Competition on Autonomous Robots for the Home

rap Dec 30, 2022

A joint team of students from King’s College London and the University of Leeds will participate in July in RoboCup@Home, an international competition with the goal of developing autonomous intelligent robots able to assist people in their daily activities.

RoboCup

RoboCup is a leading annual international robot competition, with the goal to foster AI through appealing yet fundamental challenges. The main goal has been set in 1996 as “By the middle of the 21st century, a team of fully autonomous humanoid robot soccer players shall win a soccer game, complying with the official rules of FIFA, against the winner of the most recent World Cup.”

The competition has evolved over the years beyond football (which still plays a central role, with many leagues for different kinds of robots), to encompass robots for rescue in disaster scenarios, robots for factories and logistics, and robots for the home, among which the KCL robot.

The tasks that the robot will face at the competition are defined around two themes: a robotic party host, and a robotic housekeeper. The party host is expected to welcome guest in the house, introduce them to the human host and to each other, and to serve drinks. The housekeeper is expected to set the table for meals, store groceries, and take out the garbage.

Artificial Intelligence and Service Robotics

The Learning Autonomous Service Robots (LASR) team is part of the growing research line on Artificial Intelligence for Autonomous Systems in the Department for Informatics, building on the department’s strength in reasoning and planning. The team is led by Dr Matteo Leonetti, with the collaboration of Dr Gerard Canal, and open to students from first year to PhD. Participants have the opportunity to work on the integration of several aspects of artificial intelligence and robotics, such as: computer vision, human-robot interaction, robot manipulation, machine learning and planning.

LASR brings the department’s research in AI and robotics closer to the real world, implementing and testing robots for assistance of people in homes and offices. Our headquarters in Bush House are about to be inhabited by two Pal Robotics TIAGo robots contributing to the life of the department.