Category: ROS

Report on the First MoveIt! Community Meeting

9/3/2015

Thank you for coming to the MoveIt! Community Meeting and thanks to the presenters for making this a huge success. There were more than 240 people registered and more than 150 who attended from all over the world. I apologize to those running Ubuntu who had issues joining us (using Chrome was the suggested solution for the future).

MoveIt! now has a twitter account for updates: @moveitrobot

Meeting Video

The slides from the meeting are posted here in two parts.

Slides: PART 1

Slides: PART 2

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First MoveIt! Community Meeting: Sept. 3, 2015 at 8 AM PST (Online)

8/26/2015

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The first MoveIt! Community Meeting is happening online on Sept. 3 at 8 AM PST. Come see how the community is using MoveIt!.

When
Sept. 3, 2015 at 8 AM PST

Where
Online (Register here: http://www.anymeeting.com/PIID=EC50D886804E38)

Agenda

8:00-8:10 - The State of MoveIt! - Sachin Chitta (Stealth Startup)
8:10-8:20 - OMPL - Mark Moll, Lydia Kavraki (Rice University)
8:20-8:30 - ROS-Control - Adolfo Rodríguez Tsouroukdissian (PAL Robotics)
8:30-8:40 - Updates to STOMP - Jorge Nicho (SwRI)
8:40-8:50 - MoveIt! based implementation of an I-AUV - Dina Youakim (University of Girona)
8:50-9:00 - Team VIGIR at the DRC - Stefan Kohlbrecher (Technische Universität Darmstadt)
9:00-9:10 - ROS 2.0 and Manipulation - Jackie Kay (OSRF)
9:10-9:20 - Discussion

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Save the date for the first MoveIt! Community Meeting: Sept. 3, 2015 (Online)

8/4/2015

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Save the date for the first MoveIt! Community Meeting happening online on Sept. 3 at 8 AM PST. Confirmed speakers include:

* The State of MoveIt! - Sachin Chitta
* OMPL - Mark Moll, Lydia Kavraki (Rice University)
* ROS-Control - Adolfo Rodríguez Tsouroukdissian (PAL Robotics)
* ROS-Industrial - Shaun Edwards (SwRI)
* Team VIGIR at the DRC - Stefan Kohlbrecher (Technische Universität Darmstadt)
* MoveIt! based Implementation of an I-AUV - Dina Youakim, Pere Ridao, and Narcis Plaomeras (University of Girona)

If you have used MoveIt! on an exciting project or robot and would like to present your work to the community, please don't hesitate to email me at robot.moveit@gmail.com by August 11, 2015. A final agenda and details on how to take part in the meeting will be sent out next week.

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Software and Robots having the Biggest Impact in Robotics Manipulation Research

7/29/2015

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The number of mentions for open-source software packages, frameworks and libraries at the 2015 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA 2015). This list is limited to software related to manipulation.

When I was at Willow Garage, we would often look to measure the impact that ROS and the PR2 were having. The primary target for ROS, at that point, was the robotics academic community. An obvious way to measure impact was to look at metrics like the number of packages released, the number of robots running ROS, etc. Another way to measure impact was to look at citations and mentions in robotics conferences. I ran some numbers using data from the recent IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation in Seattle to measure the impact, not only of ROS and the PR2 but also of other open-source software for Robotics and other manipulation robots.

In generating this data, I chose all the open-source frameworks, packages and libraries I know of. I left out proprietary software, like MATLAB (which gained 173 mentions). The names I searched for include those of component libraries, like FCL, simulation libraries (like Gazebo), several planning libraries (OMPL, SBPL, CHOMP, etc.) and complete open-source frameworks, like MoveIt!, OpenRAVE and ROS. The ROS-Industrial consortium is also included in the list. The list is, admittedly, biased towards the ROS ecosystem. The numbers were generated by searching for the number of papers where the names appear in the proceedings of the conference. I counted each paper where a name appears as a single mention even if the name was mentioned multiple times in the same paper. The search was performed using the search functionality in the proceedings so it is likely that some mentions may not be accurate.

The first graph shows the number of mentions for each software package. It is clear that ROS has had a huge impact, gaining mentions in 100 papers (of a total of about 930 accepted papers). Vision frameworks like OpenCV and PCL also garner a large number of mentions. Gazebo seems to be the most popular open-source simulation framework while the ROS-based planning frameworks and packages, like MoveIt!, OMPL, etc. also gain more than 10 mentions. Users seem to be about equally split between MoveIt! and OpenRAVE. Overall, it is clear that open-source software is having a big impact on robotics research in manipulation.

I also looked at which robots garnered the most mentions in manipulation research. In most cases, I looked for the names of the robots themselves, e.g. the PR2. In other cases, I chose to look for the names of vendors, e.g. KUKA. The list includes robot arms, hands, humanoids and mobile manipulation systems. Note that I am only counting the mention of a particular robot - this does not necessarily mean that the robot was used in the research.

The number of mentions for different manipulation robots at the 2015 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA 2015). This list includes robot arms, hands, humanoids and mobile manipulation systems. It is not exhaustive so feel free to email me robots you want to see included in this list at robot DOT moveit AT gmail DOT com

The PR2 finds 46 mentions at ICRA 2015. Five years after the platform was released, the PR2 is still a very popular manipulation research platform. Being the base platform on which ROS was first developed and deployed is most certainly a significant factor in its #1 ranking. KUKA robots come in a close second - possibly representing the popularity of the vendor in Europe. Shadow robot hands also find a lot of mentions, indicating the high degree of interest in multi-fingered manipulation.

Other industrial robot platforms, in general, do not rank high on this list. It is interesting to ask why. Is it safety and setup issues? The lack of a common, open API (an issue only now being addressed through the efforts of the open-source community)? The difficulty in having to integrate multiple components (grippers, sensors and more) vs. fully integrated systems like the PR2? Or is there a need for better collaboration between academia and industrial robotics? It is clear that we have reached a turning point in robotic manipulation, with the promise of new features, new capabilities and new robots. What seems to be missing is an overall software framework that brings all this together the right way - all the pieces of the puzzle are there, somebody just needs to put them together the right way.

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Amazon Picking Challenge at ICRA 2015 in Seattle

11/23/2014

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I am helping organize the Amazon Picking Challenge at ICRA 2015 in Seattle. The challenge pushes teams to design a complete system to pick objects from a Kiva "Pod". Multiple robot companies have offered to provide hardware to participating teams at the challenge. I had organized the ICRA 2012 Sushi Challenge with the PR2 - it was clear then that there were very few mobile robots around that could take part in a mobile manipulation challenge. With the Amazon challenge, fixed manipulators have a chance to demonstrate their capabilities in a really hard manipulation task. We expect to see lots of teams using MoveIt! and ROS in the challenge! Follow along at the Amazon Picking Challenge website.

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Report on the First MoveIt! Community Meeting

First MoveIt! Community Meeting: Sept. 3, 2015 at 8 AM PST (Online)

Save the date for the first MoveIt! Community Meeting: Sept. 3, 2015 (Online)

Software and Robots having the Biggest Impact in Robotics Manipulation Research

Amazon Picking Challenge at ICRA 2015 in Seattle

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