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 - 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 - JOUR A1 - Ferrein, Alexander A1 - Schiffer, Stefan A1 - Lakemeyer, Gerhard T1 - Embedding fuzzy controllers in golog / Ferrein, Alexander ; Schiffer, Stefan ; Lakemeyer, Gerhard JF - IEEE International Conference on Fuzzy Systems, 2009. FUZZ-IEEE 2009 Y1 - 2009 SN - 978-1-4244-3596-8 SP - 894 EP - 899 PB - IEEE CY - New York ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Rahier, Michael A1 - Ritz, Thomas A1 - Wallenborn, Ramona T1 - Information and communication technology for integrated mobility concepts such as E-carsharing T2 - E-Mobility in Europe : trends and good practice N2 - During the past decade attitude towards sharing things has changed extremely. Not just personal data is shared (e.g. in social networks) but also mobility. Together with the increased ecological awareness of the recent years, new mobility concepts have evolved. E-carsharing has become a symbol for these changes of attitude. The management of a shared car fleet, the energy management of electric mobility and the management of various carsharing users with individual likes and dislikes are just some of the major challenges of e-carsharing. Weaving it into integrated mobility concepts, this raises complexity even further. These challenges can only be overcome by an appropriate amount of well-shaped information available at the right place and time. In order to gather, process and share the required information, fleet cars have to be equipped with modern information and communication technology (ICT) and become so-called fully connected cars. Ensuring the usability of these ICT systems is another challenge that is often neglected, even though it is usability that makes carsharing comfortable, attractive and supports users’ new attitudes. By means of an integrated and consistent concept for human-machine interaction (HMI), the usability of such systems can be raised tremendously. KW - Information and communication technology KW - Fully connected car KW - E-carsharing KW - Mobility management KW - Integrated mobility Y1 - 2015 SN - 978-3-319-13193-1 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-13194-8_17 SP - 311 EP - 326 PB - Springer CY - Cham [u.a.] ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Neumann, Tobias A1 - Dülberg, Enno A1 - Schiffer, Stefan A1 - Ferrein, Alexander T1 - A rotating platform for swift acquisition of dense 3D point clouds T2 - Intelligent Robotics and Applications: 9th International Conference, ICIRA 2016, Tokyo, Japan, August 22-24, 2016, Proceedings, Part I Y1 - 2016 SN - 978-3-319-43505-3 (Print) SN - 978-3-319-43506-0 (Online) U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-43506-0_22 N1 - Series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics) VL - 9834 SP - 257 EP - 268 PB - Springer ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Heuermann, Holger A1 - Rumiantsev, A. A1 - Schott, S. T1 - Advanced on-wafer multiport calibration methods for mono- and mixed-mode device characterization JF - On wafer characterization : 63rd ARFTG conference digest, spring 2004, 11 June 2004, Fort Worth, TX / Automatic RF Techniques Group. [Conference chair: John Cable. Publication chair: J. G. Burns] Y1 - 2004 SN - 0-7803-8371-0 N1 - Microwave Theory and Techniques Society. ; Automatic RF Techniques Group ; ARFTG conference ; (63 : ; 2004.06.11 : ; Fort Worth, Tex.) SP - 91 EP - 96 PB - IEEE Operations Center CY - Piscataway, NJ ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Heuermann, Holger A1 - Erkens, Holger T1 - Blocking structures for mixed-mode systems. / Erkens, Holger ; Heuermann, Holger JF - Conference proceedings : Tuesday 12th, Wednesday 13th and Thursday 14th October, [RAI International Exhibition and Congress Centre, Amsterdam ; part of European Microwave Week 2004] / EuMA, European Microwave Association. Vol. 1 Y1 - 2004 SN - 1-580-53992-0 N1 - European Microwave Conference ; (34, 2004, Amsterdam) ; European Microwave Week ; (7, 2004, Amsterdam) SP - 297 EP - 300 PB - Horizon House Publ. CY - London ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Heuermann, Holger A1 - Schiek, Burkhard T1 - A Fast and Robust Procedure for the Determination of the Scattering Parameters for Network Analyzer Calibration Y1 - 1992 N1 - Precision electromagnetic measurements : conference Paris, 9-12 June 1992 = Conférence sur les Mesures Electromagnétiques de Précision. SP - 373 EP - 374 CY - Paris ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Ferrein, Alexander A1 - Fritz, Christian A1 - Lakemeyer, Gerhard T1 - On-Line Decision-Theoretic Golog for Unpredictable Domains / Ferrein, Alexander ; Fritz, Christian ; Lakemeyer, Gerhard JF - KI 2004: Advances in Artificial Intelligence : 27th Annual German Conference on AI, KI 2004, Ulm, Germany, September 20-24, 2004. Proceedings Y1 - 2004 N1 - Lecture Notes in Computer Science ; 3238 SP - 322 EP - 336 PB - Springer CY - Berlin 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 -