The RoCKIn Project

The goal of the project “Robot Competitions Kick Innovation in Cognitive Systems and Robotics” (RoCKIn), funded by the European Commission under its 7th Framework Program, has been to speed up the progress toward smarter robots through scientific competitions. Two challenges have been selected for the competitions due to their high relevance and impact on Europe’s societal and industrial needs: domestic service robots (RoCKIn@Home) and innovative robot applications in industry (RoCKIn@Work). The RoCKIn project has taken an approach to boosting scientific robot competitions in Europe by (i) specifying and designing open domain test beds for competitions targeting the two challenges; (ii) developing methods for scoring and benchmarking that allow to assess both particular subsystems as well as the integrated system; and (iii) organizing camps to build up a community of new teams, interested to participate in robot competitions. A significant number of dissemination activities on the relevance of robot competitions were carried out to promote research and education in robotics, as to researchers and lay citizens. The lessons learned during RoCKIn paved the way for a step forward in the organization and research impact of robot competitions, contributing for Europe to become a world leader in robotics research, education, and technology transfer

RoCKIn: Impact on Future Markets for Robotics

The goal of the project “Robot Competitions Kick Innovation in Cognitive Systems and Robotics” (RoCKIn), funded by the European Commission under its 7th Framework Program, has been to speed up the progress toward smarter robots through scientific competitions. Two challenges have been selected for the competitions due to their high relevance and impact on Europe’s societal and industrial needs: domestic service robots (“RoCKIn@Home”) and innovative robot applications in industry (“RoCKIn@Work”). The history and reasoning behind the chosen task and functionality benchmarks in RoCKIn are explained by providing an insight from the International Federation of Robotics and an analysis on RoCKIn’s impact on the industrial robot market domain is carried out. To paint a broad picture, RoCKIn is compared to other robot competitions and similarities, differences and challenges those competitions share are pointed out. Some industrial robot market requirements and the way RoCKIn addressed them are explained. Strength and weaknesses of the project in regard to their market impact are emphasized and it is shown how these were continued and addressed by RoCKIn’s successor European Robotics League (ERL)

Systematic mapping literature review of mobile robotics competitions

This paper presents a systematic mapping literature review about the mobile robotics competitions that took place over the last few decades in order to obtain an overview of the main objectives, target public, challenges, technologies used and final application area to show how these competitions have been contributing to education. In the review we found 673 papers from 5 different databases and at the end of the process, 75 papers were classified to extract all the relevant information using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) method. More than 50 mobile robotics competitions were found and it was possible to analyze most of the competitions in detail in order to answer the research questions, finding the main goals, target public, challenges, technologies and application area, mainly in education.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Developing a Collegiate Robotics Competition Hosted by WPI

Although Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) is considered a leader in robotics research and education, it has never specifically hosted a collegiate robotics competition. Through background research on other collegiate robotics competitions, discussions with both representatives from universities and robotics companies, and stakeholders at WPI we have developed a proposal for a collegiate robotics competition. This event would be hosted at WPI in collaboration with TouchTomorrow, a campus-wide event showcasing science and technology in early June. This event would consist of three separate challenges based on real-world problems. These challenges combined with a robotics career fair and networking opportunities would provide many long-term benefits to the school

RoboCup 2D Soccer Simulation League: Evaluation Challenges

We summarise the results of RoboCup 2D Soccer Simulation League in 2016 (Leipzig), including the main competition and the evaluation round. The evaluation round held in Leipzig confirmed the strength of RoboCup-2015 champion (WrightEagle, i.e. WE2015) in the League, with only eventual finalists of 2016 competition capable of defeating WE2015. An extended, post-Leipzig, round-robin tournament which included the top 8 teams of 2016, as well as WE2015, with over 1000 games played for each pair, placed WE2015 third behind the champion team (Gliders2016) and the runner-up (HELIOS2016). This establishes WE2015 as a stable benchmark for the 2D Simulation League. We then contrast two ranking methods and suggest two options for future evaluation challenges. The first one, "The Champions Simulation League", is proposed to include 6 previous champions, directly competing against each other in a round-robin tournament, with the view to systematically trace the advancements in the League. The second proposal, "The Global Challenge", is aimed to increase the realism of the environmental conditions during the simulated games, by simulating specific features of different participating countries.Comment: 12 pages, RoboCup-2017, Nagoya, Japan, July 201

Analysis and Observations from the First Amazon Picking Challenge

This paper presents a overview of the inaugural Amazon Picking Challenge along with a summary of a survey conducted among the 26 participating teams. The challenge goal was to design an autonomous robot to pick items from a warehouse shelf. This task is currently performed by human workers, and there is hope that robots can someday help increase efficiency and throughput while lowering cost. We report on a 28-question survey posed to the teams to learn about each team's background, mechanism design, perception apparatus, planning and control approach. We identify trends in this data, correlate it with each team's success in the competition, and discuss observations and lessons learned based on survey results and the authors' personal experiences during the challenge