iCal

Questions to be answered

• When can research results be considered ‘true’?
• What does it mean that some research results are ‘reproducible’?
• How can different approaches to cope with the same task sets be compared?
• How to estimate the TRL of a robotic solution?
• Does it make sense to talk about ‘Evidence Based’ Investing and Technology Transfer in Robotics?
• How to encourage modular, transferable and reusable solutions for robotics subsystems?
• What should an investor look for in a competition/challenge?
• Are cooperative competitions (coopetitions) better than competitions?
• What’s the impact of competitions, challenges and hackathons on the progress of research and tech transfer in Robotics?

Description

The fundamental objective of this workshop is to furnish practical examples, case studies, and directions for a thorough comprehension of the role of reproducibility, benchmarking, competitions and challenges in robotics, facilitated by expert inspiration and mentoring. By emphasizing the importance of consistent and reproducible results in practical robotic applications, we seek to expand knowledge, facilitate collaborative research and crucially speed up the rate of innovation.

We will highlight the critical roles of robot competitions, challenges as well as reproducibility and benchmarking, and modularity, transferability and compositionality, fostering research and innovation progresses, as well as reducing the hurdles in robot technologies' transferability from lab to market. (euROBIN)

We will discuss challenges, competitions, reproducibility and benchmarking can accelerate the transition to sustainable Manufacturing, Circular Economy and Smart Cities.

Organisation of the WS

• An Introduction to Coopetitions: An applied example from the euROBIN Project in Nancy (Pedro Lima)
• The long road to reproducibility and objective evaluation of performances in Robotics and AI (Fabio Bonsignorio)
• Promoting Real-World Benchmarks with the euROBIN Electronic Task Board in the Manipulation Skill Versatility Challenge at IROS 2024, Preview of Robothon Grand Challenge at automatica 2025 (Peter So)
• Challenges for Smart cities (Ian Pulford)
• Developing Software for Sim-to-Real Skill Development (Simeon Tsvetanov, HPC)
• Startup Investments in Germany: Fostering Collaboration Between Industry and Science to Unveil Emerging Talent (Nicole Ebner, Robo.Innovate)
• Extending the euROBIN Electronic Task Board to the ROS Ecosystem. Middleware as a Connector (Jaime Martin, eProsima)
• Robotic Challenges from an Industry POV. Organization and Experiences from the ARENA2036 Wire-Harness Challenge (Robert Süß-Wolf)
• Poster Pitches (Fabio Bonsignorio)
• Discussion

We also aim to validate the ‘Rimini Declaration’ and a one page summary of it.

Intended outcome

Speakers, Panelists, etc

• Fabio Bonsignorio - Heron Robots & FER, University of Zagreb, Italy
• Pedro Lima - ISR/IST, University of Lisbon, Portugal
• Ian Pulford - Smart City Consultancy, United Kingdom
• Daniel Bargmann - Fraunhofer IPA, Germany
• Mikkel Olsen - DTI, Denmark
• Peter So - Technical University of Munich, Germany
• Robert Süß-Wolf - ARENA2036
• Nicole Ebner - Head of Robotics/AI Incubator robo.innovate at MIRMI/TUM, Germany
• Simeon Tsvetanov - High Performance Creators, Bulgaria
• Jaime Martin Losa - eProsima, Spain

Topic Groups and/or Innovation networks involved

Benchmarking and Competitions, Software Engineering, Industrial Robotics, Service Robotics, Systems Integration and Systems Engineering

Projects involved

euROBIN, https://www.eurobin-project.eu/, EU Grant No 101070596

Further information

https://www.eurobin-project.eu/

F. Bonsignorio and A. P. del Pobil, "Toward Replicable and Measurable Robotics Research [From the Guest Editors]," in IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine, vol. 22, no. 3, pp. 32-35, Sept. 2015, doi: 10.1109/MRA.2015.2452073.

keywords: {Special issues and sections;Benchmarking;Measurements;Robots},

F. Bonsignorio, "A New Kind of Article for Reproducible Research in Intelligent Robotics [From the Field]," in IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine, vol. 24, no. 3, pp. 178-182, Sept. 2017, doi: 10.1109/MRA.2017.2722918.

keywords: {Robot kinematics;Research and development;Artificial intelligence},

The Rimini Declaration:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1i1kJrTM3RA4h-i7wor8ACiopaMAN7deS/view?usp=sharing

The Euron GEM Guidelines:

GemSigGuidelinesBeta.pdf https://heronrobots.com/EuronGEMSig/downloads/GemSigGuidelinesBeta.pdf

Organisers

• Fabio Bonsignorio (University of Zagreb FER and Heron Robots), fabio.bonsignorio@gmail.com fabio.bonsignorio@fer.hr fabio.bonsignorio@heronrobots.com
• Pedro U. Lima (ISR/IST, University of Lisbon), pedro.lima@tecnico.ulisboa.pt
• Daniel Bargmann (Fraunhofer IPA), daniel.bargmann@ipa.fraunhofer.de
• Peter So (TUM), peter.so@tum.de
• Mikkel Olsen (DTI), miol@teknologisk.dk
• Ian Pulford (Smart City Consultancy) ian.pulford@smccl.co.uk