This talk presents an overarching view of the research at PUC-USM Chile concerning mobile manipulators and their application to agriculture and mining in Chile, as well as the open challenges and opportunities for research collaboration. The recent and ongoing research covers aspects such physically accurate dynamic modelling, motion control and planning, navigation and perception.

Carrying out research with expensive industrial field robots has more risks than traditional indoor robotics. Thus developing physically accurate models is essential for testing through simulations before testing motion control and navigation strategies in the field. Physically accurate dynamic models are also essential to the development of energy efficient guidance methods, which cannot be properly conceived using kinematic models. Taking into account non-permanent wheel-ground contacts and skidding is a key aspect of realistic motion models for mobile robots operating in uneven terrains. Efficiently maneuvering in tight tunnels and agricultural settings has been addressed using rapid-randomly exploring trees to discover optimal paths in combination with optimal control strategies. Load variability is another challenge that motivates the study and development of strategies for online inertial parameter estimation. Other aspects that are equally important are associated to sensing and perception for teleoperated and autonomous tasks, e.g. harvesting, localization, or material handling, to name a few. Open challenges in mobile manipulation can provide a good amount of opportunities for joint research and collaboration of researchers at PUT and PUC-USM.

Speaker(s): Miguel Torres-Torriti,

Location:
Room: 433
Bldg: Electrical Engineering Building
Poznan University of Technology
ul. Piotrowo 3A
Poznan, Wielkopolskie