Javier V. Gómez

Rapyuta Robotics

The Fast Marching Method is a very popular algorithm to compute times-of-arrival maps (distances map measured in time units). Since their proposal in 1995, it has been applied to many different applications such as robotics, medical computer vision, fluid simulation, etc. Many alternatives have been proposed with two main objectives: to reduce its...

In this paper, a novel motion learning method is introduced: Fast Marching Learning (FML). While other learning methods are focused on optimising probabilistic functions or fitting dynamical systems, the proposed method consists on the modification of the Fast Marching Square (FM\(^2\)) path planning algorithm. Concretely, FM\(^2\) consists of expa...

Bi-directional search is a widely used strategy to increase the success and convergence rates of sampling-based motion planning algorithms. Yet, few results are available that merge both bi-directional search and asymptotic optimality into existing optimal planners, such as PRM*, RRT*, and FMT*. The objective of this paper is to fill this gap. Spec...

This research presents a novel approach for geometrically constrained path planning. The methodology introduced is based on the standard Fast Marching Square (FM2) method and a path extraction approach based on an optimisation process named Differential Evolution (DE). The geometric constraints are introduced in the path extraction phase. This step...

Robotic motion planning have been, and still is, a very intense research field. Many problems have been already solved and even real-time, optimal motion planning algorithms have been proposed and successfully tested in real-world scenarios. However, other problems are not satisfactory solved yet and also new motion planning subproblems are appeari...

This work presents a path planning algorithm for 3D robot formations based on the standard Fast Marching Square (FM2) path planning method. This method is enlarged in order to apply it to robot formations motion planning. The algorithm is based on a leader-followers scheme, which means that the reference pose for the follower robots is defined by g...

The sunlight intensity-based global positioning system (SGPS) is able to geolocate outdoor objects by means of the sunlight intensity detection. This paper presents the integration of SGPS into a sensor network in order to improve the overall accuracy using evolutionary algorithms. Another contribution of the paper is to theoretically solve both gl...

Experimental evaluation of navigation algorithms requires physical robots as well as position sensing devices. The common alternative is to use simulations to run the experiments. However, simulation often does not provide an accurate prediction of real-world behavior. Therefore, in this paper, we present an innovative approach towards evaluation o...

Operations of transportation in cluttered environments require robust motion planning algorithms. Specially with large and heavy vehicles under hazardous operations of maintenance, such as in the ITER, an international nuclear fusion research project. The load transportation inside the ITER facilities require smooth and optimized paths with safety...

Traditional path planning for robots is a well studied problem. However, the classical setting of the problem is simple to state: plan a path for a robot, starting from an initial point, and ending at a desired target point, given an environmental map, usually in the form of an occupancy grid. In this setting though, no special consideration is giv...

This paper presents an interesting technique abouthow to introduce restrictions in the FM2 method for finding thetrajectory of a robot. In order to find the complete movement,it is calculated a funnel shaped potential for each articulation by using FM2 and then it is defined a functionalJthat is aweighted sum of the value of the mentioned potential...

This research presents a novel approach for 3D robot formation motion planning. The methodology presented is based on the standard Fast Marching Square (FM2) path planning method and its application to robot formations motion planning. For the formation coordination, a leader-followers scheme is used, which means that the reference pose for the fol...

This paper gives a comprehensive view of the fast marching methods for path planning developed by the authors of this work. The paper recalls some of the methods developed in recent years and presents two improvements upon them: the saturated FM2, and an heuristic optimization called fast marching star (FM2*). The saturated variation of the existin...

This article provides a comprehensive view of the novel fast marching (FM) methods we developed for robot path planning. We recall some of the methods developed in recent years and present two improvements upon them: the saturated FM square (FM2) and an heuristic optimization called the FM2 star (FM2*) method.

This paper presents a comparison of the different colour spaces used in an environment modelling algorithm. This algorithm is based on the fusion of depth and colour information of a low-cost RGBD camera to model an indoor environment. This modelling is based on creating and updating Gaussian models of the colour of the walkable floor. The analysis...

This paper presents an interesting technique for finding the trajectory of an outdoor robot. This technique applies Fast Marching to a 3D surface terrain represented by a triangular mesh in order to calculate a smooth trajectory between two points. The method uses a triangular mesh instead of a square one because this kind of grid adapts better to...

