Planning and Execution Competition for Logistics Robots In Simulation

Motivation

Robots gain more capabilities every year, yet the use of planning methods to determine the overall behavior is still the exception rather than the norm. The second Planning and Execution Competition for Logistics Robots in Simulation is held in 2018 to foster mutual and closer cooperation between the planning and robotics communities. The domain is based on the RoboCup Logistics League in simulation. We propose this as a challenge to the planning and robotics community.

Competition at ICAPS 2018

The competition finals will be held at ICAPS 2018. Below you find the link to the rules of the competition, and the reference implementation provided as an image for a USB flash drive to boot into a ready-to-run system.

Rules and Regulations ICAPS 2017 and 2018 Competitions
Rules and Regulations RoboCup Logistics League 2016 (the simulation competition is based on these rules)
USB flash drive image (details how to use available in the Rules and Regulations)

Results 2018

The competition was run at ICAPS 2018. A total of 300 games (50 full iterations with three entries) was run for the round-robin phase. The best two teams (with the constraint of a maximum of one entry per school) were admitted to the finals.

Participants

CaroASP (ASP-based Time-Bounded Planning with CLIPS-based Execution)

RWTH Aachen University, Knowledge-Based Systems Group
University of Potsdam, Knowledge Representation and Reasoning Group

CaroSMT (SMT-based planning with CX-based Execution)

RWTH Aachen University, Knowledge-Based Systems Group
RWTH Aachen University, Theory of Hybrid Systems Group

KCL (ROSPlan 2018 with POPF planner)

King's College London

Round Robin Results

Team	Wins	Lost	Draws	Points For	Points Against	Points Max
CaroSMT	128	69	6	18525	9830	151
CaroASP	105	97	1	15083	12076	232
KCL	64	131	5	5143	16845	32

Finals Result

Winner: CaroSMT (139 points)

Runner-Up: KCL (32 points)

AAAI 2018

We have held a tutorial at AAAI 2018 in New Orleans, LA, USA. It was organized in cooperation with members from NIST organizing the ARIAC competition. We have given general introductions to the competitions and hands-on sessions.

Results 2017

Freiburg (University of Freiburg, Germany)
CaroOPRS/Carologistics (KBSG, RWTH Aachen University, Germany)
MERS (MERS, MIT, USA)
CaroPlanner/Carologistics (KBSG, RWTH Aachen University, Germany)
BabyTigers (Ryukoku University, Kyoto, Japan)

ICAPS 2016

The tutorial took place at ICAPS 2016, on Tuesday, June 14 from 14:00 to 17:30. Video of tutorial.

The planned program was as follows:

14:00-14:30	General Introduction and Competition Description
14:30-15:00	Planning and Executive Challenges
15:00-15:30	Hands-on Part I: Overview and bootup (CLIPS-based task coordination)
15:30-16:00	Coffee Break and Demo
16:00-17:00	Hands-on Part II: Exploring the Simulation (Enterprise Task Planning System)
17:00-17:30	Discussion and Feedback

For the Hands-on session, computers are necessary which the participants must bring. USB sticks will be provided for the time of the tutorial from which typical laptops (Apple hardware probably cannot be accommodated) can be boot to run the simulation and planning system. Bringing a mouse or similar device is advisable.

There will be a live robot demonstration of a robot operating a single processing station during the tutorial.