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

The Industrial League area at RoboCup2025.

RoboCup is a global scientific initiative with the purpose 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 varieties a part of the Industrial League and is an application-driven league impressed by the commercial situation of a wise manufacturing facility. Forward of the Brazil assembly, we spoke with three key members of the league to search out out extra. Alexander Ferrein is a RoboCup Trustee overseeing the Industrial League, and Until Hofmann and Wataru Uemura are Logistics League Government Committee members.

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

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

There are two groups competing on the similar time on completely different sides of the sphere. A lot of the machines are on the house aspect of the sphere, however some machines are additionally on the opponent’s aspect of the sphere. The groups want to indicate primary robotics expertise like navigation expertise and collision avoidance. For the manufacturing of merchandise we now have little discs which have completely different colors and might be stacked on prime of one another, they usually have completely different caps. We’ve round 550 completely different objects that may be produced. We don’t focus a lot on the dealing with of the components, due to this fact the manipulating mechanisms are fairly easy and are normally customized constructed by the groups. They simply have to seize these discs and drive them round and put them on conveyor belts on the machines.

The principle focus is on the manufacturing logistics and the planning section. The complicated merchandise must be produced or machined by a staff of robots – with out this planning and staff work it wouldn’t be attainable to ship the merchandise inside the allotted time within the competitors.

Till now, we had been supported by Festo didactics, who equipped the machines. Nonetheless, they pulled out in February and advised us that they gained’t help us in bringing the machines to Brazil. Our staff in Aachen has a whole subject arrange, so we’re within the (not really easy) means of packing the machines up in pallets and transport them to Brazil.

Until Hofmann: One vital element is that each one the merchandise that must be manufactured, the orders for these come on-line, and the variety of attainable merchandise may be very excessive. Due to this fact, you’ll be able to’t do any planning prematurely – you’ll be able to’t simply create an enormous database that accommodates one sequence that you simply execute for each attainable product, that doesn’t actually work. So the robots have to do on-line planning. Because of the truth that we now have a number of robots within the staff after which additionally the opponents groups’ robots on the sphere, many issues go otherwise than deliberate, so a really massive side of the competitors is execution monitoring and on-line replanning. Principally you create an preliminary plan, however you have to continuously adapt that plan to what really occurs throughout execution. I simply wish to stress that in distinction to different RoboCup competitions, it’s actually a long-horizon planning process within the sense that we normally have to do actions on a time horizon of 5 to 10 minutes to truly get to an intermediate purpose of manufacturing a kind of merchandise.

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

Might you speak about among the challenges the groups face within the league, and is there a problem or side of the competitors that the groups have discovered significantly tough?

Alexander: To begin with, one must say that it’s a actually robust downside that we face right here. So the groups which are beginning new, they should cope with all the robotic features, so cellular robots, autonomous intelligence programs, they should drive round, map, work together with the machines. As this stuff that we’re pushing round are non-standard issues, in addition they have to construct their very own manipulating gadgets. After which there may be this huge planning side of the league, which can also be not really easy. After we began this in 2011, 2012, we had been pondering that this have to be a solved downside, that one may use scheduling programs, that manufacturing is digital, and that every little thing could be simple. Nonetheless, we came upon it’s not really simple, and there are not any off-the-shelf options for a fleet of robots doing planning and manufacturing.

our staff (which has grow to be significantly profitable through the years) and from observing the opposite groups as a trustee, I feel that the mixing side of all of the completely different duties can be a exhausting 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 foremost problem. At the moment, navigation of a robotic isn’t the large challenge, principally, however getting it built-in into your software program system and constructing all the remaining across the planning parts and so forth, that is, from my standpoint, the foremost problem.

Until: As I discussed, I feel the mixture of long-horizon planning and execution monitoring is especially tough. We do have lots of failures throughout one manufacturing run, due to {hardware} limitations and issues with the robots. Generally the machines themselves fail and they should cope with this, with out having the ability to remedy the issue itself, as a result of it’s not of their management. So they should do lots of reasoning that considers all of the completely different instances that will occur. For instance, out of the blue you could have a product showing in a machine and also you not know the configuration as a result of this info was misplaced on the way in which. How do you cope with this? One other instance is that the robotic drops a chunk whereas it’s driving round after which tries to feed it into the machine. Then the machine experiences a failure and the staff 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 are attempting to unravel is so exhausting, we don’t have many groups within the league. We had a brand new staff at RoboCup2023, in Bordeaux, and they’re now persistently coming to the RoboCups, which is sweet. Other than this, we now have a core of three to 5 groups that take part within the league. Because the problem itself is difficult to get into, the talents solely develop slowly, so new challenges usually are not actually launched. There are slight modifications right here and there. One of many main modifications in recent times was throughout Coronavirus instances the place we needed to abandon the entire match side as a result of we couldn’t play with two groups on the similar time. We launched features of the sport as challenges. Now we now have a problem monitor as nicely, the place groups can simply give attention to sure features of the league and don’t have to play the total recreation.

The talents of the groups usually are not creating in such a means that we actually want so as to add new challenges as a result of it’s nonetheless unsolved and exhausting for all of the groups to get the robots operating, as a result of we now have so many various features.

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

Alexander: Sure, we now have some concepts for a brand new Industrial League. As Festo are pulling out we don’t see the necessity to keep on with this specific machine kind. 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 are going to talk about this at RoboCup2025.

Until: We really already had discussions with @work, and agreed that the long-term purpose is to merge the 2 competitions into one massive Industrial League. Subsequent yr, we’ll begin converging by doing a little form of collaboration problem or crossover problem the place groups from @work will collaborate with what’s now the Logistics League, however would be the Sensible Manufacturing League by that point. Then hopefully, in two or three years, this shall be one massive league relatively than separate industrial competitions. And the concept of the league that we’re at the moment planning emigrate to can be a broader good manufacturing situation the place we now have completely different features of good manufacturing. So at the moment it’s actually solely the manufacturing logistics half. However sooner or later, we additionally wish 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 shall be very completely different to the Logistics League as it’s proper now. How we’ll do the migration from what we now have to that new league with out shedding 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 kind of robotic. As we see, there’s something occurring 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 are trying in direction of the long run. Thus far we now have been doing issues that we thought may be related to trade, however trade isn’t very involved in what we’re doing right here. Not less than, they don’t seem to be knocking at our doorways and asking what our options are. That’s additionally one other side that we’ll presumably talk about at Robocup 2025 – how we may enhance our impression as a league for the skin world.

In order that’s one of many goals, I suppose, to evolve in a means such that trade shall be extra ?

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

In regards to the interviewees

	Alexander Ferrein acquired his MSc in Pc 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 Information-Based mostly Techniques Group at Aachen College earlier than he grew to become a professor for Robotics and Pc 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 sphere 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 sphere of cognitive robotics. Particularly, he’s involved in high-level management and choice making of robots and brokers appearing beneath 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 acquired 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, College of Superior Science and Know-how, 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 Expertise in Japan organizing committee of Autonomous Cellular Robots.