Meet HESTIA, the household service robot built completely in-house at UTFPR, a result of 10 years of innovations by Team UTBots.
The RoboCup@Home League
The RoboCup@Home league aims to develop service and assistive robot technology with high relevance for future personal domestic applications. It is the largest international annual competition for autonomous service robots and is part of the RoboCup initiative. A set of benchmark tests is used to evaluate the robots’ abilities and performance in a realistic non-standardized home environment setting. Focus lies on the following domains, but is not limited to: Human-Robot-Interaction and Cooperation, Navigation and Mapping in dynamic environments, Computer Vision and Object Recognition under natural light conditions, Object Manipulation, Adaptive Behaviors, Behavior Integration, Ambient Intelligence, Standardization and System Integration.
Our team
We have been participating in the Latin American Robotics Competition (LARC) and Brazilian Robotics Competition (CBR) in this category since its advent in 2014. Below a synthesis of all our participations with links to Team Description Papers, Posters and Photos:
- 2014 – São Carlos/SP 🥉
- 2015 – Uberlândida/MG [TDP | Poster]
- 2016 – Recife/PB [TDP]
- 2017 – Curitiba/PR [TDP | Poster]
- 2018 – João Pessoa/PB [TDP | Poster]
- 2019 – Rio Grande/RS [TDP | Poster]
- 2020 – Remote Participation [TDP]
- 2021 – Remote Participation [TDP]
- 2022 – São Bernardo do Campo/SP [TDP | Poster] 🥉
- 2023 – Salvador/BA [TDP | Team]
- 2024 – Goiânia/GO [TDP | Poster]
Our new robot H.E.S.T.I.A. (Household Efficient Service Task-Integrated Assistant) serves as a testbed for research on several topics, being the main current ones the following:
- Task Orchestration Models and Ontology
- HRI – Human-Robot Interaction, specially in Social Reasoning, with Natural Language Processing
- Low-cost open-source manipulators
- Object Localization in 2D and 3D space
Some of H.E.S.T.I.A’s capabilities are shown in the following video from our YouTube channel:
Documentation and Reusability
All of our software solutions are documented and available in our GitHub and our progress can be viewed by acessing our Team Description Papers in the section above.
Related Scientific Publications
- ARMÊNIO, G. F.; FABRO, J. A.; TOGNELLA, R. R.; CONTER, F. P.; OLIVEIRA, M. V.; SILVA, E. S.: “Estimating the 3D Center of an Object with Kinect Sensor RGB-D Images.” In: 2023 Latin American Robotics Symposium (LARS), XX Simpósio Latino Americano de Robótica (LARS), Salvador/BA, Brazil, 2023.
- SEGALLE D.; ARMÊNIO, G. F.; LEWIN, G. F; SILVA, E. S.; FABRO J. A.. Identifying new persons in the context of the Robocup@Home competition using knn. In: Latin American Robotics Symposium (LARS), XX Simpósio Latino Americano de Robótica (LARS) (LARS), Salvador/BA, Brazil, 2023
- CONTER, F. P. ”Object detection and 3D pose estimation through the use of convolutional neural networks”. Master’s Thesis, Federal University of Technology – Parana, 2022.
- FABRO, J.; VAZ, M.; OLIVEIRA, A. Design and Development of an Automated System for creation of Image Datasets intended to Allow Object Identification and Grasping by Service Robots. January 2020, 1-6.
- CERBARO, J,; MARTINELLI, D,; OLIVEIRA, A. S.; FABRO, J.A.:”WaiterBot: Comparison of Fuzzy Logic Approaches for Obstacle Avoidance in Dynamic Unmapped Environments Using a Laser Scanning System (LiDAR).”, In: 2020 Latin American Robotics Symposium (LARS), 2020 Brazilian Symposium on Robotics (SBR) and 2020 Workshop on Robotics in Education (WRE), Natal/RN, 2020.
- SANTOS, A. G. D.; SANTOS, D.H.; OLIVEIRA, A. S.; FABRO, J. A.: “Métodos de Controle de Movimento de Veículo-Manipuladores: Acoplado e Não-Acoplado.” In: III BRAZILIAN WORKSHOP ON SERVICE ROBOTICS – BRASERO, 2019, São Bernardo. Anais do III Brazilian Workshop on Service Robotics – BRASERO, 2019.
- FABRO, J. A.; CONTER, F. P.; OLIVEIRA, A. S.:”Integrating a mobile robot navigation control, visual object detection and manipulation using ROS and VREP.” In: XIV Brazilian Congress of Computational Intelligence, 2019, Belém-PA. Proceedings of the XIV Brazilian Congress of Computational Intelligence, 2019.
- FABRO, J. A.; de OLIVEIRA VAZ, M.; OLIVEIRA, A. S. :”Design and Development of an Automated System for creation of Image Datasets intended to Allow Object Identification and Grasping by Service Robots.” In: XIV Brazilian Congress of Computational Intelligence – CBIC, 2019, Belém-PA.
- SANTOS, D.; PALAR, P.; OLIVEIRA, A. S.; FABRO, J. A.; BECKER, T. :”Adding Conscious Aspects and Simulated Emotions through Facial Expressions in Virtual Robot Navigation with Baars-Franklins Cognitive Architecture.” In: 2018 Latin American Robotic Symposium, 2018 Brazilian Symposium on Robotics (SBR) and 2018 Workshop on Robotics in Education (WRE), 2018, João Pessoa-PB.
- SORDI FILHO, A. L.; OLIVEIRA, L. P.; OLIVEIRA, A. S.; FABRO, J. A.; WEHRMEISTER, M. A. :”Simultaneous Navigation and Mapping in an Autonomous Vehicle Based on Fuzzy Logic”. In: Nadia Nedjah; Heitor Silvério Lopes; Luiza de Macedo Mourelle. (Org.). Studies in Computational Intelligence. 1ed.: Springer International Publishing, 2017, v. 664, p. 53-68.(Book Chapter)
- BECKER, T.; Oliveira, A. S.; FABRO, J. A.; GUIMARAES, R. L. :”LIDA Bridge A ROS Interface to the LIDA (Learning Intelligent Distribution Agent) Framework.” In: Anis Koubaa. (Org.). Studies in Computational Intelligence. 1ed.: Springer International Publishing, 2016, v. 625, p. 703-728. (Book Chapter)
- GUIMARAES, R. L.; OLIVEIRA, A. S.; FABRO, J. A.; BECKER, T.; BRENNER, V. A. :”ROS Navigation: Concepts and Tutorial.” In: Anis Koubaa. (Org.). Studies in Computational Intelligence. 1ed.: Springer International Publishing, 2016, v. 625, p. 121-160. (Book Chapter)
- BECKER, T.; FABRO, J. A.; OLIVEIRA, A. S.; REIS, L. P.: “Adding Conscious Aspects in Virtual Robot Navigation through Baars-Franklin’s Cognitive Architecture.” In: 2015 IEEE International Conference on Autonomous Robot Systems and Competitions (ICARSC), 2015, Vila Real p. 204-209.
- FERREIRA, F. P.; MARCAL, M. S. ; FABRO, J. A.; OLIVEIRA, A. S. :”Trajectory Planning in Dynamic Environments for an Industrial AGV, Integrated with Fuzzy Obstacle Avoidance.” In: 2015 12th Latin American Robotics Symposium (LARS) and 2015 3rd Brazilian Symposium on Robotics (LARSSBR), Uberlandia-MG. 2015.