RoboCup Logistics League Sponsored by Festo: A Competitive Factory Automation Benchmark

A new trend in automation is to deploy so-called cyberphysical systems (CPS) which combine computation with physical processes. The novel RoboCup Logistics League Sponsored by Festo (LLSF) aims at a such CPS logistic scenarios in an automation setting. A team of robots has to produce products from a number of semi-finished products which they have to machine during the game. Different production plans are possible and the robots need to recycle scrap byproducts. This way, the LLSF is a very interesting league offering a number of challenging research questions for planning, coordination, or communication in an application-driven scenario. In this paper, we outline the objectives of the LLSF and present steps for developing the league further towards a benchmark for logistics scenarios for CPS. As a major milestone we present the new automated referee system which helps in governing the game play as well as keeping track of the scored points in a very complex factory scenario.