Dissemination events diary and results

RUBICON
Robotic UBUquitous COgnitive Network
Project No.: 269914
D6.4 – Dissemination events
diary and results
Editor(s):
Mauro Dragone (NUID UCD)
Contributor(s):
• Mauro Dragone (NUID UCD)
• Arantxa Renteria (TECNALIA)
• Victoria McArthur (PT)
• Mark Sweetnam (PT)
Dissemination level
X
PU = Public
PP = Restricted to
Commission Services)
other
programme
participants
(including
the
RE = Restricted to a group specified by the consortium (including the
Commission Services)
CO = Confidential, only for members of the consortium (including the
Commission Services)
Issue Date
Deliverable
Number
WP
Status
8/05/2014 (M36, MS5)
D6.4
WP6 – Dissemination & Exploitation
Draft Working Released *
Approved by EC
© Copyright RUBICON - All Rights Reserved
Delivered
to
EC
Document history
V
Date
Author
0.1
0.2
0.4
0.5
25/2/2014
13/3/2014
28/3/2014
12/4/2014
Mauro Dragone (UCD)
Mauro Dragone (UCD)
Mauro Dragone (UCD)
Victoria McArthur (PT)
0.7
0.9
1.0
1.1
1.2
22/4/2014
28/4/2014
2/5/2014
8/5/2014
12/5/2014
A. Renteria (TECNALIA)
Mauro Dragone
Mauro Dragone
All
Mark Sweetnam (PT)
Description
Table of content
Executive summary, intro
First draft
Dissemination
material
website
Media
Papers & Workshop
Completed version
Internal review
Q.A. Review
Disclaimer
The information in this document is provided as is and no guarantee or
warranty is given that the information is fit for any particular purpose. The
user thereof uses the information at its sole risk and liability.
The document reflects only the author’s views and the Community is not
liable for any use that may be made of the information contained therein.
&
Executive Summary
This Deliverable D6.4 – Dissemination events diary and results report
outlines the dissemination efforts of the project, the audiences addressed
and the feedback received as part of the WP6 – Exploitation and
Dissemination. The overall goal of this workpackage is to plan for the
subsequent commercial exploitation of the project results, put in place a
framework to identify, manage and exploit intellectual property, and to
disseminate and publish the results of the project to researchers, ICT
companies and the public.
The dissemination materials prepared by the RUBICON team for use in
raising the profile of the project have been described in D6.2:
Dissemination Material, issued at M6. The exploitation plan has been
described in Deliverable D6.3: Exploitation Plan, issued at M27.
In Section 1, we provide an overview of the dissemination strategy
followed by the RUBICON consortium. In Section 2, we illustrate the
dissemination materials developed in the project. Section 3 describes our
web-site and social media. Section 4 illustrates our report and software
deliverables. Section 5 lists our scientific publications. Section 6 discusses
the worshops we have organized during the length of the project. Section
7 reports from our activities to engage the media. Section 8 reports the
result of various dissemination activities. Section 9 lists our most
important collaborations with other EU projects. Section 10 concludes this
deliverable by discussing our dissemination plans.
Contents
1. Dissemination Activities: An Overview.................................................5
2. Dissemination Material........................................................................7
2.2 VIDEOS..............................................................................................9
2.1 NEWSLETTER....................................................................................10
3. WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA....................................................................10
3.1 WEBSITE..........................................................................................12
3.2 TWITTER AND FACEBOOK....................................................................13
3.1 SOURCE CODE..................................................................................15
4. DELIVERABLES AND SOURCE CODE............................................................14
5. SCIENTIFIC PUBLICATIONS........................................................................15
6. ORGANIZATION OF INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOPS..........................................20
6.1 SYROCO 2012...............................................................................22
6.2 ARE'13 AT AMI-2013.......................................................................23
6.3 EUROBOTICS FORUM 2014.................................................................24
7. MEDIA (PRESS-RELEASES, INTERVIEWS, ARTICLES)........................................24
8. COLLABORATION WITH OTHER EU PROJECTS................................................26
9. VARIOUS DISSEMINATION ACTIVITIES..........................................................28
9.1 PUBLIC EVENTS & FORUMS..................................................................30
9.2 OUTREACH & INTERACTIVE PROJECT DEMONSTRATION..............................32
9.3 CONSULTATIONS WITH USER GROUPS.....................................................33
10. DISSEMINATION PLANS...........................................................................34
1. Dissemination Activities: An Overview
Dissemination activities for RUBICON have been carried out in WP6 –
Exploitation & Dissemination for the whole duration of the project under
the leadership of NUID UCD, aided by PT in the central editorial role and
assisted by the contributions of the whole consortium. The present
deliverable is the final product of the project’s dissemination activities,
covering all dissemination actions that were completed during the entire
project duration and reporting our plans for future dissemination actions.
The RUBICON project proposes an ecosystem of robotic devices and
wireless sensor and actuators. A RUBICON systems provides useful
services and pro-actively assists its users by learning to adapt to changes
in the environment and in users' habits, while also self-organizing the
manner in which it uses available resources. RUBICON learns through an
incremental and progressive approach driven by the feedback received
from its own activities and from the user. These achievements are
primarily enabled by the interplay between four software layers that have
been built and integrated by the consortium: the Communication,
Learning, Control and Cognitive layers. Each of these layers contributes to
the overall ecology’s ability to learn in response to changes in the
environment, in system settings, and/or in the user's habits.
RUBICON has demonstrated its adaptive robotic ecologies in two main
application scenarios namely a Smart Home and Ambient Assisted Living
(AAL) Scenario and an In-Hospital Transport Scenario.
The aim of the dissemination work within RUBICON has been threefold:
1. to raise the overall profile of the project’s research, and thus to
increase its scientific impact,
2. to stimulate feedback and discussion from expert audiences which
could help the project and to identify new opportunities, new
approaches and new potential for improving the project results.
3. to act as a pre-marketing tool which enables the project team to
gain an impression of how products and services based on the
RUBICON platform might be viewed by potential customers into the
future. This feeds into the exploitation work within WP6.
The dissemination activities of the RUBICON project have been informed
by the following key criteria:
• a clear and consistent project message
• identified target audiences (public, robotics, WSN and cognitive
sciences researchers, industry)
• a spectrum of communications channels (web, seminars, media,
conferences, journals, etc.)
• regular updates
• interaction with other EU robotics projects, as appropriate
Consistent Message
The project’s basic dissemination and communications materials have
included presentations, website, brochures and posters, etc. PT have acted
as central editor of all the dissemination material, making sure that a
consistent style was used throughout all our dissemination activities. All
partners have participated to the preparation of these materials.
The project logo, typeface, colour scheme and other branding elements
have been established in the opening months of the project and have
been used in all communications. The support of the Framework
Programme has been prominently recognised.
Target Audiences
The following audiences have been addressed by our dissemination
activities, notably:
• Robotics, WSN and cognitive sciences researchers. Access to these
audiences has been secured via participation, presentations, and
organization of events at workshops and conferences, and with
publications in scientific journals.
• Representatives of potential commercial user base: RUBICON
targets companies which represent examples of the cultural sectors
where we see exploitation potential. Feedback from professional
caregivers and AAL service centres professional caregivers and AAL
service centres has been secured via consultations lead by TECNALIA
and NUID UCD and represents a first impression of how sample
customers from our target markets may view and utilize RUBICON
outputs. This has informed both our R&D work and our plans for
future exploitation and dissemination.
