From ecervera at icc.uji.es Tue Jul 1 02:32:46 2008 From: ecervera at icc.uji.es (Enric Cervera) Date: Tue, 01 Jul 2008 11:32:46 +0200 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Summer School on Rescue Robotics in Benicassim (Spain) - LAST PLACES Message-ID: <14A81B1D-7FA7-4857-9F64-764F4409BD25@icc.uji.es> Dear colleagues, Registration for IURS2008 is now OPEN: http://www.robot.uji.es/research/events/iurs08/ For the 8th edition of its well-known summer school, the Intelligent Robotics Lab of Jaume-I University, in collaboration with the Sheffield-Hallam University (UK) organizes a tutorial on the engineering, scientific and application domain of rescue robotics, sponsored by the IST-FP6 Guardians and ViewFinder EU Cognitive Systems projects: Rescue robotics has emerged in recent years as an active research field, providing valuable assistance in urban rescue tasks after catastrophes (e.g. earthquakes) or incidents like fire or accidents involving hazardous materials. According to this trend, the school will provide to an audience with an engineering background the basic insights about the technology, science, and domain issues that may be instrumental in successfully applying rescue robotics in the real world. The school instructors are leading world experts in the field, who work actively in past and present cross-disciplinary projects involving partners from technology and emergency responders. Confirmed lecturers: * Robin Murphy (Univ. South Florida, USA) * Roland Siegwart (ETH Zurich, Swtzerland) * Shigeo Hirose (Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan) * Anibal Ollero (University of Sevilla, Spain) * Andreas Birk (Jacobs University Bremen, Germany) * Hartmut Surmann (Fraunhofer Institute, Germany) * Jacques Penders (Sheffield Hallam University, UK) * Yvan Baudoin (Royal Military School, Belgium) * Lino Marques (ISR - University of Coimbra, Portugal) Graduate robotics students will have a unique training opportunity in this emergent and fast-evolving domain, closely interacting for one week with some of the top-level researchers in the world in this field, as well as with fellow students. The school will take place during next September, for the whole week 15-19, in Benic?ssim (Spain), at 300m from the Mediterranean coast. Four sessions of 90 minutes will be held every day, for a total of 30 hours of lesson. Attendance is limited to 40 students. Registration fees, covering course material, accommodation and meals, are 500? (or a reduced fee of 250 ? without accommodation). Remote participation is also offered. Registration fees, covering course material and attendace certificate, are 100?. The official site of the school will be the Hotel Intur Bonaire, and the lectures will be held in a special room of the hotel offering up- to-date technology for conferences and meetings. Speakers ans students will be accommodated in the Hotel Intur Bonaire and in the nearby (50 mts.) Hotel Intur Azor. The official language of the school is English. General Chair: * Jacques Penders, SHU, UK Program Chairs: * Enric Cervera, Jaume-I University, Spain * Yvan Baudoin, RMA, Belgium * Raul Marin, Jaume-I University, Spain Organization chair: * Leo Nomdedeu, Jaume-I University, Spain Request for information: http://www.robot.uji.es/research/events/iurs08/ iurs at uji.es Best regards, Enric Cervera UJI, Spain From jiang at gradschool.uni-luebeck.de Tue Jul 1 07:46:42 2008 From: jiang at gradschool.uni-luebeck.de (Chaoqun Jiang) Date: Tue, 01 Jul 2008 16:46:42 +0200 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Job Offer: PostDoc at Graduate School for Computing in Medicine and Life Sciences in University Luebeck Message-ID: <486A4352.6010403@gradschool.uni-luebeck.de> The Graduate School of Computing in Medicine and Life Sciences (funded by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG, and the German Government within the German university excellence program) at University of Luebeck is now offering the position of a *Post-Doctoral Fellow * Funding period is 2 years, with possible extension(s). Applications are invited from candidates having research background in ? Robotics, especially in Medical Applications ? Medical Technology ? Sensor- and Image-based Navigation in medical applications The successful candidate will manage large research projects, support the school's program teaching and management and work towards the acquisition of new projects and external funding. In the research projects s(he) will directly manage a group of more than 3 full-time researchers. We expect a PhD in one of the fields Computer Science, Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Mechatronics or Mathematics. Expertise in robotics and/or sensor technology is of advantage. Preference is given to self-motivated candidates with excellent communication skills. Part-time work is possible. Compensation is competitive (Group E 14 of the German Tarifvertrag der L?nder (TV-L)). A final evaluation of the position is done after the position has been filled. If you are interested, please, in any case contact Prof. Dr. Schweikard via email (schweikard at rob.uni-luebeck.de ) or phone (+49 (0)451 500 5200) prior to sending your documents. L?beck University is an equal opportunities employer. Female and disabled candidates with equivalent qualifications will be favoured in the consideration. Complete applications should be sent no later than 04.08.2008 to: *Universit?t zu L?beck* Rektorat -- Dezernat Personal -- Kennziffer 424 08 *Ratzeburger Allee 160, 23538 L?beck* -- Chaoqun Jiang Secretary ================================================================ Graduate School for Computing in Medicine and Life Sciences ---------------------------------------------------------------- Universit?t zu L?beck Ratzeburger Allee 160 D-23538 L?beck Germany Tel: +49 451 500 5670 Fax: +49 451 500 5202 Email: jiang at gradschool.uni-luebeck.de http://www.gradschool.uni-luebeck.de ================================================================ From jiang at gradschool.uni-luebeck.de Tue Jul 1 08:04:11 2008 From: jiang at gradschool.uni-luebeck.de (Chaoqun Jiang) Date: Tue, 01 Jul 2008 17:04:11 +0200 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Call for applications: PhD positions at Graduate School for Computing in Medicine and Life Sciences in University Luebeck Message-ID: <486A476B.5010308@gradschool.uni-luebeck.de> We seek highly skilled and enthusiastic scholars for our newly established Graduate School. We offer 37 interdisciplinary PhD positions in the fields of Neuroengineering, Navigation and Robotics and Computing in Structural and Cell Biology Supervision by leading scientists State-of-the-art research environment Advanced courses for further training Scholarships between 1250? and 1800?. The Graduate School is part of the University of L?beck (Germany) and was established through the Excellence Initiative of the German Research Foundation (DFG). Further information at www.gradschool.uni-luebeck.de. -- Chaoqun Jiang Secretary ================================================================ Graduate School for Computing in Medicine and Life Sciences ---------------------------------------------------------------- Universit?t zu L?beck Ratzeburger Allee 160 D-23538 L?beck Germany Tel: +49 451 500 5670 Fax: +49 451 500 5202 Email: jiang at gradschool.uni-luebeck.de http://www.gradschool.uni-luebeck.de ================================================================ From Philippe.Martinet at lasmea.univ-bpclermont.fr Wed Jul 2 02:42:01 2008 From: Philippe.Martinet at lasmea.univ-bpclermont.fr (Philippe Martinet) Date: Wed, 02 Jul 2008 11:42:01 +0200 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Call for participation IROS08 Workshop on Modeling, Estimation, Path Planning and Control of All Terrain Mobile Robots Message-ID: <486B4D69.7010002@lasmea.univ-bpclermont.fr> Call for Participation and Registration (at the IROS08 site) IROS?08 Half Day Workshop on Modeling, Estimation, Path Planning and Control of All Terrain Mobile Robots http://wwwlasmea.univ-bpclermont.fr/MEPPC08/Welcome.html 22nd September 2008 We are pleased to invite you to participate to a Half day workshop on ?Modeling, Estimation, Path Planning and Control of All Terrain Mobile Robots? which will be held during IROS?08 in Nice, 22nd September 2008. In robotics research, autonomy in general and motion autonomy in particular has been a long standing challenge in many fronts. Granting mobile robot autonomy demands various technological solutions and their functional integration. Some key areas include mobility, perception, localization, map building, obstacle avoidance, safety, maintenance etc. Vast resources and manpower have been invested worldwide to develop the technologies to enable the autonomy of mobile robots. This workshop focuses on the state-of-the-art developments on the modeling, estimation, and control of all terrain mobile robots. Mobility in outdoor unstructured environment remains a critical technology. Precise modeling and estimation of the contact between tire and ground, localization in unstructured environment, robustness to uncertainties of parameters, and precise trajectory tracking in dynamic environment, represent challenging issues in our scientific community. The proposed workshop will summarize the existing results, exchange the ongoing researches and address the future directions in these different areas. This workshop consists of 6 technical papers of novel research results, ranging from slipping/skidding modeling, perturbation estimation, path planning, tracking control in the presence of uncertainties, and observer designs. The spectrum of these papers addresses the proposed topics in a systematic way and great depth. We hope that this workshop stimulates more interests and provides more motivations for further research and development on intelligent transportation and autonomous robotics. Organizers : Prof. Danwei Wang Division of Control and Instrumentation School of Electrical and Electrical Engineering, Nanyang Technological University Nanyang Avenue, Singapore 639798 tel : +65 6790 5376, Fax : +65 6793 3318 mel : edwwang at ntu.edu.sg, Home page: http://www.ntu.edu.sg/home/edwwang/ Prof. Philippe Martinet LASMEA-CNRS Laboratory, Blaise Pascal, University Campus des Cezeaux, 63177 Aubiere, Cedex, France tel : +33 473 407 653, Fax : +33 473 407 262 mel : martinet at lasmea.univ-bpclermont.fr, Home page: http://isrc.skku.edu/~martinet *********************************************************************************** Program *********************************************************************************** Mobility and stability of robots on rough terrain: modeling and control Professor Faiz Ben Amar Authors : F. Ben-Amar, Ch. Grand, D. Lhomme-Desages, Ph. Bidaud ISIR, Paris 6, France amar at robot.jussieu.fr On rough non-cohesive terrain, mobility or stability of a mobile robot could be critical. Then, control and planning processes must be based on relevant indexes which qualify these performances or the risk of immobility or instability. Basically, the two concepts of mobility and stability could be generalized by the one of force transmission between the contact frames and a task frame, with unilateral and friction constraints. These constraints and that of actuator torques define a polyhedral convex cone in task wrench space, which gives a robustness measure and a robust motion direction. Some methods directly inspired from manipulation or grasping applications will be used here for measuring the obstacle clearance of articulated mobile robots or their stability on uneven ground surface. These measures are also used for motion optimization of kinematically redundant robot such as a hybrid wheel-leg robot and an articulated multi-monocycle vehicle. We will also develop through the terramechanics theory the relationship between mechanical properties of the ground material and the vehicle mobility, and show how these results can be used for trajectory tracking in the presence of skidding and slipping. In connection with that, the identification of ground properties and state parameters estimation such as ground velocity will be discussed. *********************************************************************************** Slipping/skidding estimation of mobile robots in natural rough terrain Professor Kazuya Yoshida Authors: Kazuya Yoshida, Keiji Nagatani, Genya Ishigami, and Giulio Reina Dept. of Aerospace Engineering, Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan yoshida at astro.mech.tohoku.ac.jp For a mobile robot, it is critical to detect and compensate for slippage, especially when driving in rough terrain environments. Due to its highly unpredictable nature, drift largely affects the accuracy of localization and navigation systems, even leading to total immobility of the vehicle. In this presentation, the authors discuss practical methods for effective slipping/skidding estimation and the algorithms for path tracking control with on-line compensation of these effects. For the slipping/skidding estimation during the traverse of loose terrain, the authors developed a couple of methods, both of which use an optical camera. One is a method based on the optical flow analysis and the other analyses the traces of the wheels marked on the terrain. Both methods are validated very useful in practical situations by the experiments using a rover test bed. *********************************************************************************** Integrated estimation for Wheel Mobile Robot posture, velocities, and wheel skidding & slipping perturbations Professor Danwei Wang Authors: Changboon Low and Danwei Wang CIM, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore edwwang at ntu.edu.sg This paper presents estimation schemes for high update rate Wheel Mobile Robot (WMR) posture, velocities, and perturbation estimation using Real-time Kinematic global positioning system (RTK-GPS) and inertial sensors for WMR control in the presence of wheel skidding and slipping. Outdoor estimation systems based on Kalman Filtering combines the inertial sensors with centimeter accuracy RTK-GPS measurements to provide essential posture, velocities, and perturbation information. The main contribution of this paper is in designing estimation systems to deal with WMR control problems in the presence of wheel skidding and slipping. The experimental results suggest that with careful modelling of WMR, the estimation schemes are able to provide reliable and high-update rate information for WMR control applications in the presence of wheel skidding and slipping. *********************************************************************************** Advanced path tracking control for off road mobile robot Research scientist Roland Lenain Authors: R. Lenain, C. Cariou, B Thuilot, P. Martinet Cemagref, Clermont-Ferrand, France roland.lenain at cemagref.fr The growing social needs in terms of environmental and efficiency issues make the development of automated mobile robot in a off road context more and more important. Nevertheless, the accurate control of such robots in natural environment requires to take into account several uncertain phenomenon linked in particular to the varying grip conditions and different delays. If complex models are available to address such problems, the numerous and varying parameters make them hardly tractable for an efficient use. In this paper, an adaptive and predictive control algorithm, based on an extended kinematics model and dedicated to wheeled-steered mobile robots in off-road conditions is proposed for high accurate path tracking applications. The effects of variable low grip conditions are accounted in a kinematic representation thanks to additional variables updated by an observer. This allows the application of an adaptive back-stepping control approach able to preserve the accuracy of the path tracking despite of harsh grip conditions for a two or four steering wheel vehicle. In addition, a predictive curvature control allows to compensate the large delays in the actuator used on off road heavy vehicle. The relevance of theoretical developments detailed in that paper are investigated through full scale experiments on both an agricultural tractor (two steering wheels) and a Robucar device (four steering wheels). *********************************************************************************** Adaptive rover behavior based on experiment - An ongoing research Professor Roland Siegwart Authors: Ambroise Krebs, Cedric Pradalier, Roland Siegwart Autonomous Systems Lab Institute of Robotics and Intelligent Systems, ETH Z?rich, Switzerland rsiegwart at ethz.ch Due to the fundamental nature of exploration in rough-terrain, a rover accomplishing this task is naturally confronted with an unknown environment. It is especially true regarding its interaction with the soil, as the nature of it is uncertain. This work aims at creating a strategy to allow the rover to learn from its interaction with the terrains encountered, with the goal of optimizing its behavior. In practice, the information characterizing the terrains, obtained form remote sensors (such as camera), is associated with local sensors (e.g. IMU), characterizing the rover-terrain interaction. Correspondence between those data is learned and used, through the path planner E*, to influence the rover trajectory. The CRAB platform is used in this project for the implementation and testing of this approach. *********************************************************************************** Robust Observers and Unknown Input Observers for estimation, diagnosis and control of vehicle dynamics Professor Nassir M'Sirdi Authors: N. K. M'Sirdi, B. Jaballah, A. Naamane and H. Messaoud LSIS, Marseille, France nacer.msirdi at lsis.org Car accidents occur for several reasons which may involve the driver or components of the vehicle or environment. Such situations appear when the vehicle is driven beyond the adherence or stability limits. The vehicle controllability in its environment along the road admissible trajectories still remain an important open problem. Therefore, it is extremely important to detect (on time) a tendency towards instability or faults. This must be done without adding expensive sensors, so robust observers are needed to estimate input variables like contact forces, adherence or road profile and characteristics or tire parameters and variables (stiffness, forces, velocities, wheel slip and radius). Tire forces can be represented by the nonlinear (stochastic) functions of wheel slip. The deterministic tire models encountered are complicated and depend on several factors (as load, tire pressure, environmental characteristics, etc.). This makes on-line estimation of forces and parameters difficult for vehicle control applications and detection and diagnosis for driving monitoring and surveillance. In this paper we propose robust sliding mode observers to tackle problems due to unknown inputs and uncertainties of modeling interactions with environment. In a first stage sliding mode observers are proposed to estimate contact forces assuming steady state or very slowly varing rolling conditions (force derivative is approximately null). Secondly force variations are assumed slow enough to permit adaptation of linearized contact interaction model and step by step estimations are developped. Global and partial state observations are considered before contact forces (or inputs) estimations. Then we consider, in a third part, application of triangular state observers and strutured estimation procedures to get inputs estimations. In the latter case, high order sliding mode observers will be good means to deduce velocities and accelerations. These observers will be shown also as robust to unknown inputs and efficient for estimation of road profile and the contact adherences. They can be used (with control) to enhances the road safety and lead better vehicle adherence and maneuvers ability. From jakebeal at MIT.EDU Tue Jul 1 10:36:10 2008 From: jakebeal at MIT.EDU (Jake Beal) Date: Tue, 01 Jul 2008 13:36:10 -0400 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Spatial Computing Workshop deadline extended to 7/11 Message-ID: <200807011736.m61HaA9W007209@grumpy-fuzzball.mit.edu> The Spatial Computing Workshop, whose subject matter includes multi-robot swarms and modular robotics, has moved its submission deadline from July 5th to Friday, July 11th. (IEEE SASO, to which it is attached, has pushed back its review notification date and requested that workshops postpone their submission deadlines accordingly) Call for Papers and additional information at: http://projects.csail.mit.edu/scw08/ Thanks, -Jake Beal (on behalf of the organizing committee) From maarjakr at ut.ee Wed Jul 2 03:59:42 2008 From: maarjakr at ut.ee (Maarja Kruusmaa) Date: Wed, 02 Jul 2008 13:59:42 +0300 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Invitation to participate: Estonian student robot competition Robotex 2008 Message-ID: <000601c8dc32$bb15e930$0401a8c0@LifeBook> We are inviting participants and visitors to the public robotics competition Robotex 2008. It will take place on December the 5th at Tallinn University of Technology in Estonia. Robotex is the biggest robotics competition in Estonia organized annually by Tallinn University