Abstract
Bin picking is a challenging problem common to many industries, whose automation will lead to great economic benefits. This paper presents a method for estimating the pose of a set of randomly arranged bent tubes, highly subject to occlusions and entanglement. The approach involves using a depth sensor to obtain a point cloud of the bin. The algorithm begins by filtering the point cloud to remove noise and segmenting it using the surface normals. Tube sections are then modeled as cylinders that are fitted into each segment using RANSAC. Finally, the sections are combined into complete tubes by adopting a greedy heuristic based on the distance between their endpoints. Experimental results with a dataset created with a Zivid sensor show that this method is able to provide estimates with high accuracy for bins with up to ten tubes. Therefore, this solution has the potential of being integrated into fully automated bin picking systems.

Abstract
Featured Application The robotic bin picking solution presented in this work serves as a stepping stone towards the development of cost-effective, scalable systems for handling entangled objects. This study and its experiments focused on tube-shaped objects, which have a widespread presence in the industry. Abstract Manufacturing and production industries are increasingly turning to robots to carry out repetitive picking operations in an efficient manner. This paper focuses on tackling the novel challenge of automating the bin picking process for entangled objects, for which there is very little research. The chosen case study are sets of freely curved tubes, which are prone to occlusions and entanglement. The proposed algorithm builds a representation of the tubes as an ordered list of cylinders and joints using a point cloud acquired by a 3D scanner. This representation enables the detection of occlusions in the tubes. The solution also performs grasp planning and motion planning, by evaluating post-grasp trajectories via simulation using Gazebo and the ODE physics engine. A force/torque sensor is used to determine how many items were picked by a robot gripper and in which direction it should rotate to solve cases of entanglement. Real-life experiments with sets of PVC tubes and rubber radiator hoses showed that the robot was able to pick a single tube on the first try with success rates of 99% and 93%, respectively. This study indicates that using simulation for motion planning is a promising solution to deal with entangled objects.

Abstract
Bin picking is a challenging problem that involves using a robotic manipulator to remove, one-by-one, a set of objects randomly stacked in a container. In order to provide ground truth data for evaluating heuristic or machine learning perception systems, this paper proposes using simulation to create bin picking environments in which a procedural generation method builds entangled tubes that can have curvatures throughout their length. The output of the simulation is an annotated point cloud, generated by a virtual 3D depth camera, in which the tubes are assigned with unique colors. A general metric based on micro-recall is proposed to compare the accuracy of point cloud annotations with the ground truth. The synthetic data is representative of a high quality 3D scanner, given that the performance of a tube modeling system when given 640 simulated point clouds was similar to the results achieved with real sensor data. Therefore, simulation is a promising technique for the automated evaluation of solutions for bin picking tasks.

Abstract
The manipulation of deformable objects poses a significant challenge for the automotive industry. In particular, the assembly of flexible cables and wire-harnesses in vehicles is still performed manually as there is yet to be a reliable and general solution for this problem. This paper presents a simple yet efficient motion planning algorithm to mount a flexible wire in an assembly jig, where the wire must traverse a set of forks in order. The algorithm uses a heuristic based on a set of control points to guide the wire's movement. Various controlled assembly scenarios are built in simulation using MuJoCo, a physics engine that can emulate the dynamics of Deformable Linear Objects (DLO). Experimental results in simulation demonstrated that the amount and orientation of the forks has a large impact in the solution's performance and highlighted several key ideas and challenges moving forward. Thus, this work serves as a stepping stone towards the development of more complete solutions, capable of assembling flexible items in vehicles.

Abstract
Artificial I ntelligence ( AI) a nd M achine Learning are frequently used to develop player skills in robotic soccer scenarios. Despite the potential of deep reinforcement learning, its computational demands pose challenges when learning complex behaviors. This work explores less demanding methods, namely Evolution Strategies (ES) and Hierarchical Reinforcement Learning (HRL), for enhancing coordination and cooperation between two agents from the FC Portugal 3D Simulation Soccer Team, in RoboCup. The goal is for two robots to learn a high-level skill that enables a robot to pass the ball to its teammate as quickly as possible. Results show that the trained models under-performed in a traditional robotic soccer two-agent task and scored perfectly in a much simpler one. Therefore, this work highlights that while these alternative methods can learn trivial cooperative behavior, more complex tasks are difficult t o learn.

Abstract
Effective navigation in mobile robotics relies on precise environmental mapping, including the detection of complex objects as geometric primitives. This work introduces a deep learning model that determines the pose, type, and dimensions of 2D primitives using a mobile robot equipped with a noisy LiDAR sensor. Simulated experiments conducted in Webots involved randomly placed primitives, with the robot capturing point clouds which were used to progressively build a map of the environment. Two mapping techniques were considered, a deterministic and probabilistic (Bayesian) mapping, and different levels of noise for the LiDAR were compared. The maps were used as input to a YOLOv5 network that detected the position and type of the primitives. A cropped image of each primitive was then fed to a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) that determined the dimensions and orientation of a given primitive. Results show that the primitive classification achieved an accuracy of 95% in low noise, dropping to 85% under higher noise conditions, while the prediction of the shapes' dimensions had error rates from 5% to 12%, as the noise increased. The probabilistic mapping approach improved accuracy by 10-15% compared to deterministic methods, showcasing robustness to noise levels up to 0.1. Therefore, these findings highlight the effectiveness of probabilistic mapping in enhancing detection accuracy for mobile robot perception in noisy environments.