• Broader ICT R&D institutions and companies have been targeted
via the euRobotics AISBL (Association Internationale Sans But
Lucratif) association, and topic groups and networks of excellence,
such as the ERCIM (European Research Consortium for Informatics
and Mathematics) Sensor Web Working Group, the Cooperating
Objects Network of Excellence (CONET), and the European Network
for the Advancement of Artificial Cognitive Systems, Interaction and
Robotics (EUCog II).
• The general public have been engaged with brochures/leaflets and
a newsletter aimed at illustrating the impact of the project on the
AAL and the In-Hospital transport application domains.
• The media have been provided with brief press releases about
project aims and successes, summaries of project aims, progress
and results.
RUBICON has adjusted its dissemination activities to meet the particular
interests of its different audiences. Differing styles of communication have
been used depending on the audience – simpler information, delivered by
media and website channels have been used to address the general
public, while more detailed data, in journals, seminars and conference
presentations have helped to us to achieve a greater impact within specific
business domains and/or research areas.
2. Dissemination Material
Deliverable D6.2 – Dissemination material provided a short overview of the
dissemination materials developed in the early part of RUBICON (up to M6,
i.e. September 2011), namely:
- an initial website
- a project brochure, providing an overview of the project, its aims
and its value, which has been handed out at meetings, conferences,
concertation events, etc. It has a three-column format, suitable for
“Z”-folding.
- a project flyer, with similar content to the brochure. Its single-sided
A4 layout makes it ideal for hanging on noticeboards, etc.
a poster template
These materials (some of which are depicted in Figure 1) were primarily
intended to raise awareness of the existence of the project and its support
by FP7, and to serve as a template for future dissemination, and have
been further developed to reflect the progress of the project, as briefly
summarised in the remaining of this section.
Figure 1 Some of the dissemination material that was issued at M6
2.2 Videos
The RUBICON consortium has produced several video footages. Some of
them have already been published on our website while others will be
published after the final project review.
The videos include:
•
A video produced by NUID UCD to support our presence at the AAL
Forum 2012, the official conference of the Ambient Assisted Living
Joint Programme which took place in Eindhoven, The Netherlands,
from 24 to 27 September 2012..
•
A video produced by NUID UCD to advertise project activities at the
2013 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation
Karlsruhe, May 6 - 10, 2013
•
A video produced by ISTI-CNR, including interviews to
representatives from all the partners in the RUBICON consortium
(which were filmed during our plenary meeting in Pisa, between the
5th and the 9th of November, 2012) and short videos illustrating
experiments carried out in our research and validation testbeds.
•
Videos from our third year experiments have been produced by ISTICNR to illustrate the operations of the application prototypes we
have tested in our application test-beds. These include a video of the
transport application tested at the Hospital Stella Maris in Pisa, and
videos of the AAL applications we have tested at the ORU's Ängen
test-bed in Örebro and at the TECNALIA's HomeLab living lab in
Bilbao.
2.1 Newsletter
In January 2014 we published a newsletter (edited by PT and NUID UCD)
providing updates on the progress we’ve made towards the development
of robot ecologies enabling smarter environments in assisted living
solutions and intelligent transport systems. The newsletter includes an
overview of the project, project demonstrations, and future plans for the
project. Figure 2 shows the frontpage of the newsletter.
Figure 2: Front page of RUBICON newsletter
3. Website and Social Media
3.1 Website
The project website was first published at M2, in June 2011, hosted and
edited by PT, and it has been constantly updated after that. It is available
on www.fp7rubicon.eu
Figure 3: Layout of the RUBICON website
The latest version of the website has a user-friendly layout and is divided
into the following areas and sections (depicted in Figure 2):
• The homepage, welcoming the user, providing easy access to the
site;
• A project overview (“project”), including a short video summarising
the goals of the project and its technical advancements;
• Introductions to the consortium (“team”), listing the members of the
consortium and providing links to their home page;
• Pointers to related projects (“related projects”);
• Project news and events (“News”);
• Contact details (“Contacts”);
• A private area for document sharing and archive (“Wiki”), including a
project calendar, a file upload/download facility, a forum and a
project wiki to facilitate internal communications. The WiKi reports
detailed instructions to help with the installation, the configuration,
and the use of the RUBICON middleware.
The website was updated and improved by the team throughout the length
of the project. Regular updates have been carried out to capture recent
project news and publications. An up-to-date list of publications and
presentations has been maintained on the website, with links to
downloadable versions where possible. Public deliverables have also been
posted on the website for download. The News section has been used to
publicize project events, announce upcoming conferences and link to
media coverage of the project, including a new video showing the
RUBICON concepts, which has been produced by ISTI-CNR.
3.2 Twitter and Facebook
The project has a Twitter account following related experts and projects
and a Facebook account, containing an overview of the material which can
also be found in the project website. The primary objective of our
presence on social media is to attract visitors to the project website.
Figure 4: RUBICON Facebook page
4. Deliverables and Source Code
For a more technical and detailed dissemination of the project,
deliverables reporting specific aspects of the RUBICON architecture and
the evaluation carried out in the two application scenarios have been
released according to the project Technical Annex.
The following table is the list of all the project deliverables.
No.
Title
Type
Month
D1.1
Functional Design & Specification & Mockup Layer R/PU
M6
D1.2
Integration of communication layer and robotic
components
R/PU
M24
D1.3.1 Preliminary version of the communication layer
P/PU
M12
D1.3.2 Final version of the communication layer
P/PU
M24
D1.4
Proxy-specific software suite
P/PU
M24
D2.1
Functional Design & Specification document
R/PU
M6
D2.2
Core Learning Services API and Documentation,
version 1.0
P/PU
M18
D2.3
Final Core Learning Services API and
Documentation
P/PU
M30
D3.1
Control Layer Architecture
R/PU
M6
D3.2
Control Layer, version 0.5
P/PU
M12
D3.3
Control Layer, version 1.0
P/PU
M24
D3.4
Control Layer, final release
P/PU
M30
D4.1
First synthesis of the RUBICON SOFNN
P/PU
M6
D4.2
Release of the first version of RUBICON SOFNN
P/PU
M12
D4.3
Release of the second version of RUBICON SOFNN P/PU
M24
D4.4
Final Release of the SOFNN
P/PU
M36
D5.1
Scenarios & use cases definition
R/RE
M12
D5.2
User trials report
R/PU
M36
D6.1
Website
O/PU
M2
D6.2
Dissemination materials
O/PU
M6
D6.3
Exploitation Plan
R/CO
M27
D6.4
Dissemination events diary and results report
R/PU
M36
The majority of the deliverables are public and can be freely accessed
from our website. The access of only 2 out of the 22 deliverables has been
restricted, i.e. they can still be accessed but only by users provided with a
password.
The restricted deliverables are:
• D5.1 Scenario & Use Case Definition (RE), reporting an early
description of the application scenarios and our experimental plan.
However, the description of the final scenarios and the results of
system and user trials is reported in D5.2, which is a public
deliverable.
