@article{SchulteTiggesFoersterNikolovskietal.2022, author = {Schulte-Tigges, Joschua and F{\"o}rster, Marco and Nikolovski, Gjorgji and Reke, Michael and Ferrein, Alexander and Kaszner, Daniel and Matheis, Dominik and Walter, Thomas}, title = {Benchmarking of various LiDAR sensors for use in self-driving vehicles in real-world environments}, series = {Sensors}, volume = {22}, journal = {Sensors}, number = {19}, publisher = {MDPI}, address = {Basel}, issn = {1424-8220}, doi = {10.3390/s22197146}, pages = {20 Seiten}, year = {2022}, abstract = {Abstract In this paper, we report on our benchmark results of the LiDAR sensors Livox Horizon, Robosense M1, Blickfeld Cube, Blickfeld Cube Range, Velodyne Velarray H800, and Innoviz Pro. The idea was to test the sensors in different typical scenarios that were defined with real-world use cases in mind, in order to find a sensor that meet the requirements of self-driving vehicles. For this, we defined static and dynamic benchmark scenarios. In the static scenarios, both LiDAR and the detection target do not move during the measurement. In dynamic scenarios, the LiDAR sensor was mounted on the vehicle which was driving toward the detection target. We tested all mentioned LiDAR sensors in both scenarios, show the results regarding the detection accuracy of the targets, and discuss their usefulness for deployment in self-driving cars.}, language = {en} } @article{LimpertWiesenFerreinetal.2019, author = {Limpert, Nicolas and Wiesen, Patrick and Ferrein, Alexander and Kallweit, Stephan and Schiffer, Stefan}, title = {The ROSIN Project and its Outreach to South Africa}, series = {R\&D Journal}, volume = {35}, journal = {R\&D Journal}, pages = {1 -- 6}, year = {2019}, language = {en} } @article{HofmannLimpertMatareetal.2018, author = {Hofmann, Till and Limpert, Nicolas and Matar{\´e}, Victor and Sch{\"o}nitz, Sebastian and Niemueller, Tim and Ferrein, Alexander and Lakemeyer, Gerhard}, title = {The Carologistics RoboCup Logistics Team 2018}, year = {2018}, abstract = {The Carologistics team participates in the RoboCup Logistics League for the seventh year. The RCLL requires precise vision, manipulation and path planning, as well as complex high-level decision making and multi-robot coordination. We outline our approach with an emphasis on recent modifications to those components. The team members in 2018 are David Bosen, Christoph Gollok, Mostafa Gomaa, Daniel Habering, Till Hofmann, Nicolas Limpert, Sebastian Sch{\"o}nitz, Morian Sonnet, Carsten Stoffels, and Tarik Viehmann. This paper is based on the last year's team description.}, language = {en} } @article{ClaerFerreinSchiffer2019, author = {Claer, Mario and Ferrein, Alexander and Schiffer, Stefan}, title = {Calibration of a Rotating or Revolving Platform with a LiDAR Sensor}, series = {Applied Sciences}, volume = {Volume 9}, journal = {Applied Sciences}, number = {issue 11, 2238}, publisher = {MDPI}, address = {Basel}, issn = {2076-3417}, doi = {10.3390/app9112238}, pages = {18 Seiten}, year = {2019}, language = {en} } @article{SchifferFerrein2018, author = {Schiffer, Stefan and Ferrein, Alexander}, title = {ERIKA—Early Robotics Introduction at Kindergarten Age}, series = {Multimodal Technologies Interact}, volume = {2}, journal = {Multimodal Technologies Interact}, number = {4}, publisher = {MDPI}, address = {Basel}, issn = {2414-4088}, doi = {10.3390/mti2040064}, pages = {15}, year = {2018}, abstract = {In this work, we report on our attempt to design and implement an early introduction to basic robotics principles for children at kindergarten age. One of the main challenges of this effort is to explain complex robotics contents in a way that pre-school children could follow the basic principles and ideas using examples from their world of experience. What sets apart our effort from other work is that part of the lecturing is actually done by a robot itself and that a quiz at the end of the lesson is done using robots as well. The humanoid robot Pepper from Softbank, which is a great platform for human-robot interaction experiments, was used to present a lecture on robotics by reading out the contents to the children making use of its speech synthesis capability. A quiz in a Runaround-game-show style after the lecture activated the children to recap the contents they acquired about how mobile robots work in principle. In this quiz, two LEGO Mindstorm EV3 robots were used to implement a strongly interactive scenario. Besides the thrill of being exposed to a mobile robot that would also react to the children, they were very excited and at the same time very concentrated. We got very positive feedback from the children as well as from their educators. To the best of our knowledge, this is one of only few attempts to use a robot like Pepper not as a tele-teaching tool, but as the teacher itself in order to engage pre-school children with complex robotics contents.