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 - Niemüller, Tim A1 - Ewert, Daniel A1 - Reuter, Sebastian A1 - Karras, Ulrich A1 - Ferrein, Alexander T1 - Towards benchmarking cyber-physical systems in factory automation scenarios T2 - KI 2013: advances in artificial intelligence : 36th Annual German Conference on AI, Koblenz, Germany, September 16-20, 2013 ; proceedings / Ingo J. Timm ... (ed.). (Lecture notes in computer science ; 8077) Y1 - 2013 SN - 978-3-642-40941-7 SP - 296 EP - 299 PB - Springer CY - Berlin [u.a.] ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Niemüller, Tim A1 - Lakemeyer, Gerhard A1 - Ferrein, Alexander ED - Boots, Byron T1 - Incremental task-level reasoning in a competitive factory automation scenario T2 - Designing intelligent robots : reintegrating AI II ; papers from the AAAI spring symposium ; [held March 25 - 27, 2013 in Palo Alto, California, USA, on the campus of Stanford University]. (Technical Report / Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence ; 2013,4) Y1 - 2013 SN - 9781577356011 SP - 43 EP - 48 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Niemüller, Tim A1 - Lakemeyer, Gerhard A1 - Ferrein, Alexander A1 - Reuter, S. A1 - Ewert, D. A1 - Jeschke, S. A1 - Pensky, D. A1 - Karras, Ulrich T1 - Proposal for advancements to the LLSF in 2014 and beyond Y1 - 2013 SP - Publ. online ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Rens, Gavin A1 - Ferrein, Alexander T1 - Belief-node condensation for online POMDP algorithms N2 - Slightly extended version of the paper accepted at the Robotics and Artificial Intelligence Workshop, a special track of IEEE AFRICON-2013, held in Mauritius, 9-12 September 2013 Y1 - 2013 SP - 1 EP - 7 PB - IEEE CY - New York ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Ferrein, Alexander A1 - Niemüller, Tim A1 - Schiffer, Stefan A1 - Lakemeyer, Gerhard ED - Boots, Byron T1 - Lessons learnt from developing the embodied AI platform CAESAR for domestic service robotics T2 - Designing intelligent robots : reintegrating AI II ; papers from the AAAI spring symposium ; [held March 25 - 27, 2013 in Palo Alto, California, USA, on the campus of Stanford University]. (Technical Report / Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence ; 2013,4) Y1 - 2013 SN - 9781577356011 SP - 21 EP - 26 ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Leingartner, Max A1 - Maurer, Johannes A1 - Steinbauer, Gerald A1 - Ferrein, Alexander T1 - Evaluation of sensors and mapping approaches for disasters in tunnels T2 - IEEE International Symposium on Safety, Security, and Rescue Robotics : SSRR : 21-26 Oct. 2013, Linkoping, Sweden Y1 - 2013 SN - 978-1-4799-0879-0 SP - 1 EP - 7 ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Niemüller, Tim A1 - Ewert, Daniel A1 - Reuter, Sebastian A1 - Ferrein, Alexander A1 - Jeschke, Sabina A1 - Lakemeyer, Gerhard T1 - The Carologistics RoboCup Logistics Team 2013 T2 - RoboCup 2013 : Eindhoven Y1 - 2013 SP - 1 EP - 8 ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Niemüller, Tim A1 - Lakemeyer, Gerhard A1 - Ferrein, Alexander T1 - Aspects of integrating diverse software into robotic systems extended abstract T2 - ICRA 2013 - 8th Workshop on Software Development and Integration in Robotics (SDIR), Karlsruhe, Germany Y1 - 2013 SP - 1 EP - 2 ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Priede, Gareth A1 - Ferrein, Alexander T1 - Towards passive walking for the fully-actuated biped robot Nao T2 - Emerging trends in computing, informatics, systems sciences, and engineering. (Lecture notes in electrical engineering : vol. 151) N2 - Many biped robots deploy a form of gait that follows the zero moment point (ZMP) approach, that is, the robot is in a stable position at any point in time. This requires the robot to be fully actuated. While very stable, the draw-backs of this approach are a fairly slow gait and high energy consumption. An alternative approach is the so-called passive-dynamic walking, where the gait makes use of the inertia and dynamic stability of the robot. In this paper we describe our ongoing