Enrico Pagello

• Professor (Full) at University of Padua

The aim of this paper is to exploit the peculiarities of a previously presented mechanical model for the humanoid gait, especially considering the role that certain parameters could have in the design of a multi-link leg. Usually the approach is very straightforward; most of the effort is centered on the algorithm which drives the joints, given a g...

The Planning Domain Definition Language (PDDL) successfully encodes classical planning tasks by easily describing objects, actions, and states in many planning domains. PDDL also describes domains, but they include only predefined sets of actions that can solve problems in a finite set of states. Indeed, the PDDL structure disables the processing o...

Complex manipulation tasks require careful integration of symbolic reasoning and motion planning. This problem, commonly referred to as Task and Motion Planning (TAMP), is even more challenging if the workspace is non-static, e.g. due to human interventions and perceived with noisy non-ideal sensors. This work proposes an online approximated TAMP m...

The robotic industry needs new, innovative, ideas to be globally competitive. Conventional industrial robots are not able to adapt to changes in the assembly processes. Flexible assembly applications are actually uncommon and only isolated attempts exploit industrial robots to perform tasks with variability in the parts. Variability aspects are emp...

To complete a task consisting of a series of actions that involve human-robot interaction, it is necessary to plan a motion that considers each action individually as well as in relation to the following action. We then focus on the specific action of “approaching a group of people” in order to accurately obtain human data that is used to make the...

This paper proposes RUR53: an Unmanned Ground Vehicle able to navigate through, identify, and reach areas of interest. There, it can recognize, localize, and manipulate work tools to perform both indoor and outdoor complex tasks. Indeed, a wide range of sensors composes the robot and enables it to perceive vast workspaces, reach distant targets, an...

Complex manipulation tasks require careful integration of symbolic reasoning and motion planning. This problem, commonly referred to as Task and Motion Planning (TAMP), is even more challenging if the workspace is non-static, e.g. due to human interventions and perceived with noisy non-ideal sensors. This work proposes an online approximated TAMP m...

Human-robot collaboration is one of the key elements in the Industry 4.0 revolution, aiming to a close and direct collaboration between robots and human workers to reach higher productivity and improved ergonomics. The first step toward such kind of collaboration in the industrial context is the removal of physical safety barriers usually surroundi...

This paper proposes RUR53: an Unmanned Ground Vehicle able to autonomously navigate through, identify, and reach areas of interest; and there recognize, localize, and manipulate work tools to perform complex manipulation tasks. The proposed contribution includes a modular software architecture where each module solves specific sub-tasks and that ca...

Background: A proper modeling of human grasping and of hand movements is fundamental for robotics, prosthetics, physiology and rehabilitation. The taxonomies of hand grasps that have been proposed in scientific literature so far are based on qualitative analyses of the movements and thus they are usually not quantitatively justified. Methods: This...

The paper describes a human-robot cooperative installation methodology of heavy and bulky components based on marker-based visual servoing, force control and human robot cooperation. The main advance in the human-robot cooperation is achieved by a shared-control of the interaction during the installation task, relieving the human operator by the ma...

On the basis of the industry 4.0 paradigm, the EURECA H2020 CleanSky 2 project proposes a multi-robot human-centered framework aiming to innovate installation processes within the aerospace industry. Focusing on the cabin installation tasks, the proposed robotic solution assists the human operator in onerous applications, relieving workers from hea...

The interest on wearable prosthetic devices has boost the research for a robust framework to help injured subjects to regain their lost functionality. A great number of solutions exploit physiological human signals, such as Electromyography (EMG), to naturally control the prosthesis, reproducing what happens in the human limbs. In this paper, we pr...

Motivation: Modeling human grasping and hand movements is important for robotics, prosthetics and rehabilitation. Several qualitative taxonomies of hand grasps have been proposed in scientific literature. However it is not clear how well they correspond to subjects movements. Objective: In this work we quantitatively analyze the similarity between...

