Antonio Barrientos

• PhD
• Universidad Politécnica de Madrid

Uno de los principales problemas que está encontrando la robótica blanda y, en parte, frenando su auge, es la dificultad para modelar con precisión la cinemática inversa de estos manipuladores. Su carácter redundante hace compleja esta tarea y, en multitud de ocasiones, las técnicas de aprendizaje automático precisan de un número de muestras difíci...

Perception systems are fundamental in outdoor robotics, as their correct functionality is essential for tasks such as terrain identification, localization, navigation, and analysis of objects of interest. This is particularly relevant in search and rescue (SAR) robotics, where one current research focuses on the mobility and traversal of unstructur...

The development of immersive technologies in recent years has facilitated the control and execution of tasks at a high level of complexity in robotic systems. On the other hand, exploration and manipulation tasks in unknown environments have been one of the main challenges in search and rescue (SAR) robotics. Due to the complexity and uncertainty i...

Exploring tasks in unknown environments has become a relevant search and rescue robotics approach. Ground robots are a better alternative to rescuers for first exploration. However, exploration progress is often limited by uneven terrains that exceed the kinematic capabilities of robots, including those with complex locomotion systems. This work pr...

In recent years, legged quadruped robots have proved to be a valuable support to humans in dealing with Search and Rescue (SAR) operations. These robots can move with great ability in complex terrains, unstructured environments or regions with many obstacles. This work employs the quadruped robot ARTU-R (A1 Rescue Tasks UPM Robot) by Unitree, equip...

The technological advancements in sensory systems and robotics over the past decade have facilitated the innovation of centralized systems for optimizing resource utilization and monitoring efficiency in inspection applications. This paper presents a novel system designed for gas concentration sensing in environments by implementing a modular artif...

Technological advancements have facilitated the development of sophisticated vision systems, integrating optical sensors with artificial vision and machine learning techniques to create applications in different fields of robotics. One such field is Search and Rescue (SAR) robotics, which has historically played a significant role in assisting brig...

Search and rescue robots have a critical role in exploring dangerous environments and natural disasters. Its use allows rescue teams to work more safely and efficiently in high-risk environments. Implementing teleoperation systems through virtual reality (VR) allows users to control these robots remotely with high precision. This article analyzes,...

This article proposes a visual inertial navigation algorithm intended to diminish the horizontal position drift experienced by autonomous fixed-wing UAVs (unmanned air vehicles) in the absence of GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) signals. In addition to accelerometers, gyroscopes, and magnetometers, the proposed navigation filter relies on...

The presence of sinkholes has been widely studied due to their potential risk to infrastructure and to the lives of inhabitants and rescuers in urban disaster areas, which is generally addressed in geotechnics and geophysics. In recent years, robotics has gained importance for the inspection and assessment of areas of potential risk for sinkhole fo...

Robots with bio-inspired locomotion systems, such as quadruped robots, have recently attracted significant scientific interest, especially those designed to tackle missions in unstructured terrains, such as search-and-rescue robotics. On the other hand, artificial intelligence systems have allowed for the improvement and adaptation of the locomotio...

In recent years, exploration tasks in disaster environments, victim localization and primary assistance have been the main focuses of Search and Rescue (SAR) Robotics. Developing new technologies in Mixed Reality (M-R) and legged robotics has taken a big step in developing robust field applications in the Robotics field. This article presents MR-RA...

Background Ankle-foot orthoses (AFOs) are extensively used as a primary management method to assist ambulation of children with Cerebral Palsy (CP). However, there are certain barriers that hinder their prescription as well as their use as a mobility device in all kinds of daily-life activities. This exploratory research attempts to further underst...

This article proposes a visual inertial navigation algorithm intended to diminish the horizontal position drift experienced by autonomous fixed wing UAVs (Unmanned Air Vehicles) in the absence of GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) signals. In addition to accelerometers, gyroscopes, and magnetometers, the proposed navigation filter relies on...

This article proposes a method to diminish the horizontal position drift in the absence of GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) signals experienced by the VNS (Visual Navigation System) installed onboard a UAV (Unmanned Air Vehicle) by supplementing its pose estimation non-linear optimizations with priors based on the outputs of the INS (Inert...

Post-disaster environments resulting from catastrophic events, leave sequels such as victims trapped in debris, which are difficult to detect by rescuers in a first inspection. Technological advances in electronics and perception have allowed the development of versatile and powerful optical sensors capable of capturing light in spectrums that huma...

Early detection of victims in post-disaster environments is an essential task for rescue teams, and effective victim identification will save the greatest number of lives. One of the most significant challenges to carry out these tasks lies mainly in the harsh conditions typical of post-disaster environments such as low light, victims trapped both...

