Application domains
The research of the group is focused on systems and control methods applied to robotics. The structure of the research activities can be pictured as a matrix structure with robotics application areas as columns and the core enabling technologies as rows. Projects are positioned at the intersection of rows and columns.
Inspection
In the Inspection program the use of robotics technologies is investigated for tasks in which inspection of not easily reachable structures is necessary. This can be the case for underground gas mains like in the project Pirate, high structures or plains like in the flying robot project Airobots, continuous monitoring of the dutch dikes like in the project Rose or even modeling for inspection of space rovers in collaboration with ESA for the Exomars. For the latter the modeling of altitude maps and their use in the prediction of the navigation of the ExoMars rover is considered. Problems, which arise in this study relate a combination of sparse altitude data with precise terramechanics simulations. This is tackled using a hybrid use of differential geometric techniques and computational geometric methods.
Medical
In the Medical program developments are taking place which have directly or indirectly to do with the human body. The program is composed of two parts: 1. Robotic Surgery in which new robotic instruments and methodologies are studied with projects like Teleflex and Miriam. 2. Prosthetics is related to the development or artificial limbs like transradial hand prosthesis (MyoPro) and transfemoral leg prosthesis.
Home & Care
The Home & Care program deals with development of methods and techniques to design service robots. These robots have to act in an unstructured environment, and have regularly and deliberately physical contact with its environment. Contexts in which these robots have to act are normal (household) situation and care taking situations. Topics of study are robot architectures that facilitate resilient, robust and fault-tolerant behaviour of the autonomous service robot.