This paper aims at providing a preliminary description of ROS-Health, a novel framework for neurorobotics based on the middleware Robot Operating System (ROS). The increased interest in the neurorobotics field and the proliferation of several (neuro)physiological-based applications to control robotics devices made clear the importance to establish...

This paper proposes a preliminary work on a Conditional Task and Motion Planning algorithm able to find a plan that minimizes robot efforts while solving assigned tasks. Unlike most of the existing approaches that replan a path only when it becomes unfeasible (e.g., no collision-free paths exist), the proposed algorithm takes into consideration a r...

In this paper, we address the problem of deploying a wire along a specific path selected by an unskilled user. The robot has to learn the selected path and pass a wire through the peg table by using the same tool. The main contribution regards the hybrid use of Cartesian positions provided by a learning procedure and joint positions obtained by inv...

Industry 4.0 aims to make collaborative robotics accessible and effective inside factories. Human–robot interaction is enhanced by means of advanced perception systems which allow a flexible and reliable production. We are one of the contenders of a challenge with the intent of improve cooperation in industry. Within this competition, we developed...

This paper proposes a preliminary work on a Conditional Task and Motion Planning algorithm able to find a plan that minimizes robot efforts while solving assigned tasks. Unlike most of the existing approaches that replan a path only when it becomes unfeasible (e.g., no collision-free paths exist), the proposed algorithm takes into consideration a r...

A rigid actuation method does not allow a humanoid to flexibly compliant with the efforts needed to be exerted in a changing environment. Thus, starting from the studies developed in the biomechanical and biomimetic fields, this paper introduces a novel bipedal robot equipped with a musculoskeletal-like mechanism, in order to obtain the expected co...

Exploiting the new technologies and principles of Industry 4.0, the aerospace industry is ready to take its first step into a completely new automation production. The EURECA H2020 CleanSky 2 project takes part in such epochal change, proposing a multi-robot human-centered framework dedicated to innovate the assembly of aircraft interiors by means...

When studying humanoid robots, many of the processes involving the synthesis of robots motion have much in common with problems found in biomechanics and human motor-control research. Based on the use of simulation tools, additive manufacturing and system identification techniques, this work presents the design and implementation of an underactuate...

This paper proposes an Open Semantic Framework for knowledge acquisition of cognitive robots performing manipulation tasks. It integrates a Cloud-based Engine, which extracts discriminative features from the objects and generates their manipulation actions, and an Ontology, where the Engine saves data for future accesses. The Engine offloads robots...

Robotics technology has recently matured sufficiently to deploy autonomous robotic systems for daily use in several applications: from disaster response to environmental monitoring and logistics. In such applications, robots must establish collaborative interactions so to achieve their individual and collective goals and a key problem is for robots...

The interaction with robotic devices by means of physiological human signals has become of great interest in the last years because of the capability of catching human intention of movement and translate it in a coherent action performed by a robotic platform. Due to the complexity of EMG signals, several studies have been carried out about models...

This paper proposes a planner that solves Navigation Among Movable Obstacles problems giving robots the ability to reason about the environment and choose when manipulating obstacles. It finds a path from a robot start configuration S to a goal configuration G taking into consideration the possibility of moving objects if G cannot be reached or if...

The paper describes our experience in the benchmarking phase of the European Robotics Challenges project. The main focus is on the original solution proposed for solving a door assembly task. The proposal has to deal with tolerances in the door and module positions, never seen before doors, fast and usable human-machine interfaces, legacy hardware...

The paper describes how the graduate course “Autonomous Robotics” innovatively introduces robotics to Master of Science students of the Faculty of Computer Engineering of the University of Padova (Italy). The main contributions are: 1) The adoption of a Project-Based Learning constructivist approach. This teaching methodology makes students able t...

This chapter presents a technical research contribution in the audio for robotics field where ROS was used for validating the results. More specifically it deals with 2D Audio Localization using only the Directions of Arrival (DOAs) of a fixed acoustic source coming from an audio sensor network and proposes a method for estimating the position of t...

In the last decade, the development of multi robot systems has shown with growing evidence how a well-balanced deliberative-reactive coordination can provide a group of robots with an efficient and robust collective behavior. In this paper, we want to cover exhaustively this issue from the point of view of the single agent in the general model we h...

