The ICARSC’2020 conference – 20th IEEE International Conference on Autonomous Robot Systems and Competitions – awarded several works developed in the field of robotics in 2019. The researchers from INESC TEC’s Centre for Robotics in Industry and Intelligent Systems (CRIIS) received three awards: “SPR Award for Innovation and Technology Transfer in Robotics”, honourable mention in the “SPR Award for the Best National Master’s Thesis in Robotics” and the first prize of the “Industrial Robot journal Best Paper Award”.
This conference was co-organised by the research group GRIA-NIDES of the University of the Azores, PROBOT – Programming and Robotics Association of Azores and the Portuguese Robotics Society (SPR). The event took place online, on April 15 and 16.
Innovation and Technology Transfer in Robotics
The “SPR Award for Innovation and Technology Transfer in Robotics” was presented to the HORSE FLEXCoating project – developed by INESC TEC, through a collaboration between Paulo Ribeiro (former CRIIS collaborator), Carlos Costa, Rafael Arrais, Luís Rocha, Manuel S. Silva and Germano Veiga (CRIIS researchers).
The HORSE FLEXCoating was carried out in partnership with FLUPOL Surface Engineering SA, and the main goal was the integration of safety features in an existing industrial robotic cell dedicated to advanced coating applications, in order to improve cooperation between highly qualified operators and industrial robots.
Best National Master’s Thesis in Robotics
With regard to the “SPR Award for the Best National Master’s Thesis in Robotics”, the thesis Monocular visual odometry in agriculture robots with fisheye camera(s) by André Silva Pinto de Aguiar, researcher at CRIIS, received an honourable mention. The supervisors of the thesis were Armando Jorge Sousa and Filipe Neves dos Santos, CRIIS collaborators.
Industrial Robot journal Best Paper Award
SPR and the international scientific journal “Industrial Robot – The International Journal of Robotics Research and Application” established a partnership, and the magazine’s Editorial Board awarded prizes to the best articles submitted and presented at ICARSC’2020, according to their field. The article Enhanced Performance Real-Time Industrial Robot Programming by Demonstration using Stereoscopic Vision and an IMU sensor won the first prize of the “Industrial Robot journal Best Paper Award”. Vítor H. Pinto (former CRIIS collaborator), António Amorim, Luís Rocha and António P. Moreira, researchers at CRIIS, developed the article.
The magazine’s editor, Clive Loughlin, substantiated the selection by mentioning that human operators usually perform industrial tasks such as spray painting and polishing, in order to obtain the expected quality and finish, but that said skills take years to improve. “If a robot is to replicate the performance, it needs to be taught by the skilled operator, who is unlikely to have advanced robot programming knowledge”, he said. The Industrial Robot editor found that the “the programming-by-demonstration techniques demonstrated in this paper provide a highly practical solution to this problem using 6D Mimic sensor with an IMU sensor.”
The INESC TEC researchers mentioned in this news piece are associated with INESC TEC and UP-FEUP.
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