TY - CHAP A1 - Niemueller, Tim A1 - Ferrein, Alexander A1 - Reuter, Sebastian A1 - Jeschke, Sabina A1 - Lakemeyer, Gerhard T1 - The RoboCup Logistics League as a Holistic Multi-Robot Smart Factory Benchmark T2 - Proceedings of the IROS 2015 Open forum on evaluation of results, replication of experiments and benchmarking in robotics research N2 - With autonomous mobile robots receiving increased attention in industrial contexts, the need for benchmarks becomes more and more an urgent matter. The RoboCup Logistics League (RCLL) is one specific industry-inspired scenario focusing on production logistics within a Smart Factory. In this paper, we describe how the RCLL allows to assess the performance of a group of robots within the scenario as a whole, focusing specifically on the coordination and cooperation strategies and the methods and components to achieve them. We report on recent efforts to analyze performance of teams in 2014 to understand the implications of the current grading scheme, and derived criteria and metrics for performance assessment based on Key Performance Indicators (KPI) adapted from classic factory evaluation. We reflect on differences and compatibility towards RoCKIn, a recent major benchmarking European project. Y1 - 2015 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 - Booysen, Tracy A1 - Mathew, Thomas A1 - Knox, Greig A1 - Fong, W. K. A1 - Stüttgen, Marcel A1 - Ferrein, Alexander A1 - Steinbauer, Gerald T1 - The Scarab Project T2 - ICRA 2015 Developing Countries Forum N2 - Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) is an active research field in the robotics community. Despite recent advances for many open research questions, these kind of systems are not widely used in real rescue missions. One reason is that such systems are complex and not (yet) very reliable; another is that one has to be an robotic expert to run such a system. Moreover, available rescue robots are very expensive and the benefits of using them are still limited. In this paper, we present the Scarab robot, an alternative design for a USAR robot. The robot is light weight, humanpackable and its primary purpose is that of extending the rescuer’s capability to sense the disaster site. The idea is that a responder throws the robot to a certain spot. The robot survives the impact with the ground and relays sensor data such as camera images or thermal images to the responder’s hand-held control unit from which the robot can be remotely controlled. 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 - Limpert, Nicolas A1 - Schiffer, Stefan A1 - Ferrein, Alexander T1 - A Local Planner for Ackermann-Driven Vehicles in ROS SBPL T2 - Proceedings of the International Conference on Pattern Recognition Association of South Africa and Robotics and Mechatronics (PRASA-RobMech), 2015 Y1 - 2015 U6 - http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/RoboMech.2015.7359518 SP - 172 EP - 177 ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Ferrein, Alexander A1 - Maier, Christopher A1 - Mühlbacher, Clemens A1 - Niemueller, Tim A1 - Steinbauer, Gerald A1 - Vassos, Stravros T1 - Controlling Logistics Robots with the Action-based Language YAGI T2 - Proceedings of the 2015 IROS Workshop on Workshop on Task Planning for Intelligent Robots in Service and Manufacturing Y1 - 2015 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 - Kallweit, Stephan A1 - Ferrein, Alexander A1 - Scholl, Ingrid A1 - Reichert, Walter T1 - Mobile Autonome Systeme in der Lehre, am Beispiel der ROS Summer School T2 - Tagungsband AALE 2014 : das Forum für Fachleute der Automatisierungstechnik aus Hochschulen und Wirtschaft ; 11. Fachkonferenz, Regensburg ; [11. Konferenz für Angewandte Automatisierungstechnik in Lehre und Entwicklung / Ostbayerische Technische Hochschule Regensburg; VFAALE, Verein der Freunde und Förderer der Angewandten Automatisierungstechnik] Y1 - 2014 SN - 978-3-8356-7142-3 N1 - Die Textverteilung der elektronischen Zweitveröffentlichung entspricht nicht der der o.g. Verlagsausgabe. SP - 157 EP - 163 PB - Dt. Industrieverl. CY - München 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 - 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 - 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 - http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-13560-1_33 SP - 409 EP - 421 PB - Springer CY - München 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 - 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 - 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 - 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 - 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 - 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 - 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 - http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-3558-7_18 SP - 225 EP - 236 PB - Springer CY - New York, NY ER -