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 objective of advancing the state-of-the-art of clever robots, AI and automation. The annual RoboCup occasion occurred 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 economic 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.

May 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 taking part in subject is about up with totally different machines and the robots have to deliver 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 thought is that the robots ship these merchandise after they’ve been machined, at a sure handover level, after which the crew might be awarded factors. The setup is that we now have six machines per crew, and three robots working within the sensible manufacturing facility.

There are two groups competing on the similar time on totally different sides of the sphere. Many 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 point out primary robotics abilities like navigation abilities and collision avoidance. For the manufacturing of merchandise we now have little discs which have totally different colors and will be stacked on prime of one another, and so they have totally different caps. We have now 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 must be produced or machined by a crew of robots – with out this planning and crew 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 equipped the machines. Nonetheless, they pulled out in February and instructed us that they gained’t assist us in bringing the machines to Brazil. Our crew in Aachen has an entire subject arrange, so we’re within the (not really easy) strategy of packing the machines up in pallets and delivery them to Brazil.

Until Hofmann: One essential element is that each one the merchandise that must be manufactured, the orders for these come on-line, and the variety of doable merchandise could be very excessive. Due to this fact, you possibly can’t do any planning upfront – you possibly can’t simply create a giant 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. Because of the truth that we now have a number of robots within the crew after which additionally the opponents groups’ robots on the sphere, many issues go otherwise than deliberate, so a really massive facet of the competitors is execution monitoring and on-line replanning. Mainly you create an preliminary plan, however you could 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 activity 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 objective of manufacturing a type of merchandise.

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

May 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 tough?

Alexander: To start with, one must say that it’s a actually robust drawback that we face right here. So the groups which are beginning new, they need to take care of all the robotic facets, 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’s this huge planning facet of the league, which can also be not really easy. After we began this in 2011, 2012, we have been considering that this have to be a solved drawback, that one might use scheduling methods, that manufacturing is digital, and that all the things can be straightforward. Nonetheless, we came upon it’s not really straightforward, and there are not any off-the-shelf options for a fleet of robots doing planning and manufacturing.

our crew (which has grow to be 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 is known as 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 inside the time restrict of a match, is the most important problem. As we speak, navigation of a robotic shouldn’t be the massive difficulty, mainly, however getting it built-in into your software program system and constructing all the remainder across the planning parts and so forth, that is, from my standpoint, the most important problem.

Until: As I discussed, I feel the mixture of long-horizon planning and execution monitoring is especially tough. We do have quite a lot of failures throughout one manufacturing run, due to {hardware} limitations and issues with the robots. Generally 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 quite a lot of reasoning that considers all of the totally different instances which will occur. For instance, all of the sudden you have got 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 will 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 resolve 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 constantly 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 are usually not actually launched. There are slight adjustments right here and there. One of many main adjustments in recent times was throughout Coronavirus instances 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 facets of the sport as challenges. Now we now have a problem monitor as nicely, the place groups can simply give attention to sure facets of the league and don’t have to play the complete sport.

The talents of the groups are usually 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 laborious for all of the groups to get the robots operating, as a result of we now have so many various facets.

I perceive that you’re eager about some adjustments to the league. May 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 persist with this specific machine sort. 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 objective is to merge the 2 competitions into one massive Industrial League. Subsequent 12 months, we’ll 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 Sensible Manufacturing League by that point. Then hopefully, in two or three years, this might be one massive league relatively than separate industrial competitions. And the concept of the league that we’re presently planning emigrate to is known as a broader sensible manufacturing state of affairs the place we now have totally different facets of sensible manufacturing. So presently 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 might be very totally 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 dropping all of the groups is one thing that’s nonetheless within the making.

Alexander: I additionally don’t assume 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 @House 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 eager about proposing challenges which are wanting in the direction of the long run. Up to now we now have been doing issues that we thought could be related to business, however business shouldn’t be very enthusiastic 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 are going to probably talk about at Robocup 2025 – how we might enhance our affect 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 might 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 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.

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-Primarily based Programs Group at Aachen College earlier than he turned 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 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 enthusiastic about high-level management and determination making of robots and brokers performing 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 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, Info 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 (International Convention on Client Electronics). He’s a member of the World Abilities in Japan organizing committee of Autonomous Cellular Robots.