RoboEarth project, European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme

RoboEarth offers a Cloud Robotics infrastructure, which includes everything needed to close the loop from robot to the cloud and back to the robot. RoboEarth’s World-Wide-Web style database stores knowledge generated by humans – and robots – in a machine-readable format. Data stored in the RoboEarth knowledge base include software components, maps for navigation (e.g., object locations, world models), task knowledge (e.g., action recipes, manipulation strategies), and object recognition models (e.g., images, object models).

The RoboEarth Cloud Engine (also called Rapyuta) makes powerful computation available to robots. It allows robots to offload their heavy computation to secure computing environments in the cloud with minimal configuration. The Cloud Engine’s computing environments provide high bandwidth access to the RoboEarth knowledge repository enabling robots to benefit from the experience of other robots

Click to expand...

Edited by Tristan Upton
Videography by Joel Hempenius and Daniel Blumensev

Click to expand...

This video summarizes the RoboEarth final demonstrator. The demonstrator includes four robots collaboratively working together to help patients in a hospital. These robots used RoboEarth in the following ways:
1. a knowledge repository to share and learn from each others' experience,
2. a communication medium to perform collaborative tasks, and
3. a computational resource to offload some of their heavy computation.

This research was funded by the European Union Seventh Framework Programme FP7/2007-2013 under grant agreement no. 248942 RoboEarth.

Click to expand...

Today's robots are programmed in such a way that they rely, almost completely, on feedback. Based on the consequences of an action performed by the robot, it tries to make the necessary adjustments. Each has to be programmed in advance and every time a robot has to perform a task the same process has to start all over again. A solution to this problem could be to store the robot's knowledge regarding the actions and the environment. Then, any robot that has access to the stored knowledge can bene?t
from it resulting in an improved action. Such a feed forward strategy prevents reinventing the wheel over and over again.

Recently, a consortium consisting of Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e), Philips Applied Technology, Universit?t Stuttgart (USTUTT), Eidgen?ssische Technische Hochschule Z?rich (ETHZ), Universidad de Zaragoza (UNIZAR), and Technische Universit?t M?nchen (TUM) started a project called RoboEarth. The goal is to successfully design and implement a world-wide web-style database called RoboEarth. RoboEarth should receive and store knowledge obtained by a robot and supply it to any
robot that can bene?t from it, independent of the robot's hardware and con?guration. Apart from this database, an interface between the database and the systems referring to
the database, and a language that can be used for communication have to be developed. As a proof of principle, a service robot for patient companion in a hospital environment will be built as a demonstrator. This service robot will, e.g., serve a drink or open a screw cap bottle.

Click to expand...