In order to help elder people who suffer from lower back pain caused by lower spine degeneration, a novel kind of robot-assisted exoskeleton spine was designed. It was mainly applied to lift their upper bodies for assisting movements and reducing backache during walking. The aim of this system was to control an elastically actuated motor to provide...

We perform a study on responses that should be performed by robots when touched by humans. To study the kinds of robot responses in general, there is a need for clustering similar responses. We present the use of Multiple correspondence analysis (MCA) and hierarchical clustering method as a way of clustering different humanoid robot postures. MCA i...

This paper presents a Semantic Knowledge Base that can be adopted as an information resource for autonomous cognitive robots performing manipulation tasks. Robots can use this database to save and share descriptions of learned tasks, detected objects, and explored environments. The Semantic Knowledge Base becomes: I) a data store for efficient and...

This paper presents a graduate course project on humanoid robotics offered by the University of Padova. The target is to safely lift an object by teleoperating a small humanoid. Students have to map human limbs into robot joints, guarantee the robot stability during the motion, and teleoperate the robot to perform the correct movement.We introduce...

INTRODUCTION The control of wearable devices cannot be efficiently designed by assuming that the users’ muscle forces would be the only means s/he uses to control body segments dynamics while ignoring the intrinsic mechanical properties of the muscles. The mechanical dynamics of the combined musculoskeletal system plays a central role to gain a ful...

This work presents a comparison between two optimization methods used to compute the muscle activation levels and corresponding forces that drives a set of generalized coordinates towards a set of desired trajectories. To improve the performance of musculoskeletal optimizations a supplemental set of actuators is often included in addition to the mo...

This paper evaluates the use of Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) trained through Electromyography (EMG) signals to online estimate the bending angle of a single human joint. The parameters involved in the evaluation are the number of Gaussian components, the channel used for model, the feature extraction method, and the size of the training set. The fe...

The interaction with robotic devices by means of physiological human signals has become of great interest in the last years because of the capability of catching human intention of movement and translate it in a coherent action performed by a robotic platform. Due to the complexity of EMG signals, several studies have been carried out about models...

This paper explores the Audio Source Localization problem (ASL) using only the Direction of Arrivals (DOA) estimated by a Mobile Robot Sensor Network of a fixed single acoustic source. It also proposes a fast algorithm for localizing the 2D source position using the recent Gaussian Probability over DOA approach (GP-DOA). More specifically, the pape...

The central nervous system (CNS) generates neural commands to activate the muscles in order to control the human body movements. Subsequent forces produced by muscles are transmitted by tendons to the skeleton to perform a motor task. Thus, muscles and tendons are the interface between the CNS and the articulated body segments. A firm understand...

This paper explores the precision and accuracy of the audio source DOA estimation calculated by the audio software HARK for the popular Microsoft Kinect sensor. An audiovisual method for testing the precision of the built-in 4-Microphones array with the RGB-camera is proposed: a modified checkerboard with a special hole for an audio speaker is used...

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the computational aspects of a set of physiologically based control schemes for the modelling of Human Motion. A comparison between short-range stiffness and quasi-stiffness is presented as two variables for the design of new control schemes for humanoid robots and animates. Starting from a series of recent r...

The focus of this paper is on the effect of muscle force optimization algorithms on the human lower limb stiffness estimation. By using a forward dynamic neuromusculoskeletal model coupled with a muscle short-range stiffness model we computed the human joint stiffness of the lower limb during running. The joint stiffness values are calculated using...

The aim of this study is to estimate the stiffness of the muscle-tendon unit, of human lower limb, during the execution of a normal gait cycle. Unlike the analytical techniques already widely validated in literature and discussed below, a probabilistic approach based on the Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) has been adopted here for the computation of t...

This paper aims to explore the possibility to use Electromyography (EMG) to train a Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) in order to estimate the bending angle of a single human joint. In particular, EMG signals from eight leg muscles and the knee joint angle are acquired during a kick task from three different subjects. GMM is validated on new unseen data...

