For the development of autonomous robotic systems, Dynamic Movement Primitives (DMP) and Artificial Potential Fields (APF) are two well known techniques. DMPs are a reference algorithm in robotics for one shot learning as they enable learning complex movements and generating smooth trajectories, while APF are outstanding in navigation and obstacle avoidance tasks. By integrating DMPs and APF, the task automation capability can be significantly enhanced, as the precision of DMPs combined with the reactive nature of APF promises, in theory, adaptability and efficiency for the learning algorithm. Despite the numerous papers discussing and reviewing both techniques independently, there is a lack of an objective comparison of the investigations combining both approaches. This paper aims to provide such a comprehensive literature analysis, using a homogenized mathematical formulation. Moreover, a categorization based on their application scope, the robots used and their characteristics is provided. Finally, open challenges in the combination of DMP and APF are discussed, highlighting further works that are worth conducting for improving the integration of both approaches.

Deep learning methods have revolutionized computer vision since the appearance of AlexNet in 2012. Nevertheless, 6 degrees of freedom pose estimation is still a difficult task to perform precisely. Therefore, we propose 2 ensemble techniques to refine poses from different deep learning 6DoF pose estimation models. The first technique, merge ensemble, combines the outputs of the base models geometrically. In the second, stacked generalization, a machine learning model is trained using the outputs of the base models and outputs the refined pose. The merge method improves the performance of the base models on LMO and YCB-V datasets and performs better on the pose estimation task than the stacking strategy.

In this paper, an innovative algorithm for averaging a set of multivariate time series with different lengths based on Constrained Dynamic Time Warping (CDTW) is proposed. This approach relies on the CDTW to provide the non-linear alignment of the multivariate time series, and employs the proposed Minimum Cost Averaging (MCA) technique to identify the optimum matches and get equal-length time series. MCA-CDTW is a task-agnostic approach that after selecting a reference curve, transforms the rest of the demonstrations in the set to obtain new curves that are time-aligned with the reference. From these transformed curves, not only the mean but also the signal variability can be directly extracted. This technique provides smooth mean curves even when there are large deviations between the demonstrations in the set, and still the complexity of the proposed algorithm is significantly reduced compared to other averaging techniques from the literature. When learning techniques are used to teach a motion to a robotic system, obtaining smooth trajectories is important to achieve good robotic behaviors. The new algorithm MCA-CDTW is tested and compared on two different databases: a literature database where humans move a robotic arm with kinaesthetic teaching, and a set of recordings of a teleoperated robotic arm performing laboratory manipulation. On both datasets, it is demonstrated that the new approach is providing smooth average trajectories.

This article provides a detailed description of the membrane-based sterility testing process, the use case selected in the Horizon Europe project TraceBot for demonstrating the benefit of agile robotics in a laboratory setting and its interest for the pharmaceutical industry. Based on videos of human operators performing manually the sterility testing process, we detail its different steps, starting from a human perspective, with a more robotic approach in mind, and highlight the major atomic functionalities a robot should have for executing the process at hand. Together with the analysis of the process flow of actions, we also list all elements/objects involved, and analyse the technical and scientific challenges in this process and its application environment as well as in general pharmaceutical processes. Finally, with the objective to engage the community in collaborating and taking advantage of our use case study, the complete process flow description is made available on a website, together with associated data like the object’s meshes and a generic robotic setting in ROS environment.

This study describes the software methodology designed for systematic benchmarking of bipedal systems through the computation of performance indicators from data collected during an experimentation stage. Under the umbrella of the European project Eurobench, we collected approximately 30 protocols with related testbeds and scoring algorithms, aiming at characterizing the performances of humanoids, exoskeletons, and/or prosthesis under different conditions. The main challenge addressed in this study concerns the standardization of the scoring process to permit a systematic benchmark of the experiments. The complexity of this process is mainly due to the lack of consistency in how to store and organize experimental data, how to define the input and output of benchmarking algorithms, and how to implement these algorithms. We propose a simple but efficient methodology for preparing scoring algorithms, to ensure reproducibility and replicability of results. This methodology mainly constrains the interface of the software and enables the engineer to develop his/her metric in his/her favorite language. Continuous integration and deployment tools are then used to verify the replicability of the software and to generate an executable instance independent of the language through dockerization. This article presents this methodology and points at all the metrics and documentation repositories designed with this policy in Eurobench. Applying this approach to other protocols and metrics would ease the reproduction, replication, and comparison of experiments.