Paulo José Cerqueira Gomes da Costa

University of Porto | UP · Departamento de Engenharia Eletrotécnica e de Computadores

Robotic competitions stand as platforms to propel the forefront of robotics research while nurturing STEM education, serving as hubs of both applied research and scientific innovation. In Portugal, the Portuguese Robotics Open (FNR) is an event with several robotic competitions, including the Robot@Factory 4.0 competition. This competition presents...

The cooperation between Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGVs) has brought new perspectives and effectiveness to production and monitoring processes. In this sense, tracking moving targets in heterogeneous systems involves coordination, formation, and positioning systems between UGVs and UAVs. This article presents a Pr...

Robotic competitions stand as platforms to propel the forefront of robotics research while nurturing STEM education , serving as hubs of both applied research and scientific innovation. In Portugal, the Portuguese Robotics Open (FNR) is an event with several robotic competitions, including the Robot@Factory 4.0 competition. This competition present...

As robots have limited power sources. Energy optimization is essential to ensure an extension for their operating periods without needing to be recharged, thus maximizing their uptime and minimizing their running costs. This paper compares the energy consumption of different mobile robotic platforms, including differential, omnidirectional 3-wheel,...

Robotics competitions are highly strategic tools to engage and motivate students, cultivating their curiosity and enthusiasm for technology and robotics. These competitions encompass various disciplines, such as programming, electronics, control systems, and prototyping, often beginning with developing a mobile platform. This paper focuses on desig...

Accurate localization in autonomous robots enables effective decision-making within their operating environment. Various methods have been developed to address this challenge, encompassing traditional techniques, fiducial marker utilization, and machine learning approaches. This work proposes a deep-learning solution employing Convolutional Neural...

Worldwide, forests have been harassed by fire in recent years. Either by human intervention or other reasons, the history of the burned area is increasing considerably, harming fauna and flora. It is essential to detect an early ignition for fire-fighting authorities can act quickly, decreasing the impact of forest damage impacts. The proposed syst...

This paper introduces the Kabsch Marker Estimation Algorithm (KMEA), a new, robust multi-marker localization method designed for Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMRs) within Industry 4.0 (I4.0) settings. By integrating the Kabsch Algorithm, our approach significantly enhances localization robustness by aligning detected fiducial markers with their known...

This paper presents the development of an acquisition system and data logger from an existing set of three continuous stirred-tank reactors in series. The reactors are currently used in chemical engineering educational laboratories to perform kinetic and tracer experiments. In this sense, to accomplish the store data process, the volumetric flow ra...

Energy consumption has been increasing in the last years and thus, energy efficiency is one of the most important topics actually. Besides, the consumption and energy generation forecast help in efficiency optimization. This paper presents the development of a system for forecasting surplus power generation to be used by residential loads connected...

In this paper, it is presented a field of view analysis of a time of flight sensor, that will be applied in a mobile robotics application. The sensor was configured in order to obtain a tradeoff between reactiveness and accuracy. It was used a microcontroller development board to acquire data and a manipulator to perform the movements, assuring rep...

In this paper, it is presented an integration between a finishing device and a collaborative robot in order to automate the sanding process of a ceramic industry in Portugal. The finishing device and the collaborative robot are described as well as the communication between the devices. It was used a computer responsible for decision making and con...

The 10th edition of the Technological Ecosystems for Enhancing Multiculturality (TEEM 2022) brings together researchers and postgraduate students interested in combining different aspects of the technology applied to knowledge society development, with particular attention to educational and learning issues. This volume includes contributions relat...

The robot presented in this paper was developed with the main focus on participating in robotic competitions. Therefore, the subsystems here presented were developed taking into account performance criteria instead of simplicity. Nonetheless, this paper also presents background knowledge in some basic concepts regarding robot localization, navigati...

Robots are increasingly present in our lives, sharing the workspace and tasks with human co-workers. However, existing interfaces for human-robot interaction / cooperation (HRI/C) have limited levels of intuitiveness to use and safety is a major concern when humans and robots share the same workspace. Many times, this is due to the lack of a reliab...

Localization is a crucial skill in mobile robotics because the robot needs to make reasonable navigation decisions to complete its mission. Many approaches exist to implement localization, but artificial intelligence can be an interesting alternative to traditional localization techniques based on model calculations. This work proposes a machine le...

Developing innovative systems and operations to monitor forests and send alerts in dangerous situations, such as fires, has become, over the years, a necessary task to protect forests. In this work, a Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) is employed for forest data acquisition to identify abrupt anomalies when a fire ignition starts. Even though a low-pow...

