There are pomegranates everywhere in the Royal Alcázar in Seville: in pots, in the gardens, on tiles and on tapestries.
In the Vault room the FROG robot stops for a short interactive quiz with the visitors. The answer to one of the questions should actually be ‘pomegranates’ …
Shield on tiles
Today, Javier told us that the pommegranate is the heraldic device for Granada. This device is seen in two parties of the shield on the tile above.
This close-up of the photo at the top shows a tiny pommegranate in the same stage – bursting open to reveal its seeds.
Ripe to bursting
And here you can see the same thing on another tile picture.
Here the fruits look perfect.
Border of a tapestry with pomegranates
The fruit seen below is on a larger plant in the gardens.
A fruitThe whole plant
This might just be one as well – it is on a tile set into a path in the gardens.
Is this a stylised pomegranate?
By the way, we didn’t change the answer to the quiz question – so, I’m afraid this post won’t help you get it right.
The FROG consortium will be at the Royal Alcázar in Seville from 17 till 21 November 2014.
We have been busy finishing our reports and now the EU representative and two independent reviewers (both researchers with a lot of experience with robots) will come to see if we have done our work properly.
This is a very serious event – somewhere between a tough audit and an excellent masterclass for the researchers.
FROG will be put through its paces … Looking for interested visitors!
Today FROG is the centre of attention at the Royal Alcázar in Seville!
FROG enjoying the limelight at the Royal Alcázar in Seville
All camera’s and microphones were turned on FROG…
in the Vault Room … from behind FROG …
… from behind the cameras.
The event was started with short presentations by Vicente C. Guzmán Fluja the Rector of Universidad Pablo de Olavide in Seville, and FROG’s own Luis Merino Cabañas also from UPO, and Vanessa Evers, coordinator of this EU project representing the University of Amsterdam.
Rector of UPO opens the event
FROG then took everyone on a short tour of the Alcázar and demonstrated his capabilities. Journalists from all media were in the party, both local and national!
Back in the on-site lab, Luis Merino and Fernando Caballero were interviewed for TV and radio.
Luis and FROG were interviewed in the lab
This afternoon there will be a workshop for a small group of official tour guides from the Royal Alcázar and one from the Lisbon Zoo.
Maja Pantic leads the Intelligent Behaviour Understanding Group (iBUG) at Imperial College in London.
Jie Shen and Ioannis Marras in the Royal Alcázar in Seville, September 2014
Jie and Ioannis in Seville, June 2014
running experiments in Seville, May 2013
Ioannis Marras
Ioannis Marras is a researcher from the Intelligent Behaviour Understanding Group (iBUG) at Imperial College, London. His research interests include image/video processing, computer vision and pattern recognition. During his work, he has developed multiple computer vision techniques for 2D/3D face tracking and 2D/3D face recognition in the wild.
Jie Shen
Jie Shen is a researcher from the Intelligent Behaviour Understanding Group (iBUG) at Imperial College, London. His research interests include software engineering, human-robot interaction, and affect-sensitive human-computer interfaces. During his work, he has developed the HCI^2 Framework (http://ibug.doc.ic.ac.uk/resources/hci2-framework/), which is a software integration framework for human-computer interaction systems, currently being used in multiple research projects.
Jie Shen defended his PhD thesis, titled ‘Realising Affect-Sensitive Multimodal Human-Computer Interface: Hardware and Software Infrastructure‘, in May, 2014.
Unfortunately, the rain in Spain doesn’t always stay on the plain. Today we had plenty of it at the Royal Alcázar and here we have a FROG that doesn’t like getting too wet.
Outside the lab – 21 September 2014Fine yellow sand in the gardens
In spite of all of the visitors the staff keep the halls and patios amazingly clean. There is a lot of loose yellow sand in the gardens and, of course, this gets washed and walked everywhere.
Wet but pretty, garden pathBlossom rained down from the trees
Part of the tour route
(next day) Path close to the lab and close to the gardens – amazingly little sand
Fernando Caballero Benitez and Luis Merino have been working together since 2003. They work on robot localisation and navigation, respectively. A robot first needs to know where it is (localisation) in order to carry out its mission (navigation). Fernando’s expertise is a bit more towards aerial robots, Luis’ towards ground robots.
