The Autonomous Systems group appeared officially in 1994 within the ISIS group, when we obtained project CICYT (TIC95-0589), our first funded project in Robotics. Then, we got funded with project CICYT TIC98-0562, to create an autonomous exploration system based on active vision and VLSI implementation of working algorithms, and project MCYT-FEDER TIC2001-1758, to create indoor 3D models of the environment using an explorer. Later, we started new, more specific lines on humanoids, assistive robots and robotic arm control, all funded by public national or international investment. The work of this group is tightly coupled to the Vision group and, indeed, most its members have worked or work at the moment in both areas.
All these projects provided the required experience to develop new architecture systems, innovative autonomous navigation algorithms, robot computer vision techniques, etc. Also, we started to teach a new class on Autonomous Robots for grad students and a pre-grad in microbotics.
Projects TIN2004-07441 and TEC2007-11689 were the beginning of our cooperation with KMLg (UPC), with whom we obtained STREP project SHARE-it, financed by EU FP6 to develop cognitive assistive wheelchairs for persons with special needs. In parallel, project TIN2005-01359 was the starting point for our work with humanoids and legged robots.
We have developed the required infrastructure in our group to expand our research knowledge to teaching, via several events, seminars, special courses, competitions and virtual classes. Many of our students have scored highly in local and national competitions. Our official web of microbotics offers more information to this respect.
Our research priorities in the area currently include:
Bottom-up control architectures
Active vision based learning by imitation (humanoids)
Behaviour based autonomous systems
Assistive robots for persons with special needs
Multirobot coordination
Social robots