Robot Competitions Kick Innovation In Cognitive Systems and Robotics
Robot Competitions Kick Innovation In Cognitive Systems and Robotics
The RoCKIn book, published by InTech, is out. It is OpenAccess and you can read/download it here
Today RoCKIn2015 kicks off in Lisbon. You can watch the whole event through our live stream here
As part of RoCKIn2015, we will be holding a Workshop on EU Robotics Cluster Regions. Organized by Madeeli, its main focus will be on bringing together innovative Portuguese robotics companies, along with end-users and investors, to help establish a Robotics Cluster in Portugal and provide opportunities for technology transfer - making academic research into industrial products. Further details can be found here. This one of three other satellite events that are happening during RoCKIn2015 - find out more on the RoCKIn2015 page
In the build-up to RoCKIn2015 being held in Lisbon later this year, we spoke to the teams participating to find out a bit more about their mission, vision and preparation. Three of the interviews can now be read on our new Interviews page
Updated versions of the RoCKIn@Home and RoCKIn@Work rulebooks can now be found under the 'Deliverables and Reports' section of the Publications page ...
The details and profiles of the 14 teams participating in RoCKIn2015 later this year are now available here
Datasets collected during RoCKIn competitions and events have now been made available to the robotics community here. This is to allow for further analysis and understanding about the task level and functional level performance of robotics systems. The page will be updated as more datasets become available.
A new 'Benchmarking' page has also been added to the website here, where you can read more about the importance of Benchmarking within RoCKIn and our methodology for Task and Functionality Benchmarking.
Videos providing an introduction to the tasks and demonstrating what they involve have now been made available on the RoCKIn@Home and RoCKIn@Work pages, as well as the RoCKIn YouTube page.
Set amongst the rolling hills, vineyards and iconic Tuscan architecture of Peccioli in Italy, 42 participants from 7 countries around Europe gathered for RoCKIn Camp 2015 - a week-long, hands-on event to prepare teams for the final competition event, RoCKIn2015. Encouraging diversity, both in terms of approaches and participants, is a key aim of RoCKIn, which is why we were delighted to have an all-female team from Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University in attendance. At the Camp, teams gained access to the state-of-the-art ECHORD++ domestic testbed and the RoCKIn industrial testbed and had the chance to perfect their performance in the task and functionality benchmarks. The domestic testbed was equipped with the RoCKIn ground truth system for data gathering and allowed teams to get detailed feedback on their performance.
Filippo Cavallo from the BioRobotics Institute kicked off the event with a talk on robotics in the region and some of the initiatives the institute was working on. Our second guest speaker was Professor Oskar von Stryk from the Technische Universität Darmstadt, Germany, who gave participants an insight into what it required, in terms of motivation and technological development, to take the BioRob™ robotic arm from a scientific research project to a spin-off company and eventually a commonplace commercial product on factory floors.
The expert RoCKIn team were on hand to assist participants throughout the week, working with teams late into the night on the Saturday while they made last minute preparations for the demonstrations on Sunday. The demonstrations, attended by the public and local media, provided an opportunity for the teams to showcase their improved abilities to undertake the RoCKIn tasks. Exceptional performances were recognised at the awards ceremony.
The Camp took place at the Service Robotics and Ambient Assisted Living Lab. Photos from the event are now available here.
At ERF 2015, RoCKin's project co-ordinator, Pedro Lima, was part of the 4th Workshop on Robot Competitions, Challenges and Benchmarking. Here, in a packed room in Vienna, Prof. Lima gave an introduction to RoCKIn and an overview of the past year's activities. He was also a member of the panel of experts in a lively and interactive discussion on the impact of robot competitions and Challenges in research, technology transfer and education. The workshop also featured speakers from two other EU-funded robotics projects - euRathlon and EuRoC.
About ERF 2015
This 3-day event, from March 11-13, 2015, is a meeting point for at least 350 scientists, companies and robotics officials from the European Commission. The program is designed to provide an opportunity for the companies and researchers to meet and interact in workshops and seminars in order to expand their networks, gather the latest relevant information, and build new business and collaborations thereby strengthening the potential of European robotics. Further information can be found here.
Intentions to Participate are now being accepted for RoCKIn2015. RoCKIn2015 is our our second and major competition event. It will be held in Lisbon's premier science museum - The Pavilion of Knowledge. The Pavilion of Knowledge is located in one of Lisbon's most prestigious leisure areas - Parque das Nacoes - where restaurants, bars and shopping areas share a 5km piece of land along the river Tagus, with delightful green areas, museums and modern architecture buildings.
Submit your Intention to Participate here.
