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 occurred from 15-21 July in Salvador, Brazil. The Logistics League varieties a part of the Industrial League and is an application-driven league impressed by the commercial situation of a sensible 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.

Might you begin by giving us an introduction to the Logistics League?

Alexander Ferrein: The concept of the Logistics League is to have robots serving to in intra-production logistics. The enjoying area is ready up with completely different machines and the robots have to deliver 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 concept is that the robots ship these merchandise after they’ve been machined, at a sure handover level, after which the workforce can be awarded factors. The setup is that we now have six machines per workforce, and three robots working within the sensible manufacturing facility.

There are two groups competing on the identical time on completely different sides of the sector. A lot of the machines are on the house facet of the sector, however some machines are additionally on the opponent’s facet of the sector. The groups want to indicate fundamental robotics abilities like navigation abilities and collision avoidance. For the manufacturing of merchandise we now have little discs which have completely different colors and might be stacked on high of one another, they usually have completely different caps. We’ve round 550 completely 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 normally 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 should be produced or machined by a workforce of robots – with out this planning and workforce work it wouldn’t be potential to ship the merchandise inside the allotted time within the competitors.

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

Until Hofmann: One necessary element is that every one the merchandise that should be manufactured, the orders for these come on-line, and the variety of potential merchandise may be very excessive. Due to this fact, you possibly can’t do any planning upfront – you possibly can’t simply create an enormous database that comprises one sequence that you just execute for each potential product, that doesn’t actually work. So the robots have to do on-line planning. Attributable to the truth that we now have a number of robots within the workforce after which additionally the opponents groups’ robots on the sector, many issues go in a different way than deliberate, so a really massive side of the competitors is execution monitoring and on-line replanning. Principally you create an preliminary plan, however that you must consistently adapt that plan to what truly occurs throughout execution. I simply wish to stress that in distinction to different RoboCup competitions, it’s actually a long-horizon planning activity within the sense that we normally have to do actions on a time horizon of 5 to 10 minutes to really get to an intermediate aim of manufacturing a type of merchandise.

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

Might you discuss among the challenges the groups face within the league, and is there a problem or side of the competitors that the groups have discovered significantly tough?

Alexander: To begin with, one must say that it’s a actually powerful drawback that we face right here. So the groups which might be beginning new, they must take care of the entire robotic elements, so cellular 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, additionally they have to construct their very own manipulating units. After which there’s this huge planning side of the league, which can also be not really easy. Once we began this in 2011, 2012, we had been pondering that this should be a solved drawback, that one might use scheduling techniques, that manufacturing is digital, and that all the things can be simple. Nevertheless, we discovered it’s not truly simple, and there aren’t any off-the-shelf options for a fleet of robots doing planning and manufacturing.

Taking a look at our workforce (which has turn into significantly profitable through the years) and from observing the opposite groups as a trustee, I feel that the mixing side of all of the completely different duties is known as a arduous 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 main problem. In the present day, navigation of a robotic shouldn’t be the large subject, principally, 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 main problem.

Until: As I discussed, I feel the mix of long-horizon planning and execution monitoring is especially tough. We do have plenty 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 plenty of reasoning that considers all of the completely different circumstances which will occur. For instance, all of a sudden you might have a product showing in a machine and also you now not know the configuration as a result of this info was misplaced on the way in which. How do you take care of this? One other instance is that the robotic drops a bit whereas it’s driving round after which tries to feed it into the machine. Then the machine stories a failure and the workforce must maintain its world mannequin up-to-date to know that this product is now 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 arduous, we don’t have many groups within the league. We had a brand new workforce at RoboCup2023, in Bordeaux, and they’re now persistently coming to the RoboCups, which is sweet. Aside from 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 abilities solely develop slowly, so new challenges usually are not actually launched. There are slight adjustments right here and there. One of many main adjustments lately was throughout Coronavirus instances the place we needed to abandon the entire match side as a result of we couldn’t play with two groups on the identical time. We launched elements of the sport as challenges. Now we now have a problem observe as nicely, the place groups can simply give attention to sure elements of the league and don’t have to play the total sport.

The abilities of the groups usually are not growing in such a method that we actually want so as to add new challenges as a result of it’s nonetheless unsolved and arduous for all of the groups to get the robots operating, as a result of we now have so many various elements.

I perceive that you’re excited about some adjustments to the league. Might 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 keep on 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 truly already had discussions with @work, and agreed that the long-term aim 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 can be one massive league moderately than separate industrial competitions. And the concept of the league that we’re at the moment planning emigrate to is known as a broader sensible manufacturing situation the place we now have completely different elements of sensible manufacturing. So at the moment it’s actually solely the manufacturing logistics half. However sooner or later, we additionally wish 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 can be very completely 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 shedding all of the groups is one thing that’s nonetheless within the making.

Alexander: I additionally don’t suppose 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 @Residence 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 excited about proposing challenges which might be trying in direction of the longer term. To this point we now have been doing issues that we thought is perhaps related to trade, however trade shouldn’t be very serious about what we’re doing right here. A minimum of, they aren’t knocking at our doorways and asking what our options are. That’s additionally one other side that we’ll probably 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 method such that trade can be extra ?

Alexander: Sure, be related, proper? I imply, you see a lot happening, particularly in China with the robotic manufacturing OEMs [original equipment manufacturers] that construct these robots in a couple 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 ascertain a future that’s completely different from at the moment.

In regards to the interviewees

	Alexander Ferrein acquired his MSc in Pc 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 Techniques Group at Aachen College earlier than he turned a professor for Robotics and Pc Science at FH Aachen College of Utilized Sciences. He’s a heading the Cellular Autonomous Techniques & 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 choice making of robots and brokers performing underneath 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, School of Superior Science and Know-how, 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 government 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 Shopper Electronics). He’s a member of the World Expertise in Japan organizing committee of Autonomous Cellular Robots.