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Robot Competitions Kick Innovation in Cognitive Systems and Robotics

Project description


Cognitive Systems and Robotics
RoCKIn Robot Challenge
Robot competitions have proved to be an effective instrument to foster scientific research and push the state of the art in a field. Also, thanks to these competitions, young students are attracted to science and engineering disciplines, and the relevance of robotics research is demonstrated to citizens. The goal of RoCKIn is to speed up the progress towards smarter robots through scientific competitions. Two challenges have been selected due to their high relevance and impact on Europe’s societal and industrial needs: domestic service robots (RoCKIn@Home) and innovative robot applications in industry (RoCKIn@Work).  RoCKIn introduces new and prevailing research topics, like natural interaction with humans or networking mobile robots with sensors in ambient environments.

Robot competitions have proved to be an effective instrument to foster scientific research and push the state of the art in a field. Teams participating in a competition must identify best practice solutions covering a wide range of functionalities and integrate them into practical systems. These systems have to work in the real world, outside of the usual laboratory conditions. The competition experience helps to transfer the applied methods and tools to successful and high-impact real-world applications. Other effects of robot competitions are that young students are attracted to science and engineering disciplines, and that the relevance of robotics research is demonstrated to citizens. However, some limitations can emerge as competitions mature: the effort required to enter the competition grows and may present a barrier for the participation of new teams; a gap between benchmarking complete systems in competitions and benchmarking subsystems in research may develop and limit the usefulness of the competition results to industry.
The goal of RoCKIn is to speed up the progress towards smarter robots through scientific competitions. Two challenges have been selected for the competitions due to their high relevance and impact on Europe's societal and industrial needs: domestic service robots (RoCKIn@Home) and innovative robot applications in industry (RoCKIn@Work). Both challenges have been inspired by activities in the RoboCup community, but RoCKIn improves and extends them by introducing new and prevailing research topics, like natural interaction with humans or networking mobile robots with sensors in ambient environments, in addition to specifying concrete benchmark criteria for assessing progress.
The RoCKIn project•\tdesigns open domain testbeds for competitions targeting the two challenges and usable by researchers worldwide,•\tdevelops methods for benchmarking through competitions that allow to assess both particular subsystems as well as the integrated system,•\torganizes two robot competition events, each of them based on the two challenges and testbeds,•\torganizes camps open to student participants, so as to help new teams getting involved in the competitions, and•\texecutes dissemination activities to target stakeholders in industry and academia, as well as the general public.

Programme(s)

Topic(s)

Call for proposal

FP7-ICT-2011-9
See other projects for this call

Funding Scheme

CSA - Coordination and support action

Coordinator

IST-ID ASSOCIACAO DO INSTITUTO SUPERIOR TECNICO PARA A INVESTIGACAO E O DESENVOLVIMENTO
EU contribution
€ 361 514,00
Address
AVENIDA ANTONIO JOSE DE ALMEIDA 12
1000-043 Lisboa
Portugal

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Region
Continente Área Metropolitana de Lisboa Área Metropolitana de Lisboa
Activity type
Research Organisations
Administrative Contact
Teresa Malhoa (Dr.)
Links
Total cost
No data

Participants (6)

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Last update: 25 May 2022

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Permalink: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/601012

European Union, 2024