Robotic interventions in hazardous scenarios need to pay special attention to safety, as in most cases it is necessary to have an expert operator in the loop. Moreover, the use of a multi-modal Human-Robot Interface allows the user to interact with the robot using manual control in critical steps, as well as semi-autonomous behaviours in more secure scenarios, by using, for example, object tracking and recognition techniques. This paper describes a novel vision system to track and estimate the depth of metallic targets for robotic interventions. The system has been designed for on-hand monocular cameras, focusing on solving lack of visibility and partial occlusions. This solution has been validated during real interventions at the Centre for Nuclear Research (CERN) accelerator facilities, achieving 95% success in autonomous mode and 100% in a supervised manner. The system increases the safety and efficiency of the robotic operations, reducing the cognitive fatigue of the operator during non-critical mission phases. The integration of such an assistance system is especially important when facing complex (or repetitive) tasks, in order to reduce the work load and accumulated stress of the operator, enhancing the performance and safety of the mission.
This work represents a paradigm shift in the approach to manage port infrastructure maintenance where the use of the building information modeling (BIM) method is very scarce, and it is now beginning. The new infrastructure conservation management method proposed in this manuscript combines traditional methods with new technology, covering the gap of the implementation of BIM in port maintenance. This new technology is the BIM method, and its use is already mandatory in public infrastructure projects in some countries. In this work, the BIM method is applied to the management of the conservation of port infrastructures to show the benefits that can be obtained using it. After the analysis of the state of the art in the conservation of port infrastructures, two of the main maritime works of the Outer Port of A Coruña were modeled in Revit. This as-built model serves as an inventory model and forms a large database of all the information regarding the conservation of the structures. In this way, all the data on the conservation of the port’s infrastructures are concentrated in a single source of information in which, in addition, there is a three-dimensional and georeferenced representation of the port in question. The main finding of this work is the development of a step by step method to implement BIM philosophy in port maintenance, highlighting the positive and negative points detected during the validation of the method in a real case, detecting future improvement research lines. Although BIM has a lot of advantages and possibilities just now, some improvements are still necessary.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.