of Technology in cooperation with University of Tartu and the Estonian Information Technology College since 2001. During the past years Robotex participants have included universities and schools around Estonia, Sweden and Finland. The competition has become quite popular among the students and technology enthusiasts in Estonia. Everyone is more than welcome to participate if they have the skills. The task of 2008 resembles "room cleaning" with the objective to collect empty cans and socks and move them to specified areas. The biggest challenge is to make robots orient in the field and distinguish different objects. Rules and further description is available on event's official website www.robotex.ee. The document of rules is also supplied in the mail attachment. The prize fund of the contest is over 6000 euros! The main purpose of the contest is to give practical experience to competitors in areas mentioned above and to popularize these fields amongst the youth. For this purpose Robotex 2008 will also have technology exhibition during the competition, where different innovative projects, robots, automated equipment and other thematic exhibits will be introduced. It is possible to apply to take part in the exhibition before October the 15th. There will also be a tight link (bus routes and visual broadcast) to the biggest Estonian educational youth information fair "Teeviit 2008" ("Road sign 2008" www.teeviit.ee). Accommodation for the participants is provided by the organizers and there is no participation fee at the contest. Registration deadline for participation is October the 15th, 2008. For further information please do not hesitate to contact the organizers. We are more than happy to answer your questions and have your feedback! Sincerely, Martin Kontus Martin.kontus at gmail.com Robotex 2008 event manager Board member of TUT Robotics Club From anis.sahbani at courriel.upmc.fr Wed Jul 2 04:30:30 2008 From: anis.sahbani at courriel.upmc.fr (SAHBANI) Date: Wed, 02 Jul 2008 13:30:30 +0200 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] CFP: IROS-2008 Workshop on Grasp and Task Learning by Imitation Message-ID: <4CEBB493-3825-4E29-946C-90F098B62E50@courriel.upmc.fr> ------------------------ Call for Papers ------------------------ IROS-2008 Workshop On Grasp and Task Learning by Imitation Monday, 22nd of September, 2008 Acropolis Convention Center, Nice, FRANCE + web site : http://iros08ws.robot.jussieu.fr/ + Objectives: It is becoming clear that one keystone for the realization of robots carrying out accurate and intelligent tasks is their ability to handle autonomously all sorts of objects. Despite this topic is addressed periodically in robotics research over the last two decades, it remains a very challenging problem. Work in this field involves grasp planning and manipulation capabilities. The ease with which people skillfully handle objects to perform useful tasks inspire recent developments of grasp and manipulation learning by demonstration algorithms, which this workshop aims at assessing. The workshop will address the following fields (non-exhaustive list): - Imitation learning - Programming by demonstration - Grasp gesture recognition - Task and skill learning - Motor control and learning - Visual features extraction in imitation context + Call for Papers: We solicit papers relevant to the general workshop theme in the two categories: 1. Research papers 2. Application papers Call for Papers in PDF is available for download at http:// iros08ws.robot.jussieu.fr/IROS08_GraspImitationWorkshop_cfp.pdf + Important Dates: July 7, 2008 - Deadline for paper submission (firm deadline) July 21, 2008 - Notification of acceptance September 22, 2008 - Workshop + Submission Instructions: Paper contributions should be submitted by email to one of the organizers. Papers should be in PDF format and prepared following the IROS conference style (http://iros2008.inria.fr/submission.php), with a maximum length of 8 pages. Timeliness in exchanging on-going research results and ideas is one of the driving factors of workshops. Therefore, submission of even preliminary or informal work is encouraged. Also, extended versions of IROS?08 papers can be considered. Finally, state-of-the-art surveys in the above topical areas are welcome. Contributions will be reviewed by an international program committee. Paper size should not exceed 2 Mb. All submissions will be acknowledged within a few days. Papers will be reviewed for quality and relevance and the decision of acceptance will be mailed to the corresponding author. Accepted papers will be included in the workshop notes, distributed at the workshop, and published on the workshop's web site. The organizing committee intends to publish extended versions of selected workshop papers in an international journal special issue. + Organizers: * Anis Sahbani, ISIR - Universit? Pierre & Marie Curie, Paris6 - CNRS, anis.sahbani at upmc.fr * Jorge Dias, ISR - Universit? de Coimbra - Portugal, jorge at isr.uc.pt * Paulo Menezes, ISR - Universit? de Coimbra - Portugal, pm at deec.uc.pt From glyang at SIMTech.a-star.edu.sg Thu Jul 3 00:49:44 2008 From: glyang at SIMTech.a-star.edu.sg (Yang Guilin, Dr) Date: Thu, 03 Jul 2008 15:49:44 +0800 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] CFP for AIM 2009 Message-ID: Dear Colleague, The 2009 IEEE/ASME International Conference on Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics will be held on July 14-17, 2009 in Suntec International Convention and Exhibition Center, Singapore. The theme of the conference is "Mechatronics for Everyday Lives". AIM 2009 conference invites submissions of high quality research papers describing original work on abstractions, algorithms, theories, methodologies, and case studies on the following topics: Actuators, Automotive Systems, Bioengineering, Data Storage Systems, Electronic Packaging, Fault Diagnosis, Human-Machine Interfaces, Industry Applications, Information Technology, Intelligent Systems, Machine Vision, Manufacturing, Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems, Micro/Nano Technology, Modeling and Design, Motion Vibration and Noise Control, Neural and Fuzzy Control, Opto-Electronic Systems, Prototyping, Real-Time and Hardware-in-the-Loop Simulation, Robotics, Sensors, System Integration, Transportation Systems, and other fields of mechatronics. Contributed Papers: Original full papers must be submitted in PDF format prepared strictly following the IEEE PDF Requirements for Creating PDF Documents for the IEEE Xplore(r). For detailed format information, please visit the conference website: http://www.aim2009.org/. Accepted and presented papers will be indexed by EI and included in IEEE Xplore(r). Best Paper Award: All submitted papers will be included in the evaluation for the Best Conference Paper Award. Tutorials & Workshops: Proposals for half day or full day tutorials and workshops addressing new topics in intelligent mechatronics are invited for submission to the T/W Chairs. Proposals must include (1) statement of objectives, (2) intended audiences, (3) list of speakers, and (4) list of topics. Organized Sessions: Organized session proposers should submit to the Organized Session Chairs a brief statement of purpose for the session as well as the abstract of the papers to be included. A typical organized session consists of 4 to 5 related papers. Technical Tours: In parallel to the technical sessions, the conference organizers will provide a number of technical tours to the participants to the major industrial companies, research institutions, and universities in Singapore. Details of the industrial tours will be posted on the conference website. Important Dates: Submission of Full Paper & Organized session papers January 15, 2009 Submission of Tutorials/Workshops proposals January 15, 2009 Notification of Paper Status April 1, 2009 Submission of Final Paper April 30, 2009 Advanced Registration April 30, 2009 Conference Website: http://www.aim2009.org/ With best regards, Dr Guilin Yang Publicity Co-Chairs, AIM 2009 ------------------------------------------------- SIMTech celebrates 15 years for Industry ------------------------------------------------- From daeeun.kim at googlemail.com Thu Jul 3 18:14:41 2008 From: daeeun.kim at googlemail.com (DaeEun Kim) Date: Fri, 04 Jul 2008 10:14:41 +0900 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] [CFP] Special Issue of IEEE WC (Network Robotics) Message-ID: <8cd89b4c0807031814y162fce60v20f171b581aa099b@mail.gmail.com> Final Call for Paper Special Issue of IEEE Wireless Communications on "Wireless Communications in Networked Robotics" [Apologies for possible multiple copies] =================================================== IEEE Wireless Communications (Impact Factor 2.577) Special Issue on: Wireless Communications in Networked Robotics http://www.comsoc.org/dl/pcm/cfpwcm0209.htm =================================================== Background: Wireless communication has been a key driving force in recent years both in academia and in industry. It has currently expanded to wireless multihop networks, which include ad hoc radio networks, sensor networks, wireless mesh networks and mobile multihop relay systems. With multihop capability, wireless communication can be combined with cooperative communications and network coding, which has attracted even more researchers to this field. In many wireless multihop networks, the merits of capacity enhancement as well as coverage exceed the delay caused by multihop relay. Still, however, there are unresolved issues that may not be necessarily technical; one question regards the real motivation of a relay node that allows packet relay for the other transmitting nodes by consuming its own energy. There is also a security issue in multihop communications, in the sense that one's own data transmission is received by someone else in close proximity. On the other hand, in the networked robotics area, researchers try to realize group behaviors found in small insects or animals, in order to control and coordinate a team of robots. Especially, real-time wireless communication can help dynamic resource management and self-organization for a team of cooperative robots. The multiple robots communicate with each other, sharing the same mission, naturally through wireless communications. In this respect, wireless communication is an excellent candidate for inter-robot information exchange. This special issue is an attempt to bridge these two dynamic areas. We welcome submissions on all aspects of these themes, which include (but are not limited to) the following topics: - Communication architecture for collaborative robot systems - Biologically inspired swarm robotics with networking functionality - Multiple robot networking with multihop- and cooperative communications - Network coding and wireless relay technologies for cooperative robotics - Applications of multi-robot network systems - Ad hoc robot networks - Cognitive communication technologies for inter-robot team work - Exploiting robot mobility in wireless relay networks - QoS support and resource management in networked robotics - Wireless networks under node mobility Manuscript Submission With regard to both the content and formatting style of the submissions, prospective contributors must follow the IEEE Wireless Communications guidelines at http://www.comsoc.org/pubs/pcm/sub_guidelines.html. Submitted papers must be original and must not be under current consideration for publication in other venues. Authors should submit a PDF format of their complete papers via EDAS at http://edas.info (direct link: http://edas.info/newPaper.php?c=6595&) Important Dates: - Paper submission deadline: July 31, 2008 - Notification of acceptance: October 15, 2008 - Final manuscript Due: November 15, 2008 - Publication date: February, 2009 Guest Editors: - Seong-Lyun Kim, Yonsei Univ., Korea (slkim AT yonsei.ac.kr) - Jean-Yves Le Boudec, EPFL, Switzerland (jean-yves.leboudec AT epfl.ch) - Wolfram Burgard, Univ. Freiburg, Germany (burgard AT informatik.uni-freiburg.de) - DaeEun Kim, Yonsei Univ., Korea (daeeun AT yonsei.ac.kr) From plagem at informatik.uni-freiburg.de Thu Jul 3 22:46:22 2008 From: plagem at informatik.uni-freiburg.de (Christian Plagemann) Date: Fri, 04 Jul 2008 07:46:22 +0200 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] IAS 10: Call for Participation Message-ID: <486DB92E.60109@informatik.uni-freiburg.de> --------------------------------------------------------------------- CALL FOR PARTICIPATION The 10th International Conference on Intelligent Autonomous Systems July 22-26, 2008 Baden-Baden, Germany http://www.ias-10.org --------------------------------------------------------------------- The 10th International Conference on Intelligent Autonomous Systems (IAS-10) will be held in the beautiful southern German city of Baden-Baden on July 22-26, 2008. The conference topics cover all aspects of autonomy and adaptivity of artificial systems. We invite researchers from all areas of autonomous systems to participate in this conference. In addition to a strong technical program, the conference will feature inspirational plenary talks and a diverse array of workshops and exhibits. For details, including registration and hotel room reservation, please visit the conference website (http://www.ias-10.org/). --------------------------------------------------------------------- SCHEDULE IARP Workshop on Environmental Maintenance & Protection: July 22-23 Urban Challenge Workshop: July 23 Conference and Exhibition: July 24-25 Workshop on Evolutionary Swarm Robotics: July 26 --------------------------------------------------------------------- Wolfram Burgard, IAS-10 Program Chair R?diger Dillmann, IAS-10 General Chair From zhidong.wang at it-chiba.ac.jp Fri Jul 4 02:48:56 2008 From: zhidong.wang at it-chiba.ac.jp (Zhidong Wang) Date: Fri, 04 Jul 2008 18:48:56 +0900 (JST) Subject: [robotics-worldwide] CFP for IEEE ROBIO 2008 Message-ID: <20080704184856.23A16195@it-chiba.ac.jp> 　　　　　　　　 Call for Papers 2008 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Biomimetics (ROBIO 2008) December 14-17, 2008 Bangkok, Thailand http://www.robio.org/ or http://www.robotics.it-chiba.ac.jp/wang/ROBIO2008/ The IEEE ROBIO 2008 conference will take place from December 14 to 17, 2008 at the Imperial Queen's Park Hotel in Bangkok, Thailand. The theme of Robio 2008 is "Information Technology Enabled Robotics and Biomimetics", reflecting the ever growing interests in research, development and applications in the dynamic and exciting areas of robotics and biomimetics. Bangkok is an exciting and fast growing city with business, entertainment and shopping areas. ROBIO 2008 promises to be a great event for researchers and scholars in robotics and biomimetics areas, with attractive technical and social programs. The ROBIO 2008 conference invites high quality original research and development papers in all areas related to robotics, biomimetics and related topics. The TOPICS covered by the conference are but not limited to: # Robotics # Biomimetics # Mechatronics # Control # Vision # Automation # Signal Processing # Power Electronics # Sensing and Measurement # Computational Intelligence # Emerging Technologies Important Dates: July 21, 2008: Submission of original PDF full papers & video clips July 21, 2008: Submission of proposals for tutorials & workshops October 1, 2008: Notification of paper, video clip and T/W acceptance October 20, 2008: Submission of final IEEE PDF papers & video clips Contributed Papers: Original papers are solicited in all related areas of robotics and biomimetics. Full papers must be submitted in PDF format prepared strictly following the IEEE PDF Requirements for Creating PDF Documents for the IEEE XploreR. For detailed format information, please visit the conference web page. All accepted papers will be indexed by EI and included in IEEE XploreR. Oral and Poster Presentation: There are two categories of paper presentations: oral and poster. The desired category can be selected at submission but there is no difference in the review process and the inclusion in IEEE XploreR and EI. Posters will be presented during a specially designated session at the Conference. If a paper is selected to be presented in a poster session, an electronic file of the poster has to be submitted along with the final version of the manuscript. The Conference will provide printing services for all posters. Best Paper Competition: All submitted papers will be included in the evaluation for the Best Conference Paper and Best Student Paper Competitions. In addition, the Best Poster will also be awarded. Tutorials & Workshops: Proposals for tutorials and workshops addressing new topics in robotics and biomimetics are invited for submission to the T/W Chairs. Sponsors: IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Michigan State University Asian Institute of Technology Technical Co-Sponsors: Thai Robotics Society The Robotics Society of Japan The Society of Instrument and Control Engineers The Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers The Robio Foundation National Electronics and Computer Technology Center Committees: Honorary Conference Chairs: Said Irandoust Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand Pansak Siriruchatapong NECTEC, Thailand Advisory Committee Chair: Tzyh-Jong Tarn Washington University, USA Advisory Committee Co-Chairs: Paolo Dario Scuola Superiore, Sant'Anna, Italy Toshio Fukuda Nagoya University, Japan Shigeo Hirose Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan Chih-Ming Ho University of California, Los Angeles, USA General Chair: Ning Xi Michigan State University, USA General Co-Chairs: William R. Hamel University of Tennessee, USA Worsak Kanoknukulchai Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand Kazuhiro Kosuge Tohoku University, Japan Ren Luo National Taiwan University, Taiwan Bruno Siciliano Universita di Napoli Federico II, Italy Program Chair: Toshio Fukuda Nagoya University, Japan Program Co-Chairs: Hajime Asama University of Tokyo, Japan Prabhas Chongstitvatana Chulalongkorn University, Thailand Djitt Laowattana King Mongkut's Univ. of Tech. Thonburi, Thailand Yangmin Li University of Macau, China Jackrit Suthakorn Mahidol University, Thailand Yuechao Wang CAS Shenyang Institute of Automation, China Jian-Wei Zhang University of Hamburg, Germany Organizing Committee Chairs: Manukid Parnichkun Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand Zhidong Wang Chiba Institute of Technology, Japan Special Foucs Area Chairs: Yasuhisa Hirata Tohoku University, Japan Huosheng Hu University of Essex, UK Suthee Phoojaruenchanachai NECTEC, Thailand Dong Sun City University of Hong Kong, China Kazuhito Yokoi AIST, Japan Invited Session Chairs: Yantao Shen University of Nevada, USA Shuxiang Guo Kagawa University, Japan Jason J. Gu Dalhousie University, Canada Jitkasame Ngarmnil Mahanakorn University of Technology, Thailand Tutorial & Workshop Chairs: Imad H. Elhajj American University of Beirut, Lebanon Mongkol Mongkolwongrojn King Mongkut's Inst. of Tech. Ladkrabang Dongbing Gu University of Essex, UK Zhiwei Luo Kobe University, Japan Industrial Sessions Chairs: Hiroki Murakami IHI, Japan Sutat Patomnuphong NECTEC, Thailand George Zhang ABB, USA Videos Chair: Hidenori Ishihara Kagawa University, Japan Qiang Huang Beijing Institute of Technology, China Sukon Puntunan Royal Thai Air Force Academy, Thailand Poster Session Chair: Nyesunthi Apiwattanalunggarn Kasetsart University, Thailand Xiaobo Tan Michigan State University, USA Yong Yu Kagoshima University, Japan Publicity Chairs: Li-Chen Fu National Taiwan University, Taiwan Antoine Ferreira University of Orleans, France Kin-Huat Low Nanyang Tech University, Singapore Thaweedej Sirithanapipat Kasetsart University, Thailand Satoshi Tadokoro Tohoku University, Japan Uche Wejinya University of Arkansas, USA Awards Committee Chairs: Max Meng Chinese University of Hong Kong, China Kontorn Chamniprasart Suranaree Univ. of Tech., Thailand Makoto Kaneko Osaka University, Japan Shigeki Sugano Waseda University, Japan Exhibitions Chair: Montri Karnchanadecha Pince of Songkhla University, Thailand Takanori Shibata AIST, Japan Jizhong Xiao City University of New York, USA Publications Chairs: Waree Kongprawechnon Sirindhorn International Inst. of Tech., Thailand Aiguo Ming University of Electro-Communications, Japan Technical Tour Chair: Nitin Afzulpurkar Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand Finance Adviser Xiaoping Yun Post Naval Graduate School, USA Finance Chair: Weihua Shen Oklahoma State University, USA Local Arrangement Chairs: Siripun Thongchai King Mongkut's Inst. of Tech. North Bangkok, Thailand Registration Chairs: Guangyong Li University of Pittsburgh, USA Peerayot Sanposh Kasetsart University, Thailand E-media Chairs: Jindong Tan Michigan Technological University, USA" Theerayuth Chatchanayuenyong Mahasarakam University, Thailand -------------------------------- Zhidong WANG, Ph.D, Professor Dept. of Advanced Robotics Chiba Institute of Technology, Japan Tel/Fax: +81-47-478-0142 From jbsong at korea.ac.kr Sun Jul 6 07:58:56 2008 From: jbsong at korea.ac.kr (Jae-Bok Song) Date: Sun, 06 Jul 2008 23:58:56 +0900 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] CFP for URAI 2008 Message-ID: <000001c8df78$d8d18b20$8a74a160$@ac.kr> Call for Papers 5th International Conf. on Ubiquitous Robots and Ambient Intelligence (URAI 2008) ==================================================== Location: Korea University, Seoul, Korea Dates: November 20-22, 2008 Website: http://www.robotweek.or.kr ==================================================== [Important Dates] * Submission of Full Papers or Organized Sessions: July 25, 2008 * Notification of Acceptance: September 15, 2008 * Submission of Camera-ready Papers: September 30, 2008 [Relevant Topics] * Division 1: Ubiquitous Robots ??