Soft bioinspired manipulators have a theoretically infinite number of degrees of freedom, providing considerable advantages. However, their control is very complex, making it challenging to model the elastic elements that define their structure. Finite elements (FEA) can provide a model with sufficient accuracy but are inadequate for real-time use....

Technological development within the robotics field has made it possible to generate great advances, developing complex bio-inspired systems, such as robots with legs. The same ones have great applicability within search and rescue (SAR) tasks. This type of robot stands out for its extraordinary ability to move within unstructured environments, ove...

Robotic interventions in post-disaster environments to carry out search and rescue explorations allow optimizing time for identifying victims and safeguarding the rescuer’s integrity. The rising in the neural networks field and their application in image detection algorithms have made it possible to facilitate the early detection of victims in thes...

In recent years, legged (quadruped) robots have been subject of technological study and continuous development. These robots have a leading role in applications that require high mobility skills in complex terrain, as is the case of Search and Rescue (SAR). These robots stand out for their ability to adapt to different terrains, overcome obstacles...

La Robótica de Búsqueda y Rescate en las últimas décadas ha sido una línea de gran crecimiento, brindando apoyo a brigadas de primera línea en situaciones pos-desastre, aportando principalmente transmisión de información desde zonas de alto riesgo o asistiendo con equipos de primeros auxilios a víctimas. El presente artículo busca establecer una cl...

El posicionamiento preciso de plataformas robóticas en interiores es un campo de investigación con bastantes desafíos. Cada día, se presentan alternativas con nuevas tecnologías para ampliar las metodologías utilizadas para localización de robots en entornos no estructurados sin acceso a señales satelitales GNSS. Entre estas tecnologías se encuentr...

Obtaining mathematical equations to model the kinematics of a hyper-redundant robot is not intuitive and of greater difficulty than for traditional robots. Depending on the characteristics of the robot, the most appropriate methodology to approach the modelling may be one or another. This article provides a general overview of the different approac...

Smart cities have emerged as a strategy to solve problems that current cities face, such as traffic, security, resource management, waste, and pollution. Most of the current approaches are based on deploying large numbers of sensors throughout the city and have some limitations to get relevant and updated data. In this paper, as an extension of our...

A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00779-020-01504-1

The navigation systems of autonomous aircraft rely on the readings provided by a suite of onboard sensors to estimate the aircraft state. In the case of fixed wing vehicles, the sensor suite is usually composed by triads of accelerometers, gyroscopes, and magnetometers, a Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) receiver, and an air data system (P...

The growing demand for organically produced vegetables requires the adoption of new cropping systems such as strip-cropping. To counteract the additional labour mixed cropping entails, automation and robotics play a key role. This research focuses on the development of a proof-of-concept platform that combines optical sensors and an actuation syste...

This article proposes a method to diminish the pose (position plus attitude) drift experienced by an SVO (Semi-Direct Visual Odometry) based visual navigation system installed onboard a UAV (Unmanned Air Vehicle) by supplementing its pose estimation non linear optimizations with priors based on the outputs of a GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite Sys...

The development of new sensory and robotic technologies in recent years and the increase in the consumption of organic vegetables have allowed the generation of specific applications around precision agriculture seeking to satisfy market demand. This article analyzes the use and advantages of specific optical sensory systems for data acquisition an...

Se presenta un sistema autónomo de Búsqueda y Rescate basado en la coordinación entre un UAV y un UGV (este último funcionando como plataforma móvil de aterrizaje). El vehículo aéreo debe localizar el objetivo en base a una imagen aérea, seguirlo y aterrizar sobre él cuando así le sea indicado. El algoritmo de seguimiento y aterrizaje está basado e...

Background: Ankle-foot orthoses (AFOs) are extensively used as a primary management method to assist walking and ambulation of children with Cerebral Palsy (CP). However, there are certain barriers that hinder their prescription and as well as their use as a mobility device in all kinds of daily-life activities. This research attempts to further un...

Background Ankle-foot orthoses (AFOs) are extensively used as a primary management method to assist ambulation of children with Cerebral Palsy (CP). However, there are certain barriers that hinder their prescription as well as their use as a mobility device in all kinds of daily-life activities. This exploratory research attempts to further underst...

To meet the increased demand for organic vegetables and improve their product quality, the Sureveg CORE Organic Cofund ERA-Net project focuses on the benefits and best practices of growing different crops in alternate rows. A prototype of a robotic platform was developed to address the specific needs of this field type at an individual plant level...

The interfaces for Human-Robot interaction in different fields such as precision agriculture (PA) have made it possible to improve production processes, applying specialized treatments that require a high degree of precision at the plant level. The current fertilization processes are generalized for vast cultivation areas without considering each p...

The increasing demand of organic vegetables has driven conventional farmers to change their businesses in order to develop organic methods for cultivation and the use of alternative techniques to avoid damaging the soil and the quality of the products. In some cases, to enhance biodiversity and soil fertility, crops are established in a mixed patte...

