Preface

When the IntechOpen editorial team asked us to edit a book on robotics, we had no doubt about the main subject: Industrial Robotics. There are many books that covered the historic use and deployment of robots in industrial environments. Our approach is different as it is adapted to our present times. There are two main factors that distinguish the industry nowadays: the high degree of industrialization in the world; and the change to a new industrial revolution: Industry 4.0. Both factors have started an evolution in many subjects closely related to robotics: new materials, new sensors/actuators, new floor management, and new applications that present cutting edge technologies. Based on data from the International Federation Robotics IFR, worldwide robot installation grew by 6% (to 422,271 robots), representing 16.5 billion USD (without peripherals and software), and the operational stock of robots was accounted by 2,500,000 units (+15%). Even the more involved industries (customers, automotive and electrical/electronics industry) was surprised at this increase in robotic figures due to a difficult year due to the uncertainty in the global economy. However, the automotive industry is still the largest customer with a total of 30% in installed units, ahead of electrical/electronics (25%), metal and machinery (10%), plastics and chemical products (5%), and food and beverages (3%).

The new technologies involved in Industry 4.0 will reshape the way that industrial processes are done nowadays. The trend is gathering force, and company executives need to carefully monitor the coming changes and develop strategies to take advantage of the new opportunities. The trend will be driven by four disruptions: the dramatic increase in data volumes, computational power and connectivity; the emergence of analytics and business-intelligence capabilities; new forms of human-machine interaction; and improvements in transferring digital instructions to the physical world, such as advanced robotics and 3D printing. With Industry 4.0, manufacturers will be able to operate smarter factories, in which they can more easily tailor products for specific customers. While some of these technologies are not yet ready for application at scale, many are now at a point where their greater reliability and lower cost are beginning to make sense for industrial applications.

This book is intended to cover some classical topics and subjects in Industrial Robotics with the latest technologies. The eruption of Industry 4.0 brings a new kind of use of robotics in industry environments; cooperative, collaborative, and co-robot techniques are entering the floor with strength. Humans are sharing the environment with the new robot designs; security, communications and interaction, simulated and hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) are important issues. The book emphasizes the new industrial applications that emerge with the use of autonomous robots; unmanned aerial and surface vehicles are new technologies that open classical applications to be automated. Those robots need

**II**

**Chapter 7 121**

**Chapter 8 131**

**Chapter 9 147**

Deep Learning-Based Detection of Pipes in Industrial Environments *by Edmundo Guerra, Jordi Palacin, Zhuping Wang and Antoni Grau*

Visual-Inertial Indoor Navigation Systems and Algorithms for

*by Lorenzo Galtarossa, Luca Francesco Navilli and Marcello Chiaberge*

Visual-Tactile Fusion for Robotic Stable Grasping *by Bin Fang, Chao Yang, Fuchun Sun and Huaping Liu*

UAV Inspection Vehicles

new control methodologies, and new sensoring technologies and algorithms that will also be covered in this book. Editors also give special attention to education and training in robotics, and the ethical use of the new era of industrial robotics.

The book is divided into two blocks. The first block is devoted to some new polices that have to be considered after the appearance of Industry 4.0. The article "*Fourth Industrial Revolution: Opportunities, Challenges, and Proposed Policies*" collects a set of policies together with the new opportunities and also challenges the policies that this revolution represents. In this same block, two more articles can be found. Education has a very important role in society and this new era of high technologies demand requires more pedagogical interest than ever. The article "*Training by Projects in an Industrial Robotic Application*" presents a tool to introduce and teach youngsters the robotics fundamentals that will be found in any engineering degree or simply to be introduced to this subject. In the article "*Socially Assistive Robotics: State-of-the-Art Scenarios in Mexico*", the reader will find a specific example of blending technology and culture in Mexico. This pedagogical example can be exported to any other country.

The second block of the book is devoted to applications that go beyond the classical industrial robotics. This is another strong point of this book. The new revolution, Industry 4.0, is demanding new, challenging applications with robots that are different than the classical manipulator on the floor factory. Also, the factory has to be thought as a new concept; factory can be any place where a robot can help to produce a good, covering obviously places that would not be considered real factories prior to Industry 4.0. The chapter "*Dynamic Compensation Framework to Improve the Autonomy of Industrial Robots*" covers research to enlarge the autonomy of robots in the industry which are not logically industrial manipulators. The chapter "*Cooperative Step Climbing Using Connected Wheeled Robots and Evaluation of Remote Operability*" presents a new morphology for a robot that can go through a factory with steps, this factory can be any place where a production process is happening. The chapter "*Real-Time Robot Software Platform for Industrial Application*" presents novel software that can be used for industrial robots to be executed in real-time. The next two chapters "*Visual-Tactile Fusion for Robotic Stable Grasping"* and "*Deep Learning-Based Detection of Pipes in Industrial Environments*" present applications that need external sensors such as computer vision and LiDAR; those sensors, although used in present factories, are used in new and challenging applications, the first one is for robot manipulation and grasping which is a tough task and not fully deployed in industry. The second one is a novel application to detect pipes in a large factory full of pipes (gas, oil factories for instance) that need repairing and maintaining, the detection is done with a drone able to reach complex areas of the factory. Finally, the chapter "*Visual-Inertial Indoor Navigation Systems and Algorithms for UAV Inspection Vehicles*" presents how a drone can accurately fly and locate inside environments where satellite signals do not arrive. More and more industrial applications are based nowadays on drone operations and their location has to be independent of GPS signals in the indoor environment.

**V**

The authors would like to thank the editing staff of IntechOpen for their valuable help in preparing the book, and also our colleagues at the Vision and Intelligent Systems (VIS) at Technical University of Catalonia and Tongji University for fruitfully brainstorming meetings improving the editorial line of this book.

**Antoni Grau**

Barcelona, Spain

**Zhuping Wang**

Tongji University, Shanghai, China

Automatic Control Department, School of Informatics of Barcelona, Technical University of Catalonia, UPC,

Department of Control Science and Engineering, School of Electronics and Information Engineering, The authors would like to thank the editing staff of IntechOpen for their valuable help in preparing the book, and also our colleagues at the Vision and Intelligent Systems (VIS) at Technical University of Catalonia and Tongji University for fruitfully brainstorming meetings improving the editorial line of this book.
