All posts by Marta Palau Franco

On March 8, International Women’s Day (IWD) we celebrate the political, socioeconomic and cultural achievements of women and the women right’s movement towards gender equality. “Whilst the social and political rights of women are greater in some places than others, there is no country where gender equality has been achieved” says Mary Evans, professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science in her book “The persistence of gender inequality” (Polity Press 2017). In 2022 this situation has not changed either globally or at the European level as indicated in the EU Gender Equality index for 2020 where the average of the EU is 67.4% and the maximum is Sweden with 83.8%. Although there has been a clear commitment from the European Union on gender equality (specially in innovation and science), there are still structural forms of inequality that must be challenged and changed. It is not the aim of this article to analyse or comment on those, but to show what is being done and is available, especially in the European Union, for us to contribute as individuals and as a community towards gender equality in the field of robotics.

Any journey starts with a first step, so I asked Maja Hadziselimovic, member of the Board of Directors of euRobotics and active United Nations (UN) Generation Equality champion of women and girls in STEM, how a person (no matter the gender) can contribute to gender equality. She told me “There are three actions you can take to be part of Generation Equality: Empower women and girls in science; raise awareness about gender equality and raise the visibility of women in science”. So, let’s explore different activities linked to those actions.

Empower women

Although inequalities still exist, the EU has a well-established regulatory framework on gender equality and has made significant progress over the last decades. In March 2020, the European Commission published the EU Gender Equality Strategy for 2020-2025, setting out their commitment towards “a Union where women and men, girls and boys, in all their diversity, are free to pursue their chosen path in life, have equal opportunities to thrive, and can equally participate in and lead our European society.”

Thus, it is not surprising that the EC is making an eligibility criterion for all public bodies, higher education institutions and research organisations to have a Gender Equality Plan (GEP) in order to participate in Horizon Europe. Those looking for extra information on GEPs, can take a look at the work of EU-H2020 project SPEAR (Supporting and Implementing Plans for Gender Equality in Academia and Research) which provides the SPEAR’s compass guide, to help you draft and implement gender equality measures in your Research Performing Organisation (RPO); and GEARING ROLES: Gender Equality Actions in Research Institutions to traNsform Gender ROLES with examples of implementation of GEPs in universities and research organisations, because ensuring effective implementation and avoiding resistance is not always easy.

Empowering women can also be done outside the EC sphere, at a national or local level. This is the case with the work of Ana-Maria Stancu, CEO of Bucharest Robots, founder of the association E-Civis, and member of the Board of Directors of euRobotics. She has a personal and professional mission to empower women and girls in the field of robotics in Romania: “One of the hashtags we are using in our work in Romania is #vinrobotii (robots are coming). We are not using this as a threat, but as a reminder that the robots are here and will develop further. So far, what I can see in my day-to-day work is that women are generally perceived as outsiders in this industry. Every time I talk to a potential client or public authority, the general discussion is led by me, but the minute they have a technical question, they unconsciously turn to my male colleagues. The main problem I see is that most of them do this unintentionally – which makes it even more problematic. It means that this perception is deeply rooted in people’s minds.” This probably sounds familiar to you and gender bias can be found in different fields. A good read in this regard is the book of “Invisible Women” (Chatto & Windus 2019) by Caroline Criado Perez.

Ana-Maria underlines how is important to be persistent in bringing women into the field of robotics: “There is no doubt that the robotics industry will see a tremendous growth in the very near future and will need lots of specialists. We have to make sure that this development will not include only men but will also reflect the activity of women. I believe this day – International Women’s Day – should be a reminder that we have to do more for more women in technical fields like robotics.”

To make sure women are not left behind in the robotics industry, Ana -Maria promotes robotics classes to all children and encourages girls to participate. The E-Civis association also organises robotics and programming summer schools just for girls, so they can learn in a pressure-free environment. From her experience in teaching programming and robotics in public schools in rural areas, she has no doubt that “girls are as interested as boys in this field. Every child loves robots! Let’s use this love to teach and encourage all of them to build them!”

For those who do not have the time or opportunity to be involved in mentorship or for this level of commitment, there is one activity that all of us can do in our everyday life, this is to fight micro-aggressions, correct unconscious bias, and avoid what Rebecca Solnit calls “mansplaining” in her book “Men Explain Things To Me” (Haymarket Books, 2014), and provide a sexist-free workplace. An easy and hilarious read for women and men that offers different tools to fight sexism in the workplace is “Feminist Fight Club” by Jessica Bennet (Harper Wave, 2016). Of course, there is a multitude of excellent research papers, policy reports and books you can read, and just having a coffee and listening to or supporting your female colleagues can be already of great help.