• D6.3 Exploitation Plan (CO), reporting the project consortium's plans
for the future exploitation and commercialisation of the project
results
Of particular attention for future dissemination and exploitation of project
results are the deliverables describing the final versions of the layers of
the RUBICON software architecture, i.e. D1.3.2, D2.3, D3.4, and D4.4, and
the D5.2 report that illustrates how they have been used in the application
test-beds to provide self-adaptive solutions able to smoothly adapt to
changes in the environment and in the user's habits.
3.1 Source Code
Technological outputs, research findings, and resulting expertise will be
made accessible and usable to other parties, in research and industry, to
enable them to create robotic ecologies where robots and network sensors
share their knowledge.
At the time of publication of this deliverable, the source code produced by
the consortium is available on the SVN repository hosted by NUID UCD at
http://gforge.ucd.ie/.1
The project is already sharing selected parts of its software as part of other
projects:
• The new generation of the PEIS middleware (cf. D3.2) and the
RUBICON Configuration Planner (cf. D3.3, D3.4) has already been
delivered to two other EU FP7 projects (Robot-ERA, grant no.
288899; MOnarCH, grant no. 601033). Robot-Era has customized
and extended the configuration planner to adapt it to its specific
needs, and it is now using it as a core component. MOnarCH may
use the core part of the configuration planner as a backbone for
building a socially-aware planner.
• UNIPI intends to exploit their findings on the Learning Layer in a new
FP7 project (DOREMI, grant no. 611650) related to the diagnostics
and treatment of patients in the early stages of dementia.
Specifically, the findings on the Learning Layer will be used to
develop data processing models aimed at establishing relationships
between cognitive decline, sedentariness and malnutrition. This
further study may lead to the development of products aimed at
1
NUID UCD is currently updating this website. All projects will be migrated to a GIT repository to be hosted at
https://git.ucd.ie.. The migration is expected to be completed at the end of June 2014.
supporting the health systems and medical care organization in the
prevention and treatment of dementia in elderly.
The consortium aims to continue these activities with the final preparation
of open source releases under Open Source licences of RUBICON software.
These will include:
• The PEIS Middleware, incorporationg the improvements produced
under RUBICON
• The Communication Layer, including the TinyOS/Java middleware,
the proxy solution, the synaptic channels, the web-based test-bed
programming tool, RUBICON WSN simulation, and the extensions to
the TinyOS Java SDK.
• The Learning Layer's Core Learning Services
• The Control Layer's Self-OSGi agent system
• The Control Layer's Configuration Planner
5. Scientific Publications
Several publications have been made during the project’s period.
Publications are important tools for disseminating the research outcomes
of the project. The members of the RUBICON's consortium have
demonstrated a strong commitment in publishing their work in relation to
the RUBICON project’s theme and research topics in high quality
conferences, journals, etc. During the project, thanks to the improved
maturity of the fully integrated RUBICON architecture and of the work
carried out in the two application test-beds, a stronger cooperation in
terms of joint publications among the partners was completed.
Project's flyers, brochures and newsletters were distributed by the
members of the RUBICON consortium at all the conferences and
workshops were the papers listed in this section were presented.
Furthermore, RUBICON's partners were able to exchange ideas with other
groups working in the same field that have brought valuable input into the
project focusing on project results and opportunities for collaboration with
other FP7 projects. Finally, all the publications have been deposited on the
OpenAIRE service, to satisfy the requiremnt set by the European
Commission policies on Open Access 2. RUBICON publications have been
marked as closed access (where they are purchasable) or open access
when freely available.
The following list (ordered chronologically from the latest to the first
paper) provides an overall view of 38 scientific papers published by
RUBICON partners during the project timeframe:
38. D. Bacciu, M. Di Rocco, C. Gallicchio, A. Micheli, A. Saffiotti, Learning
Context-Aware Mobile Robot Navigation in Home Environments, To Appear
in the Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Information,
Intelligence, Systems and Applications (IISA 2014), 7-9 July 2014, Chania,
Greece, IEEE
37. A. Ray, G. Leng, T. M. McGinnity, S. A Coleman, and L. P. Maguire,
Development of a Self-Sustaining Cognitive Architecture, Biologically
Inspired Cognitive Architectures, pp. 96 - 108, 2014
36. G. Leng et al., An Interval Type-2 Fuzzy Neural Network for Cognitive
Decisions, accepted in COGNITIVE 2014, Venice, 2014
35. S. Chessa, C. Gallicchio, R. Guzman, A. Micheli, Robot Localization by
Echo State Networks Using RSS, in Recent Advances of Neural Network
Models and Applications, Smart Innovation, Systems and Technologies
series, vol. 26, pp. 147–154, Springer 2014
34. D. Bacciu, P. Barsocchi, S. Chessa, C. Gallicchio, A. Micheli, An
Experimental Characterization of Reservoir Computing in Ambient Assisted
2
https://www.openaire.eu/en/component/openaire/project_info/default/619?id=269914
Living Applications, Neural Computing and Applications, vol. 24 (6), pp.
1451–1464, Springer-Verlag 2014
33. P. Barsocchi, S. Chessa, A. Micheli, C. Gallicchio, Forecast Driven
Enhancement of RSS-based Localization Systems. ISPRS International
Journal of Geo-Information, special issue: Indoor Positioning and Indoor
Navigation, vol. 2(4), pp. 978-995, 2013
32. G. Leng, A. Ray, T. M. McGinnity, S. A. Coleman, and L. P. Maguire,
Online Sliding Window Based Self-Organising Fuzzy Neural Network for
Cognitive Reasoning, in COGNITIVE 2013: The Fifth International
Conference on Advanced Cognitive Technologies and Applications,
Valencia, Spain, 2013
31. A. Ray, G. Leng, T. M. McGinnity, S. A. Coleman, and L. P. Maguire,
Dynamically Reconfigurable Online Self-Organising Fuzzy Neural Network
with Variable Number of Inputs for Smart Home Application, in 5th
International Joint Conference on Computational Intelligence, Algarve,
Portugal, 2013.
30. F. Palumbo, P. Barsocchi, C. Gallicchio, S. Chessa, A. Micheli,
Multisensor Data Fusion for Activity Recognition Based on Reservoir
Computing,
in
Evaluating
AAL
Systems
Through
Competitive
Benchmarking, Communications in Computer and Information Science
series, vol. 386, pp. 24–35, 2013
29. A. Sandygulova, M. Dragone, A Portable and Self-presenting Robotic
Ecology HRI Testbed, Evolving Ambient Intelligence, Communications in
Computer and Information Science Volume 413. pp. 136–150, 2013,
Springer International Publishing.
28. D. Bacciu, A. Micheli, A. Sperduti, An Input-Output Hidden Markov
Model for Tree Transductions, Neurocomputing, Elsevier, vol. 112, pp. 3446, 2013.
27. A. K. Ray, G. Leng, T. M. McGinnity, S. Coleman, L. Maguire.
Dynamically Reconfigurable Online Self-organising Fuzzy Neural Network
with Variable Number of Inputs for Smart Home. International Joint
Conference on Computational Intelligence, NCTA 2013, Algarve, Portugal.
Neurocomputing.
