Sep 13, 2011 - Robotic automation, microrobotics, ... evaluation tools to judge a computer plan of a ... Best Automation Paper: âAutomated Cell Manipulation:.
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Contests in China Put Next-Generation Robot Technologies to the Test By Michael Newman and Stephen Balakirsky
Robotic automation, microrobotics, robotic perception and recognition, and modular reconfigurable robots advanced a few steps closer to their future applications in manufacturing, health care, and other areas during 9–13 May 2011, i.e., when the Robotics Challenge took place at ICRA in Shanghai, China. The quartet of contests—the Virtual Manufacturing Automation Competition (VMAC), the Mobile Microrobotics Challenge (MMC), the Solutions in Perception Challenge (SPC), and the Modular and Reconfigurable Robot Challenge (MRRC)—are designed to prove the viability of advanced robotics and microrobotics technologies (Figure 6). In the first of the two VMAC matches, contestants used open-source
evaluation tools to judge a computer plan of a robot picking up boxes of various sizes and weights from a conveyor belt and arranging them on a pallet for shipping. The second half of the VMAC used off-the-shelf computer gaming engines to create simulations that virtually road tested a robot team’s ability to load trucks with pallets delivered from a warehouse. Drexel University (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) won the mixed palletizing contest, and Hood College (Frederick, Maryland) won the truckloading contest. Other teams competing in the VMAC were from Georgia Tech (Atlanta, Georgia) and the University of Zagreb (Croatia). The National Institute of Standards and
Technology (NIST) and Georgia Tech were coorganizers of the VMAC. In the MMC that was hosted by NIST, seven teams from Canada, Europe, and the United States pitted their miniature athletes—whose dimensions are measured in micrometers (millionth of a meter)— against each other in two events. The mobility challenge required the microbots to navigate a planar (twodimensional) maze about the size of a sesame seed. In the microassembly challenge, the competitors had to put together multiple microscale components in a narrow channel to simulate two applications: operation within a blood vessel by future medical microbots and assembly-based micromanufacturing.
• ICRA 2011: Better Robots, Better Life Under the leadership of General Chair Zexiang Li of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Program Chair Yuan Fang Zheng of Ohio State University, a host of volunteers, and the generous support of the Chinese government and others (see “Sponsors for ICRA”), the First IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) was held in China, which attracted more than 1,500 participants. There were 168 sessions in 15 tracks: a Robotics Challenge, six special forums, three keynote addresses on China’s Lunar Exploration Program by Ziyuan Ouyang, three plenary speakers (“Autonomous Driving” by Alberto Broggi, “Ultraautomation” by Ning Xi, and “Mobile Robots for Unstructured Environments” by Martin Buehler), and six special forums. Awards were presented to the following for their outstanding papers: l Best Conference Paper: “Minimum Snap Trajectory Generation and Control for Quadrotors” by Daniel Mellinger and Vijay Kumar, University of Pennsylvania l Best Manipulation Paper (Endowed by Ben Wegbreit): “Characterization of Oscillating Nano Knife for Single Cell Cutting by Nanorobotic Manipulation System Inside ESEM” by Yajing Shen, Masahiro Nakajima, Seiji Kojima, Michio Homma, and Toshio Fukuda, Nagoya University, Japan
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Best Vision Paper (Endowed by Ben Wegbreit): “Sparse Distance Learning for Object Recognition Combining RGB and Depth Information” by Kevin Lai, Liefeng Bo, Xiaofeng Ren, and Dieter Fox, University of Washington, and Intel Best Automation Paper: “Automated Cell Manipulation: Robotic ICSI” by Zhe Lu, Xuping Zhang, Clement Leung, Navid Esfandiari, Robert F. Casper, and Yu Sun, University of Toronto, Canada Best Medical Robotics Paper (Sponsored by Intuitive Surgical): “An Articulated Universal Joint Based Flexible Access Robot for Minimally Invasive Surgery” by J. Shang, D.P. Noonan, C. Payne, J. Clark, A. Darzi, and G.-Z. Yang, Imperial College, University of London, England KUKA Service Robotics Best Paper: “Dynamic Shared Control for Human–Wheelchair Cooperation” by Qinan Li, Weidong Chen, and Jingchuan Wang, Shangai Jiao Tang University, China Best Cognitive Robotics Paper (Sponsored by CoTeSys): “Donut as I Do: Learning from Failed Demonstrations” by Daniel H. Grollman and Aude Billard, EPFL, Switzerland Best Video Award: “High Performance Magnetically Driven Microtools with Ultrasonic Vibration for Biomedical Innovations” by Masaya Hagiwara, Tomohiro Kawahara, Lin Feng, Yoko Yamanishi, and Fumihito Arai.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MRA.2011.942540 Date of publication: 13 September 2011
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Figure 7. The PR2 robot and objects that were used in the SPC.
