is an international initiative that fosters research in robotics and artificial intelligence,
on multi-robot systems in particular, through competitions of RoboCup Robot Soccer,
RoboCup Rescue,RoboCup@Home, RoboCup Industrial, and RoboCupJunior.
The RoboCup Logistics League (RCLL) is a subleague of the RoboCup Industrial League.It focuses on
in-factory logistics applications.Following the RoboCup spirit, this league’s objective is to enable scientific
work in order to achieve a flexible solution of material and information flow within industrial production
using coordinated teams of autonomous mobile robots.
In this league, the goal is for a team of robots to assemble
products on demand, using a set of production machines.
The machines are based on the MPS- Production System
provided by Festo.There are different types of machines
that resemble different production steps, for instance
fetching raw material, assembling parts, or delivering final
products.
Two teams share a common factory floor. Each team comprises up to three autonomous robots
which can produce using seven machines. Each robot builds on the standardized Festo Robotino robot
platform which can be extended individually with sensors and computing devices. The robots are
cooperative in the sense that they need to communicate and to interact physically with the machines,
e.g. fetching raw material from a dispenser machine or delivering intermediate products to machines
that refine them.
A central agent (called Referee Box) randomly generates product orders with varying configurations
and delivery windows. These orders are communicated to the robot teams that need to derive a
production schedule and to distribute the tasks among the team robots. Hence the RCLL posts challenges
in the full range from Mobile Robotics over communication and multi-agent systems to planning and
scheduling.
See a video for a first impression.