From aude.billard at epfl.ch Mon Nov 3 07:58:12 2008 From: aude.billard at epfl.ch (Aude Billard) Date: Mon, 03 Nov 2008 16:58:12 +0100 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] HRI09: CFP VIDEO SESSION Message-ID: <877216E20CE24AB4860FF94E4C893C58@lasalap1> ******************************************************************************************* CALL FOR VIDEOS 4th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI?09) http://hri2009.org March 11-13, 2009, San Diego, CA ******************************************************************************************* IMPORTANT DATES: 01 December 2008 Submission of videos 12 December 2008 Notification of acceptance of videos 15 December 2008 Submission of late-breaking short papers 15 January 2009 Notification of acceptance of late-breaking papers ******************************************************************************************* CFP LATE BREAKING SHORT PAPERS Authors are encouraged to submit their late-breaking results for short papers (two pages) which will not appear in the proceedings but which will be presented in a special poster session. Detailed instructions are available on the conference web site: http://www.hri2009.org. ******************************************************************************************* CFP VIDEO SESSION We invite videos related to all aspects of HRI. This is a peer-reviewed session: besides the importance of the lessons learned and the novelty of the situation, the entertainment value will be judged. The videos will be published in the conference proceedings and archived in the ACM Digital Library. Guidelines and Requirements a.. Videos should be self explanatory. There will be no live narration or introduction. b.. No revisions will be accepted. Submit the final version. c.. Videos should not exceed 3 minutes in length. We recommend titles and credits last less than 3 seconds each. d.. The video cannot exceed 30MB (upload capped). e.. The video should play on standard PC and Macintosh computers with no 3rd party codecs added. Use Windows .avi, QuickTime.mov, or .mp4. f.. Do not use DRM. g.. Start the filename with the lead author?s last name. h.. The videos will be played on a projected screen. Therefore, please use a horizontal resolution of at least 640 pixels. If you can use a higher resolution and still stay under the MB cap, please do so. i.. If accepted, ACM requires video authors to sign a release. Copyright remains with author but 3rd party material must have verified copyright. Therefore, copyrighted media (music, video, etc) should not be included unless permission has been obtained. Authors are responsible for obtaining such permission. j.. As this is peer-reviewed and archival, the chairs strongly discourage videos which contain advertisements or are heavily promotional in nature. Submission instructions Submitting a video to the HRI 2009 Video Session is a two part process. 1.. Upload video: Use the upload method on http://www.hri-metrics.org/hri09videos/ to submit your movie. Please make sure the workspace below reports a successful upload. 2.. Email details to the chairs: Send the following in a plain text email to Aaron Steinfeld, astein+videos at cs.cmu.edu. This content will be included in the ACM Digital Library with the video. a.. Video title b.. Author 1, Affliation and email address c.. Author n, Affliation and email address d.. 350 word abstract For example: a.. A Happy Robot b.. Aaron Steinfeld, Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, steinfeld at cmu.edu c.. This video shows a robot which is happy when surrounded by friendly people. It becomes sad when everyone leaves. ******************************************************************************************* General Co-Chairs Matthias Scheutz (mscheutz at indiana.edu) Indiana University Fran?ois Michaud (Francois.Michaud at USherbrooke.ca) Universit? de Sherbrooke Program Co-Chairs Pamela Hinds (phinds at stanford.edu) Stanford University Brian Scassellati (scaz at cs.yale.edu) Yale University Video Session Co-Chairs Aaron Steinfeld (steinfeld at cmu.edu) Carnegie Mellon University Christoph Bartneck (c.bartneck at tue.nl) Eindhoven University of Technology Publicity Co-Chairs Aude Billard (aude.billard at epfl.ch) Ecole Polytechnique F?d?rale de Lausanne (EPFL) Christine Lisetti (lisetti at cis.fiu.edu) Florida International University Patrick Rau (rpl at mail.tsinghua.edu.cn) Tsinghua University From gruenwal at faw.uni-freiburg.de Mon Nov 3 06:49:03 2008 From: gruenwal at faw.uni-freiburg.de (Eva Gruenwald) Date: Mon, 03 Nov 2008 15:49:03 +0100 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Junior Professorship for Human Robot Interaction at University of Freiburg Message-ID: <490F0F5F.4050003@faw.uni-freiburg.de> The Faculty of Applied Sciences of the University of Freiburg, with its Departments of Computer Science