- Network-based Robotics ??- Ambient Intelligence ??- Intelligent Space/Environment Technologies ??- Human-Robot Interaction ??- Robot Vision and Audition ??- Intelligence and Learning - Robotic Agents * Division 2: Robotic Mechanisms and Systems - Navigation / Localization ??- Robotic Mechanisms and Design ??- Humanoid Robots ??- Haptics / Teleoperation ??- Sensors and Actuators ??- Medical Robotics ??- Biorobotics ??- Control Architecture and Middleware [Sponsors] Korea Robotics Society (KROS) Robotics Society of Japan (RSJ) IEEE Robotics and Automation Society [Organizing Committee] * Honorary General Chair: Il-Hong Suh (Hanyang Univ., Korea) * General Chair: Jae-Bok Song (Korea Univ., Korea) * Program Chairs: Bum-Jae You (KIST, Korea), Hajime Asama (The University of Tokyo, Japan) * Publicity Chairs: Wonpil Yu (ETRI, Korea), Tatsuo Arai (Osaka Univ., Japan), Nak-Young Chong (JAIST, Japan), Dennis Hong (Virginia Tech., USA) * Finance Chairs: Shinsuk Park (Korea Univ., Korea), Sang-Moo Lee (KITECH, Korea) * Exhibition Chairs: Sooyong Lee (Hongik Univ., Korea), Paul Oh (Drexel Univ., U.S.A.) * Publication Chairs: Jong-Bae Lee (KETI, Korea), Jaeyeon Lee (ETRI, Korea) * Local Chairs: NakJu Lett Doh (Korea Univ., Korea), Sung-Chul Kang (KIST, Korea) * Secretariat: Woojin Chung (Korea Univ., Korea), Ki-Young Kim (Korea Robotics Society) For more details, please contact Prof. Jae-Bok SONG at jbsong at korea.ac.kr . Homepage: http://robotics.korea.ac.kr From e.ruffaldi at sssup.it Mon Jul 7 03:31:23 2008 From: e.ruffaldi at sssup.it (Emanuele Ruffaldi) Date: Mon, 07 Jul 2008 12:31:23 +0200 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] RO-MAN08 WS on Skills Capture and Transfer, August 1 Message-ID: <4871F07B.3060304@sssup.it> Skills Capture and Transfer RO-MAN08 Workshop Friday, August 1, 2008 ORGANIZERS Carlo Alberto Avizzano (PERCRO-Scuola Superiore S.Anna,Italy) Emanuele Ruffaldi (PERCRO-Scuola Superiore S.Anna,Italy) Carsten Preusche (DLR,Germany) ABSTRACT Multimodal Skills Capture and Transfer is a challenging topic of research that is aimed to analyze and transfer the skilled component of human activities with the use of multimodal technologies. This field requires the contribution of researches from neuroscience, psychophysics, capturing technologies and rendering technologies. It ranges from the multimodal capture of a human task, the analysis of the task in terms of skills, to the rendering of the skill using human modalities, e.g. through haptic interfaces and advanced visualization techniques. At the same time the data acquired in real time is processed by machine learning algorithms for the identification of performance, comparing the user with an existing database of skilled user, producing as an outcome the required stimuli for improving the user task. OBJECTIVE Present the current research in the area with particular focus on the use of Multimodal technologies for capturing and transfer. In addition this event introduces the research carried on in the EU funded SKILLS IP http://www.skills-ip.eu/. SCHEDULE All speakers are confirmed, titles are subject to change. Time Title Speaker 14:00 14:20 Introduction to SKILLS Project. Carlo Alberto Avizzano (PERCRO-SSSA) Modelling and Analysis of Skills 14:20 14:50 Fundamental of Skills in terms of Human Model and Psychophysics. Benoit Bardy (UM1) 14:50 15:20 Motor influences on visual action perception. Tonino Casile (Tubingen University) Capturing and Representing Skills 15:20 15:50 Mathematical modelling of skills. Emanuele Ruffaldi (PERCRO) 15:50 16:20 EMG-Capturing of Position and Force. Patrick van der Smagt (DLR) 16:20 16:40 Break Rendering of Skills 16:40 17:10 TBA. Chris Jansen (TNO) 17:10 17:40 Skills Rendering and Augmented Reality. Didier Stricker (Univ.Kaiserslautern-FhG) Applications of the SKILLS Project 17:40 18:05 Overview of the Demonstration Activities. Carsten Preusche (DLR) 18:05 18:15 Closing Comments and Discussion. Carlo Alberto Avizzano (PERCRO-SSSA) REGISTRATION You can register for the workshop through the main conference registration site at http://www.lsr.ei.tum.de/ro-man2008/ More information about this event can be found at the workshop website at: http://www.skills-ip.eu/events/roman08/ -- Emanuele Ruffaldi Assistant Professor in Applied Mechanics - PhD Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna di Pisa PERCRO Lab - Virtual Reality and Telerobotic Systems Division via Martiri 11 56100 Pisa - ITALY Tel.: +39 050 838 980 Fax.: +39 050 883 333 E-mail: emanuele.ruffaldi at sssup.it Web: http://www.teslacore.it From Andrew.Comport at lasmea.univ-bpclermont.fr Tue Jul 8 01:22:26 2008 From: Andrew.Comport at lasmea.univ-bpclermont.fr (Andrew Comport) Date: Tue, 08 Jul 2008 10:22:26 +0200 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Phd Position - High-speed vision-based control - Deadline 14/07/08 Message-ID: <487323C2.1040000@lasmea.univ-bpclermont.fr> PhD position: Dynamic control of parallel kinematic manipulators using high-speed vision 1 Context and motivation This position is open within the Robotics and Autonomous Complex Systems group (ROSACE), interested in the control of robotic systems. This group is part of the "Laboratoire des Sciences et Mat?riaux pour l?Electronique et d?Automatique" (LASMEA) in Clermont-Ferrand, France. The scholarship is funded through the French research agency's (ANR) ?Young Researcher? project VIRAGO dealing with the vision-based control (or visual servoing) of parallel kinematic manipulators. Parallel kinematic manipulators, as opposed to serial kinematic manipulators, are composed of a mobile platform linked to its base by several kinematic chains. They thus allow for greater speed manipulation, higher loads and higher repeatability than serial kinematic manipulators. However, their control is made harder since one has to take into account the closure of the various kinematic chains. A way to by-pass much of the associated control difficulties is to perform eye-to-hand based visual servoing since it alleviates the problem of solving the theoretically hard forward kinematic problem. Nevertheless, classic visual servoing is essentially a kinematic control scheme that assumes sufficiently low speeds to neglect the dynamic e?ects due to inertia or Coriolis forces. This is not realistic in the case of parallel kinematic manipulators designed for high-speed. Therefore, we have been developing a formal framework for high-speed vision-based computed torque control, where vision copes with the high control frequencies and the control laws with the rigid body dynamics. The approach has been validated on the Orthoglide prototype in Nantes and accelerations of 1G were reached. The PhD candidate will have to extend this framework to take into account ?exibilities that can not be avoided at really high speed. In particular, the experimental validation will take place on the new Adept Quattro robot which reaches 20G accelerations. 2 Prerequisites ? Good mathematical background ? Good mechanical engineering background (multi-body dynamics, robot control) ? Basic knowledge in computer vision ? Programing skills ? Preferably ?uent French but ?uent English can be accepted 3 Important dates Application deadline: July 14th, 2008. Decision: July 21st, 2008 First working day: No later than September 1st, 2008. 4 Contact persons Nicolas Andre?, Name.Surname at lasmea.univ-bpclermont.fr Phone: +(33) 4 73 40 52 56 Andrew Comport, Name.Surname at lasmea.univ-bpclermont.fr Phone: +(33) 4 73 40 72 33 -- ------------------------------------------- Dr. Andrew Comport CNRS Researcher Robotics and Autonomous Complex Systems LASMEA Campus des C?zeaux 24 Avenue des Landais 63177 AUBIERE Cedex, FRANCE Tel : (+33)4.73.40.72.33 Fax : (+33)4.73.40.72.62 http://robots.lasmea.univ-bpclermont.fr/ From Mauro.Dragone at ucd.ie Wed Jul 9 07:24:47 2008 From: Mauro.Dragone at ucd.ie (Mauro Dragone) Date: Wed, 09 Jul 2008 15:24:47 +0100 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] PhD and post-doctoral opportunities at the CLARITY research centre, Ireland, on WSNs and Ubiquitous Robotics Message-ID: The Clarity Centre is now seeking well-qualified, motivated PhD researchers who want to be part of a world-class research group in Sensor and Adaptive Information Technology. Applicants for PhD (funded) positions should have/expect to achieve at least a 2.1 in Computer Science,?Electronic Engineering or a related discipline with a keen interest in research. A broad range of Post-Doctoral positions are also available to qualified and well motivated individuals with clear interest in CLARITY's research vision. The positions will cover a variety of research areas, including robotics, materials science, sensor platforms, middleware, content analysis, and personalization. Motivated applicants should first identify the research package/s according to their expertise and/or interest. Applications should be sent to the relative principal investigator (PI) directly together with max one page cover letter and CV. Research in Ubiquitous Robotics: Some of the available positions will address the area of robots integrated in ubiquitous, pervasive, and intelligent environments. Such robots are part of open and distributed networks of sensors, actuators, and computing services, which can also act as a shared information space for both the robots and the humans they interact with. Some of the relevant research directions foreseen within this area are: -? ?? The application of Agent-Oriented Software Engineering (AOSE)? ? ? ? ?? ? ? ? and Multi-Agent System (MAS) coordination techniques to develop? ? ? ?? ? ? ? distributed and adaptive software architectures. ? ? ? These architectures are defined in terms of distributed and autonomous software modules ? ?? ?(agents),?which can exhibit global self-configuration properties and can also deliver context ? ?? ?sensitive?and personalized services to both the users and the robots in the environment. -? ?? The integration between robots and wireless sensor networks (WSNs), that is, robots acting as ? ? ? mobile gateways or otherwise working to the advantage of networks of wirelessly connected? ? ? ?? ?sensors, e.g.??carrying out maintenance, localization, and calibration operations in applications ? ?? ?such as security,?search & rescue, and surveillance systems. Further information: The CLARITY CSET is a partnership between University College Dublin and Dublin City University, supported by research at the Tyndall National Institute (TNI) Cork. CLARITY is a collaboration between a number of specialist teams across the institutions who have already strong track records in sensor technology. It builds on work undertaken by the SFI-funded Adaptive Information Cluster, which is led by 5 principal investigators from UCD and DCU. The Clarity Centre is located in the School of Computer Science and Informatics, University College Dublin (UCD) in Dublin, Ireland. UCD has over 22,000 students including 2,500 international students from over 80 countries and is situated on a large modern campus 4 km to the south of the centre of Dublin. Find general information about vacancies at the Clarity Centre at http://www.clarity-centre.org/vacancy. The application form can be downloaded at: http://www.clarity-centre.org/files/csi-pgrad-app.doc The application should be sent to one of the Principal Investigators (PIs) (see http://www.claritycentre.org/content/principal-investigator) Applications inherent to robotic research can be addressed to Gregory O?Hare (gregory [dot] ohare [at] ucd [dot] ie). Requests for further information can be sent to Mauro Dragone (mauro [dot] dragone [at] ucd [dot] ie). -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dr. Mauro Dragone CLARITY Centre School of Computer Science and Informatics University College Dublin Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland Room A0.06/G9 Phone: +353 1 716 2491 Email: mauro.dragone at ucd.ie From info at education-germany.de Wed Jul 9 10:12:09 2008 From: info at education-germany.de (Education Germany) Date: Wed, 09 Jul 2008 19:12:09 +0200 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Job: Post-Doctoral Fellow (Computing in Medicine and Life Sciences) Message-ID: <00ab01c8e1e6$ecdb1e90$c6915bb0$@de> The Graduate School of Computing in Medicine and Life Sciences (funded by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG, and the German Government within the German university excellence program) at L?beck university is now offering the position of a Post-Doctoral Fellow. Funding period is 2 years, with possible extension(s). Applications are invited from candidates having research background in ? Robotics, especially in Medical Applications ? Medical Technology ? Sensor- and Image-based Navigation in medical applications The successful candidate will manage large research projects, support the school?s teaching program, and work towards the acquisition of new projects and external funding. In the research projects s(he) will directly manage a group of more than 3 full-time researchers. We expect a PhD in one of the fields Computer Science, Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Mechatronics or Mathematics. Expertise in robotics and/or sensor technology is of advantage. Preference is given to self-motivated candidates with excellent communication skills. Part-time work is possible. Compensation is competitive (Group E 14 of the German Tarifvertrag der L?nder (TV-L)). A final evaluation of the position is done after the position has been filled. If you are interested, please, in any case contact Prof. Dr. Schweikard via email (schweikard at rob.uni-luebeck.de) or phone (+49 (0)451 500 5200) prior to sending your documents. L?beck University is an equal opportunities employer. Female and disabled candidates with equivalent qualifications will be favoured in the consideration. Completed applications should be sent no later than 04.08.2008 to Universit?t zu L?beck Rektorat ? Dezernat Personal ? Kennziffer 424 08 Ratzeburger Allee 160, 23538 L?beck From F.Wahl at tu-bs.de Thu Jul 10 07:56:46 2008 From: F.Wahl at tu-bs.de (F. Wahl) Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2008 16:56:46 +0200 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] CfP: German Workshop on Robotics, Braunschweig, June 9-10 2009 Message-ID: <4876232E.5050600@tu-bs.de> ---------------------------------------------------------------- Please feel free to forward this message to interested colleagues. We apologize if you receive this email more than once. ----------------------------------------------------------------- ======================================================= CALL FOR PAPERS GERMAN WORKSHOP ON ROBOTICS (GWR09) ======================================================= Dear colleagues and friends, I am pleased to announce the Call for Papers of the German Workshop on Robotics 2009 to be held at the Technical University of Braunschweig, Germany during 09-10 June 2009. www.gwr09.org The aim of the two day single-track German Workshop on Robotics 2009 is to bring together leading roboticists from academia and industry with backgrounds in various subdisciplines of robotics to foster an intensive exchange of information and cross- fertilisation between these fields. Since the workshop is sponsored by the German Association of Robotics (Deutsche Gesellschaft f?r Robotik, DGR) it is mainly intended for, but is by no means limited to, researchers from the German robotics community. The conference language will be English. Paper submissions on new methodologies, algorithms, hardware components, system architectures and interesting applications are solicited. To ensure academic quality, a highly selective review process will lead to the final agenda. In addition to oral and poster presentations of refereed papers, invited talks by internationally renowned researchers will complete the conference program. All presented papers will be published by Springer-Verlag as a hardcover book to achieve high international visibility. Contributed Papers: Original full-length papers must be submitted in PDF format. For detailed format information, please visit www.gwr09.org. Schedule: ----------------------- Submission - December 14, 2008 Notification of acceptance - February 23, 2009 Final paper submission - March 22, 2009 Beginning of registration - March 01, 2009 End of advance booking period - April 30, 2009 Workshop - June 9 and 10, 2009 ----------------------- The deadline for paper submissions is firm and will not be extended! Conference Website: www.gwr09.org With best regards, Friedrich M. Wahl Chair GWR09 -- Institute for Robotics http://www.rob.cs.tu-bs.de and Process Control Technical University of Braunschweig Muehlenpfordtstrasse 23 38106 Braunschweig GERMANY ************************************ * German Workshop on Robotics 2009 * Tel: (+49) 531 391-7450 * refer to: http://www.gwr09.org/ * Fax: (+49) 531 391-7445 ************************************ From jhoh at kaist.ac.kr Thu Jul 10 10:19:38 2008 From: jhoh at kaist.ac.kr (=?euc-kr?B?v8DB2Mij?=) Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2008 02:19:38 +0900 (KST) Subject: [robotics-worldwide] [Call for papers]IEEE international Conference on Humanoid Robot, 2008(Humanoids2008) Message-ID: <24252581.3531215710378150.JavaMail.kebi@webmail.kaist.ac.kr> Dear Colleagues, Title: Call for papers: IEEE international Conference on Humanoid Robot, 2008(Humanoids2008) Full paper submission daedline is extended to July 20, 2008. Humanoid is the ultimate form of robot in the future. Even though there has been a great deal of research and development in this area last decade many people agree that the humanoid robot is still far behind to be social entities, agents or actors as a part of human?s life environment. Humanoids2008(www.humanoids2008.org), the 7th conference follows Pittsburg, USA(2007) and Genoa, Italy(2006), is IEEE Robot and Systems(RAS) sponsored conference focus on humanoid robot to share the experience and research activities to achieve our common goal, creation of humanoids. The conference will be held at Hotel Riviera(www.hotelriviera.co.kr) near KAIST, Daejon, Korea from 1st to 3rd December, 2008. The organizing committee of Humanoids2008 would like to invite submissions of research papers which report latest work exploring themes of humanoid robot and its related areas. Researches in humanoid robot are not restricted only in full body humanoid robots but they are spanned from basic biped walking, motion planning, software/hardware structures and advanced robot components to cognition, perception, human-robot interaction, social and ethical issues. Suggested topics of interest include: - Design and control of full-body humanoid robots - Motion planning - Cognition, perception and learning for humanoid robots - Advanced components for humanoid robots - Sub-parts, e.g. hands, arms, legs and etc., for humanoid robots - Humanoid robot platforms for applications - Anthropomorphism in humanoid robotics - Software and hardware architecture and system integration - Human-humanoid interaction - Planning, localization and navigation - Development tools for humanoid robots But the authors area not restricted in the topics listed above. The important dates involved are:- 1st July - Deadline for submission of full papers 20th September - Notification of acceptance + feedback of reviews 15th October - Deadline for camera ready copies 1st December - Workshop/Tutorial for Humanoids2008 2nd -3rd December - Humanoids2008 Submission of full papers should be made via internet. Please find the way for on-line paper submission at author area of http://www.humanoids2008.org. Best regards, Prof. Jun Ho Oh General chair of Humanoids2008 Director of Humanoid robot research center(Hubo Lab), KAIST Professor of Mechanical Engineering, KAIST www.humanoids2008.org From bayro at ira.uka.de Sat Jul 12 07:52:39 2008 From: bayro at ira.uka.de (Prof. Dr. Eduardo Bayro-Corrochano) Date: Sat, 12 Jul 2008 09:52:39 -0500 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Please advertise this workshop call Message-ID: <4878C537.3050108@ira.uka.de> Dear Sirs, I send previously a similar call, this is a newone bit corrected. Please advertise this one instead, Thanks, Prof. Bayro ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ CALL for PARTICIPATION WORKSHOP COGNITIVE HUMANOID VISION To be held at IEEE-RAS Humanoids?2008 http://humanoids2008.org/huma5.html Chairs: Prof. Eduardo Bayro-Corrochano (CINVESTAV, Guadalajara, Mexico) and Prof. Ales Leonardis (Visual Cognitive Systems Laboratory, University of Ljubljana) The organizers invite you to submit a 3-4 pages length extended abstract for review to the Workshop on Cognitive Humanoid Vision. The workshop will take place on Monday, December 1^st ,2008, at KAIST, Daejeon, Korea Important Dates: submission deadline ? September 15 send extended abstracts to: edb at gdl.cinvestav.mx notification of acceptance - October 15th final version ? 