Giulio Reina

• Professor
• Professor (Full) at Polytechnic University of Bari

This paper investigates the obstacle climbing ability of a novel passively articulated robot, Polibot, that is compared with a standard tracked robot using a fixed-wheel configuration. Two test cases are analysed: the traverse of a single obstacle and the navigation upward along a vertical surface. Both scenarios are analytically solved using a qua...

Autonomous systems require advanced path planning to ensure safe and efficient navigation through complex terrains. The SmartExplorer1.0 algorithm (SE1.0) utilizes Digital Terrain Models (DTMs) as input to identify navigable areas and plan optimal routes by incorporating terrain gradients, obstacle types, and environmental conditions. Compared to t...

With the advent of artificial intelligence, the analysis of systems related to complex processes has become possible or easier. The interaction of the traction factor of off-road vehicles with soil or other uncommon surfaces is one of the complex mechanical problems, which has been very difficult to model and analyze in conventional and previous me...

To meet the rising food demand of a world population predicted to reach 9 [...]

Agricultural robotics is one of the most challenging research areas in robotics given the complex challenges posed by terrain, crop and environmental conditions. This chapter reviews the use of (unmanned) ground robots in agriculture, focusing on the main different solutions in terms of mobility and kinematic architecture. The chapter discusses way...

Obstacle-crossing and stair-climbing abilities are crucial to the performance of mobile robots for urban environment mobility. This paper proposes a tracked stair-climbing robot with two bogie-like suspensions to overcome architectural barriers. After a general introduction to stair-climbing robots, the “XXbot” concept is presented. We developed a...

Robotic and multi-sensor technologies are increasingly being adopted in a number of agricultural applications, including seeding, weeding, harvesting, fertilization, and crop monitoring and analysis. However, the lack of interoperability and the predominance of manufacturer-specific closed solutions demand a careful choice of devices, sensors and d...

The purpose of prosthetic hands is to replicate the functional capabilities of the human hand, allowing users to perform daily tasks effectively. The mechanical design of artificial fingers is a key factor in determining the overall performance of these prostheses. A novel solution in this field is the Adam Hand by BionIT Labs, which belongs to the...

Digital twins provide a powerful tool for testing and maintaining products and processes in several application fields, including manufacturing, smart cities, healthcare, and agriculture, aiming to optimize operational efficiency, resource usage, and planning accuracy. Research presented in this paper deals with the development of the digital versi...

This works provides a comparison about the energy consumption of a tracked vehicle with a passive suspension system by studying the case when it is remotely controlled by a human operator and when it is controlled by an autonomous navigation software. Results from an experimental campaign are presented along with considerations about the energy con...

This article focuses on the finger force estimation in Adam’s Hand, a polyarticulated myoelectric prosthesis for transradial and upper level amputations. The main features of the prosthesis are briefly discussed and a multibody model of the device is presented. A test is carried out to measure the maximum forces exerted by the distal phalanges when...

This article focuses on a multibody model of a new passive articulated suspension tracked robot. The model of the vehicle is developed using the multibody software MSC Adams (acronym for automatic dynamic analysis of mechanical systems) in conjunction with the Adams Tracked Vehicle toolkit. The various subsystems that make up the vehicle assembly a...

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.3389/frobt.2019.00046.].

Innovation in transportation and mobility is the foundation for sustainable development. This paper provides details of the SNAP family vehicles, four-wheel pedal-assisted electric vehicles that represent a new concept in sustainable mobility that aims to fill the gap between bicycle and automobile. Special focus is given to the study of the overtu...

Stair climbing is one of the most challenging tasks for vehicles, especially when transporting people and heavy loads. Although many solutions have been proposed and demonstrated in practice, it is necessary to further improve their climbing ability and safety. This paper presents a systematic review of the scientific and engineering stair climbing...

Reliable knowledge of the vehicle heading plays a significant role in the autonomous navigation of agricultural Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGVs), especially in the context of unstructured outdoor environments such as rural and forestry scenarios. However, achieving this information with an acceptable degree of confidence is a non-trivial task and st...