26. Mauro Dragone, David Swords, G.M.P. O'Hare, Software Engineering
Challenges for Adaptive Robotic Ecologies. ICRA2012 Workshop on
Software Development and Integration in Robotics (SDIR-VIII) May 6, 2013
Karlsruhe, Germany
25. M. Dragone, M. Di Rocco, F. Pecora, A. Saffiotti and D. Swords. A
Software Suite for the Control and the Monitoring of Adaptive Robotic
Ecologie. Workshop on Towards Fully Decentralized Multi-Robot Systems:
Hardware, Software and Integration 2013 IEEE International Conference on
Robotics and Automation, ICRA 2013 Karlsruhe, Germany, May 6-10, 2013
24. G. Leng, A. K. Ray, T. M. McGinnity, S. Coleman, L. Maguire. Online
Sliding Window Based Self-Organising Fuzzy Neural Networks for Cognitive
Reasoning. International Conference on Advanced Cognitive Technologies
and Applications, Cognitive 2013, Valencia, Spain
23. A. K. Ray, L. Gang, T. M. McGinnity, S. Coleman, L. Maguire
Development of a Self Sustaining Cognitive Architecture. Biologically
Inspired Cognitive Architectures. Elsevier. 2013
22. D. Bacciu, C. Gallicchio, A. Lenzi, S. Chessa, A. Micheli, S. Pelagatti, C.
Vairo, Distributed Neural Computation over WSN in Ambient Intelligence,
Proceedings of the 4th International Symposium on Ambient Intelligence
(ISAmI'13) Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol. 219, pp.
147-154, 2013
21. G. Amato and S. Chessa and C. Gennaro and D. Pallini and C. Vairo, A
Data Logger for Wireless Sensor Network. Proceedings of 2nd International
Conference On Sensor Networks (SENSORNETS) SciTePress - Science and
Technology Publications. 2013. pp. 65-68
20. G. Amato, S. Chessa, C. Gennaro, C. Vairo, Dynamic Tracking of
Composite Events in Wireless Sensor Networks Lecture Notes of the
Institute
for
Computer
Sciences,
Social
Informatics
and
Telecommunications Engineering. Ad Hoc Networks, Springer Berlin
Heidelberg. III, 2013. pp. 72-86
19. D. Bacciu, S. Chessa, C. Gallicchio, A. Micheli, P. Barsocchi, An
Experimental Evaluation of Reservoir Computation for Ambient Assisted
Living, 22nd Italian Workshop on Neural Networks, Vietri sul Mare, Salerno,
Italy, 17-19 May 2012. In Neural Networks and Surroundings, Springer
Smart Innovation, Systems and Technologies series, vol. 19, pp. 41-50,
ISBN: 978-3-642-35466-3, 2012
18. G. Amato and M. Broxvall and S. Chessa and M. Dragone and C.
Gennaro and C. Vairo, When Wireless Sensor Networks Meet Robots.
Proceedings of The Seventh International Conference on Systems and
Networks Communications (ICSNC 2012). ThinkMind Digital Library.
November 18-23, 2012. Lisbon, Portugal. pp. 35-40
17. H. Lozano, I. Hernáez, J. Camarena, I. Díez, E. Navas, Identification of
Sounds and Sensing Technology for Home-Care Applications 4th
International Workshop, IWAAL 2012, Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain, December 35, 2012. Ambient Assisted Living and Home Care, Lecture Notes in
Computer Science. pp. 74-81. ISBN: 978-3-642-35394-9
16. A. K. Ray, G. Leng, T.M. McGinnity, S. Coleman, L. Maguire
Development of Cognitive Capabilities for Smart Home using a SelfOrganizing Fuzzy Neural Network 10th IFAC Symposium on Robot Control,
Dubrovnik, Croatia. 2012
15. D. Bacciu, M. Broxvall, S. Coleman, M. Dragone, C. Gallicchio, C.
Gennaro, R. Guzman, R. Lopez, H. Lozano-Peiteado, A. Ray, A. Renteria, A.
Saffiotti, C. Vairo, Self-Sustaining Learning for Robotic Ecologies,
Proceedings of the 2012 International Conference on Sensor Networks
(SENSORNETS'12), pp. 99-103, February 24-26, 2012
14. M. Dragone, S. Abdel-Naby, D. Swords, G. M. P. O'Hare and M. Broxvall.
A Programming Framework for Multi-agent Coordination of Robotic
Ecologies. ProMAS. 2012. pp. 72-89
13. M. Dragone, A BDI Model for Component and Service-Based Systems:
Self-OSGi. PAAMS 2012, 2012, Salamanca, Spain, 28-30 March, 2012, p.
67-72
12. M. Dragone, Demo: A BDI Model for Component and Service-Based
Systems: Self-OSGi. Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on
Practical Applications of Agents and Multi-Agent Systems, PAAMS 2012,
2012, Salamanca, Spain, 28-30 March, 2012, p. 241-244
11. H. Lozano, I. Hernáez, J. Camarena, I. Díez, E. Navas. A Real-Time
Sound Recognition System in an Assisted Environment. 13th International
Conference, ICCHP 2012, Linz, Austria, July 11-13, 2012, Proceedings, Part
II. Computers Helping People with Special Needs, Lecture Notes in
Computer Science. 2012. Vol. 7383. pp. 385-391
10. M. Dragone, Building Self-adaptive Software Systems with Component,
Services & Agents Technologies: Self-OSGi. 4th International Conference,
ICAART 2012, Vilamoura, Portugal, February 6-8, 2012. Revised Selected
Papers. Agents and Artificial Intelligence Communications in Computer and
Information Science.pp. 300-316
9. M. Dragone, Component & Service-based Agent Systems: Self-OSGi,
Proceedings of 4th International Conference, ICAART 2012, Vilamoura,
Portugal, February 6-8, 2012, pp. 200-210
8. C. Gallicchio, A. Micheli, P. Barsocchi, S. Chessa, User Movements
Forecasting by Reservoir Computing Using Signal Streams Produced by
Mote-Class Sensors. Mobile Lightweight Wireless Systems. Lecture Notes of
the Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and
Telecommunications Engineering, pp. 151-168, 2012
7. C. Gallicchio, A. Micheli, G. Visco, Constructive Reservoir Computation
with Output Feedbacks for Structured Domains, Proceedings of the 20th
European Symposium on Artificial Neural Networks, Computational
Intelligence and Machine Learning (ESANN), pp. 31-36, 2012
6. D. Bacciu, A. Micheli, A. Sperduti, Input-Output Hidden Markov
Models for Trees, Proceedings of the 20th European Symposium on
Artificial Neural Networks, Computational Intelligence and Machine
Learning (ESANN), pp. 25-30, 2012
5. D. Bacciu, S. Chessa, C. Gallicchio, A. Lenzi, A. Micheli, S. Pelagatti, A
General Purpose Distributed Learning Model for Robotic Ecologies,
Proceedings of the 10th International IFAC Symposium on Robot Control
(SYROCO'12), vol. 10, pp. 435-440, Dubrovnik, Croatia, September 5-7,
2012
4. D. Bacciu, A. Micheli, A. Sperduti, A Generative Multiset Kernel for
Structured Data, Proceedings of the 2012 International Conference on
Artificial Neural Networks (ICANN'12), pp. 57-64, 2012
3. G. Amato, M. Broxvall, S. Chessa, M. Dragone, C. Gennaro, R. Lopez, L.
Maguire, T.M. Mcginnity, A. Micheli, A. Renteria, G.M.P. O'Hare,F. Pecora,
Robotic UBIquitous COgnitive Network. Ambient Intelligence - Software and
Applications. Advances in Intelligent and Soft Computing, vol. 153, pp.