If you are a member of euRobotics, I would like you to encourage your female colleagues or employees to present themselves as candidates for the next elections. Our research board is screaming for some women power!

Raise awareness on gender equality

Integrating the gender dimension in research ensures that researchers question gender norms and stereotypes and address the evolving needs and social roles of women and men. It is a matter of improving scientific excellence and increasing the number of women in science, research and innovation. Networks and portals born as FP7 and Horizon 2020 projects, are still in place nowadays to raise awareness on gender equality, provide training and share knowledge. This is the case of GENDERACTION, GE Academy: Gender Equality Academy, GENDER-NET PLUS and GENPORT.

Since 2013, the European Commission publishes every three years the “She Figures” report that monitors the state of gender equality in research and innovation in Europe. The ERA Progress report also monitors the implementation of the objectives set by the EC: gender equality in scientific careers, gender balance in decision making and integration of the gender dimension in R&I.

As an individual you can publicly show your support to gender equality. You can join the Women’s Day march in your city or raise awareness in your social media or your workplace. You can download women’s rights posters and square images by Studio Number One for free here. Be part of the wave of change today.

Raise visibility of women in science

In 2014 a new grassroots community was started to support women in robotics across the world – the Women in Robotics network. Since 2020, the network founded by Andra Keay and Sabine Hauert has grown exponentially and become a non-profit organisation in the U.S. This global community supports women working (or interested in working) in the field of robotics. Their activities include local networking events, outreach, education, mentoring and the promotion of positive role models in robotics. They also publish every year the “list of women in robotics you need to know” on Ada Lovelace Day (13 October). Why not to join the network today? https://womeninrobotics.org/

On International Women’s Day (8 March) The European Commission celebrates the #EUWomen4future campaign and the EU Prize for Women Innovators with a seminar co-hosted by Commissioner Mariya Gabriel and President Roberta Metsola. The event highlights women’s professional achievements in culture, education, sport and science. You can attend the event online here and still use the hashtag.

This article shows a peak of a long list of projects, activities and work concerning gender equality in the area of science and technology (mainly in the EU), and some specifically in robotics. We are in a period of changes, of “Me too”, of breaking ceilings and structural inequality, of building the future we want for our sisters, our daughters, our partners, and most important of all, for ourselves. Don’t be afraid to be challenging, don’t be afraid to be loud.

The smart city of Milton Keynes hosted the first edition of the European Robotics League (ERL)- Smart Cities Robotic Challenge (SciRoc Challenge).  Ten European teams met in the shopping mall of Centre:mk to compete against each other in five futuristic scenarios in which robots assist humans serving coffee orders, picking products in a grocery shop or bringing medical aid. This robotics competition aims at benchmarking robots using a ranking system that allows teams to assess their performance and compare it with others.  Find out the winning teams of the SciRoc Challenge 2019…

The ERL Smart Cities Robotics Challenge

The European Robotics League (ERL) was launched in 2016 under the umbrella of SPARC- the Partnership for Robotics in Europe. This pan-European robotics competition builds on the success of the EU-funded projects: RoCKIn, euRathlon, EuRoC and ROCKEU2. The SciRoc Horizon 2020 project took over the reins of the league in 2018, bringing in the expertise from  the University of the West of England, Bristol, the Advanced Center for Aerospace Technologies (CATEC), the Association of Instituto Superior Técnico for Research and Development (IST-ID), the Centre for Maritime Research and Experimentation (CMRE), euRobotics aisbl, Politecnico di Milano, the Open University, the Sapienza University of Rome, the University of Applied Sciences Bonn-Rhein-Sieg and the Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya. The SciRoc consortium carefully designed the new biennial ERL Smart Cities Robotics challenge where robots from all three ERL leagues (Consumer, Professional and Emergency Service Robots) come together to interact with a smart infrastructure in a familiar urban setting.

Daniele Nardi, Professor of Artificial Intelligence at Sapienza University of Rome and Head of the Technical Committee of the SciRoc Challenge, explains that the project consortium chose the topic of smart cities because “Robotics competitions in a smart city are projected into the future, since it is likely that smart cities will be among the first places populated by robots”.  Professor Nardi adds that they structured the competition through a series of episodes, each of them being a specific technical challenge for a robotic system and at the same time representing a situation that would be typically encountered in a smart city populated with robots.