RoCKIn Camp 2015 is a week-long, hands-on event to prepare teams for the final competition event - RoCKIn2015 - happening later in the year. At the Camp, teams will gain access to the realistic domestic and industrial ECHORD++ testbeds, which will be equipped with the RoCKIn ground truth system, and have the chance to perfect their performance in the task and functionality benchmarks. The Camp will take place from 18th to 22nd March in the ECHORD++ facility of Peccioli, Italy. Following the Camp, a report on the task and functionality benchmarking achievements at the Camp will be produced and submitted for publication in a scientific journal.
The Camp is now closed for applications.
Further information on the Camp can be found here.
Over the course of 3 days in the breath-taking setting of Cite de l'Espace, 10 teams from 6 countries around the world put their autonomous robots to the test for RoCKIn's first competition event. Within the purpose-built RoCKIn@Home and RoCKIn@Work arenas, robots were tested on their performance in tasks, such as welcoming visitors to Granny Annie's apartment and transporting parts, as well in specific functionalities, such as object perception and speech recognition.
RoCKIn2014 was completely open to the public, attracting hundreds of visitors over the three days, with both French and English Language commentators on hand to set the scene for the audience. Amongst the special guests were Khalil Rouhana, a director at the European Commission as well as reporters from major French media outlets. For those that couldn't be there in person, the entire three days were streamed live on YouTube and the RoCKIn website.
On the final day of the competition, the highest scoring teams, as determined by our objective benchmarking system, were given awards for achievements including the best overall team in each of the two Challenges, and the best teams in individual tasks and functionalities.
Through our partners at Cite de l'Espace and Midi-Pyrenees, a range of satellite events for the general public, academia and industry were arranged. These included a screening of Robot & Frank, an exposition entitled 'The Robots', a live demonstration of the NAO robot, and networking and conference events.
Overall, RoCKIn2014 offered teams the opportunity to test their robots in real-life scenarios, work with new people from new places and new disciplines and for intensive skills development. For the general public, RoCKIn2014 was able to demonstrate the role robotics can play in tackling important industrial and societal challenges and sought to inspire younger generations to get involved in Science, Technology and Engineering.
RoCKIn2014 coincided with European Robotics Week (ERW) which encompassed more than 300 activities in 25 European Countries and aimed at inspiring students of all ages to pursue technology, engineering and math. In 2014, for the first time ever, the ERW Communications Centre moved from Brussels to be based with RoCKIn2014 at Cite de l'Espace in Toulouse.
Please see the RoCKin@Work and RoCKIn@Home Challenge pages for further information on the tasks, platforms and benchmarking.
The rulebooks for both RoCKIn@Home and RoCKIn@Work have now been released. Here teams, event organisers and simulation software developers can find all the information they need on the two Challenges. The first sections include detailed specifications on the test beds and environment, as well as the objects, networked devices, and benchmarking equipment contained within them. The second section gives details on the constraints on robots and teams, task and functionality benchmarks, competition structure, award categories and organisational issues. For those who are new to RoCKIn, we recommend checking out the RoCKIn@Home and RoCKIn@Work nutshell documents first.
The Call for Participation for RoCKIn Competition 2014 has now been released. Following two successful preparatory Camps, RoCKIn Competition 2014 will see teams from around the world take to the RoCKIn@Work and RoCKIn@Home arenas to showcase their robotic engineering prowess in front of a live audience. It will be held in Toulouse in the mind-blowing spaces of the science museum, Cité de l'espace, from November 26-30, 2014.
Key Dates:
To find out more on the event and how to get involved, click here.
RoCKIn Camp 2014 saw 63 participants from 13 countries travel to the grandiose Auditorium Antonianum in Rome. Here, over the course of 5 days, participants experienced an intense program of educational lectures from leading experts in the robotics field along with practical, hands-on experience with domestic service and industrial robots.
Photos and video are now available on our RoCKIn Camp 2014 page.
Running from the 26th to 30th January, RoCKIn Camp 2014 is the second in a series of educational workshops happening as part of RoCKIn - an EU-funded initiative that uses competitions to drive innovation in robotics at home and at work. Taking place at Sapienza University in Rome, the Camp will bring together teams from around the world, providing expert instruction and practical experience in order to prepare them for the RoCKIn@Home and RoCKIn@Work competition events later in the year and again in 2015.
Of particular focus are vision based pattern recognition, object and people detection, object grasping and manipulation, and human-robot interaction in natural language. Following on from each lecture, a member of the RoCKIn Team will discuss benchmarking for each section: expanding upon how the competition events will run and success measured.