191-195, 2012
2. D. Bacciu, C. Gallicchio, A. Micheli, P. Barsocchi, S. Chessa, Predicting
user movements in heterogeneous indoor environments by reservoir
computing, Proceedings of the 22nd International Joint Conference on
Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI'11), Space, Time and Ambient Intelligence
Workshop (STAMI'11), pp. 1-6, 16-22 July 2011
1. M. Dragone, S. Abdel-Naby, D. Swords and G. M. P. O'Hare Robotic
Ubiquitous Cognitive Networks. ERCIM News. 87, 2011
The following are the papers submitted or currently under preparation:
5. F. Palumbo, C. Gallicchio, A. Micheli, Human Activity Recognition using
Multisensor Data Fusion based on Reservoir Computing, submitted to
Journal of Ambient Intelligence and Smart Environments, IOS Press, 2014
4. D. Bacciu, S. Chessa, C. Gallicchio, A. Micheli, A distributed learning
system for networks of heterogeneous devices,
journal paper in
preparation, 2014
3. D. Bacciu et. al, Robotic Ubiquitous Cognitive Ecology for Smart Homes,
in preparation), 2014
2. M. Dragone, J. Saunders, and K. Dautenhahn. On the Integration of
Adaptive and Interactive Smart and Robotic Spaces. (submitted). IEEE
THMS 2014: IEEE Transactions on Human-Machine Systems - Special Issue
on Ambient Assisted Living, sensors, methods and applications
1. D. Bacciu, An Iterative Feature Filter for Sensor Timeseries, (submitted)
conference paper, 2014
6. Organization of International Workshops
During the length of the project, the RUBICON's consortium have
organized three workshops in conjuction with international conferences
and seminars. The goal of these workshop has been to bring together
academic and industrial practitioners to stimulate the transfer of ideas and
results, especially between European projects and research initiatives that
tackle the integration of service robots with smart environments and the
creation of self-learning, self-configuring, and self-adapting solutions.
6.1 SYROCO 2012
The special session on “Adaptive Robotic Ecologies” was organized at the
10th International IFAC Symposium on Robot Control (SYROCO) which was
held on September 5-7, 2012, in Dubrovnik, Croatia3 4.
The primary topic for the SYROCO 2012 was Robot Control in Dynamic
Cooperative Scenarios: “Robot control technology is widely used for
space, surgery, rehabilitation, micro machine, entertainment, underwater,
civil engineering, professional and domestic services, security etc. It will
continue to play an increasing role in the areas of robot-robot and humanrobot cooperation in various dynamic scenarios. Contributions on basic
research as well as on relevant applications are included.”
The following is the list of papers that were accepted for presentation as
full papers in the special session, including two papers from the RUBICON
consortium (one from UNIPI presenting the Learning Layer, and one from
ULSTER presenting the Cognitive Layer):
• Davide Bacciu, Stefano Chessa, Claudio Gallicchio, Alessandro Lenzi,
Alessio Micheli, Susanna Pelagatti, A General Purpose Distributed
Learning Model for Robotic Ecologies (RUBICON, UNIPI)
• Anjan Kumar Ray, Gang Leng, Martin T.M. McGinnity, Sonya
Coleman, Maguire, Liam, Development of Cognitive Capabilities for
Smart Home Using a Self-Organizing Fuzzy Neural Network
(RUBICON, ULSTER)
• Alberto Calatroni, Daniel Roggen, Gerhard Troester, Design of an
Ecology of Activity-Aware Cells in Ambient Intelligence Environments
(ETH Zurich, EU project OPPORTUNITY)
3
4
http://www.syroco2012.org/symposium-program.html
http://www.syroco2012.org/photo-gallery-day2-Adaptive-Robotic-Ecologies.html
•
•
•
Gerard McKee (Baze Univ), Blesson Varghese (Dalhousie Univ.
Halifax), Robotic Ecologies for Deep Space Outposts
C. Uguri Usug, Dogan Altan, Sanem Sariel-Talay, Robots That Create
Alternative Plans against Failures (Istanbul Tech. Univ.)
Maric Caruso, Mario , Claudio Di Ciccio, Ettore Lacomussi, Eirin
Kaldeli, Alexander Lazovik, Alexander, Massimo Mecella, Service
Ecologies for Home/Building Automation (University La Sapienza,
Roma, Italy)
All papers were published in the proceedings of SYROCO'12.
6.2 ARE'13 at AmI-2013
The AmI-13 conference brought together researchers and practitioners
from industry and academia working in the field of technologies and
applications of Ambient Intelligence.
The workshop5 included presentation of research papers, and a panel
discussion. The panel discussion have tried to identify and discuss the
main research questions in the issue of developing adaptive robotic
ecologies for AmI applications, and set the stage for the generation of a
road-map on this issue.
The following is the list of papers that were accepted for presentation as
full papers in the wokshop, including one paper from NUID UCD presenting
the RUBICON portable test-bed:
• Anara Sandygulova and Mauro Dragone, A Portable and Selfpresenting Robotic Ecology HRI Testbed (NUID UCD, Ireland, FP7
RUBICON)
• Michele Girolami and Filippo Palumbo and Francesco Furfari and
Stefano Chessa, The Integration of ZigBee with the GiraffPlus
Robotic Framework. (ISTI-CNR and UNIPI, FP7 GiraffePlus)
• Joe Saunders, Maha Salem, and Kerstin Dautenhahn, Te mporal
Issues In Teaching Robot Behaviours in a Knowledge-Based
Sensorised Home. (University of Hertfordshire, UK, FP7 ACCOMPANY)
• Lia Susana d.C. Silva-Lopez and Mathias Broxvall, Empirical methods
for evaluating properties of configuration planning algorithm.
(Örebro University, Sweden, GiraffePlus)
• S. M. Mizanoor Rahman, People-Centric Adaptive Social Ecology
between Intelligent Autonomous Humanoid Robot and Virtual Human
for Social Cooperation. (Vrije Universiteit Brussel - VUB, Belgium).
5
http://are13.ucd.ie
Proceedings of the workshops have been published by Springer under the
Communications in Computer and Information Science (CCIS) serie.
6.3 euRobotics Forum 2014
The workshop on Trends and issues in the integration between
Service Robots and Smart Environments aimed to showcase results
from past and current European projects exploring the integration of
service robots and smart environment.
The workshop consisted mainly of two parts:
• Presentations of relevant projects in EU, focused on a common set of
questions that had been distributed before the workshop;
• A round table discussion aimed at defining a concrete agenda of
next steps toward a tighter integration, at the European level, of
research in service robots and smart environments
The following speakers have presented at the workshop:
• Arantxa Renteria & Mauro Dragone, RUBICON
• Markus Vincze , HOBBIT (FP7-ICT-2011.5.4-288146)
• Atta Badi, CompanionAble (FP7-ICT-2007.7.1-216487)
• Sanja Dogramadzi, MOBISERV (FP6-IST-2005-2.6.5.1.b-045410)
• Melvin Isken, FLORENCE (FP7-ICT-2009.7.1-248730)
• Kerstin Dautenhahn, ACCOMPANY (FP7-ICT-2011.5.4-287624)
• Andrea Orlandini, GiraffePlus (FP7-ICT-5-288173)
• Paulo Alvito, MonarCH (FP7-ICT-2011.2.1-601033)
• Filippo Cavallo, Robot-ERA (FP7-ICT-2011.5.4-288899)
The panel have sought to identify the main lessons learned, the research
issues (including interoperability, personalization, coordination and
adaptation concerns), the opportunities and the advantage in seeking to
reconcile complementary approaches and aim for a new generation of
smart robotic spaces that will take advantage and combine past
advancements in the area. The discussion have been focused on creating
a common R&D agenda. The following questions were addressed: (1) what
was the mature knowledge and what are the tools and the results that can
be shared and transferred to application settings, (2) what are the
scientific questions that can be generated, (3) what are the new
opportunities and how they can help
service robotics and smart
environment technology achieve broader adoption, open the way to new
applications, and generate new business opportunities.
