General Descriptions

A simulated household environment is used as the test bed. Human-robot communication is abstracted as text-based natural language description of tasks and command instructions for task execution. The robot sensing of problem domain is stored as files according to certain format.

A simulated 3D robot is used in the competition.It can perform a set of atomic actions, fixed to all problem situations. Therefore, the competition can be considered as problem solving based on a fixed set of atomic actions. The robot has two moving wheels; one arm with one hand that can hold only one item at a time; one plate that can hold one object at a time. The robot has basic movement, abilities of picking an item up and putting it down. Based on these basic functionalities, the competition is focusing on human-robot communication, automated planning and reasoning.

The competing program is required to automatically generate a sequence of atomic actions in the specified time frame based on the problem domain description and task specification, for every challenge task posed by the competition program. The competing robots will be ranked according to the aggregated performance of the generated action sequence for each challenge task.

For testing and evaluating purposes, a simulation problem domain is provided to visualize the 3D problem domain and the execution of the action sequences. Further details on the rules,ranking criteria, competition program, and interface to the competition platform. The rules are set and can be further explained by the Technical committee, currently consisting of

• Chen Xiaoping(University of Science and Technology of China)
• Wang Jingchuan(Shanghai Jiao Tong University)
• Chen Wanmi(Shanghai University)
• Li LongShu(Anhui University)
• Zhang Xiaoyong(Central South University)
• Wang Hao(Hefei University of Technology)
• Zhang Xuefeng(Anhui University of Technology)
• Wang Fan(Hefei Normal University)
• Yang Zhenglei(Inner Mongolia University)

General Contact is Sui Zhiqiang(University of Science and Technology of China)(zqsui@mail.ustc.edu.cn).

Scoring Criteria

• Problem Domain Description

  Problem domain description specifies the current situation that the robot is currently facing, including the types of objects appeared in the problem domain, their positions and other attributes. It also provides the current states of the robot.

• Atomic Actions of the Robot

  The atomic actions of the robot are an abstraction of the basic functionalities of the robot. Atomic actions are described using pre-conditions and post-conditions. Pre-conditions are a set of constraints in the problem domain, and post-conditions are the changes and the effects in the problem domain. We assume the robot can only affect the problem domain using its atomic actions.

  • move(X): The robot moves and arrives at location X.
  • catch(A): The robot picks object A up.
  • putdown(A): The robot puts down object A.
  • toplate(A): The robot puts object A in its plate.
  • fromplate(A): The robot picks object A up from its plate.
• Task Description

  Tasks can be specified using three means: Goal, Constraints and Extra Information.

  • Goal:The goal specified by the user represents the task that the robot needs to accomplish.
  • Constraints:Constraints specify the conditions that must be satified during the process of task execution, or the conditions in the problem domain.
  • Extra Information:User can also specify some extra or supplementary information to the initial state of the problem domain.
• Scoring

  The service robot challenge requires the competing program to generate a sequence of atomic actions to complete every task specified by the competition platform, following the domain description and task specification. The competition platform will score the competing program according to the aggregated performance of the generated sequence of atomic actions for each task specification.

  • 10 marks for completing a task.
  • 5 marks for maintained one constraint.
  • -3 mark for each move action
  • -1 mark for other atomic action.

  Therefore, the score for an atomic action sequence for one question is defined as:

  Question Score = 10*number of completed tasks + 5*number of maintained constraints - 3*number of move action - length of the other action sequence.

  There are two stages of the competition, each stage will have a group of questions. The competing programs are ranked according to the aggregated total score for all questions.

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