Jakob Berghofer

Competitions for Benchmarking: Task and Functionality Scoring Complete Performance Assessment

Scientific experiments and robotic competitions share some common traits that can put the debate about developing better experimental methodologies and replicability of results in robotics research on more solid ground. In this context, the Robot Competitions Kick Innovation in Cognitive Systems and Robotics (RoCKIn) project aims to develop competitions that come close to scientific experiments, providing an objective performance evaluation of robot systems under controlled and replicable conditions. In this article, by further articulating replicability into reproducibility and repeatability and by considering some results from the 2014 first RoCKIn competition, we show that the RoCKIn approach offers tools that enable the replicability of experimental results.

RoboCup@Work: Competing for the Factory of the Future

Mobile manipulators are viewed as an essential component for making the factory of the future become a reality. RoboCup@Work is a competition designed by a group of researchers from the RoboCup community and focuses on the use of mobile manipulators and their integration with automation equipment for performing industrially-relevant tasks. The paper describes the design and implementation of the competition and the experiences made so far.

Design and development of a benchmarking testbed for the Factory of the Future

We present the design and development of a benchmarking testbed for the Factory of the Future. The testbed as a physical installation enables to study, compare and assess robotics scenarios involving the integration of mobile robots and manipulators with automation equipment, large-scale integration of service robots and industrial robots, cohabitation of robots and humans, and cooperation of multiple robots and/or humans. We also report on the lessons learned of using the testbed in recent robotic competitions.