and Microsystems Engineering, invites applications for the position of a Junior Professorship (W1) for Computer Science The successful candidate will be expected to establish a comprehensive research and teaching program in the area of human robot interaction in the department of computer science. An excellent Ph.D. obtained within the last five years in computer science or related fields is required. The appointment is not tenure-track and is limited to a maximum term of six years ? four years plus a potential extension by two years. The University of Freiburg aims to increase the representation of women in research and teaching, and therefore expressly encourages women with suitable qualification to apply for the post. Information about the Department of Computer Science can be obtained from http://www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/. Applicants should ask for an application form at the Dean?s office (E-Mail: dekanat at faw.uni-freiburg.de) Applications, including a curriculum vitae, publications list and statement of research interests should be sent until November 30, 2008 to the Dean of the Faculty of Applied Sciences, University of Freiburg, Georges-K?hler-Allee 101, D-79110 Freiburg, Germany (http://www.faw.uni-freiburg.de/). -- Eva Gruenwald Fakultaet fuer Angewandte Wissenschaften Dekanat Georges-Koehler-Allee 101 D-79110 Freiburg Telefon: +49 (0)761 203 8080 Telefax: +49 (0)761 203 8082 e-mail: gruenwald at faw.uni-freiburg.de From MICHEN at ntu.edu.sg Sun Nov 2 00:46:19 2008 From: MICHEN at ntu.edu.sg (Chen I-Ming (Assoc Prof)) Date: Sun, 02 Nov 2008 15:46:19 +0800 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Graduate student scholarship in NTU, Singapore Message-ID: <1F32C9D341671240B756314C3A841B70040F4230@EXCHANGE21.staff.main.ntu.edu.sg> Graduate student scholarship in robotics/wearable sensor/actuators School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering NANYANG TECHNOLOGICAL UNIVERSITY, SINGAPORE The Modular Robotics and Locomotion Group in the School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Nanyang Technological Univ (NTU) is seeking graduate students in PhD level for the following projects: (For project description, please refer to http://interactiverobotics.blogspot.com) 1. Replicating and Processing of Human Body Motion for Participatory Interaction in Co-Space - one PhD student in Wearable embedded sensor and actuator network for human motion replication Preferred background - wearable embedded system design, and wireless sensor network - one PhD student in Biomechanics and interaction for human motion replication Preferred background - robotics, biomechanics, or human-robot interaction 2. Micro Motor and Actuator for Therapeutic Ingestible Microcapsule - One PhD student in Micro actuator design for micro digestive capsule Preferred background - robotics, electromagnetic actuators ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The applications should be submitted to the Admission Office of NTU online @ http://www.ntu.edu.sg/GradStudies/research+programmes/default.htm In addition, please forward a copy of the application material to Professor I-Ming Chen (michen at ntu.edu.sg) Deadline of admission for July 2009 is 31 January 2009. Prof. I-Ming Chen School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Nanyang Technological University Nanyang Ave, Singapore 639798 Email: michen at ntu.edu.sg URL: http://www.ntu.edu.sg/home/michen/ Blog: http://interactiverobotics.blogspot.com PS1. Our group may have Research Fellow (PhD degree holder), Research Associate (Master degree holder), or Project officer (Bachelor degree holder) openings in 2009. Please check back with Prof Chen from time to time. PS2. School of MAE, NTU will conduct a PhD student recruitment visit to Beijing, Xian, and Hefei, China from Nov 10 to 15, 2008. If you are interested in joining our research group, please contact Prof Chen before Nov 8, 2008. From jmarshall at slc.edu Mon Nov 3 05:33:00 2008 From: jmarshall at slc.edu (Jim Marshall) Date: Mon, 03 Nov 2008 08:33:00 -0500 (EST) Subject: [robotics-worldwide] 2nd Call for Papers: FLAIRS-2009 Special track on AI Education Message-ID: <49172.167.206.19.130.1225719180.squirrel@mail.slc.edu> *** 2nd CALL FOR PAPERS *** Special Track on ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE EDUCATION The 22nd International FLAIRS Conference (FLAIRS-2009) Sanibel Island, Florida, USA Sundial Beach and Golf Resort May 19-21, 2009 IMPORTANT DATES - Submission deadline: November 23, 2008 - Acceptance notification: TBA - Final versions due: TBA Papers are being solicited for a special track on AI Education at the 22nd International FLAIRS Conference (FLAIRS-2009). The FLAIRS Special Track on AI Education is intended to provide a setting in which educators and researchers from all areas of AI can come together to share ideas and