The Bristol Robotics Laboratory (BRL) will host the first European- Commission funded European Robotics League (ERL) tournament for service robots to be held in the UK.

Two teams from the BRL and Birmingham will pitch their robots against each other in a series of events from 26 and 30 June.

Robots designed to support people with care-related tasks in the home will be put to the test in a simulated home test bed.

The assisted living robots of the two teams will face various challenges, including understanding natural speech and finding and retrieving objects for the user.

The robots will also have to greet visitors at the door appropriately, such as welcoming a doctor on their visit, or turning away unwanted visitors.

Associate Professor Praminda Caleb-Solly, Theme Leader for Assistive Robotics at the BRL said, “The lessons learned during the competition will contribute to how robots in the future help people, such as those with ageing-related impairments and those with other disabilities, live independently in their own homes for as long as possible.

“This is particularly significant with the growing shortage of carers available to provide support for an ageing populations.”

The BRL, the host of the UK’s first ERL Service Robots tournament, is a joint initiative of the University of the West of England and the University of Bristol. The many research areas include swarm robotics, unmanned aerial vehicles, driverless cars, medical robotics and robotic sensing for touch and vision. BRL’s assisted living research group is developing interactive assistive robots as part of an ambient smart home ecosystem to support independent living.

The ERL Service Robots tournament will be held in the BRL’s Anchor Robotics Personalised Assisted Living Studio, which was set up to develop, test and evaluate assistive robotic and other technologies in a realistic home environment.

The studio was recently certified as a test bed by the ERL, which runs alongside similar competitions for industrial robots and for emergency robots, which includes vehicles that can search for and rescue people in disaster-response scenarios.

The two teams in the Bristol event will be Birmingham Autonomous Robotics Club (BARC) led by Sean Bastable from the School of Computer Science at the University of Birmingham, and the Healthcare Engineering and Assistive Robotics Technology and Services (HEARTS) team from the BRL led by PhD Student Zeke Steer.

BARC has developed its own robotics platform, Dora, and HEARTS will use a TIAGo Steel robot from PAL Robotics with a mix of bespoke and proprietary software.

The Bristol event will be open for public viewing in the BRL on the afternoon of the 29th of June 2017 (Bookable via EventBrite), and include short tours of the assisted living studio for the attendees. It will be held during UK Robotics Week, on 24-30 June 2017, when there will be a nationwide programme of robotics and automation events.

The BRL will also be organising focus groups on 28 and 29 June 2017 (Bookable via EventBrite and here) as part of the UK Robotics Week, to demonstrate assistive robots and their functionality, and seek the views of carers and older adults on these assistive technologies, exploring further applications and integration of such robots into care scenarios.

The European Commission-funded European Robotics League (ERL) is the successor to the RoCKIn, euRathlon and EuRoC robotics competitions, all funded by the EU and designed to foster scientific progress and innovation in cognitive systems and robotics. The ERL is funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. See: https://www.eu-robotics.net/robotics_league/

The ERL is part of the SPARC public-private partnership set up by the European Commission and the euRobotics association to extend Europe’s leadership in civilian robotics. SPARC’s €700 million of funding from the Commission in 2014̶20 is being combined with €1.4 billion of funding from European industry. See: http://www.eu-robotics.net/sparc

euRobotics is a European Commission-funded non-profit organisation which promotes robotics research and innovation for the benefit of Europe’s economy and society. It is based in Brussels and has more than 250 member organisations. See: www.eu-robotics.net

In 2016, the European Union co-funded 17 new robotics projects from the Horizon 2020 Framework Programme for research and innovation. 16 of these resulted from the robotics work programme, and one project resulted from the Societal Challenges part of Horizon 2020. The robotics work programme implements the robotics strategy developed by SPARC, the Public-Private Partnership for Robotics in Europe (see the Strategic Research Agenda).

A wide variety of research and innovation themes are represented in the new projects: from healthcare via transportation, industrial- and logistics robotics to events media production using drones. Some deal with complex safety matters on the frontier where robots meet people, to ensure that no one comes to harm. Others will create a sustainable ecosystem in the robotics community, setting up common platforms supporting robotics development. One project deals exclusively with the potentially radical changes facing society with the rise of new autonomous technologies. The projects are either helping humans in their daily lives at home or at work, collaborating with humans to help them with difficult, strenuous tasks, or taking care of dangerous tasks, reducing the risk to humans.

