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Publications

Publications by Germano Veiga

2012

On the use of Robotics in implant dentistry research

Authors
Veiga, G; Caramelo, F; Malaca, P; Brito, P; Pires, JN;

Publication
2012 4TH IEEE RAS & EMBS INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON BIOMEDICAL ROBOTICS AND BIOMECHATRONICS (BIOROB)

Abstract
The paper presented herein describes the development of an advanced robotized system applied to in vitro implant dentistry research. To the biomedical community this paper shows the possibilities of industrial robots to help the research. Robots are special suitable to the biomedical field specially when integrated with advanced sensors and technologies, which may facilitate both the programming tasks and the data acquisition. Robotics researchers will find in this paper one of the first applications of programming by demonstration with real users with a novel explicit robot programming technique making use of multi-camera vision combined with speech recognition. This programming method targets users who have minimal robot experience but aims at 'teaching' the robot to execute a specific task.

2012

Separation of concerns on the orchestration of operations in flexible manufacturing

Authors
Veiga, G; Malaca, P; Norberto Pires, JN; Nilsson, K;

Publication
ASSEMBLY AUTOMATION

Abstract
Purpose - The growing complexity of industrial robot work-cells calls for the use of advanced orchestration techniques to promote flexibility and reusability. This paper aims to present a solution based on service-oriented platforms that endorses the separation of concerns, coordination and execution. Design/methodology/approach - This paper starts with the evaluation of available tools for the orchestration and service generation. Endorsing the missing features depicted in that evaluation, the paper describes developments of concepts and software and the evaluation made. Findings - From the early evaluations made in this paper, the SCXML-based purposed language is more adapted to the industrial robotic cell scenario than existing alternatives. The generation of services allow the integration without knowledge from any programming language. Practical implications - This approach's main drawback, as described by some users, was the lack of some programming features: simple math operations and conditional statements. Originality/value - This paper fulfils two partially unsolved problems: adequate languages for orchestration of service oriented on the device level and purposes techniques for the specification of services using robot programming languages.

2009

Experiments with service-oriented architectures for industrial robotic cells programming

Authors
Veiga, G; Pires, JN; Nilsson, K;

Publication
ROBOTICS AND COMPUTER-INTEGRATED MANUFACTURING

Abstract
Integration of equipment in industrial robot cells is to an increasing part involved with interfacing modern Ethernet technologies and low-cost mass produced devices, such as vision systems, laser cameras, force-torque sensors, soft-PLCs, digital pens, pocket-PCs, etc. This scenario enables integrators to offer powerful and smarter solutions, more adapted to small and medium enterprises (SMEs), capable of integrating process knowledge and interface better with humans. Nevertheless, programming all these devices efficiently requires too much specific knowledge about the devices, their hardware architectures and specific programming languages, details about system communication low-level protocols, and other tricky details at the system level. To address these issues, this paper describes and analyses two of the most interesting service-oriented architectures (SOA) available, which exhibit characteristics that are well adapted to industrial robotics cells. To compare, discuss and evaluate their programming features and applicability a test bed was specially designed, and the two SOA are fully implemented to program the test bed. Special focus is given to the way services are specified and to the orchestration tools used to manage system logic. The obtained results show clearly that using integrations schemes based on SOA reduces system integration time and are more adapted to industrial robotic cell system integrators.

2007

On the use of service oriented software platforms for industrial robotic cells

Authors
Veiga, G; Pires, JN; Nilsson, K;

Publication
IFAC Proceedings Volumes (IFAC-PapersOnline)

Abstract
The integration of different robot automation technologies, with the aim for reusing available production solutions, is a major obstacle for deployment of low-cost components into productive (high-performance) systems. Technologies demanding high processing power, like machine vision or voice recognition systems, are normally easy to program but require proprietary languages and platforms, which constitutes an important problem during communications and setup. Instead of the current need for trained specialist, in particular flexible manufacturing in SMEs call for solutions that are easy easy to use and (re)configure. One attempt in that direction is the service-oriented architecture (SOA) approach, which here is accomplished by the use of Universal Plug-and-Play (UPnP) technologies and confronted with real robot application demand represented by an experimental manufacturing cell. Contributions include the way of building software applications to program manufacturing cells whose building blocks are represented by UPnP devices. Such devices encapsulate both manufacturing equipment and interaction methods. The latter is exemplified by a speech recognition system, for which a tool for automatic generation of UPnP devices based on the information contained in speech recognition XML grammars is presented. Experiences form experiments confirms the desired efficiency and simplicity when setting up advanced manufacturing equipment. © 2007 IFAC.

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