(MARGOT) Monocular Camera-Based Robot Grasping Strategy for Metallic Objects.

Robotic handling of objects is not always a trivial assignment, even in teleoperation where, in most cases, this might lead to stressful labor for operators. To reduce the task difficulty, supervised motions could be performed in safe scenarios to reduce the workload in these non-critical steps by using machine learning and computer vision techniques. This paper describes a novel grasping strategy based on a groundbreaking geometrical analysis which extracts diametrically opposite points taking into account surface smoothing (even those target objects that might conform highly complex shapes) to guarantee the uniformity of the grasping.

MiniCERNBot Educational Platform: Antimatter Factory Mock-up Missions for Problem-Solving STEM Learning.

Mechatronics and robotics appeared particularly effective in students' education, allowing them to create non-traditional solutions in STEM disciplines, which have a direct impact and interaction with the world surrounding them. This paper presents the current state of the MiniCERNBot Educational Robotic platform for high-school and university students. The robot provides a comprehensive educative system with tutorials and tasks tuned for different ages on 3D design, mechanical assembly, control, programming, planning, and operation.

Monocular Robust Depth Estimation Vision System for Robotic Tasks Interventions in Metallic Targets.

Robotic interventions in hazardous scenarios need to pay special attention to safety, as in most cases it is necessary to have an expert operator in the loop. Moreover, the use of a multi-modal Human-Robot Interface allows the user to interact with the robot using manual control in critical steps, as well as semi-autonomous behaviours in more secure scenarios, by using, for example, object tracking and recognition techniques. This paper describes a novel vision system to track and estimate the depth of metallic targets for robotic interventions.