The RoboEarth project's second annual Industrial Advisory Committee (IAC) meeting was held at the Technical University of Munich, Germany, on May 23rd, 2012.
This second meeting focused on getting feedback on the project's direction at its half-way point. Thanks to all participants, in particular to the members of the committee for their participation and valueable feedback.
Update (Sep 11, 2012):
Finally, we compiled a video of the demonstrator we created during the workshop including additional explanations of what is going on behind the visible actions of the robots:
The third internal RoboEarth workshop took place at the Technical University of Munich from February 8th to 12th, 2012, and was directly followed by RoboEarth's second Annual Review meeting on February 13th, 2012.
The RoboEarth demonstrator developed during the week-long workshop showed how two robots with different hardware and in different locations could use RoboEarth to share knowledge.
First, a PR2 robot in downtown Munich was ordered to serve a drink to a patient, who was resting in a bed in a mock-up hospital room. As a related semantic task description was available in the RoboEarth database, the PR2 could download this information and infer whether its capabilities comply with the task's requirements and what other knowledge it was missing to execute the task, e.g. object detection models and environment maps. It successfully checked the availability of the missing components on RoboEarth, downloaded them and as a result could start executing the task. As the drink was stored inside of a cabinet behind a closed door, the PR2 had to learn the articulation model for that door. After completing the learning process, the PR2 annotated the object model of the cabinet with the learned articulation model for the door and updated it on the RoboEarth database.
Then an Amigo robot in a similar (but not identical) hospital room environment in Garching close to Munich was given the same command of serving a drink. The robot could download needed knowledge from RoboEarth like the PR2 did. This time the articulation model was included, so that during the execution of the task Amigo didn't have to learn it by itself. Amigo was able to grasp the handle of the door and open it right away.
This demonstration showed what a shared knowledge base like RoboEarth including its reasoning services can add to the development of robots: Robots were able to navigate, recognize objects and perform complex manipulation tasks without being explicitly pre-programmed for these tasks beforehand.
To achieve this goal, all of the involved PhD students and several professors gathered in Munich to work on tomorrow's cloud robotics solutions. The week was characterized by a large amount of work and a limited amount of sleep - and a joint evening at a Bavarian restaurant.
The third full week workshop, in which all partners of the RoboEarth project will get together for the next step in the integration of RoboEarth, will take place mid 2011.
An international committee has been formed to have a direct link to the industrial world. This committee consists of representatives of leading industries world wide. On February 7-8, 2011, a dedicated workshop has been organized at the ETH in Zurich, with the following objectives:
The second RoboEarth workshop took place from January 24th to 28th in Eindhoven, The Netherlands. The goal, which was successfully achieved, was to use the AMIGO robot, that was built at the Technical University of Eindhoven, to serve a drink to a patient in a hospital room environment. Therefore the robot should benefit from knowledge shared through RoboEarth.
The robot itself only had certain basic skills like navigation, moving its arms or using the grippers. These so called action primitives were addressed by corresponding items of a pre-shared action description, also known as action recipe, which was downloaded from RoboEarth by the robot. Starting from the mentioned basic skills, complex actions can be composed that are far beyond the initial capabilities of the robot. The robot's execution engine was responsible for translating the semantic descriptions into physical actions.
To deal with the challenge, the members of the RoboEarth team had to integrate their different software components and refine the interfaces between them. The time was also used for inspiring discussions and the exchange of views. Despite the amount of work that had to be done, there was some time left for amusement at the local bowling center, where the team could prove its sportiness.
The great outcome of this strenuous week is an indicator of what RoboEarth can do for robots. It excels at broadening their knowledge and capabilities and increasing their level of proficiency.
'Birth of RoboEarth'
The first internal RoboEarth workshop took place from July 19th to 23rd 2010 in Eindhoven. All PhD students and several professors met to discuss and work on the initial RoboEarth implementation. Apart from intense work on integrating the different parts, the week also offered the opportunity to discuss interfaces between components, research challenges and future directions. But there were also relaxing moments, like a visit to the museum of the DAF trucks manufacturer, a lab tour through the mechanical department, and a joint dinner.
During the workshop, a first working system that uploaded and downloaded a recipe has been realized. Though the example scenarios, replaying a joystick-controlled trajectory and learning the path through a maze, are still rather trivial, this showed the general feasibility of the RoboEarth approach.