approaches for teaching AI at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. We are especially interested in submissions that describe innovative curricular materials, teaching methods, pedagogical experiences, or ways to promote student interest in AI and the participation of underrepresented groups. We welcome submissions on all aspects of AI pedagogy, including, but not limited to: - Model assignments, course syllabi, software, or other curricular resources - Implementation of the Computing Curricula 2001 Intelligent Systems area - AI classroom techniques or innovations for undergraduate and/or graduate instruction - Intelligent applications for instruction of AI and assessment of such applications - The use of robots or other hands-on equipment for teaching AI - Strategies for incorporating AI research into AI courses - Strategies for encouraging wider student interest and participation in AI - Descriptions or case studies of successful class projects or other pedagogical experiences Note: There is a separate special track for Intelligent Tutoring Systems. SUBMISSION GUIDELINES Interested authors must submit completed manuscripts for double-blind review by November 23, 2008. Submission guidelines can be obtained by referring to the conference website (http://www.flairs-22.info/). Papers will be refereed and those accepted for presentation will appear in the conference proceedings which will be published by AAAI Press. Authors may be invited to submit a revised copy of their paper to a special issue of the International Journal on Artificial Intelligence Tools (IJAIT). Questions regarding the track should be addressed to Todd Neller (http://cs.gettysburg.edu/~tneller/) or Jim Marshall (http://science.slc.edu/~jmarshall/). ONLINE RESOURCES - FLAIRS: http://www.flairs.com - FLAIRS 2009: http://www.flairs-22.info/ - AI Education Track: http://cs.gettysburg.edu/~tneller/flairs09/ PROGRAM COMMITTEE Todd Neller, co-chair (Gettysburg College) Jim Marshall, co-chair (Sarah Lawrence College) Bob Aiken (Temple University) Steven Bogaerts (Wittenberg University) Debra Burhans (Canisius College) Zachary Dodds (Harvey Mudd College) Susan Fox (Macalester College) David Furcy (University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh) Ioannis Hatzilygeroudis (University of Patras, Greece) Ellen Hildreth (Wellesley College) Tim Huang (Middlebury College) Frank Klassner (Villanova University) Simon Levy (Washington and Lee University) Chun Wai Liew (Lafayette College) Shieu-Hong Lin (Biola University) Derek Long (University of Strathclyde, UK) Antonio Lopez (Xavier University of Louisiana) Myles McNally (Alma College) R. Mark Meyer (Canisius College) Dave Mooney (Shippensburg University) Jeffrey Pfaffmann (Lafayette College) John Rager (Amherst College) Anita Raja (University of North Carolina at Charlotte) Ingrid Russell (University of Hartford) Mehran Sahami (Stanford University) Gene Simmons (University of South Alabama) Rebecca Thomas (Bard College) Ellen Walker (Hiram College) Richard Wyatt (West Chester University) Sarah Zelikovitz (College of Staten Island of CUNY) We look forward to your participation at next year's FLAIRS! - Todd Neller and Jim Marshall From ayanna.howard at ece.gatech.edu Mon Nov 3 10:44:48 2008 From: ayanna.howard at ece.gatech.edu (Ayanna Howard) Date: Mon, 03 Nov 2008 14:44:48 -0400 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] IJCNN Call for Papers Message-ID: ********************************************************************* Call for Papers 2009 INTERNATIONAL JOINT CONFERENCE ON NEURAL NETWORKS (IJCNN2009) Westin Peachtree Hotel, Atlanta, June 14-19, 2009 http://www.ijcnn2009.com ********************************************************************* Important Dates and Deadlines: Paper Submissions ? December 15, 2008 Paper Acceptance Notifications ? January 30, 2009 Camera-ready Paper Submissions ? March 10, 2009 ********************************************************************* The Century of Brain Computation ? Neural Network Alliances with Cognitive Computing and Intelligent Machine Embodiments IJCNN is the premier international conference in the area of neural networks theory, analysis and applications. Topics of interest include but are not restricted to: Connectionist methods in cognitive science and cognitive modeling Computational neuroscience Neuro-technologies and neuro-engineering, brain-machine interfaces Cognitive robotics, developmental robotics and neural robotics Data mining and pattern recognition Signal processing and time series analysis Image processing and machine vision Neurocontrol Neuroinformatics and bioinformatics IJCNN 2009 will feature invited plenary talks by world-renowned invited speakers, a variety of special sessions and panel discussions aligned with the conference theme, pre-conference tutorials, post-conference workshops, as well as regular