Research line

Mobile Robotics and Intelligent Systems

Mobile Robotics and Intelligent Systems Image

The research activities of the MOBILE ROBOTICS line are aimed to endow mobile robots and ubiquitous computing devices the necessary skills to aid humans in everyday life activities. These skills range from pure perceptual activities such as tracking, recognition or situation awareness, to motion skills, such as localization, mapping, autonomous navigation, path planning or exploration.
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Head of line: Juan Andrade Cetto

Head of line

Tech. transfer

Our activity finds applications in several fields through collaboration with our technological partners

Research projects

We carry out projects from national and international research programmes.
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Urban service robotics

The group focuses on the design and development of service mobile robots for human assistance and human robot interaction. This includes research on novel hardware and software solutions to urban robotic services such as surveillance, exploration, cleaning, transportation, human tracking, human assistance and human guiding.

Research area 1 of Mobile Robotics

Social robotics

The group's work on social robotics has an emphasis in human robot interaction and collaboration, developing new techniques to predict and learn human behaviors, human-robot task collaboration, and the generation of emphatic robot behaviors using all types of sensors, computer vision techniques and cognitive systems technologies.

Research area 2 of Mobile Robotics

Robot localization and robot navigation

This research area tackles the creation of robust single and cooperative, indoor and outdoor robot localization solutions, using multiple sensor modalities such as GPS, computer vision and laser range finding, INS sensors and raw odometry. The area also seeks methods and algorithms for autonomous robot navigation, and robot formation; and the application of these methods on a variety of indoor and outdoor mobile robot platforms.

Research area 3 of Mobile Robotics

SLAM and robot exploration

We develop solutions for indoor and outdoor simultaneous localization and mapping using computer vision and three-dimensional range data using Bayesian estimation. The research includes the development of new filtering and smoothing algorithms that limit the load of maps using information theoretic measures; as well as the design and construction of novel sensors for outdoor mapping. This research area also studies methods for autonomous robotic exploration.

Research area 4 of Mobile Robotics

Tracking in computer vision

We study the development of robust algorithms for the detection and tracking of human activities in indoor and outdoor areas, with applications to service robotics, surveillance, and human-robot interaction. This includes the development of fixed/moving single camera tracking algorithms as well as detection and tracking methods over large camera sensor networks.

Research area 5 of Mobile Robotics

Object recognition

The group also performs research on object detection and object recognition in computer vision. Current research is heavily based on boosting and other machine learning methodologies that make extensive use of multiple view geometry. We also study the development of unique feature and scene descriptors, invariant to changes in illumination, cast shadows, or deformations.

Research area 6 of Mobile Robotics

These are the latest research projects of the Mobile Robotics and Intelligent Systems research line:

These are the most recent publications (2026 - 2025) of the Mobile Robotics and Intelligent Systems

  • L.B. Hriscu, A. Sanfeliu and A. Garrell Zulueta. Human perception in social tasks: a comparative evaluation of autonomous and teleoperated robots. IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, 11(1): 234-241, 2026.

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  • N. Picello, F. Herrero, S. Hernández, A. López and A. Santamaria-Navarro. Leveraging pedestrian detection and tracking in robotics navigation: A survey with practical illustrations. IEEE Access, 13: 158926-158937, 2025.

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  • M. Moutousi, A. El Saer, N. Nikolaou, A. Sanfeliu, A. Garrell Zulueta, L. Bláha, M. Čech, E.K. Markakis, I. Kefaloukos, M. Lagomarsino, G. Margetis, E. Adamakis, A. Poulakidas, F. Lykokanellos, A. Stefanidou, J. Cani, P. Radoglou-Grammatikis, M. Siganos, A. Ajoudani and G.T. Papadopoulos. TORNADO: Foundation models for robots that handle small, soft and deformable objects, 6th International Conference in Electronic Engineering and Information Technology, 2025, Chania (Greece), pp. 1--13.

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  • G. Gomez, J. Laplaza, A. Sanfeliu and A. Garrell Zulueta. Enhancing context-aware human motion prediction for efficient robot handovers, 2025 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, 2025, Hanzghou, China, pp. 16917-16922.

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  • L.B. Hriscu, A. Sanfeliu and A. Garrell Zulueta. From automation to telepresence: exploring voice preferences in humanoid robots, 2025 Iberian Robotics Conference, 2025, Porto, Portugal, Springer, to appear.

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  • J.E. Domínguez, N.A. Rodríguez and A. Sanfeliu. Perception–intention–action cycle in human–robot collaborative tasks: The collaborative lightweight object transportation use-case. International Journal of Social Robotics, 17: 1927–1956, 2025.

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  • V. Bo, A. Garrell Zulueta and A. Sanfeliu. HINT-Bench: human intention recognition benchmark for social robotics, 2025 Iberian Robotics Conference, 2025, Porto, Portugal, Springer, to appear.

