IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - June 2012 - 36

persons at the beginning. This test has to be solved within
10 min. In General Purpose Service Robot II, commands
with missing or erroneous information are given to the
robot. The robot has to ask for missing information, or, if
it detects erroneous task specifications during the execution of the task, it must react accordingly, report back to
the user, and propose alternative solutions. Shopping Mall
tests the abilities of the robots to operate in previously
unknown environments. A human user guides the robot
through a real shopping mall and shows the location of
several objects. Afterward, the robot must fetch a subset of
objects specified by the human user. Stage II concludes
with the Demo Challenge. This 7-min open demonstration
follows a theme that is defined before the competition. In
2011, the theme was cleaning the house.

(a)

(b)

Figure 1. Cognitive service robot Cosero (a) grasps a spoon and (b)
pours milk into a bowl of cereals at RoboCup GermanOpen 2011.

IEEE ROBOTICS & AUTOMATION MAGAZINE

JUNE 2012

UNIVERSITY OF BONN

Related Research on Integrated Systems
The lean rules in the RoboCup@Home league facilitate
diverse approaches. Some teams construct new and innovative robot hardware while others resort to off-the-shelf
hardware to focus on algorithmic problems.
The Chinese team WrightEagle [9] has competed in the
RoboCup@Home league since 2009. In 2011, they introduced the KeJia-2 robot platform that supports omnidirectional driving and is equipped with two seven degrees of
freedom (7 DoF) manipulators for humanlike reach, similar
to our robots. In the competition, KeJia made popcorn in a
microwave oven. For this demonstration, the robot had to
press buttons to open and close the microwave door.
The German team b-it-bots [10] introduced their robot
Jenny in the 2011 competition. Jenny consists of a modified
Care-O-Bot 3 platform from Fraunhofer IPA with a 7-DoF
Kuka lightweight robot arm and a three-finger Schunk hand.
The Australian team RobotAssist [11] competes with a
robot that combines a Segway RMP 100 base with an Exact
Dynamics iArm manipulator. For manipulator control,
they apply an optimization method that finds collision-free

arm configurations for the object to manipulate. RobotAssist also demonstrated person detection, identification, and
social skills with their robot.
Besides RoboCup@Home, many research groups developed integrated systems for mobile manipulation in everyday environments. Demonstrations of these systems are
performed in isolated settings in labs or at trade fairs.
A prominent example is the Personal Robot 2 (PR2)
developed by Willow Garage. Bohren et al. [12] demonstrated
an application in which PR2 fetches drinks from a refrigerator and delivers them to human users. Both the drink order
and the location at which it has to be delivered are specified
by the user in a Web form. In Beetz et al. [13] a PR2 and a
custom-built robot cooperatively prepare pancakes. In the
health-care domain, Jain and Kemp [14] present EL-E, a
mobile manipulator that assists motor-impaired patients by
performing pick and place operations to retrieve objects. Srinivasa et al. [15] combined object search and retrieval in different demonstrations in their lab. Their autonomous service
robot HERB navigates around a kitchen, searches for mugs,
and brings them back to the kitchen sink. Xue et al. [16] demonstrated grasping and handling of ice cream scoops with a
two-armed robot standing at a fixed position. The robot
Rollin' Justin of the German Aerospace Center (DLR) prepared coffee in a pad machine [17]. The robot grasped coffee
pads and inserted them into the coffee machine, which
involved opening and closing the pad drawer.
In the RoboCup 2011 competition, our team NimbRo
participated with the robot Dynamaid and its successor
Cosero. In the tests, the robots showed their HRI and mobile
manipulation capabilities. We introduced many new developments, such as grasp planning to extend the range of
graspable objects, real-time scene segmentation and object
tracking, and human-robot cooperative carrying of a table.
System Overview
Robot Design
We focused the design of our robots Dynamaid [18] and
Cosero [19] (see Figures 1 and 2) on typical requirements
for autonomous operation in everyday environments.
While Cosero still retains the lightweight design principles
of Dynamaid, we improved its construction and
appearance significantly and made it more precise and
stronger. Cosero's mobile base has a small footprint of
59 3 44 cm and drives omnidirectionally. This allows the
robot to maneuver through the narrow passages found in
household environments. Its two anthropomorphic arms
resemble average human body proportions and reaching
capabilities. A yaw joint in the torso enlarges the workspace of the arms. To compensate for the missing torso
pitch joint and legs, a linear actuator in the trunk can move
the upper body vertically. This enables the robot to manipulate on similar heights like humans, even on the floor.
We constructed our robots from lightweight aluminum
parts. All joints are driven by Robotis Dynamixel actuators.

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