Multi-Robot Systems (MRSs) have emerged as a suitable alternative to single robots to improve current and enable new missions [...]

Technological breakthroughs in recent years have led to a revolution in fields such as Machine Vision and Search and Rescue Robotics (SAR), thanks to the application and development of new and improved neural networks to vision models together with modern optical sensors that incorporate thermal cameras, capable of capturing data in post-disaster e...

This article proposes an inertial navigation algorithm intended to lower the negative consequences of the absence of GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) signals on the navigation of autonomous fixed wing low SWaP (Size, Weight, and Power) UAVs (Unmanned Air Vehicles). In addition to accelerometers and gyroscopes, the filter takes advantage of...

This article proposes an inertial navigation algorithm intended to lower the negative consequences of the absence of GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) signals on the navigation of autonomous fixed wing low SWaP (Size, Weight, and Power) UAVs (Unmanned Air Vehicles). In addition to accelerometers and gyroscopes, the filter takes advantage of...

Haptic technology allows us to experience tactile and force sensations without the need to expose ourselves to specific environments. It also allows a more immersive experience with virtual reality devices. This paper presents the development of a soft haptic glove for kinesthetic perception. It is lightweight and soft to allow for a more natural h...

span class="fontstyle0">A día de hoy, existen en el mercado una gran cantidad de aeronaves sin piloto que pueden ser comandadas con ordenes de alto nivel para realizar tareas complejas de forma casi automatica, como por ejemplo el mapeo de explotaciones agrícolas. De forma natural, nos podemos preguntar si sería posible coordinar a un grupo de esto...

Soft grippers have experienced a growing interest due to their considerable flexibility that allows them to grasp a variety of objects, in contrast to hard grippers, which are designed for a specific item. One of their most remarkable characteristics is the ability to manipulate soft objects without damaging them. This, together with their wide ran...

The purpose of this work consists of finding a simple and general method to control hyper-redundant manipulators. By definition, hyper-redundant robots have a large number of degrees of freedom which makes it difficult to find fast and stable solutions. In the case of growing robots, where the number of degrees of freedom can even increase, the pro...

C-legged hexapod robots offer a balanced trade-off between the robust stability of wheeled robots and the increased-motion capabilities of legged robots, and therefore, are currently of great interest. This article investigates the impact of mass, leg radius, and angular velocity on the energy consumption of C-legged hexapod robots, in order to dev...

The number of tasks that nowadays are accomplished by using unmanned aerial vehicles is rising across many civil applications, including agriculture. Thus, this work aims at providing the reader with an overview of the agronomical use of unmanned aerial vehicles. The work starts with a historical analysis of the use of aircrafts in agriculture, as...

In this chapter we present a tutorial for ClegS, a ROS meta-package for the development of C-legged robots. This is the first meta-package in ROS dedicated to develop robots with this special legs, and allows the user to experiment with different morphologies of these C-legged robots (quadruped, hexapod, octapod). ClegS has been developed to be plu...

Forest firefighting missions encompass multiple tasks related to prevention, surveillance, and extinguishing. This work presents a complete survey of firefighters on the current problems in their work and the potential technological solutions. Additionally, it reviews the efforts performed by the academy and industry to apply different types of rob...

The use of robotic systems in organic farming has taken on a leading role in recent years; the Sureveg CORE Organic Cofund ERA-Net project seeks to evaluate the benefits of strip-cropping to produce organic vegetables. This includes, among other objectives, the development of a robotic tool that facilitates the automation of the fertilisation proce...

In this work the authors present a novel algorithm for estimating the odometry of “C” legged robots with compliant legs and an analysis to estimate the pose of the robot. Robots with “C” legs are an alternative to wheeled and tracked robots for overcoming obstacles that can be found in different scenarios like stairs, debris, etc. Therefore, this k...

Recent developments in bioinspired technologies combined with the advance of intelligent and soft materials have allowed soft robots to replicate the behavior of different animal species. These devices can perform complicated tasks such as reaching or adapting in constrained and unstructured environments. This article proposes a methodology to deve...

This work presents an analysis of immersive realities and natural language applied to the teleoperation of hyper-redundant robots. Such devices have a large number of degrees of freedom, so they often exhibit complex configurations frustrating their spatial understanding. This work aims to contrast two hypotheses; first, if immersive interfaces enh...

p class="icsmabstract">Los sistemas multi-robot están experimentando un gran desarrollo en los últimos tiempos, ya que mejoran el rendimiento de las misiones actuales y permiten realizar nuevos tipos de misiones. Este artículo analiza el estado del arte de los sistemas multi-robot, abordando un conjunto de temas relevantes: misiones, flotas, operad...