Figure 6. An audience watching a robot, during the MRRC, attempting to deposit a letter into a mailbox.
The French team—a group consisting of researchers from the FEMTO-ST Institute (Bensaçon, France), the
Institut des Systemes Intelligents et de Robotique [ISIR (Paris, France)], and the Laboratoire de Photonique
• Sponsors for ICRA Financial support for ICRA was provided by the following generous companies and organizations: l Platinum sponsors l ABB l YASKAWA l KUKA l Willow Garage l Googol Tech l Adept Mobile Robots l Arbin Boshi Automation l Silver sponsors l National Instruments
Beijing Universal Pioneering Technology l Real-Time Control and Instrumentation Laboratory l GE Global Research (Shanghai) l ALDEBARAN Robotics Best Paper Award sponsors l Intuitive Surgical (Medical Robotics) l CoTeSys (Cognitive Robotics) l KUKA (Service Robotics) l Dr. Ben Wegbreit (Robot Manipulation and Robot Vision). l
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Figure 8. Group picture of all participants from the ICRA Robotics Challenge.
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et Nanostructures [LPN (Marcoussis, France)]—sped through the maze in 2.23 s, more than a half-a-minute faster than the runner-up University of Hawaii’s bubble microrobot (named because the robot is actually a gas bubble in appearance). The University of Waterloo (Ontario, Canada) was the winner in the microassembly event, densely packing together a formation of triangular-shaped lattice components that was 45 lm in length. The Waterloo robot was the only one able to complete the task. Other teams competing in the MMC were the University of Maryland (College Park); the Stevens Institute of Technology (Hoboken, New Jersey); the University of Texas (Arlington); the Italian Team, composed of members from the Italian Institute of Technology (Pontedera, Italy); and the CRIM Laboratory
• of Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna (Pisa, Italy). The third competition, the firstever SPC, was cohosted by NIST and Willow Garage. Teams in this contest were evaluated on how well their sensing software identified and determined the positions of 35 common household items and 15 manufacturing components. Robust perception is a core skill for nextgeneration robots to successfully operate in both cluttered and uncluttered environments such as factory floors, nursing homes, and even disaster sites (Figure 7). First place with a score of 68.78% went to the team from the University of California (Berkeley) with the second and third taken by Jacob
University (Bremen, Germany) at 66.41% and Stanford University (Palo Alto, California) at 53.61%, respectively. Four other teams made up the contestant pool for the SPC: University of Freiburg (Germany); Rekno Robotics (La Spezia, Italy); the University of Arkansas (Little Rock); and the State University of New York (Buffalo). The MRRC event was hosted by the University of Southern California and featured two events in which the competitors were given two hours to devise robotic solutions to sample problems provided by the hosts. The teams did not know the problems in advance and had to construct a robotic solution using only robotic
modules and tools that could fit into a single suitcase. In the challenge’s two events, robots had to: 1) go through a complex pipe system to shut down a leaking valve and 2) climb from the floor onto a desk and deposit a letter into a mailbox with narrow slots. The team performances were measured by the difficulty level of the problems they solved. This year’s winning team was from the University of Pennsylvania. A team from the Aalto University of Finland also participated in this event (Figure 8). In addition to the actual challenge events, the conference featured a special session with papers from last year’s competitors and a poster session where this year’s teams could discuss their innovative research and techniques.
IEEE HAPTICS 2012 will take place March 4-7 at the Sheraton Wall Centre in downtown Vancouver BC, Canada, as a standalone 4-day event with tutorials and workshops on the first day. Full papers due: Tutorial / workshop proposals due: Demos & Exhibits due:
September 16, 2011 September 29, 2011 (please nofy us ASAP if interested) December 19, 2011
Vancouver is the nerve center of Canada’s startlingly beauful, scienfically rich and culturally diverse West Coast, home to top universies (University of Brish Columbia, Victoria, Simon Fraser) and Olympic skiing at Whistler and on Vancouver’s North Shore; within the downtown core are exquisite Chinese gardens, dreamy beaches, bustling harbors, ancient trees, and some of the best restaurants in North America - with definitely the best views.
hp://hapcssymposium.org/
Karon MacLean & Marcia O’Malley, Co-Chairs chairs@hapcssymposium.org
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