Benchmarking through competitions

Benchmarking has been and still is a hot topic in the robotics community. How can we compare robots’ and robot systems’ performance? In 2013, the RoCKIn and euRathlon projects started exploring and developing a benchmarking methodology for robotics competitions. But, why benchmark robots through competitions? The answer from Matteo Matteuci, Assistant Professor at the Politecnico di Milano and one of the researchers behind the development of the ERL benchmarking methodology, is clear: “competitions are fun, they put you in realistic situations outside of your own lab”.

The European Robotics League approach to benchmarking is based on the definition of two separate, but interconnected, types of benchmarks: Functionality Benchmarks (FBMs) and Task Benchmarks (TBMs). A functionality benchmark evaluates a robot’s performance in specific functionalities, such as navigation, object perception, manipulation, etc. Whereas, a task benchmark assesses the performance of the robot system facing complex tasks that require using different functionalities. Matteucci comments “We have gone from a big once in a while costly competition to frequent, sustainable and repeatable competitions in a regional net of laboratories and hubs. The ERL is a big open lab running tournaments during the whole year. The competitions are structured in a way that makes them repeatable experiments you can compare.” In the case of the Sciroc Challenge he adds “it is somehow in the middle of the two, it’s a bigger event made up of small tasks in a public venue. Each task benchmark requires different functionalities, but it is more based on one than the others. For example, the episode of the elevator is mostly focused on HRI but also requires navigation and perception. The door is a mobile manipulation task but requires navigation and perception. SciRoc can be seen as a dry run of possible benchmarks that can be later introduced into the ERL local tournaments. In the case of the “Through the door” episode set up, it’s going to be deployed within 6 months in the facility of EUROBENCH project in Genova for benchmarking humanoid robots.”

The SciRoc challenge has also introduced a new term to the European Robotics League terminology: “the Episode”. Matteucci explains that this term refers more to the set up than to a category of benchmark. “The episode provides a narrative for the general public. SciRoc is a robotics event in the middle of a city in contact with people, so people are more interested in the story and perspective than the pure engineering benchmarking part. That’s why we came up with the short stories in the context of the smart cities.”

The ERL local tournaments have specific TBMs and FBMs for each of the leagues. With the purpose to align the ERL tournaments with the new SciRoc challenge, the leagues had to integrate new benchmarks. This was the case of the ERL Consumer Service robotics league, that takes place in a home or domestic environment.  Pedro Lima, Professor in Robotics at IST university of Lisbon and Head of the Technical Committee of the ERL Consumer league explains that “the tasks the robots have to perform in the apartment (navigate around the house, detecting and picking objects, etc.) are very similar to the ones they have to perform in the shopping mall. We made changes in some of the TBMs to be more in line with the requirements of the coffee shop environment. Also, the task of opening a door is not new for the ERL Consumer league, but in the “through the door” episode the door has a handle to add complexity and also encourage humanoid robots to participate.”

SciRoc Challenge 2019 winners

The ERL Smart Cities Robotic challenge finals took place during the weekend and many visitors could see the robots successfully perform different complex tasks.

The awards ceremony was held at the Centre:MK competition arena on Saturday afternoon. Matthew Studley, SciRoc project coordinator, welcomed everyone and opened the ceremony. Then followed a short speech by Enrico Motta, Director of SciRoc Challenge 2019, thanking teams and sponsors Milton Keynes Council, Centre:mk, PAL Robotics, OCADO Technology, COSTA Coffee, Cranfield University and Catapult.

The winners of the SciRoc Challenge 2019 in each episode are:

Deliver coffee shop orders (E03)

1. Winner: Leeds Autonomous Service Robots
2. Runner up: eNTiTy

Take the elevator (E04)

1. Winner: Gentlebots
2. Runner up: eNTiTy

Shopping pick and pack (E07)

1. Winner: b-it-bots
2. Runner up: CATIE Robotics

Through the door (E10)

1. Winner: b-it-bots

Fast delivery of emergency pills (E12)

1. Winner: TeamBathDrones Research
2. Runner up: UWE Aero

Public choice Award: Most social robot

1. Winner: eNTiTy

For  information on teams’ scoring, visit the websites of the European Robotics League and SciRoc Challenge.

