CoBRA: A Composable Benchmark for Robotics Applications

Today, selecting an optimal robot, its base pose, and trajectory for a given task is currently mainly done by human expertise or trial and error. To evaluate automatic approaches to this combined optimization problem, we introduce a benchmark suite encompassing a unified format for robots, environments, and task descriptions. Our benchmark suite is especially useful for modular robots, where the multitude of robots that can be assembled creates a host of additional parameters to optimize. We include tasks such as machine tending and welding in completely synthetic environments and 3D scans of real-world machine shops. The benchmark suite defines these optimization problems and facilitates the comparison of solution algorithms. All benchmarks are accessible through cobra.cps.cit.tum.de, a platform to conveniently share, reference, and compare tasks, robot models, and solutions.