Somos Científicos y Científicas

 

This month I have taken part in the Somos Científicos y Científicas initiative of the Fundación Española para la Ciencia y Tecnología (FECYT). During this time, I have had the opportunity to answer the questions of high-school students from all over Spain. They have asked me amazing questions about robotics and artificial intelligence, researchers' life, and how to become a robotics researcher. "Will robots take away our jobs?", "What will robots do in 20 years?", "How does AI work with robots?" or "What is the relationship between Maths and AI?" were some of these questions. 

A new office partner!

The works of my Leonardo Fellowship are progressing. I have acquired an autonomous ground robot to perform the experiments. However, this robot will be important beyond this project. It will support my research on multi-robot systems, machine learning in robotics, adaptive and immersive interfaces, and robotics applied to agriculture.

Videogames developed in class in 2020-2021

This academic year I had the opportunity to teach Introduction to Videogame Programming (Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science and Engineering, Autonomous University of Madrid). My students learned the main concepts of videogame programming and developed dozens of awesome videogames. In this video you can see some of them:

Swarm vs Fire Project

Swarm vs Fire Project proposes the use of drone swarm to support the tasks of prevention, surveillance, and extinguishing of forest fires. Currently, a business model and a minimum viable product are being developed under the UAM Emprende initiative of the Autonomous University of Madrid.

We performed a first survey to analyze the problems of professionals in the tasks of fire prevention, surveillance, and extinguishing. The preliminary results of this survey are shown in the following infographics:

Then, we performed a second survey to collect their opinions about different technologies that can help to solve these problems. The preliminary results of this survey are shown in the following infographics:

We used this information to propose a concept of operation for applying drone swarms in firefighting activities. The proposed system is a fleet of quadcopters that individually are only able to visit waypoints and use payloads, but collectively can perform tasks of surveillance, mapping, monitoring, etc. We define three operator roles with different access to information and functions in the mission: mission commander, team leaders, and team members. These operators take advantage of virtual and augmented reality interfaces to get the information of the scenario and, in the case of the mission commander, control the drone swarm. The system is described in more detail in this article. 

ROSEN 2020

I have taken part in the 1st International Workshop Drones Software Programming (ROSEN 2020), organized by the Information Technology Group of the Wageningen University & Research. My presentation "Adaptive & Immersive Interfaces for Drones" described how immersive technologies and artificial intelligence can lead to better human-robot interfaces. 

Leonardo Fellowship of BBVA Foundation

 

I have been awarded a Leonardo Fellowship of the BBVA Foundation. These fellowships provide 40,000€ to develop research projects with a duration between 12 and 18 months. Only 59 fellowships have been awarded out of 1,580 applicants (5 out of 144 in the area of engineering and architecture). 

My project is entitled "Training robots for intervening in dangerous environments: development and application of reinforcement learning models". I will be writing here about how the project is developing. Meanwhile, you can find more information at the official website.

SwarmCity Project on TV!

The spanish public television has made a report about SwarmCity Project. The piece has appeared in the program Zoom Net of TVE 1, TVE Internacional and 24h. I am very proud to see the new result of our project. We have worked very hard to carry out this project, although we did not get the financial support from public and private organizations. In three years we have developed a city simulator, swarm intelligence and data fusion algorithms, and an adaptive and immersive interface. Additionally, we have published two articles in journals (Cognitive Systems Research and Personal and Ubiquitous Computing) and other two in conferences (IEEE IROS 2018 and IEEE PerCom 2019). Finally, some students have done their BSc and MSc theses in the context of SwarmCity Project. I hope this is not the end...