Epilogue

This summer our colleague and friend Gerhard Kraetzschmar passed away. Gerhard was Professor for Autonomous Systems at Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University of Applied Sciences, RoboCup Trustee and Head of the ERL Professional Service Robots league. He believed robotics competitions are an excellent platform for challenging and showcasing robotics technologies, and for developing skills of future engineers and scientists. I am sure his legacy will inspire new generations of roboticist, the same way that he inspired us.

Get involved in robotics competitions, they are much more than fun.

See you all at SciRoc Challenge 2021!

Missed coverage of the teams participating in SciRoc Challenge? Find it here.

The European Robotics League (ERL) presents the SciRoc Challenge, a new robotics competition on smart cities that occurs every two years in a European city. Funded by the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 framework programme, the first SciRoc challenge takes place in the city of Milton Keynes, United Kingdom. In the context of smart shopping, robots interact with the Milton Keynes Data Hub (MK:DataHub) in a shopping mall. They update stock lists, take customers’ orders or find out the location of a person in need. On the third day of the competition, teams continued competing in the five different episodes and the public could see the first trials in the emergency category. The aerial teams were ready to start delivering autonomously the first-aid kit to the mannequin placed inside the flying arena!

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The European Robotics League (ERL) presents the SciRoc Challenge, a new robotics competition on smart cities that occurs every two years in a European city. Funded by the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 framework programme, the first SciRoc challenge takes place in the city of Milton Keynes, United Kingdom. In the context of smart shopping, robots interact with the Milton Keynes Data Hub (MK:DataHub) in a shopping mall. They update stock lists, take customers’ orders or find out the location of a person in need. On the third day of the competition, teams continued competing in the five different episodes and the public could see the first trials in the emergency category. The aerial teams were ready to start delivering autonomously the first-aid kit to the mannequin placed inside the flying arena!

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The ERL Smart Cities Robotics Challenge 2019 takes place from 17-21st September in Milton Keynes, United Kingdom. Funded by the European Commission under the SciRoc Horizon 2020 project, this new challenge of the European Robotics League (ERL) focuses on the role of robots in smart cities. The competition includes five different episodes or scenarios under three categories: human-robot interaction & mobility, emergency and manipulation. On the second day of the competition teams kept working on improving their scores to secure a place in the finals.

Manipulation
The SciRoc episodes under this category require robots to achieve manipulation tasks, applying some of the task benchmarks (TBMs) of the ERL Professional and the ERL Consumer Service Robots leagues. The episodes are open to robots able to navigate, and equipped with arms and/or effectors for the manipulation of objects. The episodes in which teams can participate are: Shopping pick and pack (E07) and Through the door (E10).

Episode (E07): Shopping pick and pack
This episode sponsored by OCADO addresses the problem of delivering customised orders in a grocery shop. The customer uses an app on a tablet to select a limited number of items and makes an order. The system processes the order and sends it to the robot that will collect the items from the shop shelves and put them into a delivery area.

The main functionality tested in this episode is mobile manipulation of an autonomous robot, although it also requires object perception.

In the latest years, mobile manipulation has become a problem of interest among researchers due to the variety and complexity of challenges and robot capabilities that are involved.

“Different objects need different type of grasping. There is not a universal type of grasping, so robots must know which grasp to use in each case. For this episode we chose a range of packaged products, from deformable objects such as a pack of seeds to reflective objects like a jar of honey or a metallic tube of tomato puree. On the shelves there are rows of the same product, this makes it more challenging for the robot to grab the object without damaging it or the ones surrounding it. It is also important that the robot is capable of understanding if it failed to achieve the task, requiring it to try again” comments Roberto Capobianco, lecturer at the Sapienza University of Rome and lead member of the technical committee of Episode E07.

The competition arena reproduces a grocery shop. It has shelves with products and a delivery area. The role of the robot in this context is to support and provide customers with the deliveries they ordered. It also can assist the shop staff by connecting to the data hub and automatically updating the list of products, take care of stock or check if the shelves need to be refilled.

“OCADO was interested in this episode from the very beginning and contributed actively to the rulebook. They helped us design the layout of the arena to make it realistic and at the same time closer to their idea of how a smart grocery shop could be in the (near) future” explains Capobianco.

Due to the complexity of the manipulation tasks, only two teams participate in this episode: CATIE Robotics and b-it-bots.
“Yesterday we tested successfully the navigation and taking orders tasks. Today we are focusing on the second part of the episode, which involves detecting the different objects, grabing them and putting them in the red boxes. We expect the robot to be able to complete the full sequence tomorrow” says Clement Pinet, software engineer at CATIE and team member of CATIE Robotics.

