[AllUsers-ISR] Talk at ISR this Wednesday (Feb. 12th) at 2:00pm - Autonomous Articulated Vehicles for Agricultural Applications

[Rui Rocha]

Dear All,

Next Wednesday, February 12th, at 2:00pm, Leonardo Guevara will give a talk in the ISR Amphitheater titled "Autonomous Articulated Vehicles for Agricultural Applications" (see the abstract and short bio below).

Leonardo is a Ph.D. student from Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María, Valparaíso, Chile, who received a grant from Santander for a visiting Ph.D. student position at ISR between Jan. and May 2020. In his talk, after a short presentation of the research group he is affiliated with in Chile, he will present the research on motion control of articulated mobile robots for agriculture that he has been carrying out in his Ph.D.

You are all invited to attend!

Best regards,
Rui P. Rocha

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Talk by Leonardo Guevara, Ph.D. student

Title: Autonomous Articulated Vehicles for Agricultural Applications

Abstract:
In agricultural scenarios, autonomous ground vehicles are being used to weeding, seeding, harvesting and transporting purposes, with the aim of enhancing the productivity. In this context, articulated vehicles, a.k.a. N-trailers vehicles, are especially useful in transportation operations due to their load capacity, but their automatic control is a challenge which becomes too complex as the number of passive trailers increases. The passive nature of the joints in traditional N-trailers generates unsafe off-tracks maneuvers and, depending on the motion direction and the structure configuration, they can generate undesirable folding effects in the passive joints. Moreover, in real-life conditions, those vehicles are subject to external disturbances such as unmodelled terrain, loss of localization readings, as well as internal disturbances, such as error in the proprioceptive sensors and unmodelled trailer dynamics. Within this context, some strategies have been proposed to address in-field navigation of autonomous N-trailer vehicles, particularly in harvesting and transport agricultural operations, where a safe interaction with the environment and other entities who share the workspace is required.

Short Bio:
César Leonardo Guevara received the B.Sc. degree in Electronics and Control Engineering from Escuela Politécnica Nacional, Quito, Ecuador in 2016. Since 2017, he has been a Ph.D. student in the Department of Electronic Engineering, Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María, Valparaíso, Chile, under the supervision of Prof. Fernando Auat Cheein. His doctoral thesis is about robust navigation strategies for N-trailer vehicles subject to maneuverability constraints in field applications, e.g. in agricultural robotics. Since 2018, he has been involved in a collaborative research project on the topic, involving the Advanced Center for Electrical and Electronic Engineering (AC3E) in Chile and the Institute of Automation and Robotics of Poznan University of Technology in Poland. His research interests include robust motion control, robot navigation, multi-robot coordination, multi-robot trajectory planning, N-trailer vehicles, mobile robots, and agriculture robotics. In his stay at ISR-University of Coimbra between Jan. and May 2020, he will collaborate with Prof. Rui P. Rocha and pursue research on the coordination of multiple N-trailer vehicles for automated transportation in crop-harvesting.


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Rui Paulo Rocha, Ph.D. 
Assistant Professor, Senior Researcher 
ISR - Institute of Systems and Robotics 
Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering
University of Coimbra, Portugal

E-mail: rprocha at isr.uc.pt