The research and innovation projects focus on a wide variety of Robotics and Autonomous Systems and capabilities, such as navigation, human-robot interaction, recognition, cognition and handling. Many of these abilities can be transferable to other fields as well.

At the European Robotics Forum 2017, on 22-24 March 2017, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK, all projects presented themselves during a dedicated workshop.

Watch the video with all Horizon2020 projects presentations:

Watch the video with FP7 projects results:

Every week, euRobotics will publish a video interview with each project, so that you can find out more about their activities.

We are looking forward to following these new projects and accompanying them to bring benefits to Europe’s citizens and economy.

Teams participating in the ERL Service Robots local tournament at certified Leon@Home Test bed. Copyright: Universidad de León.

The European Robotics League has closed a successful first season. Funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Programme for research, the ERL brings a common framework for two indoor robotics competitions, ERL Industrial Robots and ERL Service Robots and one outdoor robotics competition, ERL Emergency Robots.  The three competitions are designed to target three clear objectives: the European societal challenge of an aging population, the strengthening of the European robotics industry and the use of autonomous systems for emergency response.

The last tournament of the ERL season 2016/17 took place at the Leon@Home Test bed located at the Módulo de Investigación en Cibernética of the Universidad de León, Spain. The ERL Service Robots local competition organised by Dr Vicente Matellan and the Leon Robotics Group was held from the 13-17 March and consisted of several trials, which mainly took place on the last day.

Caption: (Left) Leon@Home Test bed. (Right) Módulo de Investigación en Cibernética (MIC). Copyright: Universidad de León

The teams competed in different Task Benchmarks (TBM) and Functionality Benchmarks (FBM), comprising “TBM1: Getting to know my home”, “TBM4: Visit My Home”, “FBM2: Navigation Functionality” and “FBM3: Speech Recognition”. Robots were required to generate a map of their environment, detect random changes in the location of furniture and other items, interact effectively with humans and demonstrate different behaviors when dealing with known and unknown people, and help them with general tasks throughout the day.

The three teams that participated in the local tournament were SPQReL, University of Rome (Italy) and University of Lincoln (UK), Outsider Bots, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos (Spain) and University of Luxemburg (Luxembourg), and Leonbot, Universidad de León (Spain).

Caption: (Left) Example of a  semantic Map of the environment. (Right) Objects used in TBM1. Copyright: Universidad de León

The final score for each team was calculated as the MEDIAN of the best performance in each TBM and FBM trials. The teams’ scoring and standings for the season 2016/2017 are available on the ERL Service Robots and ERL Industrial Robots web page.

The ERL Service and ERL Industrial Awards (Season 2016/17), sponsored by Texas Instruments University Program, were handed to the winning teams during the euRobotics Awards Ceremony held on 23 March, at the National Museum of Scotland, in Edinburgh.

ERL Tournaments dates (Season 2017/18)

The European Robotics League has announced the tournament dates for the new season. The local and major tournaments are based in Europe and are open to international participation from Universities, Research labs, Industry and/or end-users. The events are open to the public and anyone interested is welcome to contact the local organisers and attend as a spectator.

There are eight tournaments already confirmed for this season 2017-2018 and new ones are expected to be confirmed in the next months.

ERL Service Robots

Major Tournament

• 28-31 August 2017: as part of the IEEE RO-MAN 2017 event held in Lisbon, Portugal

Local Tournament

• 26-30 June 2017: BRL Anchor Personalised Assisted Living Studio, Bristol Robotics Laboratory, Bristol, UK
• 11-15 September 2017: Leon@Home test bed, Universidad de Leon, Leon, Spain
• ERW 2017, 20-26 November 2017: PAL Robotics, Barcelona, Spain.
• 4-7 December 2017: ECHORD++ RIF Peccioli test bed, Peccioli, Italy.