In this paper we introduce a framework that uses Semantic Web Technologies to facilitate multi-robots coordination. These Technologies let the creation of a Knowledge Base supporting the assignment of tasks to robots according to their capabilities. We address two problems: data sets interlinking and robots coordination. We interlink data sets to a...

Download Citation Email Print IEEE is not the copyright holder of this material This paper presents a Robot Learning from Demonstration (RLfD) framework for teaching manipulation tasks in an industrial environment: the system is able to learn a task performed by a human demonstrator and reproduce it through a manipulator robot. An RGB-D sensor acq...

This paper focuses on the key role played by the adopon of a framework in teaching roboocs with a computer science approach in the master in Computer Engineering. The framework adopted is the Robot Operaang System (ROS), which is becoming a standard de facto inside the roboocs community. The educaaonal accviies proposed in this paper are based on a...

A constructive debate is ongoing among experts and academics about the social and economic impacts of advanced robotics. Exoskeleton robotic suits represent one of the most significant examples of what Human-Oriented Robotics is. After recent technological advances, the range of application fields of these devices has widened with respect to the fi...

Exoskeletons represent one of the most important examples of human-oriented robotic devices. This paper describes an existing lower-limb exoskeleton designed to assist people with lower extremity paralysis or weakness during the movements of standing up and walking. Starting from the analysis of a real system developed about seven years ago, a virt...

In this study, we investigated an aspect of the chemical plume tracing behavior of an insect by using a bio-machine hybrid system. We implemented an experimental system by which an insect brain was connected to a robot body. We observed th neural responses to external disturbances and transitions at changes in the motor gain of the robot body. Base...

Our planner allows the extraction of the metal sheets from a press-brake. Since the solution must respect safety standard, this operation can be very complex. For this reason it is useful to usean automatic system to plan these operations. Thus, we have developed a specific planning algorithm, called EFT (Exit from Tools), that utilizes a hybrid ap...

This paper presents an ambient intelligence system aimed at increasing the security of elderly people in their living environment. The proposed system processes both video and audio signals to detect dangerous events and trigger automatic warnings. The system is implemented through a software middleware for multimedia streaming and processing in wh...

In this paper a system for automatic crack detection is presented. The system is capable of analyzing metal parts by means of a laser excitation system and a thermographic camera. The laser creates thermal gradients inside the part under inspection, and the thermal camera observes how heat diffuses inside the part. Cracks are automatically detected...

One of the main features of social robots is the ability to communicate and interact with people as partners in a natural way. However, achieving a good verbal interaction is a hard task due to the errors on speech recognition systems, and due to the understanting the natural language itself. This paper tries to overcome such kind of problems by pr...

The creation of intelligent robots has been a major goal of Artificial Intelligence since the early days and has provided many motivations to Artificial Intelligence researchers. Therefore, a large body of research has been done in this field and many relevant results have shown that integration of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics techniques is...

This paper proposes a fast and robust multi-people tracking algorithm for mobile platforms equipped with a RGB-D sensor. Our approach features an efficient point cloud depth-based clustering, an HOG-like classification to robustly initialize a person tracking and a person classifier with online learning to manage the person ID matching even after a...

This paper describes the software architecture of a distributed multi-people tracking algorithm for mobile platforms equipped with a RGB-D sensor. Our approach features an efficient point cloud depth-based clustering, an HOG-like classification to robustly initialize a person tracking and a person classifier with online learning to drive data assoc...

In the last decade the development of multirobot systems has come to maturation providing a lot of important results in many applicative domains. Many paradigms and approaches have been devised to this aim but one of them seems very promising for future applications: dense colony of robots where the large numbers of individuals is combined with a v...

The conventional actuator of robot needs to be improved since the bandwidth of motor is limited and it cannot provide enough flexibility to perform the compliance in robot locomotion interacted with environment. In this paper, we present a novel elastic actuator so as to enhance the range of robot activities for adaptability. Considering the charac...

