For more information, have a look at the first part of the workshop, featuring local and remote talks from Moritz Tenorth (TU Bremen), Alper Aydemir (KTH Stockholm), Séverin Lemaignan (LAAS-CNRS), Ibrahim [...]]]> The RoboEarth team organized a Cloud Robotics Workshop at the eu Robotics Forum, 19-21 March, Lyon, France. The event was very well received.

For more information, have a look at the first part of the workshop, featuring local and remote talks from Moritz Tenorth (TU Bremen), Alper Aydemir (KTH Stockholm), Séverin Lemaignan (LAAS-CNRS), Ibrahim Volkan Isler (University of Minnesota, remote), M. Ani Hsieh (Drexel University, remote), Guoqiang Hu (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, remote), Matei Ciocarlie and Kaijen Hsiao (Willow Garage, remote), Shuichi Nishio (ATR Japan, remote), and Ken Goldberg (UC Berkeley, remote):

Note: Echo is gone after the first 2min.

You may also want to have a look at the archived Cloud Robotics workshop page.

It is our pleasure to announce the first public release of Rapyuta: The RoboEarth Cloud Engine. Rapyuta is an open source cloud robotics platform for robots. It implements a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) framework designed specifically for robotics applications.

Rapyuta helps robots to offload heavy computation by providing secured customizable computing environments in the cloud. Robots [...]]]>  

It is our pleasure to announce the first public release of Rapyuta: The RoboEarth Cloud Engine. Rapyuta is an open source cloud robotics platform for robots. It implements a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) framework designed specifically for robotics applications.

Rapyuta helps robots to offload heavy computation by providing secured customizable computing environments in the cloud. Robots can start their own computational environment, launch any computational node uploaded by the developer, and communicate with the launched nodes using the WebSockets protocol.

The above figure shows a simplified overview of the Rapyuta framework: Each robot connected to Rapyuta has a secured computing environment (rectangular boxes) giving them the ability to move their heavy computation into the cloud. Computing environments have a high bandwidth connection to the RoboEarth knowledge repository (stacked circular disks). This allows robots to process data directly inside the computational environment in the cloud without the need for downloading and local processing. Furthermore, computing environments are tightly interconnected with each other. This paves the way for the deployment of robotic teams.

The name Rapyuta is inspired from the movie Tenku no Shiro Rapyuta (English title: Castle in the Sky) by Hayao Miyazaki, where Rapyuta is the castle in the sky inhabited by robots.

To learn more and contribute to this open-source effort, visit: http://rapyuta.org/.

The event met with unexpectedly high [...]]]> At this year’s PICNIC Festival in Amsterdam, RoboEarth held a joint workshop on Robots and the Internet of Things (IoT) with Council, a think tank part of the High Level Expert Group (EG IoT) on the Internet of Things of the European Commission.

The event met with unexpectedly high attendance, resulting in a room packed with an interested and engaged audience and resulting in lively discussion and debate. The main topics centered on how robots could enrich our lives through the Internet and the challenges both communities face to make a vision where the Internet gets hands through robots, and robots greatly benefit from the Internet become a reality.

As the chairman Rob van Kranenburg introduced: “Rather than programming robots to handle every potential situation, the Internet of Things could create an environment in which the objects themselves inform robots of their purpose and usage. Tomorrow’s smart objects can provide sensing, robots can act, processing can be on the robot or in the Cloud. To accomplish this, the fields of robotics and IoT need to define common standards for knowledge storage, representation and communication.”

The topics of debate had clear connection points, and pointed to potential future research questions for RoboEarth, including:

• Tomorrow’s smart objects can provide sensing, robots can act, processing can be on the robot or in the Cloud (e.g., using RoboEarth’s Cloud Engine)
• Rather than programming robots to handle every potential situation, the Internet of Things could create an environment in which the objects themselves inform robots of their purpose and usage.
• Both the IoT and RoboEarth encode knowledge. The fields of robotics and IoT need to define common standards for knowledge storage and representation.
• The IoT, robots, and humans need to communicate. The fields of robotics and IoT need to define interfaces and common standards for communication.

For more information, have a look at the article Enlisting Robots – Once robots are integrated into the Internet of Things, they can perform tasks automatically published in the RFID Journal.

Update (Feb 27, 2013):
Even more information can be found in the article The Internet of Things: Robots, RFID & Co-operation published in the December 2012 issue of Elektor.

This second meeting focused on getting feedback on the project’s direction at its half-way point. Thanks to all participants, in particular to the [...]]]> The RoboEarth project’s second annual Industrial Advisory Committee (IAC) meeting was held at the Technical University of Munich, Germany, on May 23rd, 2012.

This second meeting focused on getting feedback on the project’s direction at its half-way point. Thanks to all participants, in particular to the members of the committee for their participation and valueable feedback.