Programming intelligent household robots using a virtual research environment

Michaela Kümpel

Unterrichtssprache: Englisch

Kursbeschreibung:

Have you always wondered what is needed to program a robot to bring milk to the coffee table for breakfast? If so, you can find out in this project-framed course! The course is designed to teach the principles needed for developing a robot application that does just that: bring milk to the coffee table, in simulation. Using a virtual research environment running on a website that does not require software installation or specific hardware, we will go over four main aspects needed to create a robot application: 1) Modelling the environment. A robot uses its sensors to make sense of its surroundings, but the sensor data needs to be labeled so that some object can be detected as a table, or a fridge. We will create a kitchen for the robot to act in. 2) Now we need a robot in our kitchen. The robot needs to be told to look for objects and match this to the environment model. We will integrate a robot model and perform a basic perception task. 3) With a robot in a kitchen, the next thing needed for performing the task is to give the robot knowledge about what a milk is and where a milk can be found. We will discuss knowledge engineering and let the robot infer where the milk would be stored. 4) Finally, the robot is equipped to perform the task of bringing milk to the table. Now we need to write an action plan for the robot so that it knows what to/ how to move to perform the task. We will instruct the robot to move to the fridge, grasp the milk, and bring it to the table.

During the program, we will also address problems that arise when robots operate in human environments. For example, the importance of creating a trustworthy interaction, and how to achieve this, but also how to include preferences of humans if one prefers lactose-free milk, or soy milk. We will further ask ourselves if different age groups, genders or people with different abilities would need robots to act in different ways, and how.

Voraussetzungen:

Ein Computer mit WLAN-Verbindung und grundlegende Programmierkenntnisse.

Biographie: Michaela Kümpel

Michaela is a Postdoc at the Institute for Artificial Intelligence, and also a mother of three. Her research lies in the intersection of cognitive robotics and knowledge engineering, creating intelligent agents that support humans in their daily life.
After high school, Michaela did an apprenticeship as Qualified IT Specialist before she got her Bachelor of Science in Information Systems at University of Osnabrück and her Master of Science in Management Information Systems at the University of South Florida, Tampa, US. She came back to Germany for a short stop at the Jacobs University and the DFKI Bremen before joining the Institute for Artificial Intelligence at the University of Bremen, where she got her Doctorate.