Safety, Exploration and Maintenance of Forests with Ecological Robotics

 

Segurança, Exploração e Manutenção de Florestas com Integração de Robótica Ecológica

Designação do Projeto

SEMFIRE .: Segurança, Exploração e Manutenção de Florestas com Integração de Robótica Ecológica

 

Código do Projeto

CENTRO-01-0247-FEDER-032691

 

Ficha do Projeto

wildfires are currently considered as the third natural disaster with major economic impacts in the Mediterranean Europe - SEMFIRE intends to make a difference.

Overview

SEMFIRE (Safety, Exploration and Maintenance of Forests with the Integration of Ecological Robotics) proposes the development of a support robotic system to reduce fuel accumulation (e.g., forest debris), thus assisting in landscaping maintenance tasks. This is an application domain with an unquestionable beneficial impact at the economic, social and environmental level, as the proposed project will contribute by significantly reducing wildfire hazard potential.

 

SEMFIRE addresses several disciplines to succeed in fire prevention by benefiting from disruptive technologies and novel ecological robotic approaches. Focus will be placed in the development of a multi-robot system, combined with pervasive local positioning, multi-robot navigation and coordination in forests, and an innovative artificial perception architecture.

 

SEMFIRE is a project of the Central Portugal Region cofunded by the program Portugal 2020, under the reference

CENTRO-01-0247-FEDER-032691

Objectives

Aiming to push forward the development of field robotics to cope with forestry fires, a scourge with unquestionable impact on society, a consortium was assembled to fulfill the following specific scientific objectives:

 

Design and develop a heterogeneous team of robotic platforms for forest clearing, reconnaissance and surveillance

Integrate the latest advancements in traversability analysis, path-planning and navigation of field robots in outdoor terrains

Develop a marsupial deployment strategy in forestry areas

Implement a swarm exploration and coverage algorithms for collective reconnaissance and surveillance of forestry areas

Implement innovative computer vision methods for detection, identification and characterization of the environment needed for landscape maintenance procedures

 

 

 

Research

Europe has been affected by an alarming number of wildfires every year, ravaging nearly half a million hectares of forestry areas and resulting in an unacceptable amount of human losses. The year 2017 was one of the worst ever recorded, with devastating wildfires raging across the globe. Bearing these shocking facts in mind, this position paper aims to lay the foundations of crucial new upcoming research in the field of forestry robotics by presenting an overview of the SEMFIRE project. SEMFIRE proposes the development of a robotic system designed to reduce the accumulation of combustible material in forests, thus assisting in landscaping maintenance tasks for wildfire prevention. This paper describes the multi-robot system envisaged by SEMFIRE, combined with pervasive local positioning, multi-robot navigation and coordination in forests, and an innovative artificial perception architecture.

 

 

 

TEAM

João FILIPE FERREIRA

University of Coimbra

Principal Investigator

 

 

 

MICAEL COUCEIRO

INGENIARIUS

Coordinator

 

 

 

João BAndeirinha

SFERA ULTIMATE

 

 

 

daryna datsenko

INGENIARIUS

 

 

 

FILIPE PINTO

INGENIARIUS

 

 

 

ANDré AraúJO

INGENIARIUS

 

 

 

NUNO GONçALVES

University of Coimbra

 

 

 

DAVID PORTUGAL

University of Coimbra

 

 

 

RUI ROCHA

University of Coimbra

 

 

 

Luís Duarte

SFERA ULTIMATE

 

 

 

FILIPE SANTOS

SFERA ULTIMATE

 

 

 

our partners

 

This project is only possible with the collaboration of two local government councils which will provide all necessary forestry areas to evaluate the SEMFIRE solution:

 

Góis Parish Council - Freguesia de Góis

 

Municipal Council of Penacova - Município de Penacova

Integrated within Tulipp's Ecosystem

JOÃO PEDRO

SFERA ULTIMATE

 

 

 

Publications

 

Couceiro, M. S., Portugal, D., Ferreira, J. F., & Rocha, R. P. SEMFIRE: towards a new generation of forestry maintenance multi-robot systems, in 2019 IEEE. In SICE International Symposium on System Integration (SII)(IEEE, Paris, 2019) (pp. 270-276).

