Aachen Team Wins Robotics World Competition
The Carologistics team won its second championship title in the Logistics League. The finals of the RoboCup robotics competition took place in Hefei, China.
The team consist of researchers and students at the IMA/ZLW & IfU institute cluster (Prof. Sabina Jeschke, mechanical engineering, RWTH), the Knowledge-Based Systems Group (Prof. Gerhard Lakemeyer, Computer Science, RWTH), and the Mobile Autonomous Systems & Cognitive Robotics Institute (Prof. Alexander Ferrein, FH Aachen).
In a suspenseful final, the Aachen robots won against those of the Switzerland-based Solidus team. After an initial head-to-head competition, the Aachen team profited from the robustness of its system and was finally able to win the championship title in the RoboCup Logistics League with a score of 46:16.
The agent-based high-level organization of the robot team, in combination with its basic capabilities of localization, navigation, and ambient perception, built the basis for a stable interaction between the machines and their adequate adaptation to changing environmental parameters.
The RoboCup Logistics League
The RoboCup Logistics League (RCLL) is a league of the annual international robotics competition RoboCup. In the games, two teams of cooperating transport robots play against each other. The pitch is a simulated factory floor in which the robots have to efficiently transport workpieces between various production machines and then deliver the final product to the delivery area. The production machines are part of a modular production system by the automation technology supplier Festo.
Workpieces are represented by color-coded cylinders. In order to correctly and efficiently transport the different goods, the robot team must coordinate its actions and react adequately to various events. In this way, the logistics processes of a flexible “Industry 4.0” production scenario are simulated.
The RoboCup championships took place between July 19 and 22 in Hefei, China. The aim of the RoboCup Logistics League is to foster and strengthen scientific exchange between the participating teams and provide a platform for them on which to evaluate their own-developed systems and algorithms.
The RoboCup Soccer League in particular is a highly popular contest, whose ultimate goal is develop a team of fully autonomous humanoid robots that can win against the human world champion team in soccer.