Modelling soft robots is a non‐trivial task since their behaviours rely on their morphology, materials and surrounding elements. These robots are very useful to safely interact with their environment and because of their inherent flexibility and adaptability skills. However, they are usually very hard to model because of their intrinsic non‐lineari...

Hyper-redundant robots are highly articulated devices that present numerous technical challenges such as their design, control or remote operation. However, they offer superior kinematic skills than traditional robots for multiple applications. This work proposes an original and custom-made design for a discrete and hyper-redundant manipulator. It...

A crop monitoring system was developed for the supervision of organic fertilization status on tomato plants at early stages. An automatic and nondestructive approach was used to analyze tomato plants with different levels of water-soluble organic fertilizer (3 + 5 NK) and vermicompost. The evaluation system was composed by a multispectral camera wi...

In the above article [1] , the affiliation of the authors was written as:

Robotización del cultivo en hileras para la agricultura ecológica. Proyecto SUREVEG El proyecto SUREVEG aborda la agricultura ecológica basada en cultivos en hileras en las que se alterna el cultivo principal con otro complementario, con apoyo de sistemas robóticos y de Inteligencia Artificial La demanda de productos de agricultura ecológica está e...

One of the active challenges in multi-robot missions is related to managing operator workload and situational awareness. Currently, the operators are trained to use interfaces, but in the near future this can be turned inside out: the interfaces will adapt to operators so as to facilitate their tasks. To this end, the interfaces should manage model...

Featured Application Autonomous takeoff, tracking, and landing maneuvers on a moving target with application to a fleet of robots with aerial and ground vehicles that need to operate for extended periods of time, as in Search and Rescue tasks. Abstract Robot cooperation is key in Search and Rescue (SaR) tasks. Frequently, these tasks take place in...

Multiple robot missions imply a series of challenges for single human operators, such as managing high workloads or maintaining a correct level of situational awareness. Conventional interfaces are not prepared to face these challenges; however, new concepts have arisen to cover this need, such as adaptive and immersive interfaces. This paper repor...

Industry 4.0 aims at integrating machines and operators through network connections and information management. It proposes the use of a set of technologies in industry, such as data analysis, Internet of Things, cloud computing, cooperative robots, and immersive technologies. This paper presents a training system for industrial operators in assemb...

This paper presents a novel tool capable of collecting thermal signatures inside a building by using low-cost IR temperature sensors mounted on-board an aerial platform. The proposed system aims to facilitate the detection of heat loss inside buildings, which is a key aspect for improving energy efficiency in large commercial or industrial building...

Smart Cities have emerged as a strategy to solve problems that current cities face, such as traffic, resource management , waste, pollution, etc. Most of the Smart City proposals are based on placing sensors in fixed locations of the city or, at the most, in public transportation systems. These strategies can produce blind zones, given that the sen...

This chapter describes a series of works developed in order to integrate ROS-based robots with Unity-based virtual reality interfaces. The main goal of this integration is to develop immersive monitoring and commanding interfaces, able to improve the operator’s situational awareness without increasing its workload. In order to achieve this, the ava...

This article presents a new approach to the interception of moving targets in large and complex scenarios. The path planning for interception is based on the Risk-RRT algorithm, which is enhanced by integrating additional information obtained using Fast Marching Method algorithms. Two different techniques based on that method were adapted and integ...

This work explores the potential of game theory to solve the task allocation problem in multi-robot missions. The problem considers a swarm with dozens of drones that only know their neighbors, as well as a mission that consists of visiting a series of locations and performing certain activities. Two algorithms have been developed and validated in...

Traffic monitoring is a key issue to develop smarter and more sustainable cities in the future, allowing to make a better use of the public space and reducing pollution. This work presents an aerial swarm that continuously monitors the traffic in SwarmCity, a simulated city developed in Unity game engine where drones and cars are modeled in a reali...

In many cases, the control system for robotic swarms are complex behavioral networks (frequently probabilistic finite state machines) with several parameters to be tuned. Their selection has a high impact on the performance of the swarm carrying out a given task. In the past, those parameters have been optimized using automatic methods, whereas in...

Los robots hiper-redundantes son aquellos que tienen un número muy elevado de grados de libertad. En su uso cotidiano, la redundancia es referida para indicar una repetición o un uso excesivo de un concepto. En el campo de la robótica, la redundancia puede ofrecer numerosos beneficios frente a los robots convencionales. Los robots hiper-redundantes...

Multi-robot missions can be compared to industrial processes or public services in terms of complexity, agents and interactions. Process mining is an emerging discipline that involves process modeling, analysis and improvement through the information collected by event logs. Currently, this discipline is successfully used to analyze several types o...

The search of a given area is one of the most studied tasks in swarm robotics. Different heuristic methods have been studied in the past taking into account the peculiarities of these systems (number of robots, limited communications and sensing and computational capacities). In this work, we introduce a behavioral network made up of different well...