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  • A. Santamaria-Navarro, S. Hernández, F. Herrero, A. López, I. del Pino, N.A. Rodríguez, C. Fernandez, A. Baldó, C. Lemardelé, A. Garrell Zulueta, J. Vallvé, H. Taher, A.M. Puig-Pey, L. Pagès and A. Sanfeliu. Towards the deployment of an autonomous last-mile delivery robot in urban areas. IEEE Robotics and Automation Magazine, 32(3): 26-39, 2025.

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  • A. Garrell Zulueta, G. Canal and R. Ros. Special issue on prediction and anticipation for reasoning in Human-Robot Interaction. International Journal of Social Robotics, 2025.

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  • P. Vial, J. Solà, N. Palomeras and M. Carreras. On Lie group IMU and linear velocity preintegration for autonomous navigation considering the Earth rotation compensation. IEEE Transactions on Robotics, 41: 1346-1364, 2025.

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  • H. Cherfi, J. Lesouple, J. Solà and P. Thevenon. Uncertainty quantification of first fix in a time-differenced carrier phase observation model. Sensors, 25(11): 3480, 2025.

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  • J. Laplaza, F. Moreno-Noguer and A. Sanfeliu. Enhancing robotic collaborative tasks through contextual human motion prediction and intention inference. International Journal of Social Robotics, 17: 2077–2096, 2025.

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  • J.E. Domínguez and A. Sanfeliu. The human intention: A taxonomy attempt and its applications to robotics. International Journal of Social Robotics, 17: 2479-2499, 2025.

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  • F. Gebelli, L.B. Hriscu, R. Ros, S. Lemaignan, A. Sanfeliu and A. Garrell Zulueta. Personalised explainable robots using LLMs, 2025 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, 2025, Melbourne, Australia, pp. 1304-1308.

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  • J.E. Domínguez and A. Sanfeliu. When the inference meets the explicitness or why multimodality can make us forget about the perfect predictor. International Journal of Social Robotics, 17: 2965-2980, 2025.

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  • F. Gebelli, A. Garrell Zulueta, S. Lemaignan and R. Ros. Dynamics of mental models: Objective vs. subjective user understanding of a robot in the wild. IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, 10(8): 7755-7762, 2025.

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  • A. Garrell Zulueta, I. del Pino, A. Santamaria-Navarro and A. Sanfeliu. Collaborative Transport Robots (CTRs) applicable in the proximal urban environment: A review. ACE | Architecture, City and Environment, 20(58): 12627, 2025.

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  • J. Cani, K. Panagiotis, K. Foteinos, I. Kefaloukos, L. Argyriou, M. Falelakis, I. del Pino, A. Santamaria-Navarro, M. Čech, O. Severa, A. Umbrico, F. Fracasso, A. Orlandini, D. Drakoulis, E. Markakis, I. Varlamis and G. Th. Papadopoulos. TRIFFID: Autonomous robotic aid for increasing first responders efficiency, 6th International Conference in Electronic Engineering and Information Technology, 2025, Chania (Greece), pp. 1-9.

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  • L.B. Hriscu, A. Sanfeliu and A. Garrell Zulueta. AI or Human? Understanding perceptions of embodied robots with LLMs, 34th IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication, 2025, Eindhoven, Netherlands, pp. 917-923.

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  • A.M. Puig-Pey, B. Amante, Y. Bolea and A. Sanfeliu. A methodological proposal for the integration of robotic services in the urban public space of cities. ACE | Architecture, City and Environment, 20(58): 12591, 2025.

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  • L. Fuster, M. Dalmasso, A. Aubach, S. Izquierdo, A. Sanfeliu and A. Garrell Zulueta. Negotiation of assignation plans in human-robot team task scheduling, 34th IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication, 2025, Eindhoven, Netherlands, pp. 1222-1228.

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  • F. Gebelli, A. Garrell Zulueta, J. Habekost, S. Lemaignan, S. Wermter and R. Ros. Personalised explanations in long-term human-robot interactions, 34th IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication, 2025, Eindhoven, Netherlands, pp. 775-782.

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Mobile Robotics Laboratory

The Mobile Robotics Laboratory is an experimental area primarily devoted to hands-on research with mobile robot devices. The lab includes 3 Pioneer platforms, 2 service robots for urban robotics research based on Segway platforms, and a 4-wheel rough outdoor mobile robot, a six-legged LAURON-III walking robot, and a vast number of sensors and cameras.

Mobile Robotics Laboratory

Barcelona Robot Laboratory

The Barcelona Robot Lab encompasses an outdoor pedestrian area of 10.000 sq m., and is provided with 21 fixed cameras, a set of heterogeneous robots, full coverage of wifi and mica devices, and partial gps coverage. The area has moderate vegetation and intense cast shadows, making computer vision algorithms more than challenging.

Barcelona Robot Laboratory
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