Field Robotics
The Field Robotics team plans to research novel mechanisms, methodologies and algorithms to let robots operate efficiently in difficult and hazardous environments. These robots will address applications with high societal impact, such as firefighting, security, demining, and precision agriculture. The study and integration of non-conventional sensing modalities will be explored for enhanced perception and efficient mapping, leveraging the coordinated planning and control of complementary heterogeneous teams of robots navigating and operating in large-scale natural environments.
Projects
Publications
Catarina Leitao, A. Barata Pires Lopes,
Beatriz Ribeiro, U. J. Nunes,
Carlos Carona, Emotional effects of a brief child-robot interaction to teach school-aged children a relaxation exercise: an exploratory pre-post study, Current Psychology, Springer Nature, 2025
Beatriz Ribeiro, A. Barata Pires Lopes,
Carlos Carona, U. J. Nunes,
ISR-FABEL: A Landmark-Based Dataset and Multimodal Emotion Recognition Framework for Child-Robot Interaction, IEEE Access, IEEE, 2025
Telmo Adao, Joao Cerqueira, Miguel Adao, Nuno Silva, David Pascoal, Luis G. Magalhaes, T. Barros,
C. Premebida,
U. J. Nunes,
Emanuel Peres, Raul Morais, PROMORE: A Procedural Modeler of Virtual Rural Environments With Artificial Dataset Generation Capabilities for Remote Sensing Contexts, IEEE Access, IEEE, 2025
D. Rocha,
P. Lopes,
P. Peixoto,
A. de Almeida,
M. Tavakoli,
Miniaturized Liquid Metal Composite Circuits with Energy Harvesting Coils for Battery-Free Bioelectronics and Optogenetics, Advanced Functional Materials, Volume 35, Issue 13, 2025
P. Vicente de Almeida,
R. P. Rocha,
AI-powered social robot for cognitive stimulation in the elderly through personalized storytelling, 2025 11th International Conference on Automation, Robotics, and Applications (ICARA 2025), 122-126, IEEE RAS, Zagreb, Croatia, 2025
Lucyanno Frota, R. P. Rocha,
A semantic mapping framework for service robots, Proceedings of the 40th ACM/SIGAPP Symposium on Applied Computing (SAC 25), 832–839, ACM, Catania, Italy, 2025
André Araújo,
Carlos A. P. Pizzino, M. S. Couceiro,
R. P. Rocha,
A Multi-Drone System Proof of Concept for Forestry Applications, Drones, 9, 80, MDPI, 2025
J. P. Barreto,
A. Ribeiro,
A Parallel Computing Platform for Arthroscopic Video Synchronization in Augmented Reality Surgery Applications, 2, Universidade de Coimbra, Portugal, 2024, Supervised by
T. Barros,
L. Artur da Silva Garrote,
M. J. Coombes, , C. Premebida,
U. J. Nunes,
PointNetPGAP-SLC: A 3D LiDAR-Based Place Recognition Approach With Segment-Level Consistency Training for Mobile Robots in Horticulture, IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, vol. 9, Issue: 11, 2024
Jose Lourenco, Goncalo Arsenio, L. Artur da Silva Garrote,
U. J. Nunes,
, Multimodal 6D Detection of Industrial Pallets, in Real and Virtual Environments, with Applications in Industrial AMRs, In Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Informatics in Control, Automation and Robotics , Vol. 2: ICINCO; ISBN 978-989-758-717-7, SciTePress, 2024
E. Borges,
L. Artur da Silva Garrote,
U. J. Nunes,
A Modular Multimodal Multi-Object Tracking-by-Detection Approach, with Applications in Outdoor and Indoor Environments, In Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Informatics in Control, Automation and Robotics , Vol. 2: ICINCO; ISBN 978-989-758-717-7, SciTePress, 2024
R. Bettencourt,
U. J. Nunes,
M. Castelo-Branco,
G. Pires,
Searching for Neurophysiological Biomarkers Correlated with BCI Performance in a Completely Locked-In State Patient, 11th Int. Conf. on Software Development for Enhancing Accessibility and Fighting Info-exclusion (DSAI 2024), 2024
W. Moreira Cardoso,
T. Barros,
G. Goncalves,
C. Premebida,
U. J. Nunes,
Multispectral Image Segmentation in Agriculture: Evaluating Deep Learning Models with Train-Test Split and Cross-Validation Strategies, 7th Iberian Robotics Conference (ROBOT), Madrid - Spain, 2024
Joao Jorge, T. Barros,
C. Premebida,
M. Aleksandrov,
Daniel Goehring, U. J. Nunes,
Impact of 3D LiDAR Resolution in Graph-Based SLAM Approaches: A Comparative Study, 7th Iberian Robotics Conference (ROBOT), Madrid - Spain, 2024
T. Barros,
C. Premebida,
Stephanie Aravecchia, Cedric Pradalier, U. J. Nunes,
SPVSoAP3D: A Second-order Average Pooling Approach to enhance 3D Place Recognition in Horticultural Environments, IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, 2024