The TUT Flagship project “Robotics and Intelligent Machines” started by four departments

The four department units of Tampere University of Technology started an ambitious research project on autonomous robots and heavy machinery. The project is funded by TUT and Academy of Finland. The goal is a completely autonomous work site of multiple co-operating robots and machines.

Tampere University of Technology is profiling in teaching and research on robotics and, in particular, heavy working machinery. Robotics research is expensive, challenging and multidisciplinary research field, but it has enormous future potential. This has been identified in the EU Horizon 2020 programme which aims to bring European research and industry to the front line of "robotization". In Tampere region and Finland there are several big players who benefit from the national top research and TUT has long research and industrial collaboration tradition in the field of heavy machinery.

The Flagship project was started in 2015 by the four active departments with existing research in the robotics:

• Intelligent Hydraulics and Automation (Professors Kalevi Huhtala and Reza Ghabcheloo)
• Mechanical Engineering and Industrial Systems (Professor Kari T Koskinen)
• Signal Processing (Professors Joni Kämäräinen, Ari Visa and Heikki Huttunen)
• Automation Science and Engineering (Professor Risto Ritala who is the project leader)

The goal of the project is a robotized environment (work site), where robots and heavy machinery autonomously operate and collaborate and in the case of failures or other "surprises" collaborative re-plan and repair machinery and operation with the help of available (re-usable and movable) robot platform. The system is based on multiple robust sensors and, in particular, computer vision and machine learning.

See the example video of the system: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30U1Pe0-k_E

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The article was first published on Tampere University of Technology website