The student team "Hibikino-Musashi@Home (HMA)" from Kyushu Institute of Technology Graduate School and Kitakyushu City University won the @Home DSPL of RoboCup 2024, the world's largest robot and artificial intelligence competition, held in Eindhoven, Netherlands from July 7 to 17, 21. This is the team's third victory in the world championship, following wins in 2024 and 2017.
RoboCup is a competition for autonomous mobile robots, and the @Home League is a league that evaluates the performance of service robots that work with humans in living spaces such as homes and offices. Robots are required to have the ability to naturally communicate with humans, recognize their surrounding environment, and have high artificial intelligence capabilities to plan and execute on their own.
The HMA team is working on developing a robot with the goal of "realizing a home service robot that can coexist with humans." In the competition, they participated in the Domestic Standard Platform League (DSPL) category, an artificial intelligence competition, using a Human Support Robot (HSR) made by Toyota. Ten teams that had won preliminary rounds from around the world competed, and the HMA team won.
The technical key to the win was the use of generative AI (large-scale language model: LLM). The LLM was given the ability to understand commands and carry out tasks in the appropriate order. In addition, the method of inputting prompts, the method of dealing with exceptional values, and the overall system structure of the robot were all devised, and it was said that the combination with conventional technology was also important.
Going forward, the company aims to create robots that can flexibly adapt to completely new environments, such as a robot that can instantly perform a series of actions on the spot, such as searching for customers and taking their orders, and grabbing and carrying specified items, just like a veteran part-time worker.