The
RUBICON
web-site
hosts
a
dedicated
page
(http://fp7rubicon.eu/index.php/eurobotics), which has been used to
advertise and is now publishing information related to the workshop and to
the future activities of the panel. The intended outcomes of this workshop
are to (i) provide a review of lessons learned, trends and issues from
current and past EU projects in the integration of service robots and smart
environments, (ii) identify promising integration approaches, (iii) propose
novel research directions, and (iv) ultimately set the stage for the
generation of a common road-map on this theme, with particular emphasis
on the Horizon2020.
To this end, our web-site acts as a forum to facilitate the production of a
concrete strategic agenda, including the provision of strategic input to the
EC, in particular to the Robotics Multi-Annual Roadmap (MAR). The
Robotics MAR does not yet include the health/AAL application domain.
However, by adopting a robotic ecology approach with commercial sensors
and already available cheap robot platforms, systems like RUBICON
address a primary need of the civil domain outlined by the MAR:
“Progressively lower system, subsystem and component costs through
increased use of commercial-off-the-shelf components rather than custom
development of systems, while providing increased robustness and
dependability”. In addition, the combined advancements in HRI, learning,
and planning capabilities pursued by this type of projects will enable
important step changes in the Configurability, Adaptability, Interaction and
Decisional Autonomy abilities of current assistive, smart robotic
environments. As such, the activities of our panel have the potential to
contribute to several topic groups in euRobotics, including the topic group
in the MAR
7. Media (Press-releases, interviews, articles)
The public and the media have been less central to the actual delivery of
the RUBICON project, but they have served to raise the profile of the
project and the partners with policy makers and funding bodies.
While the general public have been engaged with brochures/leaflets and
the newsletter (see Section 2), the media have been provided with brief
press releases about project aims and successes, summaries of project
aims, progress and results, especially toward the beginning and end of the
project and after each major milestone.
The following is a list of all appearances of
Date
Type of media
Name
14/06/2011 National newspaper, Ireland
Irish times
21/11/2011 National newspaper, Italy
La Repubblica
02/08/2011 Internet news
technologyvoice.com
19/5/2011
Internet news
politico.ie
3/12/2011
Internet news
robotland.blogspot.ie
4/3/2012
National radios, Ireland
All national radios
1/9/2012
National newspaper, Ireland
Irish times
10/4/2013
National radios, Ireland
All national radios
13/10/2013 Regional radio, Spain
3/20/2014 Internet news
3/20/2014
3/20/2014
3/20/2014
3/20/2014
3/20/2014
3/21/2014
3/21/2014
3/21/2014
3/21/2014
3/21/2014
3/21/2014
Regional TV, Spain
Regional TV, Spain
Regional radio, Spain
30 mins. interview
Regional TV, Spain
Regional TV, Spain
Regional newspaper, Spain
National newspaper, Spain
Regional newspaper, Spain
National newspaper, Spain
Regional newspaper, Spain
Regional radio, Spain
ONDA CERO EUSKADI
HERALDO.ES, Informativos
Telecinco, Kaixo.com,
La Región, La Voz Libre,
Lainformación.com,
MedicinaTV.com,
Milesnoticias.com,
Presspeople,com, SigloXXI,
Teinteresa.es, Terra Noticias,
Yahoo.es News.
Euskal Telebista - ETB2
Euskal Telebista - ETB1
ONDA VASCA EUSKADI
Euskal Telebista - ETB2
Euskal Telebista - ETB1
DEIA
EL CORREO
EL DIARIO VASCO
LA RAZON
LA VOZ DE GALICIA
RADIO EUSKADI
3/21/2014
3/22/2014
3/22/2014
3/25/2014
3/25/2014
3/25/2014
3/25/2014
3/25/2014
3/25/2014
3/25/2014
3/25/2014
3/25/2014
3/25/2014
3/25/2014
3/27/2014
3/26/2014
3/26/2014
4/1/2014
9/4/2014
4/14/2014
4/22/2014
30 mins
interview
National radio, Spain
15 mins
interview
Regional newspaper, Spain
National newspaper, Spain
Regional newspaper, Spain
Regional newspaper, Spain
Regional newspaper, Spain
Regional newspaper, Spain
Regional newspaper, Spain
Regional newspaper, Spain
Regional newspaper, Spain
Regional newspaper, Spain
Regional newspaper, Spain
Regional newspaper, Spain
Regional radio, Spain
30 mins interview
Regional newspaper, Spain
Regional newspaper, Spain
National newspaper, Spain
National radio, Spain
15 mins interview
National radios, Ireland
National newspaper, Spain
National TV, Spain
RADIO NACIONAL DE ESPAÑA
- RNE-1
CANARIAS 7
LA RAZON
DIARIO DE ALMERIA
DIARIO DE CADIZ
DIARIO DE JEREZ
DIARIO DE SEVILLA
DIARIO DE CORDOBA
EL DIA DE CORDOBA
EUROPA SUR
GRANADA HOY
HUELVA INFORMACION
MALAGA HOY
ONDA CERO EUSKADI
GARA
BERRIA
20 MINUTOS
RADIO NACIONAL DE ESPAÑA
− RNE-1
All national radios
EL MUNDO
TVE - TELEVISION ESPAÑOLA
- Basque edition
8. Collaboration with other EU projects
Throught the lifetime of the project we have collaborated with a number of
other EU projects:
• A RUBICON delegation from NUID UCD visited the ETH, Zurich, in
November 2011, to work with Daniel Roggen's team of FP7 project
OPPORTUNITY6. In particular, the meeting focused on the approach
used in Opportunity to collect data from their smart home environment,
which has informed our own work in WP5 (cf. D5.1). We had other
meetings with ETH, for instance, at the SYROCO workshop in
September 2012 in Croatia.
• UNIPI had several exchanges of information with FP7 projects
ORGANIC7, i-Sense8, and AMARSi9 concerning the reservoir
computing paradigm (RC) models developed in RUBICON.
• We have closely monitored the activities of the FP7 project
FLORENCE10, especially their deliverables concerning robotic services
for home applications and their evaluation practice, which has informed
our own work in the design of the RUBICON architecture (cf. D1-4.1)
and our experimental methodology (cf. D5.1).
• We have worked with UBICITEC11 project, an international virtual
research center initiated founded by former members of CONET12, the
Cooperation Objects Network of Excellence, a FP7-project supported by
the European Commission, in order to test their results on hybrid
WSN/robot simulation and interoperable solutions for WSN simulation 13.
