ACTIVITIES

 

   Operational Summary of Proposed Events

 
 
    The Practical Training Courses are connected to the Euroconferences.  This stimulates the attendance of senior researchers at the Practical Training Courses where they will be introduced in the very large possibilities and constraints of the testbed. 
     
    Here follows more information about the first event, the 1st EUROBOT Practical Training Course that is to be held in parallel to the Ulm Robotics Week, in Germany. 
 

   European Newletter

    To explain the advances regarding of scientific, educational, and industrial project in terms of the European Comission.  This will be substented on the European Mailing List. 
    European Mailing List  
    A list to discuss everybody freely and create the scientific body for the European Comission proposals. 
     To subscribe: Send E-mail to webmanager@songoku.udg.es 
    with a content of "subscribe robocup-euro". 
     To submit an article: Send E-mail to eurobot-eu@eia.udg.es. 
 
         Caution: This is an unmoderated list. 
 
    1st EUROBOT Practical Training Course 
    Date: March 21 to 24, 1998 
    Detailed schedule of events will be sent in a follow-up email! 
    The first EUROBOT Practical Training Course and all EUROBOT events will have the preliminary meeting in the Ulm Robotics Week. Date: March 21 to March 28 or 29, 1998. 
    Details of the 1st EUROBOT Practical Training Course will be obtained from the senior organisers, together with the experience from this preliminary event. 
 

   Introduction

    What is The Ulm Robotics Week? 
    It is a bundle of robotics events. The EUROBOT Trials are the main event, where teams of both real and simulated robots play soccer. Three workshops on Co-operative Robotics, on Multi-agent Systems and Simulation, and on Innovative Science and Engineering Education provide a forum for scientific exchange. A number of tutorials, in terms of Practical Training Courses for senior researchers, allow novices and experienced participants to learn more about specific topics and to gain practical experience in building and programming robots during the accompanying lab sessions. The public, media and press are invited to watch the final competitions of the various events.  Several organisational meetings (EUROBOT Committee meeting, etc.) and social events (excursion to Daimler, dinner, etc.) round up the list of events. 
 
    Why do we want The Ulm Robotics Week? 
    There are scientific, educational, and organisational reasons for such an event.  Therefore, we expect that a significant number of people will attend. We estimate an attendance of 10 to 40 European researchers, 10 to 40 German researchers, about one or two dozen local university students, about 20 high school students, and about 10 adult students and high school teachers. 
    The scientific reasons are that the exchange of both theoretical and practical scientific experience in a number of areas, including robotics, vision, real-time control, neural networks, evolutionary computation, artificial intelligence, intelligent agents, and multi-agent systems, is fostered.  The educational and organisational reasons include the ability to organise a series of tutorials on a wide range of topics related to the above fields with a significantly reduced cost, if organised at the same time than the Practical Training Courses. In addition, a great learning opportunity is provided for local, German, and European students of various age groups. 
 
    Which development led to The Ulm Robotics Week 
    Besides having participated in the Robot Building Lab at AAAI-93 and enjoyed the thrill of building and programming robots to compete on a task, I have been actively involved in a number of similar events at universities and colleges, research institutes, conferences and summer schools. 
     
    At IK-97, we met several colleagues and professors, some of whom have participated in former Robot Building Labs. They expressed a strong interest in a new event that -- among other activities – would include Robot Building Lab activities and provide an opportunity for German roboticists and educators to meet. 
     
    At IJCAI-97 in Nagoya, Japan, the EUROBOT Committee was created. One of the first decisions was to hold a EUROBOT Trial about 3 months before the next RoboCup World Championships in Japan. Gerhard K. Kraetzschmar offered to organise this event in Ulm. 

    Overview of Events 
    The following events are planned for the Ulm Robotics Week: 

    • EUROBOT Trials
    • Robotics Tutorials oriented to the 1st EUROBOT Practical Training Course.
    • Robot Programming Lab (for researchers and college students)
    • Workshop CR-98: Co-operative Robotics -- The RoboCup Challenge
    • Workshop MASSIM-98: Multi-agent Systems and Simulation – The RoboCup Challenge
    • Workshop SEE-98: Science and Engineering Education High school students RBL (optional, in German only)
    • Adult education RBL (optional, tutorial in German only)
    • Robot Exhibition and Demonstration
    • EUROBOT Committee Meeting
    • Press Conference (optional)
    • Opening Reception, Farewell Party (mandatory), Banquet (optional)
 
    EUROBOT Trials 
    The main event during the Ulm Robotics Week are the EUROBOT Trials, which present a forum for EUROBOT teams to test their technology under real competitive conditions. According to the subdivisions of RoboCup Competitions, determined by the International RoboCup Committee, we will have three categories of trials: 
     
      • Simulator League Trials
      • Small Robot League Trials
      • Medium-Size Robot League Trials
    The primary goal of these events is to provide an opportunity for practical sessions and a forum for the exchange of scientific and engineering experience for potential participants of RoboCup-98 (to be held in Paris in July 98). Anyone interested in participating in Paris is strongly encouraged to use this opportunity and to make his team even stronger for Paris. In order to foster this intention, we will try to restrict media and press coverage to a single day, when finals will be played. 
 
