With an objective of complete autonomy, total automation
technology tries to maintain a target system under complete control.
This is necessary to attain specific operating conditions that are needed in truly dependable systems in many situations. Think for example in nuclear power plants, life
support systems, extra-planetary vehicles, etc.
Traditional control technologies are adequate
for control purposes in predefined operation conditions. Some approaches to control systems try to enhance control system behaviour in uncertain situations (adaptive, robust, stochastic control, etc.). Uncertainty comes from the outer environment through imperfect perception, from the inner environment or even from the knowledge used to perform control or the controller itself.
Controlled systems, environments and control implementations
are complex in almost all real situations worth mentioning.
Human-based supervisory control systems are the common way to increase the percentage of plant operating time.
Buthumans fail; in some cases they are even not present. An a big question arises: What can we do to increase the degree of autonomy of the machines?
The answer is clear: better controli.e. more
intelligence i.e more understanding of what's going on.
Intelligence is just having better control for bodies. Look
at the following definition from a well known dictionary:
in.tel.li.gence n
[ME, fr. MF, fr. L intelligentia, fr. intelligent-, intelligens
intelligent] (14c) 1 a (1): the
ability to learn or understand or
to deal with new or trying situations: reason; also: the
skilled
use of reason (2): the ability to apply knowledge to manipulate
one's environment or to think abstractly as measured by objective
criteria.
intelligence
= deal properly with new situations
= autonomous control
Intelligence is nota binary property. It is a more or less continuous magnitude, measured using an utility function in relation with some specific task in some specific context. The bigger the complexity of the task, higher the intelligence of the entity that performs
it. This means, for example, that my handheld calculator is more
intelligent that myself for some tasks (I hope they are few tasks).
Intelligent autonomous systems have minds that are Complex Control Systems.
We have just started (Jun. 2019) the project ROBOMINERS. This is an EC-funded project in te H2020 programme.
ROBOMINERS will develop a bio-inspired, modular and reconfigurable robot miner for small and difficult to access deposits. The aim is to create an amphibious robot that is capable of mining underground, underwater, in slurries or above water, and can be delivered in modules to the deposit via a large diameter borehole.
Our responsibility in the project is the creation of a metacontrol layer to drive the adaptation of the robot to new circumstances.
The project is leaded by Claudio Rossi. Find more information at the project website: https://robominers.eu/.
Last Updated ( Tuesday, 15 October 2019 )
PhD Theses
Friday, 04 February 2011
For some people, journal articles in high impact index journals is the main research product from university research activity. I don't agree. I think that the most valuable result emerging from University research are the PhD theses. I think so because this is the best reading material when wanting to learn about some new area of knowledge. This article contains a list of the theses I've been involved with.
My own PhD Thesis
Una Arquitectura de Control Inteligente de ProcesosPDF
Universidad Politécnica de Madrid
Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingenieros Industriales
1990
Supervised PhD Theses
Manuel Rodríguez Hernández Modelado de Sistemas Industriales Complejos
Universidad Politécnica de Madrid
Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingenieros Industriales
1998
Angel de Antonio Bermejo La Arquitectura de Control Inteligente ICA: Un Enfoque Basado en Componentes para Sistemas de Control
Universidad Politécnica de Madrid
Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingenieros Industriales
1999
Miguel José Segarra Martínez CORBA Control Systems
Universidad Politécnica de Madrid
Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingenieros Industriales
2005
Ignacio López Paniagua A Foundation For Perception In Autonomous Systems
Universidad Politécnica de Madrid
Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingenieros Industriales
2007
Julita Bermejo Alonso OASys: An Ontology for Autonomous Systems
Universidad Politécnica de Madrid
Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingenieros Industriales
2010
Jaime Gómez Ramírez A New Foundation for Cognitive and Brain Science: Category Theory and the Hippocampus
Universidad Politécnica de Madrid
Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingenieros Industriales
2010
Other Supervised Theses
Many theses at the MS and PFC levels.
Last Updated ( Saturday, 04 February 2012 )
Metacontrol for ROS2 systems (MROS)
Sunday, 10 February 2013
We have just started (Oct. 2019) the project Metacontrol for ROS2 systems (MROS). This is a cascaded project from the EC-funded project RokMoSys.
A current challenge in robot software architectures in autonomous applications is to address task, contingency and system handling while performing tasks. Current solutions in ROS and ROS2 are typically based on complex, distributed logic that interweaves the three aspects, resulting in maintainability, reusability and reliability issues. The objective of MROS is to leverage the RobMoSys model-based approach at runtime, to provide a solution for ROS2 systems, based on architectural self- adaptation driven by ontology reasoning on the architecture models. The solution will be applied to the ROS2 Navigation stack, and demonstrated in two variants of the RobMoSys Intralogistics pilot, with the Thiago platform and with a Bosch consumer- product prototype. MROS will connect the ROS2 and RobMoSys frameworks, and further enable a metamodeling-sound usage of ontologies for robot software architecting.
“Composeable models@runtime of ROS2 software will support more adaptable and reliable autonomous robots”
The project is leaded by Carlos Hernandez, from Delft University of Technology. Other partners are Robert Bosch Gmbh and Universidad Rey Juan Carlos.
Last Updated ( Tuesday, 15 October 2019 )
The HBP Project @ RTVE
Sunday, 10 February 2013
Se ha concedido el proyecto HBP en el que participa la UPM en multiples ámbitos, incluyendo la neurorobótica por parte de nuestro grupo de investigación.
La UE investiga con el objetivo de entender el cerebro
Research 
