Most of the scenarios proposed in ECHORD++’s RIFs will be held in Facilities located in Peccioli area and in the Service Robotics and Green Robotics- Ambient Assisted Living(AAL) Laboratory. The BioRobotic Institute also provides: The Advanced Robotics Technology and Systems Laboratory (ARTS Lab), the Center of Research In Microengineering (CRIM), the Center for Research on the technology and support services for the Longevity (EZ-Lab), the joint lab of rehabilitation at Auxilium Vitae (Volterra), the centre of excellence on computer assisted surgery (Pisa) and the new Research Centre on Sea Technologies and Marine Robotics (Livorno).

Key areas of research

The Peccioli RIF consists of outdoor and indoor settings, where different scenarios could be developed, tested and evaluated, such as (i) Robotic worker (in rubbish dump), (ii) logistics robots (autonomous transport of goods and autonomous transport of people, in urban area), (iii) robot co-worker in domestic environment (robot companion, in the domotic house and in a nursing home), (iv) edutainment robot (robot guide and robot companion, in museum and in the domotic house) as well as agricultural robotics, (v) medical robotics (hospital and rehabilitation center) and (vi) agricultural robotics (biofarms in Peccioli area).

The Peccioli RIF addresses all users such as robot manufacturing SMEs and companies (service robots: autonomous cars, edutainment robots, assistive robots, components), robotics researchers, sociology researchers, service providers (health care, waste management, museum management, public transportation).

To contact the staff of the Peccioli RIF please write to [email protected].

A 360 degree tour through the facility is available on YouTube

The facility provides the following hardware and software:

Hardware

• A Comau Dual Arm Robot equipped with:
  • A Kinect v2
  • Festo and Schunk grippers

• 2 Scitos G5 equipped with:
  • 1 Laser scanner SICK
  • 1 Laser scanner Hokuyo
  • 1 Asus xtion pro
  • 1 Pan-tilt unit

• A Kinova jaco arm
• 2 Kinect
• A Stargazer
• NAO Next Gen Humanoid Robotic Platform
• KUKA youBot omni-directional mobile platform
• 2 Segway rpm200
• An outdoor wifi network
• An outdoor surveillance monitoring system

Sensor Network

• Wireless sensor network for smart environments
• ZigBee based home automation system
• Wearable sensor for physiological parameters
• Personal localization system  (GSM/GPRS/GPS)
• Posture assessment (Inertial Sensors)
• Pir Sensor, Temperature Sensor, Humidity Sensor, Light Sensor, Door Sensor

Services

• Acceptability and dependability assessment
• Benchmarking
• Legal issues, insurance, ethical issues & economical issues
• Knowledge exchange workshops

Facilities Involved:

• Cognitive Tools and Workers for Cognitive Factories
  • 1 Landfill
  • 1 Kitchens Warehouse

• General Purpose and Robotic Co-workers
  • 1 Domotic Home
  • 1 Museum
  • 1 Nursing Home
  • Local Industries
  • Research Centre on Sea Technologies and Marine Robotics

• Cognitive Logistics Robots
  • Peccioli town

• Medical Robotics
  • Auxilium Vitae Rehabilitation Center
  • Cisanello Hospital
  • Locomotion Disorders Laboratory
  • Neuro-Developmental Engineering Laboratory
  • Center for Micro-BioRobotics

• Agricultural and Food Robotics
  • 2 Biofarms
  • 1 Breeding farm

More about Peccioli

Peccioli is a small ancient village located among the hills of Tuscany and it has a strong tradition in conjugating tradition (high quality of life, highlong life expectation, excellent services to citizens) with a vision for the future, based on the appropriate use of advance ICT and robotics technologies. For the last 20 years, Peccioli has been offering citizens very advanced research and experimentation facilities on ageing, telemedicine, domotics, rehabilitation, energy, environment, wellness, and so on. Moreover, since 1995 Peccioli Municipality has been collaborating on joint research projects with Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna.

The BioRobotic Institute is close to the Pontedera train station (Pontedera Casciana Terme, less than 5-min walk), with regular trains every hour or 30 minutes all the day. Pontedera is along the railway from Pisa to Florence and on the freeway connecting Pisa and Florence, both provided with airports. The area of Peccioli is easy to reach from all art towns of Tuscany. The two exits to Pontedera from the Express Freeway FI-PI-LI joining the towns of Florence, Pisa and Livorno are just 15 km away from the village. Parallel to this main road, called “superstrada” by the Tuscans, is the railway line Florence-Pisa. A regular bus service is available from Pontedera to Peccioli and the near villages by the company CPT – Compagnia Pisana Trasporti.