Applied Social Robotics—Building Interactive Robots with LEGO Mindstorms

Kipp A, Schneider S. Applied Social Robotics—Building Interactive Robots with LEGO Mindstorms. In: Merdan M, Lepuschitz W, Koppensteiner G, Balogh R, eds. Robotics in Education. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing. 1st ed. Cham: Springer Nature; 2016: 29-40

Wissensbasierte Multiagentenarchitektur mit Einsatz in der Montagedomäne

Abweichender Titel laut Übersetzung der Verfasserin/des VerfassersZsfassung in dt. SpracheHeutige Fertigungssysteme reagieren häufig zu inflexibel und unausreichend anpassungsfähig an die schnell ändernden Produktanforderungen mit unvorhersehbarer und plötzlicher Fluktuation sowie an die Produktionsstillstandzeiten. Außerdem leiden solche Systeme öfters unter einer schwachen Informations- und Wissensversorgung sowie unter schwachen Informationen- und Wissensaustausch zwischen verschiedenen Unternehmensbereichen. Aufgrund dessen dass die Montage einen hohen Anteil an den Produktherstellungskosten hat und die Automatisierungsrate in diesem Arbeitsfeld sehr niedrig ist, führt die Anwendung flexiblerer Produktionsparadigma in dieser Domäne zu größten Nutzen. Das Ziel dieser Dissertation ist die Entwicklung einer innovativen, agilen Steuerungsarchitektur um die gegenwärtigen Anforderungen, die die Montage einem Produktionsunternehmen auferlegt, zu begegnen. Um ein gemeinsames Ziel zu erreichen, können autonome Agenten Probleme lösen und miteinander kommunizieren. Mit dieser Fähigkeit bieten sie einen viel versprechenden Ansatz zur Entwicklung passender Paradigma für das Design intelligenter Fertigungssysteme und zur Steigerung derer Flexibilität und Agilität. Unser Ansatz ist die Entwicklung einer wissensintensiven Multi-Agent Architektur, welche die ontologiebasierte Kommunikation und Kooperation zwischen autonomen und heterogenen Agenten ermöglicht. Ein Agent, das Kernstück unserer Architektur, agiert basierend auf seinem Wissen, indem er das Produktionsumfeld und -Bedingungen analysiert und den Schlussfolgerungs-Prozess auslöst.Dadurch wird die entsprechende Aktion ausgewählt, welche in ihrer Ausführung wiederum das Produktionsumfeld und bzw.Produktionsbedingungen beeinflusst. Jeder Agent verfügt über das Wissen über sein Anwendungsgebiet, über Strategien, die verwendet werden können um ein spezifisches Ziel zu erreichen, sowie über die im System beteiligten Agenten. Der Agent repräsentiert die Produktionskomponente, die entweder ein physikalisches Ressource (numerisches Steuerungsmaschine, Roboter, Ladeplatte, usw.) oder eine logische Einheit (Auftrag, Zulieferung, usw.) sein kann. Eine mitbenutzte Ontologie ist entscheidend für eine erfolgreiche Kommunikation zwischen den Agenten, da sie ein gemeinsames Agreement und Verständigung über die verwendeten Konzepte liefert. Dies bietet die Möglichkeit die Interoperabilitätsproblemen zu lösen. Folglich, dient eine von Agenten gemeinsam benutzte Ontologie als Instrument dafür ein von Agenten, während ihrer Interaktionen verwendetes Vokabular zu definieren und "das Verstehen" des Nachrichteninhalts im Sinne einer korrekten Interpretation zu unterstutzen. Insbesondere, das wesentliche Domänewissen wird den Agenten durch die Ontologie zugänglich gemacht.Today's manufacturing systems are often too inflexible and not sufficiently adaptable to rapidly changing environments with unpredictable and abrupt fluctuation in product demands or manufacturing downtimes. Moreover, such systems suffer from the weak covering and exchange of the information and knowledge between enterprise levels. Since the assembly participates with high percentage in the cost of manufacturing a product and since the automation rate in this domain is very low, this is where the most benefits can be gained by applying more flexible manufacturing paradigms. This dissertation intends to develop innovative, agile control architecture to face the current requirements imposed to the manufacturing enterprises in the assembly domain. Having their own problem-solving capabilities and ability to interact in order to reach an overall goal, the autonomous agents are considered as a promising approach to provide a suitable paradigm for designing intelligent manufacturing systems to enhance flexibility and agility. We propose a knowledge-intensive multi-agent architecture that enables ontology-based communication and cooperation among a set of autonomous and heterogeneous agents. An agent, the main core of our architecture, acts based on his knowledge, by sensing the manufacturing environment, triggering the reasoning process, which selects the proper actions to be executed and that will affect the manufacturing environment. Each agent has knowledge about his domain of application, about strategies, which can be used to achieve a specific goal, and knowledge about the (other) agents involved in the system. The agent is a representation of a manufacturing component that can be either a physical resource (numerical control machine, robot, pallet, etc.) or a logic entity (order, supply, etc.). Having a shared ontology is critical for successful communication between agents, since such a shared ontology provides the common agreement and understanding about the concepts used. This offers the possibility for solving inter-operability problems. Therefore, the ontology will be shared among agents and will serve as the instrument to define the vocabulary used by the agents during their interactions, and to support "understanding" of the message content in the sense of its correct interpretation. In particular, the essential knowledge about the domain will be made available to the agents through an ontology.11