technical sessions, poster sessions, social functions. Prospective authors are invited to submit complete papers of no more than eight (8) pages in IEEE two-column conference proceedings format. Authors should submit their papers in PDF through the online submission system, which will be available through the website: http://www.ijcnn2009.com ************************************************ Dr. Ayanna M. Howard Associate Professor Electrical and Computer Engineering Georgia Institute of Technology http://HumAnSLab.ece.gatech.edu ************************************************ From kenji at ieee.org Mon Nov 3 17:25:35 2008 From: kenji at ieee.org (Kenji Suzuki) Date: Tue, 04 Nov 2008 10:25:35 +0900 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Research Assistant Positions (PhD Studentships) Message-ID: <490FA48F.1030405@ieee.org> * We apologize if you receive multiple copies of this announcement. Research Assistant Positions (PhD Studentships) Cybernics Program, University of Tsukuba Tsukuba, Japan Ref: CYB05/R0811 http://www.cybernics.tsukuba.ac.jp/jobs/CYB05R0811.html Applications are invited for a few research assistant positions (fully-funded PhD studentships), which cover tuition fees and living costs, who have (or expect to obtain) a Master's degree or equivalent in a relevant subject. We offer a supportive environment for individuals to work towards PhD, DEng or DMedSci qualifications. The successful candidates should be keen on their assignments, attend to their academic duties. These studentships provide students with the opportunity to work on a Cybernics research project as a research assistant. These positions are available for duration of three years. The successful candidates can be formally admitted to the PhD program, if s/he meets the University admission requirements to study for a PhD. Note that the PhD supervisor must be a faculty member related to Cybernics Program, which is listed at the website. (http://www.cybernics.tsukuba.ac.jp/members.html) Students should have research interests in the field of Cybernics Program, which is a new domain of interdisciplinary academic field of human-assistive technology to enhance, strengthen, and support human's cognitive and physical functions, which challenges to integrate and harmonize humans and robots (RT: robotics technology) with the basis of information technology (IT). This challenging program will help you to develop practical and experimental skills in your chosen field. The three primary research areas are: (i) Cybernoid: robot suits, cybernic limb and hand, implanted cybernic system, subjective cognition computing, virtual human-body kernel. (ii) Next-generation interface: brain-computer interface, somato-sensory media, humanoid, medical interface, ubiquitous sensing interface, intelligent robots. (iii) Management technology for next-generation advanced systems: network security, new-generation risk management, cognitive engineering, ethical, sociological, and conceptual readiness. In particular, the topics including - but not limited to - Robot suits (exoskeleton) - Assistive and Rehabilitation robotics - Humanoid robotics - Physical and cognitive human-robot interaction - Vital data sensing, Medical interface and Medical robotics - Brain-machine interface - Other fields in Cybernics (see the faculty members) Please note that these studentships are available to all potential applicants and not restricted to nationals. The successful candidate must be able to start the PhD on the 1st April 2009. Interested applicants are encouraged to apply. Please complete an application form which can be downloaded from the following web site. http://www.cybernics.tsukuba.ac.jp/jobs/CYB05R0811.html Please return your application by email, preferably in PDF format, to jobs.ra at cybernics.tsukuba.ac.jp. You should include the ref. number you are applying for in the header of your e-mail, or standard mail envelope. For informal inquiries please contact the above address on email (jobs.ra at cybernics.tsukuba.ac.jp). Otherwise, if you have already decided on a research lab, please try making direct contact with the faculty member (by e-mail). Tsukuba is a university and science city, located about 60 kilometers, about 45 minutes by train, or 1 hour by car, northeast of central Tokyo. Over 50 national and independently administered research organizations are concentrated in the Tsukuba Science City district, which is centered on the university. *Important Dates Application deadline: December 1st, 2008. Yoshiyuki Sankai Professor, Leader of Cybernics Program University of Tsukuba --- Kenji Suzuki kenji at ieee.org University of Tsukuba, Japan http://www.iit.tsukuba.ac.jp/~kenji/ From mail at jan-peters.net Wed Nov 5 07:33:49 2008 From: mail at jan-peters.net (Jan Peters) Date: Wed, 05 Nov 2008 16:33:49 +0100 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Reminder/Final