work of combining the principles of passive-dynamic walking on the fully-actuated biped robot Nao, which is also deployed for robotic soccer applications. We present a simple controller that allows the robot to stably rock sidewards, showing a closed limit-cycle. We discuss first results of superimposing a forward motion on the sidewards motion. Based on this we expect to endow the Nao with a fast, robust, and stable passive-dynamic walk on the fully-actuated Nao in the future. Y1 - 2013 SN - 978-1-4614-3557-0 ; 978-1-4614-3558-7 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-3558-7_18 SP - 225 EP - 236 PB - Springer CY - New York, NY ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Niemüller, Tim A1 - Ewert, Daniel A1 - Reuter, Sebastian A1 - Ferrein, Alexander A1 - Jeschke, Sabina A1 - Lakemeyer, Gerhard T1 - RoboCup logistics league sponsored by festo: A competitive factory automation testbed T2 - RoboCup 2013: Robot World Cup XVII : Eindhoven; Netherlands; 1 July 2013 through 1 July 2013. (Lecture notes in computer science ; 8371) N2 - A new trend in automation is to deploy so-called cyber-physical systems (CPS) which combine computation with physical processes. The novel RoboCup Logistics League Sponsored by Festo (LLSF) aims at such CPS logistic scenarios in an automation setting. A team of robots has to produce products from a number of semi-finished products which they have to machine during the game. Different production plans are possible and the robots need to recycle scrap byproducts. This way, the LLSF is a very interesting league offering a number of challenging research questions for planning, coordination, or communication in an application-driven scenario. In this paper, we outline the objectives of the LLSF and present steps for developing the league further towards a benchmark for logistics scenarios for CPS. As a major milestone we present the new automated referee system which helps in governing the game play as well as keeping track of the scored points in a very complex factory scenario. Y1 - 2014 SN - 978-3-662-44467-2 (Print) 978-3-662-44468-9 (Online) SP - 336 EP - 347 PB - Springer CY - Berlin 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 - Beck, Daniel A1 - Buchleitner, Martin A1 - Ferrein, Alexander A1 - Niemüller, Tim A1 - Steinbauer, Gerald T1 - Mostly Harmless & AllemaniACs - mixed innovations Y1 - 2014 SP - 1 EP - 8 ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Alhwarin, Faraj A1 - Ferrein, Alexander A1 - Scholl, Ingrid T1 - IR stereo kinect: improving depth images by combining structured light with IR stereo T2 - PRICAI 2014: Trends in artificial intelligence : 13th Pacific Rim International Conference on Artificial Intelligence : Gold Coast, QLD, Australia, December 1-5, 2014 : proceedings. (Lecture notes in computer science ; vol. 8862) N2 - RGB-D sensors such as the Microsoft Kinect or the Asus Xtion are inexpensive 3D sensors. A depth image is computed by calculating the distortion of a known infrared light (IR) pattern which is projected into the scene. While these sensors are great devices they have some limitations. The distance they can measure is limited and they suffer from reflection problems on transparent, shiny, or very matte and absorbing objects. If more than one RGB-D camera is used the IR patterns interfere with each other. This results in a massive loss of depth information. In this paper, we present a simple and powerful method to overcome these problems. We propose a stereo RGB-D camera system which uses the pros of RGB-D cameras and combine them with the pros of stereo camera systems. The idea is to utilize the IR images of each two sensors as a stereo pair to generate a depth map. The IR patterns emitted by IR projectors are exploited here to enhance the dense stereo matching even if the observed objects or surfaces are texture-less or transparent. The resulting disparity map is then fused with the depth map offered by the RGB-D sensor to fill the regions and the holes that appear because of interference, or due to transparent or reflective