Major limitations to robot manipulation include reliable grasping of objects and a lack of quantitative, informative performance evaluation
Researchers typically only contribute to one novel subsystem component at a time while the other components used are generally not standardized
Bottlenecks include lack of relevant comparable benchmarks, issues integrating open-source products, and truly modular software, among others; additional information gathered during Phase I of this project which motivates the current Phase II effort can be found on the Background page
The COMPARE ecosystem aims to improve the compatibility and benchmarking of open-source products for robot manipulation
Steering committee for roadmap development and prioritization of ecosystem efforts
Advisory committee for oversight and ecosystem sustainability counsel
Community facilitator for community interaction and representation to the steering committee
Working groups comprised of developers and users to establish guidelines and standards
Ecosystem infrastructure (bottom) will support the development of open-source products and conducting performance evaluations of robot manipulation capabilities (top)
The ecosystem will produce:
Standards and guidelines for topics including, but not limited to: open-source product development, procedures for conducting benchmarking, and reporting of performance results.
Online resources such as: discussion channels and forums, repositories of open-source products for robot manipulation, and leaderboards of benchmarking results.
Test and evaluation procedures to validate the open-source products and their compatibility with others in the software pipeline, including: reviews of their adherence to the developed standards and guidelines, performance assessments of their functionality in multiple contexts, and usability analyses of product integration.
A series of events will be conducted to activate the open-source ecosystem by engaging the community to share their research, develop best practices, and integrate open-source products together, including:
Conference workshops on benchmarking protocols, datasets, and software pipelines,
Seasonal schools to develop and integrate the open-source products, andÂ
Competitions to propel the development of the open-source products and generate new benchmarks for the community.
University of Massachusetts Lowell
University of Massachusetts Lowell
COMPARE
Community Facilitator
Rutgers University
Worcester Polytechnic University
Yale University
University of South Florida
The COMPARE Ecosystem logo was designed by Ronald Abregu and Adam Norton.