5th November workshop - December 1th All accepted abstracts will be published in a DVD workshop proceedings Special Issue of International Journal of Humanoid Robotics (IJHR) selected full extended papers will be consider as part of an special IJHR issue on Cognitive Human Vision, which will be printed out in December 2009 Scope In the middle eighties pioneers brought into play the concept of active vision. This accompanied the thoughts of researchers and developers of vision systems up to know. On the other hand research in neuroscience, cognitive robotics and humanoids is showing the need for more understanding about the brain function and the human vision system. Recently at the Workshop ?The Active Vision of Humanoid Robots? (Humnoids?2007, Pittsburgh) the wording Action Vision was introduced to relate vision with an expected action when we are looking for the foundations of a cognitive architecture. Definitively, it appears that we need a broad conceptual framework to bring together all those new ideas and efforts for vision to push forward the design and development of intelligent perception action systems. The visual manifold carries enormous amount of information which can not be exhaustively processed in real time with current technology. So, the obvious WWWW questions are: what, where, when and with which procedures we should look at. The rapid growing in research interests like to understand how the brain works by building humanoids, shows clearly that our current thoughts, theory, algorithms and hardware are by far still insufficient to cope with the high algorithmic complexity involved by the image processing to tackle in real time fundamentals problems like the correspondence problem other our na?ve predisposition to stick with processing in Euclidean metric in apparently obvious subspaces. The attempt of this workshop goes beyond Active Vision or Action Vision, it proposes as study topic the Cognitive Humanoid Vision as a much more general framework to develop a real time vision system for humanoids. The Workshop goal is to gather researchers confronted with the challenge to develop real time algorithms for cognitive vision. The traditional robot architectures are calling for a cognitive architecture to embodied the sophistication required for an intelligent machine. In this regard, the traditional concept of active vision evolves to a concept the /action vision and /further to/ cognitive humanoid vision/, as this is the way how the visual processing is tight with a reactive behaviour as by humans confronted with dynamic changes of all sort in their environment. In this workshop we expect contributions and a debate with focus on following key issues: - visual architecture for a cognitive architecture - Feature extraction, grouping, 3D contours, visuo-motor representations - Segment the scene into surfaces? - How build models of objects and events in space and time? - How integrate cue information - Visuo-motor representations: how build and use them - Priming models to bottom up information - Model base segmentation, prospective anticipation - Conscious reality instead of physical reality - Perception of spatial layout - Software for a basic visual front-end for humanoids - Nature of the information that the humanoid should extract from images and video - A language for processing the semantics of the meaning of the visual manifold - Information extracting and learning at middle level vision Submissions All accepted abstracts will be published in a DVD workshop proceedings. New results are welcome. We also encourage researchers with relevant work to retarget previously published results to the workshop topic. Authors will be asked to present their work as a talk. Selected papers in an extend form will be considered for an special issue IJHR on Cognitive Humanoid Vision which will be printed out in December 2009. All submissions should describe the material to be presented at the workshop. The extended abstracts should be 3 to 4 pages length and comply with the standard IEEE conference page layout.in PDF format using the IEEE template (http://humanoids2008.org/huma3-2.html). The abstracts should be emailed to edb at gdl.cinvestav.mx by September 15th . Notification of acceptance will be given on October 15th and the submission of the final version at November 5 th From liyi at cs.sfu.ca Thu Jul 10 15:03:09 2008 From: liyi at cs.sfu.ca (Yi Li) Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2008 15:03:09 -0700 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Program for IROS'08 half-day tutorial on Fast Marching Method Message-ID: <200807102203.m6AM39bj020196@rm-rstar.sfu.ca> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://duerer.usc.edu/pipermail/robotics-worldwide/attachments/20080710/c7f8cbf0/attachment.pl From charlie.kemp at bme.gatech.edu Thu Jul 10 21:05:16 2008 From: charlie.kemp at bme.gatech.edu (Charlie Kemp) Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2008 00:05:16 -0400 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] ICDL 2008: Final Call for Participation Message-ID: <4876DBFC.4000706@bme.gatech.edu> FINAL CALL FOR PARTICIPATION 7th International Conference on Development and Learning Asilomar Conference Center, Monterey, California August 9th-12th, 2008, http://www.icdl08.org/ The organizers for ICDL invite you to attend this year's conference held at the spectacular venue of Asilomar, a beach resort near Monterrey, California from August 9th to 12th. Early registration rates will continue until July 21st, but rooms are going quickly: http://icdl08.org/Registration.htm ICDL brings together a diverse array of researchers at the forefront of the computational and biological sciences to focus on issues of development and learning. We believe this year's program is especially strong with contributions across developmental psychology, computational neuroscience, machine learning, and robotics. You can download the program here: http://icdl08.org/ICDL2008-Program.pdf In addition to high-quality oral presentations and poster sessions for peer-reviewed work, we are excited to have the following invited speakers: * Richard Aslin University of Rochester * Terry Jernigan University of California San Diego * Andrew Ng Stanford University Topical sessions at the conference include: + Intention and Causality + Bayesian and Connectionist Approaches to Learning + Learning Linguistic and Perceptual Categories + Language Learning Principles + Visual Attention and Recognition + Autism + Spatial Learning and Manipulation + Architectures and Principles + Dynamical Systems and Neural Fields + Sensorimotor Control and Representation We encourage you to join us for what we expect to be a highly stimulating and productive conference. Sincerely, The Organizers http://icdl08.org/Committees.htm From fabio.bonsignorio at gmail.com Sat Jul 12 01:20:03 2008 From: fabio.bonsignorio at gmail.com (Fabio Bonsignorio) Date: Sat, 12 Jul 2008 10:20:03 +0200 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] CfP: IROS 2008 Sept 26 W on Performance Evaluation and Benchmarking for Intelligent Robots and Systems Message-ID: Dear all, you will find below the call for participation for the IROS workshop on performance evaluation and benchmarking for intelligent robots to be held in NICE on September 26th during IROS 2008. This is an hot topic and high quality and even provocative contributions on measuring somehow elusive capabilities of artificial agents, such as autonomy and cognition, as well as more established like SLAM and Visual Servoing, are welcome. If you are interested just drop an email to one of the organizers All the best Fabio ps: previous mail had formatting commands not understandable from some email client Important Dates Papers/Ext. Abstracts: July 28th Acceptance: August 11th Full Papers: September 12th Workshop: September 26th CALL FOR PARTICIPATION It is a well-known fact that current robotics research makes it difficult not only to compare results of different approaches, but also to assess the quality of individual work. Some steps have been taken to address this problem by studying the ways in which research results in robotics can be assessed and compared. In this context, the European Robotics Research Network EURON has as one of its major goal the definition and promotion of benchmarks for robotics research. The Performance Metrics for Intelligent Systems (PerMIS) Workshop series has been dealing with similar issues in the context of intelligent systems. A related issue, if not a prerequisite, is the capability of replicating research results. The EURON Good Experimental Methodology and Benchmarking Special Interest Group aims to gather efforts in replication of results and benchmarking in order to increase the overall experimentation benefit in robotics research. The main purpose of this workshop is to contribute to the progress of performance evaluation and benchmarking, focusing in intelligent robots and systems, by providing a forum for participants to exchange their on-going work and ideas in this regard. The emphasis of the workshop will be on cognitive solutions to practical problems. These cognitive approaches should enable an "intelligent" system to behave appropriately in real-world scenarios in various application domains. We also propose to discuss the distinction between autonomy and intelligence (if any) and how one influences the other. We welcome any topic relevant to benchmarking and performance evaluation in the context of cognitive solutions to practical problems, such as: - Knowledge representation, perception (sensing), and learning - Uncertainty management in robot navigation, path-planning and control - Cognitive manipulation - Benchmarking autonomy and robustness to changes in the environment/task - Capability-led understanding of cognitive robots - Shared ontologies to discuss robotic cognitive systems in terms of their performance capabilities - Relationships between different cognitive robotics capabilities - Requirements, theories, architectures, models and methods that can be applied across multiple engineering and application domains - Detailing and understanding better the requirements for robots in terms of performance, the approaches to meeting these requirements, the trade-offs in terms of performance - The development of experimental scenarios to evaluate performance, demonstrate generality, and measure robustness Workshop Format & Date The workshop will consist of invited presentations and regular presentations. These will be included in the IROS 2008 Tutorials and Workshops DVD. The full-day workshop is scheduled to be held on September 26th 2008. You can register for the workshop via the IROS'08 website at http://www.iros2008.org/. Intended Audience The primary audience of the proposed workshop is intended to be researchers and practitioners both from academia and industry with an interest in cognitive robotics and how these approaches can be utilized in generating intelligent behaviors amidst uncertainty for robots in the service and commercial sectors. The workshop is also aimed at benchmarking and objectively evaluating performance of such robots. Accordingly, it is envisioned to be useful for anyone who has an interest in quantitative performance evaluation of robots. Contact Details Angel P. del Pobil, Univ. Jaume I pobil at icc.uji.es Raj Madhavan ORNL/NIST raj.madhavan at nist.gov Fabio Bonsignorio Heron Robots fabio.bonsignorio at heronrobots.com About the Organizers The organizers of the workshop have been actively involved in performance evaluation and benchmarking for robotics. The organizers are currently involved in several projects to define methods for measuring cognitive abilities for robots, both at the component and the systems level. -- Fabio P. Bonsignorio Ceo Heron Robots s.r.l. Via R.Ceccardi 1/18 I-16121 Genova Italy www.heronrobots.com From raj.madhavan at nist.gov Fri Jul 11 09:08:52 2008 From: raj.madhavan at nist.gov (Raj Madhavan) Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2008 12:08:52 -0400 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] PerMIS'08 CALL FOR PARTICIPATION Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20080711120627.069fceb0@mailhub.mel.nist.gov> CALL FOR PARTICIPATION PerMIS?08 Performance Metrics for Intelligent Systems Workshop August 19?21, 2008 http://www.isd.mel.nist.gov/PerMIS_2008/ Washington DC, U.S.A. General Chair Elena Messina, NIST Program Chair Raj Madhavan, ORNL/NIST PerMIS'08 will be the eighth in the series that started in 2000, targeted at defining measures and methodologies of evaluating performance of intelligent systems. The workshop has proved to be an excellent forum for discussions and partnerships, dissemination of ideas, and future collaborations in an informal setting. Attendees usually include researchers, graduate students, practitioners from industry, academia, and government agencies. PerMIS?08 aims at 'identifying and quantifying contributions of functional intelligence towards achieving success'. Our working definition of functional intelligence is ?the ability to act appropriately in an uncertain environment, where appropriate action is that which increases the probability of success?, and success is ?the achievement of behavioral goals? (J. Albus, 1991). In addition to the main theme, as in previous years, the workshop will focus on applications of performance measures to practical problems in commercial, industrial, homeland security, and military applications. Topic areas include, but are not limited to: * Defining and measuring aspects of a system: The level of autonomy Human-robot interaction Collaboration & Coordination Taxonomies * Evaluating components within intelligent systems: Sensing and perception Knowledge representation, world models, ontologies Planning and control Learning and adapting Reasoning * Infrastructural support for performance evaluation: Testbeds and competitions for intercomparisons Instrumentation and other measurement tools Simulation and modeling support * Technology readiness measures for intelligent systems * Applied performance measures in various domains, e.g., Intelligent transportation systems Emergency response robots (search and rescue, bomb disposal) Homeland security systems De-mining robots Defense robotics Hazardous environments (e.g., nuclear remediation) Industrial and manufacturing systems Space/Aerial robotics Medical robotics & assistive devices The Proceedings of PerMIS are indexed by INSPEC, Compendex, ACM Digital Library, and are released as a NIST Special Publication. Selected papers from past workshops have been published as special issues with the Journal of Integrated Computer-Aided Engineering (PerMIS?04) and the Journal of Field Robotics (PerMIS?06). PLENARY ADDRESSES Prof. Sunil Agrawal (University of Delaware, U.S.A.) Prof. Alonzo Kelly (Carnegie Mellon University, U.S.A.) Prof. Allison Okamura (Johns Hopkins University, U.S.A.) Prof. Erwin Prassler (Bonn-Aachen International Center for Information Technology, Germany) Dr. Alan Schultz (Navy Research Laboratory, U.S.A.) SPECIAL SESSIONS Cognitive Systems of EU Cognition Programme Architectures for Unmanned Systems Quantitative Assessment of Robot-generated Maps Results from a Virtual Manufacturing Automation Competition Performance Metrics for Perception in Intelligent Manufacturing Medical Robotics Developmental Robotics REGISTRATION DEADLINE August 14th 2008 SPONSORS NIST, with technical co-sponsorship of the IEEE Washington Section Robotics and Automation Society Chapter and in-cooperation with the Association for Computing Machinery Special Interest Group on Artificial Intelligence --------------------------------------------------------------------- Raj Madhavan, Ph.D. Intelligent Systems Division National Institute of Standards and Technology 100 Bureau Drive, Mail Stop 8230 Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8230. Tel: (301) 975-2865 Fax: (301) 990-9688 URL: http://aser.ornl.gov/madhavan/ From burschka at cs.tum.edu Sat Jul 12 09:21:08 2008 From: burschka at cs.tum.edu (Darius Burschka) Date: Sat, 12 Jul 2008 18:21:08 +0200 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Submission Deadline Extended: ECCV 2008 Workshop on 'Vision in Action: Efficient strategies for cognitive agents in complex environments' Message-ID: <1215879668.29314.8.camel@localhost6.localdomain6> Due to many requests, the submission deadline for ECCV 2008 Workshop on 'Vision in Action: Efficient strategies for cognitive agents in complex environments' has been extended to July 20, 2008, 11:59PM PST. http://robsens.acin.tuwien.ac.at/ECCV2008/index.htm [Apologies for possible multiple copies] Darius Burschka ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Call for papers Vision in Action: Efficient strategies for cognitive agents in complex environments (ECCV2008 Workshop) The field of computer vision has developed significantly over the past decades and its importance in fields of development of cognitive systems in the areas of robotics and artificial intelligence is growing. The first goal of this workshop is to initiate a close dialog between the communities and allow for long term planning of synergistic effects from the integrated research. The second goal is to model the entire perception-action loop, since in robotics, vision cannot be considered an isolated component and vision research should include consideration of the control of the system. We invite papers in relation to one or more of the following topics: * Attention control - the complexity of the scene requires additional image processing for a light process decision about areas of interest in the sensor data. * Collaborative sensing with simple agents - small, lightweight systems do not allow an implementation of large and complex sensing systems. Collaboration between simple systems is a promising way to tackle this problem. * Multi-modal fusion of sensory perception - we aim to invite researchers working on fusion of different sensor data representations including physical sensing, resolution, and accuracy. * Modeling and learning of perception and action for development of innate behaviors - an example of the emerging research in this area are the established vision-based control approaches in the robotics. * Memory and representations - coupling between visual perception, tasks, knowledge and the visual system requires memory and suitable data representations. Important Dates: * Full paper submission: July 20, 2008 Submission only via email to: argyros at ics.forth.gr * Format: Maximum 6 pages, ECCV format (http://www.robots.ox.ac.uk/~vgg/eccv08/submissions.html) * Notification of acceptance: August 20, 2008 Papers will be part of centralized workshop proceedings * Final manuscript due: August 30, 2008 Strict deadline! -- ------------------------------------------------------------------ I like the whooshing sound of the deadlines passing by... Prof. Dr.