@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{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}
}
@inproceedings{NeumannDuelbergSchifferetal.2016,
  author    = {Neumann, Tobias and D{\"u}lberg, Enno and Schiffer, Stefan and Ferrein, Alexander},
  title     = {A rotating platform for swift acquisition of dense 3D point clouds},
  series = {Intelligent Robotics and Applications: 9th International Conference, ICIRA 2016, Tokyo, Japan, August 22-24, 2016, Proceedings, Part I},
  volume    = {9834},
  booktitle = {Intelligent Robotics and Applications: 9th International Conference, ICIRA 2016, Tokyo, Japan, August 22-24, 2016, Proceedings, Part I},
  publisher = {Springer},
  isbn      = {978-3-319-43505-3 (Print)},
  doi       = {10.1007/978-3-319-43506-0_22},
  pages     = {257 -- 268},
  year      = {2016},
  language  = {en}
}