Thanks to their software contribution and support, we have succesfully
incorporated a Java-based simulaton of a RUBICON system deployed on
TinyOS WSN in our software deliverable D1.3.2 - Final version of the
communication layer. The simulation can be used to provide automatic
tests of RUBICON solutions, and to promote further extensions and
application of our work.
• We have published summaries of our activities on the TC-SOFT
forum14, which is chaired by the coordinating partner of the EU FP7
project BRICS15. TC-SOFT is a forum for furthering the research in
Software Engineering for Robotics and Automation. The forum's interest
spans across many areas of computer science, robotics, and
automation with the aim of promoting cross-fertilization and synergy.
The BRICS project is a EU-FP7 large-scale integrating project that
pursues the development of a methodology that enables an easy
6
http://www.opportunity-project.eu/
http://reservoir-computing.org/
8
http://www.i-sense.org/index.html
9
http://www.amarsi-project.eu/
10
http://www.florence-project.eu/
11
http://www.ubicitec.org/about-us/
12
http://www.cooperating-objects.eu/
13
Joakim Eriksson, Fredrik Österlind, Thiemo Voigt, Adam Dunkels, Niclas Finne, Nicolas Tsiftes, Robert
Sauter, Pedro José Marrón, Towards Interoperability Testing for Wireless Sensor Networks with
COOJA/MSPSim, In Proceedings of the 6th European Conference on Wireless Sensor Networks (EWSN'09),
demo session
14
http://robotics.unibg.it/tcsoft/
15
http://www.best-of-robotics.org/
7
•
•
configuration of robotics platforms from available hardware and
software components for research and educational purposes as well as
for new industrial applications. RUBICON's partners have partecipated
to the 8th Workshop on Software Development and Integration in
Robotics (SDIR-VIII), held in conjuction with ICRA-2013 in Karlsruhe on
the 6th of May 2013, by discussing software integration issues for
robotic ecologies.
UNIPI has participated in the activities of the AAL Open Association
(AALOA16), which is promoted by the partners of the European
Integrated Projects PERSONA and universAAL and the discussion
about its organization is currently coordinated by CNR-ISTI. In
addition, a CNR-ISTI & UNIPI team have tested communication
and learning solutions developed in RUBICON by participating
to the 2nd Track (Activity Recognition) of the EvAAL17
competition. EvAAL (Evaluating AAL Systems Through Competitive
Benchmarking) is an international contest aimed at raising interest in
the research and developer communities in the multidisciplinary
research fields enabling Ambient Assisted Living (AAL), and at creating
benchmarks for the evaluation and comparison of AAL systems. The
RUBICON team finished second.
In our third year, we have furthered our collaboration with other
projects in the area of service robots in smart environments. In
particular, we have worked with the University of Hertfordshire, the
coordinating partner of project ACCOMPANY18, in order to leverage the
complementarity of our approaches. As many of the projects working
toward the integration between service / domestic robots and smart
environmenr, ACCOMPANY focuses on human interaction and
personalization of single robots to adapt to different users and
applications. However, usually those projects rely on human
intervention and costly offline studies to come up with the necessary
modifications to the system. As such, there is a huge potential, for
applying online and autonomous learning mechanisms, of the type
being developed in RUBICON. Our collaboration has already generated
a submission of a journal paper, in which we review our approaches and
propose an integration roadmap19.
The project also had strong information exchange with CLARITY20, the
Irish national Centre for Sensor Web Technologies and the Robotics
research teams in all project partner organisations. The website of all the
projects listed in this section have been listed on our related work webpage (and vice-versa). Their mailing lists have been used to disseminate
RUBICON's activities and results, and to coordinate the preparation of
workshop proposals and other dissemination activities.
16
http://www.aaloa.org/
http://evaal.aaloa.org/
18
http://accompanyproject.eu/
19
M. Dragone, J. Saunders, and K. Dautenhahn. On the Integration of Adaptive and Interactive Smart and
Robotic Spaces. (submitted). IEEE THMS 2014: IEEE Transactions on Human-Machine Systems - Special Issue
on Ambient Assisted Living, sensors, methods and applications
20
http://www.clarity-centre.org/
17
9. Various Dissemination Activities
In addition to publications, the members of the Consortium have also been
actively presented in many seminars and other public events, national
events as part of European initiatives, and also contributed content to EU
Commission publicity vehicles such as websites, research magazines and
others, as specified by the Commission.
9.1 Public events & Forums
The following is the list of participations to public events where RUBICON
was discussed:
• August 2011 - RUBICON was presented by Mauro Dragone (NUID
UCD) at an Irish workhop on Automous Robots in Maynooth on 09
Aug 2011 featuring invited talks by Irish Robotics researchers to an
audience of 50 people.
• November 2011 – Mauro Dragone and David Swords (NUID UCD)
spent two days working with researchers at the Wearable Computer
Laboratory, ETH Zentrum, ETZ, Zurich, Switzerland. On the 14th and
15th of November, the delegation presented project Rubicon to the
ETZ team and discussed the experimental practice and the activity
recognition research conducted within the EU FP7 project
Opportunity.
• February 2012 - RUBICON co-hosted UCD’s first Robotics Open Day
on 09 Feb 2012 where the project was presented. Robotics
researchers from all over Ireland had been invited to present their
work to a general audience. Mauro Dragone (NUID UCD) presented
RUBICON. The day finished with a tour of the UCD RUBICON testbed.
• February 2012 - A poster about RUBICON was featured at the 5th
International Conference on Cognitive Systems, CogSys 2012,
February 22-23, 2012, TU Vienna, Austria
(http://cogsys2012.acin.tuwien.ac.at/).
• July 2012 - A RUBICON interactive demo enjoyed a succesful stay in
Europa House in Dublin, as part of a EU project showcase between
July 9th and 20th. Euroscience Open Forum week was officially
launched on Wednesday 11th July when the Commissioner for
Research, Innovation & Science Máire Geoghegan-Quinn presented
the final and largest call under FP7 to an audience of key players in
research, academia, industry, media and government. The event
was attended by over 100 participants. After that, the RUBICON's
demo was left in the Europa House, in the centre of Dublin, as part of
the EU projects showcase open to the public, where it ran for a full
week.
• September 2012 - RUBICON participated at the AAL Forum,
between 24-27th September 2012, in Eindhoven, Netherlands.
Stefano Chessa (UNIPI) and Arantxa Renteria (TECNALIA)
represented the project and illustrated our efforts and RUBICON's
expected impact in the AAL R&D domai (http://www.aalforum.eu/)
•
•
•
November 2012 - A delegation from ULSTER have attended
'Activage2012' in Dublin on Saturday 3rd November 2012. The
event, part of Dublin City of Science 2012, was concerned with
technology and the future of ageing and will brought together
engineers, designers, artists and older people to discuss and debate
ideas on current and future technologies to support successful
ageing. ULSTER presented our work to elderly members of the
general public and industry representatives, and discussed how our
current projects are aimed at bringing assistive robots into homes
December 2013 - As part of European Robotics Week 2013 the
Science Gallery in Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland, hosted an evening
of robotics where Ireland’s roboticists showcased research to the
general public. Postdoctoral researcher Sameh Abdel-Naby and PhD
student Anara Sandygulova (NUID UCD) were there to present
RUBICON. Project scientific leader Dr. Mauro Dragone gave a talk to
illustrate the potential of adaptive robotic ecologies and the results
achieved in RUBICON. Philip Vance (ULSTER) presented RUBICON to
various scientific institutions, industrial representatives, school
children and members of the general public. The delegation was also
interviewed and presented our work on RTE evening news (Ireland's
main evening news on TV)
February 2013 – A delegation from ULSTER attended an exhibition
in Stormont, Belfast on Tuesday 5th February 2013 to discuss and
demonstrate RUBICON to various MLA's of Northern Ireland, school
children and teachers.
