Projects & Funding
MIRAI2.0 Japan-Sweden collaborative project.
Funding Institution: MIRAI2.0. Call: Joint seed funding of Japan-Sweden collaborative projects. Budget: 400000 JPY + 20000 SEK. Period: 2022. Participation: PI in Sweden. Partners: Örebro University (Sweden), Tohoku University (Japan). Topic: AI.
MIRAI2.0 Japan-Sweden collaborative project.
Funding Institution: MIRAI2.0. Call: Joint seed funding of Japan-Sweden collaborative projects. Budget: 67000 SEK + 400000 JPY. Period: 2022. Participation: Main proposal coordinator and PI in Sweden. Partners: Örebro University (Sweden), Jönköping University (Sweden), and Kyushu University (Japan). Topic: AI and Ageing.
Wallenberg AI, Autonomous Systems and Software Program (WASP)
Funding Institution: Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, Sweden. Program: Wallenberg AI, Autonomous Systems and Software Program (WASP). Budget: 15,725,115 SEK. Period: 2019-2023. Participation: I am the manager and main responsible for this funding.
Robotic-Based Well-Being Monitoring and Coaching for Elderly People during Daily Life Activities (RobWell).
Funding Institution: Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades, Spain. Call: Programa Estatal de I+D+i Orientada a los Retos de la Sociedad 2018. Budget: 94985 EUR. Period: 01/01/2019-31/12/2021. Reference: RTI2018-095599-A-C22. Participation: PI from 01/01/2019 to 04/10/2019; Researcher from 05/10/2019 (due to a change of institution).
Monitorización de Estados Mentales Durante Actividades de la Vida Diaria Usando Inteligencia Ambiental y Robótica de Servicios.
Funding Institution: Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades, Spain. Call: Jose Castillejo 2018. Budget: 15019 EUR. Period: 01/06/2019-30/09/2019. Reference: CAS18/00384. Participation: PI. Location: Kyushu University, Japan.
Computer‐Based Intelligent Technologies Applied to Service Robotics and People Assistance.
Funding Institution: Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnologia. Call: Ramon y Cajal 2014. Budget: 40000 EUR. Period: 01/04/2016-31/03/2020. Reference: RYC-2014-15029. Participation: PI.
Geomarketing and Big Data Services (Servicios de geomarketing y big data)
Funding Institution: Consejeria de Desarrollo Económico, Turismo y Empleo, Spain (Cooperacion - RIS3Mur). Budget 71408.26 EUR. Period: 01/01/2017-31/03/2019. Reference: 2I16SA000050. Participation: Researcher. (PI: Alejandro Santos Martinez Sala).
People Localization System on Militar Ships (Sistema de localizacion de Personal (SPL) en barco de guerra)
Funding Institution: Catedra Isaac Peral-NAVANTIA, UPCT, Spain. Budget 9500 €. Period: 01/03/2018-31/08/2018. Reference: 5328/18TIC-C. Participation: Researcher. (PI: Alejandro Santos Martinez Sala).
Intelligent System for decision making in autonomous driving in urban environments based on learned behaviours (Sistema Inteligente de Toma de Decisión para Conducción Autónoma en Ambientes Urbanos basado en pautas de Comportamiento Aprendido)
Funding Institution: Ministerio del interior, Spain. Program: Ayudas a la I+D+I en materia de tráfico, movilidad y seguridad vial Dirección general de tráfico. Call: Proyectos I+D+I y ayudas complementarias en materia de tráfico, movilidad y seguridad vial 2017. Budget 49834 EUR. Period: 15/12/2017-14/12/2018. Reference: SPIP2017-02286. Participation: Researcher (PI: Pedro Navarro Lorente).
Los UPCT-INGENIOSSANOS- El futuro visita el hospital
Funding Institution: Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad, Spain. Period: 01/2017-31/12/2017. Participation: Researcher (with Juan Suardiaz Muro as PI).
Developing ground-breaking Emotional Technologies (LIMBIC)
Grupo Excelencia Región Murcia. FUNDACION SENECA. Budget 250.000€. Period: 2016-2020. Participation: Researcher (with José Manuel Ferrandez as PI).
