Estimations of world population growth urgently require improving the efficiency of agricultural ... more Estimations of world population growth urgently require improving the efficiency of agricultural processes, as well as improving safety for people and environmental sustainability, which can be opposing characteristics. Industry is pursuing these objectives by developing the concept of the “intelligent factory” (also referred to as the “smart factory”) and, by studying the similarities between industry and agriculture, we can exploit the achievements attained in industry for agriculture. This article focuses on studying those similarities regarding robotics to advance agriculture toward the concept of “intelligent farms” (smart farms). Thus, this article presents some characteristics that agricultural robots should gain from industrial robots to attain the intelligent farm concept regarding robot morphologies and features as well as communication, computing, and data management techniques. The study, restricted to robotics for outdoor farms due to the fact that robotics for greenhou...
Smart and precise agriculture has increasingly been developed in the last decade, and with that, ... more Smart and precise agriculture has increasingly been developed in the last decade, and with that, the idea of optimizing the tools commonly used in this field. One way to improve these devices, particularly cutting tools conceived for harvesting purposes, is to measure the shear energy consumption required for a particular plant. The aim of this research is to establish both a design criterion for cutting grippers and a quantifiable way to evaluate and classify a harvesting tool for a specific crop. This design criterion could help to minimize energy consumption in future harvesting robots, making them more energy-efficient.
Forecasts of world population increases in the coming decades demand new production processes tha... more Forecasts of world population increases in the coming decades demand new production processes that are more efficient, safer, and less destructive to the environment. Industries are working to fulfill this mission by developing the smart factory concept. The agriculture world should follow industry leadership and develop approaches to implement the smart farm concept. One of the most vital elements that must be configured to meet the requirements of the new smart farms is the unmanned ground vehicles (UGV). Thus, this chapter focuses on the characteristics that the UGVs must have to function efficiently in this type of future farm. Two main approaches are discussed: automating conventional vehicles and developing specifically designed mobile platforms. The latter includes both wheeled and wheel-legged robots and an analysis of their adaptability to terrain and crops.
The objective of the research presented in this paper was to design an accurate and robust algori... more The objective of the research presented in this paper was to design an accurate and robust algorithm for the challenging task of detecting field-grown cucumbers for robotic harvesting automation in precision agriculture applications. The proposed algorithm is based on a combination of several processing and data mining techniques to achieve a classification system capable of segmenting cucumbers from the different elements of the scene, such as leaves, stems, the ground, stones, and irrigation pipes. The algorithm includes a support vector machine pixel classifier that provides the initial regions of interest for further processing, a Euclidean distance transform for eliminating less compact blobs that usually correspond to flowers and young leaves, an image category classifier based on a bag-of-visual-words model that increases the detection reliability, and a segmentation procedure based on the watershed transform and the minima imposition technique. Several experimental campaigns were carried out in field conditions to acquire data for training the classifiers and for validating the designed algorithm. Detection performance was evaluated at both the pixel and cucumber levels by comparing the results provided by the proposed algorithm with the ground truth data generated from hand-labeled images. The high hit rate and the low false-positive rate obtained at the pixel level and the high recall and precision at the cucumber level demonstrated the satisfactory performance of the proposed solution and highlight its potential benefits for automatic cucumber-harvesting applications. INDEX TERMS Robot vision system, precision agriculture, grown-field cucumbers, automatic detection, image processing, robotic harvesting, machine learning, SVM, bag-of-visual-words.
Nowadays, with highly developed instrumentation, sensing and actuation technologies, it is possib... more Nowadays, with highly developed instrumentation, sensing and actuation technologies, it is possible to foresee an important advance in the field of autonomous and/or semi-autonomous transportation systems. Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) have been subjected to very active research for many years, and Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) is one area of major interest. Among the most promising transport infrastructures, the articulated bus is an interesting, low cost, high occupancy capacity and friendly option. In this paper, an experimental platform for research on the automatic control of an articulated bus is presented. The aim of the platform is to allow full experimentation in real conditions for testing technological developments and control algorithms. The experimental platform consists of a mobile component (a commercial articulated bus) fully instrumented and a ground test area composed of asphalt roads inside the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) premises. This paper focuses also on the development of a human machine interface to ease progress in control system evaluation. Some experimental results are presented in order to show the potential of the proposed platform.
