On September 27, we reached our second milestone and demonstrated the core abilities of the ILIAD system live to invited industry representatives at the National Centre for Food Manufacturing in Holbeach, UK. In the set of demonstrations, we showcased the current implementation of core components for deployment and operation – from when the first ILIAD robot is unpacked at a new site, to…

In the middle of May, we had the third project-wide integration week of ILIAD. This time the partners met in Örebro, Sweden, in order to synchronise and integrate developments in navigation, coordination, tracking, as well as the models used for long-term fleet operation. [Best_Wordpress_Gallery id="23" gal_title="IW03"]

Last week the ILIAD consortium gathered in Luxembourg, on the 19th and 20th of March, for its first Periodic Review Meeting at the European Commission. Main objectives of the meeting were to provide a overview of the work carried out in the First Reporting Period (M1-M12, 1st of January 2017 - 31st of December 2017). During the 19th of March a trial…

During last week's European Robotics Forum in Tampere,  ILIAD co-organised three workshops. The "Robotics for Logistics and Transport" workshop was divided in two slots. The first slot was about mapping state-of-the-art solutions from technology providers in the logistics sector. We had exciting input from DHL Innovation, Robotnik, IFM industrial imaging, as well as Reutlingen Uni, Eurecat and the Czech Technical Uni. The second slot was…

The first period of the project is soon coming to an end and we can look back on an eventful year. Notable outcomes after the first year of the project include the first milestone demonstration of the project in simulation, as well as a public release of the open-source software components. Dissemination-wise, the project has been present and presented at…

On September 18-22 we had our second integration sprint, hosted by University of Lincoln/NCFM, bringing together ILIAD's software developers from the different partners, in preparation of the project's first milestone. The rather ambitious goal for Milestone 1 is demonstrate in simulation, already now, an early version of all relevant components that will be included in the final use-case demonstration, and to put the overall system…

We've recently had four papers accepted for presentation in the upcoming IROS 2017 and ITSC 2017 conferences. The topics of these works relate to improvements to the scan matching algorithms used by robots to build maps and localise, a novel way for robots to recognise what kind of place they are in, and more agile manoeuvering. Zaganadis et al. have developed a scan matching algorithm that partitions 3D scans from the environment…

We will be organising a workshop on Introspective Methods for Reliable Autonomy at the IROS 2017 conference in September. The aim of this workshop is to provide a forum for discussing possible answers to the question of how to assess the quality of a robot's operation and how to alter their behaviour based on this information. These issues are at the core…

ILIAD partners visited two distribution centres near Birmingham for end-user requirements elicitation and planning for the final demonstrators. [Best_Wordpress_Gallery id="7" gal_title="Site visit 2017-05"]