-Ing. Darius Burschka Department of Informatics Phone: (+49 89) 289-18133 Lab for Robotics and Embedded Systems Fax: (+49 89) 289-18107 Technische Universit?t M?nchen USPhon:(+1 410) 702 5672 http://personal.visual-navigation.com From doetomo at unimelb.edu.au Sat Jul 12 18:40:40 2008 From: doetomo at unimelb.edu.au (Denny Oetomo) Date: Sun, 13 Jul 2008 11:40:40 +1000 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Reminder: Special Issue: Agricultural Robotics, JFR References: <1215879668.29314.8.camel@localhost6.localdomain6> Message-ID: Dear all, Please be reminded that the deadline for the Special Issue on Agricultural Robotics, Journal of Field Robotics, is approaching (the 25th of July 2008). The Call for Paper is included below. Best Regards, Denny Oetomo --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Journal of Field Robotics (JFR) Special Issue: Advances in Agricultural Robotics Automation is one of the most important reasons in the improvement of farming efficiency. The maturing technologies being developed by the robotics community are paving the way for the exciting deployments of robust robotic systems in the environment of large scale farming, one that is semi-structured. Not only does this have the potential to increase the productivity and the quality of agricultural facilities, it can also significantly alter the way in which the farming industry is modeled and conducted. The future vision of the emerging trend in autonomous farming is of great interest, not only to the robotics and agricultural communities, but also to the industries and wider community. Field of interest includes the broader area of agriculture such as forestry and aquaculture. Advances in agricultural efficiency provided by the robotics technology and automation greatly impact the sustainability of our natural resources in satisfying the demand of the growing world population. The Journal of Field Robotics (JFR) announces a special issue on the advances in agricultural robotics. High quality submissions are sought to present various state-of-the-arts applications of robotic techniques to the area of agricultural robotics and automation. Field experimentation results as well as conceptual ideas with potentials to define the future of agricultural automation are of great interest. Perspective from agricultural experts on robotics and automation is also of great interest. We invite papers that exhibit theory and methods applied to field of agricultural robotics, including but not limited to : * Examples of robust implementation of robotics technology deployed on the farm * Methods of sensing, identification, and localisation in the semi-structured farming environment * Modelling and control of autonomous systems in agricultural tasks * Mechanism analysis, design, as well as manipulation strategies specific to the tasks required in the agricultural processes * Techniques for reliable information sharing in an integrated farm automation framework * Strategies for effective human-machine coordination and cooperation in farming tasks * Algorithm for efficient interaction between the systems and the environment * Other novel ideas, concepts, applications that would be of significant contribution to the field of autonomous agriculture It is of great interest that papers for this special issue provide technical descriptions of systems as well as results and analysis of fielded experimentations. Lessons learned in development and operation are also pertinent. Special Issue Guest Editors: John Billingsley, University of Southern Queensland John Reid, Intelligent Machine Systems, John Deere Denny Oetomo, University of Melbourne Deadlines: July 25, 2008 Submission of manuscripts September 25, 2008 Complete reviews October 15, 2008 Notification of acceptance December 15, 2008 Final manuscripts due for publication URL: http://www.journalfieldrobotics.org/Special_Issues.html Contact: doetomo at unimelb.edu.au or billings at usq.edu.au From lesperan at cse.yorku.ca Mon Jul 14 07:39:44 2008 From: lesperan at cse.yorku.ca (Yves Lesperance) Date: Mon, 14 Jul 2008 10:39:44 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Cognitive Robotics Workshop - Final Call for Participation In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: FINAL CALL FOR PARTICIPATION CogRob08 The Sixth International Cognitive Robotics Workshop (The ECAI 2008 Workshop on Cognitive Robotics) Patras Greece, July 21-22, 2008 http://www.cse.yorku.ca/cogrob08/ Please distribute to interested people. Apologies for any duplicates. Workshop Description: -------------------- Cognitive robotics is concerned with integrating reasoning, perception, and action within a uniform theoretical and implementation framework (using methods drawn from logic, probability and decision theory, reinforcement learning, game theory, etc.). It is quite a young field of research. However, the use of robots and softbots is becoming more and more widespread, with many commercial products on the market. Complex applications and the need for effective interaction with humans are increasing demand for robots that are capable of deliberation and other high-level cognitive functions. Models from cognitive science and techniques from machine learning are being used to enable robots to extend their knowledge and skills. Combining results from mainstream robotics and computer vision with those from knowledge representation and reasoning, machine learning, and cognitive science has been central to research in cognitive robotics. The International Cognitive Robotics Workshop aims at bringing together researchers involved in all aspects of the theory and implementation of cognitive robotics, to discuss current work and future directions. The Program ----------- The 2008 edition of the Workshop received 16 technical paper and 2 position paper submissions. Of these, 7 submissions were accepted for long presentations and 6 for short presentations. The accepted papers appear in these proceedings. We have an excellent program with papers on cognitive robot architecture, cognitive vision, learning for cognitive robotics, human-robot interaction, and systems addressing specific types of applications. We are also having two invited lectures: - "Qualitative Spatio-Temporal Representations and Cognitive Vision" by Tony Cohn, and - "Motor Skill Learning for Cognitive Robotics" by Jan Peters. The Preliminary Schedule is available at http://www.cse.yorku.ca/cogrob08/PrelimSched.html. Organizers: ---------- Yves Lesperance (Chair), York University, Toronto Gerhard Lakemeyer, Aachen Univ of Technology Jan Peters, Max Plank Inst, Tuebingen Fiora Pirri, University of Rome "La Sapienza" From adrian.stoica at jpl.nasa.gov Wed Jul 16 22:41:07 2008 From: adrian.stoica at jpl.nasa.gov (Adrian Stoica) Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2008 22:41:07 -0700 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] LAB-RS 2008, Edinburgh, August 6-8, call for participation and call for videos Message-ID: <487EDB73.9030205@jpl.nasa.gov> Please distribute, thank you. =================================================== Call for participation and Call for videos *ECSIS Symposium on Learning and Adaptive Behavior in Robotic Systems, LAB-RS 2008* Edinburgh, Scotland, UK, August 6-8, 2008 See program at http://www.see.ed.ac.uk/~labrs08/ / The aim of the symposium is to bring together researchers from academia and industry to report on new concepts, laboratory demonstrations, and fielded robotic systems that exhibit learning and adaptive behaviors.// /The symposium will attempt to roadmap future directions for development of robotic systems with capabilities comparable to those of biological systems.//// *Keynote Speakers * Dr. Paul S. Schenker, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, USA /Space Robotics: Challenges to Learning and Adaptive Systems/ Dr. Dario Floreano, Laboratory of Intelligent Systems (LIS), EPFL, Switzerland /How to Evolve Controllers for Truly Cooperative Robots/ *Video Competition*: Submission for videos will remain open till July 31, 2008*.* Video submissions do not require LAB-RS registration/participation.Videos previously presented elsewhere are acceptable; there will be no distribution, only screening during the event on August 6th. A $1000 prize will be awarded for best video. =================================================== //// -- Adrian Stoica, Ph.D. Senior Research Scientist, Principal MTS Supervisor, Advanced Robotic Controls Mobility and Robotic Systems, Autonomous Systems Division NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory MS 198-219, 4800 Oak Grove Drive, Pasadena, CA 91109 Tel: +1 818 354 2190, Fax: +1 818 393 5007 Email: adrian.stoica at jpl.nasa.gov, Web: http://robotics.jpl.nasa.gov From oli at cs.umass.edu Thu Jul 17 10:35:52 2008 From: oli at cs.umass.edu (Oliver Brock) Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2008 13:35:52 -0400 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] CFP: Autonomous Mobile Manipulation Message-ID: <2330F00E4A3C924AB7F7297AE42D353530B254@zor.ads.cs.umass.edu> Call for Papers on ------------------------------ Autonomous Mobile Manipulation ------------------------------ for a special issue of the journal Autonomous Robots http://www.editorialmanager.com/auro/ Research in autonomous mobile manipulation seeks to develop mobile robotic systems that autonomously perform manipulation tasks in unstructured environments. Such robotic systems could have a profound impact on many application areas of societal, economic, and scientific importance, including domestic assistance, healthcare, flexible manufacturing, automated supply chain management, planetary exploration, and emergency services. The development of robotic systems for autonomous mobile manipulation is inherently interdisciplinary. Successful systems are likely to require new approaches and innovations involving multiple areas of robotics, such as perception, control, mechanisms, motion planning, manipulation, navigation, human-robot interaction, artificial intelligence, and machine learning. This special issue seeks to capture the state of the art in autonomous mobile manipulation. Special attention will be given to novel approaches validated on real robots that address challenges arising from complex problem domains. Each submission should clearly explain how its contribution is important to autonomous mobile manipulation. We especially encourage submissions that include empirical validation using a real mobile manipulator operating in an unstructured environment. --------------- Relevant topics --------------- - Approaches to perception - Grasping and dexterous manipulation - Motion planning and control - Hardware designs for increased performance and/or safety - Human-robot interaction - Multi-robot systems - Learning and reasoning - Navigation - Architectures for system integration - Applications with empirically demonstrated success Given the breadth of related research, this is only a partial list of appropriate topics. We encourage authors interested in submitting work from other areas to contact the guest editors. --------------- Important Dates --------------- Paper submission deadline: December 15, 2008 Notification to authors: March 15, 2009 Camera ready papers: April 15, 2009 Date of publication: Summer of 2009 ----------- Submissions ----------- Submissions to this special issue will be made through the journal's web site: http://www.editorialmanager.com/auro/ During the online submission process, please select article type "SI: Mobile Manipulation". ------------- Guest Editors ------------- Oliver Brock University of Massachusetts Amherst oli[at]cs.umass.edu Charlie Kemp Georgia Institute of Technology charlie.kemp[at]bme.gatech.edu From faconti_davide at yahoo.it Fri Jul 18 01:41:29 2008 From: faconti_davide at yahoo.it (Davide Faconti) Date: Fri, 18 Jul 2008 08:41:29 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [robotics-worldwide] 8 positions available in humanoidrobotics research Message-ID: <334829.44593.qm@web27004.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Pal Technology is a company involved in high level research in humanoid and service robots. Our goal is to develop humanoids that can perform useful tasks in the real world. We are a young and multidisciplinary team of highly motivated engineers, that have successfully developed several prototypes. For more informations on our project visit: www.pal-robotics.com In June 2008 the robot REEM-B was officially presented in Abu Dhabi. The development team is located in Barcelona, Spain. There are several open positions in different field of research such as mechanical design, research in redundant manipulation, biped dynamic walking algorithms, electronic design, etc. Job starting in Septemeber - November 2008 Location: Barcelona, Spain for more informations visit http://www.pal-robotics.com/contact.html Davide Faconti ----------------------------------------------------- C. Paris 175, 4o 1a, 08036, Barcelona Spain tel. +34 934145347 fax: +34 932091109 Mobile: +34 666722156 ----------------------------------------------------- ______________________________________________ Enviado desde Correo Yahoo! La bandeja de entrada m?s inteligente. From zhidwang at ieee.org Fri Jul 18 01:08:26 2008 From: zhidwang at ieee.org (Zhidong Wang) Date: Fri, 18 Jul 2008 17:08:26 +0900 (JST) Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Submission Deadline Approaching: IEEE ROBIO 2008 Message-ID: <20080718170826.271F7926@it-chiba.ac.jp> Call for Papers 2008 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Biomimetics (ROBIO 2008) December 14-17, 2008 Bangkok, Thailand http://www.robio.org/ or http://www.robotics.it-chiba.ac.jp/wang/ROBIO2008/ The IEEE ROBIO 2008 conference will take place from December 14 to 17, 2008 at the Imperial Queen's Park Hotel in Bangkok, Thailand. The theme of Robio 2008 is "Information Technology Enabled Robotics and Biomimetics", reflecting the ever growing interests in research, development and applications in the dynamic and exciting areas of robotics and biomimetics. Bangkok is an exciting and fast growing city with business, entertainment and shopping areas. ROBIO 2008 promises to be a great event for researchers and scholars in robotics and biomimetics areas, with attractive technical and social programs. The ROBIO 2008 conference invites high quality original research and development papers in all areas related to robotics, biomimetics and related topics. The TOPICS covered by the conference are but not limited to: # Robotics # Biomimetics # Mechatronics # Control # Vision # Automation # Signal Processing # Power Electronics # Sensing and Measurement # Computational Intelligence # Emerging Technologies Important Dates: July 21, 2008: Submission of original PDF full papers & video clips July 21, 2008: Submission of proposals for tutorials & workshops October 1, 2008: Notification of paper, video clip and T/W acceptance October 20, 2008: Submission of final IEEE PDF papers & video clips Contributed Papers: Original papers are solicited in all related areas of robotics and biomimetics. Full papers must be submitted in PDF format prepared strictly following the IEEE PDF Requirements for Creating PDF Documents for the IEEE XploreR. For detailed format information, please visit the conference web page. All accepted papers will be indexed by EI and included in IEEE XploreR. Oral and Poster Presentation: There are two categories of paper presentations: oral and poster. The desired category can be selected at submission but there is no difference in the review process and the inclusion in IEEE XploreR and EI. Posters will be presented during a specially designated session at the Conference. If a paper is selected to be presented in a poster session, an electronic file of the poster has to be submitted along with the final version of the manuscript. The Conference will provide printing services for all posters. Best Paper Competition: All submitted papers will be included in the evaluation for the Best Conference Paper and Best Student Paper Competitions. In addition, the Best Poster will also be awarded. Tutorials & Workshops: Proposals for tutorials and workshops addressing new topics in robotics and biomimetics are invited for submission to the T/W Chairs. Sponsors: IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Michigan State University Asian Institute of Technology Technical Co-Sponsors: Thai Robotics Society The Robotics Society of Japan The Society of Instrument and Control Engineers The Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers The Robio Foundation National Electronics and Computer Technology Center Committees: Honorary Conference Chairs: Said Irandoust Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand Pansak Siriruchatapong NECTEC, Thailand Advisory Committee Chair: Tzyh-Jong Tarn Washington University, USA Advisory Committee Co-Chairs: Paolo Dario Scuola Superiore, Sant'Anna, Italy Toshio Fukuda Nagoya University, Japan Shigeo Hirose Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan Chih-Ming Ho University of California, Los Angeles, USA General Chair: Ning Xi Michigan State University, USA General Co-Chairs: William R. Hamel University of Tennessee, USA Worsak Kanoknukulchai Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand Kazuhiro Kosuge Tohoku University, Japan Ren Luo National Taiwan University, Taiwan Bruno Siciliano Universita di Napoli Federico II, Italy Program Chair: Toshio Fukuda Nagoya University, Japan Program Co-Chairs: Hajime Asama University of Tokyo, Japan Prabhas Chongstitvatana Chulalongkorn University, Thailand Djitt Laowattana King Mongkut's Univ. of Tech. Thonburi, Thailand Yangmin Li University of Macau, China Jackrit Suthakorn Mahidol University, Thailand Yuechao Wang CAS Shenyang Institute of Automation, China Jian-Wei Zhang University of Hamburg, Germany Organizing Committee Chairs: Manukid Parnichkun Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand Zhidong Wang Chiba Institute of Technology, Japan Special Foucs Area Chairs: Yasuhisa Hirata Tohoku University, Japan Huosheng Hu University of Essex, UK Suthee Phoojaruenchanachai NECTEC, Thailand Dong Sun City University of Hong Kong, China Kazuhito Yokoi AIST, Japan Invited Session Chairs: Yantao Shen University of Nevada, USA Shuxiang Guo Kagawa University, Japan Jason J. Gu Dalhousie University, Canada Jitkasame Ngarmnil Mahanakorn University of Technology, Thailand Tutorial & Workshop Chairs: Imad H. Elhajj American University of Beirut, Lebanon Mongkol Mongkolwongrojn King Mongkut's Inst. of Tech. Ladkrabang Dongbing Gu University of Essex, UK Zhiwei Luo Kobe University, Japan Industrial Sessions Chairs: Hiroki Murakami IHI, Japan Sutat Patomnuphong NECTEC, Thailand George Zhang ABB, USA Videos Chair: Hidenori Ishihara Kagawa University, Japan Qiang Huang Beijing Institute of Technology, China Sukon Puntunan Royal Thai Air Force Academy, Thailand Poster Session Chair: Nyesunthi Apiwattanalunggarn Kasetsart University, Thailand Xiaobo Tan Michigan State University, USA Yong Yu Kagoshima University, Japan Publicity Chairs: Li-Chen Fu National Taiwan University, Taiwan Antoine Ferreira University of Orleans, France Kin-Huat Low Nanyang Tech University, Singapore Thaweedej Sirithanapipat Kasetsart University, Thailand Satoshi Tadokoro Tohoku University, Japan Uche Wejinya University of Arkansas, USA Awards Committee Chairs: Max Meng Chinese University of Hong Kong, China Kontorn Chamniprasart Suranaree Univ. of Tech., Thailand Makoto Kaneko Osaka University, Japan Shigeki Sugano Waseda University, Japan Exhibitions Chair: Montri Karnchanadecha Pince of Songkhla University, Thailand Takanori Shibata AIST, Japan Jizhong Xiao City University of New York, USA Publications Chairs: Waree Kongprawechnon Sirindhorn International Inst. of Tech., Thailand Aiguo Ming University of Electro-Communications, Japan Technical Tour Chair: Nitin Afzulpurkar Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand Finance Adviser Xiaoping Yun Post Naval Graduate School, USA Finance Chair: Weihua Shen Oklahoma State University, USA Local Arrangement Chairs: Siripun Thongchai King Mongkut's Inst. of Tech. North Bangkok, Thailand Registration Chairs: Guangyong Li University of Pittsburgh, USA Peerayot Sanposh Kasetsart University, Thailand E-media Chairs: Jindong Tan Michigan Technological University, USA" Theerayuth Chatchanayuenyong Mahasarakam University, Thailand ------------------------------- Zhidong WANG, Ph.D, Professor Dept. of Advanced Robotics Chiba Institute of Technology, Japan Tel/Fax: +81-47-478-0142 From gj at dfki.de Fri Jul 18 02:55:28 2008 From: gj at dfki.de (Geert-Jan Kruijff) Date: Fri, 18 Jul 2008 11:55:28 +0200 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Job Opening: socially guided / active learning for interactive cognitive robots References: <713B1DCF-9CF8-4CFD-9073-F748596B95FE@dfki.de> Message-ID: apologies for multiple copies =================== JOB OPENING (extended deadline -- applications by august 31 2008) The German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI GmbH) is seeking for its Language Technology Lab a SENIOR RESEARCHER in the area of cognitive systems, for a research position (Post-Doc, or senior) in the EU FP7 IP "Cognitive Systems that Self-Understand and Self-Extend" (CogX). The CogX project is a European project in the area of cognitive systems and will run from May 2008 till the end of June 2012 [ http://cogx.eu ]. The project (which is a follow-up to the CoSy project, [http://www.cognitivesystems.org ] and [ http://cosy.dfki.de/ ] ) will have a strong emphasis on the theoretical and practical integration of capabilities in vision, manipulation, mobility, spatial cognition, planning, and dialogue processing. CogX will be focused on the dynamics of a system capable of actively extending itself to fulfill identified requirements: "Imagine a cognitive system that models not only the environment, but its own understanding of the environment and how this understanding changes under action. It identifies gaps in its own understanding and then plans how to fill those gaps so as to deal with novelty and uncertainty in task execution, gather information necessary to complete its tasks, and to extend its abilities and knowledge so as to perform future tasks more efficiently." In the cognitive systems we conceive of, a wide and heterogeneous set of learning problems can be identified. These scenarios typically Involve social contexts with a rich multimodal communication between human and robot. Across these potential learning problems, the appropriate representations, learning models and evaluation criteria differ widely. To create a unified theory that makes it possible for the robot to reason about its knowledge and lack thereof, and to communicate the essence of this reasoning, will most likely require insights from fields such as socially guided machine learning, traditional and novel forms of machine learning such as active learning, meta learning, human-robot interaction, and situated dialogue processing, We are looking for an experienced researcher with a PhD in computer science (or equivalent) to work on "interactive continuous learning of crossmodal concepts" in the CogX project. We need a person with * a strong background in machine learning, * preferably with experience in active learning, socially guided learning, interactive learning; * preferably with experience in robotics, artificial intelligence, computational