IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - June 2013 - 106

ON THE SHELF

Towards Service Robots for
Everyday Environments: Recent
Advances in Designing Service
Robots for Complex Tasks in
Everyday Environments
Erwin Prassler, Rainer Bischoff,
Wolfram Burgard, Robert Haschle,
Martin Hagele, Gisbert Lawitzky,
Bernard Nebel, Paul Ploger, Ulrich
Reiser, and Marius Zollner, SpringerVerlag, Berlin Heidelberg, 2012,
528 pages.
ooks on robotics often cover a
broad range of the topics or
describe several approaches to
solving problems. Towards Service Robots for Everyday Environments
chose instead a case study of a five-year
project in Germany, organized to fulfill
the long-standing human desire to create helpful robot technology that could
be integrated into daily life. This book
includes information in addition to the
results from the collaborative research
project Deutsch Service Robotik Initiative [(DESIRE), German Service Robotics Initiative]. It shows the process of
discovery with iterations of failures and
successes, as well as offering valuable
lessons learned.
In particular, the objectives of the
DESIRE project were as follows: 1) to
develop capable, dependable, and
affordable robots for everyday use; 2) to
create a platform that could promote
convergence and consolidation of technology for the larger robotics community; 3) to develop an adaptable and
scalable architecture for mobile

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MRA.2013.2255516
Date of publication: 6 June 2013

106

IEEE ROBOTICS & AUTOMATION MAGAZINE

june 2013

manipulation and service robots; and 4)
to promote entrepreneurship in the
field. The approach involved robotic
control from an internal rather than
external locus of control, a kind of selfawareness, to achieve its objectives.
Although the results of DESIRE have
inspired several new European research
projects, interestingly, the project had
to abandon its third objective. The
authors learned that people preferred to
build their own architecture rather than
reusing someone else's, a valuable lesson
in itself!
This book is organized into eight
chapters, although we use the term
loosely-each is more like a book in
itself, reporting everything you would
want to know about the topic covered.
Chapter 1 provides an overview of the
objectives and problems to tackle. In
Chapter 2, the book moves directly into
the robot architecture, which uses an
Eigen model central system state model
aimed at being able to make task planning adaptive to everyday life situations.
Chapter 3 describes task planning and
execution as well as discusses research
questions for employing an action planning system as part of a robot controller.
Using an action planner, the robot can
respond more flexibly, devising a suitable action plan, with only a general
goal given.
Service robots need to be able to
adapt to their environments in real
time, and Chapter 4 explains the
approach used to enable the robotic
hands to learn a probabilistic body
schema model of their manipulators,
built up from their own sensor data.
Chapter 5 details the various camera

hardware and perception algorithms,
employing a systematic probabilistic
handling of uncertainties along with the
use of active perception mechanisms.
They are able to analyze complex scenes
and identify varied objects. Chapter 6
deals with mobility, manipulation, and
grasping, as they are integrated into the
DESIRE project and are important tasks
for service robots to master. The
authors lay out their grasp planning system that integrates with object modeling perception described earlier. Service
robots need to interact with an owner
who may be a layperson, and Chapter 7
details how the project created an interactive tutoring scenario that could be
operated even by someone without
technical knowledge. Chapter 8 integrates all the components on one common platform. The researchers share
what they learned in the development
of this complex service robot system
and propose methods and tools to support further development and even
remote testing.
This volume points out many concerns and provides ways to solve them.
Regardless of whether they choose to
follow this approach or not, roboticists
of the future can draw valuable lessons
to help direct their progress more efficiently and effectively. Thus, this book
can be very useful for educating readers in general on how to go about
developing their own complete system
for service robots.
-Reviewed by
C. Alexander Simpkins, Ph.D., and
Annellen M. Simpkins, Ph.D.,
San Diego, California

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - June 2013