Innovation in transportation and mobility is central to sustainable development. There is a widespread awareness that society would benefit if transportation became more sustainable, promoting economic growth while respecting the environment. This paper introduces SNAP, a four-wheel pedal-assisted electric vehicle that represents a new concept in s...

The paper deals with the design and testing of a robot for industrial applications featuring omnidirectionality thanks to the use of mecanum wheels. While this architecture provides remarkable manoeuvrability in narrow or cluttered spaces, it has some drawbacks that limit its widespread deployment in practice, especially for heavy-duty and long-dur...

Automated in-field data gathering is essential for crop monitoring and management and for precision farming treatments. To this end, consumer-grade digital cameras have been shown to offer a flexible and affordable sensing solution. This paper describes the integration and development of a cost-effective multi-view RGB-D device for sensing and mode...

In the context of autonomous off-road mobility, tracked robots feature larger contact areas compared to equivalent wheeled vehicles, which turn into improved traction especially on soft terrains. This paper discusses a novel tracked robot, named Polibot, that is outfitted with passive articulated suspensions. The multibody model is developed within...

The paper presents RoboNav, a cost-effective and accurate decimeter-grade navigation system that can be used for deployment in the field of autonomous agricultural robots. The novelty of the system is the reliance on a dual GPS configuration based on two u-blox modules that work in conjunction with three low-cost inertial sensors within a Gaussian...

In the context of autonomous off-road mobility, tracked robots are useful because they offer a large contact area with the ground, which provides better traction than wheels especially on soft terrains. However, they pose many challenges for modeling when tracks are suspended via articulated mechanisms. This is the case for the all-terrain rover Po...

In this paper, the multibody model of a novel tracked vehicle with passive articulated suspension is presented. The vehicle being modeled is called Polibot, an electric unmanned ground robot specifically designed to traverse uneven terrains and perform precision field operations thanks to the perception system installed onboard. The model of the tr...

Recently, tunable stiffness methods have been actively researched, since many applications in soft robotics require both conformability and stiffness. Jamming-based techniques provide a promising solution since they are easy to fabricate, easily scalable, and capable of rapidly tuning their stiffness. Layer-jamming structures are usually fabricated...

Underactuated grippers and suction cups are two appealing solutions for industrial robots. The first one allows high adaptability to envelope the object with power or precision grasping. On the other hand, suction cups increase the payload as well as provide the possibility of unilateral grasping. The proposed gripper, named Polypus, combines these...

Ground vehicles equipped with vision-based perception systems can provide a rich source of information for precision agriculture tasks in orchards, including fruit detection and counting, phenotyping, plant growth and health monitoring. This paper presents a semi-supervised deep learning framework for automatic pomegranate detection using a farmer...

In this article, the results of nonlinear model predictive controllers that are used to generate optimized trajectories of omnidirectional robots equipped with spraying units for the perimeter of hazardous areas inside warehouses are presented, using a nonlinear model predictive controller. Results are provided for various trajectories along with c...

Soil Surface Roughness (SSR) is a physical feature of soil microtopography, which is strongly influenced by tillage practices and plays a key role in hydrological and soil erosion processes. Therefore, surface roughness indices are required when using models to estimate soil erosion rates, where tabular values or direct measurements are typically u...

On-demand stiffening methods are receiving increasing attention from the soft robotics community, due to the need of both flexibility and stiffness in many applications. Among the various methods, jamming-based techniques became very popular thanks to features such as fast and reversible transition between flexible and rigid states and easy fabrica...

The implementation of a Support Vector Machine based terrain classifier for the hybrid locomotion rover SherpaTT is presented. In the first phase of classification the physical characteristics of the traversed terrain are statistically derived from proprioceptive data (i.e. engineered features). The features are then used by the classifier to disti...

A rigid in-plane matrix of suction cups is widely used in robotic end-effectors to grasp objects with flat surfaces. However, this grasping strategy fails with objects having different geometry e.g., spherical and cylindrical. Articulated rigid grippers equipped with suction cups are an underinvestigated solution to extend the ability of vacuum gri...