Navigation is one of the most important tasks for a mobile robot and the localisation is one of its main requirements. There are several types of localisation solutions such as LiDAR, Radio-frequency and acoustic among others. The well-known line follower has been a solution used for a long time ago and still remains its application, especially in...

Simulators have been increasingly used on development and tests on several areas. They allow to speed up the development without damage and no extra costs. On realistic simulators, where kinematics play an important role, the modelling process should be imported for each component to be accurately simulated. Some robots are not yet modelled, as for...

This survey analyses and compares ten different robots capable of hybrid locomotion in an attempt to elucidate the readers on several aspects of importance when designing and implementing a legged-wheeled vehicle. With this purpose in mind, the robots are compared based on their goals, kinematic configurations, joint specifications and overall perf...

Forests are remote areas with uneven terrain, so it is costly to map the range of signals that enable the implementation of systems based on wireless and long-distance communication. Even so, the interest in Internet of Things (IoT) functionalities for forest monitoring systems has increasingly attracted the attention of several researchers. This w...

Three-dimensional scanning is a task of great importance for our modern society and has brought significant advances in the precision of material inventory. These sensors map the material surface continuously, allowing real-time inventory monitoring. Most technologies are expensive because this process is complex, and even inexpensive ones are cons...

The urge for robust and reliable localization systems for autonomous mobile robots (AMR) is increasing since the demand for these automated systems is rising in service, industry, and other areas of the economy. The localization of AMRs is one of the crucial challenges, and several approaches exist to solve this. The most well-known localization sy...

In a robotics scope, an excellent way to test and improve knowledge is through competitions. In other words, it is possible to follow the results in practice, compare them with the development of other teams and improve the current solutions. The Robot At Factory Lite proposal simulates an Industry 4.0 warehouse scenario, applying education through...

The robotization and automation of tasks are relevant processes and of great relevance to be considered nowadays. This work aims to turn the manual action of assigning the score for the robotic competition Robot at Factory 4.0 by an automatic referee. Specifically, the aim is to represent the real space in a set of computational information using c...

Laboratory experiments are important pedagogical tools in engineering courses. Restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic made it very difficult or impossible for laboratory classes to take place, resulting on a fast transition to simulation as an approach to guarantee the effectiveness of teaching. Simulation environments are powerful tools tha...

Robotic competitions are an excellent way to promote innovative solutions for the current industries’ challenges and entrepreneurial spirit, acquire technical and transversal skills through active teaching, and promote this area to the public. In other words, since robotics is a multidisciplinary field, its competitions address several knowledge to...

A robot simulation system is a basic need for any robotics application. With it, developers' teams of robots can test their algorithms and make initial calibrations without risk of damage to the real robots, assuring safety. However, building these simulation environments is usually time-consuming work, and when considering robot fleets, the simula...

Nowadays, the automation of factory floors is necessary for extensive manufacturing processes to meet the ever-increasing competitiveness of current markets. The technological advances applied to the digital platforms have led many businesses to automate their manufacturing processes, introducing robotic manipulators collaborating with human operat...

Counterfeit medicine is still a crucial problem for healthcare systems, having a huge impact in worldwide health and economy. Medicine packages can be traced from the moment of their production until they are delivered to the costumers through the use of Data Matrix codes, unique identifiers that can validate their authenticity. Currently, many pra...

Legged-wheeled locomotion systems are a particular case of robot types that can be characterized by an increase in the degrees of freedom. To increase safety and robustness in the performance of industrial robots, while reducing the risk of damage to the robot joints and injure to human operators, the use of non-rigid joints is growing in the liter...

Odometry calibration adjusts the kinematic parameters or directly the robot’s model to improve the wheeled odometry accuracy. The existent literature considers in the calibration procedure only one steering geometry (differential drive, Ackerman/tricycle, or omnidirectional). Our method, the OptiOdom calibration algorithm, generalizes the odometry...

Robotics competitions encourage the development of solutions to new challenges that emerge in sync with the rise of Industry 4.0. In this context, robotic simulators are employed to facilitate the development of these solutions by disseminating knowledge in robotics, Education 4.0, and STEM. The RobotAtFactory 4.0 competition arises to promote impr...

This paper presents a systematic mapping literature review about the mobile robotics competitions that took place over the last few decades in order to obtain an overview of the main objectives, target public, challenges, technologies used and final application area to show how these competitions have been contributing to education. In the review w...