Active Vision with Human-in-the-Loop for the Visually Impaired
Google Faculty Research Award, 2015.
Participation: Co-Principal Investigator (with Nicolla Bellotto (PI), and Grzegorz Cielniak (Co-PI)). Budget: $55k
The research proposed in this project is driven by the need of independent mobility for the visually impaired. It addresses the fundamental problem of active vision with human-in-the-loop, which allows for improved navigation experience, including real-time categorization of indoor environments with a handheld RGB-D camera. This is particularly challenging due to the unpredictability of human motion and sensor uncertainty. While visual-inertial systems can be used to estimate the position of a handheld camera, often the latter must also be pointed towards observable objects and features to facilitate particular navigation tasks, e.g. to enable place categorization. An attention mechanism for purposeful perception, which drives human actions to focus on surrounding points of interest, is therefore needed. This project proposes a novel active vision system with human-in-the-loop that anticipates, guides and adapts to the actions of a moving user, implemented and validated on a mobile device to aid the indoor navigation of the visually impaired.
ENRICHME: Enabling Robot and assisted living environment for Independent Care and Health Monitoring of the Elderly.
No: 643691. Call: Horizon 2020; PHC-19-2014: Advancing active and healthy ageing with ICT: Service robotics within assisted living environments. Duration: 1 March 2014 - 28 Feb 2018. Total Budget: EUR 3 990 002,50 . Budget for UoL: EUR 542 781,25
Participation: Co-Principal Investigator (with Nicolla Bellotto (PI), and Shigang Yue (Co-PI))
This is a collaborative project, involving academic institutes, industrial partners and charity organizations across six European countries. It tackles the progressive decline of cognitive capacity in the ageing population proposing an integrated platform for Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) with a mobile robot for long-term human monitoring and interaction, which helps the elderly to remain independent and active for longer. The system will contribute and build on recent advances in mobile robotics and AAL, exploiting new non-invasive techniques for physiological and activity monitoring, as well as adaptive human-robot interaction, to provide services in support to mental fitness and social inclusion. Our research contribution in this project focuses in the area of robot perception and ambient intelligence for human tracking and identity verification, as well as physiological and long-term activity monitoring of the elderly at home. Primary tasks include developing novel algorithms and approaches for enabling the acquisition, maintenance and refinement of models to describe human motion behaviors over extended periods. as well as integration of the algorithms with the AAL system.
Mobile Robotics for Ambient Assisted Living
Research Investment Fund, University of Lincoln.
Period: 2014-2017. Participation: Co-Investigator/Second Supervisor (with Nicola Bellotto (PI/First Supervisor)).
The life span of ordinary people is increasing steadily and many developed countries, including UK, are facing the big challenge of dealing with an ageing population at greater risk of impairments and cognitive disorders, which hinder their quality of life. Early detection and monitoring of human activities of daily living (ADLs) is important in order to identify potential health problems and apply corrective strategies as soon as possible. In this context, the main aim of the current research is to monitor human activities in an ambient assisted living (AAL) environment, using a mobile robot for 3D perception, high-level reasoning and representation of such activities. The robot will enable constant but discrete monitoring of people in need of home care, complementing other fixed monitoring systems and proactively engaging in case of emergency. The goal of this research will be achieved by developing novel qualitative models of ADLs, including new techniques for 3D sensing of human motion and RFID-based object recognition. This research will be further extended by new solutions in long-term human monitoring for anomaly detection.
Wearable Intelligent Technologies
University of Lincoln, UK.
Undergraduate Research Opportunities Scheme (UROS). Participation: Principal Investigator. Budget: £1000.
The interactive hat reacts to the presence of the people. The hat integrates technology based on artificial intelligence with a fashionable design. The hat is able to detect people using its integrated webcam, and then greets with a flashing and colourful light pattern.
Strategic Information and Communication R&D Promotion Programme (SCOPE)
Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, Japan.
Kyushu Univeristy, japan
Period: 2012--2015. Participation: Researcher
Tracing everyday objects in indoor environment for robotic service to daily human life
Grant-in-Aid for JSPS Fellows. Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS). Number: 22-00362. Period: November 2010 - November 2012.
