Updates
Participatory Event »Decontamination Robotics 2024« ·
The third participatory event of the ROBDEKON competence center takes place from 23.10.2024 to 24.10.2024. Join us for informative talks and practical demonstrations by experts from science and industry. This time we welcome you in Bremen.
Framework for mobile manipulation in unknown environments ·
The Chair of High-Performance Humanoid Technologies (H2T) at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) has developed a processing pipeline in ROBDEKON that opens up a wide range of mobile manipulation options for robots - even in unknown environments and independent of the specific robot type. The pipeline, described in detail in the paper MAkEable: Memory-centered and Affordance-based Task Execution Framework for Transferable Mobile Manipulation Skills, represents a significant advance in the field of robotic manipulation and offers a versatile and adaptable solution that can cope with the complexities of real-world environments.
ROBDEKON at the AI-based Robotics Conference ·
Robot-assisted decontamination technologies presented in a talk and live exhibit: At the first conference for »AI-based robotics« (KIRO2024) organized by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action (BMWK) in Berlin, ROBDEKON presented the status of its developments.
Learning from successful grasping actions
In his talk, ROBDEKON spokesperson and Fraunhofer IOSB institute director Prof. Jürgen Beyerer provided an insight into the technologies and platforms that the competence center is researching. The aim is to use artificial intelligence to enable robots to independently master complex tasks in unstructured and dynamic environments, in order to reduce the burden on humans and keep them out of danger zones. The robots learn by themselves to store and improve successful grasping actions. Built-in AI algorithms help with the perception of the surroundings and the visual recognition of hazardous objects.
Live exhibit: salvaging barrels at a distance of 500 km
In addition to the talk, conference participants in Berlin experienced the autonomous excavator ALICE (Autonomous Large Intelligent Crawler Excavator) as a live exhibit: In the accompanying exhibition, visitors could use a laptop to instruct the excavator to recover barrels. ALICE itself was located 500 kilometers away in Karlsruhe and carried out the requested maneuvers independently, which the participants could again follow live via video link.
The aim of the conference was to bring together robotics experts from business and science in order to secure the long-term competitiveness and sovereignty of Germany and Europe in the field of AI-based robotics.
Bundled robotics expertise in the new Robotics Institute
The conference also marked the launch of the Robotics Institute Germany (RIG), which brings together Germany's leading institutions in the field of robotics research and creates a central point of contact. The competence network, which is managed by the Technical University of Munich (TUM), will drive forward cutting-edge research, talent development and innovation in Germany in the field of AI-based robotics and will receive funding of 20 million euros from the BMBF for four years.
The spokesperson for the RIG is Professor Tamim Asfour, who has been involved in ROBDEKON from the very beginning. He holds the Chair of High-Performance Humanoid Technologies (H²T) at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). He describes the objective of the new virtual institute as follows: »We will establish the RIG as a nationally recognized and internationally unique institute that designs cutting-edge research, education and innovation in AI-based robotics and aligns it with the needs of Germany.« Fraunhofer IOSB, as the lead partner of ROBDEKON, is also part of RIG and will link the laboratory for autonomous construction machines, which was built in ROBDEKON under the direction of Dr.-Ing. Janko Petereit, with other infrastructures and expand it into a laboratory for large-scale robotics.
ROBDEKON presents three decontamination robots at KERNTECHNIK 2024 ·
From June 11 to 13, 2024, operators, manufacturers, suppliers, authorities and organizations from research and academia will meet again at the trade fair in Leipzig to discuss the latest developments and research results in the field of nuclear technology. ROBDEKON will be there with a booth and will show the current state of development of robotic systems.
Fraunhofer IOSB and ZECH Umwelt test autonomous excavator in a quarry ·
In a joint measurement campaign, the Fraunhofer Institute of Optronics, System Technologies and Image Exploitation IOSB and ZECH Umwelt tested the ALICE autonomous excavator developed at the ROBDEKON competence center in a quarry. The challenging environment with its different properties of the soil and excavated material provided an ideal setting for testing the autonomous excavator. This allowed valuable findings to be gathered in order to evaluate the system's robustness in real operating conditions.
The Competence Center can now also be found on LinkedIn.
Participatory Event »Decontamination Robotics 2023« ·
From October 18th to October 19th, 2023, the second participation event of the ROBDEKON Competence Center will take place in Karlsruhe, featuring hands-on demonstrations and talks from academia and practice.
KERNTec Scientific Days 2023: Insights into the future of decontamination technology ·
The KERNTec Scientific Days, a newly introduced platform for scientific exchange in nuclear technology, took place from June 13-15, 2023 in Frankfurt am Main. ROBDEKON was there.
Best Presentation Award at KERNTECHNIK 2022 ·
From 21.06.2022 to 22.06.2022 the KERNTECHNIK 2022 took place in Leipzig. The team of Prof. Dr.-Ing. Sascha Gentes from the professorship Dismantling of Conventional and Nuclear Structures at the Institute of Technology and Management in Construction of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) was represented with several presentations.
»Workshop on Intelligent Autonomous Robots for Hazardous Decommissioning Tasks« at the IAS-17 ·
On Monday, June 13th 2022, from 9am to 4:45pm, the Workshop on Intelligent Autonomous Robots for Hazardous Decommissioning Tasks is held in the context of the 17th International Conference on Intelligent Autonomous Systems (IAS-17) in Zagreb, Croatia. Deploying mobile robots in hazardous environments is a difficult task that involves not only high costs but also health and environmental risks. Modern, intelligent robots can support the decommissioning and reduce many hazards for humans.
ROBDEKON at the BMBF Innovation Forum »Civil Security« ·
ROBDEKON is participating with a booth at the BMBF Innovation Forum »Civil Security« 2022 and discusses novel concepts for robot-based decontamination with experts.
Fraunhofer IOSB Welcomes Spot as Latest Member of its Robot Family ·
Yet another member joins the robot family in the Fraunhofer IOSB lab: Boston Dynamics’ Robot dog Spot has been equipped to support the decontamination tasks in ROBDEKON with advanced exploration capabilities.
On Tuesday, September 28th 2021, from 2pm - 6:15pm, the 1st Workshop on Scene Understanding in Unstructured Environments is held in the context of the DAGM German Conference on Pattern Recognition. Scene understanding in unstructured environments is a key element in ROBDEKON.
In 2018, the ROBDEKON competence center (robotic systems for decontamination in hazardous environments) started operations. After three years of work, a regular review was due - on this occasion, the ROBDEKON partners in Karlsruhe and Bremen presented the state of their developed technology and gave live demonstrations of the teleoperated, semi-autonomous and autonomous systems they are researching.
VDB Mapping: Framework for real-time 3D mapping released ·
The FZI Forschungszentrum Informatik has released »VDB Mapping«, a high-performance probabilistic 3D mapping framework that generates volumetric environment maps in real-time from lidar data.
iviz: an App for visualization and teleoperation of robots in AR and VR ·
KIT releases the newly developed app »iviz« for visualization and teleoperation of robots using virtual and augmented reality.
From 22.10.2019 to 23.10.2019 the first participatory event of the ROBDEKON Competence Center will take place in Karlsruhe. The event has the character of a conference and will feature talks by experts in the field of decontamination and robotics. The talks will be given both by users from the field and by members of the ROBDEKON consortium.
Announcement: Ceremonial Opening ·
Around a year after work began on setting up the ROBDEKON Competence Center (»Robotic systems for decontamination in hazardous environments«), a ceremonial opening event will be held on June 25, 2019, at the Fraunhofer Institute of Optronics, System Technologies and Image Exploitation IOSB in Karlsruhe.