Dirk Holz
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This book includes the post-conference proceedings of the 22nd RoboCup International Symposium, held in Montreal, QC, Canada, in June 2018.
The 32 full revised papers and 11 papers from the winning teams presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 51 submissions.
This book highlights the approaches of champion teams from the competitions and documents the proceedings of the 22nd annual RoboCup International Symposium. Due to the complex research challenges set by the RoboCup initiative, the RoboCup International Symposium offers a unique perspective for exploring scientific and engineering principles underlying advanced robotic and AI systems.
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Examples relate to simultaneous localization and calibration. An example implementation may involve receiving sensor data indicative of markers detected by a sensor on a vehicle located at vehicle poses within an environment, and determining a pose graph representing the vehicle poses and the markers. For instance, the pose graph may include edges associated with a cost function representing a distance measurement between matching marker detections at different vehicle poses. The distance measurement may incorporate the different vehicle poses and a sensor pose on the vehicle. The implementation may further involve determining a sensor pose transform representing the sensor pose on the vehicle that optimizes the cost function associated with the edges in the pose graph, and providing the sensor pose transform. In further examples, motion model parameters of the vehicle may be optimized as part of a graph-based system as well or instead of sensor calibration.
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Example implementations may relate methods and systems for detecting, recognizing, and localizing pallets. For instance, a computing system may receive sensor data representing aspects of an environment, and identify a set of edge points in the sensor data. The computing system may further determine a set of line segments from the set of edge points where each line segment may fit to a subset of the set of edge points. Additionally, the computing system may also filter the set of line segments to exclude line segments that have a length outside a height range and a width range associated with dimensions of a pallet template, and identify, from the filtered set of line segments, a subset of line segments that align with the pallet template. Based on the identified subset of line segments, the computing system may determine a pose of a pallet in the environment.
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Localization with Negative Mapping
Patent (2018)
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Example embodiments include determining a map of an environment of a robotic vehicle. The map includes locations of a plurality of mapped landmarks within the environment and a false detection source region within the environment. The embodiments further include detecting a plurality of candidate landmarks, and determining which of the detected candidate landmarks correspond to one of the plurality of mapped landmarks and which correspond to false detections. The embodiments additionally include estimating a pose of the robotic vehicle within the environment. The embodiments further include determining which of the detected candidate landmarks determined to correspond to false detections fall within the false detection source region. The embodiments still further include determining a confidence level of the pose estimate based on which of the detected candidate landmarks determined to correspond to false detections fall within the false detection source region.
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Example implementations relate to map generation and alignment. For instance, a computing system may receive and use sensor data indicative of positions of multiple markers positioned relative to a sensor within an environment to determine a pose of the sensor and also create a map that indicates the markers positions. The computing system may also receive and use subsequent sensor data indicative of distances from the sensor to surfaces in the environment and the determined pose of the sensor to determine an occupancy grid map that represents the surfaces within the environment. The computing system may then determine a transformation between the map of the markers and a design model of the environment that relates occupied cells in the occupancy grid map to sampled points from the design model, and provide the transformation between the map of the plurality of markers and the design model.
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Landmark Placement for Localization
Patent (2018)
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Embodiments are provided that include receiving sensor data from a sensor positioned at a plurality of positions in an environment. The environment includes a plurality of landmarks. The embodiments also include determining, based on the sensor data, a subset of the plurality of landmarks detected at each of the plurality of positions. The embodiments further include determining, based on the subset of the plurality of landmarks detected at each of the plurality of positions, a detection frequency of each landmark. The embodiments additionally include determining, based on the determined detection frequency of each landmark, a localization viability metric associated with each landmark. The embodiments still further include providing for display, via a user interface, a map of the environment. The map includes an indication of the localization viability metric associated with each landmark.
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Localization of Robotic Vehicles
Patent (2018)
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An example method includes determining locations of a plurality of candidate landmarks in relation to a robot based on sensor data from at least one sensor on the robot. The method further includes determining a plurality of sample sets, wherein each sample set comprises a subset of the plurality of candidate landmarks and a plurality of corresponding mapped landmarks. The method also includes determining a transformation for each sample set that relates the candidate landmarks from the subset to the corresponding mapped landmarks. The method additionally includes applying the determined transformation for each sample set to the plurality of candidate landmarks to determine a number of inliers associated with each sample set based on distances between the transformed plurality of candidate landmarks and a plurality of neighbouring mapped landmarks. The method further includes selecting a sample set from the plurality based on the number of inliers associated with each sample set. The method still further includes estimating a pose of the robot based on the selected sample set.
