Mobile manipulators are viewed as an essential component for making the factory of the future become a reality. RoboCup@Work is a competition designed by a group of researchers from the RoboCup community and focuses on the use of mobile manipulators and their integration with automation equipment for performing industrially-relevant tasks. The paper describes the design and implementation of the competition and the experiences made so far.
We present the design and development of a benchmarking testbed for the Factory of the Future. The testbed as a physical installation enables to study, compare and assess robotics scenarios involving the integration of mobile robots and manipulators with automation equipment, large-scale integration of service robots and industrial robots, cohabitation of robots and humans, and cooperation of multiple robots and/or humans. We also report on the lessons learned of using the testbed in recent robotic competitions.
This paper presents the development of Modelica model for the youBot manipulator. Whereas other robotic simulations focus on the robot interaction with its environment, Modelica allows the modeling of the manipulator controllers and motors. The model was developed with a Modelica library for the manipulator’s components which provides modularity, reusability and abstraction. A comparison test with the actual system has been performed to ensure the model accuracy. The test shows promising result and provides possible future work. The Modelica model of the youBot manipulator is freely available.
The RoCKIn@Work Challenge
(2014)
RoCKIn is a EU-funded project aiming to foster scientific progress and innovation in cognitive systems and robotics through the design and implementation of competitions. An additional objective of RoCKIn is to increase public awareness of the current state-of-the-art in robotics in Europe and to demonstrate the innovation potential of robotics applications for solving societal challenges and improving the competitiveness of Europe in the global markets. In order to achieve these objectives, RoCKIn develops two competitions, one for domestic service robots (RoCKIn@Home) and one for industrial robots in factories (RoCKIn@Work). These competitions are designed around challenges that are based on easy-to-communicate and convincing user stories, which catch the interest of both the general public and the scientific community. The latter is in particular interested in solving open scientific challenges and to thoroughly assess, compare, and evaluate the developed approaches with competing ones. To allow this to happen, the competitions are designed to meet the requirements of benchmarking procedures and good experimental methods. The integration of benchmarking technology with the competition concept is one of the main objectives of RoCKIn.
The RoCKIn@Home Challenge
(2014)
RoCKIn is a EU-funded project aiming to foster scientific progress and innovation in cognitive systems and robotics through the design and implementation of competitions, to increase public awareness of the current state-of-the-art in robotics in Europe, and to demonstrate the innovation potential of robotics applications for solving societal challenges and improving the competitiveness of Europe in the global markets. RoCKIn develops two competitions, one for domestic service robots (RoCKIn@Home) and one for industrial robots in factories (RoCKIn@Work). The integration of benchmarking technology with the competition concept is one of the main objectives of RoCKIn.
This paper presents the b-it-bots RoboCup@Work team and its current hardware and functional architecture for the KUKA youBot robot.We describe the underlying software framework and the developed capabilities required for operating in industrial environments including features such as reliable and precise navigation, flexible manipulation and robust object recognition.
