First face-to-face industry training held in Tampere

The MORE project has been running for nearly two years and due to travel restrictions, all meetings and trainings up to now have been held virtually until today. We finally had the opportunity to meet in person for the first time from the 15th-17th November 2021. In total, 23 members from the MORE consortium including the eight Early Stage Researchers met up for the 3rd Industry training event organised by TAU in Tampere, Finland.

The three-day training event included presentations from invited external speakers on Robotics, manipulator, trajectory optimization (Arun Singh, Univ. of Tartu) and a number of MORE network members on a number of relevant topics covering Hydraulics boom (Marcus Rösth, HIAB), Forestry Applications and Technologies (Timo Käppi, J. Deere), BIM in Infra Construction (Teppo Viinikka, Novatron), Control of Articulated Hydraulic Robotic Systems, (Janne Koivumäki Novatron), Operator assistance (Manuel Bös, Liebherr), Robot learning for heavy mobile machines (Nataliya Strokina / Reza Ghabcheloo,TAU) and Automation, Robotics in heavy machines (Christine Brach/Ulrich Lenzgeiger, Bosch Rexroth)

We also had the opportunity to visit our local hosts’ labs and demonstrators. TAU to showcase Robots in action in our RoboLab Tampere https://research.tuni.fi/robolabtampere/ At the end of each day, we held roundtable session to discuss the technical topics which were presented during the day.  In these discussion academia and industry collaboration was intensively elaborated. Being able to meet in person has provided the MORE members the possibility to get to know each other on a much more personal level and to strengthen team spirit. We would like to thank all the contributors to the Industry Day and are looking forward to MORE!  

Presentation at FPMC 2021, “Towards a Standard Taxonomy for Levels of Automation in Heavy-Duty Mobile Machinery”

Our MORE Early Stage Researcher, Tyrone J. Machado presented a paper titled “Towards a Standard Taxonomy for Levels of Automation in Heavy-Duty Mobile Machinery” at the ASME/Bath Symposium on Fluid Power and Motion Control (FPMC) 2021. 

We noticed a lack of commonly accepted definitions and taxonomies for levels of automation (LOA) in the heavy-duty mobile machinery (HDMM) industry/community. They rely on SAE J3016 from the automotive industry, which is unsuitable for HDMM because HDMM perform working activities or manipulation of external materials, in addition to driving activities. Thus, we propose a new two dimensional LOA matrix concept, with manipulation LOA on one dimension, and driving LOA on another dimension. 

The conference was held virtually from 19 to 21 October 2021 and the recording from Tyrone’s presentation is available to watch below.

Presentation on Autonomous Heavy-Duty Mobile Machinery: A Multidisciplinary Collaborative Challenge by Tyrone J. Machado at IEEE-ICTE 2021

Tyrone held a presentation at the International Conference on Technology and Entrepreneurship IEEE-ICTE2021 in Track 6: Interconnected business models; open innovation in digital age; Digitalization of innovation, R&D and creativity processes held virtually from 24-27 August 2021. The paper titled “Autonomous Heavy-Duty Mobile Machinery: A Multidisciplinary Collaborative Challenge” was a joint effort by all the MORE Early Stage Researchers.

In the presentation, Tyrone introduces autonomous heavy-duty mobile machinery from a more general rather than technical perspective, and highlights the conceptual challenges that arise when transitioning from traditional machinery to autonomous machinery. The paper took a holistic and multidisciplinary view on the topic covering technical, economical and management perspectives.

David (ESR4) participated at the SICFP’21

The Scandinavian International Conference on Fluid Power (SICFP) is one of the major conferences in the fluid power community and was held for the 17th time on 1-2 June 2021. David, MORE’s early stage researcher 4, was one of the speakers, presenting his simulation work on an electro-hydraulic concept for improved energy-efficiency of the implements on heavy-duty mobile machines.  Even though the pandemic forced the participants to meet online instead of in Sweden at Linköping University, the conference offered David a good opportunity to present and discuss his research.  The fact that many other talks dealt with electrification and efficiency improvement as well showed that David is on a right track with his research.  

Project pitch by Reza Taheri

Reza is currently hosted at Tampere University in Finland and will join our industry partner Bosch Rexroth AG in Germany later this year. Within MORE, Reza’s individual project focuses on transfer learning for safe motion control of a heavy duty under-actuated crane in the presence of obstacles which he explains in more detail in his project pitch. Watch his pitch here or visit our YouTube channel for all Early Stage Researcher’s project pitches.

Project pitch by Himanshu Gupta

MORE is an innovative European Industrial Doctorate (EID) research and training programme. We are the first industry-academia partnership to jointly educate researchers on heavy-duty mobile machinery. The first of its kind that will address the need for dramatic improvements in HDM machinery and fill the gap in related research and training. 

Eight early stage researchers (ESRs) will be equipped with a set of research skills including robotics, machine learning, energy systems, as well as transferable skills such as entrepreneurship and career management. 

In this video, Himanshu Gupta presents his individual project in MORE on Robust all-weather environment 3D perception and obstacle avoidance.

 

Project Pitch by Amirmasoud Molaei

Amirmasoud is one of the eight Early Stage Researchers in MORE who are all researching on individual projects to address the need for dramatic improvements in HDM machinery. In this video, Amirmasoud Molaei presents his individual project in MORE on work performance evaluation of mobile machines in earth moving tasks by using process models and sensor data.

Project Pitch by Daniel Eriksson

Daniel’s research focuses on Automatic Bucket Filling for Wheel Loaders Using Machine Learning Techniques. Currently, he is at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany and will switch to Liebherr in Austria to benefit both from our academic and industry partners. He is one of eight Early Stage Researchers in MORE that are working on individual research projects all with the main aim to address the need for dramatic improvements in HDM machinery. Watch his project pitch to find out MORE.

Second Industry Workshop held online

The second Industry Workshop was organised by Örebro University on the 3. – 4. March 2021. The focus of the two day workshop was on Autonomous Navigation of HDM Machinery and consisted of a number of presentations from experts in the field.

In total, there were eight presentations:

  • Autonomous HDM operation  – Reza Ghabcheloo (TUT)
  • Model predictive control autonomous haulers – Johan Sjöberg (VCE)
  • Positioning and mapping for field robots – Juhana Ahtiainen (GIM Robotics)
  • Robot Operating System (ROS) – Henrik Andreasson (ORU)
  • Fully Automated Harbours: Position Measurement of the Container Handling Machine – Pekka Yli-Paunu (HIAB)
  • Under the Radar – System-Level Self-Supervision for Perception and Navigation – Ingmar Posner (Oxford)
  • Human Motion Prediction for save and efficient operation in shared environments – Andrey Rudenko (Bosch)
  • Decision making under uncertainty – Joni Pajarinen (TUD & Aalto)

The workshop was closed with a round table between the speakers and Early Stage Researchers to present their topics and ask any open questions in relation to the presented topics. In total, MORE will organise five Industry Workshops with the objective to provide ESRs and other experts with the knowledge and the tools to better understand the current and future challenges in the research topics covered by MORE.

Project Pitch by Paolo Forte

Paolo is one of the eight Early Stage Researchers in MORE who are all researching on individual projects to address the need for dramatic improvements in HDM machinery. Paolo’s project focuses on material flow coordination and optimization in construction sites. Currently, he is hosted in Sweden at Örebro University and will later join Novatron Oy in Finland to carry on his research within MORE.