Lectures

Part 2: In his second lecture, Kei Okada discusses episodic memory. It describes the collection of past personal experiences in comparison to semantic memory that refers to the general knowledge about the world humans accumulate throughout their life. In order to achieve a goal like tidying up objects, a robot has to rely on acquired knowledge about where to find objects and what to do with them. In a very educational way, Kei Okada further addresses the concepts of task instantiation and experience accumulation mechanism, meaning the formation of patterns and routines in task completion. 

Part 1: In the first part of his captivating lecture, Rachid Alami discusses decisional abilities required for Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) and Human-Robot Collaboration in particular. The challenge is to develop and build cognitive and interactive abilities to allow robots to perform collaborative tasks with humans, not for humans. The first part centers on the introduction to Human-Robot Joint Actions and the problems of combining tasks planning (what to do) with motion planning (how to do it), especially for grasping, and how they can be solved.

Part 1: Kei Okada starts his first talk with a short introduction on the history of humanoid robotics research at JSK and presents various former projects such as HARP (Human Autonomous Robot Project) . He then continues to explore knowledge representation of everyday activities and knowledge-based object localization before concluding with motion imitation for robots. The compact and thorough presentation is suitable for beginners.

Follow Michael Beetz' talk on the exciting topic of digital twin knowledge bases. The term digital twins refers to virtual, AI-based images of physical objects in the real world. It is an emerging technology and plays a crucial role for the Industry 4.0 and the digitization of manufacturing in several domains. In retail, for example, digital twins show an exact digital replica of the store and warehouse and the location of each product. In his comprehensive talk, Michael Beetz focuses on the aspect of knowledge representation. He proposes a hybrid reasoning system that couples simulation-based with symbolic reasoning and wants to demonstrate the gain of such a combination.

Michael Suppa from Roboception GmbH gives useful insights into robot perception applications in real-world environments. Roboception provides 3D vision hardware and software solutions that enable industrial robotic systems to perceive their environments in real-time. His talk introduces sensing principles, confidence and errror modelling, as well as pose estimation and SLAM (simultaneous localization and mapping). He also lists the requirements for real-world perception and manipluation systems in industrial environments. His informative and application-oriented talk is suitable for beginners.

Part 2: In his very engaging follow-up lecture, Markus Vincze's continues to discuss tasks for robot vision (detection, grasping, and placing objects) in situated environments. In this talk, he demonstrates 3D object modelling and stresses the importance of robotics simulations, especially training robots the orientations of objects for grasping actions. He presents various approaches to object recognition and provides an introduction to deep learning. The talk is also suitable for beginners.

Part 1: In the first part of his highly interesting lecture, Markus Vincze gives us useful insights into robotics visions and presents his vision of domestic robots. As an expert on 2D and 3D vision, he trains robots to understand the functions of objects and how they can help humans in everyday life situations. He shortly introduces two EU projects, HOBBIT and Squirrel, on domestic robots before diving deeper into tasks for robot vision in real-world environments (detection, grasping, placing). The lecture is suitable for beginners.

Moritz Tenorth, CTO at the start-up Magazino GmbH, talks about mobile pick-and-place robots in industrial working environments. Magazino develops and builds customized industrial robots and robot platforms mainly used in logistics that serve as robot assistants to humans, for example to factory workers to keep their work environment safe and efficient. Moritz Tenorth gives us an idea of how challenging these tasks are and how they can be solved. He also shares his advice for a successful transition from academia to industry and the work in a real startup environment. Follow his vivid lecture that is also suitable for beginners.

Part 2: In his follow-up lecture, Michael Beetz gives a short recap of his first talk before further exploring knowledge representation and reasoning for robotic agents. He focuses on one of the main problems of human-scale manipulation tasks for robotic systems, action description, when it comes to the performance of abstract tasks like "pour the water out". From "grasp the pot by the handles" to "tilt the pot around the axis between the handles" to "hold the lid while pouring", every action includes multiple intermediate tasks that have to be described in detail for the robot. Follow his comprehensive lecture that covers many aspects of cognition-enabled robotics.

Part 3: In his third and final lecture, David Vernon discusses recent developments in cognition research. He addresses the common model of cognition that emcompasses approaches in Artificial Intelligence, Cognitive Science, Neuroscience, and Robotics. It is mainly based on the book "Unified theories of cognition" by Allen Newell, a leading investigator in computer science and cognitive psychology. Newell states that cognition takes place over multiple timescales (from millisecond-level to year-level and everything in between). Follow David Vernon's gripping lecture that is also suitable for beginners.