ERL Industrial Robots

Local Tournament

• 11-15 September 2017: b-it-bots@Work Test Bed, Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University of Applied Science, Sankt Augustin, Germany
• ERW 2017, 21-25 November 2017: Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy

ERL Emergency Robots

Major Tournament

• 15-23 September 2017: Piombino, Italy. (Download ERL Emergency 2017 brochure)

ERL Emergency 2017 promo video:

This season 2017/18, Worthington Sharpe Ltd., silver sponsor of ERL Emergency Robots 2017,  will provide one Wing Ground Control Station (GCS) for loan to a selected applicant team. Teams wishing to borrow the Wing GCS must apply to the ERL consortium, following the application procedure set on ERL Emergency web page. Applications received will be evaluated by the consortium and Worthington Sharpe Ltd. to select the team who will be granted the loan equipment.

PAL Robotics, a platinum sponsor of ERL Service Robots, announced at the ERL Awards ceremony that the company will offer on a very affordable rental scheme limited units of TIAGo robots for different teams to use in the competition.

Companies and academic institutions interested in sponsoring ERL events can contact Dr Fausto Ferreira for information on the sponsorship and exhibitor packages.

To find out more about the European Robotics League, please visit www.robotics-league.eu.

 ERL History

The ERL is the natural evolution of a series of highly successful previous competitions that were established via FP7 funded projects: RoCKIn, euRathlon and EuRoC.  All three projects aimed to foster scientific progress and innovation in cognitive systems and robotics through the design and implementation of new competitions.

The European Robotics League is funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement n° 688441

Watch the European Robotics League promo video:

www.robotics-league.eu

About euRobotics and SPARC

euRobotics is a non-profit organisation based in Brussels with the objective to make robotics beneficial for Europe’s economy and society.  With more than 250 member organisations, euRobotics also provides the European Robotics Community with a legal entity to engage in a public/private partnership with the European Commission, named SPARC.

SPARC, the public-private partnership (PPP) between the European Commission and euRobotics, is a European initiative to maintain and extend Europe’s leadership in civilian robotics. Its aim is to strategically position European robotics in the world thereby securing major benefits for the European economy and the society at large.

SPARC is the largest research and innovation programme in civilian robotics in the world, with 700 million euro in funding from the European Commission between 2014 to 2020, which is tripled by European industry to yield a total investment of 2.1 billion euro. SPARC will stimulate an ever more vibrant and effective robotics community that collaborates in the successful development of technical transfer and commercial exploitation.

www.eu-robotics.net

www.eu-robotics.net/sparc

Credit: euRobotics

The 2017 European Robotics Forum in Edinburgh brought together over 800 people from robotics academia and industry. In an effort to bridge the two, euRobotics hosted an Entrepreneurship and TechTransfer award. Startups from around Europe competed for top prizes in front of a panel of experts.

The euRobotics Technology Transfer Award, now in its fourteenth year, showcases the impact of robotics research and puts the spotlight on successful technology transfer between science and industry. Innovations in robot tech and automation — through the result of research and industry working together —  are eligible for the prize.

The euRobotics Technology Transfer Awards were handed by MEP Victor Negrescu (Romania), winner of last year’s MEP Award on Digital Agenda. As a former digital entrepreneur himself, Victor Negrescu is a promoter of a stronger voice for European entrepreneurs and researchers.

Technology Transfer Award winners and coordinators together with MEP Victor Negrescu. Credits: Visual Outcasts

Fotokite, a tethered drone, won first place. The company is designed to make aerial photography accessible for everyone. Similar to a kite, the drone is tethered and foldable making it easy for anyone who wants to take photos from a bird’s-eye view. The company raised over 400K USD in crowdfunding in 2015 and have since started shipping their product.

Christopher McCall, who pitched for Fotokite, said: “We make a new type of tethered drone which is 100% autonomous, flies for several hours, and can be used by broadcast journalists, or for inspection.” Adding that, “It’s incredible to win the Tech Transfer Award at ERF.” Watch the Fotokite in action:

https://youtu.be/FX1BpdAmRss

The Entrepreneurship award helps small innovative companies pitch their ideas for the next big thing in robotics to a panel of technology investment experts. It’s all about learning skills, gaining visibility, and bringing in the cash prize.

