#RoboCup2019 @Home – competition setup and first day

I’ll be reporting three sub-leagues of RoboCup @Home (domestic standard, social, and open platform).

Preparation
Yesterday the teams were getting the final details down, acquiring the map information of the arenas, doing safety inspections for all the participating robots and meeting with their team leaders to clarify outstanding details for the competition to begin on Thursday.

As an additional portion of the competition all teams did a 3-minute poster presentation highlighting the research and methods that make it possible for their teams to compete.

First day of competition
Today, across all sub-leagues of @Home, the teams had two major blocks of tests: the first one was related to housekeeping tasks (throwing out the trash, serving breakfast or cleaning up misplaced objects) and the second one were related to tasks under a house party scenario (welcoming new guests, finding them a drink or walking them out). Among the major challenges involved in housekeeping tasks is correctly recognizing and manipulating objects which can be of many sizes. In the social interactions, the teams had to deal with keeping interactions as natural as possible as well as safe for the people acting as volunteer party attendants. Tomorrow there will be one more round of combined tasks (housekeeping and party scenario) before the top teams are selected for the second round.

Maru Cabrera is Research Associate at University of Washington.

Maru Cabrera is Research Associate at University of Washington.