This paper presents a novel methodology for planning the movements of a robotic hand when a precision grasp is going to be performed. The approach used is based on the standard Fast Marching Square (FM2) path planning method and its application to robot formations motion planning. In this case, the hand is considered to be a kinematic chain in whic...

This paper formulates a generic framework for the social path planning problem. Previous works deal with very specific cases of socially-aware motion planning. Instead, here we propose a mathematical formulation that can be considered the preliminary steps towards a general theoretical setting, incorporating previous work as sub-cases. Social path p...

Sampling-based path planning algorithms are well-known because they are able to find a path in a very short period of time, even in high-dimensional spaces. However, they are non-smooth, ran- dom paths far away from the optimum. In this paper we introduce a novel improving technique based on the Fast Marching Method which improves in a deterministi...

This paper presents a novel methodology for planning the movements of a robotic hand when a precision grasp wants to be performed. This approach is based on the standard Fast Marching Square (FM2) path planning method recently introduced for robot ormations. A three-finger kinematic chain is consider as a robot formation to perform simulations. In...

Rhombic like vehicles are characterized for high maneuverability in cluttered environments. This type of vehicles will be used on remote handling operations of maintenance in the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER). Previous work was done in motion planning using Constrained Delaunay Triangulation for rhombic like vehicles opera...

This paper presents a novel algorithm to solve the robot formation path planning problem working under uncertainty conditions such as errors the in robot’s positions, errors when sensing obstacles or walls, etc. The proposed approach provides a solution based on a leader–followers architecture (real or virtual leaders) with a prescribed formation g...

Experimental evaluation of navigation algorithms requires physical robots as well as position sensing devices. The common alternative is to use simulations to run the experiments. However, simulation often does not provide an accurate prediction of real-world behavior. Therefore, in this paper, we present an innovative approach towards evaluation o...

This paper describes a robust algorithm for mobile robot formations based on the Voronoi Fast Marching path planning method. This is based on the propagation of a wave throughout the model of the environment, the wave expanding faster as the wave’s distance from obstacles increases. This method provides smooth and safe trajectories and its computat...

This article provides a comprehensive view of the novel fast marching (FM) methods we developed for robot path planning. We recall some of the methods developed in recent years and present two improvements upon them: the saturated FM square (FM2) and an heuristic optimization called the FM2 star (FM2*) method. The saturated variation of the existin...

For robots to be able to fluidly collaborate with and keep company to humans in indoor spaces, they need to be able to perceive and understand such environments, including furniture and rooms. Towards that goal, we present a system for indoor furniture and room recognition for robots, which has two significant novelties: it utilizes internet-derive...

Water monitoring is important in domains including documenting climate change, weather prediction and fishing. This paper presents a simple and energy efficient localization strategy for near surface buoy based sensors. Sensors can be dropped randomly in the ocean and thus self-calibrate in terms of geographic location such that geo-tagged observat...

This paper presents a novel robotic learning technique based on Fast Marching Square (FM2). This method, which we have called FM Learning, is based on incorporating previous experience to the path planning system of the robot by taking into account paths taught to the robot via kinesthetic teaching, this is, guiding manually the robot through the d...

In this paper we discuss initial concepts of the development of a fully automatic guide dog system for blind users. The physical scene is scanned using a laser range device, and the three dimensional point cloud measurements are analyzed and transformed into a description of the environment that is communicated to the user via synthetic speech and/...

Teaching a mobile robot to complete a task and to reproduce it is possible, but as the robot tries to replicate actions natural events as a wheel-slide would feed in inaccuracies on the localization of the robot mobile base, and it may be difficult to succeed replicating. Robot tasks can be represented as trajectories compound by a series of poses...

This paper presents a novel methodology for fast path planning based on an offline predefined skeleton of the environment by means of the Fast Marching Square method. The FM2 skeleton concept is introduced whose intuition is a set which contains the shortest paths (in terms of time) of a given environment This way, the path planning algorithm is ad...

Robot formations are getting important since they can develop tasks that only one robot could not do or could take too much time. Also, they can perform some tasks better than humans. This paper provides a new algorithm to control robot formations working under uncertainty conditions such as errors in robot positions, errors when sensing obstacles...

Along this chapter a robust path planning method called Fast Marching Square is applied proposed to be applied into the ITER simulation environmentscenarios. This method is characterized by its robustness and its smooth and safe paths, including even velocity commands. Simulation results show that the proposed method behaves very well in the ITER m...