Entrepreneurship Award winners, coordinators and juries. Credits: Visual Outcasts

The third prize was awarded to ReHand Technologies, maker of prosthetic, orthotic and rehabilitation devices. The second prize went to Haxtron for their robot Pr0be, a spherical autonomous aerial robotic platform. The winner this year was Neha Chaudhry from the company Walk to Beat. Inspired by her late grandad who suffered from Parkinson’s for 8 years, her product is a robotic walking stick with an innovative technology that gives out pulses in the handle  – it’s discreet and looks good, so people feel empowered instead of disabled.

Commenting on winning first prize, Neha Chaudhry said, “This was totally unexpected! I’m producing and designing for assisted living using smart technology products. Our product is simple: to help improve people’s lives. And with this [Walk to Beat] it’s for people who are struggling with Parkinson’s. Winning this award is great exposure for our company and we’re delighted.”

The euRobotics TechTransfer and Entrepreneurship Awards 2017 are funded by the EU’s Horizon 2020 Programme.

European Robotics League finalists

The European Robotics League (ERL) consists of two indoor robotics competitions, ERL Industrial and ERL Service, and one outdoor robotics competition, ERL Emergency. Points are awarded by attending local and major tournaments, not a central event, with three main objectives: strengthening the European robotics industry, push innovative autonomous systems for emergency response, and addressing societal challenges of ageing populations in Europe. The European Robotics League is funded by the EU’s Horizon 2020 Programme.

Current finalists for ERL Industrial Robots are autonOHM for the best-in-class task: “Fill a box with parts for manual assembly, and b-it-bots for the best-in-class functionality “navigation functionality.” Finalists for ERL Service Robots include homer@UniKoblenz and SPQReL.

Read the ERL Awards press release: Top service and industrial robots to win the European Robotics League Awards (Season 2016/17)

ERL Service and Industrial Robots Awards. Credits: Visual Outcasts

“Challenges such as these are the pivot from research to industrial applications. Trialling in real-world environments is key to this kind of innovation.” said Reinhard Lafrenz, Secretary General euRobotics.

“Through competitions, we can attract top talent in robotics to exchange knowledge while solving real-world challenges. We gave two ERL awards, in the service and industrial leagues at ERF. We’re also looking forward to the upcoming 2017 ERL Emergency Competition in Piombino, Italy,” said Prof. David Lane, ERF2017 General Chair and Director of the Edinburgh Centre for Robotics.

Organisers:

The European Robotics Forum is organised by euRobotics under SPARC, the Public-Private partnership for Robotics in Europe. This year’s conference is hosted by the Edinburgh Centre for Robotics.

About euRobotics and SPARC

euRobotics is a non-profit organisation based in Brussels with the objective to make robotics beneficial for Europe’s economy and society.  With more than 250 member organisations, euRobotics also provides the European Robotics Community with a legal entity to engage in a public/private partnership with the European Commission, named SPARC.

SPARC, the public-private partnership (PPP) between the European Commission and euRobotics, is a European initiative to maintain and extend Europe’s leadership in civilian robotics. Its aim is to strategically position European robotics in the world thereby securing major benefits for the European economy and the society at large.

SPARC is the largest research and innovation programme in civilian robotics in the world, with 700 million euro in funding from the European Commission between 2014 to 2020, which is tripled by European industry to yield a total investment of 2.1 billion euro. SPARC will stimulate an ever more vibrant and effective robotics community that collaborates in the successful development of technical transfer and commercial exploitation.

www.eu-robotics.net

www.eu-robotics.net/sparc

Air, land and sea robots will meet in Piombino, Italy, for the ERL Emergency Robots major tournament. Photos: Joshua Hayes Davidson / euRathlon

The European Robotics League (ERL) is pleased to announce the dates for the major tournament of the ERL Emergency Robots competition. The 2017 challenge will be held in Piombino, Italy, from 15-23 September 2017. The call for participation is now open.

Lead by euRobotics in collaboration with SPARC Robotics, and funded by the European Union, the ERL is the natural evolution of a series of highly successful previous competitions that were established via FP7-funded projects: euRathlon, RoCKIn and EuRoC. This competition builds upon the success of euRathlon 2015 Challenge, the first world’s robotics multi-domain competition and aims to push the state of the art in heterogeneous cooperative autonomous systems for emergency response.

ERL Emergency Robots: Call for participants

The call for participation in ERL Emergency Robots major tournament is now open. Detailed information on the application process and requirements can be found on ERL Emergency website and the competition Rulebook.

