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”.
(Top) Image from the camera inside the elevator. (Bottom) Volunteers act as customers and interact with the robots. Photo Credits: European Robotics LeagueThis 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!
In this episode, Ron Vanderkley interviews Mark Pivac, Chief Technical Officer and co-founder of FBR (formerly Fastbrick Robotics) about the world’s first end-to-end autonomous bricklaying robot, ‘Hadrian X’. Three years after his first interview, we catch up with Pivac to see how FBR has expanded its operation and chat about their latest commercial prototype, ‘Hadrian X’, as well as the future of the robotic construction industry.
Mark Pivac is the primary inventor of FBR’s automated bricklaying technology. He is an aeronautical and mechanical engineer with over 25 years’ experience working on the development of high technology equipment ranging from lightweight aircraft to heavy off-road equipment. He has 20 years’ experience working with pro/engineer 3D CAD software as well as high-level mathematics, including matrix mathematics, robot transformations and vector mathematics for machine motion. Mark has also worked extensively with design, commissioning and fault finding on servo controlled motion systems achieving very high dynamic performance.
Links
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.