linguistics. * strong analytical skills, * strong mathematical skills, * strong programming skills (e.g. C++, Java, Python), * experience in collaborative software development (our project software is usually developed across 6-7 international sites, with up to 15 developers) * a good command of English, spoken and written The person will work in an international team. Responsibilities will include leading the machine learning efforts in our group within the CogX project, theory development, implementation and evaluation of software in an integrated (robot) system. The person will be expected to write, or contribute to writing, scientific papers and articles set in the project context. Highly valued personal qualities include creativity, open-mindedness, team spirit, and a willingness to address novel challenges in unknown scientific territory. The applicant should have a completed PhD degree on commencing the job. The earliest starting date of the position is September 2008. The duration of the contract will probably be until the end of the project (June 2012). DFKI GmbH [ http://www.dfki.de ] is located on the campus of Saarland University in Saarbrucken, Germany. The university's research groups and curricula in the fields of Computational Linguistics and Computer Science are internationally renowned. The LT-Lab [ http://www.dfki.de/lt/ ] offers excellent working conditions in a well-established research group. The position provides opportunities to collaborate in a variety of international projects. The competitive salary is calculated according to qualifications based on DFKI GmbH scales. For more on our work at DFKI, see [ http://www.dfki.de/lt/ ]. and [ http://cosy.dfki.de ] Please send your electronic application (preferably in PDF format) to lt-jobs at dfki.de , referring to this job opening (No. 200820), not later than August 31, 2008. A meaningful application should include a cover letter, a CV, a brief summary of research interests, a statement of interest in the position offered, and contact information for three references. For questions concerning this job opening, please contact Dr.ir. Geert- Jan Kruijff [ http://www.dfki.de/~gj ] -- Dr.ir. Geert-Jan M. Kruijff Senior researcher/Project leader Language Technology Lab, DFKI GmbH, Stuhlsatzenhausweg 3, D-66123 Saarbruecken, Germany Email: gj at dfki.de Phone: +49.681.302.5153 Fax: +49.681.302.5338 Mobile: +49.179.479.5892 http://www.dfki.de/~gj/ http://www.dfki.de/cosy/ ----------------------------------------------------- Deutsches Forschungszentrum fuer Kuenstliche Intelligenz GmbH Firmensitz: Trippstadter Strasse 122, D-67663 Kaiserslautern Geschaeftsfuehrung: Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. mult. Wolfgang Wahlster (Vorsitzender) Dr. Walter Olthoff Vorsitzender des Aufsichtsrats: Prof. Dr. h.c. Hans A. Aukes Amtsgericht Kaiserslautern, HRB 2313 ----------------------------------------------------- From info at isr09.com Fri Jul 18 04:50:26 2008 From: info at isr09.com (isr09) Date: Fri, 18 Jul 2008 13:50:26 +0200 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] CALL FOR PAPERS Message-ID: Dear Sirs, We are glad to inform you that the deadline for contribution submission has been extended to next August 15, 2008. For further information, visit the www.isr09.com Best Regards, Xavier Grau ISR 2009 Organizing Committee Secretary IPC - ISR'09 Rambla de Catalunya, 70 3?2? 08007 BARCELONA t. 34932155760 f. 34932152307 ipc @isr09.com www.isr09.com From dayalparhi at yahoo.com Sat Jul 19 00:18:11 2008 From: dayalparhi at yahoo.com (dayal parhi) Date: Sat, 19 Jul 2008 00:18:11 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [robotics-worldwide] International journal Call for Papers-Urgent Message-ID: <988906.90923.qm@web51809.mail.re2.yahoo.com> Dear Members, ? International Journal of Applied Artificial Intelligence in Engineering System publishes paper mainly on robotics. A special issue will come in December 2008. Dead line for submission of papers is 20th September 2008. Please visit the website for detail; "http://www.serialspublications.com/journals1.asp?jid=219&dtype=1&jtype=1"? ? Best regards! Dr. Dayal R. Parhi Department of Mechanical Engineering National Institute of Technology Rourkela , Pin: 769008. Orissa , India Phone: ++916612464509 From aokamura at jhu.edu Sat Jul 19 05:00:56 2008 From: aokamura at jhu.edu (Allison Okamura) Date: Sat, 19 Jul 2008 08:00:56 -0400 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] 2008 IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Fellowship In-Reply-To: <79272B6A-0754-4437-BD3A-C6F1D7463EE0@jhu.edu> References: <62E5C81C-16AB-4FB3-8FEE-6AA3411B38B1@jhu.edu> <79272B6A-0754-4437-BD3A-C6F1D7463EE0@jhu.edu> Message-ID: The IEEE Robotics and Automation Society is sponsoring a fellowship for a Ph.D. student in the areas of robotics and/or automation, to be expended before the end of the 2008 calendar year. Proposals for the ?2008 IEEE RAS Fellowship? are now solicited. This fellowship is intended to support a student who will have a significant future impact on the fields of robotics and/or automation, and increase gender diversity in the field. The winner and honorable mentions for a similar fellowship offered last year are listed at http://www.ieee-ras.org/news/38/RAS-Fellowship-Awarded-to--Rachel-Gockley.html . The deadline for applications is August 1, 2008. The nominee and nominator must be IEEE RAS members, and the application must be submitted through the applicant university's sponsored projects office. Please see http://haptics.lcsr.jhu.edu/wiki/images/f/f0/RAS_Fellowship.pdf for detailed rules and instructions. Sincerely Yours, Allison Okamura, Johns Hopkins University Nancy Amato, Texas A&M University ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Allison M. Okamura, Associate Professor The Johns Hopkins University Department of Mechanical Engineering 125 CSEB, 3400 N. Charles St. Baltimore, MD 21218 Tel: 410-516-7266 Fax: 410-516-7254 Email: aokamura at jhu.edu http://www.me.jhu.edu/~allisono ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ From russt at MIT.EDU Sat Jul 19 11:25:57 2008 From: russt at MIT.EDU (Russ Tedrake) Date: Sat, 19 Jul 2008 14:25:57 -0400 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Reminder: Abstract submissions for IROS 2008 Workshop on Robot Learning Message-ID: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ----------------------------- IROS 2008 Workshop on "Robotics Challenges for Machine Learning" ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ----------------------------- Just a quick reminder that if you would like to present a poster at the workshop, then you must submit an abstract by next Friday, July 25. We have lined up an exciting set of speakers, and it promises to be a productive workshop. Looking forward to seeing you there! Details can be found here: http://www.learning-robots.de/TC/IROS2008 - Russ Tedrake, Nick Roy, Jan Peters, Jun Morimoto From denis at icmc.usp.br Mon Jul 21 04:53:35 2008 From: denis at icmc.usp.br (Denis Wolf) Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2008 08:53:35 -0300 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] ACM SAC 2009 - ROBOTICS TRACK Message-ID: <488478BF.2090307@icmc.usp.br> ACM SAC 2009 - CALL FOR PAPERS Track: Intelligent Robotic Systems (ROBOT) http://www.icmc.usp.br/~lrm/sac09/ The 24th Annual ACM Symposium on Applied Computing (SIGAPP) March 8 - 12, 2009, Hilton Hawaiian Village Beach Resort & Spa Waikiki Beach, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA (http://www.acm.org/conferences/sac/sac2009/) For the past twenty-three years, the ACM Symposium on Applied Computing has been a primary gathering forum for applied computer scientists, computer engineers, software engineers, and application developers from around the world. For the second year, the ACM SAC will have a specific track on robotics. It aims to be a forum for researchers to share experiences, expose issues, and discuss about this exciting research field. Robotics is a multidisciplinary area of study that presents an enormous commercial and research potential. While industrial robotics covers the study, design, and use of robot systems for manufacturing, mobile robotics concerns about developing systems that are capable of making decisions and acting autonomously in real and unpredictable environments to accomplish determined tasks. In the last decade, technological advances made possible the development of very efficient sensors and electronic devices at affordable prices. This fact has great impact on robotics research, allowing the development of efficient and relatively cheap sensors and computing devices. It also allows robots to accomplish more complex tasks, posing new challenges to scientists and engineers. This track focuses on all aspects of robotics, including related areas and applications. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to: Rehabilitation Robotics Humanoid Robotics Underwater Robots Search and Rescue Robots Entertainment Robots Multi-robot Coordination Active Perception and Vision Coverage and Deployment Learning Autonomous systems Navigation Localization and Mapping Evolutionary Robotics Grasping Control Architectures and Programming Bio-Inspired Robots Aerial Robotics Contact Modeling and Touching Educational Robotics Smart Actuators Micro/nano robotics Embedded Systems architectures Reconfigurable robotic platforms Vision-based Systems Multi-robot systems Simulation Important Dates Aug. 16, 2008: Paper submissions Oct. 11, 2008: Author notification Oct. 25, 2008: Camera-Ready Copy From the.robotics.institute.of.yucatan at gmail.com Sun Jul 20 13:20:33 2008 From: the.robotics.institute.of.yucatan at gmail.com (The Robotics Institute Yucatan) Date: Sun, 20 Jul 2008 14:20:33 -0600 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] The Robotics Institute of Yucatan is looking for your generosity Message-ID: Dear Sir, "The Robotics Institute of Yucatan" is looking to conform a unique space both for theory and experimentation in such a way to facilitate both R&D projects and programs as well as to promote start-ups in the region. At "The Robotics Institute of Yucatan" (TRIY), we are involved on high tech R&D in robotics and computer vision. One of our main task is related with the development of curricula for kids and teenagers. http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=602430&id=828436869 Second main task is related to supervise Bachelors, MSc and PhD students in Robotics and Computer Vision in different schools and universities. At the same time we are actually working on the formulation of our own Master Degree in Robotics, a unique program in Mexico. We are looking for collaboration from partners around the world in asking you for the possibilities of donation of equipment, books, manuals, software, electric/mechanical tools, robots, robots-parts, cameras, frame grabbers and any kind of robotic devices that are not anymore useful for you. One of future projects is to set-up a Robotic Museum. >From Robotic & Computer Vision companies, we are looking to have your printed catalogues / CDs / manuals in such a way to conform a Documentation Center . It should be great as well to have parts or equipment that can serve for the illustration of concepts and technology. Education / Research Institutions can help us by sharing with us manuals/thesis/reports about robotics and compute vision in different domains. Merida is a beautiful, quiet and the safest city in south Mexico, close to Chichen Itza and Uxmal, 30 kms far away the nicest beaches of the Yucatan?s Penninsula. Maybe you can consider to visit us or to spend a sabbatical leave in M?rida ! If at any time you have any questions or comments for us, please let us know. With my very best regards, Dr. Luis Alberto Mu?oz Ubando, Founder and CEO The Robotics Institute of Yucat?n Calle 24 #99G x 19 y 21 Chuburn? de Hidalgo 97205 M?rida, Yucat?n M?xico From zhidwang at ieee.org Mon Jul 21 05:55:27 2008 From: zhidwang at ieee.org (Zhidong Wang) Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2008 21:55:27 +0900 (JST) Subject: [robotics-worldwide] ROBIO 2008: Submission Deadline Extended Message-ID: <20080721215527.34E16579@it-chiba.ac.jp> Dear Colleagues, Due to many requests, the submission deadline for 2008 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Biomimetics (ROBIO 2008) has been extended to August 4, 2008, 11:59 Pacific Time http://www.robio.org/ or http://www.robotics.it-chiba.ac.jp/wang/ROBIO2008/ [Apologies for possible multiple copies] --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Call for Papers 2008 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Biomimetics (ROBIO 2008) December 14-17, 2008 Bangkok, Thailand The IEEE ROBIO 2008 conference will take place from December 14 to 17, 2008 at the Imperial Queen's Park Hotel in Bangkok, Thailand. The theme of Robio 2008 is "Information Technology Enabled Robotics and Biomimetics", reflecting the ever growing interests in research, development and applications in the dynamic and exciting areas of robotics and biomimetics. Bangkok is an exciting and fast growing city with business, entertainment and shopping areas. ROBIO 2008 promises to be a great event for researchers and scholars in robotics and biomimetics areas, with attractive technical and social programs. The ROBIO 2008 conference invites high quality original research and development papers in all areas related to robotics, biomimetics and related topics. The TOPICS covered by the conference are but not limited to: # Robotics # Biomimetics # Mechatronics # Control # Vision # Automation # Signal Processing # Power Electronics # Sensing and Measurement # Computational Intelligence # Emerging Technologies Important Dates: August 4, 2008: Submission of original PDF full papers & video clips August 4, 2008: Submission of proposals for tutorials & workshops October 5, 2008: Notification of paper, video clip and T/W acceptance October 20, 2008: Submission of final IEEE PDF papers & video clips Contributed Papers: Original papers are solicited in all related areas of robotics and biomimetics. Full papers must be submitted in PDF format prepared strictly following the IEEE PDF Requirements for Creating PDF Documents for the IEEE XploreR. For detailed format information, please visit the conference web page. All accepted papers will be indexed by EI and included in IEEE XploreR. Oral and Poster Presentation: There are two categories of paper presentations: oral and poster. The desired category can be selected at submission but there is no difference in the review process and the inclusion in IEEE XploreR and EI. Posters will be presented during a specially designated session at the Conference. If a paper is selected to be presented in a poster session, an electronic file of the poster has to be submitted along with the final version of the manuscript. The Conference will provide printing services for all posters. Best Paper Competition: All submitted papers will be included in the evaluation for the Best Conference Paper and Best Student Paper Competitions. In addition, the Best Poster will also be awarded. Tutorials & Workshops: Proposals for tutorials and workshops addressing new topics in robotics and biomimetics are invited for submission to the T/W Chairs. Sponsors: IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Michigan State University Asian Institute of Technology Technical Co-Sponsors: Thai Robotics Society The Robotics Society of Japan The Society of Instrument and Control Engineers The Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers The Robio Foundation National Electronics and Computer Technology Center Committees: Honorary Conference Chairs: Said Irandoust Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand Pansak Siriruchatapong NECTEC, Thailand Advisory Committee Chair: Tzyh-Jong Tarn Washington University, USA Advisory Committee Co-Chairs: Paolo Dario Scuola Superiore, Sant'Anna, Italy Toshio Fukuda Nagoya University, Japan Shigeo Hirose Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan Chih-Ming Ho University of California, Los Angeles, USA General Chair: Ning Xi Michigan State University, USA General Co-Chairs: William R. Hamel University of Tennessee, USA Worsak Kanoknukulchai Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand Kazuhiro Kosuge Tohoku University, Japan Ren Luo National Taiwan University, Taiwan Bruno Siciliano Universita di Napoli Federico II, Italy Program Chair: Toshio Fukuda Nagoya University, Japan Program Co-Chairs: Hajime Asama University of Tokyo, Japan Prabhas Chongstitvatana Chulalongkorn University, Thailand Djitt Laowattana King Mongkut's Univ. of Tech. Thonburi, Thailand Yangmin Li University of Macau, China Jackrit Suthakorn Mahidol University, Thailand Yuechao Wang CAS Shenyang Institute of Automation, China Jian-Wei Zhang University of Hamburg, Germany Organizing Committee Chairs: Manukid Parnichkun Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand Zhidong Wang Chiba Institute of Technology, Japan Special Foucs Area Chairs: Yasuhisa Hirata Tohoku University, Japan Huosheng Hu University of Essex, UK Suthee Phoojaruenchanachai NECTEC, Thailand Dong Sun City University of Hong Kong, China Kazuhito Yokoi AIST, Japan Invited Session Chairs: Yantao Shen University of Nevada, USA Shuxiang Guo Kagawa University, Japan Jason J. Gu Dalhousie University, Canada Jitkasame Ngarmnil Mahanakorn University of Technology, Thailand Tutorial & Workshop Chairs: Imad H. Elhajj American University of Beirut, Lebanon Mongkol Mongkolwongrojn King Mongkut's Inst. of Tech. Ladkrabang Dongbing Gu University of Essex, UK Zhiwei Luo Kobe University, Japan Industrial Sessions Chairs: Hiroki Murakami IHI, Japan Sutat Patomnuphong NECTEC, Thailand George Zhang ABB, USA Videos Chair: Hidenori Ishihara Kagawa University, Japan Qiang Huang Beijing Institute of Technology, China Sukon Puntunan Royal Thai Air Force Academy, Thailand Poster Session Chair: Nyesunthi Apiwattanalunggarn Kasetsart University, Thailand Xiaobo Tan Michigan State University, USA Yong Yu Kagoshima University, Japan Publicity Chairs: Li-Chen Fu National Taiwan University, Taiwan Antoine Ferreira University of Orleans, France Kin-Huat Low Nanyang Tech University, Singapore Thaweedej Sirithanapipat Kasetsart University, Thailand Satoshi Tadokoro Tohoku University, Japan Uche Wejinya University of Arkansas, USA Awards Committee Chairs: Max Meng Chinese University of Hong Kong, China Kontorn Chamniprasart Suranaree Univ. of Tech., Thailand Makoto Kaneko Osaka University, Japan Shigeki Sugano Waseda University, Japan Exhibitions Chair: Montri Karnchanadecha Pince of Songkhla University, Thailand Takanori Shibata AIST, Japan Jizhong Xiao City University of New York, USA Publications Chairs: Waree Kongprawechnon Sirindhorn International Inst. of Tech., Thailand Aiguo Ming University of Electro-Communications, Japan Technical Tour Chair: Nitin Afzulpurkar Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand Finance Adviser Xiaoping Yun Post Naval Graduate School, USA Finance Chair: Weihua Shen Oklahoma State University, USA Local Arrangement Chairs: Siripun Thongchai King Mongkut's Inst. of Tech. North Bangkok, Thailand Registration Chairs: Guangyong Li University of Pittsburgh, USA Peerayot Sanposh Kasetsart University, Thailand E-media Chairs: Jindong Tan Michigan Technological University, USA" Theerayuth Chatchanayuenyong Mahasarakam University, Thailand ------------------------------- Zhidong WANG, Ph.D, Professor Dept. of Advanced Robotics Chiba Institute of Technology, Japan Tel/Fax: +81-47-478-0142 From K.Dautenhahn at herts.ac.uk Wed Jul 23 07:24:26 2008 From: K.Dautenhahn at herts.ac.uk (Kerstin Dautenhahn) Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2008 15:24:26 +0100 (BST) Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Special issue on Robots in the Wild: Exploring Human-Robot Interaction in Naturalistic Environments [Interaction Studies] Message-ID: ------------SECOND CALL FOR PAPERS------------------------------ Robots in the Wild: Exploring Human-Robot Interaction in Naturalistic Environments Special Issue of INTERACTION STUDIES published by John Benjamins Publishing Company Submission Deadline ***15 September 2008*** Interaction Studies is an interdisciplinary journal that publishes original, high-quality research on social behaviour and communication in biological and artificial systems. This special issue encourages submissions on original research findings involving situations where robots and people interact with each other socially 'in the wild', i.e. outside laboratory conditions. Such naturalistic environments may include: - robot assisted search and rescue (e.g. in urban or wilderness environments) - robots in museums and public spaces - robot assisted play for therapy or education - service robots and robot companions in real home settings - human-robot interaction in artistic contexts - human-robot interaction in hospitals, schools, nurseries etc. - others This special issue aims to report on the latest research findings in this field, as well as point out the key challenges (and possible ways to address some of these) that such naturalistic environments pose in terms of methodological, technical and other aspects. The submission of research not involving interactions between physical robots and people are discouraged. Authors should consider the interdisciplinary readership of IS and prepare their manuscripts accordingly. Authors may either submit full papers or short research reports. See the journal's homepage for guidelines on the suggested length and formatting of the manuscripts: http://www.benjamins.com/cgi-bin/t_seriesview.cgi?series=IS Authors who intend to submit a manuscript are encouraged to contact K.Dautenhahn at herts.ac.uk as soon as possible in order to ensure that the planned submission falls within the aims and scope of the special issue. Please submit the journal manuscripts by 15 September 2008 to K.Dautenhahn at herts.ac.uk in PDF only. All articles will be peer-reviewed. ----------------------------------------------------- Prof. Dr. Kerstin Dautenhahn Professor of Artificial Intelligence Adaptive Systems Research Group The University of Hertfordshire, School of Computer Science College Lane, Hatfield, Hertfordshire AL10 9AB, United Kingdom URL: http://homepages.feis.herts.ac.uk/~comqkd E-mail: K.Dautenhahn at herts.ac.uk Fax: +44-1707-284-303 Tel: +44-1707-284-333 From lino at isr.uc.pt Wed Jul 23 06:06:15 2008 From: lino at isr.uc.pt (Lino Marques) Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2008 14:06:15 +0100 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Fellowships on Robotics for Post-Docs and PhD candidates Message-ID: <48872CC7.3070906@isr.uc.pt> Fellowships on Robotics for Post-Docs and PhD candidates Institute for Systems and Robotics (www.isr.uc.pt), University of Coimbra (www.uc.pt) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Coimbra) Coimbra ? PORTUGAL Positions available for candidates wishing to apply for a Post-Doc or a Research Assistantship grant to pursue research activities at ISR-UC. The Post-Doc grants will only be available for candidates who have obtained their Ph.D. degrees in the last five years. The Research Assistantship grants will be offered preferably to candidates who hold a M.Sc. degree and intend to pursue research leading to a Ph.D. degree. 