ERL Emergency Robots is a civilian, outdoor robotics competition, with a focus on realistic, multi-domain emergency response scenarios. Inspired by the 2011 Fukushima accident, the ERL Emergency challenge can only be met when land, marine and flying robots work cooperatively. The competition itself sees International teams of various disciplines and organisations surveying the scene, collecting data, searching for missing workers and identifying critical hazards, all in a race against the clock.

The challenge is open to universities, research centres and industrial companies interested in applying the results of robotics research and development to real world challenges.

ERL Emergency Robots 2017 is expected to go beyond the competition boundaries, aiming to cross-fertilise multiple robotics domain and foster discussions within the robotics community. The event will also provide a forum where roboticists from different areas will exchange ideas, show the state-of-the-art and outline the future of research on disaster-response robot systems.

Sponsors and exhibitors

Companies and academic institutions are invited to attend the event and present their work as an exhibitor and/or as a sponsor.

In parallel to the competition, the event will run a program of activities that will include robot demonstrations and robotics talks from eminent experts in the field. In 2015, the competition attracted over 100 robotics experts, 150 participants and more than 1200 visitors and public in general.

This is a unique opportunity to be associated with a high-profile European robotics competition and with universities and institutions leading in robotics research across Europe.

Please visit their website for detailed information on the competition and sponsorship, or contact erl.emergency@robotics-league.eu

If you enjoyed this article, you may also want to read:

• European Robotics Week #ERW2015 recap and videos
• Live coverage: Robocup 2016
• European Robotics League posts first major tournament results
• Day One at euRathlon 2015: Video recap
• Day Two at euRathlon 2015: Video recap
• Day Three at euRathlon 2015: Video recap
• Day Four at euRathlon 2015: Video recap

See all the latest robotics news on Robohub, or sign up for our weekly newsletter.

Team Tech United Eindhoven testing their robot at ERL Service Robots major tournament. Photo: European Robotics League

The European Robotics League (ERL) is a European-based common framework for robotics competitions in the fields of Industrial Robots (ERL Industrial Robots), Service Robots (ERL Service Robots) and Emergency Robots (ERL Emergency Robots). The ERL builds on the success of the European funded FP7 projects EuRoC, RoCKIn and euRathlon.

International teams participate in local and major tournaments distributed across Europe. The three robotics competitions have been designed to address open societal, scientific and industrial challenges and to thoroughly assess, compare, and evaluate their competing innovative approaches. This new robotics league format was launched under the umbrella of SPARC – the Partnership for Robotics in Europe – at this year´s RoboCup in Leipzig, Germany.

The kick-off event took place in Leipzig, Germany, during the RoboCup 2016 World Championship. Organised by SPARC and hosted by Reinhard Lafrenz (Secretary General of euRobotics), it included members from the robotics community, including: Juha Heikkilä, Head of the European Commission Robotics Unit; Anne Bajart, Programme Officer of the European Commission Robotics Unit; Rainer Bischoff, Vice President euRobotics/KUKA; Bruno Siciliano, Researcher from Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II; Pedro Lima, Coordinator of ERL Service Robots; Marta Palau Franco, Project Manager of ERL Emergency Robots.

European Robotics League organisers and RoboCup trustees at the ERL kick-off event. Photo: European Robotics League

Background about ERL

The ERL provides a common framework for two indoor robotics competitions, ERL Industry Robots and ERL Service Robots, and one outdoor robotics competition, ERL Emergency Robots. These competitions aim at replicating consistent benchmarking results, more so than stating a winner of a single event. The ERL local and major tournaments are based in Europe and open to international participation. ERL Service and ERL Industrial Robots have a diffused set of benchmarking testbed across Europe, where researchers compete, meet, discuss, learn and improve. Whilst ERL Emergency organises a pre-competition summer school and attendees can prepare themselves for participating in the major tournament.

The three competitions target three clear objectives:

• European societal challenge of aging population
• strengthening of the European robotics industry
• push the state of the art in autonomous systems for emergency response

Finally, the ERL provides a platform for challenging, developing and showcasing robotics technologies and engages not only with the robotics community but also industry and general audiences. This new model for the robotics league will be tested for viability alongside its implementation over the next two years.