Episode (E10): Through the door
This episode aims at evaluating the capability of an autonomous robot to interact with a hinged door. Hinged doors are common in human environments and probably, one of the pieces of engineering most closely matched to human capabilities and limitations. This means that they are easy to use for a standard person but can be difficult or impossible to operate for those who do not match that standard criteria. For instance, people with disabilities, small children, animals and mobile machines such as robots.
“In a long-term view, robots will live together with people in their houses and work in a human environment. It is important that robots can manage things that are common for us, one of those things is doors. If you have a robot at home to assist you, it should be able to open the door to go from a room to another without your help. This episode is interesting for society for this reason, and for researchers because it is a complex manipulation task. The robot has to manipulate an object that has multiple mobile elements that need to be moved at the same time. When we open a door, we move the handle and at the same time we move the door.” explains Giulio Fontana, research engineer at Politecnico di Milano, and lead member of the technical committee of Episode E10.

The main functionality tested in this episode is interaction with physical objects, although navigation and mapping are also required to complete the tasks.

The robots must identify the door, approach it, open it and go through it. In each run the configuration of the handle, the torque (e.g. simulating a small rock behind it or a big box) and the colour of the surface may change; pushing teams to find a more general approach to the problem.

Minh Nguyen, master student at the Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg and team member of b-it-bots comments “The complexity is solving this problem in a general way. There are many sensors involved in the task of opening a door: vision, tactile, force torque, etc. and humans have a background knowledge of how to open doors or operate them. We have been interacting with different types of doors all our life. Getting information from the interaction between the robot and the door will help us to better integrate all the different aspects necessary for opening it.”

The “Through the door” episode is funded by EUROBENCH Horizon 2020 project with the aim to contribute and consolidate a benchmarking methodology for human-centred robots such as prostheses, exoskeletons and humanoids. Researchers and engineers behind the Modular Active Door for RObot Benchmarking (MADROB) have developed a task benchmark (TBM) that can also be used within the benchmarking at competitions of the European Robotics League.

“For the SciRoc challenge we use only the motion control part. The sensor part is tailored to the requirements of EUROBENCH and is not used in this competition” says Fontana.

Martino Migliavacca, CEO of Nova Labs, a spin-off of the Artificial Intelligence and Robotics laboratory of Politecnico di Milano and partner in MADROB, explains how the sensors on both sides of the door work. “We measure with sensors the distance to the floor, so we can know if the robot has gone through the door or not. In this image you can see the signal of a sensor located above the door handle, the drop on the signal means that a robot or a person has gone through the door.”

The two teams competing in this episode use commercial robotics platforms. The team Leeds Autonomous Service Robots participated with a PAL Robotics TIAGo robot, while the team b-it-bots participated with the current RoboCup@Home domestic standard platform: the Toyota HSR.

For more information on the episodes including the evaluation criteria, check the SciRoc Rulebook – episode E07 and SciRoc Rulebook – Episode E10.

Don’t miss tomorrow’s Day Three recap on emergency drones in urban environments.

The ERL Smart Cities Robotics Challenge (SciRoc Challenge) includes five different episodes around the topic of smart shopping. Ten teams from five different countries have travelled to Milton Keynes, UK, to participate in this unique biennial event that brings together the three European Robotics League (ERL) competitions: consumer, professional and emergency.

SciRoc challenge adds the new concept of episodes to the ERL benchmarking methodology. An episode aims at targeting one or two functionalities (tested during a specific ERL Functionality Benchmark, FBM) within an operational context. For instance, delivering coffee orders or taking an elevator. In order to complete an episode, the robot might also be required to integrate other functionalities commonly used in a social environment, such as navigation or speech recognition.

Teams participate in one or more episodes during the week, and the best two will classify for the finals on Saturday.

Human-Robot interaction and Mobility
The SciRoc challenge is organised in three categories, being one of them the Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) and mobility. The episodes of this category involve robots able to show social behaviours, such as verbally interacting with (human) customers or navigating respecting proxemics, in line with the ERL Consumer Robots league. Any robot, wheeled or legged, with navigational and verbal communication can participate in the two episodes available in this category: Deliver coffee shop orders (E03) and Take the elevator (E04)

Episode (E03): Deliver coffee shop orders
In this episode sponsored by COSTA Coffee the robot assists the staff of a coffee shop by taking care of the customers. The robot must recognise the status of all tables (i.e. Need serving, Already served, Needs cleaning, and Table ready), take orders, report the number of free tables, and deliver objects such as food and beverages to and from the customers’ tables.