Call: Special Issue on Robot Learning in Autonomous Robots Message-ID: Please be reminded of the Final Call for Papers for the Special Issue on Robot Learning of the Autonomous Robots journal! The deadline is this SUNDAY, Nov. 8, 2008 Note that submission can only happen through Autonomous Robots WebInterface http://www.editorialmanager.com/auro/ If you have questions, please contact us by email ASAP. Best wishes, Jan Peters & Andrew Ng = = = ======================================================================== Final Call For Papers: Autonomous Robots - Special Issue on Robot Learning = = = ======================================================================== Quick Facts ========= Editors: Jan Peters, Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Andrew Y. Ng, Stanford University Journal: Autonomous Robots Submission Deadline: November 8, 2008 Author Notification: March 1, 2009 Revised Manuscripts: June 1, 2009 Approximate Publication Date: 4th Quarter, 2009 Abstract ====== Creating autonomous robots that can learn to act in unpredictable environments has been a long standing goal of robotics, artificial intelligence, and the cognitive sciences. In contrast, current commercially available industrial and service robots mostly execute fixed tasks and exhibit little adaptability. To bridge this gap, machine learning offers a myriad set of methods some of which have already been applied with great success to robotics problems. Machine learning is also likely play an increasingly important role in robotics as we take robots out of research labs and factory floors, into the unstructured environments inhabited by humans and into other natural environments. To carry out increasingly difficult and diverse sets of tasks, future robots will need to make proper use of perceptual stimuli such as vision, lidar, proprioceptive sensing and tactile feedback, and translate these into appropriate motor commands. In order to close this complex loop from perception to action, machine learning will be needed in various stages such as scene understanding, sensory-based action generation, high-level plan generation, and torque level motor control. Among the important problems hidden in these steps are robotic perception, perceptuo-action coupling, imitation learning, movement decomposition, probabilistic planning, motor primitive learning, reinforcement learning, model learning, motor control, and many others. Driven by high-profile competitions such as RoboCup and the DARPA Challenges, as well as the growing number of robot learning research programs funded by governments around the world (e.g., FP7-ICT, the euCognition initiative, DARPA Legged Locomotion and LAGR programs), interest in robot learning has reached an unprecedented high point. The interest in machine learning and statistics within robotics has increased substantially; and, robot applications have also become important for motivating new algorithms and formalisms in the machine learning community. In this Autonomous Robots Special Issue on Robot Learning, we intend to outline recent successes in the application of domain-driven machine learning methods to robotics. Examples of topics of interest include, but are not limited to: ? learning models of robots, task or environments ? learning deep hierarchies or levels of representations from sensor & motor representations to task abstractions ? learning plans and control policies by imitation, apprenticeship and reinforcement learning ? finding low-dimensional embeddings of movement as implicit generative models ? integrating learning with control architectures ? methods for probabilistic inference from multi-modal sensory information (e.g., proprioceptive, tactile, vision) ? structured spatio-temporal representations designed for robot learning ? probabilistic inference in non-linear, non-Gaussian stochastic systems (e.g., for planning as well as for optimal or adaptive control) From several recent workshops, it has become apparent that there is a significant body of novel work on these topics. The special issue will only focus on high quality articles based on sound theoretical development as well as evaluations on real robot systems. Time Line ======== Submission Deadline: November 8, 2008 Author Notification: March 1, 2009 Revised Manuscripts: June 1, 2009 Approximate Publication Date: 4th Quarter, 2009 Editors ====== Inquiries on this special issue should be send to one of the editors listed below. Jan Peters (http://www.jan-peters.net/) Senior Research Scientist, Head of the Robot Learning Laboratory Department for Machine Learning and Empirical Inference, Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tuebingen, Germany Andrew Y. Ng (http://ai.stanford.edu/~ang/) Assistant Professor Department of Computer Science, Stanford University, Palo Alto, USA From J.L.Herder at tudelft.nl Tue Nov 4 04:26:58 2008 