    Tutorials (Co-ordinated with the 1st EUROBOT Practical Training Course) 
    A variety of tutorials, which are open to all participants, are planned. 
    Anyone who plans to give a tutorial at the first EUROBOT Practical Training Course (in June ‘98) or Summer School (in August ’98) is given the opportunity to test his tutorial in Ulm. 
    A list of possible tutorials (together with potential speakers in collaboration with the general Training Staff described in section 4.A) is given hereafter: 
    • Robot Building Lab Tutorial (Kraetzschmar)
    • Intro to RoboCup (Burkhard/ Kraetzschmar)
    • RoboCup Simulator and Agent Prog Basics (Hannebauer/Wendler)
    • Mobile bases, Kinematics and Dynamics (Tibken/Lahres/ Kraetzschmar)
    • Motors and Energy            (Tibken/Lahres/ Kraetzschmar)
    • Intro to Real-time Control  (Tibken/Lahres/ Kraetzschmar)
    • Sensors for Mobile Robots    (Kaiser/ Kraetzschmar)
    • Survey of Electronics        (Kaiser/Frank/ Kraetzschmar)
    • Robot Programming Environments and Techniques (Enderle/Sablatnög/ Kraetzschmar)
    • Robot and Agent Control Architectures (Beetz/Kraetzschmar/HDB/Fischer)
    • Robot Localisation and Position Estimation (Burgard/Fox/Gutmann)
    • Robot Vision (for RoboCup) (Neumann/Mallot)
    • Robot Planning (Beetz)
    • Robot Learning (Thrun/Burgard)
    • Reinforcement Learning for Robotics (Kraetzschmar/Vollbrecht)
    • Neural Networks for Robotics (Palm/Schwenker)
    • AI Techniques for Robotics (Beetz/ Kraetzschmar)
    • Evolutionary Computation for Robotics (Banzhaf)
    A selection of them will be offered as a Practical Training Course for senior researchers. 
 
    Robot Programming Lab 
    A limited number of students work in groups to solve small robot programming tasks on our robots. The goal is to give students some practical experience with typical robot programming environments. 

    We have a variety of robots in our lab. We will probably be able to borrow extra robots from nearby labs, so that we may have available up to 12 or more Pioneers, 3 B21, a Nomad 200, between 4 and 10 Kheperas, and a variety of small LEGO-based or custom-built robots. 

    Workshop CR-98: Co-operative Robotics --- The RoboCup Challenge 
     

      • Co-operative Agents.
      • Distributed Artificial Intelligence.
      • Robotics & Autonomous Systems.
    Workshop MASSIM-98: Multi-agent Systems and Simulation – the RoboCup Challenge 
     
      • Real-time simulation.
      • Simulating physics.
      • Weather circumstances.
      • Virtual reality, 3D, ...
    Workshop SEE-98: Science and Engineering Education 
     
      • robotics education for computer scientists
      • technical education in high schools
      • adult engineering education
    High School Students Robot Building Lab 
    (a modified version of our classical RBL) 
    Adult Education Robot Building Lab 
    (see above) 

    Robot Exhibition and Demonstration 
    If you have a performant robot, then come and show it off... 

 
 

   Organisation of the Ulm Robotics Week

    Local Organising Committee: 
      • Gerhard K. Kraetzschmar (Chair)
      • Marlene Hartmann (General Administration)
      • Stefan Enderle (Competitions and Trials)
      • Thomas Boss (Competitions and Trials)
      • Stefan Sablatnög (Tutorials)
      • Volker Baier (Labs)
      • Gerd Meyer (HW and SW set up)
      • Thomas Ketterle (HW and SW set up)
      • Hans Utz (Web Publications)
    Available facilities 
     
      •  H20 lecture hall
      • Sun-Pool 1: 35 workstations
      • Sun-Pool 2: 20 workstations
      • PC-Pool: 40 PCs
      • Ulm Robot Lab (robots.... plus more Pioneers from Tuebingen and Freiburg)
      • Seminar rooms etc.
      • Cafeteria, delivery services and nearby restaurant.