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Methods and systems for detecting sensor orientation characteristics using marker-based localization are disclosed herein. In one aspect, a robotic device can: receive a map of a horizontal marker plane that includes mapped positions of a first marker and a second marker arranged in the horizontal marker plane; receive, from a sensor configured to scan a two-dimensional sensor plane, sensor data indicative of positions of the first and second markers relative to the sensor; determine measured positions of the first and second markers based on the sensor data and a current position of the sensor; determine a difference vector between a first vector that connects the mapped positions of the first and second markers and a second vector that connects the measured positions of the first and second markers; and determine, based on the difference vector, an orientation of the two-dimensional sensor plane relative to the horizontal marker plane.
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A Standard for Map Data Representation: IEEE 1873-2015 Facilitates Interoperability Between Robots
Francesco Amigoni
Wonpil Yu
Torsten Andre
Martin Magnusson
Matteo Matteucci
Hyungpil Moon
Masashi Yokotsuka
Geoffrey Biggs
Raj Madhavan
IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine, vol. 25 (2018), pp. 65-76
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The availability of environment maps for autonomous robots enables them to complete several tasks. A new IEEE standard, IEEE 1873-2015, Robot Map Data Representation for Navigation (MDR) [15], sponsored by the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (RAS) and approved by the IEEE Standards Association Standards Board in September 2015, defines a common representation for two-dimensional (2-D) robot maps and is intended to facilitate interoperability among navigating robots. The standard defines an extensible markup language (XML) data format for exchanging maps between different systems. This article illustrates how metric maps, topological maps, and their combinations can be represented according to the standard.
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SkiROS — A skill-based robot control platform on top of ROS
Francesco Rovida
Matthew Crosby
Athanasios S. Polydoros
Bjarne Großmann
Ronald P. A. Petrick
Volker Krüger
Robot Operating System (ROS), Springer International Publishing (2017), pp. 121-160
Multi-Layered Mapping and Navigation for Autonomous Micro Aerial Vehicles
David Droeschel
Matthias Nieuwenhuisen
Marius Beul
Jörg Stückler
Sven Behnke
Journal of Field Robotics, vol. 33(4) (2016), pp. 451-475
A Skill-Based System for Object Perception and Manipulation for Automating Kitting Tasks
Angeliki Topalidou-Kyniazopoulou
Francesco Rovida
Mikkel Rath Pedersen
Volker Krüger
Sven Behnke:
IEEE International Conference on Emerging Technologies and Factory Automation (ETFA), Luxembourg (2015)
Registration with the Point Cloud Library: A Modular Framework for Aligning in 3-D
Alexandru E. Ichim
Radu B. Rusu
Sven Behnke
IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine, vol. 22, no 4 (2015), pp. 110-124
RoboCup@Home: Analysis and results of evolving competitions for domestic and service robots
Luca Iocchi
Javier Ruiz-del-Solar
Komei Sugiura
Tijnvan der Zant
Artificial Intelligence, vol. 229 (2015), pp. 258-281
Registration of non-uniform density 3D laser scans for mapping with micro aerial vehicles
RoboCup@Home — Benchmarking Domestic Service Robots
Sven Wachsmuth
Maja Rudinac
Jaview Ruiz-del-Solar
AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), Austin, Texas, USA (2015), pp. 4328-4329
Evaluation of Registration Methods for Sparse 3D Laser Scans
Jan Razlaw
David Droeschel
Sven Behnke
European Conference on Mobile Robots (ECMR), Lincoln, UK (2015)
Real-Time Object Detection, Localization and Verification for Fast Robotic Depalletizing
Angeliki Topalidou-Kyniazopoulou
Joerg Stueckler
Sven Behnke
IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), Hamburg, Germany (2015)
Approximate Surface Reconstruction and Registration for RGB-D SLAM
Registration of Non-Uniform Density 3D Point Clouds using Approximate Surface Reconstruction
Omnidirectional Perception for Lightweight MAVs using a Continously Rotating 3D Laser Scanner
David Droeschel
Sven Behnke
Photogrammetrie Fernerkundung Geoinformation (PFG), vol. 5 (2014), pp. 451-464
Mapping with Micro Aerial Vehicles by Registration of Sparse 3D Laser Scans
Sven Behnke
International Conference on Intelligent Autonomous Systems (IAS), Padova, Italy (2014)
Active Recognition and Manipulation for Mobile Robot Bin Picking
Matthias Nieuwenhuisen
David Droeschel
Jörg Stückler
Alexander Berner
Jun Li
Reinhard Klein
Sven Behnke
Gearing up and accelerating cross-fertilization between academic and industrial robotics research in Europe - Technology transfer experiments from the ECHORD project, vol 94 of Springer Tracts in Advanced Robotics (STAR) (2014), pp. 133-153
Increasing Flexibility of Mobile Manipulation and Intuitive Human-Robot Interaction in RoboCup@Home
Jörg Stückler
David Droeschel
Kathrin Gräve
Michael Schreiber
Angeliki Topalidou-Kyniazopoulou
Max Schwarz
Sven Behnke:
RoboCup 2013: Robot World Cup XVII, Lecture Notes in Computer Science 8371, Springer (2014), pp. 135-146
Towards Autonomous Navigation of an UAV-based Mobile Mapping System
Lasse Klingbeil
Matthias Nieuwenhuisen
Johannes Schneider
Christian Eling
David Droeschel
Thomas Läbe
Wolfgang Förstner
Sven Behnke
Heiner Kuhlmann:
International Conference on Machine Control & Guidance (MCG) (2014)
On RoboCup@Home — Past, Present and Future of a Scientific Competition for Service Robots.
