Automation and robotics

The research field is an inter-disciplinary approach which includes both basic and applied research on identifying novel applications of cutting-edge material science, sensor technology, advanced signal processing and advanced control. Exploring and proposing novel techniques for modelling and embedded advanced control in order to address the industrial needs is a central aspect of this research. his approach provides students the environment to practice hands-on the advantages of applying robot technology to solve real-world problems and this are integrated into their academic educational programmes. Current research is focused on human-/environment-robot interaction, intelligent machines and automation systems in the forest and energy industry, embedded and intelligent control, multimodal feedback as well as biologically-inspired architecture design.

Overview

The research on automation and robotics focuses on four different areas with applications to the forest, steel and solar energy industry: aging, environment, energy and education.

Energy: Adaptive control algorithms for active analysis, diagnosis to make predictions of energy consumption and take corrective actions in time for load balancing for PV systems with battery storage.
Environment: Adaptive control system methods and AI algorithms implemented and tested to detect the position of single reference marker as an input to control system to be able to perform the autonomous control of a small drone for environmental monitoring.
Aging: AI algorithms implemented and tested to estimate the position of food in the plate as an input to the control system of an eating aid. Vision based steering will test with a robotic arm with gripper.
Education: Industrial oriented PBL aims to provide the the students may not only learn the basic concepts of complex system but also may obtain an understanding of the real applications of the theoretical concepts from a interdisciplinary approach within the different areas of STEM (Science, technology, engineering and math) education.

Current projects and news:

Automation
- Projects
- News:
  - Read on the project Promoting innovation in manufacturing through industrial systems
  - Bachelor/master thesis in adaptive control for PV systems with battery storage in 2021 (see more details by clicking here)!
  - Read on the project Development of intelligent control systems for greenhouse lighting system with a high proportion of local renewable energy!
  - Read on Excellent Paper Award at icSmartGrid 2019 on AI-based Prediction of Energy Consumption!
  - Read on the Power by Nature project
  - Read on the Adaptive Control of Energy Storage (ACES) project
  - Read the executive summary of the European Pattern Recognition project
Robotics
- Projects:
  - Industry 5.0
  - picoROBOTA
- News:
  - Read our published paper on vision-based control for a micro aerial vehicle "Towards the Development of an Automatic UAV-Based Indoor Environmental Monitoring System: Distributed Off-Board Control System for a Micro Aerial Vehicle"
  - Read on the project Promoting innovation in manufacturing through industrial systems
  - Master thesis in assistive robotics in 2021 (see more details by clicking here)!
  - Read the journal paper accepted for publication in Robotics Special Issue (KaRD2020)!
  - Master thesis in vision-control based for assistive robotics in 2020 (see more details by clicking here)!
  - Master thesis in vision-control based for drones in 2020
  - Karlstad University is the project coordinator for the VINNOVA-JST project (2017-2019) on "Robotic assistive device with multi-grip tools and vision system for frail elderly’s independent life"