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That’s a Wrap: Virtual Robotics Challenge Concludes

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After 74 exciting and grueling hours of staffing the OSRF office around the clock, the Virtual Robotics Challenge (VRC) is finished! The first teams began competing in Japan last Monday afternoon PDT, and the final competition task was completed shortly after 6 pm last Thursday PDT. Over the course of those three days, we saw many creative and impressive solutions to the difficult VRC tasks.

We’re excited to see the final results this coming Thursday, June 27. Stay tuned to find out which teams won an ATLAS robot!

For more information, visit http://theroboticschallenge.org .

The Virtual Robotics Challenge is Underway!

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As of Monday at 4 pm local time, the Virtual Robotics Challenge (VRC) is underway! The VRC is the first of three competitions that make up the DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC), and up to six winning teams will be awarded an ATLAS robot, along with additional funding. We’ve been working hard in the months leading up to the VRC, and are excited as teams begin competing across the world. Stay tuned because the VRC winners will be announced on June 27!

For more information, visit http://theroboticschallenge.org .

OSRF welcomes our GSoC students

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OSRF GSoC 2013 students

OSRF is pleased to welcome Gonzalo Abella, Esteve Fernandez and Andrei Haidu, our first-ever students for the Google Summer of Code!

Gonzalo is an M.S. student at Universidad Rey Juan Carlos. He is a member of the Spiteam RoboCup SPL team. For the last two years, he has been involved in medical research using the Nao robot in therapies for people with Alzheimer’s. As a GSoC member at OSRF, he hopes to improve ROS core by developing a new Parameter API.

Esteve is an M.S. student at Universitat Pompeu Fabra, advised by Prof. Vladimir Estivill-Castro and Prof. Jorge Lobo, and a member of the UPF-Griffith RoboCup Standard Platform team. His research focuses on multirobot localization and coordination in unreliable networks. He holds an M.S. in Computer Engineering from Universitat Oberta de Catalunya and a B.S.E. in Computer Engineering from Universitat de Barcelona. A frequent contributor to free and open source software, Esteve is a PMC member of Apache Thrift and a committer at Twisted, and has given talks at PyCon US and Europython.

Andrei is a fourth semester M.S. student in Informatics at the Technical University of Munich (TUM), majoring in Software Engineering. Since 2011 he has been working in simulation at the IAS Group from TUM, currently The Institute for Artificial Intelligence (IAI) since the group has moved to the University of Bremen.

We’re excited to work with Gonzalo, Esteve, and Andrei in the coming months, and look forward to their contributions this summer!

Closing In On Virtual Robotics Challenge

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Boston Dynamics ATLAS robot

While Memorial Day is the unofficial first day of summer and most people turn to thoughts of barbeques and vacations, the situation here at OSRF is much different. That’s because it’s only a matter of days until the DARPA Virtual Robotics Challenge (VRC).

There’s lots of information on the DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC) website at http://www.theroboticschallenge.org, but the immediate task before us is a key stage in the DRC where all qualifying teams will run their robots through a computer simulation of some of the anticipated tasks from the live DRC events.

OSRF has developed a simulator for DARPA (more details of our relationship are available at FBO.gov), with the plan that the virtual test environment will play a catalyzing role in development of future robotics technology, allowing new hardware and software designs to be evaluated without the need for physical prototyping. The simulator is an open-source, real-time, operator-interactive virtual test bed, with models of robots, robot components, and field environments.

Needless to say, all of us at OSRF are focusing on making the VRC a big success.

May 31 was the last day for teams to qualify for the VRC, and qualifying teams are able to practice until June 8.

The VRC takes place from June 17 to June 27, and DARPA will announce soon after which teams will advance to the DRC Trials taking place in December 2013.

Details of the DRC events, track structure and participating teams can be found at http://www.theroboticschallenge.org/local/images/DRC_Schedule.png.

ROSCon slides and videos posted

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We’re happy to announce that we’ve posted videos of the ROSCon 2013 talks, along with speakers’ slides. They’re linked from the program page. Clear your calendar; that’s over 16 hours of ROSCon content.

Slides and/or video are missing for a few of the talks. They’ll trickle in over time. We’re also expecting to get photos from the official photographer soon. In the meantime, attendee photos are coming together on G+.

The final registration count was 288, up 37% from 2012. Thanks again to everybody for coming! And thanks to our sponsors, without whom we couldn’t put on such an event.

OSRF welcomes Ben Charrow

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OSRF is pleased to welcome Ben Charrow! Ben is a PhD student at the University of Pennsylvania advised by Prof. Vijay Kumar and Prof. Nathan Michael. His research focuses on how to enable teams of robots to gather information about the world around them. Ben is a big believer in the power of ROS. He even used it to build a tele-operated robotic ring bearer for his wedding. At OSRF he hopes to improve ROS support for multi-robot systems.

OSRF welcomes Sarah Elliott

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OSRF is pleased to welcome Sarah Elliott! Sarah is a software engineering intern at OSRF. She is currently completing her BASc in Systems Design Engineering at the University of Waterloo. She spent two previous internships at Willow Garage working on Android control of robots and the mobile manipulation tool MoveIt. At OSRF Sarah will once again be focusing on Android and ROS compatibility, with the goal of allowing developers to easily create apps for robots.