The last European Robotics League (ERL) Consumer Service Robots tournament of the 2018/19 season will take place from the 25th of February to the 1st of March 2019 in Bristol, UK, at the Bristol Robotics Laboratory (BRL). The ERL-certified Anchor Personalised Assisted Living (ARPAL) Studio in the BRL offers facilities for research into innovative person-centred assistive robotics technologies to enable independent living and active ageing within a “Living Lab” testing environment.

The studio has been developed as a typical apartment to provide realistic conditions to pursue vital research on the design and development of assistive robotics that can be deployed in people’s homes.  Providing a multi-disciplinary working environment with access to teams of health care experts and end-users, it provides robotics researchers an opportunity to validate of concepts and trialling of users’ actual experience of technology.

During the ERL Consumer tournament, the robotics community and the public will get a preview of the support that robots could provide to humans in the future in domestic environments. International teams will compete to provide robotics services for home and healthcare applications, such as welcoming visitors and supporting people in their daily lives.

This will be a Local Tournament, during which a small number of teams (maximum 3 teams expected) compete and cooperate to advance research on consumer service robots through a scientific competition.

The teams and their robots will perform different ERL Consumer Task and Functionality Benchmarks from a set available at the BRL tournament:

  • TBM1: Getting to Know My Home
  • TBM2: Welcoming Visitors
  • TBM3: Catering for Granny Annie’s Comfort
  • TBM4: Visit My Home
  • FBM3: Speech Understanding

The European Robotics League tournaments take place under the scope of the SciRoc EU-H2020 project.

For more information about the ERL Consumer tournament in Bristol, including the competition rules and how to reach the venue, visit https://sites.google.com/site/erlsrbrl2019/

Watch the SciRoc Challenge promo video featuring TIAGo robot https://youtu.be/O9yHi-xXFEY

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Local ContactsPraminda Caleb-Solly
E-mail: praminda.caleb-solly@uwe.ac.uk
Joseph Daly
E-mail: joe.daly@brl.ac.uk

Bristol Robotics Laboratory,
T Block, University of the West of England, Frenchay Campus
Coldharbour Lane
Bristol BS16 1QY
United Kingdowm

Press contactMarta Palau Franco
University of the West of England, Bristol
Bristol Robotics Laboratory
Email: info@robotics-league.eu
Social media: @erlrobotleague

Notes for editors

The European Robotics League

The European Robotics League (ERL) is the successor to the RoCKIn, euRathlon and EuRoC robotics competitions, funded by the EU and designed to foster scientific progress and innovation in cognitive systems and robotics. The ERL comprises annual competitions for Consumer, Professional and Emergency Service Robots, and a biennial robotics challenge for Smart Cities.

SciRoc

The European Robotics League is run by the SciRoc project, funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Programme under grant agreement n° 780086.

SciRoc continues to build the ERL; raising interest through public engagement, validating and disseminating new benchmarks, and accelerating development through demonstrating the performance of components and techniques against these benchmarks.  Setting the competitions in a Smart City context drives development towards real societal needs. See: http://sciroc.eu

SPARC

The ERL is part of the SPARC public-private partnership set up by the European Commission and the euRobotics association to extend Europe’s leadership in civilian robotics. SPARC’s €700 million of funding from the Commission in 2014–20 is being combined with €1.4 billion of funding from European industry.