“The question I had in mind when designing the episode of Deliver coffee shop orders was: how could a robot best assist humans in a shop? We are not talking about taking their job, but to help them. For example, a catering robot can assist human servers at peak hours by handling the manual works at a fast pace and reducing the customer response time” explains Meysam Basiri, researcher at Instituto Superior Tecnico (IST) and member of the technical committee of episode E03.

The main functionalities evaluated in this episode are people perception and object perception. However, the episode also requires other functionalities such as navigation and speech recognition.

The robot has 15 minutes to execute sequentially and without any interruption three phases: 1) recognising the status of all the tables and report it, 2) serving an order and 3) greeting and guiding a new customer to the table.
As HRI is not the main focus of the episode, the selection of the menu orders has been left open for the teams to decide. They can simply ask the customers to communicate the item numbers through speech, a use QR codes, click the items in a display, etc.

Robots will also report their position in the shop, the table status and the orders to the smart data hub, this way the referees and the person at the counter will have access to the information in real-time.

The four teams competing in this episode are SocRob, Gentlebots, eNTiTy and Leeds Autonomous Service Robots. All the teams participate with the PAL Robotics TIAGo platform, except SocRob, that participates with the Monarch platform from IDmind.

Carlos Azevedo, PhD student and team member of SocRob comments, “This robot was developed to interact with children with cancer in a hospital. The group of researchers of the MONARCH project asked the kids to draw a robot and used the drawings to design the robotics platform. Therefore, it is not very tall and has that kind of cute face. People seem to empathise easily with the robot, which makes easier human-robot interaction“. He adds that the team has specifically developed for the coffee shop episode an artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm to establish conversation with the customers “we thought it would be more interesting to start a human-like conversation when the robot doesn’t, for example, understand a menu order. Sorry, did you ask for A or for B?”

Episode (E04): Take the elevator
In this HRI & mobility episode, the robot must take the elevator together with regular customers of the shopping mall to reach a service located on another floor. The robot must enter and exit the elevator at the right floor in the presence of people and interact with the smart data hub to know the floor it needs to go. Due to safety reasons and with the purpose of showing to the public how interactions inside the elevator is happening, the episode takes place in a realistic mock elevator.
The main functionality tested in this episode is navigation respecting proxemics, and it also requires other functionalities like spoken dialogue beyond command and people detection.

Luca Iocchi, Assistant Professor at Sapienza University of Rome, and lead member of Episode E04 technical committee explains that in this episode there is a focus also on the social aspect. The robot needs to negotiate the space with humans inside the elevator, thus it may need to use human social protocols. “When we take the elevator with other people, we do our best to find a comfortable space in that confined environment. That negotiation of space requires social communication. In this context, a robot needs to use these social protocols to achieve its goal. If there is missing information, ask the human. One important, and novel, element of this competition is that the customers are volunteers with no technical knowledge, and they are also involved in the evaluation of the robots”.

This episode has a Human-robot Interaction questionnaire as part of the performance evaluation and scoring. The questionnaire has been developed by Lu wang, PhD student at Sapienza University of Rome, and member of the technical committee of episode E04; with the external collaboration of Mary Ellen Foster, Senior lecturer on Human-Robot Interaction at the University of Glasgow, UK. “We developed this questionnaire to evaluate users’ perceptions in a real context. We investigated previous work done in this type of questionnaires and filmed an experiment in a similar context to the one of the episode. We asked users to select from a list of behaviours which ones they saw. From their answers we designed what is now the HRI questionnaire we are using in episode E04” explains Lun Wang.

The efforts to generate this questionnaire and the episode rulebook are now part of the scientific paper “Developing a Questionnaire to Evaluate Customers’ Perception in the Smart City Robotic Challenge” that will be presented at the 28th Edition of the IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (Ro-Man 2019).

The award for the best social robot has unleashed teams’ creativity when developing the human-robot interaction. Referees have already seen volunteers laughing at some of the robots’ comments.

