CUIK++: An Extension of Branch-and-Prune Techniques for Motion Analysis and Synthesis of Complex Robotic Systems



The Team @ IRI


Lluis Ros. Lluís Ros (PI) received the Mechanical Engineering degree in 1992, and the Ph.D. degree (with honors) in Industrial Engineering in 2000, both from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC). From 1993 to 1996 he worked with the Control of Resources Group of the Institut de Cibernètica (Barcelona). He was a visiting scholar at York University (Toronto, 1997), University of Tokyo (Tokyo, 1998), and the Laboratoire d'Analyse et Architecture des Systèmes (Toulouse, 1999). He joined the Institut de Robòtica i Informàtica Industrial (IRI, CSIC-UPC) in 1997, where he is currently an Associate Researcher of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) since 2004. His research interests include geometry and kinematics, with applications to robotics, computer graphics, and machine vision.
Oriol Bohigas. Oriol Bohigas. received the double M.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Spain, and in Aeronautical Engineering from the Institut Supérieur de l'Aéronautique et de l'Espace (ISAE), France, in 2006. After a research internship at Airbus France, he worked for two years as a space engineer at the Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES). He obtained his Ph.D. degree with the. Kinematics and Robot Design group of the Institut de Robòtica i Informàtica Industrial (IRI, CSIC-UPC). His current research interests include workspace and singularity analysis of robot mechanisms.
Enric Celaya. Enric Celaya received the B.Sc. degree in physics from the Universitat de Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain, in 1979, and the Ph.D. degree in artificial intelligence from the Universitat Politécnica de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain, in 1992. He is currently a Full Researcher at the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Institut de Robòtica i Informàtica Industrial (CSIC-UPC), Barcelona. He has been engaged in research projects in the field of vision-based robot navigation in natural environments. His current research interests include geometric reasoning, legged robot locomotion, reinforcement learning in robotics, and visual saliency detection.
Montserrat Manubens. Montserrat Manubens received the Mathematics degree from the Universitat de Barcelona in 2001, and the Ph.D. degree (with honors) in Computer Algebra from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya in 2008. From 2009 to 2010 she worked with the Robotics Group of the Institut de Recherche en Communications et Cybernétique de Nantes (France) in the analysis of cuspidal robots. Since 2011 she holds a Juan de la Cierva contract at the Institut de Robòtica i Informàtica Industrial, (IRI, CSIC-UPC). Her current research interests include mathematics and kinematics, with applications to robotics.
Josep M. Porta. Josep M. Porta. received the Engineering degree in Computer Science in 1994, and the Ph.D. degree (with honors) in Artificial Intelligence in 2001, both from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Spain. From 2001 to 2003 he held a postdoctoral position at the University of Amsterdam, doing research in autonomous robot localization using vision. Currently, he is an Associate Researcher of the Spanish National Research Council at the Institut de Robòtica i Informàtica Industrial (IRI, CSIC-UPC), Barcelona, Spain. Currently he is coordinator of the Kinematics and Robot Design group at IRI. His research interests include planning under uncertainty and computational kinematics.
Vicente Ruiz de Angulo. Vicente Ruiz de Angulo was born in Miranda de Ebro, Burgos, Spain. He received the B.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in computer science from the Universidad del País Vasco, Bilbao, Spain. During the academic year 1988-1989, he was an Assistant Professor with the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain. In 1990, he was with the Neural Network Laboratory, Joint Research Center of the European Union, Ispra, Italy. From 1995 to 1996, he was with the Institut de Cibernètica, Barcelona, participating in the ESPRIT project entitled Robot Control Based on Neural Network Systems (CONNY). He also spent six months with the Istituto Dalle Molle di Studi Sull'Inteligenza Articiale di Lugano, working in applications of neural networks to robotics. Since 1996, he has been with the Institut de Robòtica i Informàtica Industrial (CSIC-UPC), Barcelona. His interests in neural networks include fault tolerance, noisy and missing data processing, and their application to robotics and computer vision.

External Collaborators

Juan Cortes. Juan Cortés. received the engineering degree in control and robotics from the Universidad de Zaragoza, Zaragoza, Spain, in 2000 and the Ph.D. degree in robotics from the Institut National Polytechnique de Toulouse, Toulouse, France, in 2003. Since 2004, he is a Researcher with the LAAS, Centre National de la Recherche Scientique, Toulouse. His current research interests include the development of algorithms for computing and analyzing the motion of complex systems in robotics and structural biology. Dr. Cortés is a Co-Chair of the IEEE-RAS TC on Algorithms for Planning and Control of Robot Motion.

LAAS.
Michael E. Henderson. Michael E. Henderson. is a member of the Numerical Analysis Group in the Mathematical Sciences Department at IBM's T.J. Watson Research Center. He obtained a B.S. in Engineering Science from The Pennsylvania State University, and a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from The California Institute of Technology. His current research interest is non-linear systems, especially bifurcation theory and continuation methods.

IBM.
Leonard Jaillet. Léonard Jaillet. received the Engineering degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Institut Superieur de Mecanique de Paris, Paris, France, and the Ph.D. degree in Robotics from the University of Toulouse, Toulouse, France, in 2001 and 2005, respectively. From 2008 to 2012, he has been a postdoctoral fellow at the Institut de Robòtica i Informàtica Industrial, Spanish National Research Council, Barcelona, Spain. His research interests include motion planning for complex robotic systems and molecular simulations for structural biology. Currently, he holds a Post-doctoral position in the Nano-D group at INRIA-Grenoble.

INRIA.
Alba Perez. Alba Pérez. is assistant professor at the Department of Mechanical Engineering of the College of Science and Engineering, at Idaho State University. Her current research deals with the kinematic synthesis of articulated bodies. She is interested in the use of Clifford algebras for the analysis and synthesis of systems with spatial motion. Specific applications include multi-fingered robotic hands and exoskeletons for rehabilitation and prosthetics.

Idaho State University.
Carlos Rosales. Carlos Rosales. received the Mechanical Engineering degree from the Universidad de Carabobo, Venezuela, in 2003, a master in Mechatronics from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) , Spain, in 2006, and the PhD degree (with honors) in Robotics and Advanced Automation from the UPC in 2013. Currently he holds a PostDoc positoin at the Research Center E. Piaggio of the University of Pisa. His main research topic is the consideration of kinematic and static limitations for grasp synthesis. He is also interested in motion planning and geometric methods in robot position analysis.

E. Piaggio Research Center.
Dimiter Zlatanov. Dimiter Zlatanov. obtained the Diploma in Mathematics and Mechanics from the University of Sofia, Sofia, Bulgaria, in 1989, and the Ph.D. degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Toronto, Canada, in 1998. He has held positions at Laval University, in Quebec City, Canada, the University of Innsbruck, Austria, and Tokyo City University, Japan. He is currently on the faculty of the Department of Mechanical and Energy Engineering of the University of Genoa, Italy. His research interests include the design, kinematics, dynamics and control of robotic mechanisms.

University of Genoa.