A robot developed at INESC TEC’s Centre for Robotics in Industry and Intelligent Systems (CRIIS) won the Robot@Factory 4.0, a competition part of the National Robotics Festival, which took place from April 29 to May 1, in Santa Maria da Feira.
The challenge was to transport as many boxes as possible in the shortest time, using an electromagnet, from a starting warehouse to a target warehouse, while moving the boxes through specific processing machines according to their colour. Said colour was introduced at beginning of the competition, and the robot had to request this information to the server, in order to know the colour and position of the boxes in the starting warehouse.
The competition was divided into three stages: the first involved transporting four blue boxes only between warehouses; the second focused on moving two blue and two green boxes through a processing machine; and the third involved moving one blue, two green and one red boxes by two processing machines. Competing with three other teams, INESC TEC’s robot finished the race in first place, transporting all the boxes, and completing the first stage in 2m04s7, the second in 2m09s5 and the third stage in 2m15s3.
The differentiating factors of INESC TEC’s robot were, on the one hand, a LiDAR laser, which facilitated the location considering the poles in the corners of the field, and, on the other hand, the mechanum wheels with omnidirectional traction, which provided freedom of navigation in all directions. For the development of this robot, which started about three months ago, the team resorted to 3D modelling and design, location algorithms using laser data and odometry (wheel data), as well as coordination, sequencing, and task assignment actions.
The National Robotics Festival 2022 was attended by hundreds of elementary and high school students, higher education institutions, teachers and researchers; the event aims to raise awareness and attract younger people to careers in the field of science and technology.
The videos of INESC TEC’s performance in each stage are now available:
The INESC TEC researchers mentioned in this news piece are associated with INESC TEC and UP-FEUP.
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