Jaview Ruiz-del-Solar
Komei Sugiura
Sven Wachsmuth
Robot World Cup XVIII, Lecture Notes in Computer Science (2014), pp. 686-697
Approximate Triangulation and Region Growing for Efficient Segmentation and Smoothing of Range Images
Combining Contour and Shape Primitives for Object Detection and Pose Estimation of Prefabricated Parts
Alexander Berner
Jun Li
Jörg Stückler
Sven Behnke
Reinhard Klein
IEEE International Conference on Image Processing (ICIP), Melbourne, Australia (2013)
Evaluating the Impact of Perception and Decision Timing on Autonomous Robotic Exploration.
Francesco Amigoni
Alberto Quattrini Li
European Conference on Mobile Robots (ECMR), Barcelona, Spain (2013), pp. 68-73
Mobile Bin Picking with an Anthropomorphic Service Robot
Matthias Nieuwenhuisen
David Droeschel
Jörg Stückler
Alexander Berner
Jun Li
Reinhard Klein
Sven Behnke
IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), Karlsruhe, Germany (2013)
Towards Multimodal Omnidirectional Obstacle Detection for Autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
Matthias Nieuwenhuisen
David Droeschel
Michael Schreiber
Sven Behnke
The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, vol. XL-1/W2 (2013), pp. 201-206
Multimodal Obstacle Detection and Collision Avoidance for Micro Aerial Vehicles
Matthias Nieuwenhuisen
David Droeschel
Johannes Schneider
Thomas Läbe
Sven Behnke
European Conference on Mobile Robots (ECMR), Barcelona, Spain (2013)
Benchmarking Intelligent Service Robots through Scientific Competitions: the RoboCup@Home approach
Luca Iocchi
Tijn van der Zant
AAAI Spring Symposium Designing Intelligent Robots: Reintegrating AI II (2013)
Efficient 3D object perception and grasp planning for mobile manipulation in domestic environments
Jörg Stückler
Ricarda Steffens
Sven Behnke
Robotics and Autonomous Systems, vol. 61(10) (2013), pp. 1106-1115
Johnny: An Autonomous Service Robot for Domestic Environments
Thomas Breuer
Geovanny Giorgana Macedo
Ronny Hartanto
Nico Hochgeschwender
Frederik Hegger
Zha Jin
Christian Müller
Jan Paulus
Mike Reckhaus
José Álvarez Ruiz
Paul Plöger
Gerhard K. Kraetzschmar
Journal of Intelligent & Robotic Systems, vol. 66(1-2) (2012), pp. 245-272
Towards Robust Mobility, Flexible Object Manipulation, and Intuitive Multimodal Interaction for Domestic Service Robots.
Jörg Stückler
David Droeschel
Kathrin Gräve
Jochen Kläß
Michael Schreiber
Ricarda Steffens
Sven Behnke.
