ROBxTASK - Cloud platform for vendor-independent exchange of robot control tasks and processes

ROBxTASK will enable the easy transfer of robotic applications between different target processes using social robotics and industrial robotics.

Short Description

Robots have very vendor-specific programming interfaces, requiring special technical development knowledge for each type of robotic device and task. Furthermore, robots often perform similar tasks across different domains for their end-users.

A typical example in the manufacturing domain is to pick an object, move to a destination and place it there, a task that is also common in a social care scenario. In the health domain on the other hand, social robots provide cognitive abilities for human-centred user interaction like gesture recognition or observing the users well-being by monitoring feelings or stress, using camera algorithms and biometric data from wearables.

Human-centred interaction tasks are increasingly required in industrial contexts for collaborative robotics. Still there are no tools or standards available, that would help to re-use task definitions across different robotic platforms and there are still monolithic software stacks in use, where robots execute pre-defined, non-adaptable receipts with limited interaction towards other systems. Too much effort has to be put into the configuration and programming of robotic tasks from scratch.

With the emergence of new robot models and approaches in industrial, collaborative and social robotics, the technical skills required of users to manage the robot must decrease in order for robotics to realise its growth potential.

The goal of ROBxTASK is to decouple process models and robot task definitions from specific robotic hardware, and to enable interoperability by the exchange of formal knowledge across application domains along automated processes.

Our approach is interdisciplinary, inter-domain, human-centred and based on Internet platform technology. It will:

  • Extend an existing robotic ontology towards new application domains
  • Develop re-usable mappings from the high-level language to target robots
  • Create a web-based internet platform environment for robot task exchange
  • Experiment with exchange of formalised expert knowledge via platforms
  • Bring robot experts and users from different application domains together
  • Validate robot task re-usability across social and industrial robotic scenarios in demo labs (TRL4)

ROBxTASK will enable the easy transfer of robotic applications between different target processes using social robotics and industrial robotics. Domain experts will be able to define semantic task templates at a higher, domain-specific level, while technical experts can concentrate on transferring existing task templates to the specific hardware platforms, including simulation environments.

Individual task templates in formal language allow the definition of complex sequences involving robotic and human tasks. ROBxTASK functionality for task and process modelling will enable collaboration of the different user communities, to speed up the knowledge-transfer between users decreasing time and costs.

For each end-user role, the platform will provide human-oriented services, e.g. searchable indices of task modules with facets, negotiation and collaboration on specific functions based on a robotic skills ontology. To achieve that, ROBxTASK will invite several stakeholder groups in design-fiction workshops to stimulate a co-creative ecosystem on the design and development of robotic task and translation modules.

Project Partners

Consortium lead

Salzburg Research Forschungsgesellschaft mbH

Other consortium partners

  • AIT Austrian Institute of Technology GmbH
  • Eberle Automatische Systeme GmbH
  • Johanniter Österreich Ausbildung und Forschung gem. GmbH
  • Profactor GmbH
  • RIC (Regionales Innovations Centrum) GmbH
 

Contact Address

Salzburg Research Forschungsgesellschaft mbH
DI Felix Strohmeier
Jakob Haringer Straße 5/3
A-5020 Salzburg