, Andrea Marica Zanchettin, Paolo Rocco
Status: concluded
Abstract: The main goal of the SCORPION project is to develop a planning,
control and perception framework that allows efficient execution of
productive operations with a mobile manipulator, while preserving a
prescribed level of safety with respect to unplanned obstacles,
including human beings. Human-robot interaction is in fact a cornerstone
of the project.
Reference is made to an industrial setting, but the principles are
general enough to be applied in other (e.g. domestic) environments.
The system has several distinctive features:
- full exploitation of the redundancy of the mobile manipulator to determine the robot configuration during a certain task;
- perception of the environment through additional LED distance sensors mounted onboard the robot;
- interaction both with humans (perceived trough a Microsoft Kinect mounted on-board) and the environment (perceived thanks to an eye-in-hand camera);
- continuous assessment of the danger induced by the moving robot itself, through the recently introduced concept of the Danger Field;
- online re-planning of the optimal robot trajectory (e.g. in case of the appearance of obstacles, or of a change in the desired task), which exploits the redundancy of the mobile manipulator with respect to the task.
The system is designed on, and tailored to, a youBot system, while being scalable to other sizes of mobile manipulators.
Innovation Award: the project was selected by an international jury as one of the four finalist (among 30 applications) for the 2014th KUKA Innovation in Mobile Manipulation Award. The competion finals took place in Munich during the 2014th AUTOMATICA Fair, where SCORPION placed second ex-aequo.
Here is the page of the project on the KUKA youBot website.
ROSETTA (RObot control for Skilled ExecuTion of Tasks in natural interaction with humans; based on Autonomy, cumulative knowledge and learning)
Website: www.fp7rosetta.org
Status: concluded
Project info and goals: ROSETTA is an European Large-Scale Integrating
Research Project. The 4-year project started March 1st, 2009, and has a
total budget of 10 MEUR.
ROSETTA develops “human-centric” technology for industrial robots that will not only appear more human-like, but also cooperate with workers in ways that are safe and perceived as natural. Such robots will be programmed in an intuitive and efficient manner, making it easier to adapt them to new tasks when a production line is changed to manufacture a new product.
ROSETTA develops “human-centric” technology for industrial robots that will not only appear more human-like, but also cooperate with workers in ways that are safe and perceived as natural. Such robots will be programmed in an intuitive and efficient manner, making it easier to adapt them to new tasks when a production line is changed to manufacture a new product.
My work: I developed my master thesis within the ROSETTA project, endowing an industrial manipulator with a distributed distance sensor capable of detecting humans and obstacles. Collision avoidance strategies were developed to enhance safety in human-robot interaction. I worked on the project also afterwards, helping in developing the final demonstration.
In the following video you can see some result of my master thesis.
