The Project

Modern industrial environments like mines, docks and construction sites, frequently have areas that several resources must share. By resources, we understand autonomous units completely guided by electronic sensors and systems, semi-autonomous machines guided by people and assisted by electronic sensors and systems, and finally, people. The localization and pose (direction and speed) estimation of each one of these resources is of the utmost importance in order to avoid accidents, which given the characteristics of industrial machinery, in general turn out to be fatal. In addition, a good knowledge of the location of each unit is key to increase the productivity provided that more units can work more time in the same area. In order to know the location of a unit with precision, it is convenient to have multiple types of (redundant) sensors, fuse the data from all sensors with the geographical information using an intelligent algorithm and generate reliable notices and alarms to the corresponding resources. In order to do this, complex nonlinear filters like particle filters must be implemented at the unit level.

3D technology opens the possibility to do this, because of its massive computation capabilities (tens of thousands of million transistors can be allocated in a multichip), obtained by integration of several dies, for example, of CMOS wafers and DRAM wafers. The general objective of the project is the realization of complex gigascale systems on chip in a novel three-dimensional (3D) technology for applications in industrial Field Robotics: in particular, the localization of and pose estimation of resources in real industrial environments where autonomous units and people must interact. The project proposes experimental research on two cutting-edge technological areas: 3D integrated circuit (IC) design, whose complexity lies in the magnitude of the systems and the fact that is a rather novel and unexplored area; localization and pose estimation of moving resources in real industrial environments, whose complexity lies in the strict safety regulations and accuracy standards that guidance and surveillance systems must comply with, given the fact that people and equipment safety depend on them.

To achieve the above mentioned objectives this project proposes a joint collaboration with groups of Johns Hopkins University (EEUU), University of Maryland (EEUU), University of Sydney (AUS) and Instituto Tecnológico de Costa Rica (TEC). The final target is the development of technology for control of semi-automated mines, docks and construction sites. In addition, the developed technology will be of application to automated industries not only in mining fields, but also in docks, and construction sites in our country, and, on the other hand will allow the generation of local knowledge that can be exported to other countries in the form of products and services, providing added value to the scientific research produced in Argentina.

Th project was funded by the Argentinean Government from Nov 2011 to Nov 2015 with 1.2M ARS