[robocup-worldwide] RoboCup Logistics League Winter School 2015 - Call for Participation

Tue Nov 3 07:56:09 EST 2015

                   == CALL FOR PARTICIPATION ==

              RoboCup Logistics League Winter School
               December 7-11, 2015, Aachen, Germany

         https://www.carologistics.org/winter-school-2015

:: *Objectives and Scope*
The RoboCup Logistics League (RCLL) is one of the youngest of the
RoboCup leagues. It is an application-driven league inspired by the
industrial scenario of a smart factory. In 2015, the introduction of
MPS processing stations and increasing the number of possible products
from 3 to nearly 240 has made the RCLL more complex and challenging.

The Carologistics RoboCup team (http://www.carologistics.org), which
won the competition in 2014 and 2015, intends to organize a RoboCup
Logistics League Winter School in Aachen, Germany. The purpose is to
disseminate the state of the art in the RCLL. This winter school
targets new and existing teams for the RCLL. For new teams it will
lower the barrier to enter the competition by learning from an
existing open-source software stack and simulation. Theoretical
sessions will detail the applied methods in fields like perception,
navigation, simulation, or behavior. This will be supplemented by
practical hands-on sessions based on the full software stack release
by the Carologistics team [1] (the release will be updated soon based
on the 2015 version). Open forums will allow other teams to
disseminate and share their work and to point out alternatives.
[1] https://www.fawkesrobotics.org/projects/llsf2014-release/

:: *Important Dates*

  Registration ends: November 18, 2015
       Notification: November 19, 2015 (cf. Registration)
      Winter School: December 7-11, 2015

:: *Program*
The one-week winter school comprises five days with the following topics.

- Day 1: Introduction and setup
  The general scenario and rulebook will be explained to the audience,
  to point out specifics to existing teams and the overall game to new
  ones. In the hands-on session participants can setup their
  development environment and perform the basic installation on the
  robots.

- Day 2: Perception
  The necessary perceptual components for machine detection and light
  signal recognition will be presented. The system will be configured
  and tuned during the hands-on session.

- Day 3: Simulation
  The simulation will be introduced and the theoretical part will also
  explain how to adapt the simulation to other robots, e.g. by adding
  different kinds of sensors or changing the model. The hands-on will
  comprise running full games and analyzing the overall software
  structure in more detail. We will also look into adding additional
  sensors to the robot.

- Day 4: Navigation
  We will look at path planning, path realization, and collision
  avoidance. In particular, the dynamic topological graph generation
  will be introduced. The hands-on session will focus on implementing
  and tuning basic navigation.

- Day 5: Behavior and agent design
  Based on a classic three-layer separation we will detail how to
  generate the overall coordinated behavior of the group of
  robots. Topics will cover basic reactive behaviors (Lua-based
  Behavior Engine [2]), agent design (with our CLIPS-based agent [3]
  as one specific existing example), and inter-robot
  communication. The hands-on session will involve to create basic
  behaviors and a minimal agent to perform a sub-task of the
  competition.
  [2] https://www.fawkesrobotics.org/projects/behavior-engine/
  [3] https://www.fawkesrobotics.org/projects/clips-agent/

Each day will roughly be structured as follows: morning lectures will
present in-depth interactive tutorials on aforementioned topics, while
afternoon sessions will be focused on implementations, and will take
place in a collaborative environment. We will provide notebooks
running the simulation and development environment. Festo will provide
a partial RCLL field based on real machines for testing on real
hardware.

Participants are encouraged to bring up to one robot per team to the
event. On the first day will be an opportunity to setup the system
with the provided software to try it on own hardware (and take it
ready-to-run home afterwards). During the open forums teams may also
demonstrate features of their own systems.

:: *Accommodation and Scholarships*
We have made arrangements for hostel accommodation in Aachen. The
website lists details on how to register for this discounted lodging.

We have limited funds to partially sponsor travel expenses of selected
students. Please confer the winter school website for the procedure to
apply for (partial) funding of the participation in the winter school.

:: *Fees*
The fee for participation is 50 Euro.

It includes participation in the winter school according to the
program above, lunch catering, and transport to the provided
accommodation in the morning and evening.
There will be a small social event.

:: *Sponsors*
We gratefully acknowledge sponsoring by Festo Didactic SE, also the
main sponsor of the league as a whole. Support from the RoboCup
Federation has been requested and it is under evaluation. Furthermore,
we thank the IMA/ZLW & IfU Institute Cluster of the RWTH Aachen
University for providing the venue for the event. Finally, we thank
the Department of International Affairs of the FH Aachen for their
financial and organizational support. This winter school would not be
possible without the generous support of our sponsors.

:: *Eligibility and Registration*
The winter school is open to team members of existing RCLL teams as
well as interested students and researchers that plan to attend RCLL
in the future. This winter school focuses on best practices within the
RCLL domain and attendees should leave with practical knowledge to
implement solutions to RCLL challenges.

The space is limited to 30 participants. The organizers will balance
seats among all interested teams. If you registered many team members,
not all may be accepted for the Winter School. Registrations per team
will be accepted per on a first come, first serve basis.

See the website for the registration details. Registration ends
November 18 2015. Notifications and payment details will be sent out
on Nov 19 2015.

:: *Organizers and Contact*
- Tim Niemueller, KBSG, RWTH Aachen University
  niemueller at kbsg.rwth-aachen.de
- Sebastian Reuter, IMA/ZLW & IfU, RWTH Aachen University
  sebastian.reuter at ima-zlw-ifu.rwth-aachen.de
- Tobias Neumann, MASCOR, FH Aachen University of Applied Sciences
  t.neumann at fh-aachen.de

:: *Website*
https://www.carologistics.org/winter-school-2015

We hope to meet you in Aachen in December!

  Tim Niemueller, Sebastian Reuter, Tobias Neumann
  Organizers RCLL WS2015

-- 
KBSG - Knowledge-Based Systems Group            AllemaniACs RoboCup Team
========================================================================
http://robocup.rwth-aachen.de                     RWTH Aachen University
http://kbsg.rwth-aachen.de                               Ahornstrasse 55
http://www.fawkesrobotics.org                             D-52056 Aachen