}, language = {en} } @article{SchifferFerrein2016, author = {Schiffer, Stefan and Ferrein, Alexander}, title = {Decision-Theoretic Planning with Fuzzy Notions in GOLOG}, series = {International Journal of Uncertainty, Fuzziness and Knowledge-Based Systems}, volume = {24}, journal = {International Journal of Uncertainty, Fuzziness and Knowledge-Based Systems}, number = {Issue Suppl. 2}, publisher = {World Scientific}, address = {Singapur}, issn = {1793-6411}, doi = {10.1142/S0218488516400134}, pages = {123 -- 143}, year = {2016}, abstract = {In this paper we present an extension of the action language Golog that allows for using fuzzy notions in non-deterministic argument choices and the reward function in decision-theoretic planning. Often, in decision-theoretic planning, it is cumbersome to specify the set of values to pick from in the non-deterministic-choice-of-argument statement. Also, even for domain experts, it is not always easy to specify a reward function. Instead of providing a finite domain for values in the non-deterministic-choice-of-argument statement in Golog, we now allow for stating the argument domain by simply providing a formula over linguistic terms and fuzzy uents. In Golog's forward-search DT planning algorithm, these formulas are evaluated in order to find the agent's optimal policy. We illustrate this in the Diner Domain where the agent needs to calculate the optimal serving order.}, language = {en} } @article{FerreinSteinbauer2016, author = {Ferrein, Alexander and Steinbauer, Gerald}, title = {Looking back on 20 Years of RoboCup}, series = {KI - K{\"u}nstliche Intelligenz}, volume = {30}, journal = {KI - K{\"u}nstliche Intelligenz}, number = {3-4}, publisher = {Springer}, address = {Berlin}, issn = {1610-1987}, doi = {10.1007/s13218-016-0443-y}, pages = {321 -- 323}, year = {2016}, language = {en} } @article{SteinbauerFerrein2016, author = {Steinbauer, Gerald and Ferrein, Alexander}, title = {20 Years of RoboCup}, series = {KI - K{\"u}nstliche Intelligenz}, volume = {30}, journal = {KI - K{\"u}nstliche Intelligenz}, number = {3-4}, publisher = {Springer}, address = {Berlin}, issn = {1610-1987}, doi = {10.1007/s13218-016-0442-z}, pages = {221 -- 224}, year = {2016}, language = {en} } @article{FerreinSteinbauer2016, author = {Ferrein, Alexander and Steinbauer, Gerald}, title = {The Interplay of Aldebaran and RoboCup}, series = {KI - K{\"u}nstliche Intelligenz}, volume = {30}, journal = {KI - K{\"u}nstliche Intelligenz}, number = {3-4}, publisher = {Springer}, address = {Berlin}, issn = {1610-1987}, doi = {10.1007/s13218-016-0440-1}, pages = {325 -- 326}, year = {2016}, language = {en} } @article{NiemuellerKarrasFerrein2017, author = {Niemueller, Tim and Karras, Ulrich and Ferrein, Alexander}, title = {Meisterschaft der Maschinen: Die Industrial Logistic Liga}, series = {C´t Magazin f{\"u}r Computertechnik}, journal = {C´t Magazin f{\"u}r Computertechnik}, number = {26}, year = {2017}, language = {de} } @article{FerreinSteinbauer2016, author = {Ferrein, Alexander and Steinbauer, Gerald}, title = {20 Years of RoboCup - A Subjective Retrospection}, series = {KI - K{\"u}nstliche Intelligenz}, volume = {30}, journal = {KI - K{\"u}nstliche Intelligenz}, number = {3}, publisher = {Springer}, address = {Berlin}, issn = {1610-1987}, doi = {10.1007/s13218-016-0449-5}, pages = {225 -- 232}, year = {2016}, abstract = {This summer, RoboCup competitions were held for the 20th time in Leipzig, Germany. It was the second time that RoboCup took place in Germany, 10 years after the 2006 RoboCup in Bremen. In this article, we give an overview on the latest developments of RoboCup and what happened in the different leagues over the last decade. With its 20th edition, RoboCup clearly is a success story and a role model for robotics competitions. From our personal view point, we acknowledge this by giving a retrospection about what makes RoboCup such a success.}, language = {en} } @article{FerreinSchifferBooysenetal.2016, author = {Ferrein, Alexander and Schiffer, Stefan and Booysen, T. and Stopforth, R.}, title = {Why it is harder to run RoboCup in South Africa: Experiences from German South African collaborations}, series = {International Journal of Advanced Robotic Systems}, volume = {13}, journal = {International Journal of Advanced Robotic Systems}, number = {5}, issn = {1729-8806}, doi = {10.1177/1729881416662789}, pages = {1 -- 13}, year = {2016}, abstract = {Robots are widely used as a vehicle to spark interest in science and technology in learners. A number of initiatives focus on this issue, for instance, the Roberta Initiative, the FIRST Lego League, the World Robot Olympiad and RoboCup Junior. Robotic competitions are valuable not only for school learners but also for university students, as the RoboCup initiative shows. Besides technical skills, the students get some project exposure and experience what it means to finish their tasks on time. But qualifying students for future high-tech areas should not only be for students from developed countries. In this article, we present our experiences with research and education in robotics within the RoboCup initiative, in Germany and South Africa; we report on our experiences with trying to get the RoboCup initiative in South Africa going. RoboCup has a huge support base of academic institutions in Germany; this is not the case in South Africa. We present our 'north-south' collaboration initiatives in RoboCup between Germany and South Africa and discuss some of the reasons why we think it is harder to run RoboCup in South Africa.