The Automation and Robotics Lab (ARL) deals with theoretical and basic research problems, algorithms and operational systems. It integrates research in the fields of intelligent systems, computational intelligence, automatic control and robotics to develop intelligent and autonomous systems and to control the behaviour of complex systems.
Research in the field of intelligent systems consists mainly in the development of novel methods for processing (classification, clustering, segmentation, prediction, etc) of time series and heterogeneous data which arise in many contexts and real-world problems. To this end the methodologies of neural networks, evolutionary computing and fuzzy systems are employed.
In the robotics field the lab deals with robot control, grasping (especially grasping and manipulation of objects by multi-fingered hands), remote manipulation and mobile systems. It has expertise in the area of handling of flexible materials such as textiles and leather.
In the automatic control field ARL deals especially with complex and uncertain systems where there is no model of the system. Therefore techniques drawing on computational intelligence are employed.
Methods and algorithms from the above fields are used as tools by which an agent can develop various abstractions of the environment based on data from sensors. In this sense the problem of concept representation and semantic processing is addressed. This is believed to be a way to the design and development of cognitive agents/robots.
The lab has a lot of experience with funded projects. It participated/participates in over twenty research projects funded by EU, Greek ministries and industry. Also participates in two EU networks of excellence, namely, EVONET ( Network of excellence in Evolutionary Computing) and EURON (European Robotics Network).