2024
Authors
Caldana, D; Carvalho, R; Rebelo, PM; Silva, MF; Costa, P; Sobreira, H; Cruz, N;
Publication
ROBOT 2023: SIXTH IBERIAN ROBOTICS CONFERENCE ADVANCES IN ROBOTICS, VOL 1
Abstract
Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMR) are seeing an increased introduction in distinct areas of daily life. Recently, their use has expanded to intralogistics, where forklift type AMR are applied in many situations handling pallets and loading/unloading them into trucks. One of the these vehicles requirements, is that they are able to correctly identify the location and status of pallets, so that the forklifts AMR can insert the forks in the right place. Recently, some commercial sensors have appeared in the market for this purpose. Given these considerations, this paper presents a comparison of the performance of two different approaches for pallet detection: using a commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) sensor and a custom developed application based on Artificial Intelligence algorithms applied to an RGB-D camera, where both the RGB and depth data are used to estimate the position of the pallet pockets.
2024
Authors
Rebelo, PM; Valente, A; Oliveira, PM; Sobreira, H; Costa, P;
Publication
ROBOT 2023: SIXTH IBERIAN ROBOTICS CONFERENCE ADVANCES IN ROBOTICS, VOL 1
Abstract
Mobile robot platforms capable of operating safely and accurately in dynamic environments can have a multitude of applications, ranging from simple delivery tasks to advanced assembly operations. These abilities rely heavily on a robust navigation stack, which requires stable and accurate pose estimations within the environment. The wide range of AMR's applications and the characteristics of multiple industrial environments (indoor and outdoor) have led to the development of a flexible and robust robot software architecture that allows the fusion of different data sensors in real time. In this way, and in terms of localization, AMRs have greater precision when it comes to uncontrolled and unstructured environments. These complex environments feature a variety of dynamic and unpredictable elements, such as variable layouts, limited visibility, unstructured spaces, and uncertain terrain. This paper presents a multi-localization system for industrial mobile robots in complex and dynamic industrial scenarios, based on different localization technologies and methods that can interact together and simultaneously.
2024
Authors
Brilhante, M; Rebelo, PM; Oliveira, PM; Sobreira, H; Costa, P;
Publication
ROBOT 2023: SIXTH IBERIAN ROBOTICS CONFERENCE ADVANCES IN ROBOTICS, VOL 1
Abstract
Since creating universally capable robots is challenging for a single manufacturer, a diverse fleet of robots from various manufacturers is utilized. However, these heterogeneous fleets encounter communication and interoperability issues. As a result, there is a growing need for a standardized interface that is capable of communicating, controlling and managing a diverse fleet without these interoperability issues. This paper presents a translation software module capable of controlling an autonomous mobile robot and communicating with a ROS-based robot fleet manager using the VDA5050 Standard and exchanging information via the MQTT communication protocol, aiming at flexibility and control across different robot brands. The effectiveness of the software in controlling a mobile robot via the VDA5050 standard was demonstrated by the results. It accurately analysed data from the Robot Fleet Manager, converted it into VDA 5050 JSON messages and skilfully translated it back into ROS messages. The robot's behavior remained consistent before and after the VDA5050 implementation.
2024
Authors
Rebelo, PM; Féliz, MC; Oliveira, PM; Sobreira, H; Costa, P;
Publication
ROBOT 2023: SIXTH IBERIAN ROBOTICS CONFERENCE ADVANCES IN ROBOTICS, VOL 1
Abstract
The need for interoperability between robots of different brands and navigation typologies, graph-based and free navigation, is increasing and this has led to the development of a new approach to empower a graph and ROS-based robot fleet manager for the management of free navigation mobile robots. For this implementation and validation, in real tests, the OMRON LD-90 was the mobile robot platform chosen, which has the particularity of not allowing the execution of a waypoints sequence. A software module was developed to exchange data between a non-ROS-based mobile robot and a specific ROS-based robot fleet manager. This is an approach applicable to any free navigation Autonomous Mobile Robot (AMR) with the necessary adaptations regarding the information provided by the different robot brands.
2024
Authors
Matos, DM; Costa, P; Sobreira, H; Valente, A; Lima, J;
Publication
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INTELLIGENT ROBOTICS AND APPLICATIONS
Abstract
With the increasing adoption of mobile robots for transporting components across several locations in industries, congestion problems appear if the movement of these robots is not correctly planned. This paper introduces a fleet management system where a central agent coordinates, plans, and supervises the fleet, mitigating the risk of deadlocks and addressing issues related to delays, deviations between the planned paths and reality, and delays in communication. The system uses the TEA* graph-based path planning algorithm to plan the paths of each agent. In conjunction with the TEA* algorithm, the concepts of supervision and graph-based environment representation are introduced. The system is based on ROS framework and allows each robot to maintain its autonomy, particularly in control and localization, while aligning its path with the plan from the central agent. The effectiveness of the proposed fleet manager is demonstrated in a real scenario where robots operate on a shop floor, showing its successful implementation.
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