TY - JOUR A1 - Ferrein, Alexander A1 - Fritz, Christian A1 - Lakemeyer, Gerhard T1 - Extending DTGOLOG with Options / Ferrein, Alexander ; Fritz, Christian ; Lakemeyer, Gerhard JF - IJCAI-03, Proceedings of the Eighteenth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Acapulco, Mexico, August 9-15, 2003 Y1 - 2003 SP - 1391 EP - 1393 ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Ferrein, Alexander A1 - Kallweit, Stephan A1 - Lautermann, Mark T1 - Towards an autonomous pilot system for a tunnel boring machine T2 - 5th Robotics and Mechatronics Conference of South Africa (ROBMECH) : 26 - 27 November 2012 ; CSIR International Conference Centre Gauteng South Africa Y1 - 2012 SN - 978-1-4673-5183-6 N1 - Robotics and Mechatronics Conference of South Africa <5, 2012, Johannesburg> ; ROBOMECH <5, 2012, Johannesburg> PB - IEEE CY - Piscataway, NJ ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Ferrein, Alexander T1 - golog.lua: Towards a non-prolog implementation of Golog for embedded systems T2 - Dagstuhl Seminar Proceedings, Volume 10081 N2 - Among many approaches to address the high-level decision making problem for autonomous robots and agents, the robot program¬ming and plan language Golog follows a logic-based deliberative approach, and its successors were successfully deployed in a number of robotics applications over the past ten years. Usually, Golog interpreter are implemented in Prolog, which is not available for our target plat¬form, the bi-ped robot platform Nao. In this paper we sketch our first approach towards a prototype implementation of a Golog interpreter in the scripting language Lua. With the example of the elevator domain we discuss how the basic action theory is specified and how we implemented fluent regression in Lua. One possible advantage of the availability of a Non-Prolog implementation of Golog could be that Golog becomes avail¬able on a larger number of platforms, and also becomes more attractive for roboticists outside the Cognitive Robotics community. Y1 - 2010 U6 - https://doi.org/10.4230/DagSemProc.10081.9 N1 - Dagstuhl Seminar 10081 "Cognitive Robotics", 21.02. to 26.02.2010, Schloss Dagstuhl - Leibniz Center for Informatics, Wadern, DE SP - 1 EP - 15 ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Niemüller, Tim A1 - Ferrein, Alexander A1 - Beck, Daniel A1 - Lakemeyer, Gerhard T1 - Design principles of the component-based robot software framework Fawkes T2 - Simulation, Modeling, and Programming for Autonomous Robots N2 - The idea of component-based software engineering was proposed more that 40 years ago, yet only few robotics software frameworks follow these ideas. The main problem with robotics software usually is that it runs on a particular platform and transferring source code to another platform is crucial. In this paper, we present our software framework Fawkes which follows the component-based software design paradigm by featuring a clear component concept with well-defined communication interfaces. We deployed Fawkes on several different robot platforms ranging from service robots to biped soccer robots. Following the component concept with clearly defined communication interfaces shows great benefit when porting robot software from one robot to the other. Fawkes comes with a number of useful plugins for tasks like timing, logging, data visualization, software configuration, and even high-level decision making. These make it particularly easy to create and to debug productive code, shortening the typical development cycle for robot software. Y1 - 2010 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-17319-6_29 N1 - Second International Conference, SIMPAR 2010, Darmstadt, Germany, November 15-18, 2010 SP - 300 EP - 311 PB - Springer CY - Berlin ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Niemüller, Tim A1 - Ferrein, Alexander A1 - Lakemeyer, Gerhard T1 - A Lua-based behavior engine for controlling the humanoid robot Nao T2 - RoboCup 2009: Robot Soccer World Cup XIII N2 - The high-level decision making process of an autonomous robot can be seen as an hierarchically organised entity, where strategical decisions are made on the topmost layer, while the bottom layer serves as driver for the hardware. In between is a layer with monitoring and reporting functionality. In this paper we propose a behaviour engine for this middle layer which, based on formalism of hybrid state machines (HSMs), bridges the gap between high-level strategic decision making and low-level actuator control. The behaviour engine has to execute and monitor behaviours and reports status information back to the higher level. To be able to call the behaviours or skills hierarchically, we extend the model of HSMs with dependencies and sub-skills. These Skill-HSMs are implemented in the lightweight but expressive Lua scripting language which is well-suited to implement the behaviour engine on our target platform, the