Robot Soccer World Cup XV, LNCS 7416 (2012), pp. 51-62
Fast Range Image Segmentation and Smoothing using Approximate Surface Reconstruction and Region Growing
Sven Behnke
International Conference on Intelligent Autonomous Systems (IAS), Jeju Island, Korea (2012)
Demonstrating Everyday Manipulation Skills in RoboCup@Home
Jörg Stückler
Sven Behnke
IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine, vol. 19(2) (2012), pp. 34-42
Towards Joint Attention for a Domestic Service Robot – Person Awareness and Gesture Recognition using Time-of-Flight Cameras
David Droeschel
Jörg Stückler
Sven Behnke
IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), Shanghai, China (2011)
Hierachies of Octrees for Efficient 3D Mapping
Kai Wurm
Daniel Hennes
Radu Bogdan Rusu
Cyrill Stachniss
Kurt Konolige
Wolfram Burgard:
IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), San Francisco, USA (2011)
A comparative evaluation of exploration strategies and heuristics to improve them
Nicola Basilico
Francesco Amigoni
Sven Behnke
European Conference on Mobile Robots (ECMR), Örebro, Sweden (2011), pp. 25-30
Real-Time 3D Perception and Efficient Grasp Planning for Everyday Manipulation Tasks
Jörg Stückler
Ricarda Steffens
Sven Behnke
European Conference on Mobile Robots (ECMR), Örebro, Sweden (2011)
Real-Time Plane Segmentation using RGB-D Cameras
Stefan Holzer
Radu Bogdan Rusu
Sven Behnke:
Robot Soccer World Cup XV, LNCS 7416 (2011), pp. 306-217
Multi-frequency Phase Unwrapping for Time-of-Flight Cameras
David Droeschel
Sven Behnke
IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), Taipei, Taiwan (2010)
Using Time-of-Flight Cameras with Active Gaze Control for 3D Collision Avoidance
David Droeschel
Jörg Stückler
Sven Behnke
IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), Anchorage, Alaska, USA (2010)
Rescue Robots at the Collapse of the Municipal Archive of Cologne City: a Field Report
Torsten Linder
Viatcheslav Tretyakov
Sebastian Blumenthal
Peter Molitor
Hartmut Surmann
Robin Murphy
Satoshi Tadokoro
IEEE International Workshop on Safety, Security, and Rescue Robotics (SSRR), Bremen, Germany. (2010)
Towards Semantic Scene Analysis with Time-of-Flight Cameras
Ruwen Schnabel
David Droeschel
Jörg Stückler
Sven Behnke
RoboCup 2010: Robot Soccer World Cup XIV, Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science, pp. 121-132
Naive but Efficient – Using Greedy Strategies for Exploration, Inspection and Search.
Fachwissenschaftlicher Informatik-Kongress, Lecture Notes in Informatics (LNI) (2010)
Fast 3D Perception for Collision Avoidance and SLAM in Domestic Environments
David Droeschel
Sven Behnke
Stefan May
Hartmut Surmann
Mobile Robots Navigation (2010), pp. 53-84
Sancta Simplicitas - On the efficiency and achievable results of SLAM using ICP-Based Incremental Registration
Sven Behnke
IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), Anchorage, Alaska (2010)
Probabilistic Phase Unwrapping for Time-of-Flight Cameras
Evaluating the efficiency of frontier-based exploration strategies
Nicola Basilico
Francesco Amigoni
Sven Behnke
International Symposium on Robotics (ISR) (2010)
Effiziente Kartographie und Navigation für mobile Service Roboter
GI Informatik-Spektrum, vol. 33(4) (2010), pp. 393-397
Three-Dimensional Mapping with Time-of-Flight Cameras
Stefan May
David Droeschel
Stefan Fuchs
Ezio Malis
Andreas Nüchter
Joachim Hertzberg
Journal of Field Robotics, vol. 26(11--12) (2009), pp. 934-965
Robust and Computationally Efficient Navigation in Domestic Environments
Gerhard K. Kraetzschmar
Erich Rome
Robot Soccer World Cup XIII, Lecture Notes in Computer Science (2009), pp. 104-115
Robust 3D-Mapping with Time-of-Flight Cameras
Stefan May
Stefan Fuchs
David Droeschel
Andreas Nüchter
IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), St. Louis, Missouri, USA, (2009)
Robust Ego-Motion Estimation with ToF Cameras
David Dröschel
Stefan May
Paul Plöger
Sven Behnke
European Conference on Mobile Robots (ECMR), Dubrovnik, Croatia (2009)
Continuous 3D Sensing for Navigation and SLAM in Cluttered and Dynamic Environments
Christopher Lörken
Hartmut Surmann
International Conference on Information Fusion (FUSION), Cologne, Germany (2008)
Teleoperated Visual Inspection and Surveillance with Unmanned Ground and Aerial Vehicles
Hartmut Surmann
Sebastian Blumenthal
Thorsten Linder
Peter Molitor
Viatcheslav Tretyakov
International Journal of Online Engineering (iJOE), vol. 4(4) (2008), pp. 26-38
Continuous 3D Environment Sensing for Autonomous Robot Navigation and Mapping
Christopher Lörken
Fachwissenschaftlicher Informatik-Kongress, Lecture Notes in Informatics (LNI) (2007), pp. 39-42