1. SCIENTIFIC AREAS UNDER WHICH GRANTS ARE BEING OFFERED: --------------------------------------------------------- - Underwater robotics - Aerial robotics - Climbing robots - Cooperative mobile robotics - Robot sensing and perception - Olfactory-based robotics - Cooperative SLAM - Embedded systems design - Robotic MEMS Requisites: * Applicants must have a Degree in Electrical Engineering, or Computer Science, or Mechanical Engineering, or similar. * Strong mathematical skills, expert knowledge of C/C++ programming, and good level of written/spoken English are required. * Applicants must also have expert knowledge in at least one of the following areas: estimation theory, state-space methods, classical and modern control system design, embedded systems design, smart sensors. * We are looking for individuals who show strong motivation to pursue advanced studies and are capable of adapting to team work. 2. CONDITIONS OFFERED: ---------------------- Successful applicants will receive a one-year research assistantship, renewable yearly based on successful research achievements. The value of the fellowship will range from 980 ? to 1495 ? monthly free of taxes. Additionally, the expenses of a social security plan will be offered. Whenever vacancies are available students will be accommodated at one of the University residences. 3. THE APPLICATIONS MUST INCLUDE THE FOLLOWING: ----------------------------------------------- - Curriculum Vitae (including full name, date and place of birth, nationality, ID or passport number and validity date, postal address, fax number and e-mail, education record, previous employment, scientific area of interest, languages and publications); - Copy of diploma(s) (English official translation); - A description of prior research including a copy of international publications, if any (max 3); - The names of two academic references (name, title, affiliation, e-mail and telephone number(s)) who are willing to provide detailed recommendation letters about the candidate; - An one-page summary of their future research objectives. 4. CLOSING DATE: ---------------- Applications can be sent immediately and will be considered until the positions are filled. 5. CONTACT: ----------- The above material, or any inquire regarding the research work, should be e-mailed to Lino Marques (lino (at) isr.uc.pt) From Luca.Iocchi at dis.uniroma1.it Fri Jul 25 02:34:02 2008 From: Luca.Iocchi at dis.uniroma1.it (Luca Iocchi) Date: Fri, 25 Jul 2008 11:34:02 +0200 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] CFP SIMPAR Workshop on Mini and Micro UAV for Security and Surveillance Message-ID: <48899E0A.1090506@dis.uniroma1.it> -------------- next part -------------- An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: SIMPAR_Workshop-mUAV.txt Url: http://duerer.usc.edu/pipermail/robotics-worldwide/attachments/20080725/5b26991c/attachment.txt From urbano at deec.uc.pt Mon Jul 28 11:37:17 2008 From: urbano at deec.uc.pt (Urbano Nunes) Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2008 19:37:17 +0100 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] IEEE IROS08 Workshop on Planning, Perception and Navigation for Intelligent Vehicles Message-ID: <488E11DD.2000005@deec.uc.pt> Dear Colleagues, You are kindly invited to attend the IROS08 WORKSHOP ON PLANNING, PERCEPTION AND NAVIGATION FOR INTELLIGENT VEHICLES, at IEEE IROS 2008 (http://iros2008.inria.fr/), on the 26 September 2008, Nice, France The program comprises: - 17 regular Presentations and, - 1 Invited Talk by Prof. Alberto Broggi (*Towards the Perfect Pedestrian Detection System?*) See the Workshop Program at: http://www.isr.uc.pt/~urbano/WorkIROS08/program.htm This workshop is organized by the IEEE RAS Technical Committtee on Autonomous Ground Vehicles and ITS (http://tab.ieee-ras.org/committeeinfo.php?tcid=10) If you want to join RAS TC on ITS please send an e-mail to me (urbano at deec.uc.pt) Best Regards Organisers: Urbano Nunes (ISR/Univ. Coimbra, Portugal), Christian Laugier (INRIA, France), Alberto Broggi (Univ. Parma, Italy) From Rene.Mayorga at uregina.ca Sun Jul 27 17:22:30 2008 From: Rene.Mayorga at uregina.ca (Rene Mayorga) Date: Sun, 27 Jul 2008 18:22:30 -0600 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Biologically Inspired Robots --> jABB (2nd) Special Issue References: <483D85E7.238F.0089.0@uregina.ca> <483D8683.238F.0089.0@uregina.ca> <483D86B3.238F.0089.0@uregina.ca> <483D872D.238F.0089.0@uregina.ca> <48551597.238F.0089.0@uregina.ca> Message-ID: <488CBCE5.238F.0089.0@uregina.ca> Dear Colleague I would greatly appreciate that you distribute this notice. Call for Papers 2nd Special Issue on "Biologically Inspired Robots" for the journal: Applied Bionics and Biomechanics http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/11762322.asp Kind reminder on the deadline for Paper submissions: August 18, 2008. Please take notice that this is our 2nd Special Issue on "Biologically Inspired Robots". Due to a favorably response to our first Special Issue on this important topic; we have decided to publish a second issue on the same topic. If you are interested in contributing to this (2nd) Special Issue; I would greatly appreciate that you contact me soon. (Email address below). Also, please prepare your Paper contribution following the "Instuctions for Authors" guidelines at: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/authors/tbobauth.asp Best regards. Dr. Rene V. Mayorga Editor in Chief Applied Bionics and Biomechanics Rene.Mayorga at uregina.ca From jbsong at korea.ac.kr Fri Jul 25 18:09:05 2008 From: jbsong at korea.ac.kr (Jae-Bok Song) Date: Sat, 26 Jul 2008 10:09:05 +0900 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Deadline extension of URAI 2008 Message-ID: <000701c8eebc$33231a60$99694f20$@ac.kr> Due to numerous requests, submission deadline for URAI 2008 will be extended to August 20, 2008. 5th Int. Conf. on Ubiquitous Robots and Ambient Intelligence (URAI 2008) ==================================================== Location: Korea University, Seoul, Korea Dates: November 20-22, 2008 Website: http://www.robotweek.or.kr ==================================================== The 5th International Conference on Ubiquitous Robots and Ambient Intelligence (URAI 2008), hosted by Korea Robotics Society (KRS) will be held on November 20-22, 2008 at the Hana Square at Korea University, Seoul, Korea. [Important Dates] * Submission of Full Papers or Organized Sessions: August 20, 2008 (New) * Notification of Acceptance: September 30, 2008 (New) * Submission of Camera-ready Papers: October 20, 2008 (New) [Relevant Topics] * Division 1: Ubiquitous Robots - Network-based Robotics - Ambient Intelligence - Intelligent Space/Environment Technologies - Human-Robot Interaction - Robot Vision and Audition - Intelligence and Learning - Robotic Agents * Division 2: Robotic Mechanisms and Systems - Navigation / Localization - Robotic Mechanisms and Design - Humanoid Robots - Haptics / Teleoperation - Sensors and Actuators - Medical Robotics - Biorobotics - Control Architecture and Middleware [Sponsors] Korea Robotics Society (KROS) Robotics Society of Japan (RSJ) IEEE Robotics and Automation Society [Organizing Committee] * Honorary General Chair: Il-Hong Suh (Hanyang Univ., Korea) * General Chair: Jae-Bok Song (Korea Univ., Korea) * Program Chairs: Bum-Jae You (KIST, Korea), Hajime Asama (Univ. of Tokyo, Japan) * Publicity Chairs: Wonpil Yu (ETRI, Korea), Tatsuo Arai (Osaka Univ., Japan), Nak-Young Chong (JAIST, Japan), Dennis Hong (Virginia Tech., USA) * Finance Chairs: Shinsuk Park (Korea Univ., Korea), Sang-Moo Lee (KITECH, Korea) * Exhibition Chairs: Sooyong Lee (Hongik Univ., Korea), Paul Oh (Drexel Univ., U.S.A.) * Publication Chairs: Jong-Bae Lee (KETI, Korea), Jaeyeon Lee (ETRI, Korea) * Local Chairs: NakJu Lett Doh (Korea Univ., Korea), Sung-Chul Kang (KIST, Korea) * Secretariat: Woojin Chung (Korea Univ., Korea), Ki-Young Kim (Korea Robotics Society) For more details, please contact Prof. Jae-Bok SONG at jbsong at korea.ac.kr . From dayalparhi at yahoo.com Sat Jul 26 05:13:36 2008 From: dayalparhi at yahoo.com (dayal parhi) Date: Sat, 26 Jul 2008 05:13:36 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Urgent Call for International Journal Paper Message-ID: <815345.43733.qm@web51802.mail.re2.yahoo.com> Dear Members, International Journal of Applied Artificial Intelligence in Engineering System publishes paper mainly on robotics. A special issue will come in December 2008. Dead line for submission of papers is 20th September 2008. Please visit the website for detail "http://www.serialspublications.com/journals1.asp?jid=219&dtype=1&jtype=" Best regards! Dr. Dayal R. Parhi Department of Mechanical Engineering National Institute of Technology Rourkela , Pin: 769008. Orissa , India Phone: ++916612464509 From stephane.viollet at univmed.fr Tue Jul 29 02:00:32 2008 From: stephane.viollet at univmed.fr (stephane viollet) Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2008 11:00:32 +0200 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] IEEE workshop on Visual guidance systems for small autonomous aerial vehicles Message-ID: <403BCC7F-21A6-4863-A8A9-FD6043022C31@univmed.fr> Dear Colleague, You are warmly invited to participate to the Workshop on Visual guidance systems for small autonomous aerial vehicles, will be held at Nice on September 22, 2008. The program comprises 19 regular presentations and 1 guest lecturer (D. O'Carroll) : D. O?Carroll (Univ. Adelaide,) : Biomimetic and bio-inspired motion detectors based on insect vision. G. Barrows (Centeye Inc., USA) : Minimalist Vision Sensors for Micro Air Vehicles S. Fuller (Caltech, USA) : Reichardt Correlators observing a constructed environment S. Liu (ETHZ, Zurich) : A time-of-travel motion detection chip for steering autonomous robots G. Conte (Link?ping Univ., Sweden) : A GPS Independent Navigation System for UAVs T. Hamel (I3S, Nice) : Advanced ?ight control for VTOL UAV using Image-based control paradigm C. Taylor (Brigham Young Univ., USA) : Using Vision to Improve MAV Pose Estimation L. Derafa (LISV, Paris/Algers) : Real-Time Motion Detection and Tracking in Aerial Video D. Burschka (Munchen Univ.) : Monocular Vision-Based Navigation Strategies for Small Autonomous Aerial Vehicles. S. Bouabdallah (ETHZ, Zurich), S. Grzonka (Freiburg) : Towards a Fully Autonomous Indoor Helicopter. J. Serres (CNRS/Univ. Marseille) : A bio-inspired optic flow based autopilot for guiding a miniature hovercraft in corridors. S. Humbert (Univ. Maryland) : Wide-Field Integration of Optic Flow for Corridor Navigation on a Micro Helicopter. J. C. Zufferey (EPFL, Lausanne) : Optic flow to control small UAVs. R. Lozano (Compi?gne Univ., France) : Real-time stabilization of an Eight-Rotor UAV using Optical ?ow R. Mahony (ANU, Australia) : Analysis of the closed-loop ?ight dynamics of aerial vehicles given proportional feedback of optic ?ow measurements L. Matthies (JPL, USA) : Vision Systems for Planetary Landers Y. Watanabe (ONERA, France) : Research Perspectives in UAV Visual Target Tracking in Uncertain Environments Y. Measson (CEA-LIST, France) : Survey of CEA LIST activities in the field of UAV E. Baird (Lund Univ., Sweden) : A visual strategy for landing on a vertical surface S. Krupinski (Cybernetix, France) : Localisation and guidance in the AUV docking problem The complete workshop program can be downloaded here : http://www.ism.univmed.fr/AerialVisualGuidanceIROS08/images/program_workshop_IROS08.pdf Please take a look at the workshop web site at http://www.ism.univmed.fr/AerialVisualGuidanceIROS08/index.php . If you are interested, please, do not forget to register to the workshop, all the details that you need can be found here : http://iros2008.inria.fr/registration.php . Best regards. Stephane Viollet. Franck Ruffier. --------------------------------------------------------------------- St?phane Viollet Charg? de Recherche - Researcher http://www.laps.univ-mrs.fr/~viollet Equipe Biorobotique - Biorobotics B?t. IRPHE-IOA UMR 6233 Institut Science du Mouvement CP 938 163, avenue de Luminy F-13288 Marseille Cedex 09 From K.Dautenhahn at herts.ac.uk Tue Jul 29 02:25:02 2008 From: K.Dautenhahn at herts.ac.uk (Kerstin Dautenhahn) Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2008 10:25:02 +0100 (BST) Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Faculty Position in Human-Robot Interaction at University of Hertfordshire Message-ID: Faculty Position in the area of Human-Robot Interaction Dear colleagues, I would like to circulate an advert offering a newly created permanent faculty position in the area of human-robot interaction, joining the multidisciplinary and international research team at University of Hertfordshire in Hatfield, UK. The human-robot interaction activities have attracted substantial research funding and we are currently involved in a number of European projects (Robotcub, IROMEC, LIREC, I-Talk). The postholder will participate in and contribute to this research. The post is particularly suitable for researchers with a background and/or interest in interdisciplinary research. The post is being advertised as Senior/Principal Lecturer, and a successful postholder will be expected to be eligible for a Readership (Associate Professor) within a few years. The Adaptive Systems Research Group founded in 2000 by Prof. K. Dautenhahn and Prof. C. L. Nehaniv is an internationally leading group in Human-Robot Interaction, Social Robotics, and other areas, comprising over 30 research academic, postdocs, and other researchers. Below I include the official advert. Essential requirements for the post include several years of post-doctoral or equivalent research experience with an excellent research track record of relevant quality publications in English. More details about the post (including the complete job and person specifications) can be found at: http://web-apps.herts.ac.uk/uhweb/apps/hr/academic-vacancies.cfm All formal applications must be made online (see URL above). In order to judge the suitability for the post it is recommended to find out about the research being carried out by Prof. Kerstin Dautenhahn before contacting her: http://homepages.feis.herts.ac.uk/~comqkd/papers.html Closing date: 18 August 2008. Kerstin Dautenhahn ------------------------------------ Senior/Principal Lecturer in Adaptive Systems University of Hertfordshire http://www.herts.ac.uk/ School of Computer Science Adaptive Systems Research Group http://adapsys.feis.herts.ac.uk/ Salary 33700-51000 GBP pa depending on qualifications and experience You will work within the Adaptive Systems Research Group, a proactive, dynamic and interdisciplinary research team with an excellent international research profile. The group is leading research in the fields of Human-Robot Interaction and Social Robotics and has organized several international conferences and attracted substantial research funding. This role is focused towards the long-term development of the existing Computer Science research base at the University. In the 2001 RAE this unit of assessment became the largest 4-rated unit in the sector (34.2 FTE) and you will complement and strengthen these ongoing research activities. In particular, we are seeking individuals who will contribute to and further develop international excellence in research in the Adaptive Systems area, specifically in those research activities led by Prof. Kerstin Dautenhahn. You will have significant experience of working in a research environment, as evidenced by an excellent track record of quality publications in the area of Adaptive Systems, e.g. in one of the following fields: Human-Robot Interaction, Human-Computer Interaction, Developmental Robotics, Cognitive Robotics. For an initial period of three years you will be given considerable support to build up your research with around 70% of your work devoted to research activities. A funded PhD studentship will be available and associated to one of the existing research projects in Adaptive Systems. Following this period your research will be expected to be self funding as part of externally funded research projects within the Adaptive Systems research group. You can anticipate that within a few years your profile will make you eligible for a Readership. Preference will be given to candidates whose research is a good fit with the existing research activities led by Prof. Dautenhahn in the Adaptive Systems research group. For informal enquiries please contact Prof. K. Dautenhahn on K.Dautenhahn at herts.ac.uk Closing Date: 18 August 2008 Quote Reference: EN8631 ----------------------------------------------------- Prof. Dr. Kerstin Dautenhahn Professor of Artificial Intelligence Adaptive Systems Research Group The University of Hertfordshire, School of Computer Science College Lane, Hatfield, Hertfordshire AL10 9AB, United Kingdom URL: http://homepages.feis.herts.ac.uk/~comqkd E-mail: K.Dautenhahn at herts.ac.uk Fax: +44-1707-284-303 Tel: +44-1707-284-333 From stephane.viollet at univmed.fr Tue Jul 29 03:29:50 2008 From: stephane.viollet at univmed.fr (stephane viollet) Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2008 12:29:50 +0200 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Special issue in Autonomous Robots (AuRo) journal Message-ID: <5AAB6597-60FC-4662-8C53-ED1A843311BD@univmed.fr> Dear Members, Autonomous Robots (AuRo) journal has published a call for paper for a special issue on Visual Guidance Systems for Small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. Dead line for submission of papers is 1st February 2009. Please visit the website for detail : http://www.springer.com/computer/artificial/journal/10514. Best regards. Stephane Viollet. --------------------------------------------------------------------- St?phane Viollet Charg? de Recherche - Researcher http://www.laps.univ-mrs.fr/~viollet Equipe Biorobotique - Biorobotics B?t. IRPHE-IOA UMR 6233 Institut Science du Mouvement CP 938 163, avenue de Luminy F-13288 Marseille Cedex 09 From pal at isr.ist.utl.pt Tue Jul 29 08:48:20 2008 From: pal at isr.ist.utl.pt (Pedro M U A Lima) Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2008 16:48:20 +0100 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Full-time researcher position on Biologically Inspired and Social Robotics Message-ID: <488F3BC4.1030803@isr.ist.utl.pt> [apologies for duplicates] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- RESEARCHER JOB OFFER CALL at ISR/IST, Lisbon (Portugal) http://www.isr.ist.utl.pt (Open till 17 September 2008) Applications are invited for a RESEARCHER position (at least 3 years post-doctoral experience) in thematic areas of Biologically Inspired and Social Robotics. The contract offered will have duration of up to 5 years, renewed yearly based on mutual agreement. See http://www.ist.utl.pt/files/ciencia2008/EditalIST_ISR.pdf for further information. Applicants should have obtained a PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Control Science, or related areas. Candidates should have a high quality research record and research experience. They must show independence and resourcefulness, good working habits, and the ability to integrate well in a multidisciplinary team. The successful candidates are expected