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Pedro U. Lima

Lisbon University Institute Portugal

Pedro Lima got his Ph.D. (1994) in Electrical Engineering at RPI, NY, USA. Currently, he is a Professor at Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa, and a researcher of the Institute for Systems and Robotics, where he is the coordinator of the Intelligent Robots and Systems group and Deputy Vice-President for Scientific Affairs. He is the co-author of two books, and member of the Editorial Board of the Elsevier’s Journal of Robotics and Autonomous Systems. His research interests lie in the areas of discrete event models of robot tasks and planning under uncertainty, with applications to networked robot systems. Pedro Lima was a Trustee of the RoboCup Federation (2003-2012), and was the General Chair of RoboCup2004, held in Lisbon. He was President and founding member of the Portuguese Robotics Society, was National Delegate to EU and ESA Space Robotics programs and was awarded a 6-month Chair of Excellence at the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain in 2010. He has also been very active in the promotion of Science and Technology to the society, through the organization of Robotics events in Portugal, including the Portuguese Robotics Open since 2001

1books edited

2chapters authored

Latest work with IntechOpen by Pedro U. Lima

Many papers in the book concern advanced research on (multi-)robot subsystems, naturally motivated by the challenges posed by robot soccer, but certainly applicable to other domains: reasoning, multi-criteria decision-making, behavior and team coordination, cooperative perception, localization, mobility systems (namely omni-directional wheeled motion, as well as quadruped and biped locomotion, all strongly developed within RoboCup), and even a couple of papers on a topic apparently solved before Soccer Robotics - color segmentation - but for which several new algorithms were introduced since the mid-nineties by researchers on the field, to solve dynamic illumination and fast color segmentation problems, among others. This book is certainly a small sample of the research activity on Soccer Robotics going on around the globe as you read it, but it surely covers a good deal of what has been done in the field recently, and as such it works as a valuable source for researchers interested in the involved subjects, whether they are currently "soccer roboticists" or not.

Robotic Soccer

Robotic Soccer

Edited by Pedro U. Lima

Chapters authored

The RoCKIn Project

By Pedro U. Lima

The goal of the project “Robot Competitions Kick Innovation in Cognitive Systems and Robotics” (RoCKIn), funded by the European Commission under its 7th Framework Program, has been to speed up the progress toward smarter robots through scientific competitions. Two challenges have been selected for the competitions due to their high relevance and impact on Europe’s societal and industrial needs: domestic service robots (RoCKIn@Home) and innovative robot applications in industry (RoCKIn@Work). The RoCKIn project has taken an approach to boosting scientific robot competitions in Europe by (i) specifying and designing open domain test beds for competitions targeting the two challenges; (ii) developing methods for scoring and benchmarking that allow to assess both particular subsystems as well as the integrated system; and (iii) organizing camps to build up a community of new teams, interested to participate in robot competitions. A significant number of dissemination activities on the relevance of robot competitions were carried out to promote research and education in robotics, as to researchers and lay citizens. The lessons learned during RoCKIn paved the way for a step forward in the organization and research impact of robot competitions, contributing for Europe to become a world leader in robotics research, education, and technology transfer.

Part of the book: RoCKIn

RoCKIn@Home: Domestic Robots Challenge

By Luca Iocchi, G. Kraetzschmar, Daniele Nardi, Pedro U. Lima, Pedro Miraldo, Emanuele Bastianelli and Roberto Capobianco

Service robots performing complex tasks involving people in houses or public environments are becoming more and more common, and there is a huge interest from both the research and the industrial point of view. The RoCKIn@Home challenge has been designed to compare and evaluate different approaches and solutions to tasks related to the development of domestic and service robots. RoCKIn@Home competitions have been designed and executed according to the benchmarking methodology developed during the project and received very positive feedbacks from the participating teams. Tasks and functionality benchmarks are explained in detail.

Part of the book: RoCKIn

Related collaborators

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