This paper describes the modeling and the simulation of a novel Elastic Bipedal Robot based on Human Musculoskeletal modeling. The geometrical organization of the robot artificial muscles is based on the organization of human muscles. In this paper we study how the robot active and passive elastic actuation structures develop force during selected...

Individuality is one of the most important qualities of humans. Social robots should be able to model the individuality of the human partners and to modify their behaviours accordingly.This paper proposes a profiling system for social robots to be able to learn the individuality of human partners in social contexts. Profiles are expressed in terms...

In this paper, we use motion capture technology together with an EMG-driven musculoskeletal model of the knee joint to predict muscle behavior during human dynamic movements. We propose a muscle model based on infinitely stiff tendons and show this allows speeding up 250 times the computation of muscle force and the resulting joint moment calculati...

Many of the processes involved into the synthesis of human motion have much in common with problems found in robotics research. This paper describes the modeling and the simulation of a novel bipedal robot based on Series Elastic Actuators (SEAs). The robot model takes inspiration from the human musculoskeletal organization. The geometrical organiz...

This paper focuses on decentralized coordination for small or medium groups of heterogeneous mobile robots with relatively low compu-tational resources. Specifically, we consider coordinated obstacle avoidance techniques for mobile platforms performing high level tasks, such as patrolling or exploration. In more details, we propose the use of a gre...

In this paper, a multimodal system for recognizing people in intelligent environments is presented. Users are identified and tracked by detecting and recognizing voices and faces through cameras and microphones spread around the environment. This multimodal approach has been chosen to develop a flexible and cheap though reliable system, implemented...

In this paper an audio-video system for intelligent environments with the capability to recognize people is presented. Users are tracked inside the environment and their positions and activities can be logged. Users identities are assessed through a multimodal approach by detecting and recognizing voices and faces through the different cameras and...

In this work, we propose a robust and efficient method to build dense 3D maps, using only the images grabbed by an omnidirectional camera. The map contains exhaustive information about both the structure and the appearance of the environment and it is well suited also for large scale environments. We start from the assumption that the surrounding e...

This paper presents a novel neuromusculoskeletal (NMS) model of the human lower limb that uses the electromyo-graphic (EMG) signals from 16 muscles to estimate forces generated by 34 musculotendon actuators and the resulting joint moments at the hip, knee and ankle joints during varied contractile conditions. Our proposed methodology allows overcom...

A biologically inspired control algorithm for robot control was introduced in a previous work. The algorithm is robust to noisy sensor information and hardware failures. In this paper a new version of the algorithm is presented. The new version is able to cope with highly non-linear systems and presents an improved robustness to low-pass filter eff...

The next generation of tools for rehabilitation robotics requires advanced human-robot interfaces able to activate the device as soon as patient's motion intention is raised. This paper investigated the suitability of Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifiers for identification of locomotion intentions from surface electromyography (sEMG) data. A ph...

This paper presents a new approach to automatically monitor an indoor environment on thermodynamic basis. It uses temperature as the driving parameter and is especially suited for comfort analysis or evaluation of moisture. The system measures all fundamental environment parameters (e.g., air temperature, relative humidity and air speed) by imaging...

Cooperative control is a key issue for multirobot systems in many practical applications. In this paper, we address the problem of coordinating a set of mobile robots in the RoboCup soccer middle-size league. We show how the coordination problem that we face can be cast as a specific coalition formation problem, and we propose a distributed algorit...

Artifact systems created by humans interact with the surrounding natural world and have a large-scale influence on our human lives. The most creditable concept to this critical issue of scientific and technological development seems to be ''System Life'' ...

The inclusion of robotic systems in physiotherapy allows developing new solutions for the rehabilitation and support of disabled people. Our research addresses the core problem for the advancement of such applications: the availability of a human machine interface offering intuitive control of robotic devices. In this paper we present an EMG-driven...

We have been developing a MKR (Muratec Keio Robot), an autonomous omni-directional mobile transfer robot system for hospital applications. This robot has a wagon truck to transfer luggage, important specimens and other materials. This study proposes a safe obstacle collision avoidance technique that includes a human detection algorithm for omni dir...