News

Final evaluation of project's outcomes by FCT

2015-12-14T10:20:00+00:00

The final report of CHOPIN project to FCT has been approved with the flattering comments below. We are all proud of our hard work during this exciting project!

"In spite of being extremely ambitious, we consider that the obtained results correspond to a full success in the pursuit of the proposed objectives.
The global and partial reports as well as the various published articles reveal that the proposed scientific and technical objectives were attained.
The fulfillment of the promised values for the scientific production indicators in a R&D project with a large development component reveal a great operational capability of the project research team.
Obviously that, in a project of this nature, it would be desirable to ensure formal guarantees of reliability and robustness to an extend that surpasses the one proposed. However, this extra effort would require significantly more means (time, person-power, and others) than the ones made available to the project."

"Os objectivos científicos previstos foram plenamente atingidos. Os resultados evidenciam grande qualidade científica, nomeadamente ao nível das publicações em revistas internacionais com referee. O projecto contribuiu para a formação de jovens investigadores e para a projecção internacional da equipa envolvida."

Members of the final evaluation board:

(Coord.) Leonel Augusto Pires Seabra Sousa (INESC ID - Instituto de Engenharia de Sistemas e Computadores).
Fernando Manuel Ferreira Lobo Pereira (DEEC, Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto).
Luis Miguel Teixeira d´Avila Pinto da Silveira (INESC ID - Instituto de Engenharia de Sistemas e Computadores).
Mário Alexandre Teles de Figueiredo (Instituto de Telecomunicações - Instituto Superior Técnico).
Nuno Miguel Gonçalves Borges de Carvalho (Instituto de Telecomunicacoes).
Pedro Manuel Santos de Carvalho (Instituto Superior Técnico).
Urbano José Carreira Nunes (Universidade de Coimbra).

Final integration tests of the project's prototype

2015-09-15T10:37:00+00:00

The final prototype of the CHOPIN R&D project has been prepared by Rohit Chandra since the end of 2014. A final set of integration tests was carried out on July 28, 2015, in an urban search and rescue simulated scenario where a simulacrum of a mission to respond to a small urban fire was done.

In these final integration tests the following components were integrated:

Knowledge-based framework for human-robots collaborative context awareness;
Multi-robot SLAM;
Autonomous fire outbreaks and victims detection by the mobile robots;
Recognition of contexts about the firefighter's activity, based on a hand-held device worn by the fireman (an Android smartphone was used in the proof of concept);
Firefighter localization by mobile robots using distance estimation based on RSSI and trilateration.

A photo taken during the experiments can be seen here. A video of the final prorotype is available here.

One paper accepted in a SI of JINT

2014-11-15T20:09:00+00:00

The paper titled "Fusing Sonars and LRF data to Perform SLAM in Reduced Visibility Scenarios” had been presented in ICARSC 2014 having João Machado Santos as first author, and had been selected for being submitted as an extended version to the Special Issue (SI) on Autonomous Robot Systems of the Journal of Intelligent and Robotic Systems (JINT). The extended version has been accepted for publication in the SI.

The reference of the article:

João Machado Santos, Micael S. Couceiro, David Portugal and Rui P. Rocha, “A Sensor Fusion Layer to Cope with Reduced Visibility in SLAM”, Journal of Intelligent and Robotic Systems, special issue on Autonomous Robot Systems, Springer, 2015.

One paper accepted in LNEE

2014-10-14T13:21:00+00:00

The paper titled "A Comparison of General-Purpose FOSS Compression Techniques for Efficient Communication in Cooperative Multi-Robot Tasks", which was presented in ICINCO 2014 and whose first author is Gonçalo S. Martins, was selected to be published as a book chapter in the Lecture Notes in Electrical Engineering (LNEE), published by Springer-Verlag.

The reference of the extended version of the paper is:

Gonçalo S. Martins, David Portugal and Rui P. Rocha, "On the Usage of General-Purpose Compression Techniques for the Optimization of Inter-Robot Communication", In Informatics in Control, Automation and Robotics, 11th International Conference, ICINCO 2014 Vienna, Austria, Sep. 1-3, 2014, Lecture Notes in Electrical Engineering (LNEE) series, Springer-Verlag, 2015.

Project final date was extended

2014-10-09T09:38:00+00:00

FCT accepted the team request to extend 6 months the project execution period. The project will last until Sep. 30, 2015.

One paper accepted in WD'14

2014-09-19T23:31:00+00:00

A paper describing a routing protocol for mobile ad hoc communication networks in search & rescue scenarios was accepted to be presented at the 2014 IEEE Wireless Days (WD'14), which will be held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in Nov. 12-14, 2014.

The reference of the paper is:

Filipe Araújo, José Santos and Rui P. Rocha, “Implementation of a Routing Protocol for Ad Hoc Networks in Search and Rescue Robotics”, In Proc. of 2014 IEEE Wireless Days (WD'14), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Nov. 12-14, 2014.

One paper accepted in IROS 2014

2014-05-17T20:17:00+00:00

A paper describing a theoretical analysis of performance bounds in multi-robot patrolling strategies was accepted to be presented at the 2014 IEEE/RSJ Int. Conf. on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2014), which will be held in Chicago, Illinois, USA, in Sept. 14-18, 2014.

The reference of the paper is:

David Portugal, Charles Pippin, Rui P. Rocha and Henrik Christensen, “Finding Optimal Routes for Multi-Robot Patrolling in Generic Graphs ”, In Proc. of 2014 IEEE/RSJ Int. Conf. on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2014), Chicago, Illinois, USA, Sep. 14-18, 2014.

Rohit Chandra has been hired

2014-05-07T08:00:00+00:00

Rohit Chandra has been hired to be a research assistant of the CHOPIN project after the departure of the team of the former research fellow João M. Santos. He received his M.Sc. degree on September 2013 in the Warsaw University of Technology (Poland), with a dissertation titled "Optimization of Grasping Strategy". He has been hired for 6 months with the possibility of renewing his contract for additional 6-month periods, starting on May. 20, 2014, and under the scientific supervision of Prof. Rui P. Rocha.

One paper accepted in ICARSC 2014

2014-04-07T22:27:00+00:00

A paper describing a method to perform SLAM in scenarios with low visibility, e.g. due to smoke, was accepted to be presented at the IEEE Int. Conf. on Autonomous Robot Systems and Competitions (ICARSC 2014), which will be held in Espinho, Portugal, in May 14-15, 2014.

The reference of the paper is:

João M. Santos, Micael S. Couceiro, David Portugal and Rui P. Rocha, “Fusing Sonars and LRF data to Perform SLAM in Reduced Visibility Scenarios”, In Proc. of IEEE Int. Conf. on Autonomous Robot Systems and Competitions (ICARSC 2014), Espinho, Portugal, pp. 116-121, May 14-15, 2014.