 

Martins, G. S., Ferreira, J. F., Portugal, D., & Couceiro, M. S. (2019). MoDSeM: modular framework for distributed semantic mapping. Poster Papers, 12.

 

Martins, G. S., Ferreira, J. F., Portugal, D., & Couceiro, M. S. (2019, July). MoDSeM: towards semantic mapping with distributed robots. In Annual Conference Towards Autonomous Robotic Systems (pp. 131-142). Springer, Cham.

 

Portugal, D., Ferreira, J. F., & Couceiro, M. S. (2020, September). Requirements specification and integration architecture for perception in a cooperative team of forestry robots. In Annual Conference Towards Autonomous Robotic Systems (pp. 329-344). Springer, Cham.

 

Nasir, A. K., Araújo, A. G., & Couceiro, M. S. (2020, October). Localization and navigation assessment of a heavy-duty field robot. In Proceedings of the 2020 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2020), Workshop on Perception, Planning and Mobility in Forestry Robotics (WPPMFR 2020) (pp. 25-29).

 

Andrada, M. E., De Castro Cardoso Ferreira, J., Portugal, D., & Couceiro, M. (2020). Testing different CNN architectures for semantic segmentation for landscaping with forestry robotics.

 

Lourenço, D., De Castro Cardoso Ferreira, J., & Portugal, D. (2020). 3D local planning for a forestry UGV based on terrain gradient and mechanical effort.

 

Portugal, D., Andrada, M. E., Araújo, A. G., Couceiro, M. S., & Ferreira, J. F. (2021). Ros integration of an instrumented bobcat t190 for the semfire project. In Robot Operating System (ROS) (pp. 87-119). Springer, Cham.

 

Andrada, M. E., Ferreira, J. F., Portugal, D., & Couceiro, M. S. (2022, January). Integration of an Artificial Perception System for Identification of Live Flammable Material in Forestry Robotics. In 2022 IEEE/SICE International Symposium on System Integration (SII) (pp. 103-108). IEEE.

 

Karfakis, P. T., Couceiro, M. S., Portugal, D., & Antunes, C. H. (2022, March). A Comparative Study of Mobile Robot Positioning Using 5G NR. In ICRA 2022 Workshop in Innovation in Forestry Robotics: Research and Industry Adoption.

 

Bittner, D., Ferreira, J. F., Andrada, M. E., Bird, J. J., & Portugal, D. (2022, March). Generating Synthetic Multispectral Images for Semantic Segmentation in Forestry Applications. In ICRA 2022 Workshop in Innovation in Forestry Robotics: Research and Industry Adoption.

 

Andrada, M. E., Ferreira, J. F., Kantor, G., Portugal, D., & Antunes, C. H. (2022, March). Model Pruning in Depth Completion CNNs for Forestry Robotics with Simulated Annealing. In ICRA 2022 Workshop in Innovation in Forestry Robotics: Research and Industry Adoption.

 

 

Invited Talks:

 

Ferreira, J. F. (2019). “Forestry 4.0” – Going Beyond Smart Agriculture. Invited Talk. Smart Industry Workshop, Nottingham Trent University, United Kingdom.

 

Deliverables



 

Requirements of System and Scenarios of Use

 

Functional and Technical Specification

 

Artificial Perception System and Robotic Decision-Making – Artificial Perception Base System

 

Multi-Robot Exploration, Patrolling and Localization System

 

Initial Deployment of Scouts under Connectivity Constraints

 

Plan of dissemination and disclosure enlarged from results

 

Contents multimedia for disclosure of prototype

 

Contents multimedia for disclosure of prototype

CONTACT INFO

QUICK MESSAGE

Rua Nossa Senhora da Conceição 146

4445-147 Alfena

Portugal

 

Mobile Phone: + 351 961 171 409

Email:  semfire@ingeniarius.pt

 

Page Stats

Submitting Form...

The server encountered an error.

Form received.

All rights reserved