“Humans are helpful by nature. They want to take part in activities when they see a robot that reminds them of the future. If the robot is more human-like and behaves more like a human, it will be better accepted by customers. In that context we can also predict some actions or behaviours of the customers. We use the Pepper robot because it has a soft voice and a broad range of gestures, thus is less likely to scare people. If a robot relies on being expressive, it can rely on people to help it.” says Daniel Delgado Bellamy, research associate at the Bristol Robotics Laboratory and team member of HEARTS.

In this first day, the five participating teams (HEARTS, Gentlebots, Leeds Autonomous Service Robots, eNTiTy and Robotics Lab UC3) performed without major problems.

Team Gentlebots completed the episode in the first day with a TIAGO robot they loaned from SciRoc platinum sponsor PAL robotics. “We have been working with TIAGo since June this year. Our research team focuses in cognitive architecture oriented to social robots. We chose the platform without the manipulator, because we were interested in the social navigation and dialogue. TIAGo is definitely an easy and powerful platform to work with” says Francisco Martin Rico, Associate professor at Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, and Team leader of Gentlebots.

For a detailed description of the episodes and the evaluation criteria, check the SciRoc Rulebook – episode E03 and SciRoc Rulebook – Episode E04.

Watch this space for Day Two: robot manipulation in human environments!

The city of Milton Keynes hosts from the 17th to the 21st of September the European Robotics League – Smart Cities Robotics Challenge (SciRoc Challenge). For the first time, international researchers in robotics and artificial intelligence meet in a shopping mall to demonstrate the state of the art in robotics within the context of smart cities and specifically smart shopping.

The European Robotics League, funded by the European Commission to advance research, development and innovation in robotics and artificial intelligence, is the umbrella for three robotics competitions: ERL Consumer, ERL Emergency and ERL Professional service robots. All three leagues meet every two years in the ERL Smart Cities Robotics Challenge, showcasing how real robots can make our lives better in urban environments.

The Challenge
The SciRoc challenge will be held in the smart shopping mall of the Centre:MK. The challenge focuses on smart shopping and is divided into a series of episodes, each consisting of a task to be performed addressing specific research challenges. In order to accomplish their tasks, robots will have to cooperate with the simulated digital infrastructure of a smart shopping mall. Although the competing robots will face mock scenarios, the environment and difficulties are intended to be as realistic as possible, including the interaction with people from the public.

The episodes are organised into three categories:

Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) and Mobility, focuses on robots able to show social behaviour tasks such as verbal interaction with humans.

Manipulation, focuses on robots able to achieve manipulation tasks.

Emergency, defines tasks addressed autonomously by small aerial robots

The SciRoc consortium has designed the episodes with the collaboration of external experts from research and industry in the different categories.

The five episodes that are part of the Smart Cities Robotics challenge, and have been chosen by the robotics community from a previous list of fourteen are:

Deliver coffee shop orders (E03)
In this episode the robot will assist customers in a coffee shop by taking orders and bringing objects to and from customers’ tables.
The main functionality evaluated in this episode is people perception. Additional side functionalities are navigation, speech synthesis and recognition.

Take the elevator(E04)
The robot must take the elevator crowded with customers to reach a service located in another floor.
The robot should interact with the MK:DataHub to discover which floor it must reach to accomplish its task. The robot must be able to take the elevator together with regular customers of the shopping mall.

Shopping pick and pack (E07)
The robot is in one the booths of the mall. On the shelf of the booth are the goods displayed for sale to the customers.
The customers can place orders through a tablet. The robot must move behind the display and collect the requested packages for the customer, place them in a box, and place the box on a tray where the customer can pick it up.

Open the door (E10)
Doors are ubiquitous in human environments. There are many types of doors, some of which are easier to operate than others for a robot.
In this episode the robot will identify a door, approach it and open it completely within a specified tolerance from 90°.

Fast delivery of emergency pills (E12)
The aerial robot must attend an emergency situation in which a first-aid kit needs to be delivered to a customer.
The robot must be able to fly autonomously to the customer location as fast as possible.

Teams can participate in one or more episodes depending on to their research interests.

The teams
A total of 10 teams from 5 different countries classified to compete in the first edition of the ERL Smart Cities Robotics Challenge.
The teams participating in the SciRoc Challenge 2019 are:

1. SocRob@Home – The Soccer Robots or Society of Robots (SocRob) team is a long-term research project of the Instituto Superior Tecnico, Portugal. Funded in 1998, the team has a broad experience participating in robotics competitions such as RoboCup Soccer, RoboCup@Home, RocKin@Homeand and ERL Consumer Robots. The team has special interest in the topic of HRI and mobility and will participate in Episode 3 – Deliver coffee shop orders.

