CETRI’s group of Mechatronics and Robotics (M&R) is composed from Engineers and Experts, across various fields with long experience in Research, Innovation, and Development. Mechatronics and Robotics are applicable almost in any sector such as Power, Transportation, Environment, Renewables, etc. The technology advancements have enabled the employment of such systems in extreme environmental conditions, under demanding timings, and in services which require high accuracy and repeatability. CETRI’s group of M&R is capable of designing custom robotics and mechatronics according to its clientele needs, as well as to define the necessary requirements for off the self purchases.
- Vision: object detection, target identification, target tracing, 3D pose estimation, navigation, visual control, feature detection, pattern matching
- Data Fusion: Fuzzy logic, Neural networks, Expert systems, Kalman Filtering
- CAD, CAE
- Robotics performing NDT: Long range Ultrasounds, Acoustic Emissions, visual inspection, signal processing
- Kinematics Extraction, Dynamic Path planning, Adaptability, and Human robot interaction
Robotics
CETRI has a vast experience in developing robotics system for a wide range of applications which varies among AUVs (Autonomous Unmanned Vehicles), tele-operated robots, and human-in the loop architectures. The design depends on the objective of each task, hence the robots are developed either to carry tools for the given services or offer. CETRI can offer solutions path planning, human-robot interaction, path following, and positioning accuracy.
- The robots can be either armed, such as manipulators
- Legged robots, spider like
- Wheeled, tracked, crawler platforms
- Aerial Unmanned vehicles, multi-copters, drones
- Multi-degrees of freedom
Monitoring- Inspection – Surveillance
These services are applied almost to any system such as piping, wind turbine blades, concrete walls, ship skulls, soil, area surveillance, etc. The robotics systems are designed to apply all the necessary sensors and tools according to the defined requirements, e.g. keep a safe distance, make contact, apply constant force, etc. The goal is to perform the desired task efficiently and productively.
Non Exhaustive list of CETRI offerings:
- crawling robot for climbing vertical surfaces
- Robotic scanner to inspect surfaces
- Mechatronics to carry repairing equipment
- Fixate sensors to a perpendicular positioning relative to the surface
- Apply always a given force to the probes
- Inspect curved and complex surfaces
- Robotics manipulator to inspect composites materials
- Keep a defined distance at all times from the target
- Fixate to a perpendicular positioning relative to the surface
- Always apply a specific amount of force to the probes
- Inspect curved and complex surfaces
- Ground wheeled robot to monitor the ground for anomalies
- Crawler to detect buried rocks and minerals
- Robotic spring to apply sensor for measuring soil Contamination
- Aerial Vehicle to measure air pollution
Vision Applications
Computer and Robotics vision is a widespread application on robotics. Vision is the primary sense for human being and many vertebrates. The extraction of information from a scene is of importance for numerous applications and that is why visual sensors can be found in many sectors for a wide variety of tasks. Computer vision is an energy consuming task due to its high computational burden and, especially when the frame rate and the resolution of the sensor are high. However, the recent advancements on the processing units have made easy the application of vision systems even in applications which require processing on board.
- NDT
- decision making
- visual inspection
- obstacle avoidance
- target identification and tracking
- navigation
- Semantic mapping
- Digital Elevation Models (DEM)
- 3D reconstruction and Mapping
- Visual and Inertial odomentry
- object recognition
- 3D pose estimation
- time to impact
- image stabilization
Visual NDT – The employment of visual sensors to carry out tasks involved for inspection and repair has thrived the last years. Thermal imaging is quite famous and efficient application. The technology is based on the property of the materials to emit radiation whose wavelength and relative maximum is related to the temperature of the material.
- Conventional Imaging
- Thermography
- Infrared images (IR)
- Lock in Thermography (LIT)
- Electroluminescence (EL)
- Photoluminescence (PL)
- Vibration Thermography
Identification, Tracing, Recognition – Vision systems are used to find targets of interest, especially in applications where humans cannot enter an area either for safety or due to the environmental conditions. Recognizing a known object, follow a certain path, avoid obstacles, and locate a target of interest are some of the key applications of robotics vision. These require the development of sophisticated algorithms as well as the employment of image processing methodologies and technologies, colour transformations, colour corrections, edge detections, noise filters, corner extraction, image transformations, etc.
- Object recognition
- 3D pose estimation of a target
- Depth estimation
- Time to impact
- Digital image stabilization
- Navigation control
- Target tracking
Data Fusion
Robotics make use of many heterogeneous sensors. The acquired data of each sensor contain vital information which in many cases are complementary to another sensor. Moreover, robots require redundancy to their sensors in order to mitigate possible risks of failure, either to its operation or during their executed tasks.
- Fuzzy logic
- Kalman Filtering
- Hierarchical systems
- Neural Networks
- Data Clustering
- Statistical analysis
- Weighted analysis
- Expert systems