USE

Universidad de Sevilla (USE)

grvc.us.es

Short description of the organization

The University of Seville (USE) created in the early 16th century is one of the most important higher education institutions in Spain, with 70,000 students, 4,400 professors, and 2,400 administrative and service staff. USE will have as third party AICIA for the administrative and financial management of costs (see Section 4.2). USE will be involved in the project through the “Robotics, Vision and Control” (GRVC) group which has 75 researchers and engineers with strong expertise on robotics and particularly on aerial robotics. Thus, in 2013 the group participated in 13 projects (17 contracts) related to aerial robotics and unmanned aerial systems. GRVC has a long tradition coordinating and participating in projects of the EU Framework Programmes (FP) including 4 projects of the FP4, 3 of the FP5, 3 of the FP6 and 5 of FP7.

Role in the project and main tasks

USE will be the coordinator entity of the project and will contribute
mainly to WP3 (aerial robotic manipulator control), WP5 (aerial robotics mapping and localisation) and WP6 (reactivity for safe operation)

Relevant previous experience

The GRVC group was the Scientific and Technical Coordinator of the FP5 COMETS IST project on the coordination and control of multiple heterogeneous unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), the first project in Europe demonstrating experimentally the cooperation of multiple UAVs with application to forest fires. GRVC coordinated the successful FP7 AWARE IST that developed and validated in field experiments a platform providing the functionalities required for the cooperation of UAVs with ground wireless networks, and joint load transportation by means of three coupled helicopters. GRVC is also the Associated Coordinator of the FP7 CONET Network of Excellence and the FP7 PLANET project. The head of the GRVC is the coordinator of ARCAS that is playing a main role in the emergence of the aerial manipulation developing aerial robots arms that can be considered the firsts in the world, and also the coordinator of the EC-SAFEMOBIL developing new techniques to increase the safety of aerial robots.
Other projects have been the URUS FP6 on network robot systems, and the Spanish projects CLEAR on
long endurance aerial robots, ROBAIR on the safety of aerial robots, AEROSENS on the integration of
aerial and ground robots with WSN, and CROMAT on the cooperation of aerial and ground robots.

Project publications

Key publications before the project

  • K. Kondak, K. Krieger, A. Albu-Schaeffer, M. Schwarzbach, M. Laiacker, I. Maza, A. Rodriguez-Castano and A. Ollero. Closed loop behavior of an autonomous helicopter equipped with a robotic arm for aerial manipulation tasks, International Journal of Advanced Robotic Systems. Vol 10, pp 1-9, 2013.
  • M. Bernard, K. Kondak, I. Maza and A. Ollero. Autonomous Transportation and Deployment with Aerial Robots for Search and Rescue Missions, Journal of Field Robotics, Vol. 28, Issue 6, pp 914-931, Wiley Blackwell, 2011.
  • I. Maza, F. Caballero, J. Capitán, J.R. Martinez de Dios and A. Ollero. A Distributed Architecture for a Robotic Platform with Aerial Sensor Transportation and Self-Deployment Capabilities. J. Field Robotics, 2011.
  • A. E. Jimenez-Cano, J. Martin, G. Heredia, R. Cano and A. Ollero. Control of an aerial robot with multi-link arm for assembly tasks. Proceedings of the 2013 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA 2013). Karlsruhe, Germany, 6-10 May 2013.
  • F. Caballero, L. Merino, J. Ferruz and A. Ollero. Vision-based Odometry and SLAM for Medium and High Altitude Flying UAVs. Journal of Intelligent and Robotic Systems. Vol 55, No 4-5, Pp 137-161, 2009.