NimbRo is the robot competition team of the ''Autonomous Intelligent Systems'' group of

University of Bonn The University of Bonn, officially the Rhenish Friedrich Wilhelm University of Bonn (), is a public research university in Bonn, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It was founded in its present form as the () on 18 October 1818 by Frederick Willi ...

, Germany. It was founded in 2004 at the

University of Freiburg The University of Freiburg (colloquially ), officially the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg (), is a public university, public research university located in Freiburg im Breisgau, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. The university was founded in 1 ...

, Germany.

Research

The project NimbRo – Learning Humanoid Robots – was initially funded by the

German Research Foundation The German Research Foundation ( ; DFG ) is a German research funding organization, which functions as a self-governing institution for the promotion of science and research in the Federal Republic of Germany. In 2019, the DFG had a funding bud ...

(DFG). Focus was on the development of humanoid robots. Both hardware and software were developed for perception, planning, and learning. The robot systems have been integrated and tested in challenging domains. Initially, humanoid soccer robots and communication robots for intuitive

multimodal interaction Multimodal interaction provides the user with multiple modes of interacting with a system. A multimodal interface provides several distinct tools for input and output of data. Multimodal human-computer interaction involves natural communicati ...

s with humans were developed. In recent years, robots have also been developed for domestic service,

search and rescue Search and rescue (SAR) is the search for and provision of aid to people who are in distress or imminent danger. The general field of search and rescue includes many specialty sub-fields, typically determined by the type of terrain the search ...

, micro aerial vehicles, and

bin picking BIN or Bin may refer to: Abbreviations * Badan Intelijen Negara, Indonesia's state intelligence agency * Bank Identification Number * Belgian Institute for Normalization * Believe in Nothing * Black Information Network, a radio network * Bri ...

. NimbRo has developed autonomous micro aerial vehicles designed for tasks such as the inspection of industrial chimneys. NimbRo has competed in numerous robot soccer competitions. One of the challenges of designing a robot for humanoid soccer is the generation of dynamic movements while maintaining balance, an area of robot development important in practical applications. Hardware and software developed by NimbRo has been used by multiple other robotics competition teams. NimbRo competed in the 2016

Amazon Amazon most often refers to: * Amazon River, in South America * Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin * Amazon (company), an American multinational technology company * Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek myth ...

Picking Challenge, and the 2017 Amazon Robotics Challenge. Bin picking robots need to detect objects in complex scenes, estimate their pose, grasp them, and place the objects at a target location. The mobile manipulation robot ''Momaro'' was designed for the

DARPA Robotics Challenge The DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC) was a prize competition funded by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Held from 2012 to 2015, it aimed to develop semi-autonomous ground robots that could do "complex tasks in dangerous, degraded, ...

and inspired the ''Centauro'' robot, which was developed the European research Project CENTAURO. The 2018 NimbRo-OP2X robot played in the RoboCup Humanoid AdultSize class. It is 135 tall and has a weight of 18 kg. Its hard- and software are

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

. Its structural parts are 3D-printed from polymers. For the ANA Avatar XPRIZE competition, NimbRo developed an immersive telepresence system consisting of an anthropomorphic mobile robot and an operation station. In 2022, NimbRo won the Finals and received the Grand Prize of 5 Million US$. NimbRo Avatar Telepresence Robot at ANA Avatar XPRIZE Finals

Competitions and challenges

NimbRo participated at the following robot competitions and challenges: *

RoboCup RoboCup is an annual international robotics competition founded in 1996 by a group of university professors (including Hiroaki Kitano, Manuela M. Veloso, Itsuki Noda and Minoru Asada). The aim of the competition is to promote robotics and AI ...

, robot soccer – in the Humanoid League size classes AdultSize, TeenSize, and KidSize * ANA Avatar XPRIZE Competition * Mohamed Bin Zayed International Robotics Challenge (MBZIRC) *

(DRC), search and rescue robots * RoboCup@Home, domestic service robots * Amazon Picking/Robotics Challenge, bin picking robots * European Robotics Challenges (EuRoC), robots for industrial use cases * DLR SpaceBot Cup, space exploration robots The team won world championship titles in 2009–2013, including first place in 2011 and 2012, and 2016-2019 in the

''Humanoid League'' robot soccer. In MBZIRC 2017, NimbRo won the Grand Challenge ($1 million prize) and one of the individual challenges. The focus of this competition was mobile manipulation and autonomous micro aerial vehicles.

References

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External links

Official Website
Robotics organizations Sports clubs and teams in Germany Science and technology in Germany DARPA Grand Challenge University of Bonn