In order to study the behavior and performance of a robot, building its simulation model is crucial. Realistic simulation tools using physics engines enable faster, more accurate and realistic testing conditions, without depending on the real vehicle. By combining legged and wheeled locomotion, hybrid vehicles are specially useful for operating in...

The industry tends to increasingly automate as many processes as possible, and to make this possible, they often resort to the use of robotic arms. This paper presents the development of a proposal for a modular joint for robotic arms that allows: to obtain the best possible torque/weight ratio; to be controlled in speed and/or position; to communi...

In this paper it is presented the stochastic modeling of a time of flight sensor, to be applied in a mobile robotics application. The sensor was configured to provide data at a frequency 30 Hz, obtaining a tradeoff between reactiveness and accuracy. The sensor data was acquired using a microcontroller development board, being the sensor moved with...

p>The current SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has been affecting all sectors worldwide, and efforts have been targeting the enhancement of people’s health and labour conditions of collaborators belonging to healthcare institutions. The recent vaccines emerging against covid-19 are seen as a solution to address the problem that has already killed up to two mill...

This paper presents a legged-wheeled hybrid robotic vehicle that uses a combination of rigid and non-rigid joints, allowing it to be more impact-tolerant. The robot has four legs, each one with three degrees of freedom. Each leg has two non-rigid rotational joints with completely passive components for damping and accumulation of kinetic energy, on...

This paper presents a systematic literature review (SLR) about realistic simulators that can be applied in an educational robotics context. These simulators must include the simulation of actuators and sensors, the ability to simulate robots and their environment. During this systematic review of the literature, 559 articles were extracted from six...

Odometry calibration adjusts the kinematic parameters or directly the robot's model to improve the wheeled odometry accuracy. The existent literature considers in the calibration procedure only one steering geometry (dif-ferential drive, Ackerman/tricycle, or omnidirectional). Our method, the OptiOdom calibration algorithm, generalizes the odometry...

Worldwide, forests have been devastated by fires in recent years. Whe- ther by human intervention or for other reasons, the history of burned areas is increasing year after year, degrading fauna and flora. For this reason, it is vital to detect an early ignition so that firefighters can act quickly, reducing the impacts caused by forest fires. The...

The pose control (position and orientation) of a robot is important to control how and when the robot gets to the desired pose at the desired time in order to perform some task. Controlling omnidirectional robots is of great interest due to their complete maneuverability. So, we use Proportional-Integrative (PI), Proportional-Derivative (PD), and F...

There are currently several techniques for automatic calibration of inertial sensors. This paper describes a subset of these algorithms that could be used in a manipulator and should allow for its prompt use. A robotic manipulator specifically developed for the study of over-sensored systems is used to realistically test the performance of the impl...

The pose control (position and orientation) of a robot is important to control how and when the robot gets to the desired pose at the desired time in order to perform some task. Controlling omnidirectional robots is of great interest due to their complete maneuverability. So, we use Proportional-Integrative (PI), Proportional-Derivative (PD), and F...

Most path planning algorithms used presently in multi-robot systems are based on offline planning. The Timed Enhanced A* (TEA*) algorithm gives the possibility of planning in real time, rather than planning in advance, by using a temporal estimation of the robot’s positions at any given time. In this article, the implementation of a control system...

There is an increasing demand for robotic manipulators to perform more complex and versatile tasks. In order to fulfill this need, expeditious calibration and estimation techniques are required as a first step for the correct usage of the manipulator. This article aims at finding a subset of these algorithms that could be used in a generic manipula...

When the COVID-19 pandemic hits Portugal in early March 2020, medical doctors, engineers and researchers, with the encouragement of the Northern Region Health Administration, teamed up to develop and build, locally and in a short time, a ventilator that might eventually be used in extreme emergency situations in the hospitals of northern Portugal....

This article presents an innovative legged-wheeled system, designed to be applied in a hybrid robotic vehicle’s locomotion system, as its driving member. The proposed system will be capable to combine the advantages of legged and wheeled locomotion systems, having 3DOF connected through a combination of both rigid and non-rigid joints. This configu...

Robots are increasingly present in our lives, sharing the workspace and tasks with human co-workers. However, existing interfaces for human-robot interaction / cooperation (HRI/C) have limited levels of intuitiveness to use and safety is a major concern when humans and robots share the same workspace. Many times, this is due to the lack of a reliab...

The micromouse competition has been gaining prominence in the robotic atmosphere, due to the challenging and multidisciplinary characteristics provided by the teams’ duels, being a gateway for those who intend to deepen their studies in autonomous robotics. In this context, this paper presents a realistic micromouse simulator developed with Unity s...