About the Tutorial

Robotics is still characterized by a landscape of isolated solutions which cannot be reused and combined easily. Furthermore, today’s approaches lack comprehensive software engineering methodologies and abstractions for handling the increased heterogeneity and complexity of robotic software systems. Hence, there is a need to incorporate software engineering principles within the development of future robot platforms.

The EU H2020 RobMoSys project (http://robmosys.eu) aims to coordinate the whole robotics community’s best and consorted effort to realize a step change towards a European ecosystem for open and industry-grade model-driven software development for robotics. It established a first round of open source Eclipse-based model-driven tooling for robotics.

This brings the robotics community much closer to the step change from ROS-specific coding to framework- agnostic modeling.

With that tutorial, we want to bring interested stakeholders into contact with ready-to-use model-driven tooling, educate them about how simple their use already now is and introduce to them a migration path from their current systems to becoming able to give model-driven approaches with their benefits a try.

Relevant links to give you an impression on the background on which this tutorial is based:

Topics of interest:

Robotics Systems Engineering
Robotics System Composition
Eclipse-based Tooling
Model-Driven Software Development
ROS agnostic
Framework agnostic

Intended audience

PhD students (in robotics, in systems engineering, in software engineering) who want to learn about cutting edge model-driven software development approaches for robotics systems. This tutorial offers them an easy entry point into the current state-of-the-art and the robotics software engineering community. It gives them an understanding of current challenges and upcoming next steps. This is about attracting the next generation towards model-driven approaches and towards shaping better tools for better systems.
Experienced robotics researchers from academia and industry who want to learn about the maturity of model-driven software engineering for robotics. This tutorial offers them an overview on the available ready-to-use Eclipse-based tooling and the consolidated modeling background. This is about attracting domain experts and let them learn how they can already now make the step into model-driven approaches for robotics.
Practitioners from industry who want to learn that there is more in robotics than just coding. Having not known so far about Eclipse-based tooling for robotics software, they can get an intense introduction. They can see that now the maturity level is there for industrial take up and to make their live easier by model-driven tooling.
Decision makers that want to get an overview on what is the state towards the envisioned disruptive change of introducing good model-driven engineering practices into robotics software systems.

News

November 8th 2019

Slides available

October 21th 2019

Update to program schedule – adjusted timing

July 31st 2019

Update of program

June 4th 2019

Website available

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Program

The tutorial will be held on November 8th 2019.

Key persons from the EU H2020 RobMoSys project guide the participants through the entry points into the model-driven world for robotics. This is done by concrete tooling demos. The tooling is freely available as open source and there are also video tutorials available with step-by-step guidance. We provide virtual machines which allow the participants to follow our tooling presentations on their laptops. This also allows them to repeat the tutorial later on their own.

We exploit the in-person nature of IROS by the interactive nature of the tooling presentations. The getting- to-know and direct interaction with key persons and with other interested parties is strengthening the community building. The tutorial is at the same time a meeting place for the model-driven community and complements the continuously on-going discourse interactions by in-person discussions

09:00 – 09:20 Talk: Towards an open and industry-grade European robotics software ecosystem Presenter: Christian Schlegel Slides

09:20 – 10:00 Interactive Tool Demo: Open source Eclipse-based tooling for system composition: Piecing together software components to pilot applications Presenter: Dennis Stampfer Slides (PDF page 2-27)

10:00 – 10:45 Interactive Tool Demo: Open Source Eclipse-Based Tooling for Component Builders: Middleware Agnostic Robotics Software Components Presenter: Alex Lotz Slides (PDF page 2-27)

10:45 – 11:15 Coffee Break

11:15 – 11:55 Interactive Tool Demo: Safety-analysis by model-driven tooling Selma Kchir

11:55 - 12:35 Interactive Tool Demo: Stepwise Migration to Model Driven Development: Linking Legacy Systems via the Mixed Port Component, Linking ROS Systems, OPC UA Systems etc. Presenter: Dennis Stampfer, Alex Lotz Slides (PDF page 29-44)

12:35 - 12:55 Talk: Overview, motivation, benefits of model-driven approaches in robotics: What-if analysis, compliance, predictability, etc. Presenter: Herman Bruyninckx Slides

12:55 – 13:00 Wrap Up: Summary of what to find where, how to get involved etc. Presenter: Christian Schlegel

About RobMoSys

The H2020 project “RobMoSys - Better Models, Better Tools, Better Systems” (http://robmosys.eu) is part of the effort towards a European Digital Industrial Platform for Robotics.

RobMoSys will enable the composition of robotics applications with managed, assured, and maintained system-level properties via model-driven techniques. It will establish structures that enable the management of the interfaces between different robotics-related domains, different roles in the ecosystem and different levels of abstractions. Thereto, “composability”, “separation of roles” and “model – tool – code” are first class principles of RobMoSys.

RobMoSys envisions an integrated approach built on top of the current code-centric robotic platforms, by applying model-driven methods and tools. RobMoSys aims to establish Quality-of-Service properties, enabling a composition-oriented approach while preserving modularity. RobMoSys will drive the non-competitive part of building a professional quality ecosystem by encouraging the community involvement. RobMoSys will elaborate many of the common robot functionalities based on broad involvement of the community via two Open Calls.

Organizers

Christian Schlegel Technical Lead of the H2020 RobMoSys project. Elected coordinator of the euRobotics Topic Group on Software Engineering, System Integration, System Engineering. Co-Founder and Associate Editor of the open access journal JOSER – Journal of Software Engineering for Robotics. Co-Organizer of the series of International Workshop on Domain-Specific Languages and Models for Robotics Systems (DSLRob). Head of the service robotics research group at Hochschule Ulm, Professor for Real Time Systems and Autonomous Systems in the Computer Science Department of Hochschule Ulm since 2004. Co-opted member of the Faculty of Engineering, Computer Science and Psychology of the University of Ulm. http://www.servicerobotik-ulm.de

Herman Bruyninckx Core Technical Partner of the H2020 RobMoSys project with a focus on modeling of motion, perception and world model stacks for robotics. Associate Editor of the open access journal JOSER – Journal of Software Engineering for Robotics. From 2008 to 2015, he has been leading the robotics community in Europe, first as Coordinator of the seminal network EURON, and in 2013-2015 as Vice-President Research of the euRobotics association. Full professor at KU Leuven and part-time at Eindhoven University of Technology. https://people.mech.kuleuven.be/~bruyninc/