Underactuated grippers represent an appealing solution that allows complex objects to be grasped and manipulated via passive adaptation of the hand with objects via simple control inputs. The grasping ability can be further improved in combination with vacuum gripping, i.e., by outfitting the gripper phalanges with suction cups, that remains a larg...

Agricultural soils provide a variety of ecological services, including nutrient cycling, water purification and storage, carbon sequestration, and flood protection. Soil Surface Roughness (SSR) represents a key parameter for evaluating the terrain quality structure, especially in the layers beneath the usual primary tillage depth, and therefore its...

Increasing the terrain awareness of planetary exploration rovers is one key technology for future space robotics to successfully accomplish long‐distance and long‐duration missions. In contrast to most of the existing algorithms that use visual or depth data for terrain classification, the approach presented in this study tackles the problem using...

In this study a 2D FEM model was developed to analyze ruts formation, rolling resistance, and power loss for a grape transporting cart aimed to replace the use of heavy tractors while harvesting grape. The model was supported by experiments in a vineyard in South Italy. Cone penetration tests were conducted to estimate frictional and cohesive prope...

Innovation in transportation and mobility is central to sustainable development. There is a widespread awareness that society would benefit if transportation became more sustainable, promoting economic growth while respecting the environment. This paper introduces SNAP, a four-wheel pedal-assisted electric vehicle that represents a new concept in s...

The use of robotic solutions for sustainability is critical to reduce pollution and waste of materials during the manufacturing processes, and it can significantly reduce the amount of energy employed compared with traditional methods. This paper presents two case studies in the development of mobile robotic solutions used to increase the manufactu...

The Power-Split Continuously Variable Transmission is one of the most promising architectures for Hybrid Electric Vehicles. These systems have been introduced to improve vehicle global efficiency since they can maximize the efficiency in varying operating conditions. During the design stage, the availability of modeling tools would play a key role...

Sideslip angle is an important variable for understanding and monitoring vehicle dynamics, but there is currently no inexpensive method for its direct measurement. Therefore, it is typically estimated from proprioceptive sensors onboard using filtering methods from the family of the Kalman filter. As a novel alternative, this work proposes modeling...

The future challenge for field robots is to increase the level of autonomy towards long distance (>1 km) and duration (>1h) applications. One of the key technologies is the ability to accurately estimate the properties of the traversed terrain to optimize onboard control strategies and energy efficient path-planning, ensuring safety and avoiding po...

In this paper, we present a novel general framework grounded in the factor graph theory to solve kinematic and dynamic problems for multibody systems. Although the motion of multibody systems is considered to be a well-studied problem and various methods have been proposed for its solution, a unified approach providing an intuitive interpretation i...

Sideslip angle is an important variable for understanding and monitoring vehicle dynamics but it lacks an inexpensive method for direct measurement. Therefore, it is typically estimated from inertial and other proprioceptive sensors onboard using filtering methods from the family of the Kalman Filter. As a novel alternative, this work proposes mode...

Inspired by the fifth-year anniversary celebration of the homonymous symposium at the International Mechanical Engineering Congress & Exposition (IMECE), this Special Section with 10 papers shares the latest research efforts in design, theory, development, and applications for Mobile Robots (MRs) and Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGVs).

There is a growing interest towards multi-body modelling and simulation that play a critical role in the development and testing of new mechanical systems, in general, and formula cars specifically to avoid expensive and time-consuming experimental track testing. Recent advances in computer-aided engineering packages, allows one not only to evaluat...

Advanced control and driving assistance systems play a major role in modern vehicles, ensuring higher standards of safety and performance. Their correct operation extensively depends on the knowledge of tyre forces and vehicle drift. However, these quantities are hard to measure directly, due to cost or technological reasons. One possible alternati...

This paper presents an integrated mechanics study for the design and the development of a service tracked robot able to move inside a truck container and roll over the flax raw material by compressing it to increase its overall bulk density. A series of flax material properties have been used to properly characterize the robot's locomotion paramete...