2. Robotics Lab UC3 – This multidisciplinary research group from the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain, has previously participated in the ERL Consumer Robots league with one of the TIAGO platforms sponsored by PAL Robotics. The team will demonstrate their robot abilities to interact with humans in the Episode 4 – Take the elevator.

3. Gentlebots – Gentlebots is a team of researchers in robotics from the Rey Juan Carlos University and the University of León, Spain. Their research focus is on software development that allows robots to exhibit intelligent behaviours and they have competed in RoboCup@Home. They will participate in Episode 3 and Episode 4.

4. b-it-bots – The team from the Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg, Germany, has a broad experience with industrial and domestic robots in RoboCup@Work and RoboCup@Home. Winners of the ERL Professional Robots Season 2018-2019, they will participate in Episode 7 – Shopping pick and pack and Episode 10- Open the door, both episodes involve manipulation tasks.

“You learn a lot of things at University, but not always how to apply them in real life. Robotics competitions are the best place for students to use their knowledge in real scenarios and learn from mistakes. In this competition we are solving problems which do not have a solution yet, so the students cannot download a tutorial or watch a YouTube video, they need create their own engineered solutions. This is learning by doing, not learning by listening” says Deebul Nair, b-it-bots Team Manager.

5. Leeds Autonomous Service Robots – The team of the newly established AI group of the University of Leeds, UK, studies long-term decision making and adaptation. They will demonstrate how it is applied in robotics by participating in Episodes 3, 4 and 10.

6. HEARTS – The Healthcare Engineering and Assistive Robotics Technology and Services (HEARTS) team is based in the Bristol Robotics Laboratory, a collaboration between the University of the West of England (UWE) and the University of Bristol, UK. The team was formed to provide an opportunity for students to get hands-on experience of developing assistive robots that are robust and reliable to assist people in a range of situations. The HEARTS will participate in Episode 4 – Take the elevator.

“Participating in the SciRoc challenge gives me the opportunity to use a social robot platform like Pepper in applications different from the ones of my PhD. Pepper is designed for interaction with humans, so it is a good platform for the episode of the elevator in which we are competing” explains Beth Mackey, PhD student and member of the HEART team.

7. UWE Aero – This aerial team of the University of the West of England, UK, is made up of a group of students interested in aerospace projects, focusing in Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Their backgrounds in aerospace engineering, 3D printing and computer science are a perfect combination to participate in Episode 12 – Fast delivery of emergency pills.

8. CATIE Robotics – The technology transfer center CATIE, France, created in early 2018 this robotics team with the aim of exploring service robotics. CATIE robotics was created in early 2018, and has participated at RoboCup@Home. The team aims to explore service robotics from an application-driven perspective.

“Competitions bring together people from different technical backgrounds under a common goal. They give visibility and the opportunity to be part of a community of experts. Robotics competitions are always very motivating” says Remi Fabre, Team Leader of CATIE robotics.

They will apply their knowledge in control and grasping in Episode 7 – Shopping pick and pack.

9. eNTiTy – Everbots – eNTiTy is the team of the R&D department of NTT Disruption, Spain. The team focuses on developing social robotics applications for clients. They first participated in the ERL Consumer tournament in IROS 2018 conference in Madrid.

“Participating in robotics competitions such as the SciRoc challenge help us advance the state of the art in social robotics and put together a good team of researchers. It gives us the opportunity to test different algorithms, such as vision modules, that we can then apply to other products” says Julian Caro Linares, robotics engineer of NTT Disruption.

They will participate with a PAL Robotics TIAGO robot in Episode 3 – Deliver coffee shop orders and Episode 4 – Take the elevator.
Irene Diaz-Portales, computer vision researcher adds “we chose TiAGo because it’s an excellent robotics platform for developing ROS modules.”

10. TeamBathDrones Research – The TeamBathDrones Research is the University of Bath, UK, competitive autonomous aircraft team. The team is formed of a mixture of lecturers, PhD and undergraduate students from the engineering faculty. Through entering in the ERL Smart cities challenge in the emergency category, they aim to demonstrate the application of collision avoidance by in-flight risk minimisation in Episode 12 – Fast delivery of emergency pills.

Which teams will successfully address the SciRoc Challenge Episodes? Don’t miss the updates starting this week.