Purpose The aim of this paper is to introduce a hexapod walking robot specifically designed for a... more Purpose The aim of this paper is to introduce a hexapod walking robot specifically designed for applications in humanitarian demining, intended to operate autonomously for several hours. To this end, the paper presents an experimental study for the evaluation of its energy efficiency. Design/methodology/approach First, the interest of using a walking robot for detection and localization of anti-personnel landmines is described, followed by the description of the mechanical system and the control architecture of the hexapod robot. Second, the energy efficiency of the hexapod robot is assessed to demonstrate its autonomy for performing humanitarian demining tasks. To achieve this, the power consumed by the robot is measured and logged, with a number of different payloads placed on-board (always including the scanning manipulator arm assembled on the robot front end), during the execution of a discontinuous gait on flat terrain. Findings The hexapod walking robot has demonstrated low e...
The international journal of medical robotics + computer assisted surgery : MRCAS, Jan 20, 2017
Nowadays robots play an important role in society, mainly due to the significant benefits they pr... more Nowadays robots play an important role in society, mainly due to the significant benefits they provide when utilized for assisting human beings in the execution of dangerous or repetitive tasks. Medicine is one of the fields in which robots are gaining greater use and development, especially those employed in minimally invasive surgery (MIS). However, due to the particular conditions of the human body where robots have to act, the design of these systems is complex, not only from a technical point of view, but also because the clinical needs and the normativity aspects are important considerations that have to be taken into account in order to achieve better performances and more secure systems for patients and surgeons. Thus, this paper explores the clinical needs and the technical requirements that will trace the roadmap for the next scientific and technological advances in the field of robotic surgery, the metrics that should be defined for safe technology development and the sta...
The hydrosphere contains large amounts of suspended particulate material, including living and no... more The hydrosphere contains large amounts of suspended particulate material, including living and non-living material that can be found in different compositions and concentrations, and that can be composed of particles of different sizes. The study of this particulate material along water columns plays a key role in understanding a great variety of biological, chemical, and physical processes. This paper presents the conceptual design of two patented robotic platforms that have been conceived for carrying out studies of water properties at desired depths with very high accuracy in the vertical positioning. One platform has been specially designed for operating near to a reservoir bottom, while the other is intended to be used near the surface. Several experimental tests have been conducted in order to validate the proposed approaches.
Manual prodding is still one of the most utilized procedures for identifying buried landmines dur... more Manual prodding is still one of the most utilized procedures for identifying buried landmines during humanitarian demining activities. However, due to the high number of accidents reported during its practice, it is considered an outmoded and risky procedure and there is a general consensus about the need of introducing upgrades for enhancing the safety of human operators. With the aim of contributing to reduce the number of demining accidents, this paper presents an intelligent multisensory system for training operators in the use of prodders. The proposed tool is able to provide to deminers useful information in two critical issues: (a) the amount of force exerted on the target and if it is greater than the safe limit and, (b) to alert them when the angle of insertion of the prodder is approaching or exceeding a certain dangerous limit. Results of preliminary tests show the feasibility and reliability of the proposed design and highlight the potential benefits of the tool.
Traditionally, building construction has been performed mainly by hand with a little help from el... more Traditionally, building construction has been performed mainly by hand with a little help from electromechanical-manual devices. However, this industry possesses a great potential for automation and robotic systems are being introduced step by step because of many technical hitches. Apart from these technical shortcomings, builders are being pushed in many countries to provide automatic tools to improve both productivity and operator's safety. This paper presents some technical aspects of a tool developed to help out operators in handling and installing pre-manufactured plaster panels for indoor-wall construction. It consists in a lightweight six-DOF manipulator, which is fixed between floor and ceiling so that it can carry heavy payloads without tipping over. The robot is easily assembled and disassembled to make possible transportation by operators. This paper presents the basic guidelines to configure a system for the mentioned activity. It includes the system's main features and functions and some design aspects that makes this manipulator an example of how to configure a lightweight manipulators to handle heavy payloads
Building construction is a very interesting field for automation, but the incorporation of fully ... more Building construction is a very interesting field for automation, but the incorporation of fully automated systems is a very slow matter because of the inherent difficulties of its unstructured and changing environment. However, this industry produces a large number of accidents and injuries in workers and government agencies are demanding protection for them. An intermediate solution is to provide the workers with new tools capable of supplying power to carry the heavy loads while the workers are still providing their sensor system and intelligence. This is just the concept of a power assist device. This paper presents two versions of a manipulator to assist operators in handling and installing pre-manufactured plaster panels for indoor-wall construction. This manipulator is guided directly by the operator, so it can be considered yet another tool to assist operators in handling heavy loads. The system's main features and its functions are presented.