Participation: Co-Principal Investigator (with Prof. Tsutomu Hasegawa). Budget: YEN 2400 000.
We use a variety of objects in our everyday life like for example, glasses, newspaper, or cups. These objects may be on the table, on the floor, or in the cabinet. Moreover, these objects are moved, handled, and left there by humans or robots. Looking for these objects is a task that we often carry out and that sometimes is quite time consuming, or even frustrating if the desired object is not found. Thus the main purpose of our research is to design a robot able to find everyday objects in indoor environments and bring them to the user. To carry out this task, the robot will combine human tracking techniques with some other sensors such as vision or RFIDs to trace the objects and pick them up. One of the main points in this research will be the interaction and exchange of information between the robot, the environment, and the human himself to solve complicate tasks such as finding lost objects. In this last case, even if the robot does not posses the complete knowledge about the searched object such as the shape, color, or the precise location, it will search and find the object according to the, sometimes ambiguous, instructions from the human. In other words, the robot and the human will collaborate with each other and will increase their own belief about the searched object by exchanging partial information about the state of the object. A robot able to find objects in indoor environments has many applications. For example, it could help people with moving disabilities by fetching the objects they need. Moreover, people with special memory loss problems such as Alzheimer patients, or elderly people, will get great advantage of this system as well.
HYPER: Equipo de investigación en materia de neuroprotésica y neurorrobótica para la rehabilitación de trastornos motores en lesiones medulares, accidence cerebrovascular y parálisis cerebral
Spanish Project. Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación. Consolider Ingenio. ID: CSD2009-00067 Period: 2010-2014. Participation: Researcher.
Neuro-control cognitivo de prótesis robóticas y de miembros humanos por estimulación eléctrica funcional para aplicaciones de rehabilitación
Spanish project. Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación. ID: DPI2009-14732-C02-01.
Period: 2009-2011. Participation: Researcher.
Exhibition Robots in FITUR 2009
Two robots robots were developed to represent the city of Elche (Spain) at FITUR 2009, the largest tourism trade fair on the international circuit. The first robot represented the Lady of Elche, and the second robot represented a palm from Elche. The robots interacted with people visiting the exhibition.
CoSy: Cognitive Systems for Cognitive Assistants
European Union FP6 IST Cognitive Systems Integrated project. Call: FP6-2002-IST-2. Area: IST-2002-2.3.2.4. ID: FP6-004250-IP. Total Budget: EUR 7 490 000.
Period: Sept 2004 - Aug 2008. Coordinator: Henrik Christensen. PI ALU: Wolfram Burgard. Participation: Researcher.
The main goal of the project is to advance the science of cognitive systems through a multi-disciplinary investigation of requirements, design options and trade-offs for human-like, autonomous, integrated, physical (eg., robot) systems, including requirements for architectures, for forms of representation, for perceptual mechanisms, for learning, planning, reasoning and motivation, for action and communication.
VISCOBOT: Sistema de percepción visual móvil y cooperativo como soporte para la realización de tareas con redes de robots
Spanish project. Programa Nacional del Plan Nacional de Investigación Científica, Desarrollo e Innovación Tecnológica 2004-2007. Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia.
ID: DPI2007-61197. Budget: EUR 227 722
Period: 1/10/2007 - 30/09/2010. PI: Oscar Reinoso. Participation: Researcher.
SmartTer: a Vehicle for Fully Autonomous Navigation and Mapping in Outdoor Environmentsh4>
Participation: Key member.
The goal of this project is to develop an autonomous vehicle based the Smart car. The project was created as a cooperation between the Autonomous Systems Lab at EPFL, Lausanne, and the research group for Autonomous Intelligent Systems at ALU, Freiburg, to participate in the ELROB 2006 event, where 20 European teams demonstrated outdoor navigation technology.
Mecanismos de degeneracion, regeneracion y reparacion en un modelo experimental neurodegenerativo
Spanish project from Ministerio de Educacion y Ciencia.
Period: June 1999 - June 2000. Participation: Researcher.