to do research in one or more of the areas listed above. For more information, consult http://www.eracareers.pt. The responsibilities of the successful candidates will include conducting independent work, pushing new lines of research, and proposing research programmes and PhD thesis topics. The candidates are expected to organize seminars and discussion sessions, aimed at fostering cooperation links among members of the research team at ISR-LA (http://www.isr.ist.utl.pt) and to supervise and train new members of the team, including doctoral students. Candidates with a technical vein are expected to contribute to the development of new experimental techniques and approaches. The work language is English. The successful candidates will receive a salary in accordance with the university regulations for a senior researcher. The contract offered will have duration of up to 5 years, renewed yearly based on mutual agreement. The annual gross income, before taxes, will be approximately 3,000 Euros x 14 months. To apply, please send an email to ciencia2008 at isr.ist.utl.pt with the following information: identification of the candidate and domain of application, curriculum Vitae/Resume, Letters of Reference, and Statement of Purpose for the period of the contract. From pal at isr.ist.utl.pt Tue Jul 29 08:59:41 2008 From: pal at isr.ist.utl.pt (Pedro M U A Lima) Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2008 16:59:41 +0100 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Full-time researcher position on Networked Systems, Cooperative Navigation / Map Building, and Machine Learning Message-ID: <488F3E6D.6060003@isr.ist.utl.pt> [apologies for duplicates] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- RESEARCHER JOB OFFER CALL at ISR/IST, Lisbon (Portugal) http://www.isr.ist.utl.pt (Open till 17 September 2008) Applications are invited for 2 RESEARCHER positions (at least 3 years post-doctoral experience) in the thematic areas of Networked Systems, Cooperative Navigation / Map Building, and Machine Learning. The contract offered will have duration of up to 5 years, renewed yearly based on mutual agreement. See http://www.ist.utl.pt/files/ciencia2008/EditalIST_ISR.pdf for further information. Applicants should have obtained a PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Control Science, or related areas. Candidates should have a high quality research record and research experience. They must show independence and resourcefulness, good working habits, and the ability to integrate well in a multidisciplinary team. The successful candidates are expected to do research in one or more of the areas listed above. For more information, consult http://www.eracareers.pt (ref C2008-IST/ISR.3). The responsibilities of the successful candidates will include conducting independent work, pushing new lines of research, and proposing research programmes and PhD thesis topics. The candidates are expected to organize seminars and discussion sessions, aimed at fostering cooperation links among members of the research team at ISR-LA (http://www.isr.ist.utl.pt) and to supervise and train new members of the team, including doctoral students. Candidates with a technical vein are expected to contribute to the development of new experimental techniques and approaches. The work language is English. The successful candidates will receive a salary in accordance with the university regulations for a senior researcher. The contract offered will have duration of up to 5 years, renewed yearly based on mutual agreement. The annual gross income, before taxes, will be approximately 3,000 Euros x 14 months. To apply, please send an email to ciencia2008 at isr.ist.utl.pt with the following information: identification of the candidate and domain of application, curriculum Vitae/Resume, Letters of Reference, and Statement of Purpose for the period of the contract. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From pal at isr.ist.utl.pt Tue Jul 29 09:15:15 2008 From: pal at isr.ist.utl.pt (Pedro M U A Lima) Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2008 17:15:15 +0100 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] IST-EPFL Joint Doctoral Initiative Message-ID: <488F4213.5090605@isr.ist.utl.pt> [apologies for duplicates] IST-EPFL Joint Doctoral Initiative Call for PhD Student Applications Distributed and Cognitive Robotics Focus Area The Instituto Superior T?cnico (IST) and the Ecole Polytechnique F?d?rale de Lausanne (EPFL) have established a Joint Doctoral Initiative. The PhD program, comprises a curricular component as well as a strong research activity. During the duration the PhD program, students will spend about 50% of the time at IST and 50% of the time at EPFL and be advised by faculty members from both institutions. The Joint Doctoral Initiative is oriented towards seven Focus Areas. The choice of areas was, in some cases, grounded on existing or long standing collaborations and correspond to areas where both EPFL and IST have strong competences and have the ambition to work together to build synergies and take advantages from research and complementarities. The Focus Areas in the Initiative are the following: Biological and Medical Imaging Distributed and Cognitive Robotics Computational and Stochastic Mathematics Antennas and EM devices for Wireless Applications Environmental Hydraulics Plasma Physics Architecture The focus area of Distributed and Cognitive Robotics is highly interdisciplinary and involves two main research lines: (i) distributed, networked robots and (ii) cognitive personal assistant robots and devices capable of interacting with humans and understanding human actions. * Distributed, networked robots - Recent advances in robotics, computer vision, artificial intelligence, statistical signal processing and control theory, as well as the advent of miniaturized sensors and actuators, powerful embedded processors, and wireless communication systems, have afforded engineers with the methodologies and technologies to design and build networks of autonomous robots and systems. The applications include monitoring and operations in hazardous or remote environments (ocean, space, contaminated areas, areas destroyed by natural disasters, etc), in industrial or civil engineering structures (pipeline monitoring and surveillance, bridges, dams), and in services (buildings, public areas, traffic monitoring and surveillance). * Cognitive personal assistant robots - The massive deployment of sensors and robotic devices (e.g. smart appliances, robotic assistants) in offices, homes and urban environments, as opposed to factories, places the interaction with humans and the interpretation of human activity in a central role (e.g. ambient intelligence, health-care, surveillance). This challenge opens a new landscape of research directions in learning, human action recognition and cognition in a multidisciplinary approach involving (e.g. humanoid) robotic systems, as well as neuroscience and psychology. The research domains in this Focus Area include Human activity recognition from sensor data (e.g. video), context aware systems that can learn from observation and Learning by imitation in humanoid robotic assistants with biological inspiration. HOW TO APPLY A selection committee consisting of faculty members both from EPFL and IST is responsible for ranking the candidates applying to the Initiative. Outstanding candidates will be awarded grants provided by the Portuguese FCT ? Funda??o para a Ci?ncia e a Tecnologia. When applying, candidates should indicate their Focus Area of choice. If selected to the Initiative, students will at a later stage be invited to propose or choose a thesis topic within the Focus Area. The list of faculty members involved in each Focus Area will be provided. Documents required for the application: - Application form (to be provided) - CV (good knowledge of english is mandatory) - Statement of purpose (indicate interests and motivation, indication and justification of the Focus Areas for the application) - Reference letters (mininum 3) Applications can only be submitted electronically (one ZIP file containing all PDF documents) by email (email to be defined). Deadline for application: June 21st to 15thSeptember 2008 Additional information: ist-epfl at ist.utl.pt From oli at cs.umass.edu Tue Jul 29 11:07:34 2008 From: oli at cs.umass.edu (Oliver Brock) Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2008 14:07:34 -0400 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Post-Doc: Applications of Robotics to Computational Biology Message-ID: <2330F00E4A3C924AB7F7297AE42D353530B389@zor.ads.cs.umass.edu> The Robotics and Biology Laboratory at the University of Massachusetts Amherst is looking for a roboticist interested in applying concepts and techniques from robotics to problems in computational biology, such as protein structure prediction, protein motion, and protein docking. The post-doc position could be for multiple years. No biology background required! If you have basic knowledge of kinematics, dynamics, motion planning, machine learning, and optimization and if you are interested in expanding into a new and exciting application area, please contact me at oli(at)cs.umass.edu. Please send 1) your CV, 2) a paragraph explaining why you are interested, 3) a description of your level of expertise in molecular biology, and 4) the names of at least three references (they will not be contacted without your knowledge) to oli(at)cs.umass.edu. Kind regards, Oliver Brock From rjwood at eecs.harvard.edu Tue Jul 29 13:46:40 2008 From: rjwood at eecs.harvard.edu (Robert Wood) Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2008 16:46:40 -0400 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Postdoc position in the Harvard Microrobotics Lab Message-ID: <003901c8f1bc$344bd5f0$f1f8f78c@Optitron> The Harvard Microrobotics Lab is currently seeking applicants for a postdoctoral research position in the area of bio-inspired controls. The project will build on recent success in the development of a robotic fly with the goal of bringing flying robotic insects to a greater level of autonomy. This is part of a highly visible research project and it is expected that the successful applicant will be a leader of a large multidisciplinary team of researchers. Research will entail a study of insect attitude control, development of next generation robotic insects, and implementation of bio-inspired and non bio-inspired control techniques with the ultimate goal of stable autonomous hovering. Applicants should have a PhD in Electrical, Mechanical, or Aerospace engineering or a closely related field. Experience with theoretical AND practical aspects of control is essential. Experience with meso- and micro-fabrication is also emphasized. Applicants should send a cover letter briefly describing their background and career plans, a CV, and the names and contact information for at least three references. These documents should be submitted as pdf attachments to: rjwoodseas.harvard.edu Harvard University is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action employer and applications from women and underrepresented minorities are strongly encouraged. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Robert Wood Assistant Professor School of Engineering and Applied Sciences Harvard University (617) 496-1341 The Harvard Microrobotics Lab http://micro.seas.harvard.edu (617) 384-7892 ----------------------------------------------------------------- From mjjohnso at mcw.edu Tue Jul 29 21:35:55 2008 From: mjjohnso at mcw.edu (Johnson, Michelle) Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2008 23:35:55 -0500 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] T-RO Special Issue on Rehabilitation Robotics Message-ID: <3261933EB7678946A50C0314A1AAC07B1D5A5FA5@MCWMAIL.mcwcorp.net> Call for Papers IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ROBOTICS Special Issue on Rehabilitation Robotics Rehabilitation Robotics aims at the development of novel medical solutions for assisted motor therapy and functional assessment of patients with reduced motor and/or cognitive abilities in order to ultimately favor the best achievable functional recovery. Robot-assisted therapy emphasizes the central role of the patient during the motor exercise. This poses major technical challenges for the design of safe and effective robotic platforms. Typical requirements include high backdriveability, easy adaptation to different anthropometric parameters, adaptive control schemes for interaction control, friendly human-machine interfaces for motivating the patient and for allowing customization of robot performance by the doctor or therapist. A new generation of rehabilitation robots, to be conceived and developed in tight cooperation with medical experts and end users, is expected to come in the near future. Researchers working in the academy or industry are invited to submit papers to this Special Issue of the IEEE Transactions on Robotics (T-RO) on the theoretical, technological and experimental aspects of design, development, and validation of novel rehabilitation robotic systems. Topics - Novel robotic systems for application to rehabilitation - Human-centred design methods and case studies of rehabilitation robots - Robotic platforms for functional assessment and human behavioral analysis - Exoskeletons and operational machines for lower and\or upper limb rehabilitation - Robotic systems for telerehabilitation and homecare - Portable robotics systems for ubiquitous rehabilitation - Backdriveable mechanisms, compliant actuators and other innovative components for rehabilitation robots - Physical human-robot interaction control in rehabilitation applications - Impedance control, adaptive motor control and learning in rehabilitation robotics - Multimodal and natural human-robot interfaces for rehabilitation - Robotic systems for cognitive rehabilitation and for diagnosis and treatment of neurodevelopmental disorders - Magnetic-imaging (MI) compatible robotic systems - Application of robotic systems for biomechanical modeling of the human body - Robotic systems for prevention of age-related motor disabilities Important dates September 15, 2008: Deadline for Paper Submission December 31, 2008: Completion of First Review March 15, 2009: Completion of Final Review June 2009 (tentative): Publication Submission and Review of Papers This is the first T-RO Special Issue on this topic and also the first one that will be fully handled electronically via the papercept system. Author information is available at the T-RO web site http://www.ieee-ras.org/tro . Submissions should go to T-RO PaperCept at http://ras.papercept.net/journals/tro . T-RO considers also accompanying multimedia material. Papers submitted to the Special Issue undergo the usual T-RO review process. Please refer your T-RO submissions to this Special Issue following the guidelines provided on the papercept system. For downloading the PDF release of this CFP and further information on the Special Issue, please check the IEEE RAS TC on Rehabilitation & Assistive Robotics web site at http://tab.ieee-ras.org/ . We look forward to receiving your submissions. The Guest Editors of the T-RO Special Issue on Rehabilitation Robotics Dr. Takanori Shibata, AIST, Japan - shibata-takanori at aist.go.jp Dr. Michelle J. Johnson, Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, USA- mjjohnso at mcw.edu Prof. Eugenio Gugliemelli, Universit? Campus Bio-Medico, Roma, Italy -e.guglielmelli at unicampus.it ********************************************************************************************************************************** Dr. Michelle J. Johnson, PhD Asst. Prof., Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Medical College of Wisconsin Research Asst. Prof., Biomedical Engineering, Marquette University (414) 805 4256 (MCW office) (414) 384 2000 x45878 or x47171 (Rehab Robotics Lab Office) email: mjjohnso at mcw.edu lab website: http://www.mcw.edu/roboticsrehab From mjjohnso at mcw.edu Wed Jul 30 23:05:16 2008 From: mjjohnso at mcw.edu (Johnson, Michelle) Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2008 01:05:16 -0500 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Call for Participation in BioRob Workshop on Gerontechnologies and Robotics Message-ID: <3261933EB7678946A50C0314A1AAC07B1D5A5FD1@MCWMAIL.mcwcorp.net> Call for Participation in Workshop on Gerontechnologies and Robotics at IEEE BioRob 2008 Conference The world population is rapidly aging. This trend has several implications, including: (i) a larger number of older people in absolute and relative terms; (ii) a considerably larger number of "older" elderly people; (iii) a smaller number of informal carers (e.g., family carers); (iv) a smaller productive workforce to contribute to the financing of formal health and social services. These trends pose significant challenges to the organisation of health and social care services. On one hand, there will be more frail and disabled older people in need for social, home and health-care services, both in a short-term and long-term perspective. On the other hand, the number of informal carers is constantly getting smaller, and pressures for cost-containment of formal services are increasing. For this reason, the issues related to the aging of the population are becoming more and more necessary to be addressed from different points of view. Gerontechnology (which concerned with research on the biological, psychological, social, and medical aspects of ageing) can help elderly people in order to identify and slow down the effects of the age-related modifications of the (central and peripheral) neural and musculo-skeletal systems. In particular, this approach can (partly) restore sensory-motor performance increasing the quality of life and the ability of the elderly people of participating in daily life activities increasing the time they can live at home independently and reducing the hospitalization time. The aim of this workshop is to describe the most innovative and interesting research activities in this field with a specific attention to the clinical aspects of ageing. It is important to point out that these applications are not only related to the development of "rehabilitation devices" but also to the analysis of age-related modifications of performance in elders not affected by any disability ("frail elders"). Date: Sunday, October 19, 2008 Time: 1:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m. (Half Day Workshop) We are accepting applications for participation in the workshop. We are looking for speakers who are able to present a wide variety of perspectives on the topic. If you are interested, please send a one-page proposal with a presentation title, a presentation abstract, a 100 word bio, a CV or biosketch summarizing your accomplishments, and description of how you believe your presentation would fit with the workshop goals. http://www-arts.sssup.it/Biorob2008_GerontechnologyWS/ Please send the application to Dr. Michelle Johnson, PhD, mjjohnso at mcw.edu. From mdorigo at ulb.ac.be Thu Jul 31 01:55:14 2008 From: mdorigo at ulb.ac.be (Marco Dorigo) Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2008 10:55:14 +0200 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Post-doc position available in the Swarmanoid (robotics) project Message-ID: IRIDIA, the computational intelligence lab of the Free University of Brussels, has an open position (one year, renewable) in swarm robotics for a postdoc. The position is available within the framework of the Swarmanoid project (www.swarmanoid.org). Start date September 1, 2008, or later. Position open until a candidate is selected. Please send CV and availability information by email to mdorigo at ulb.ac.be = ======================================================================== Swarm Intelligence: a quarterly journal published by Springer Information on the journal available at http://www.springer.com/11721 Papers can be submitted at http://www.editorialmanager.com/swrm = ======================================================================== Marco Dorigo, Ph.D. email mdorigo@(no.spam)ulb.ac.be Directeur de Recherches du FNRS URL iridia.ulb.ac.be/~mdorigo IRIDIA CP 194/6 Skype: mdorigo Universite' Libre de Bruxelles Tel +32 (0)2 6503169 Avenue Franklin Roosevelt 50 Mobile +32 478 301233 1050 Bruxelles Fax +32 (0)2 6502715 Belgium Secretary +32 (0)2 6502729 = ======================================================================== From dayalparhi at yahoo.com Thu Jul 31 05:51:52 2008 From: dayalparhi at yahoo.com (dayal parhi) Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2008 05:51:52 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Urgent Call for Paper- International Journal Message-ID: <965835.44885.qm@web51802.mail.re2.yahoo.com> Dear Members, International Journal of Applied Artificial Intelligence in Engineering System publishes paper mainly on robotics. A special issue will come in December 2008. Dead line for submission of papers is 20th September 2008. Please visit the website for detail; "http://www.serialspublications.com/journals1.asp?jid=219&dtype=1&jtype=1" Best regards! Dr. Dayal R. Parhi Department of Mechanical Engineering National Institute of Technology Rourkela , Pin: 769008. Orissa , India Phone: ++916612464509