With expert speakers from both sides of the Atlantic, the workshops should provide innovative insights and guidance on the future of robotics: sparking discussions that will then develop into the afternoon practical sessions. On the final day the competition scenario for each of the RoCKIn@Home and RoCKIn@Work Challenges will be introduced - giving competitors a marker from where to direct their future work and kick-start their Challenge entry. The preliminary schedule with links to the guest speakers can be found here.
Applications for the Camp are now closed but information on future RoCKIn events and how to get involved will be posted on the website as soon as it’s available. The main slides from the Camp will be published online in early February, and you can catch up on the 2013 Camp here.
In the beautiful setting of the internal city and only a stones-throw away from the great monuments of the past, the 2014 RoCKIn Camp seeks to push the boundaries of robotics and drive a future society whereby, within domestic and industrial settings, human-robot interactions are common-place and will provide lifestyles previously limited to science-fiction. If you are attending the 2014 RoCKIn Camp, we look forward to seeing you on the 26th. If this is your first interaction with RoCKIn, we hope that it will spark a continued interest and a possible future attendance of our follow up events.
To keep up-to-date with all the latest announcements, you can subscribe to the mailing list above and follow us on Twitter, where we will be tweeting live throughout the event.
For media enquiries, please contact info@rockinrobotchallenge.eu.
RoCKIn Camp 2013 was held from June 28th to July 1st in the scope of RoboCup in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. RoboCup is a thrilling international robots competition that genuinely drives progress, (and as we heard from stories of hotel room welding and hackathons, even overnight sometimes!). Split into various categories - including RoboCup Soccer League, RoboCup@Work, RoboCup@Home and RoboCup Rescue - the RoboCup experience helped inspire the RoCKIn project: rules and Challenges evolve each year, which encourages the passionate teams to share their knowledge and fosters crossover progress.
It is in this environment that our team of students and researchers was introduced to central concepts of robot competitions and benchmarking through informative lectures and collaborative sessions in the first ever RoCKIn Camp.
Lecturers included Prof. Pedro U. Lima, Prof. Matteo Matteucci, Prof. Gerhard Kraetzschmar and Prof. Luca Iocchi, who covered subjects such as: principles for benchmarking robotics; raising awareness and disseminating robotics research; as well as discussion of developing robotics through scientific competitions like RoboCup.
In addition to those lectures, attendees were given the opportunity to benefit from first-hand experience of demo challenges, tests, and hardware and software solutions during practical sessions that were led by Dr. Jakob Berghofer and Prof. Luca Iocchi. This included Q&As with teams as their robots competed live in the RoboCup@work arena, and exchanging notes on how the RoCKIn attendees scored the @home robots compared with the judges.
Finally, during the last two days, RoCKIn Camp participants attended the Major finals, awards and closing ceremonies at RoboCup 2013, as well as the RoboCup International Symposium (the core meeting for presentation and discussion of scientific contributions to a variety of research areas related to all RoboCup divisions, including Robotics and Artificial Intelligence). This was a unique opportunity for our team to share with all RoboCup participants, and for students to meet professionals and experts about their common interests and the future of robotics and innovation in competitions.
All presentation slides from the Camp are now available on our Publications page.
You can read the profiles on each of the RoCKIn Camp participants and find out where they come from on our RoCKIn world map here.
This week, RoCKIn released its first report, with contributions from many prominent experts in robotics. Dealing with the general features of scenarios and robots for benchmarking through competitions, this report states the goals and motivations of the RoCKIn Challenge.
After explaining the general approach used by RoCKIn, the report presents user stories for both RoCKIn@Work and RoCKIn@Home. These should help determine the scenarios and robots to be used in benchmarking and competitions. For example, the story of Granny Annie whose robots help her in her daily routine would tell you what sort of innovations the RoCKIn@Home Challenge is looking up to and what features matters when developing a scenario.
This report also looks at other robots competitions (the AAAI Mobile Robot Competition and Exhibition, RoboCup and the DARPA Challenges) as examples of what is or has been done to underline where the RoCKIn project idea comes from. The complete version of this report then explains what is specific about the RoCKIn approach, while the short version directly draws conclusions about scenario features.
These conclusions are enhanced in the complete version by remarks about the use of a Functional Reference Platform (FRP). With the FRP, one robot is not considered as a whole but each of its functional areas will be considered separately. The sharing of the most advanced functional modules from prior parts of the Challenges will develop the community and help every team, newcomers or previous competitors, to stay up to speed. It also aims at defining more precisely what functionalities from robots of the RoCKIn Challenges are to be benchmarked using generated data or simple observation of their capacities.
Finally, both versions of the report examine benchmarking, scoring and ranking methods in related fields, such as Science and Sports, for information and comparison purposes.
