Following last October’s World MoveIt! Day, the first-ever MoveIt! China Developer Workshop 2019 was successfully held on January 16th in Suzhou, China. This event was co-led by Intel EDO (Ecosystem Development Office) & Intel OTC (Open Source Technology Center), with support from the People’s Government of Xiangcheng District Suzhou, the China Association of Small and Medium Enterprise High-Tech Industry Branch, and PickNik Consulting. The workshop aimed to give an opportunity for MoveIt!/ROS developers to come together to share their experiences, projects, and plans while also exploring collaboration possibilities and working together to fix outstanding issues for the future growth of MoveIt! and industrial robots in China. Approximately 210 technical experts attended this workshop, including technical leaders from 30+ industrial companies (industrial robotics, smart manufacturing, machine vision, etc), professors, researchers and students from 7 universities, and ROS/MoveIt! community developers. ~7300 viewed the workshop’s online video stream.
It is the first time that MoveIt!, the globally renowned open source project, was represented in China. Intel OTC brought MoveIt! expertise to Chinese developers by preparing technical content and a hands-on workshop, while EDO bridged the resources of speakers and audience through its smart robotics ecosystem developed over the past 3 years, which covers ~300 ecosystem partners. By the close collaboration of EDO and OTC, the workshop had significant impact on developers and ecosystem partners by presenting a full picture of open source robotics, including authoritative technical methodology, influential academic perspective, typical industrial application as well as inspiring case studies.
In the morning, 6 industrial / community leaders and university professors delivered technical sharing, focusing on MoveIt!, industrial robot applications, smart manufacturing, and collaborative robots:
- MoveIt!: Past, Present, and Future
- Dave Coleman, lead maintainer of MoveIt! project, CEO of PickNik LLC
- Smart Manufacturing Trend
- Qingshan Xie, Intel SMG
- Industrial Robot Use Case and Optimization on IA platforms
- Sharron Liu, Senior Software Engineer, Intel OTC
- Collaborative Robot and its Development on ROS
- Min Huasong, Professor, Wuhan Science & Technology University
- Smart Manufacturing Ecosystem and Product Line Quality Control
- Yang Weijie, Siasun Corporate
- Industrial Robot Platform Based on MoveIt!
- Lin Minghao, NexCom Corporate
In the afternoon, about 120 attendees joined a MoveIt! hands-on activity. They were technical leaders from industrial companies who either work on robot products or are eager to upgrade their product line from traditional equipment to intelligent ones and students from colleges who are interested in or majoring in robotics technologies.
Intel OTC robotics team hosted the afternoon’s hands-on lab activities. MoveIt! lead maintainer Dave Coleman also joined and provided support and answered questions. We went through the below hands-on activities and had an open discussion in the end.
- ROS and MoveIt! setup
- Arm configuration in Gazebo simulator
- Draw “X” in simulator
- Pick and place in simulator
- Demo OpenVINO enabled random pick and place with UR5 robot arm
