European RoboCup@Home Education Challenge 2019

European RoboCup@Home Education Challenge

EU@HomeEdu 2019

Home | Schedule | Workshop | Rules | Competition | Registration

[Date] May 23 - 26, 2019

[Venue] International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP)

Scientific FabLab (SciFabLab)

Street address: via Beirut 6, ICTP E. Fermi Bulding lower level

Trieste 34151, Italy

[Web] See the website http://scifablab.ictp.it for directions

Co-located with Trieste Mini Maker Faire: https://trieste.makerfaire.com/

[Rules]

Rules are based on RoboCup@Home Rulebook 2018 (Download here) focussing on simplified versions of the following tests: Help-me-carry, Speech and Person Recognition, Restaurant, Final.

[Organizers]

- Luca Iocchi (Sapienza University of Rome, Italy) - iocchi<AT>diag.uniroma1.it

- Paola Ferrarelli (Sapienza University of Rome, Italy)

- Jeffrey Too Chuan Tan (Nankai University, China)

- Sebastian Castro (Mathworks, USA)

- Stefano Olivieri (Mathworks, Italy)

- Paolo Cirinei (Robotics 3D, Rome, Italy)

- Sandro Scandolo, Enrique Canessa e Carlo Fonda (ICTP, Trieste, Italy)

RoboCup@Home Education is an educational initiative that promotes educational efforts to boost RoboCup@Home participation and service robot development. RoboCup@Home Education takes inspiration from @Home tasks and aims at forming teams that may become @Home teams in the future. This education initiative plays the role to bridge between Major @Home league and RoboCupJunior, providing an educational platform to let Junior teams to participate and gain experience, in order to prepare themselves for the step up @Home league.

With this inspiring motivation, we are honoured to host the European RoboCup@Home Education Challenge in the Mini Maker Faire 2019 in Trieste (Italy) for the participation from European community. The Education Challenge will be conducted in a Workshop+Competition format to encourage also inexperienced but interested participants to learn how to build the robot in the workshop and take part in the competition.

<Sponsors>

Main sponsors of this events are

RoboCup Federation and Mathworks for partial reimbursement of travel of the teams and for acquiring workshop and competition material.

Robotics 3D for offering the awards for the winning teams.

ICTP for the organization and free accommodation for the students.

DIAG Dept., Sapienza University of Rome, Italy, Nankai University, China and Mathworks for the contribution in setting up the robots, the teaching material, the competition organization and rules, and for running the challenge.

<Preliminary activities>

Teams are strongly invited to participate to preliminary activities describing in the page linked below that will help in the preparation of the challenge. These activities will help in installing the software required for the workshop and the competition, in testing your system off-line or on your own robot, and in making some preliminary exercises that will be useful to solve the competition tasks.

The preliminary activities are open and will be useful to all the interested teams, even for teams that may decide not to come to Trieste for the actual challenge.

Preliminary activities (click here)

<Schedule>

May 23, 2019 (Thu)

- AM Team setup, software/hardware configuration

- PM Workshop 1 Speech, Vision

May 24, 2019 (Fri)- PM Workshop 2 Speech, Vision

- AM Workshop 2 System Integration

- AM Workshop 3 Mapping and navigation

- PM Competition Task 2: Speech, Object and Person Recognition (Runs 1,2)

May 25, 2019 (Sat)

- AM Competition Task 1: Help-me-carry (Runs 1,2)

- PM Competition Task 3: Restaurant (Runs 1,2)

May 26, 2019 (Sun)

- AM Competition Final: (Run 1)

***AM 09:00~12:00; PM 13:00~18:00

<Workshop>

Workshop Contents

We will conduct hands-on workshop to guide the participants to build the robot for the competition. Prior experience in robot building is not required. However, some basic programming skill is needed. You can refer to our online resources to get some ideas on the contents of the workshop

Robot Hardware

Robots for RoboCup@Home Education should be low-cost platforms equipped with low-cost sensors.

Any suitable robotic platform is allowed. Two platforms are suggested:

For teams interested in using MARRtino platform, you can bring MARRtino spare parts (as listed in the web site) and we will assist you with building the robot during the workshop, so you will get back home with a fully working robot.

To facilitate totally inexperienced participants to join the event and lower participation costs, teams without robot will be allowed as well. We will provide basic robot platforms, sensors and software for beginner teams to work for the workshop development and competition.

PC and Software

For using MARRtino platform, please refer to www.marrtino.org/software. Best way to start with it (specially if you do not have a robot) is to install the Virtual Machine available from the web site, that contains all the software needed for the competition already installed.

EU@HomeEdu2019 is partially supported by MathWorks.

MATLAB support through ROS is available for both the platforms. MATLAB bridge to ROS can be easily configured to connect to other ROS-based platforms. Contact us if you are willing to use MATLAB for your robot.

To install the last version of MATLAB (complimentary software license by MathWorks)

*** 1. Check System Requirements https://www.mathworks.com/support/sysreq.html

*** 2. Go to the RoboCup support page and request a complimentary software license. The steps to install and activate MATLAB will be emailed to you once the license is approved, and each team member should use the same information. https://www.mathworks.com/academia/student-competitions/robocup.html

<Competition>

Based on the official RoboCup@Home rulebook of 2018, 4 tests are selected as follows:

  1. Speech and Person Recognition

  2. Help-me-carry

  3. Restaurant/Finals

Detailed rules are provided here: RULES

Team selection and support

8 European teams will be selected to participate to the challenge. Each team must be composed by up to 4 students.

Teams will be selected according to the following criteria: 1) geographical diversity in Europe, 2) previous experience in RoboCupJunior, 3) mixed university and high-school students, 4) potential in forming a long-term team to enter RoboCup@Home major league in the future.

Registration to the competition is free of charge.

Cheap student accommodation close to the venue is available.

Although a selection is necessary because of space limitation in Trieste, all the interested teams will be involved in all the remote activities in preparation of the challenge.So all the teams can benefit from the educational material that will be prepared for the challenge.

Financial support for students

Thanks to RoboCup Federation and Mathworks, partial travel and accommodation support will be available for all the students in the teams.

<Registration>

1. Intention of Participation: CLOSED

2. Registration: CLOSED

Step 1 - Intention of Participation

Fill in and submit the on-line Intention of Participation form below (one per team).

https://goo.gl/forms/pe0khbpRSqJPGixk1

Step 2 - Registration (only for selected teams)

Complete the registration procedure according to the instructions you will receive by email.

Registration is free of charge.

<Participating teams>

<Awards>

The prizes are offered by Robotics 3D.

Open category (undergraduate students)

1st place - IntelligentRoboticsLabs@URJC Universidad Rey Juan Carlos Spain

2nd place - IPCB@home Instituto Politecnico de Castelo Branco Portugal

Junior category (high-school students)

1st place - E-404 Liceo Scientifico Enrico Fermi Padova Italy

2nd place - AvanguardiaBot Liceo Scientifico G. Peano di Monterotondo Italy

3rd place - Austria HTL Weiz Austria

Best use of Matlab and Simulink Award

E-404 Liceo Scientifico Enrico Fermi Padova Italy

Austria HTL Weiz Austria

Special Award (motivation: best maker robot)

IPCB@home Instituto Politecnico de Castelo Branco Portugal

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RoboCup@Home Education | Inquiry: oc@robocupathomeedu.org