The Editors are not responsible for any statement made in this publication. Data, discussion, and... more The Editors are not responsible for any statement made in this publication. Data, discussion, and conclusions developed by authors are for information only and are not intended for use without independent substantiating investigation on the part of potential users. Opinions expressed are those of the Authors and are not necessarily those of the Editor's Institutions.
ABSTRACT This work presents the development of the automatic control of an articulated bus. It is... more ABSTRACT This work presents the development of the automatic control of an articulated bus. It is describes the most relevant concepts of the architecture of perception and actuation implemented on a large wheeled vehicle, Volvo B10M articulated bus of 18.75m in length. In this work, some experimental results of strategies for lateral and longitudinal control of the bus are shown, when it travels on a guide rail through a guiding mechatronics box. Additionally, this article presents the concepts of the guiding rail detection and obstacle detection by means of two Lidar systems for the test lane detection in advance, and for the pedestrians’ safety, respectively. Several experimental results are presented in this manuscript.
Legged-climbing robot is considered. Each foot of the robot has an electromagnet system for robot... more Legged-climbing robot is considered. Each foot of the robot has an electromagnet system for robot's holding on a metal surface. This surface can be both vertical and inclined, including negative slope. Analytical calculation of robot stability under turn over or sliding conditions has been made. Critical slopes have been determined. One of these slopes corresponds to minimal reserve of robot stability towards sliding and another to minimal reserve of robot stability towards turning-over. As total reserve of stability of a robot is always equal to the minimal one of these reserves. Additional support elements of elastic material with high coefficient of friction, along with electromagnet, allows to increase minimal reserve of robot stability towards sliding. The use of such support elements leads to redistributing force of normal support reaction between electromagnet (which surface has low coefficient of friction) and additional support element (which surface has high coefficient of friction). It is just what leads to increasing the total friction force and as a consequence to increasing of minimal reserve of robot stability towards sliding.
Estimations of world population growth urgently require improving the efficiency of agricultural ... more Estimations of world population growth urgently require improving the efficiency of agricultural processes, as well as improving safety for people and environmental sustainability, which can be opposing characteristics. Industry is pursuing these objectives by developing the concept of the “intelligent factory” (also referred to as the “smart factory”) and, by studying the similarities between industry and agriculture, we can exploit the achievements attained in industry for agriculture. This article focuses on studying those similarities regarding robotics to advance agriculture toward the concept of “intelligent farms” (smart farms). Thus, this article presents some characteristics that agricultural robots should gain from industrial robots to attain the intelligent farm concept regarding robot morphologies and features as well as communication, computing, and data management techniques. The study, restricted to robotics for outdoor farms due to the fact that robotics for greenhou...
Smart and precise agriculture has increasingly been developed in the last decade, and with that, ... more Smart and precise agriculture has increasingly been developed in the last decade, and with that, the idea of optimizing the tools commonly used in this field. One way to improve these devices, particularly cutting tools conceived for harvesting purposes, is to measure the shear energy consumption required for a particular plant. The aim of this research is to establish both a design criterion for cutting grippers and a quantifiable way to evaluate and classify a harvesting tool for a specific crop. This design criterion could help to minimize energy consumption in future harvesting robots, making them more energy-efficient.
Forecasts of world population increases in the coming decades demand new production processes tha... more Forecasts of world population increases in the coming decades demand new production processes that are more efficient, safer, and less destructive to the environment. Industries are working to fulfill this mission by developing the smart factory concept. The agriculture world should follow industry leadership and develop approaches to implement the smart farm concept. One of the most vital elements that must be configured to meet the requirements of the new smart farms is the unmanned ground vehicles (UGV). Thus, this chapter focuses on the characteristics that the UGVs must have to function efficiently in this type of future farm. Two main approaches are discussed: automating conventional vehicles and developing specifically designed mobile platforms. The latter includes both wheeled and wheel-legged robots and an analysis of their adaptability to terrain and crops.
