User:J.saez-pons@shu.ac.uk

The research focuses mainly on designing robot behaviors required by a group of robots generate and maintaing flexible formation to assist a human. These behaviors of multi-robot or human-robot teams have to be achieved without central and on-line control. The formation has to achieved without explicit communication and therefore can be still applicable when communication links are severed. The generated global behaviour is relatively independent of the number of robots in the group, making the system robust to failures of individual robots.

Many applications can benefit from the collaboration of a human and a group of robots. The [GUARDIANS] project uses a group of robots to assist a firefighter in the case of heavy smoke in big wharehouses, like IKEA for example.

Me the firefighter

IKEA wharehouse

Me and Leo the firefighters

VIDEOS

A video showing the trials that took place at Castellon University (Spain).	A video demonstration of the control algorithms simulation.
A real-world trial with four autonomous mobile robots.	coming soon

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PUBLICATIONS

• A. Naghsh, J. Saez-Pons, J. Penders , J. Gancet, E Motard, L. Nomdedeu, J. Sales, E. Cervera, R. Marin, P. Sanz, R. Sebastia. Remote and in-situ multirobot interaction for firefighters interventions under smoke condition. Submitted to the Second IFAC Symposium on Telematics Applications (TA 2010), TimiÈ™oara, Romania, October 5‒8, (2010)
• Lyuba Alboul, Jacques Penders, Joan Saez-Pons and Leo Nomdedeu. Heterogeneous multi-agent system behavior for robotic application. To appear in Handbook for Robotics: Emerging Robotics and Sensors Technology for Humanitarian De-mining and Risky Interventions. Editors: Prof. Maki K. Habib and Prof. Yvan Baudoin (2010).
• Penders, J. and Alboul, L. and Witkowski, U. and Naghsh, A. and Saez-Pons, J. and Herbrechtsmeier, S. and El-Habbel, M., GUARDIANS final report part 1 (draft): a robot swarm assisting a human fire fighter. In Sheffield Hallam University Research Archive, 2009.
• Lyuba Alboul, Joan Saez-Pons, Jacques Penders and Leo Nomdedeu.Challenges of the multi-robot team in the GUARDIANS project. Second International Conference on Intelligent Robotics and Applications (ICIRA09), Singapore (2009).
• Lyuba Alboul, Joao Duro, Jacques Penders and Joan Saez-Pons. Robots team tasks in the GUARDIANS project. Basic and emerging behaviours. 14th International Symposium on Robotics Research (ISRR09), Lucerne, Switzerland (2009).
• Nomdedeu L., Sales J., Marin R., Cervera E., and Saez-Pons, J. Sensing capabilities for mobile robotics. Proceedings of the EURON/IARP International Workshop on Robotics for Risky Interventions and Surveillance of the Environment (RISE09). Brussels, Belgium (2009).
• Aboul, L., Saez-Pons, J. and Penders, J. Mixed human-robot team navigation in the Guardians project. Proceedings of the IEEE International Workshop on Safety, Security and Rescue Robotics (SSRR 2008). Sendai, Japan (2008).
• Saez-Pons, J., Alboul, L., Penders, J., Veysel, G. Non-Communicative Robot Swarming in the Guardians Project. Proceedings of the EURON/IARP International Workshop on Robotics for Risky Interventions and Surveillance of the Environment (RISE08). Benicàssim, Spain (2008).
• Saez-Pons, J., Hübner, W., Dahmen, J. Mallot, H.A. Vision-based robot homing in dynamic environments. In: Schilling K (Hrsg) Proceedings of the 13th IASTED International Conference Robotics and Applications (RA2007) ACTA Press: 293-298. Würzburg, Germany (2007).
• Saez-Pons, J., Mallot, H.A. Robust visual navigation using optical flow fields in dynamic environments. Proceedings of the 9th Tübingen Perception Conference. Germany (2006).
• Saez-Pons, J., Mallot, H.A. Visual navigation in dynamic environments. Making Europe more attractive to researchers, MEST-CT-2004-504321. Pisa, Italy (2005)