TY  - JOUR
A1  - Ferrein, Alexander
A1  - Marais, Stephen
A1  - Potgieter, Anet
A1  - Steinbauer, Gerald
T1  - RoboCup Junior: A vehicle for S&T education in Africa?
Y1  - 2011
SN  - 978-1-61284-992-8
N1  - AFRICON, 2011
SP  - 1
EP  - 6
PB  - IEEE
CY  - New York
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Ferrein, Alexander
A1  - Steinbauer, Gerald
T1  - 20 Years of RoboCup -  A Subjective Retrospection
JF  - KI - Künstliche Intelligenz
N2  - 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.
Y1  - 2016
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1007/s13218-016-0449-5
SN  - 1610-1987
VL  - 30
IS  - 3
SP  - 225
EP  - 232
PB  - Springer
CY  - Berlin
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Ferrein, Alexander
A1  - Steinbauer, Gerald
A1  - McPhillips, Graeme
A1  - Niemüller, Tim
A1  - Potgieter, Anet
T1  - Team Zadeat 2009 : team report
Y1  - 2009
VL  - 6
SP  - 1
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Leingartner, Max
A1  - Maurer, Johannes
A1  - Ferrein, Alexander
A1  - Steinbauer, Gerald
T1  - Evaluation of Sensors and Mapping Approaches for Disasters in Tunnels
JF  - Journal of Field Robotics
N2  - 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.
Y1  - 2016
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1002/rob.21611
SN  - 1556-4967
VL  - 33
IS  - 8
SP  - 1037
EP  - 1057
PB  - Wiley-VCH
CY  - Weinheim
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Rens, Gavin
A1  - Varzinczak, Ivan
A1  - Meyer, Thomas
A1  - Ferrein, Alexander
T1  - A Logic for Reasoning about Actions and Explicit Observations
JF  - AI 2010: Advances in Artificial Intelligence 23rd Australasian Joint Conference, Adelaide, Australia, December 7-10, 2010. Proceedings
Y1  - 2010
SN  - 978-3-642-17431-5
N1  - Lecture Notes in Computer Science ; 6464
SP  - 395
EP  - 404
PB  - Springer
CY  - Berlin
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Ferrein, Alexander
A1  - Niemüller, Tim
A1  - Steinbauer, Gerald
T1  - Team Zadeat 2010 : application for participation
Y1  - 2010
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Ferrein, Alexander
A1  - Dylla, Frank
A1  - Lakemeyer, Gerhard
T1  - Specifying Multirobot Coordination in ICPGolog - From Simulation towards Real Robots / Dylla, Frank ; Ferrein, Alexander ; Lakemeyer, Gerhard
Y1  - 2003
N1  - AOS-4 at IJCAI-03
SP  - 1
EP  - 10
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Ferrein, Alexander
A1  - Steinbauer, Gerald
A1  - Vassos, Stavros
T1  - Action-Based Imperative Programming with YAGI
N2  - Many tasks for autonomous agents or robots are best described by a specification of the environment and a specification of the available actions the agent or robot can perform. Combining such a specification with the possibility to imperatively program a robot or agent is what we call the actionbased imperative programming. One of the most successful such approaches is Golog. In this paper, we draft a proposal for a new robot programming language YAGI, which is based on the action-based imperative programming paradigm. Our goal is to design a small, portable stand-alone YAGI interpreter. We combine the benefits of a principled domain specification with a clean, small and simple programming language, which does not exploit any side-effects from the implementation language. We discuss general requirements of action-based programming languages and outline YAGI, our action-based language approach which particularly aims at embeddability.