The objective of the research presented in this paper was to design an accurate and robust algori... more The objective of the research presented in this paper was to design an accurate and robust algorithm for the challenging task of detecting field-grown cucumbers for robotic harvesting automation in precision agriculture applications. The proposed algorithm is based on a combination of several processing and data mining techniques to achieve a classification system capable of segmenting cucumbers from the different elements of the scene, such as leaves, stems, the ground, stones, and irrigation pipes. The algorithm includes a support vector machine pixel classifier that provides the initial regions of interest for further processing, a Euclidean distance transform for eliminating less compact blobs that usually correspond to flowers and young leaves, an image category classifier based on a bag-of-visual-words model that increases the detection reliability, and a segmentation procedure based on the watershed transform and the minima imposition technique. Several experimental campaigns were carried out in field conditions to acquire data for training the classifiers and for validating the designed algorithm. Detection performance was evaluated at both the pixel and cucumber levels by comparing the results provided by the proposed algorithm with the ground truth data generated from hand-labeled images. The high hit rate and the low false-positive rate obtained at the pixel level and the high recall and precision at the cucumber level demonstrated the satisfactory performance of the proposed solution and highlight its potential benefits for automatic cucumber-harvesting applications. INDEX TERMS Robot vision system, precision agriculture, grown-field cucumbers, automatic detection, image processing, robotic harvesting, machine learning, SVM, bag-of-visual-words.
Nowadays, with highly developed instrumentation, sensing and actuation technologies, it is possib... more Nowadays, with highly developed instrumentation, sensing and actuation technologies, it is possible to foresee an important advance in the field of autonomous and/or semi-autonomous transportation systems. Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) have been subjected to very active research for many years, and Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) is one area of major interest. Among the most promising transport infrastructures, the articulated bus is an interesting, low cost, high occupancy capacity and friendly option. In this paper, an experimental platform for research on the automatic control of an articulated bus is presented. The aim of the platform is to allow full experimentation in real conditions for testing technological developments and control algorithms. The experimental platform consists of a mobile component (a commercial articulated bus) fully instrumented and a ground test area composed of asphalt roads inside the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) premises. This paper focuses also on the development of a human machine interface to ease progress in control system evaluation. Some experimental results are presented in order to show the potential of the proposed platform.
Purpose The aim of this paper is to introduce a hexapod walking robot specifically designed for a... more Purpose The aim of this paper is to introduce a hexapod walking robot specifically designed for applications in humanitarian demining, intended to operate autonomously for several hours. To this end, the paper presents an experimental study for the evaluation of its energy efficiency. Design/methodology/approach First, the interest of using a walking robot for detection and localization of anti-personnel landmines is described, followed by the description of the mechanical system and the control architecture of the hexapod robot. Second, the energy efficiency of the hexapod robot is assessed to demonstrate its autonomy for performing humanitarian demining tasks. To achieve this, the power consumed by the robot is measured and logged, with a number of different payloads placed on-board (always including the scanning manipulator arm assembled on the robot front end), during the execution of a discontinuous gait on flat terrain. Findings The hexapod walking robot has demonstrated low e...
The international journal of medical robotics + computer assisted surgery : MRCAS, Jan 20, 2017
Nowadays robots play an important role in society, mainly due to the significant benefits they pr... more Nowadays robots play an important role in society, mainly due to the significant benefits they provide when utilized for assisting human beings in the execution of dangerous or repetitive tasks. Medicine is one of the fields in which robots are gaining greater use and development, especially those employed in minimally invasive surgery (MIS). However, due to the particular conditions of the human body where robots have to act, the design of these systems is complex, not only from a technical point of view, but also because the clinical needs and the normativity aspects are important considerations that have to be taken into account in order to achieve better performances and more secure systems for patients and surgeons. Thus, this paper explores the clinical needs and the technical requirements that will trace the roadmap for the next scientific and technological advances in the field of robotic surgery, the metrics that should be defined for safe technology development and the sta...
The hydrosphere contains large amounts of suspended particulate material, including living and no... more The hydrosphere contains large amounts of suspended particulate material, including living and non-living material that can be found in different compositions and concentrations, and that can be composed of particles of different sizes. The study of this particulate material along water columns plays a key role in understanding a great variety of biological, chemical, and physical processes. This paper presents the conceptual design of two patented robotic platforms that have been conceived for carrying out studies of water properties at desired depths with very high accuracy in the vertical positioning. One platform has been specially designed for operating near to a reservoir bottom, while the other is intended to be used near the surface. Several experimental tests have been conducted in order to validate the proposed approaches.