Figure 5: Anara Sandygulova and Sameh Abdel-Naby
(NUID UCD) with Irish Minister for Research and
Innovation Sean Sherlock at RUBICON demo at euRobotics
Week
9.2 Outreach & Interactive Project Demonstration
ULSTER also had numerous visits to their robotics lab from various schools
and industries from around Northern Ireland including a few STEM
(Science, Technology, Engineering, Maths) based visits to the lab and
centre where they have described their research projects to school
children of all ages and teachers, and how RUBICON is aimed at assistive
robotic applications.
NUID UCD have used the RUBICON middleware to create a detachable
section of the NUID UCD's RUBICON testbed 21, to help with project's
dissemination events, by creating a self-presenting robotic ecology, i.e. an
interactive and autonomous robotic ecology that is able to engage human
users, react to their activities, and introduce them to the main concepts
behind robotic ecologies and the RUBICON project.
NUID UCD have used the testbed in a wide range of occasions to present
wider project results, from outreach demonstrations in secondary schools
and universities, to open days in NUID UCD, to research exhibition,
industrial seminars and other project dissemination events. To this end, the
testbed was designed to be easily transportable and re-configurable in
order to adapt to different settings and requirements. Furthermore, all the
PEIS components used in the demonstration have been published on the
RUBICON's code repository, in order to facilitate the creation of similar
interactive demonstrations across the consortium.
9.3 Consultations with user groups
NUID UCD and TECNALIA have already started to identify possible AAL and
HealthCare services in which RUBICON-enabed AAL solutions could be
used with maximum benefit for their end-users.
Elderly people facing difficulties in remaining independent in the EU have
a variety of residential care arrangements ranging from extramural (at
home), to semi extramural settings such as an assisted living community,
to receiving up to 24 hour nursing in an intramural setting (nursing
home)22. To this end, NUID UCD has conducted a preliminary requirement
analysis with the the Accord Group23, a not-for-profit organisation in the UK
made up of six different housing associations which provide a wide range
of housing, care, health and support services to meet local need in the
West Midlands area of England and beyond. The Group manages more
than 11,000 homes and provides services to over 60,000 people of all
ages. Specialist support and/or accommodation is provided to customer
groups with specific needs such as those with learning disabilities, mobility
difficulties, mental health issues, dementia, or young people leaving care.
21
A. Sandygulova, M. Dragone, A Portable and Self-presenting Robotic Ecology HRI Testbed, Evolving
Ambient Intelligence, Communications in Computer and Information Science Volume 413. pp. 136–150, 2013,
Springer International Publishing.
22
Accompany: Deliverable 1.1, Status of elderly care in Europe and the potential for service robotics
23
www.accordgroup.org.uk
TECNALIA has conducted preliminary consultations with Home Care Lab,
S.Coop. (HCL24), part of Grupo Servicios Sociales Integrados - “Integrated
Social Services Group” – SSI (http://www.grupossi.es/) is a cooperative set
up in Bilbao in 1986, made up of professional people who globally respond
to the social needs of people in situations of dependence and social
vulnerability, and their families, in Euskadi (mainly in Great Bilbao area),
by managing public social services such as tutored housing, municipal
social emergencies service and hostel for homeless people
These consultations have focused on examining the current practices
followed by those organization to identify potential practical applications
for RUBICON-based solutions, including:
• Ensure low-level medical administration and compliance, including
helping the user to monitor health (hydration) and health conditions
(diabetes / asthma / heart condition).
• Prompt, motivate and assist the user in managing their daily
activities in order to promote re-ablement and maintain a healthy
and active life-style, for instance, by reminding the user to have a
bath or to get ready for their GP appointment, encouraging
rehabilitation or other physical exercise, and also by helping them to
get used to new circumstances (such as having to cope with moving
around the home with an arm or leg in plaster)
• Detect situations in which the user starts engaging in some activity
(such as bathing, leaving the house), for which they require
assistance, in order to reduce risk (e.g. by prompting them to call a
support worker, or by alerting them directly).
• Monitor for early indicators, and anomalies in a user's behaviour that
may symptomatic of self-neglect, illness, anxiety, lack of confidence
and depression, in order to help manage the situations and more
promptly activate support workers, especially when the users may
not do that by themselves. This avoids the user having to wait for
scheduled visits and thus reduces risk to them by prompt action.
All the services have the potential to maximize the impact of future
applications built with RUBICON solutions, by complementing the current
best-practices followed by the professional caregivers and AAL service
centres, helping them to provide the best possible care for their users
24X7 thanks to the autonomy of RUBICON robotic ecologies.
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http://www.hclcoop.es/
10.
Dissemination Plans
Dissemination plans after the end of the project are intended to further
increase the visibility of project's exploitable results mainly by enforcing
the dissemination channels already used during the project timeframe.
To further disseminate the knowledge and methodologies achieved during
the RUBICON project, some of the partners have plans to submit some
proposals for workshops and tutorials on the topic of Adaptive Robotic
Ecologies to be considered by the Technical Program Committees of
international conferences in the field of Ambient Intelligence, Ambient
Assisted Living, Cooperative Robotics, Ubiquitous Robotics, Cognitive
Robotics and Artificial Intelligence.
The RUBICON website still remains at the centre of the project future
dissemination plans. Finally, NUID UCD, CNR-ISTI, ULSTER and ORU all
have active technology transfer organisations, as well as networks of
industrial contacts who can be expected to take an interest in this
technology, and to engage with the consortium.
A number of possible targets for future dissemination of RUBICON's results
have been already identified in the RUBICON Exploitation Plan (D6.3,
issued at M27). These include:
• CoTeSys25 - a cluster of Excellence coordinated by Technische
Universität München investigating how technical systems can be
equipped with cognitive abilities, in order to learn from observations,
adapt to unknown situations, perceive their environment and
interact with persons and objects in its environment.
• UBICITEC26 - an international virtual research center initiated
founded by former members of CONET, the Cooperation Objects
Network of Excellence, a FP7-project supported by the European
Commission.
• Other target groups related to ambient assisted living, assistive care,
health etc, will be reached in the respective forums of interest (for
example AAL Forum, AALOA or PHealth), that attract not only
scientists/engineering, but also end users, service providers and
industrial representatives.
• AAL and health-related conferences and forums of interest, such as
the AAL Forum, PHealth, Annual International Congress on Telehealth
and Telecare, Work, Wellbeing and Wealth: Active Ageing at Work,
European Congress of the E.D.E: Let’s network our care!, Technology
in care Opportunities and Limits, European Association for the
Advancement of Assistive Technologies in Europe Conference
• Representatives of potential commercial user base, including
transport robotics companies and professional caregivers and AAL
service centres. Their feedback represents a first impression of how
sample customers from our target markets may view and utilize
RUBICON outputs, and has informed both our R&D work and plans
for future exploitation and dissemination.
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http://www.ubicitec.org/about-us/