}, language = {en} } @article{LeingartnerMaurerFerreinetal.2016, author = {Leingartner, Max and Maurer, Johannes and Ferrein, Alexander and Steinbauer, Gerald}, title = {Evaluation of Sensors and Mapping Approaches for Disasters in Tunnels}, series = {Journal of Field Robotics}, volume = {33}, journal = {Journal of Field Robotics}, number = {8}, publisher = {Wiley-VCH}, address = {Weinheim}, issn = {1556-4967}, doi = {10.1002/rob.21611}, pages = {1037 -- 1057}, year = {2016}, abstract = {Ground or aerial robots equipped with advanced sensing technologies, such as three-dimensional laser scanners and advanced mapping algorithms, are deemed useful as a supporting technology for first responders. A great deal of excellent research in the field exists, but practical applications at real disaster sites are scarce. Many projects concentrate on equipping robots with advanced capabilities, such as autonomous exploration or object manipulation. In spite of this, realistic application areas for such robots are limited to teleoperated reconnaissance or search. In this paper, we investigate how well state-of-the-art and off-the-shelf components and algorithms are suited for reconnaissance in current disaster-relief scenarios. The basic idea is to make use of some of the most common sensors and deploy some widely used algorithms in a disaster situation, and to evaluate how well the components work for these scenarios. We acquired the sensor data from two field experiments, one from a disaster-relief operation in a motorway tunnel, and one from a mapping experiment in a partly closed down motorway tunnel. Based on these data, which we make publicly available, we evaluate state-of-the-art and off-the-shelf mapping approaches. In our analysis, we integrate opinions and replies from first responders as well as from some algorithm developers on the usefulness of the data and the limitations of the deployed approaches, respectively. We discuss the lessons we learned during the two missions. These lessons are interesting for the community working in similar areas of urban search and rescue, particularly reconnaissance and search.}, language = {en} } @article{SchifferFerreinLakemeyer2015, author = {Schiffer, Stefan and Ferrein, Alexander and Lakemeyer, Gerhard}, title = {Abstracting Away Low-Level Details in Service Robotics with Fuzzy Fluents}, series = {Model-Driven Knowledge Engineering for Improved Software Modularity in Robotics and Automation. Workshop at European Robotics Forum 2015 Vienna, Austria, March 11-13, 2015.}, journal = {Model-Driven Knowledge Engineering for Improved Software Modularity in Robotics and Automation. Workshop at European Robotics Forum 2015 Vienna, Austria, March 11-13, 2015.}, pages = {1 -- 4}, year = {2015}, language = {en} } @article{AlhwarinFerreinScholl2014, author = {Alhwarin, Faraj and Ferrein, Alexander and Scholl, Ingrid}, title = {IR stereo kinect: improving depth images by combining structured light with IR stereo}, pages = {1 -- 9}, year = {2014}, language = {en} } @article{Ferrein2008, author = {Ferrein, Alexander}, title = {Towards applying soccer moves in the RoboCup Standard Platform League}, series = {{\"O}GAI-Journal}, volume = {Bd. 27}, journal = {{\"O}GAI-Journal}, number = {H. 3}, organization = {{\"O}sterreichische Gesellschaft f{\"u}r Artificial Intelligence}, issn = {0254-4326}, pages = {4 -- 9}, year = {2008}, language = {en} } @article{Ferrein2004, author = {Ferrein, Alexander}, title = {Autonome Entscheidungsfindung bei Robotern : Planwirtschaft}, series = {Linux-Magazin}, journal = {Linux-Magazin}, number = {7}, issn = {1432-640X (Print)}, pages = {50 -- 53}, year = {2004}, language = {de} } @article{FerreinSteinbauerMcPhillipsetal.2009, author = {Ferrein, Alexander and Steinbauer, Gerald and McPhillips, Graeme and Niem{\"u}ller, Tim and Potgieter, Anet}, title = {Team Zadeat 2009 : team report}, volume = {6}, pages = {1}, year = {2009}, language = {en} } @article{FerreinNiemuellerSteinbauer2010, author = {Ferrein, Alexander and Niem{\"u}ller, Tim and Steinbauer, Gerald}, title = {Team Zadeat 2010 : application for participation}, pages = {1 -- 5}, year = {2010}, language = {en} } @article{BeckBuchleitnerFerreinetal.2014, author = {Beck, Daniel and Buchleitner, Martin and Ferrein, Alexander and Niem{\"u}ller, Tim and Steinbauer, Gerald}, title = {Mostly Harmless \& AllemaniACs - mixed innovations}, pages = {1 -- 8}, year = {2014}, language = {en} }