RoboCup Logistics League: an interview with Alexander Ferrein, Until Hofmann and Wataru Uemura

The Industrial League enviornment at RoboCup2025.

RoboCup is a world scientific initiative with the aim of advancing the state-of-the-art of clever robots, AI and automation. The annual RoboCup occasion came about from 15-21 July in Salvador, Brazil. The Logistics League types a part of the Industrial League and is an application-driven league impressed by the commercial state of affairs of a wise manufacturing facility. Forward of the Brazil assembly, we spoke with three key members of the league to seek out out extra. Alexander Ferrein is a RoboCup Trustee overseeing the Industrial League, and Until Hofmann and Wataru Uemura are Logistics League Govt Committee members.

Might you begin by giving us an introduction to the Logistics League?

Alexander Ferrein: The concept of the Logistics League is to have robots serving to in intra-production logistics. The taking part in subject is ready up with totally different machines and the robots have to carry uncooked supplies and merchandise to the machines and decide merchandise up from them. There are orders coming in for various merchandise of various complexities. The concept is that the robots ship these merchandise after they’ve been machined, at a sure handover level, after which the workforce can be awarded factors. The setup is that we have now six machines per workforce, and three robots working within the good manufacturing facility.

There are two groups competing on the identical time on totally different sides of the sector. Many of the machines are on the house aspect of the sector, however some machines are additionally on the opponent’s aspect of the sector. The groups want to point out fundamental robotics abilities like navigation abilities and collision avoidance. For the manufacturing of merchandise we have now little discs which have totally different colors and might be stacked on high of one another, and so they have totally different caps. We’ve round 550 totally different objects that may be produced. We don’t focus a lot on the dealing with of the elements, subsequently the manipulating mechanisms are fairly easy and are often customized constructed by the groups. They only have to seize these discs and drive them round and put them on conveyor belts on the machines.

The primary focus is on the manufacturing logistics and the planning part. The complicated merchandise have to be produced or machined by a workforce of robots – with out this planning and workforce work it wouldn’t be doable to ship the merchandise inside the allotted time within the competitors.

Till now, we had been supported by Festo didactics, who provided the machines. Nevertheless, they pulled out in February and advised us that they gained’t assist us in bringing the machines to Brazil. Our workforce in Aachen has an entire subject arrange, so we’re within the (not really easy) technique of packing the machines up in pallets and transport them to Brazil.

Until Hofmann: One vital element is that each one the merchandise that have to be manufactured, the orders for these come on-line, and the variety of doable merchandise could be very excessive. Subsequently, you may’t do any planning upfront – you may’t simply create an enormous database that comprises one sequence that you simply execute for each doable product, that doesn’t actually work. So the robots have to do on-line planning. Resulting from the truth that we have now a number of robots within the workforce after which additionally the opponents groups’ robots on the sector, many issues go in a different way than deliberate, so a really massive facet of the competitors is execution monitoring and on-line replanning. Principally you create an preliminary plan, however it is advisable always adapt that plan to what truly occurs throughout execution. I simply need to stress that in distinction to different RoboCup competitions, it’s actually a long-horizon planning activity within the sense that we often have to do actions on a time horizon of 5 to 10 minutes to truly get to an intermediate aim of manufacturing a type of merchandise.

Wataru Uemura: The main target of our league is on how you can deal with the manufacturing line. The three cellular robots are an important half. At first these had been autonomous guided robots, however now they’re utterly autonomous cellular robots. The robots have to resolve on their path to make the product.

Might you discuss a number of the challenges the groups face within the league, and is there a problem or facet of the competitors that the groups have discovered notably troublesome?

Alexander: To begin with, one must say that it’s a actually robust drawback that we face right here. So the groups which might be beginning new, they need to cope with all the robotic features, so cellular robots, autonomous intelligence methods, they should drive round, map, work together with the machines. As these things that we’re pushing round are non-standard issues, in addition they have to construct their very own manipulating units. After which there may be this large planning facet of the league, which can be not really easy. After we began this in 2011, 2012, we had been considering that this should be a solved drawback, that one may use scheduling methods, that manufacturing is digital, and that all the pieces can be straightforward. Nevertheless, we discovered it’s not truly straightforward, and there aren’t any off-the-shelf options for a fleet of robots doing planning and manufacturing.

Taking a look at our workforce (which has change into notably profitable through the years) and from observing the opposite groups as a trustee, I believe that the mixing facet of all of the totally different duties can be a arduous factor. Having a software program system that’s able to so many issues, speaking with the centralized referee field, and making it run inside the time restrict of a match, is the most important problem. Right this moment, navigation of a robotic isn’t the large situation, principally, however getting it built-in into your software program system and constructing all the remaining across the planning elements and so forth, that is, from my perspective, the most important problem.

Until: As I discussed, I believe the mix of long-horizon planning and execution monitoring is especially troublesome. We do have a number of failures throughout one manufacturing run, due to {hardware} limitations and issues with the robots. Typically the machines themselves fail and they should cope with this, with out with the ability to clear up the issue itself, as a result of it’s not of their management. So they should do a number of reasoning that considers all of the totally different instances which will occur. For instance, all of a sudden you’ve gotten a product showing in a machine and also you not know the configuration as a result of this data was misplaced on the best way. How do you cope with this? One other instance is that the robotic drops a bit whereas it’s driving round after which tries to feed it into the machine. Then the machine reviews a failure and the workforce must preserve its world mannequin up-to-date to know that this product is not the place they thought it was. How will we cope with this?

Will there be any new challenges launched for RoboCup 2025?

