Carologistics 2016
Carologistics bring their third-in-a-row championship title at the robot world cup in the RoboCup Logistics League to Aachen
In a breath-taking final, the joint team Carologistics from RWTH and FH Aachen was able to defend their title against team Solidus from Switzerland with 94:26. This is the third championship in a row that the team won in the RoboCup Logistics League at the international RoboCup competitions. The team consists of researchers and students from the Cybernetic Cluster (RWTH Aachen, Mechanical Engineering, Prof. Sabina Jeschke), the Knowledge-Based Systems Group (RWTH Aachen, Computer Science, Prof. Gerhard Lakemeyer) and the MASCOR Institute (FH Aachen, Electrical Engineering and Information Technology, Prof. Alexander Ferrein).
In the RoboCup Logistics League two teams compete with three autonomous mobile robots each in an intra-logistics scenario. The scenario reflects the idea of an industry 4.0 setting, where intelligent machines take over building complex products in a dynamic production process. First, robots have to explore their environment to locate and identify the machines available. Then, an optimal flow of material using these machines is planned and realized.
This year again a technical challenge was held. It features taks alongside the main competition to test possible future developments of the league. One goal amongst others was to locate the modular production stations without the help of markers (e.g. QR or AR tags). The team Carologistics was able to reach first place in this challenge as well. Apart from this challenge, for the first time, a RoboCup Industrial Cross-Over-Challenge was arranged. In this challenge teams from the RoboCup Logistics League and from RoboCup@Work collaboratively work on a common task. The Carologistics team already published their software in 2014 and 2015 and they were awarded the third place of the 1st International Harting Open Source Award.
Besides their strong basic capabilities in environment perception and navigation the robots from the Aachen Carologistics team scored with their robust decentralized multi-agent strategy. This strategy is particularly fitted for highly complex, only partially known and dynamic environments. After a convincing preliminary round and playoff-phase the Carologistics had to face team Solidus from Switzerland in the grand final. With a strong performance the Aachen robots were able to clearly secure their victory. This also reinforces Aachen's current role as a leading place for science and research in mobile robotics and artificial intelligence.
Next year, after 21 years RoboCup will be held in its birth place Nagoya in Japan again, where was held for the first time in 1996.
The Carologistics is online at carologistics.org.
There is an Open Source Release of the software at fawkesrobotics.org/blog/2016/02/22/rcll2015-release.
Find the Carologistics on facebook.com/Carologistics
based on the geman text by Christoph Henke, IMA/ZLW & IfU, RWTH Aachen
english version by Stefan Schiffer, KBSG at RWTH Aachen & MASCOR at FH Aachen