Marysol is an assistant robot designed, manufactured and programmed entirely in ITER, whose main function is to give support to the guided tours in ITER´s facilities.
For a few months now, Marysol welcomes our guests at the visitors centre as a complement to ITER’s dissemination programme.
The assistant robot Marysol has welcomed more than 200 visitors at ITER´s Visitor Center since last April. With the ability to move on two wheels and move autonomously through the facilities, Marysol is responsible for answering questions, complementing the visits by reproducing audiovisual content, showing real-time information about ITER´s renewable energy power generation, or even supply general information of interest about the island of Tenerife and its electricity demands.
Designed and built by the Institute’s robotics unit, Marysol can swiftly move avoiding obstacles continuously learnning to recognize the environment. At the same time, and thanks to artificial intelligence, Marysol can interact with people through voice commands and a touchscreen interface.
Marysol is the first assistant robot fully designed, developed and programmed in Tenerife.
This project is framed within a collaboration agreement signed in 2018 between the Institute of Technology and Renewable Energies (ITER), the Autonomous Organization of Museums and Centers of the Cabildo de Tenerife and the public company Grantecan S.A. to design and build robots that would attend the guided visits that these centers offer. Going by the names of Marysol, Gara and Cosme, respectively, these prototypes will be designed to attract the attention of visitors, guide them through the installations, answer questions and help disseminate science.
ITER´s visitors have warmly welcomed Marysol, especially the youngest ones. The robot is part of the dissemination team, and is a fundamental tool to share the technological developments made by the ITER´s Robotics Unit.
The Marysol project has used a modular development methodology since the beginning, choosing open source development tools and libraries. In this way, the project not only covers the needs of ITER in terms of dissemination, but at the same time is a platform for future developments introduced by other users or external entities, since all the resources and results generated are publicly available in the free access repository https://gitlab.com/iter-robotica/marysol.
More information about the Marysol project can be found on the project website http://marysol.iter.es.