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

The Industrial League area at RoboCup2025.

RoboCup is a world scientific initiative with the aim of advancing the cutting-edge of clever robots, AI and automation. The annual RoboCup occasion came about from 15-21 July in Salvador, Brazil. The Logistics League kinds a part of the Industrial League and is an application-driven league impressed by the commercial state of affairs of a wise manufacturing unit. 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 area is ready up with totally different machines and the robots have to convey 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 crew will probably be awarded factors. The setup is that now we have six machines per crew, and three robots working within the sensible manufacturing unit.

There are two groups competing on the similar time on totally different sides of the sector. A lot 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 expertise like navigation expertise and collision avoidance. For the manufacturing of merchandise now we have little discs which have totally different colors and might be stacked on prime of one another, they usually have totally different caps. Now we have round 550 totally 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 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 principle focus is on the manufacturing logistics and the planning section. The complicated merchandise have to be produced or machined by a crew of robots – with out this planning and crew work it wouldn’t be attainable to ship the merchandise throughout the allotted time within the competitors.

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

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

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

Might you speak about 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 start 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 must take care of the entire robotic points, so cell robots, autonomous intelligence techniques, 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 gadgets. After which there may be this large planning facet of the league, which can also be not really easy. After we began this in 2011, 2012, we have been pondering that this have to be a solved drawback, that one might use scheduling techniques, that manufacturing is digital, and that every little thing could be straightforward. Nonetheless, we discovered it’s not really straightforward, and there aren’t any off-the-shelf options for a fleet of robots doing planning and manufacturing.

Taking a look at our crew (which has change into notably profitable over time) and from observing the opposite groups as a trustee, I feel that the combination facet of all of the totally different duties can be a laborious factor. Having a software program system that’s able to so many issues, speaking with the centralized referee field, and making it run throughout the time restrict of a match, is the key problem. In the present day, navigation of a robotic will not be the large concern, principally, however getting it built-in into your software program system and constructing all the remainder across the planning elements and so forth, that is, from my viewpoint, the key problem.

Until: As I discussed, I feel the mix of long-horizon planning and execution monitoring is especially troublesome. We do have lots of failures throughout one manufacturing run, due to {hardware} limitations and issues with the robots. Typically the machines themselves fail and they should take care of this, with out with 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 totally different instances which will occur. For instance, instantly you may have a product showing in a machine and also you not know the configuration as a result of this info was misplaced on the best way. How do you take care of 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 studies a failure and the crew must hold its world mannequin up-to-date to know that this product is not the place they thought it was. How can we take care of 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 laborious, we don’t have many groups within the league. We had a brand new crew at RoboCup2023, in Bordeaux, and they’re now persistently coming to the RoboCups, which is good. Aside from this, now we have a core of three to 5 groups that take part within the league. Because the problem itself is tough to get into, the talents solely develop slowly, so new challenges are usually not actually launched. There are slight adjustments right here and there. One of many main adjustments in recent times 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 similar time. We launched points of the sport as challenges. Now now we have a problem observe as nicely, the place groups can simply give attention to sure points of the league and don’t have to play the total sport.

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

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

Alexander: Sure, now we 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 explicit machine kind. We had a workshop earlier this 12 months 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 really already had discussions with @work, and agreed that the long-term aim is to merge the 2 competitions into one large Industrial League. Subsequent 12 months, 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 will probably be one large league somewhat than separate industrial competitions. And the concept of the league that we’re presently planning emigrate to can be a broader sensible manufacturing state of affairs the place now we have totally different points of sensible manufacturing. So presently it’s actually solely the manufacturing logistics half. However sooner or later, we additionally need to embody the meeting itself as a part of the competitors and likewise lengthen this to humanoid robots and likewise give attention to human-robot collaboration on this manufacturing setting.

So this will probably be very totally different to the Logistics League as it’s proper now. How we are going to do the migration from what now we have 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 assume we shouldn’t limit ourselves to only one kind 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 @House League there are concepts to introduce the staircases the place you want extra agility in these settings. So for me, I wouldn’t limit the kind of robots that we’re utilizing. We’re simply excited about proposing challenges which might be wanting in direction of the long run. Thus far now we have been doing issues that we thought may be related to trade, however trade will not be very serious 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 presumably talk about at Robocup 2025 – how we might improve our affect as a league for the skin world.

In order that’s one of many goals, I suppose, to evolve in a approach such that trade will probably 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 number of years which have fairly spectacular capabilities. And nicely, we stand apart and simply watch. So perhaps 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 as we speak.

Concerning the interviewees

	Alexander Ferrein acquired 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 Information-Based mostly Programs 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 Programs & 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. Particularly, he’s serious about high-level management and determination 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 specific 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, Data and Communication Engineering Course, College 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 govt 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 (World Convention on Shopper Electronics). He’s a member of the World Abilities in Japan organizing committee of Autonomous Cellular Robots.