objects. Our results show that the density of depth information is increased especially for transparent, shiny or matte objects. Y1 - 2014 SN - 978-3-319-13559-5 (Print) ; 978-3-319-13560-1 (E-Book) U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-13560-1_33 SP - 409 EP - 421 PB - Springer CY - München ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Neumann, Tobias A1 - Ferrein, Alexander A1 - Kallweit, Stephan A1 - Scholl, Ingrid T1 - Towards a mobile mapping robot for underground mines T2 - 7th Conference of Robotics and Mechatronics : RobMech 2014 : 27th and 28th Nov. 2014, Cape Town Y1 - 2014 SP - 1 EP - 6 ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Stopforth, Riaan A1 - Ferrein, Alexander A1 - Steinbauer, Gerald T1 - Europe and South African collaboration on the Mechatronics and Robotics systems as part of the SA Robotics Center T2 - ICRA 2015 Developing Countries Forum N2 - Mechatronics consist of the integration of mechanical engineering, electronic integration and computer science/ engineering. These broad fields are essential for robotic systems, yet it makes it difficult for the researchers to specialize and be experts in all these fields. Collaboration between researchers allow for the integration of experience and specialization, to allow optimized systems. Collaboration between the European countries and South Africa is critical, as each country has different resources available, which the other countries might not have. Applications with the need for approval of any restrictions, can also be obtained easier in some countries compared to others, thus preventing the delays of research. Some problems that have been experienced are discussed, with the Robotics Center of South Africa as a possible solution. Y1 - 2015 ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Niemueller, Tim A1 - Lakemeyer, Gerhard A1 - Ferrein, Alexander ED - Finzi, Alberto T1 - The RoboCup Logistics League as a Benchmark for Planning in Robotics T2 - Proceedings of the 3rd Workshop on Planning and Robotics (PlanRob-15); Jerusalem, Israel 7-8/6/2015 Y1 - 2015 SP - 63 EP - 68 ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Schiffer, Stefan A1 - Ferrein, Alexander T1 - Decision-Theoretic Planning with Linguistic Terms in Golog T2 - FLinAl 2015 - Fuzzy Logic in Artificial Intelligence : Proceedings of the Workshop on Fuzzy Logic in AI (FLinAI-15) co-located with the 24th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI 2015) Buenos Aires, Argentina, July 25, 2015. Y1 - 2015 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0074-1424-4 SN - 1613-0073 ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Ferrein, Alexander A1 - Kallweit, Stephan A1 - Scholl, Ingrid A1 - Reichert, Walter T1 - Learning to Program Mobile Robots in the ROS Summer School Series T2 - Proceedings 6th International Conference on Robotics in Education (RiE 15) N2 - The main objective of our ROS Summer School series is to introduce MA level students to program mobile robots with the Robot Operating System (ROS). ROS is a robot middleware that is used my many research institutions world-wide. Therefore, many state-of-the-art algorithms of mobile robotics are available in ROS and can be deployed very easily. As a basic robot platform we deploy a 1/10 RC cart that is wquipped with an Arduino micro-controller to control the servo motors, and an embedded PC that runs ROS. In two weeks, participants get to learn the basics of mobile robotics hands-on. We describe our teaching concepts and our curriculum and report on the learning success of our students. Y1 - 2015 ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Alhwarin, Faraj A1 - Ferrein, Alexander A1 - Gebhardt, Andreas A1 - Kallweit, Stephan A1 - Scholl, Ingrid A1 - Tedjasukmana, Osmond Sanjaya T1 - Improving additive manufacturing by image processing and robotic milling T2 - 2015 IEEE International Conference on Automation Science and Engineering (CASE), Aug 24-28, 2015 Gothenburg, Sweden Y1 - 2015 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1109/CoASE.2015.7294217 SP - 924 EP - 929 ER -