COGNITIVE ROBOTICS: LEARNING ENVIRONMENT PERCEPTION

For robots to successfully perceive and understand their environment, they must be taught to act in a goal-directed way. While mapping environments geometry is a necessary prerequisite for many mobile robot applications, understanding the semantics of the environment will enable novel applications, which require more advanced cognitive abilities. Sven Behnke, Head of Autonomous Intelligent Systems Group at the University of Bonn, is tackling this area of robotics by combining dense geometric modelling and semantic categorization. Through this, 3D semantic maps of the environment are built. Sven's team have demonstrated the utility of semantic environment perception with cognitive robots in multiple challenging application domains, including domestic service, space exploration, search and rescue, and bin picking.