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PROJECT DESCRIPTION AND OBJECTIVES

This interdisciplinary project, aims to develop theoretical and experimental frameworks for the design, control and evaluation of a new generation of networked assistive mobile robots. This project addresses human-centered mobile robotics and will contribute for safer and more user-friendly mobile robotic assistants adapted to human environments. In partnership with the APCC (Associação de Paralisia Cerebral de Coimbra), we aim to contribute with results towards better mobility of people suffering from neuromotor disorders. Human factors will be taken into account, namely by benchmarking and evaluating the developed approaches by end users.

Human-machine interfaces are a central key in Human-centered mobile robotics since they define how users can input commands to steer the mobile robot. Users with severe motor disabilities need interfaces that can be controlled with minimal or zero muscular activity, such as brain-computer interfaces and eye-trackers. However, this type of interface provides information that is sparse in time and that may be unreliable. The use of multi-modal interfaces can help to increase both information transfer rate and reliability, but it is still not enough to operate efficiently a mobile robot (e.g., a wheelchair) in domestic environments. Therefore, human-machine collaborative navigation, accepting input commands from user is required to have a safer and efficient navigation. The development of 2D/3D perception/reconstruction is a major requirement for SLAM and to plan navigation trajectories in cluttered and dynamic environments.

To accomplish the project objectives, the following research topics were addressed:

1- 3D Reconstruction Algorithms

2- Real-time Dense Reconstruction

3- Visual Odometry from Planes

4- Signal Processing and Classification of Biosignals

5- BCI-based Human-Machine Interface (HMI)

6- Multimodal HMI and User’s State Characterization

7– Collaborative Control, Planning and Safety for Assistive Robot Navigation

8– Human-robot Interaction

9- Prototypes

10- Experimental Tests