Cátedra UPM-CESEDEN Award to the best scientific paper

Our paper "Multi-robot interfaces and operator situational awareness: study of the impact of immersion and prediction" has been awarded with the Cátedra Ingeniero Remón y Zarco del Valle prize to the best scientific paper in defense and security. This prize is awarded annually by Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM), which is my alma mater, and Centro Superior de Estudios de Defensa Nacional (CESEDEN), which is a center of the Spanish Army that deals with defense research and culture. 

The commitee has decided to award our paper because it presents a novel technology that will have an impact on the future of defense and security. This paper was the result of months of teamwork, starting from the multi-robot missions performed in Luxembourg in 2016 and finishing at the experiments with operators developed in Spain in 2017. Therefore, I would like to say "thanks" to my colleagues who participated in this work and "congratulations" to Elena because she contributed as much as me to this success.

Here you can see the paper:

J.J. Roldán, E. Peña-Tapia, A. Martín-Barrio, M.A. Olivares-Méndez, J. del Cerro and A. Barrientos. “Multi-Robot Interfaces and Operator Situational Awareness: Study of the Impact of Immersion and Prediction”. Sensors, 17(8), 1720. 2017. Impact Factor (2016): 2.677. Article

Simposio de Innovación Docente en Automática

I have attended to the Simposio de Innovación Docente en Automática (Symposium of Teaching Innovation in Automation) organized by the Comité Español de Automática (Spanish Automation Committee) in León (Spain) the January 10-12, 2018. In this event, I have seen the latest trends about inverted classrooms and remote laboratories, I have presented our work about a training system for industrial operators in assembly tasks, and I have visited the cathedral of León and a wind generator factory!

E. Crespo, J.J. Roldán, A. Martín-Barrio, J. del Cerro and A. Barrientos. “Virtual reality and process mining applied to operator training in complex assembly tasks”. IV Seminario de Innovación Docente en Automática (CEA-IFAC). León, January 10-12, 2018. Article     

One of the proposals of Industry 4.0 is the integration of machines and operators through network connections and information management. One of the challenges that can be addressed following this approach is the management of knowledge in the industry or, in other words, the transmission of knowledge from the expert operators to the new ones. This work has been developed a system that combines Virtual Reality and Process Mining to allow this knowledge transmission in the particular case of assembly tasks. Virtual Reality allows to create work environments that reproduce the real ones and interact with them without detracting resources of other processes or facing the risks of working with real systems. Process Mining allows to acquire the knowledge of experts, store it in models and then transmit it to novices. The developed system has been tested by means of several examples of assemblies with Lego.

This research line is under development and there will be news in the next months!