Global navigation satellite system (GNSS) is the standard solution for solving the localization problem in outdoor environments, but its signal might be lost when driving in dense urban areas or in the presence of heavy vegetation or overhanging canopies. Hence, there is a need for alternative or complementary localization methods for autonomous dr...

Plant phenotyping, that is, the quantitative assessment of plant traits including growth, morphology, physiology, and yield, is a critical aspect towards efficient and effective crop management. Currently, plant phenotyping is a manually intensive and time consuming process, which involves human operators making measurements in the field, based on...

Advances in precision agriculture greatly rely on innovative control and sensing technologies that allow service units to increase their level of driving automation while ensuring at the same time high safety standards. This paper deals with automatic terrain estimation and classification that is performed simultaneously by an agricultural vehicle...

Accurate soil mapping is critical for a highly-automated agricultural vehicle to successfully accomplish important tasks including seeding, ploughing, fertilising and controlled traffic, with limited human supervision, ensuring at the same time high safety standards. In this research, a multi-sensor ground mapping and characterisation approach is p...

In the last few years, robotic technology has been increasingly employed in agriculture to develop intelligent vehicles that can improve productivity and competitiveness. Accurate and robust environmental perception is a critical requirement to address unsolved issues including safe interaction with field workers and animals, obstacle detection in...

Precision agriculture relies on the availability of accurate knowledge of crop phenotypic traits at the sub-field level. While visual inspection by human experts has been traditionally adopted for phenotyping estimations, sensors mounted on field vehicles are becoming valuable tools to increase accuracy on a narrower scale and reduce execution time...

Electric cars are typically subject to highly variable operational conditions, especially when they drive in urban environments. Consequently, the efficiency of the electric motors may degrade significantly, possibly leading to lower autonomy and higher running costs. Latest advances in power electronics and motion control have paved the way to the...

In this paper, we present a novel general framework grounded in the factor graph theory to solve kinematic and dynamic problems for multi-body systems. Although the motion of multi-body systems is considered to be a well-studied problem and various methods have been proposed for its solution, a unified approach providing an intuitive interpretation...

The success of a science mission in the context of surface planetary exploration is tightly connected with the rover’s ability to detect the type of supporting surface. This research aims to develop a general approach to address the terrain awareness issue relying entirely on proprioceptive sensing, i.e. measuring motion states and parameters depen...

The paper addresses the path tracking issue for a robot that uses wind as the main propulsion energy source. There is a growing interest in investigating alternative sources of energy for propulsion and wind energy could be a possible answer. Given a set of predefined waypoints, an algorithm is proposed that enables a robot to follow the straight l...

Electric vehicles are typically employed in highly-variable operating conditions, especially during city drive. The variability in speed and torque results in suboptimal efficiency of the drive motor. However, recent technological advances in new embedded processing units and power electronics open the way to the adoption of novel efficient control...

An immense body of research has focused on path-planning and following of wheeled robots in unstructured surfaces. Nonholonomic robots traveling over deformable terrains together with complex operating conditions, however, pose further challenges in terms of a higher demand for robustness and optimality. In this paper, a Chaos-enhanced Accelerated...

This research is developed within the ADE (Autono-mous DEcision making in Very Long Traverses) project funded by the European Union to develop novel technologies for future space robotics missions. ADE's objective is to increase the range of traveled distance of a planetary exploration rover up to 1 km/sol, while ensuring at the same time optimal s...

Approximately 70% of the upper extremity amputations refers to partial hand loss with the involvement of one or more fingers. Historically, this type of limb amputation has been addressed adopting simple opposition designs that use the movement of the residual digit for grasping against a fixed device. Nevertheless, in the last few years, technolog...

A planetary exploration rover’s ability to detect the type of supporting surface is critical to the successful accomplishment of the planned task, especially for long-range and long-duration missions. This paper presents a general approach to endow a robot with the ability to sense the terrain being traversed. It relies on the estimation of motion...

