TY - CHAP A1 - Stopforth, Riaan A1 - Davrajh, Shaniel A1 - Ferrein, Alexander T1 - Design considerations of the duo fugam dual rotor UAV T2 - 2017 Pattern Recognition Association of South Africa and Robotics and Mechatronics (PRASA-RobMech) Y1 - 2017 SN - 978-1-5386-2314-5 U6 - http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/RoboMech.2017.8261115 SP - 7 EP - 13 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Niemüller, Tim A1 - Ferrein, Alexander A1 - Beck, Daniel A1 - Lakemeyer, Gerhard T1 - Design Principles of the Component-Based Robot Software Framework Fawkes JF - Simulation, Modeling, and Programming for Autonomous Robots Y1 - 2010 N1 - Lecture Notes in Computer Science ; 6472 ; Second International Conference, SIMPAR 2010, Darmstadt, Germany, November 15-18, 2010. Proceedings SP - 300 EP - 311 ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Donner, Ralf A1 - Rabel, Matthias A1 - Scholl, Ingrid A1 - Ferrein, Alexander A1 - Donner, Marc A1 - Geier, Andreas A1 - John, André A1 - Köhler, Christian A1 - Varga, Sebastian T1 - Die Extraktion bergbaulich relevanter Merkmale aus 3D-Punktwolken eines untertagetauglichen mobilen Multisensorsystems T2 - Tagungsband Geomonitoring Y1 - 2019 U6 - http://dx.doi.org/10.15488/4515 SP - 91 EP - 110 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 - Hofmann, Till A1 - Mataré, Victor A1 - Neumann, Tobias A1 - Schönitz, Sebastian A1 - Henke, Christoph A1 - Limpert, Nicolas A1 - Niemueller, Tim A1 - Ferrein, Alexander A1 - Jeschke, Sabina A1 - Lakemeyer, Gerhard T1 - Enhancing Software and Hardware Reliability for a Successful Participation in the RoboCup Logistics League 2017 Y1 - 2018 SN - 978-3-030-00308-1 U6 - http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00308-1_40 N1 - Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 11175 SP - 486 EP - 497 PB - Springer CY - Cham ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Schiffer, Stefan A1 - Ferrein, Alexander T1 - ERIKA—Early Robotics Introduction at Kindergarten Age JF - Multimodal Technologies Interact N2 - In this work, we report on our attempt to design and implement an early introduction to basic robotics principles for children at kindergarten age. One of the main challenges of this effort is to explain complex robotics contents in a way that pre-school children could follow the basic principles and ideas using examples from their world of experience. What sets apart our effort from other work is that part of the lecturing is actually done by a robot itself and that a quiz at the end of the lesson is done using robots as well. The humanoid robot Pepper from Softbank, which is a great platform for human–robot interaction experiments, was used to present a lecture on robotics by reading out the contents to the children making use of its speech synthesis capability. A quiz in a Runaround-game-show style after the lecture activated the children to recap the contents they acquired about how mobile robots work in principle. In this quiz, two LEGO Mindstorm EV3 robots were used to implement a strongly interactive scenario. Besides the thrill of being exposed to a mobile robot that would also react to the children, they were very excited and at the same time very concentrated. We got very positive feedback from the children as well as from their educators. To the best of our knowledge, this is one of only few attempts to use a robot like Pepper not as a tele-teaching tool, but as the teacher itself in order to engage pre-school children with complex robotics contents. Y1 - 2018 U6 - http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/mti2040064 SN - 2414-4088 VL - 2 IS - 4 PB - MDPI CY - Basel ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Ferrein, Alexander A1 - Steinbauer, Gerald A1 - McPhillips, Graeme A1 - Potgieter, Anet T1 - Establishing the RoboCup Standard League in Africa - applying for the RoboCup Standard League with a German-Austrian-South African Research Project Y1 - 2007 SP - 1 EP - 5 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 - 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 - 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 - http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/rob.21611 SN - 1556-4967 VL - 33 IS - 8 SP - 1037 EP - 1057 PB - Wiley-VCH CY - Weinheim ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Niemueller, Tim A1 - Reuter, Sebastian A1 - Ferrein, Alexander A1 - Jeschke, Sabina A1 - Lakemeyer, Gerhard ED - Almeida, Luis T1 - Evaluation of the RoboCup Logistics League and Derived Criteria for Future Competitions T2 - RoboCup 2015: Robot World Cup XIX Y1 - 2016 SN - 978-3-319-29339-4 U6 - http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-29339-4_3 N1 - Lecture Notes in Computer Science ; 9513 SP - 31 EP - 43 PB - Springer International Publishing CY - Cham ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Rens, Gavin A1 - Ferrein, Alexander A1 - Poel, Etienne van der T1 - Extending DTGolog to deal with POMD-Ps T2 - Proceedings of the Nineteenth Annual Symposium of the Pattern Recognition Association of South Africa (PRASA 2008) Y1 - 2008 SP - 49 EP - 54 ER - 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 - Niemueller, Tim A1 - Reuter, Sebastian A1 - Ferrein, Alexander ED - Almeida, Luis T1 - Fawkes for the RoboCup Logistics League T2 - RoboCup 2015: Robot World Cup XIX Y1 - 2016 SN - 978-3-319-29339-4 U6 - http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-29339-4_31 N1 - Lecture Notes in Computer Science ; 9513 SP - 365 EP - 373 PB - Springer International Publishing CY - Cham 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 - 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) Y1 - 2011 SN - 978-3-642-25486-4 SP - 241 EP - 250 ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Mataré, Victor A1 - Schiffer, Stefan A1 - Ferrein, Alexander ED - Steinbauer, Gerald ED - Ferrein, Alexander T1 - golog++ : An integrative system design T2 - CogRob 2018. Cognitive Robotics Workshop : Proceedings of the 11th Cognitive Robotics Workshop 2018 co-located with 16th International Conference on Principles of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning (KR 2018) Tempe, AZ, USA, October 27th, 2018 Y1 - 2019 SN - 1613-0073 SP - 29 EP - 35 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 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Ferrein, Alexander T1 - golog.lua: Towards a Non-Prolog Implementation of Golog for Embedded Systems JF - Cognitive Robotics / Lakemeyer, Gerhard (ed.) Y1 - 2010 N1 - Dagstuhl Seminar Proceedings ; 10081 SP - 1 EP - 15 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 - http://dx.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 ER -