A4 - Mobile Robotics and Industrial Systems

Coordinator: Matteo Saveriano

This area focuses on developing smart solutions to integrate “traditional” robots (e.g., wheeled or legged) in production. The goal is to increase robots’ autonomy with innovative SW and HW components while maintaining a human-centric approach to production.

Keywords: safe and intuitive human-robot interaction, human-centric collaborative manufacturing, industry 5.0, smart mobility, wearable sensors, soft grippers/hands, human augmentation, mobile manipulation and material flow, human-machines interaction and interfaces.

In the field of advanced robotics for production, the primary objective is to augment the autonomy of conventional robots like wheeled and legged robots. This involves the seamless integration of cutting-edge technology to reshape production capabilities, facilitating harmonious collaboration between automated systems and human workers in the dynamic manufacturing landscape. To pursue this objective, this area looks at innovative production paradigms with a special focus on: 1) Human augmentation, aiming to synergistically enhance human capabilities and efficiency through collaborative efforts with robots; 2) Mobile manipulation and material flow, ensuring seamless coordination between humans and machines throughout the production cycle. Key focus areas include: safe and intuitive human-robot interaction; collaborative manufacturing; smart mobility and material flow; wearable sensors for human-robot interaction.

Relevance within the Department of Excellence Project

The activities within this area aim to contribute to the general objectives of the Department of Excellence project, by focusing in particular on robotic integrated systems and applications, as defined in Quadro D.2 of the project description.

The activities within this area will pursue a system-level approach, and will thus mainly cover the following levels of the research project structure (Quadro D.3):

Level 3 - Integrated subsystems, including both soft/continuum and rigid robots, augmented/virtual reality, and smart garment sensing.
Level 3 - Applications, including smart manufacturing and healthcare.

This area aims to provide contributions to the following project deliverables:

Prototypes of integrated soft robots, combining artificial muscles and soft links
Prototypes of smart garments, with integrated sensors/actuators.
Testing of integrated solutions in relevant application areas.

Strategic equipment for this area, procured as part of the Department of Excellence programme, includes:

Cluster GPU consisting of 3 workstations, for computationally intensive and highly parallelizable algorithms including training of machine learning models, environment reconstruction, physical simulations.
Quadruped robot, for mobile manipulation, material flow, inspection applications.
Mobile robot + arm, for in/outdoor mobile manipulation, material flow, inspection applications.
SW for point cloud acquisition and registration, for detecting and reconstructing large areas like factory floors, to optimize robot trajectories in smart manufacturing.

A4 - Mobile Robotics and Industrial Systems

Relevance within the Department of Excellence Project

Activities

A4.1 - Robotised palpation diagnostics

A4.2 - Collision-free socially aware robot navigation

A4.3 - Localization and mapping for agricultural robotics

A4.4 - Human-centric collaborative manufacturing

A4.5 - Wireless control system for production of reconfigurable and/or frameless autonomous unmanned vehicles