Making a difference in the field of autonomous robotic deliberation

April 2024 Newsletter

Project Update

CONVINCE had its first successful review meeting in October 2023 at Renningen, Germany, hosted by Bosch Research. We were grateful for the reviews by the EU Project Officer Dr Mariusz Bałdyga and the reviewers Prof. Marc Hanheide and Prof. Malik Ghallab, which resulted in insightful discussions and great feedback. Since then, our team has been busy developing the tools and integrating these into the CONVINCE toolchain, which will enhance the robot’s deliberation systems capacity for detecting challenges in unsupervised environments and learning from past experiences. The specification of the data model for the CONVINCE toolchain has been released. You can find it on GitHub under the CONVINCE project.

We are working hard to deliver the first version of the CONVINCE software toolchain, so stay tuned and remember to follow us on LinkedIn or sign up for our newsletter to Get the latest news.

Survey

CONVINCE has launched our first online survey aimed at autonomous system developers, with the goal of gathering their feedback on the current system workflow. The survey has gathered overwhelming support from developers with nearly 90 responses generated so far! Therefore, we would like to extend our sincere gratitude to everyone who has taken the time to participate and contribute their valuable insights. This feedback will play a crucial role in shaping the development of our open-source toolchain. You can find the survey link here.

EUROPEAN ROBOTIC FORUM 2024

The CONVINCE consortium was busy at the European Robotics Forum (ERF) 2024!

During the ERF 2024, we attended an informal session hosted by PILLAR Robots, along with a group of sister projects funded under the Horizon Europe AI & Robotics EU program, including CONVINCE, AGIMUS, Coresense, and Sestosenso. The goal of the meeting was to strengthen the ties between the projects and discuss potential joint activities.

At the Industrial session on the 14^th of March, CONVINCE presented a pitch and a poster on ‘Towards Robust Autonomous Robots Using Statistical Model Checking’. The presentation generated a lot of interest and sparked many engaging discussions.

Finally, the CONVINCE team wrapped up the ERF 2024 by co-organising a workshop titled 'Safe Adaptation for Long-Term Autonomy and Human-Robot Interaction' alongside the Horizon Europe project Sestosenso. While both projects aim to enable autonomous robots to operate in unpredictable environments without human intervention, Sestosenso focuses on sensor-based technology, while CONVINCE is developing a deliberation layer for detecting and responding to unexpected situations. This workshop facilitated open discussions addressing common challenges in advancing robotic capabilities to operate safely and autonomously.

Info

Scientific Publications

Learning linear temporal properties for autonomous robotic systems

Ghiorzi, E., Colledanchise, M., Piquet, G., Bernagozzi, S., Tacchella, A. and Natale, L.

IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, 8(5), pp.2930-2937.

Formal Modelling for Multi-Robot Systems Under Uncertainty

Street, C., Mansouri, M. and Lacerda, B.

Current Robotics Reports, 4(3), pp.55-64.

Multi-Formation Planning and Coordination for Object Transportation

Zhang, W., Street, C. and Mansouri, M.

In 2023 European Conference on Mobile Robots (ECMR) (pp. 1-7). IEEE

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Upcoming Events

6-11 April, 2024

ETAPS 2024

At the ETAPS 2024 industry day on the 9th of April, Bosch Research will be giving an invited talk on ‘How Bosch brings Formal Methods to Autonomous Systems Engineering’.

4-8 June, 2024

Summer School 2024

CONVINCE consortium, is co-organising a Summer School with ACM SIGSOFT to provide an intensive, hands-on learning experience in software engineering within the context of robotics. The Summer School will take place in Brussels, from 04 to 08 June 2024.