From: J.L.Herder at tudelft.nl (Just Herder - 3ME) Date: Tue, 04 Nov 2008 13:26:58 +0100 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] 2nd CfP ReMAR2009 Message-ID: <9390A3433EDEAD459F6C6871FFA073221D30@SRV503.tudelft.net> [Apologies for multiple postings] Dear Colleagues, I am writing to distribute this 2nd call for papers for you to encourage paper submission to the ASME/IFToMM International Conference on Reconfigurable Mechanisms and Robots (ReMAR 2009) to be held at King's College London, University of London, UK during 22-24 June 2009. With the development of science and technology and with space exploration, hazardous environment work, and production requirements of small batch and quick change-over, traditional concepts of mechanisms and robots development are facing a challenge in the 21st century for adaptability and reconfigurability. This led to continuous effort from researchers since 1990s of generating new ideas and concepts for new mechanisms and machines including robots for reconfigurability. It is now felt by the wide community in mechanisms, robotics and design that it is a good time to hold this international conference for people in this field to express their views and for people from the community to discuss the research in this reconfigurable mechanisms and robots and to discuss the future direction in this rising field in reconfigurable mechanisms and robots. The ASME/IFToMM International Conference on Reconfigurable Mechanisms and Robots (ReMAR 2009) is to provide an international forum for presenting and discussing new mechanisms and robots developed in the past decade for their new properties in changing topological structure and therefore the mobility of a mechanism/robot and for discussing their uses for domestic, hazardous, out-space and manufacturing environments for adaptability and reconfiguration. The main areas of this conference include, but not limit to, following subjects: Novel Mechanism Design Reconfiguration and Adaptability Metamorphic Mechanisms Reconfigurable Mechanisms Reconfigurable Topology Metamorphic Robotics Reconfigurable Manufacturing Bio-design Technics Bio-metamorphic Robotics Reconfigurable Robots Kinematics and Dynamics of Reconfiguration Bio-reconfiguration Engineering Various Topology Modeling Modular Devices Biological Self-Assembly Mechanisms Biomimetics Artiomimetics The ReMAR 2009 will be held at King's College London, University of London, which is situated at the heart of London, UK, in conjuction to the celebration of 171 Years of Engineering at King's College London. King's is one of the oldest and most prestigious UK universities with 13,000 undergraduate students and 9,200 graduates in nine schools of study with 2,700 academic staff and 2,700 other staff. The Engineering was established at King's in 1838 and is arguably the oldest established engineering school in England. King's College London was ranked in the top 25 of the world leading universities. You are very welcome to submit your work to this conference. Your submission will be reviewed by members of our Programme Committee and selected external reviewers. The special issues of Robotica and Journal of Mechanical Engineering Science will be followed. More detailed information about this event can be found in conference official website: www.remar2009.com The important dates are 1 December 2008, Proposal for the Special Sessions and Workshops 1 December 2008, Final Paper Submission Due 2 February 2009, Acceptance Notification 2 March 2009, Final Manuscript Submission Due I will look forward to your attendance with us! Sincerely yours, Professor Jian S Dai General Chair ASME/IFToMM International Conference on Reconfigurable Mechanisms and Robots (ReMAR 2009) www.remar2009.com Chair in Mechanisms and Robotics Head of Centre for Mechatronics and Manufacturing Systems CEng, IMechE Fellow, CertEd(HE) School of Physical Sciences and Engineering King's College London University of London Strand, London WC2R 2LS, UK +44 (0) 20 7848 2321 www.kcl.ac.uk/cmms/jsd From soniamd at ucsd.edu Tue Nov 4 09:16:05 2008 From: soniamd at ucsd.edu (Sonia Martinez) Date: Tue, 04 Nov 2008 09:16:05 -0800 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] International Conference on Robot Communication and Coordination RoboComm 09 Message-ID: <49108355.5020606@ucsd.edu> Dear colleague, We invite you to submit a paper or a proposal for a half-day or full-day tutorial and workshop to the Second International Conference on Robot Communication and Coordination RoboComm 2009, to be held in Odense Denmark on 31 March--2 April 2009. Scope The Second International Conference on Robot Communication and Coordination targets the convergence of robotics and communications, acting as a common forum for the two communities. The event will promote cross-pollination of these two areas, adding to our understanding of the