2024
Authors
Levin, TB; Oliveira, JM; Sousa, RB; Silva, MF; Parreira, BS; Sobreira, HM; Mendonça, HS;
Publication
2024 7TH IBERIAN ROBOTICS CONFERENCE, ROBOT 2024
Abstract
Human oversight can benefit scenarios with complex tasks, such as pallet docking and loading and unloading containers, beyond the current capabilities of autonomous systems without any failures. Furthermore, teleoperation systems allow remote control of mobile ground robots, especially with the surge of 5G technology that promises reliable and low latency communication. Current works research on exploring the latest features from the 5G standard, including ultra-Reliable Low-Latency Communication (uRLLC) and network slicing. However, these features may not be available depending on the Internet Service Provider (ISP) and communication devices. Thus, this work proposes a network architecture for the teleoperation of ground mobile robots in industrial environments using commercially available devices over the 5G Non-Standalone (NSA) standard. Experimental results include an evaluation of the network and End-to-End (E2E) latency of the proposed system. The results show that the proposed architecture enables teleoperation, achieving an average E2E latency of 347.19 ms.
2024
Authors
Sousa, RB; Placido Sobreira, HM; Silva, MF; Moreira, AP;
Publication
ICARA
Abstract
The extraction of geometric information from the environment may be of interest to localisation and mapping algorithms. Existent literature on extracting geometric features from 2D laser data focuses mainly on detecting lines. Regarding corners, most methodologies use the intersection of line segment features. This paper presents a feature extraction algorithm for corner-like points in the 2D laser scan. The proposed methodol-ogy defines arrival and departure neighbourhoods around each scan point and performs local line fitting evaluated in multiple distance-based scales. Then, a set of indicators based on line fitting error, the angle between arrival and departure lines, and consecutive observation of the same keypoint across different scales determine the existence of a corner-like feature. The experiments evaluated the corner-like features regarding their relative position and observability, achieving standard deviations on the relative position lower than the sensor noise and visibility ratios higher than 75% with very low false positives rates.
2024
Authors
Sousa, RB; Rocha, CD; Martins, JG; Costa, JP; Padrao, JT; Sarmento, JM; Carvalho, JP; Lopes, MS; Costa, PG; Moreira, AP;
Publication
2024 IEEE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON AUTONOMOUS ROBOT SYSTEMS AND COMPETITIONS, ICARSC
Abstract
Robotic competitions stand as platforms to propel the forefront of robotics research while nurturing STEM education, serving as hubs of both applied research and scientific innovation. In Portugal, the Portuguese Robotics Open (FNR) is an event with several robotic competitions, including the Robot@Factory 4.0 competition. This competition presents an example of deploying autonomous robots on a factory shop floor. Although the literature has works proposing frameworks for the original version of the Robot@Factory competition, none of them proposes a system framework for the Robot@Factory 4.0 version that presents the hardware, firmware, and software to complete the competition and achieve autonomous navigation. This paper proposes a complete robotic framework for the Robot@Factory 4.0 competition that is modular and open-access, enabling future participants to use and improve it in future editions. This work is the culmination of all the knowledge acquired by winning the 2022 and 2023 editions of the competition.
2023
Authors
Sousa, RB; Sobreira, HM; Moreira, AP;
Publication
JOURNAL OF FIELD ROBOTICS
Abstract
Long-term operation of robots creates new challenges to Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) algorithms. Long-term SLAM algorithms should adapt to recent changes while preserving older states, when dealing with appearance variations (lighting, daytime, weather, or seasonal) or environment reconfiguration. When also operating robots for long periods and trajectory lengths, the map should readjust to environment changes but not grow indefinitely. The map size should depend only on updating the map with new information of interest, not on the operation time or trajectory length. Although several studies in the literature review SLAM algorithms, none of the studies focus on the challenges associated to lifelong SLAM. Thus, this paper presents a systematic literature review on long-term localization and mapping following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analysis guidelines. The review analyzes 142 works covering appearance invariance, modeling the environment dynamics, map size management, multisession, and computational topics such as parallel computing and timing efficiency. The analysis also focus on the experimental data and evaluation metrics commonly used to assess long-term autonomy. Moreover, an overview over the bibliographic data of the 142 records provides analysis in terms of keywords and authorship co-occurrence to identify the terms more used in long-term SLAM and research networks between authors, respectively. Future studies can update this paper thanks to the systematic methodology presented in the review and the public GitHub repository with all the documentation and scripts used during the review process.
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