Developing extended real and virtual robotics enhancement classes with years 10-13

There is growing evidence of the potential of educational robotics to enhance science, technology, engineering and mathematics education provided that they are deployed carefully. This paper describes a developmental research project be-tween a university and a secondary school in the UK to develop extended robotics enhancement classes, mainly using LEGO MINDSTORMS robotic kits, and GeoGebra, which was used to animate virtual robots. Two styles of class were deployed: student-led project creations and facilitator-led challenges. The pedagogical principles underpinning these classes and their design are discussed. Feedback generally indicated that the classes were successful and appreciated by the students but they experienced difficulties in incorporating the virtual robotic element. Lessons learnt from the project, including the development of employability skills, the potential impact on students with autism, and the effective use of peer students, are discussed. The possibility of combining the two styles of class together is proposed

Distributed Agents Architecture Applied in Assembly Domain

The need for agility of production structures is continuously growing due to increasing complexity of products and decrease of product life cycle. This paper proposes a distributed knowledge-based architecture based on a multi-agent paradigm applied in the assembly domain. The proposed approach is modeled by a society of cognitive agents, which control a set of heterogeneous resources and cooperate together in order to achieve their own aims as well as the system's aim. The assembly knowledge is encapsulated in a rule-based system, which allows an efficient generation of assembly steps. Ontologies are semantic tools that provide a framework to represent this knowledge. The ontology is shared among agents and serves as the instrument to define the vocabulary used by the agents during their interactions.The original publication is available at JAIST Press http://www.jaist.ac.jp/library/jaist-press/index.htmlProceedings of KSS'2007 : The Eighth International Symposium on Knowledge and Systems Sciences : November 5-7, 2007, [Ishikawa High-Tech Conference Center, Nomi, Ishikawa, JAPAN]Organized by: Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technolog

Educational Practices for Improvement of Entrepreneurial Skills at Secondary School Level

Entrepreneurial knowledge and skills can play a crucial role for young people in order to achieve a bright professional perspective. In this context, entrepreneur-ship education can make a significant contribution to the development of their en-trepreneurial attitudes and skills. It can inspire future graduates to develop and in-ternalize entrepreneurial mindsets and prepare them for the challenges of the fu-ture. This paper introduces four practices for fostering entrepreneurial skills car-ried out at Vienna’s biggest secondary school Vienna Institute of Technolo-gy/Technologisches Gewerbemuseum (TGM). Two of the presented approaches are realized by the TGM alone (the Junior Company and the Learning Office) while the other two are implemented in cooperation with the non-profit associa-tion Practical Robotics Institute Austria (PRIA) and the Automation and Control Institute (ACIN) of the Vienna University of Technology (iBridge and Mak-ers@School, the latter also with further partners)