interaction between these two exciting computer science research areas. Robotics is an interdisciplinary field, having benefited greatly from interactions with mechanics, control theory, and electronics. Lately, with the unprecedented growth of wireless communication technologies, the growing attention devoted to sensor networks and ad-hoc networks, and the emergence of commodity robotics platforms, networked robotics represents an exciting new research direction. Networked robotics offers a framework for coordination of complex mobile systems, thus providing the natural common ground for convergence of information processing, communication theory and control theory. It poses significant challenges, requiring the integration of communication theory, software engineering, distributed sensing and control into a common framework. Furthermore, robots are unique in that their motion and tasking control systems are co-located with the communications mechanisms. This allows the co-exploitation of individual subsystems to provide completely new kinds of networked or distributed autonomy. Thematic Areas ROBOCOMM is a leading-edge conference where prominent researchers with different backgrounds can exchange ideas for a common framework that will enable new applications based on large scale networks of mobile or modular robots. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to: * Robotic interactions with sensors * Communication protocols for tele-operatated and tele-reflexive robots * Intra-sensor communications within individual robots * Communication protocols for flocks and swarms of networked robots * Distributed coordination of modular robots or mobile robots * Situated and embodied communication * Biologically inspired or biomimetic robot communication * Exploiting the interactions betweeen communications and autonomy * Localization and tracking using robotic communications * Industrial applications of networked robotics * Real-time software for mobile robots or modular robots * Wired networking for robots * Advanced communication systems for single tele-operated robots ROBOCOMM will encompass the above mentioned aspects and will encourage the largest possible involvement of industrial partners who are involved in networked robotics and controls. This will provide a dialog between the academic and the industrial communities that will promote the growth of networked robotics. Submission Instructions: Please visit www.robocomm.org for instructions of how to submit your paper/proposal. Best regards, Sonia Martinez Publicity Chair of RoboComm 09 From mail at jan-peters.net Wed Nov 5 07:33:49 2008 From: mail at jan-peters.net (Jan Peters) Date: Wed, 05 Nov 2008 16:33:49 +0100 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Reminder/Final Call: Special Issue on Robot Learning in Autonomous Robots Message-ID: Please be reminded of the Final Call for Papers for the Special Issue on Robot Learning of the Autonomous Robots journal! The deadline is this SUNDAY, Nov. 8, 2008 Note that submission can only happen through Autonomous Robots WebInterface http://www.editorialmanager.com/auro/ If you have questions, please contact us by email ASAP. Best wishes, Jan Peters & Andrew Ng = = = ======================================================================== Final Call For Papers: Autonomous Robots - Special Issue on Robot Learning = = = ======================================================================== Quick Facts ========= Editors: Jan Peters, Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Andrew Y. Ng, Stanford University Journal: Autonomous Robots Submission Deadline: November 8, 2008 Author Notification: March 1, 2009 Revised Manuscripts: June 1, 2009 Approximate Publication Date: 4th Quarter, 2009 Abstract ====== Creating autonomous robots that can learn to act in unpredictable environments has been a long standing goal of robotics, artificial intelligence, and the cognitive sciences. In contrast, current commercially available industrial and service robots mostly execute fixed tasks and exhibit little adaptability. To bridge this gap, machine learning offers a myriad set of methods some of which have already been applied with great success to robotics problems. Machine learning is also likely play an increasingly important role in robotics as we take robots out of research labs and factory floors, into the unstructured environments inhabited by humans and into other natural environments. To carry out increasingly difficult and diverse sets of tasks, future robots will need to make proper use of perceptual stimuli such as vision, lidar, proprioceptive sensing and tactile feedback, and translate these into appropriate motor commands. In order to close this complex loop from perception to action, machine learning will be needed in various stages such as scene understanding, sensory-based action generation, high-level