ERL Service Robots

ERL Service Robots focuses on service robots for home and healthcare applications. The scenarios are designed around the idea of giving support to an elderly person in mastering his/her daily life at home. Robots have to welcome visitors, map the home, and perform a large variety of other general-purpose service tasks.

A student setting up her team’s robot. Photo: European Robotics League

The first major tournament of ERL Service Robots was held in conjunction with RoboCup@Home 2016. All the twenty-three teams from thirteen countries that qualified for RoboCup@Home opted to participate in ERL Service. Teams’ performances in two of the RoboCup@Home tasks were shared with ERL Service. The tasks that were assessed using the ERL scoring system were Navigation/Visit My Home and General Purpose Service Robot.

Task benchmarking sheets. Photo: European Robotics League

The ERL scoring system is based on achievements and penalizations, a ‘class’ assigned to each team, determined by their number of achievements. The class number goes from 0 to a maximum number of achievements that may vary from task-to-task.

In this first major tournament, the teams’ classes were:

Task Benchmark: Navigation/VisitMyHome

• ToBI, University of Bielefeld, Germany: Class 6
• Tech United Eindhoven, TU Eindhoven, The Netherlands : Class 3
• CIT brains, CIT, China: Class 2
• eR@sers, Tamagawa University, Japan: Class 2
• Markovito, Mexico: Class 2
• WrightEagle@Home, University of Science and Technology of China, China: Class 2
• b-it-bots@Home, Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University, Germany: Class 1
• KameRider, University of Tokyo, Japan: Class 1

Task Benchmark: General Purpose Service Robot

• ToBI, University of Bielefeld, Germany: Class 3
• homer@UniKoblenz, Univesity of Koblenz, Germany: Class 2
• Tech United Eindhoven, TU Eindhoven, The Netherlands : Class     2
• WrightEagle@Home, University of Science and Technology of China, China: Class 2
• eR@sers, Tamagawa University, Japan: Class 2
• Golem, UNAM, National Autonomous University of Mexico, Mexico: Class 1
• Pumas, UNAM, National Autonomous University of Mexico, Mexico: Class 1
• SocRob@home, Instituto Superior Técnico, University of Lisbon: Class 1

(Left) Team TOBI’s and Team homer@UniKoblenz’s robots. (Right) A member of Team homer@UniKoblenz sets up their robot. Photo: European Robotics League.

The next ERL Service local tournaments will take place in Portugal and Italy. More information on the calls will be published soon.

ERL Industrial Robots

ERL Industrial Robots main purpose is to foster innovation in industrial robotics. The focus is on manipulation, handling, assembly and transport of work pieces. The competition takes place in a scaled-down factory environment and uses desktop-size robots for mobile manipulation. The scenarios include performing a variety of work steps at different locations on a shop floor and automating high-mix, low volume production using a limited number of production equipment.

Standard platforms used in RoboCup@Work and ERL Industrial Robots. Photo: European Robotics League

Eight teams of four countries participated in ERL Industrial Robots competition first major tournament in Leipzig.  Three RoboCup@Work tasks were assessed using the ERL scoring system, which follows the common model of Penalties and Achievements.

The teams’ classes for the ERL Industrial Robots were:

Task Benchmark: Basic Transportation Task 1

• LUHBots, Leibniz University Hannover, Germany: Class 4
• Robo-Erectus, Singapore Polytechnic, Singapore: Class 4
• AutonOHM, Nuremberg Institute of Technology, Germany: Class 4

Task Benchmark: Basic Transportation Task 2

• smARTLab@Work, University of Liverpool, United Kingdom: Class 3
• AutonOHM, Nuremberg Institute of Technology, Germany: Class 3
• robOTTO, Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg, Germany: Class 3
• Robo-Erectus, Singapore Polytechnic, Singapore: Class 3
• SPQR@Work, Spienza University of Rome, Italy: Class 2
• WF Wolves, Ostfalia University of Applied Sciences, Germany: Class 2
• B-it-bots, Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University of Applied Sciences, Germany: Class 1
• LUHBots, Leibniz University Hannover, Germany: Class 1

Task Benchmark: Basic Transportation Task 3

• B-it-bots, Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University of Applied Sciences, Germany: Class 2
• SPQR@Work, Spienza University of Rome, Italy: Class 1
• AutonOHM, Nuremberg Institute of Technology, Germany: Class 1
• LUHBots, Leibniz University Hannover, Germany: Class 1

Teams preparing their robots for the competition. Photo: European Robotics League

ERL Emergency Robots

ERL Emergency Robots is a civilian, outdoor robotics competition, with a focus on realistic, multi-domain emergency response scenarios. Inspired by the 2011 Fukushima accident, the ERL Emergency Grand Challenge can only be met when land, underwater and flying robots work cooperatively.