Y1  - 2012
N1  - Cognitive Robotics
AAAI Technical Report WS-12-06
SP  - 24
EP  - 31
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Ferrein, Alexander
A1  - Hermanns, Lutz
A1  - Lakemeyer, Gerhard
T1  - Comparing Sensor Fusion Techniques for Ball Position Estimation / Ferrein, Alexander ; Hermanns, Lutz ; Lakemeyer, Gerhard
JF  - RoboCup 2005: Robot Soccer World Cup IX
Y1  - 2006
SN  - 978-3-540-35437-6
N1  - Lecture Notes in Computer Science ; 4020
SP  - 154
EP  - 165
PB  - Springer
CY  - Berlin
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Ferrein, Alexander
A1  - Schiffer, Stefan
A1  - Lakemeyer, Gerhard
T1  - Football is coming Home / Schiffer, Stefan ; Ferrein, Alexander ; Lakemeyer, Gerhard
JF  - PCAR '06 Proceedings of the 2006 international symposium on Practical cognitive agents and robots
Y1  - 2006
SN  - 1-74052-130-7
SP  - 39
EP  - 50
PB  - ACM
CY  - New York, NY
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Ferrein, Alexander
A1  - Mies, Christoph
A1  - Lakemeyer, Gerhard
T1  - Repairing Decision-Theoretic Policies Using Goal-Oriented Planning / Mies, Christoph ; Ferrein, Alexander ; Lakemeyer, Gerhard
JF  - KI 2008: Advances in Artificial Intelligence : 31st Annual German Conference on AI, KI 2008, Kaiserslautern, Germany, September 23-26, 2008. Proceedings
Y1  - 2008
SN  - 978-3-540-85844-7
N1  - Lecture Notes in Computer Science ; 5243
SP  - 267
EP  - 275
PB  - Springer
CY  - Berlin
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Ferrein, Alexander
A1  - Rens, Gavin
A1  - Poel, Etienne van der
T1  - A BDI agent architecture for a POMDP planner / Rens, Gavin ; Ferrein, Alexander ; Poel, Etienne van der
Y1  - 2009
N1  - 9th International Symposium on Logical Formalization of Commonsense Reasoning: Commonsense 2009, Toronto, Canada, 1-3 June, 2009
SP  - 1
EP  - 6
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Limpert, Nicolas
A1  - Wiesen, Patrick
A1  - Ferrein, Alexander
A1  - Kallweit, Stephan
A1  - Schiffer, Stefan
T1  - The ROSIN Project and its Outreach to South Africa
JF  - R&D Journal
Y1  - 2019
VL  - 35
SP  - 1
EP  - 6
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Ferrein, Alexander
A1  - Schiffer, Stefan
A1  - Booysen, T.
A1  - Stopforth, R.
T1  - Why it is harder to run RoboCup in South Africa: Experiences from German South African collaborations
JF  - International Journal of Advanced Robotic Systems
N2  - 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.
Y1  - 2016
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1177/1729881416662789
SN  - 1729-8806
VL  - 13
IS  - 5
SP  - 1
EP  - 13
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Alhwarin, Faraj
A1  - Ferrein, Alexander
A1  - Scholl, Ingrid
T1  - IR stereo kinect: improving depth images by combining structured light with IR stereo
Y1  - 2014
SP  - 1
EP  - 9
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Ferrein, Alexander
A1  - Strack, Andreas
A1  - Lakemeyer, Gerhard
T1  - Laser-Based Localization with Sparse Landmarks  / Strack, Andreas ; Ferrein, Alexander ; Lakemeyer, Gerhard
JF  - RoboCup 2005: Robot Soccer World Cup IX
Y1  - 2006
SN  - 978-3-540-35437-6
N1  - Lecture Notes in Computer Science ; 4020
SP  - 569
EP  - 576
PB  - Springer
CY  - Berlin
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Vorst, Phillip
A1  - Ferrein, Alexander
A1  - Lakemeyer, Gerhard
T1  - AllemaniACs3D team description
Y1  - 2006
SP  - 1
EP  - 6
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Ferrein, Alexander
A1  - Schiffer, Stefan
A1  - Lakemeyer, Gerhard
T1  - Qualitative World Models for Soccer Robots / Schiffer, Stefan ; Ferrein, Alexander ; Lakemeyer, Gerhard
JF  - Qualitative constraint calculi : application and integration ; KI 2006, 14 - 19 June 2006, Bremen, Germany ; 29th Annual German Conference on Artificial Intelligence ; workshop / Stefan Wölfl ... (eds.)
Y1  - 2006
SN  - 3-88722-666-6
SP  - 3
EP  - 14
PB  - Univ.
CY  - Bremen
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Hofmann, Till
A1  - Limpert, Nicolas
A1  - Mataré, Victor
A1  - Schönitz, Sebastian
A1  - Niemueller, Tim
A1  - Ferrein, Alexander
A1  - Lakemeyer, Gerhard
T1  - The Carologistics RoboCup Logistics Team 2018
N2  - 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 Schönitz,
Morian Sonnet, Carsten Stoffels, and Tarik Viehmann.
This paper is based on the last year’s team description.
Y1  - 2018
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Ferrein, Alexander
A1  - Schiffer, Stefan
A1  - Lakemeyer, Gerhard
T1  - A Fuzzy Set Semantics for Qualitative Fluents in the Situation Calculus / Ferrein, Alexander ; Schiffer, Stefan ; Lakemeyer, Gerhard
JF  - Intelligent Robotics and Applications : First International Conference, ICIRA 2008 Wuhan, China, October 15-17, 2008 Proceedings, Part I
Y1  - 2008
N1  - Lecture Notes in Computer Science ; 5314
SP  - 498
EP  - 509
PB  - Springer
CY  - Berlin
ER  -