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 - 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 - 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 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-17432-2_40 N1 - Lecture Notes in Computer Science ; 6464 SP - 395 EP - 404 PB - Springer CY - Berlin 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 - 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, Aachen, Germany, December 6-8, 2011, proceedings, part I. (Lecture notes in computer science ; 7102) 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 SP - 241 EP - 250 PB - ACM CY - New York 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 -