The RoboCup@Home league is a benchmark for domestic service robot systems. It evaluates approaches to mobile manipulation and human-robot interaction by testing integrated systems. In this article, we detail the contributions of our team NimbRo, with which we won the RoboCup@Home competition in 2011. We demonstrated novel capabilities in the league such as real-time tabletop segmentation, flexi...

Assuming the feasibility of main-memory database management systems, the current research aims at designing a new type of data manipulation API, called Business Object Query Language (BOQL), specifically tailored for in-database data manipulation in main-memory ERP systems. The paper contributes the concept of business object virtualization and describes a query processor that takes advantage o...

Optical methods for microfluidic flow manipulation offer a flexible, noncontact technique for both fluid actuation and valving. At present, however, such techniques are limited by their high laser power requirements, low achieved flow rates, or poor valve switching times. Here we demonstrate a microfluidic valving technique based on optothermorheological manipulation using a low-power 40 mW las...

BACKGROUND Nasopharyngeal surgery is commonly performed with a rigid endoscope using a transnasal or transoral approach. Here, we demonstrate a flexible single port computer-assisted endoscopic system enabling easy transoral access to the nasopharynx. METHODS Transoral nasopharyngeal surgery was performed in human cadavers (n = 8) using the Flex System (Medrobotics, Raynham, MA). Learning cur...

A critical aspect of flexible choice is that alternative actions yield distinct consequences: Only when available action alternatives produce distinct outcome states does discrimination and selection between actions allow an agent to flexibly obtain the currently most desired outcome. Here, we use instrumental divergence - the degree to which alternative actions differ with respect to their out...

This paper presents a real-time open-architecture control system (ROACS) which has been developed for flexible manipulation of industrial robots. Flexible manipulation refers to robot manipulation that handles tasks with uncertainties; hence, decision-making based on feedback data is essential in realtime operation. A real-time open-architecture control system with the capacity of parallel proc...

Spatial navigation, active sensing, and most cognitive functions rely on a tight link between motor output and sensory input. Virtual reality (VR) systems simulate the sensorimotor loop, allowing flexible manipulation of enriched sensory input. Conventional rodent VR systems provide 3D visual cues linked to restrained locomotion on a treadmill, leading to a mismatch between visual and most othe...

The paper proposes a multimodal interface for a real sales database application. We show how natural language processing may be integrated with a visual, direct manipulation method of database query, to produce a user interface which supports a flexible form of query specification, provides implicit guidance about the coverage of the linguistic component, and allows more focused discourse refer...