Team ICARUS inspecting the building area with their land robots. Photo: Joshua Hayes Davidson

A summer school in collaboration with TRADR EU-FP7 project will take place in Oulu, Finland from 22-26 August 2016. If you would like to attend the outdoor demonstrations as an observer, contact the organisers.

The ERL Emergency Robots major tournament will be held in Piombino, Italy, September 2017. More information on the event will be published autumn 2016.

If you enjoyed this article, you may also want to read:

• European Robotics Week #ERW2015 recap and videos
• Live coverage: Robocup 2016
• Call for euRathlon/TRADR Summer School 2016 on heterogeneity in robotic systems
• Day One at euRathlon 2015: Video recap
• Day Two at euRathlon 2015: Video recap
• Day Three at euRathlon 2015: Video recap
• Day Four at euRathlon 2015: Video recap

See all the latest robotics news on Robohub, or sign up for our weekly newsletter.

Credit: Lijin Aryananda

Automatica coverage; new sUAS rules; limiting cuteness in robot design; bots to become electronic persons?; European Robotics League launches, and more. Find out what’s happening in our robotics universe this week.

What knocked our socks off today @Automatica (Robotiq)

The Automatica trade show taking place in Munich this week is one of the largest robotics events in history. It brings industry experts, academics, manufacturers, customers, and others together to showcase new products and ideas and form new relationships.

Robotiq is there too, of course, and we’re providing live-blogging coverage of the event from start to finish.  Stay tuned to this blog for all the latest news from Automatica, including the launch of a brand-new collaborative robot with a whopping 60kg payload:

At 12:30m, the curtain was pulled back to reveal…

.. an impressively huge collaborative robot! The AURA robot has a massive 60kg payload capacity, by far the highest for any current collaborative robot.

In his presentation, Comau’s CEO Mauro Fenzi, talked about the future of Comau. The company is 40 years old, he said “and getting younger and younger.”

FAA announcement for sUAS met with industry excitement (Robohub)

Quadrocopter drone flying in the sky

The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) released a set of highly anticipated rules governing the operation of small UAS (sUAS) for commercial purposes this week.

Scheduled to take effect in late August, the new rules generally follow the proposals contained in the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) that was issued by the FAA in February 2015. One of the most significant changes for industry is that commercial operations that fit within the framework of Part 107 will no longer require approval by exemption, which has typically taken months to secure. Undoubtedly, the new framework will mean increased efficiency for commercial operators who will also not be required to secure airworthiness certification for their sUAS.

One of the most significant changes for industry is that commercial operations that fit within the framework of Part 107 will no longer require approval by exemption, which has typically taken months to secure. Undoubtedly, the new framework will mean increased efficiency for commercial operators who will also not be required to secure airworthiness certification for their sUAS.

The fact that operators will no longer be required to hold a manned aircraft pilot’s license and can instead take a knowledge test to obtain a sUAS operator’s certificate is a significant win for the industry that will open up the skies to make more operators. Brendan Schulman, VP of Policy and Legal at DJI remarks:

“This is a global precedent. The most respected aviation authority in the world has concluded that drones may be operated safely for basic commercial operations without requiring airworthiness certification and without requiring pilots to pass a practical flight examination. This reflects how fundamentally safe and beneficial this technology is, and is a model that should be adopted worldwide.”

The Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) welcomed the news in a statement: “Today’s release of the final small UAS rule by the FAA is a critical milestone in the integration process and a long-awaited victory for American businesses and innovators. It establishes a clear regulatory framework and helps to reduce many barriers to civil and commercial operations, allowing anyone who follows the rules to fly in the national airspace.

