Research Background

 

I finished my studies at the University of Valladolid in December 1999. Since then I have worked for 13 years at a research company called CARTIF Foundation (www.cartif.com) located in the Technological Park of Boecillo (Spain). As you can check in its website, CARTIF is a research center that covers several research areas, one of them is Robotics and Computer Vision which is the department to which I have belonged to.
 
I have managed and/or collaborated in many projects related with social, mobile robotics, human-robot interaction, service robots, development of advanced sensors/devices. My first project in CARTIF was the development of a tour guide robot for the Valladolid Science Museum. It had to provide information to the visitors of the museum and navigate autonomously in one of the rooms of the museum following a daily shedule 6 days a week and 8 hours per day, it is still working there. I also have collaborated in the development of mobile autonomous robots for hotels and logistics. “Sacarino” is the name of a Bellboy Robot developed for the Novotel Hotel of Valladolid, which has been working there for several months providing information about the hotel and giving services and after some upgrading it will be in service soon with new features. Regarding the logistics, I also have collaborated in the development of the hardware control, localization and navigation systems of several AGV for carrying laundry and food in the new hospital of Valladolid, or for carrying medicaments in a hospital in Palencia.
 
I got my PhD degree in May 2007 in the Systems Engineering and Automatic department of the Industrial Engineering School of the University of Valladolid. As you can check in my Thesis disertation "Arisco, a social robot with learning and interaction capabilities" (written in Spanish), my study is close related to social robotics, interaction with humans and learning by reinforcement using Neural Networks. In order to put in practice the ideas emerged during my doctorate I built a mechatronic head called “Arisco” with gestural capabilities and several devices for interaction with humans. That head served as experimental platform and also as a demonstrator of social robotics/mechatronics in our department. Arisco is working since 2006 in the Robotics and Computer Vision department of CARTIF five days a week 8 hours a day autonomously.
 
In 2011 I was granted with an Intership from the regional government of Castilla y León to collaborate with an International research team during six months. I chose the Fraunhofer Institute for Intelligent Analysis and Information Systems IAIS where I was working with a wonderful team in an European Project called NIFTi  about human-robot cooperation in Urban Search & Rescue. The project goal was to explore a disaster area using aerial and ground robots, to assess the situation and locate victims. My mission in the project was to develop a localization and mapping system for the robots using an RGBD sensor and with not too much CPU load for the onboard computer. In this work I got a lot of experience with ROS, 6D transformations, 3D-color point clouds manipulation, openGL, etc. After the Intership I wrote a paper called “6D Fast Odometry based on Visual Features and Depth” developed during my stay in Germany and it was accepted in the Intelligent Autonomous Systems 2012 (IAS-12) congress in South Korea where it was one of the 10 finalists for the best paper award.

In 2013 I left CARTIF and moved to Nantes (France) to continue developping my professional career. I started working on a project called ICARS which aim is to convert an electrical comercial car model (Renault Zoe ZE) into a self-driving car and set it up to be available as an experimentation platform for the french robotics ROBOTEX network. This is one of the most interesting projects I have been involved in my life. During this project I have to deal with and solve all kind of problems related to localization, hardware implementation, control, navigation, human-machine interface, sensor fusion, computer vision processing, etc. A lot of work done but a lot of experience gained.
 
My research interests are focused in embedded systems, social and mobile robotics systems and autonomous vehicles as well. The key strengths that I possess include: Good  knowledge with a high practical experience on linux system, ROS, computer vision with OpenCV, robot localization techniques (e.g. SLAM, GPS), sensor fusion (Kalman Filters), embedded systems, C/C++ and Python programming, electronic boards design, knowledge of PIC/dsPIC microcontrollers and communication buses, Real Time low level control systems programming using FreeRTOS and an some experience in mechanical design.