All those stories and features are for discussion between the RoCKIn participants and should inspire you to develop relevant tools for benchmarking the competition and your own scenarios. To get inspired and share your thoughts with the community, you can always start a new topic or contribute to an existing one using our Forum application in this website. It’s very easy to join in, and start discussing the project with other people around the world... you will help enhance the RoCKIn challenges!
The full report is now available on our Publications page here. The short version of this report is also available here.
You can discuss it and exchange with the RoCKIn community in our Forum.
RoCKIn Camp 2013 is soon upon us. Co-located with RoboCup in Eindhoven, the Netherlands from June 28th - July 1st, RoCKIn Camp will introduce students and researchers to central concepts of robot competitions and benchmarking.
Over 4 days, participants will learn the fundamentals of robotics benchmarking through informative lectures and collaborative practical sessions, drawing on the knowledge and experience of prominent experts on the RoCKIn team.
Lectures will cover subjects such as principles for benchmarking robotics; raising awareness and disseminating robotics research; as well as discussion of the value of developing robotics through scientific competitions like RoboCup. Speakers include Prof. Pedro U. Lima; Prof. Matteo Matteucci; Graham Buchanan; and Prof. Luca Iocchi.
In addition to lectures RoCKIn Camp will conduct practical sessions that will enable attendees to get firsthand experience of demo challenges, tests, hardware and software solutions. There will also be opportunities to ask the RoboCup teams, Technical Committee and Organizing Committee questions. The sessions will be led by Dr. Jakob Berghofer and Prof. Luca Iocchi.
The final 2 days of RoCKIn Camp will be attending RoboCup 2013. These include the Major finals, awards and closing ceremonies, and the RoboCup International Symposium. The Symposium represents the core meeting for presentation and discussion of scientific contributions to a variety of research areas related to all RoboCup divisions, including Robotics and Artificial Intelligence.
Further details of the event programme can be found here.
Get in touch and keep up to date with us on Twitter @RoCKinChallenge and #RoCKInCamp
Today marks the launch of Robot Competitions Kick Innovation in Cognitive Systems and Robotics (RoCKIn), an EU funded project designed to spur innovation in robotics through competitions. The project will consist of two challenges - RoCKIn@Work and RoCKIn@Home. The challenges will be developed through two competition events (scheduled for May 2014 and December 2015) and three education and research camps to be run over the next three years.
RoCKIn@Work will look for innovative robot applications in industry; robots that can work interactively with humans, have reduced initial programming requirements and enhanced physics simulation capabilities. RoCKIn@Home will focus on domestic service robots; those that have enhanced networking and cognitive abilities and are able to perform socially useful tasks such as supporting the impaired and the elderly. RoCKIn Camp and RoCKIn Field Exercise, planned for 2014 and 2015 respectively, will accompany the competition events and provide an opportunity for newcomers to learn about robotics, practice in RoCKIn's testbeds and work in teams to further develop their technology.
Inspired by RoboCup, RoCKIn aims to improve and extend upon their principles of competition design by putting a special focus on cognitive abilities, lowering the barriers to entry and establishing concrete benchmarking criteria that considers the performance of subsystem components and allows for the comparison of results across years. Precise benchmarks and testbed configurations will be established over the coming year, which RoCKIn hopes to make a deliberative and collaborative process, holding workshops and meetings following the major events to review the project.
Overall the project aims to inspire younger generations to get involved in STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and maths), foster the technological and cognitive development of robotic systems and prove the worth of continued investment in robotics research. An introductory event is planned for the end of June at this year's RoboCup in Eindhoven, The Netherlands. Registration for the event will open in March through the RoCKIn website, where further details on the event can also be found: http://rockinrobotchallenge.eu The project is being run by a consortium of 6 organisations, each with extensive experience in the design and execution of competitive robotics and technology events. These are Instituto Superior Tecnico (coordinator), Università degli Studi di Roma, Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University of Applied Sciences, KUKA Laboratories, Politecnico di Milano, and InnoCentive EMEA.
RoCKIn, in partnership with EURATHLON, is organizing the second edition of its workshop on robot competitions: Benchmarking, Technology Transfer, and Education. The overall aim is to discuss and compare how different robot competitions and participating researchers pursue their research objectives, and learn lessons to improve the competitions, with the objective of fostering research advances in intelligent (multi-)robot systems, by providing challenging and imaginative scenarios, test beds and benchmarking methods and tools.
The first edition was held during the latest IEEE/RSJ IROS Conference that took place in Vilamoura, Portugal, October 2012.
Click here for more information.
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