“Today’s release of the final small UAS rule by the FAA is a critical milestone in the integration process, and a long-awaited victory for American businesses and innovators. It establishes a clear regulatory framework and helps to reduce many barriers to civil and commercial operations, allowing anyone who follows the rules to fly in the national airspace.

“Accelerating civil and commercial UAS operations will not only help businesses harness tremendous potential of UAS, it will also help unlock the economic impact and job creation potential of the technology. Once UAS are fully integrated into the national airspace and become more widely used, the industry will continue to grow as a job creator and generate significant economic impact.

This is massive news for the commercial drone sector.. and long overdue.

Too cute for their own good, robots get self-defense instincts (Wall Street Journal)

Designers working on bots for use in public spaces have to thread a fine line between creating robots that are non-threatening so that people are comfortable engaging with them, but not so cute that people don’t take them seriously. The team behind Knightscope‘s security robot “K5” took on that challenge, going through hundreds of design permutations to find the sweet spot for K5’s sensors.

They also found that making some modifications to the robot’s behavior improved the efficacy and quality of human-robot interaction.

“The K5’s designers, along with the shriek, programmed it to stop moving if cornered. Being boring, they found, is an antidote to cuteness.

At Palo Alto’s Stanford Shopping Center, a group of young adults chased the robot past a Starbucks and Jamba Juice. When they surrounded the K5, it stopped moving. They lost interest, wandering away toward a California Pizza Kitchen.”

The choice between robots and pizza is a tough one for anybody to make, especially a kid. Of course with Pepper appearing in pizza restaurants and development of pizza-making humanoid RoDyMan well underway, future generations of children will not be faced with such a difficult existential choice.

Europe’s robots to become ‘Electronic Persons’ under draft plan (Reuters)

A draft European Union plan could see robot workers being classed as “electronic persons” with all the legal rights that would entail, including social security payments.

The draft motion called on the European Commission to consider “that at least the most sophisticated autonomous robots could be established as having the status of electronic persons with specific rights and obligations”.

It also suggested the creation of a register for smart autonomous robots, which would link each one to funds established to cover its legal liabilities.

The reaction from some industry leaders has been less than enthusiastic.

Patrick Schwarzkopf, managing director of the VDMA’s robotic and automation department, said: “That we would create a legal framework with electronic persons – that’s something that could happen in 50 years but not in 10 years.”

“We think it would be very bureaucratic and would stunt the development of robotics,” he told reporters at the Automatica robotics trade fair robotics trade fair in Munich, while acknowledging that a legal framework for self-driving cars would be needed soon.

Schwarzkopf may well be correct about the timescales involved, but it’s great to see policymakers taking robotics seriously enough to raise and debate these issues.

European Robotics League to launch at RoboCup 2016 in Leipzig (SPARC)

Set to launch June 30th, the European Robotics League (ERL) will pit international teams against each other in three robotics categories: industrial, service and emergency robotics. Local matches and regional tournaments will take place around Europe over the course of the next year.

“The European Robotics League will spur innovation and entrepreneurship and both maintain and extend European leadership in robotics”, says Dr. Rainer Bischoff, Vice-President Industry of euRobotics aisbl and Head of Corporate Research at KUKA. “It is a unique opportunity to break down real-world challenges into a competition format, similar to the UEFA Champions League in football, which is exciting for robotics scientists, the robotics industry and the general public alike.”

The industrial robotics segment of the competition will focus on manipulation, handling, assembly, and transport of work pieces. The league will use “scaled-down factory environment and desktop-size robots” for mobile manipulation. Challenges for the teams will include “performing a variety of work steps at different locations on the shop floor and automating high-mix low-volume production using a limited number of, but flexible production equipment.”

And Finally…

Robots, swarming drones and ‘Iron Man’: Welcome to the new arms race (Washington Post)

Google Gets Practical about the Dangers of AI (MIT technology Review)

Kiwi workers don’t fear ‘robot redundancy’ (Otago Daily Times)

Watch Out Humans – Robots Have Mastered Motion Planning (Factor Tech)

Tend.ai trains your robot to operate dozens of 3D printers and laser cutters at a time (TechCrunch)

Artificially Intelligent Russian Robot Makes a Run for It … Again (LiveScience)