Project description Cognitive Systems and RoboticsSTRANDS aims to enable a robot to achieve robust and intelligent behaviour in human environments through exploitation of long-term experience. The approach is based on understanding 3D space and how it changes over time, from milliseconds to months. The project will develop control mechanisms which yield adaptive behaviour in highly demanding, real-world security and care scenarios. The robots will be able to run for significantly longer than current systems. Long runtimes provide previously unattainable opportunities for a robot to learn about its world. The society will benefit as robots become more capable of assisting humans, a necessary advance due to the demographic shifts in the health industry. Show the project objective Hide the project objective STRANDS aims to enable a robot to achieve robust and intelligent behaviour in human environments through adaptation to, and the exploitation of, long-term experience. Our approach is based on understanding 3D space and how it changes over time, from milliseconds to months. We will develop novel approaches to extract spatio-temporal structure from sensor data gathered during months of autonomous operation. Extracted structure will include reoccurring 3D shapes, objects, people, and models of activity. We will also develop control mechanisms which exploit these structures to yield adaptive behaviour in highly demanding, real-world security and care scenarios.The spatio-temporal dynamics presented by such scenarios (e.g. humans moving, furniture changing position, objects (re-)appearing) are largely treated as anomalous readings by state-of-the-art robots. Errors introduced by these readings accumulate over the lifetime of such systems, preventing many of them from running for more than a few hours. By autonomously modelling spatio-temporal dynamics, our robots will be able run for significantly longer than current systems (at least 120 days by the end of the project). Long runtimes provide previously unattainable opportunities for a robot to learn about its world. Our systems will take these opportunities, advancing long-term mapping, life-long learning about objects, person tracking, human activity recognition and self-motivated behaviour generation. The extraction of structure is key to this, as it both captures potential meaning, and also compresses a robot's sensor data into representations capable of storing months of experience in a manageable form.We will integrate our advances into complete cognitive systems to be deployed and evaluated at two end-user sites: a care home for the elderly in Austria, and an office environment patrolled by a security firm in the UK. The tasks these systems will perform are impossible without long-term adaptation to spatio-temporal dynamics, yet they are tasks demanded by early adopters of cognitive robots. We will measure our progress by benchmarking these systems against detailed user requirements and a range of objective criteria including measures of system runtime and autonomous behaviour.STRANDS will produce a wide variety for results, from software components to an evaluation of robot assistants for care staff. These results will benefit society in a range of ways: researchers will be able to access our results as open-access papers, software and data; our methodology for creating long-running robots will encourage roboticists to tackle this unsolved problem in our field; industrialists will see how cognitive robots can play a key role in their businesses, and access prototypes for their own use; and society will benefit as robots become more capable of assisting humans, a necessary advance due to, for example, the demographic shifts in the health industry. Fields of science natural sciencescomputer and information sciencessoftwareengineering and technologyelectrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineeringelectronic engineeringroboticscognitive robotsengineering and technologyelectrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineeringelectronic engineeringsensors Programme(s) FP7-ICT - Specific Programme "Cooperation": Information and communication technologies Topic(s) ICT-2011.2.1 - Cognitive Systems and Robotics Call for proposal FP7-ICT-2011-9 See other projects for this call Funding Scheme CP - Collaborative project (generic) Coordinator THE UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM EU contribution € 1 601 509,00 Address Edgbaston B15 2TT Birmingham United Kingdom See on map Region West Midlands (England) West Midlands Birmingham Activity type Higher or Secondary Education Establishments Administrative Contact May Chung (Ms.) Links Contact the organisation Opens in new window Website Opens in new window Total cost No data Participants (7) Sort alphabetically Sort by EU Contribution Expand all Collapse all TECHNISCHE UNIVERSITAET WIEN Austria EU contribution € 1 331 642,00 Address KARLSPLATZ 13 1040 Wien See on map Region Ostösterreich Wien Wien Activity type Higher or Secondary Education Establishments Administrative Contact Markus Vincze (Prof.) Links Contact the organisation Opens in new window Website Opens in new window Total cost No data AKADEMIE FUR ALTERSFORSCHUNG AM HAUS DER BARMHERZIGKEIT Austria EU contribution € 523 958,00 Address SEEBOCKGASSE 30 A 28 1160 WIEN See on map Region Ostösterreich Wien Wien Activity type Research Organisations Administrative Contact Christoph Gisinger (Mr.) Links Contact the organisation Opens in new window Total cost No data RHEINISCH-WESTFAELISCHE TECHNISCHE HOCHSCHULE AACHEN Germany EU contribution € 1 399 208,00 Address TEMPLERGRABEN 55 52062 Aachen See on map Region Nordrhein-Westfalen Köln Städteregion Aachen Activity type Higher or Secondary Education Establishments Administrative Contact Ernst Schmachtenberg (Prof.) Links Contact the organisation Opens in new window Website Opens in new window Total cost No data KUNGLIGA TEKNISKA HOEGSKOLAN Sweden EU contribution € 1 437 427,00 Address BRINELLVAGEN 8 100 44 Stockholm See on map Region Östra Sverige Stockholm Stockholms län Activity type Higher or Secondary Education Establishments Administrative Contact Friné Portal (Ms.) Links Contact the organisation Opens in new window Website Opens in new window Total cost No data G4S TECHNOLOGY LIMITED United Kingdom EU contribution € 17 600,00 Address CHALLENGE HOUSE - INTERNATIONAL DRIVE GL20 8UQ TEWKESBURY See on map Activity type Private for-profit entities (excluding Higher or Secondary Education Establishments) Administrative Contact David Ella (Mr.) Links Contact the organisation Opens in new window Total cost No data UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS United Kingdom EU contribution € 1 049 541,00 Address WOODHOUSE LANE LS2 9JT Leeds See on map Region Yorkshire and the Humber West Yorkshire Leeds Activity type Higher or Secondary Education Establishments Administrative Contact Martin Hamilton (Mr.) Links Contact the organisation Opens in new window Website Opens in new window Total cost No data UNIVERSITY OF LINCOLN United Kingdom EU contribution € 873 658,00 Address Brayford Pool LN6 7TS Lincoln See on map Region East Midlands (England) Lincolnshire Lincolnshire Activity type Higher or Secondary Education Establishments Administrative Contact Carolyn Williams (Mrs.) Links Contact the organisation Opens in new window Website Opens in new window Total cost No data