humanoid robot Nao. Y1 - 2010 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-11876-0_21 N1 - 13th RoboCup International Symposium, Graz, Austria, June/July, 2009 SP - 240 EP - 251 PB - Springer CY - Berlin ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Ferrein, Alexander A1 - Steinbauer, Gerald T1 - On the Way to High-Level Programming for Resource-Limited Embedded Systems with Golog T2 - Simulation, Modeling, and Programming for Autonomous Robots N2 - In order to allow an autonomous robot to perform non-trivial tasks like to explore a foreign planet the robot has to have deliberative capabilities like reasoning or planning. Logic-based approaches like the programming and planing language Golog and it successors has been successfully used for such decision-making problems. A drawback of this particular programing language is that their interpreter usually are written in Prolog and run on a Prolog back-end. Such back-ends are usually not available or feasible on resource-limited robot systems. In this paper we present our ideas and first results of a re-implementation of the interpreter based on the Lua scripting language which is available on a wide range of systems including small embedded systems. Y1 - 2010 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-17319-6_23 N1 - Second International Conference, SIMPAR 2010, Darmstadt, Germany, November 15-18, 2010 SP - 229 EP - 240 PB - Springer CY - Berlin ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Rens, Gavin A1 - Varzinczak, Ivan A1 - Meyer, Thomas A1 - Ferrein, Alexander T1 - A Logic for Reasoning about Actions and Explicit Observations T2 - AI 2010: Advances in Artificial Intelligence N2 - We propose a formalism for reasoning about actions based on multi-modal logic which allows for expressing observations as first-class objects. We introduce a new modal operator, namely [o |α], which allows us to capture the notion of perceiving an observation given that an action has taken place. Formulae of the type [o |α]ϕ mean ’after perceiving observation o, given α was performed, necessarily ϕ’. In this paper, we focus on the challenges concerning sensing with explicit observations, and acting with nondeterministic effects. We present the syntax and semantics, and a correct and decidable tableau calculus for the logic Y1 - 2010 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-17432-2_40 N1 - 23rd Australasian Joint Conference, Adelaide, Australia, December 7-10, 2010 SP - 395 EP - 404 PB - Springer CY - Berlin ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Ferrein, Alexander A1 - Rens, Gavin A1 - Meyer, Thomas A1 - Lakemeyer, Gerhard T1 - A Logic for Specifying Partially Observable Stochastic Domains JF - Proceedings of the Ninth International Workshop pn non-Monotonic Reasoning, Action and Change (NRAC`11) Y1 - 2011 N1 - Technical Report RMIT-TR-11-02 SP - 15 EP - 22 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Schulte-Tigges, Joschua A1 - Förster, Marco A1 - Nikolovski, Gjorgji A1 - Reke, Michael A1 - Ferrein, Alexander A1 - Kaszner, Daniel A1 - Matheis, Dominik A1 - Walter, Thomas T1 - Benchmarking of various LiDAR sensors for use in self-driving vehicles in real-world environments JF - Sensors N2 - 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. KW - Lidar KW - Benchmark KW - Self-driving Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3390/s22197146 SN - 1424-8220 N1 - This article belongs to the Special Issue "Sensor Fusion for Vehicles Navigation and Robotic Systems" VL - 22 IS - 19 PB - MDPI CY - Basel ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Schiffer, Stefan A1 - Ferrein, Alexander A1 - Lakemeyer, Gerhard T1 - Caesar: an intelligent domestic service robot JF - Intelligent service robotics N2 - In this paper we present CAESAR, an intelligent domestic service robot. In domestic settings for service robots complex tasks have to be accomplished. Those tasks benefit from deliberation, from robust action execution and from flexible methods for human–robot interaction that account for qualitative notions used in natural language as well as human fallibility. Our robot CAESAR deploys AI techniques on several levels of its system architecture. On the low-level side, system modules for localization or navigation make, for instance, use of path-planning methods, heuristic search, and Bayesian filters. For face recognition and human–machine interaction, random trees and well-known methods from natural language processing are deployed. For deliberation, we use the robot programming and plan language READYLOG, which was developed for the high-level control of agents and robots; it allows combining programming the behaviour using planning to find a course of action. READYLOG is a variant of the robot programming language Golog. We extended READYLOG to be able to cope with qualitative notions of space frequently used by humans, such as “near” and “far”. This facilitates human–robot interaction by bridging the gap between human natural language and the numerical values needed by the robot. Further, we use READYLOG to increase the flexible interpretation of human commands with decision-theoretic planning. We give an overview of the different methods deployed in CAESAR and show the applicability of a system equipped with these AI techniques in domestic service robotics Y1 - 2012 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s11370-012-0118-y SN - 1861-2776 N1 - Special Issue on Artificial Intelligence Techniques for Robotics: Sensing, Representation and Action, Part I VL - 5 IS - 4 SP - 259 EP - 276 PB - Springer CY - Berlin ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Ferrein, Alexander A1 - Steinbauer, Gerald A1 - Vassos, Stavros T1 - Action-Based Imperative Programming with YAGI JF - AAAI Technical Report 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, Papers from the 2012 AAAI Workshop, CogRob@AAAI 2012, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, July 22-23, 2012 SP - 24 EP - 31 PB - AAAI CY - Menlo Park ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Chajan, Eduard A1 - Schulte-Tigges, Joschua A1 - Reke, Michael A1 - Ferrein, Alexander A1 - Matheis, Dominik A1 - Walter, Thomas T1 - GPU based model-predictive path control for self-driving vehicles T2 - IEEE Intelligent Vehicles Symposium (IV) N2 - One central challenge for self-driving cars is a proper path-planning. Once a trajectory has been found, the next challenge is to accurately and safely follow the precalculated path. The model-predictive controller (MPC) is a common approach for the lateral control of autonomous vehicles. The MPC uses a vehicle dynamics model to predict the future states of the vehicle for a given prediction horizon. However, in order to achieve real-time path control, the computational load is usually large, which leads to short prediction horizons. To deal with the computational load, the control algorithm can be parallelized on the graphics processing unit (GPU). In contrast to the widely used stochastic methods, in this paper we propose a deterministic approach based on grid search. Our approach focuses on systematically discovering the search area with different levels of granularity. To achieve this, we split the optimization algorithm into multiple iterations. The best sequence of each iteration is then used as an initial solution to the next iteration. The granularity increases, resulting in smooth and predictable steering angle sequences. We present a novel GPU-based algorithm and show its accuracy and realtime abilities with a number of real-world experiments. KW - Heuristic algorithms KW - Computational modeling KW - model-predictive control KW - GPU KW - autonomous driving Y1 - 2021 SN - 978-1-7281-5394-0 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1109/IV48863.2021.9575619 N1 - 2021 IEEE Intelligent Vehicles Symposium (IV), July 11-17, 2021. Nagoya, Japan SP - 1243 EP - 1248 PB - IEEE CY - New York, NY ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Reke, Michael A1 - Peter, Daniel A1 - Schulte-Tigges, Joschua A1 - Schiffer, Stefan A1 - Ferrein, Alexander A1 - Walter, Thomas A1 - Matheis, Dominik T1 - A Self-Driving Car Architecture in ROS2 T2 - 2020 International SAUPEC/RobMech/PRASA Conference, Cape Town, South Africa N2 - In this paper we report on an architecture for a self-driving car that is based on ROS2. Self-driving cars have to take decisions based on their sensory input in real-time, providing high reliability with a strong demand in functional safety. In principle, self-driving cars are robots. However, typical robot software, in general, and the previous version of the Robot Operating System (ROS), in particular, does not always meet these requirements. With the successor ROS2 the situation has changed and it might be considered as a solution for automated and autonomous driving. Existing robotic software based on ROS was not ready for safety critical applications like self-driving cars. We propose an architecture for using ROS2 for a self-driving car that enables safe and reliable real-time behaviour, but keeping the advantages of ROS such as a distributed architecture and standardised message types. First experiments with an automated real passenger car at lower and higher speed-levels show that our approach seems feasible for autonomous driving under the necessary real-time conditions. Y1 - 2020 SN - 978-1-7281-4162-6 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1109/SAUPEC/RobMech/PRASA48453.2020.9041020 N1 - 2020 International SAUPEC/RobMech/PRASA Conference, 29-31 Jan. 2020, Cape Town, South Africa SP - 1 EP - 6 PB - IEEE CY - New York, NY ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Ferrein, Alexander T1 - Robot controllers for highly dynamic environments with real-time constraints JF - Künstliche Intelligenz : KI N2 - In this extended abstract we describe the robot programming and planning language READYLOG, a GOLOG dialect which was developed to support the decision making of robots acting in dynamic real-time domains like robotic soccer. The formal framework of READYLOG, which is based on the situation calculus, features imperative control structures like loops and procedures, allows for decision-theoretic planning, and accounts for a continuously changing world. We developed high-level controllers in READYLOG for our soccer robots in RoboCup’s Middle-size league, but also for service robots and for autonomous agents in interactive computer games. Y1 - 2010 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s13218-010-0041-3 SN - 1610-1987 VL - 24 IS - 2 SP - 175 EP - 178 PB - Springer CY - Heidelberg ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Ferrein, Alexander T1 - golog.lua: Towards a Non-Prolog Implementation of Golog for Embedded Systems Y1 - 2010 SP - 20 EP - 28 PB - AAAI CY - Menlo Park ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Ferrein, Alexander A1 - Siebel, Nils T. A1 - Steinbauer, Gerald T1 - Hybrid control for autonomous systems — Integrating learning, deliberation and reactive control JF - Robotics and Autonomous Systems Y1 - 2010 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.robot.2010.06.003 SN - 0921-8890 VL - 58 IS - 9 SP - 1037 EP - 1038 PB - Elsevier CY - Amsterdam ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Harlacher, Markus A1 - Altepost, Andrea A1 - Elsen, Ingo A1 - Ferrein, Alexander A1 - Hansen-Ampah, Adjan A1 - Merx, Wolfgang A1 - Niehues, Sina A1 - Schiffer, Stefan A1 - Shahinfar, Fatemeh Nasim ED - Lausberg, Isabel ED - Vogelsang, Michael T1 - Approach for the identification of requirements on the design of AI-supported work systems (in problem-based projects) T2 - AI in Business and Economics N2 - To successfully develop and introduce concrete artificial intelligence (AI) solutions in operational practice, a comprehensive process model is being tested in the WIRKsam joint project. It is based on a methodical approach that integrates human, technical and organisational aspects and involves employees in the process. The chapter focuses on the procedure for identifying requirements for a work system that is implementing AI in problem-driven projects and for selecting appropriate AI methods. This means that the use case has already been narrowed down at the beginning of the project and must be completely defined in the following. Initially, the existing preliminary work is presented. Based on this, an overview of all procedural steps and methods is given. All methods are presented in detail and good practice approaches are shown. Finally, a reflection of the developed procedure based on the application in nine companies is given. KW - Business understanding KW - Requirements KW - Process model KW - Participation KW - Im-plementation of AI-systems Y1 - 2024 SN - 9783110790320 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110790320 SP - 87 EP - 99 PB - De Gruyter CY - Berlin ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Schiffer, Stefan A1 - Ferrein, Alexander A1 - Lakemeyer, Gerhard T1 - Fuzzy representations and control for domestic service robots in Golog T2 - Intelligent Robotics and Applications, 4th International Conference, ICIRA 2011, Proceedings Part II N2 - In the RoboCup@Home domestic service robot competition, complex tasks such as "get the cup from the kitchen and bring it to the living room" or "find me this and that object in the apartment" have to be accomplished. At these competitions the robots may only be instructed by natural language. As humans use qualitative concepts such as "near" or "far", the robot needs to cope with them, too. For our domestic robot, we use the robot programming and plan language Readylog, our variant of Golog. In previous work we extended the action language Golog, which was developed for the high-level control of agents and robots, with fuzzy concepts and showed how to embed fuzzy controllers in Golog. In this paper, we demonstrate how these notions can be fruitfully applied to two domestic service robotic scenarios. In the first application, we demonstrate how qualitative fluents based on a fuzzy set semantics can be deployed. In the second program, we show an example of a fuzzy controller for a follow-a-person task. Y1 - 2011 SN - 978-3-642-25486-4 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-25489-5_24 N1 - Intelligent Robotics and Applications, 4th International Conference, ICIRA 2011, Aachen, Germany, December 6-8, 2011 N1 - Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS, volume 7102) SP - 241 EP - 250 PB - ACM CY - New York ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Ferrein, Alexander A1 - Schiffer, Stefan A1 - Booysen, Tracy A1 - Stopforth, Riaan 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 -