Alexander: As a result of the issue we try to unravel is so arduous, we don’t have many groups within the league. We had a brand new workforce at RoboCup2023, in Bordeaux, and they’re now constantly coming to the RoboCups, which is good. Aside from this, we have now a core of three to 5 groups that take part within the league. Because the problem itself is difficult to get into, the abilities solely develop slowly, so new challenges should not actually launched. There are slight modifications right here and there. One of many main modifications lately was throughout Coronavirus occasions the place we needed to abandon the entire match facet as a result of we couldn’t play with two groups on the identical time. We launched features of the sport as challenges. Now we have now a problem monitor as properly, the place groups can simply give attention to sure features of the league and don’t have to play the complete recreation.

The talents of the groups should not growing in such a manner that we actually want so as to add new challenges as a result of it’s nonetheless unsolved and arduous for all of the groups to get the robots working, as a result of we have now so many alternative features.

I perceive that you’re enthusiastic about some modifications to the league. Might you say extra about this?

Alexander: Sure, we have now some concepts for a brand new Industrial League. As Festo are pulling out we don’t see the necessity to follow this explicit machine sort. We had a workshop earlier this yr with all of the groups and organising committees and we’re proposing a future problem, or league. We’ll talk about this at RoboCup2025.

Until: We truly already had discussions with @work, and agreed that the long-term aim is to merge the 2 competitions into one massive Industrial League. Subsequent yr, we are going to begin converging by doing a little type of collaboration problem or crossover problem the place groups from @work will collaborate with what’s now the Logistics League, however would be the Good Manufacturing League by that point. Then hopefully, in two or three years, this can be one massive league somewhat than separate industrial competitions. And the thought of the league that we’re at present planning emigrate to can be a broader good manufacturing state of affairs the place we have now totally different features of good manufacturing. So at present it’s actually solely the manufacturing logistics half. However sooner or later, we additionally need to embrace the meeting itself as a part of the competitors and in addition lengthen this to humanoid robots and in addition give attention to human-robot collaboration on this manufacturing setting.

So this can be very totally different to the Logistics League as it’s proper now. How we are going to do the migration from what we have now to that new league with out dropping all of the groups is one thing that’s nonetheless within the making.

Alexander: I additionally don’t suppose we shouldn’t prohibit ourselves to only one sort of robotic. As we see, there’s something happening with respect to humanoid robots, and the Rescue League is proposing a quadruped robotic. Within the @Residence League there are concepts to introduce the staircases the place you want extra agility in these settings. So for me, I wouldn’t prohibit the kind of robots that we’re utilizing. We’re simply enthusiastic about proposing challenges which might be trying in direction of the long run. To this point we have now been doing issues that we thought could be related to business, however business isn’t very excited about what we’re doing right here. At the least, they aren’t knocking at our doorways and asking what our options are. That’s additionally one other facet that we’ll probably talk about at Robocup 2025 – how we may improve our influence as a league for the skin world.

In order that’s one of many goals, I assume, to evolve in a manner such that business can be extra ?

Alexander: Sure, be related, proper? I imply, you see a lot happening, specifically in China with the robotic manufacturing OEMs [original equipment manufacturers] that construct these robots in a couple of years which have fairly spectacular capabilities. And properly, we stand apart and simply watch. So possibly we should always use these robots, and combine them into our course of. It’s crucial that we’re opening our minds to examine a future that’s totally different from in the present day.

In regards to the interviewees

	Alexander Ferrein obtained his MSc in Laptop Science (Dipl.-Inform.) and his PhD (Dr. rer. nat) from Aachen College in 2001 and 2007, respectively. Between 2009-2011 he joined the Robotics and Brokers Analysis Lab, College of Cape City, as a postdoctoral analysis fellow with Feodor-Lynen scholarship granted by the Alexander-von-Humboldt Basis. He then re-joined the Data-Primarily based Techniques Group at Aachen College earlier than he grew to become a professor for Robotics and Laptop Science at FH Aachen College of Utilized Sciences. He’s a heading the Cellular Autonomous Techniques & Cognitive Robotics Institute at Aachen Utilized Science College. His analysis focusses on the sector of Synthetic Intelligence and Cognitive Robotics. Since 2015 he’s member of the Advisory Committee of the African-German Community of Excellence in Science whose Vice-president he was between 2019-2023. His analysis concentrates on the sector of cognitive robotics. Specifically, he’s excited about high-level management and choice making of robots and brokers appearing below real-time constraints.
	Until Hofmann is a Postdoc at RWTH Aachen College. His analysis focuses on planning, plan execution, generalized planning in addition to reactive synthesis, with a selected give attention to planning for robotics. He was a participant within the RoboCup Logistics League from 2016 till 2019 and member of the technical committee from 2017 till 2020. Since 2024, he’s on the manager committee of the RCLL.
	Wataru Uemura was born in 1977, and obtained B.E, M.E. and D.E. levels from Osaka Metropolis College, in 2000, 2002, and 2005. He’s an affiliate professor in Electronics, Info and Communication Engineering Course, School of Superior Science and Expertise, Ryukoku College in Shiga, Japan. He’s a member of IEEE, RoboCup and others. He’s a chairperson of the RoboCup Japanese Nationwide Committee. He’s an government committee member of RoboCup Logistics League. He was a member of the Industrial Robotics Competitors Committee, the World Robotic Summit. He was TPC Vice Chairs of GCCE 2012, Convention Chair of GCCE 2016, and Publication Chairs of GCCE (International Convention on Shopper Electronics). He’s a member of the World Abilities in Japan organizing committee of Autonomous Cellular Robots.