PhD students who are fortunate enough to have these two as their supervisors are very lucky. It may be hard work but that goes with some solid training in the science that is the fundament of what they do, and sincere appreciation for what the PhD’s achieve. It’s a pleasure to see this close supervision in action – even if you don’t understand Spanish.
One or both of these supervisors is on hand nearly all of the time
Apart from lots of lecturing and work in projects, Fernando is taking part in one of the European Robotics Challenge in the GRVC–CATEC team taking on Challenge 3. These Challenges are set up in stages, something like the levels in a game. Each stage has to be overcome in order to pass on to the next phase and to acquire more funding. The first stage is to sift out the serious participants. The GRVC – CATEC team hopes to go on to the second phase after October 2014.
Fernando likes a good barbecue and he designed our polos.
A really good barbecueAn excellent barbecue
One day Fernando will get around to making a serious, English language website and you will then find the link here. Till then we’ll have to make do with his publications page.
Luis and Fernando lead and supervise UPO’s team of young researchers………..
Ignacio Pérez Hurtado de Mendoza … without beard
Ignacio Pérez Hurtado de Mendoza is a computer science postdoc interested in the application of machine learning techniques to social robotics. In the FROG project supports the development of software modules related to the navigation of the robot and assists with the deployment of experiments.
Noé Pérez Higueras
Noé Pérez Higueras is in charge of the safe and robust navigation of the FROG robot in (indoor and outdoor) environments with people. Noé is trying to add social capabilities to navigation algorithms so that the robot respects human social conventions and guarantees the comfort of surrounding persons.
His PhD Thesis is on: “Robot autonomous navigation and interaction in pedestrian environments“.
Noé’s PhD is directly related to his work in the FROG project. Mainly, he is studying the different robot navigation algorithms and trying to extend them by adding social skills. To do that he employs machine learning techniques in order to learn from real people how they navigate between each other in crowded scenarios.
Noé and the UPO person detection tool
In 2014 Noé spent 3 weeks in the Netherlands, mapping the Gallery at the University of Twente for the opening ceremony with the Dutch king.
Noé preparing to map the Gallery at the UT in February 2014
Noé fitted in well with the UT PhDs and will continue to work with some of them in the TERESA project. When he makes a website we will link to it here.
Noé and some UT PhDs
Javier Pérez-Lara
In the FROG project,Javier Pérez-Lara is working on improving localisation algorithms, based not only in laser readings but also on appearance matching, to recover from erroneous convergences to wrong localisation or even recovering from complete lost situations.
Javier’s thesis topic is related to robust localisation for mobile robot navigation and mobile robot interaction in crowded environments. Where we try to take into account the variability of crowded environments when localising and relocalising mobile robots.
Rafael and FROG – both in white – Seville February 2014
Rafael Ramón Vigo’s knowledge of transversal competences like electronics, software and hardware are all put to good use in the FROG project. Rafael provides help with the general set up of the robotic platform and assists with the deployment of experiments.
Rafael’s PhD thesis work is on how to infer from data and its statistics the insights of human motion navigation, with the idea of transferring it to the robot’s navigation stack. The basis of this approach is to use machine learning algorithms.
Rafael and FROG, Seville 2014
Rafael also grows delicious mangoes. Recently his family planted nearly 2000 young trees that will come into production in 4 or 5 years time.
Beautiful fruit……from sun drenched fields… in a stunning landscape.
In 2013, Noé, Javier and Rafael had to spend weeks at a time in Lisbon. Though often cold or very tired, they did discover some good places to eat and were given Wi-Fi access at most of them.
Noé, Javier and Rafael nearly took up residence in Lisbon and it wasn’t always this sunny!
How about this for an emblem? It looks great on the FROG polos.
FROG polo, modelled by Paulo
The emblem printed on the polos is actually a reversed version of the docking target. It is a set of ArUco markers that just happen to say FROG – though it probably took Fernando Caballero quite some time to find them. UPO uses this ArUco marker to align the FROG to its charger during the docking procedure.
