Industrial logistics of the future
What's it about?
Our team is working on developing a robot named @Work to participate in the RoboCup competition. @Work is an autonomous mobile robot capable of operating independently in an environment. Its task is to navigate to workplaces, detect and sort the objects present there. Predefined objects are also to be picked up and placed in the correct location. The competition features workplaces with varying levels of difficulty, continuously challenging the participants. Therefore, all important topics of modern robotics are addressed, such as dynamic and secure manipulation, autonomous navigation, SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping), computer vision, and state-of-the-art sensor technology.
What are the current goals of the @Work team?
Changes in the team and adaptions of the rules of the league in 2018 made it necessary to restructure and re-implement major parts of our ROS software implementations. Goals were to simplify and modularize the structure for making debugging easier and to enhance mainly the robustness of the software system. The new software stack was used and tested in the RoboCup German Open and World Championship 2019, achieving 3rd and 4th place respectively. The Corona Pandemic in 2020, which meant cancellation of all events, gave us time to develop and build our own robotic platform. We also introduced a new robotic arm. In 2021 we were able to participate in the virtual RoboCup World Championship 2021 with completely new hardware. The focus for now is to ensure robustness and safety of the developed robot in the first place, aiming to have a reliable, competitive and well performing system in the 2023 events and in the future.