The extent of vibrations experienced by a vehicle driving over natural terrain defines its ride quality. Generally, surface irregularities, ranging from single discontinuities to random variations of the elevation profile, act as a major source of excitation that induces vibrations in the vehicle body through the tire-soil interaction and suspensio...

The extent of vibrations experienced by a vehicle driving over natural terrain defines its ride quality. Generally, surface irregularities, ranging from single discontinuities to random variations of the elevation profile, act as a major source of excitation that induces vibrations in the vehicle body through the tire–soil interaction and suspensio...

There is a growing interest in new sensing technologies and processing algorithms to increase the level of driving automation towards self-driving vehicles. The challenge for autonomy is especially difficult for the negotiation of uncharted scenarios, including natural terrain. This paper proposes a method for terrain unevenness estimation that is...

There is a growing interest in new sensing technologies and processing algorithms to increase the level of driving automation towards self-driving vehicles. The challenge for autonomy is especially difficult for the negotiation of uncharted scenarios, including natural terrain. This paper proposes a method for terrain unevenness estimation that is...

Drag reduction systems are largely employed in racing car competitions to help drivers in overtaking manoeuvres, ensuring a good show to the public. This paper presents a full-design approach to drag reduction systems that includes the computational fluid dynamics estimation of the forces acting on the rear wing, the dynamic analysis of the drag re...

This paper presents a novel approach for terrain characterization based on a tracked skid-steer vehicle with a passive independent suspensions system. A set of physics-based parameters is used to characterize the terrain properties: drive motor electrical currents, the equivalent track, the power spectral density for the vertical accelerations and...

In the design of humanoid robotic hands, it is important to evaluate the grasp stability, especially when the concept of underactuation is involved. The use of a number of degrees of actuation lower than the degrees of freedom has shown some advantages compared to conventional solutions in terms of adaptivity, compactness, ease of control, and cost...

Accurate soil mapping is critical for a highly-automated agricultural vehicle to successfully accomplish important tasks including seeding, ploughing, fertilising and controlled traffic, with limited human supervision, ensuring at the same time high safety standards. In this research, a multi-sensor ground mapping and characterisation approach is p...

The analysis of end-effector grasp stability is a critical issue, especially for underactuated hands, which have a number of degrees of freedom higher than that of degrees of actuation. Although underactuated systems can be self-adaptive, robust, easy to control and cost-effective, only a limited attention in the Literature has been given to their...

The model of a wheeled vehicle propelled by wind using a rigid sail is presented. The vehicle nonlinear dynamic model is expressed in a compact matrix form, starting from the equations of motion. The full three-dimensional regulation of the sail is considered, including trim, heel and rake angle. Simulations are included showing the impact of the s...

Plant phenotyping, that is, the quantitative assessment of plant traits including growth, morphology, physiology, and yield, is a critical aspect towards efficient and effective crop management. Currently, plant phenotyping is a manually intensive and time consuming process, which involves human operators making measurements in the field, based on...

This article concerns with the analysis of the frequency range within which Timoshenko’s model can be applied for the study of vibrating beams, possibly without incurring in large engineering approximations. Timoshenko's equations are solved in exact way for all classical boundary conditions; frequencies and modes are compared with exact or asympto...

The response of active safety systems of modern cars strongly depends on the estimation accuracy in the key motion states of the vehicle. One common limitation of current systems is the lack of adaptability in the parameters of the vehicle model that are usually treated as time-invariant, although they are not exactly known or are subject to tempor...

This paper presents a study on the dynamic modelling of a land-yacht, i.e. a ground vehicle that is propelled by wind energy through the use of a vertical airfoil. First, a non-linear dynamic model of the land-yacht motion is derived using a compact matrix notation. Then, an introduction to the study of the performance and handling characteristics...

Surface irregularity acts as a major excitation source in off-road driving that induces vibration of the vehicle body through the tire assembly and the suspension system. When adding ground deformability, this excitation is modulated by the soil properties and operating conditions. The underlying mechanisms that govern ground behavior can be explai...