Manual prodding is still one of the most utilized procedures for identifying buried landmines dur... more Manual prodding is still one of the most utilized procedures for identifying buried landmines during humanitarian demining activities. However, due to the high number of accidents reported during its practice, it is considered an outmoded and risky procedure and there is a general consensus about the need of introducing upgrades for enhancing the safety of human operators. With the aim of contributing to reduce the number of demining accidents, this paper presents an intelligent multisensory system for training operators in the use of prodders. The proposed tool is able to provide to deminers useful information in two critical issues: (a) the amount of force exerted on the target and if it is greater than the safe limit and, (b) to alert them when the angle of insertion of the prodder is approaching or exceeding a certain dangerous limit. Results of preliminary tests show the feasibility and reliability of the proposed design and highlight the potential benefits of the tool.
Traditionally, building construction has been performed mainly by hand with a little help from el... more Traditionally, building construction has been performed mainly by hand with a little help from electromechanical-manual devices. However, this industry possesses a great potential for automation and robotic systems are being introduced step by step because of many technical hitches. Apart from these technical shortcomings, builders are being pushed in many countries to provide automatic tools to improve both productivity and operator's safety. This paper presents some technical aspects of a tool developed to help out operators in handling and installing pre-manufactured plaster panels for indoor-wall construction. It consists in a lightweight six-DOF manipulator, which is fixed between floor and ceiling so that it can carry heavy payloads without tipping over. The robot is easily assembled and disassembled to make possible transportation by operators. This paper presents the basic guidelines to configure a system for the mentioned activity. It includes the system's main features and functions and some design aspects that makes this manipulator an example of how to configure a lightweight manipulators to handle heavy payloads
Building construction is a very interesting field for automation, but the incorporation of fully ... more Building construction is a very interesting field for automation, but the incorporation of fully automated systems is a very slow matter because of the inherent difficulties of its unstructured and changing environment. However, this industry produces a large number of accidents and injuries in workers and government agencies are demanding protection for them. An intermediate solution is to provide the workers with new tools capable of supplying power to carry the heavy loads while the workers are still providing their sensor system and intelligence. This is just the concept of a power assist device. This paper presents two versions of a manipulator to assist operators in handling and installing pre-manufactured plaster panels for indoor-wall construction. This manipulator is guided directly by the operator, so it can be considered yet another tool to assist operators in handling heavy loads. The system's main features and its functions are presented.
The Editors are not responsible for any statement made in this publication. Data, discussion, and... more The Editors are not responsible for any statement made in this publication. Data, discussion, and conclusions developed by authors are for information only and are not intended for use without independent substantiating investigation on the part of potential users. Opinions expressed are those of the Authors and are not necessarily those of the Editor's Institutions.
ABSTRACT This work presents the development of the automatic control of an articulated bus. It is... more ABSTRACT This work presents the development of the automatic control of an articulated bus. It is describes the most relevant concepts of the architecture of perception and actuation implemented on a large wheeled vehicle, Volvo B10M articulated bus of 18.75m in length. In this work, some experimental results of strategies for lateral and longitudinal control of the bus are shown, when it travels on a guide rail through a guiding mechatronics box. Additionally, this article presents the concepts of the guiding rail detection and obstacle detection by means of two Lidar systems for the test lane detection in advance, and for the pedestrians’ safety, respectively. Several experimental results are presented in this manuscript.
Legged-climbing robot is considered. Each foot of the robot has an electromagnet system for robot... more Legged-climbing robot is considered. Each foot of the robot has an electromagnet system for robot's holding on a metal surface. This surface can be both vertical and inclined, including negative slope. Analytical calculation of robot stability under turn over or sliding conditions has been made. Critical slopes have been determined. One of these slopes corresponds to minimal reserve of robot stability towards sliding and another to minimal reserve of robot stability towards turning-over. As total reserve of stability of a robot is always equal to the minimal one of these reserves. Additional support elements of elastic material with high coefficient of friction, along with electromagnet, allows to increase minimal reserve of robot stability towards sliding. The use of such support elements leads to redistributing force of normal support reaction between electromagnet (which surface has low coefficient of friction) and additional support element (which surface has high coefficient of friction). It is just what leads to increasing the total friction force and as a consequence to increasing of minimal reserve of robot stability towards sliding.
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Papers by Manuel Armada