plan generation, and torque level motor control. Among the important problems hidden in these steps are robotic perception, perceptuo-action coupling, imitation learning, movement decomposition, probabilistic planning, motor primitive learning, reinforcement learning, model learning, motor control, and many others. Driven by high-profile competitions such as RoboCup and the DARPA Challenges, as well as the growing number of robot learning research programs funded by governments around the world (e.g., FP7-ICT, the euCognition initiative, DARPA Legged Locomotion and LAGR programs), interest in robot learning has reached an unprecedented high point. The interest in machine learning and statistics within robotics has increased substantially; and, robot applications have also become important for motivating new algorithms and formalisms in the machine learning community. In this Autonomous Robots Special Issue on Robot Learning, we intend to outline recent successes in the application of domain-driven machine learning methods to robotics. Examples of topics of interest include, but are not limited to: ? learning models of robots, task or environments ? learning deep hierarchies or levels of representations from sensor & motor representations to task abstractions ? learning plans and control policies by imitation, apprenticeship and reinforcement learning ? finding low-dimensional embeddings of movement as implicit generative models ? integrating learning with control architectures ? methods for probabilistic inference from multi-modal sensory information (e.g., proprioceptive, tactile, vision) ? structured spatio-temporal representations designed for robot learning ? probabilistic inference in non-linear, non-Gaussian stochastic systems (e.g., for planning as well as for optimal or adaptive control) From several recent workshops, it has become apparent that there is a significant body of novel work on these topics. The special issue will only focus on high quality articles based on sound theoretical development as well as evaluations on real robot systems. Time Line ======== Submission Deadline: November 8, 2008 Author Notification: March 1, 2009 Revised Manuscripts: June 1, 2009 Approximate Publication Date: 4th Quarter, 2009 Editors ====== Inquiries on this special issue should be send to one of the editors listed below. Jan Peters (http://www.jan-peters.net/) Senior Research Scientist, Head of the Robot Learning Laboratory Department for Machine Learning and Empirical Inference, Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tuebingen, Germany Andrew Y. Ng (http://ai.stanford.edu/~ang/) Assistant Professor Department of Computer Science, Stanford University, Palo Alto, USA From mdorigo at ulb.ac.be Tue Nov 4 03:57:25 2008 From: mdorigo at ulb.ac.be (Marco Dorigo) Date: Tue, 04 Nov 2008 12:57:25 +0100 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Special Issue on Swarm Robotics of the Swarm Intelligence journal Message-ID: Dear all, the journal Swarm Intelligence, published by Springer has just released a triple issue dedicated to Swarm Robotics. Guest editors of this special issue are Erol Sahin and Alan Winfield. Papers are available online at: http://www.springerlink.com/content/1935-3812 The table of contents is appended below. Best regards, Marco Dorigo Swarm Intelligence Editor-in-Chief %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %%%%%%%%%%%%%% Editorial Erol Sahin and Alan Winfield pages 69-72 Evolving coordinated group behaviours through maximisation of mean mutual information Valerio Sperati, Vito Trianni and Stefano Nolfi pages 73-95 Self-organized flocking in mobile robot swarms Ali E. Turgut, Hande ?elikkanat, Fatih G?k?e and Erol ?ahin pages 97-120 Biologically inspired redistribution of a swarm of robots among multiple sites M. Ani Hsieh, ?d?m Hal?sz, Spring Berman and Vijay Kumar pages 121-141 SWARMORPH-script: a language for arbitrary morphology generation in self-assembling robots Anders Lyhne Christensen, Rehan O?Grady and Marco Dorigo pages 143-165 Ant-based swarming with positionless micro air vehicles for communication relay Sabine Hauert, Laurent Winkler, Jean-Christophe Zufferey and Dario Floreano pages 167-188 Massively multi-robot simulation in stage Richard Vaughan pages 189-208 A framework of space?time continuous models for algorithm design in swarm robotics Heiko Hamann and Heinz W?rn pages 209-239 Modelling a wireless connected swarm of mobile robots Alan F. T. Winfield, Wenguo Liu, Julien Nembrini and Alcherio Martinoli pages 241-266 = ======================================================================== 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 sarkar at cse.usf.edu Wed Nov 5 20:27:15 2008 From: sarkar at cse.usf.edu (Sudeep Sarkar) Date: Wed, 05 Nov 2008 23:27:15 -0500 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] posting of open faculty postions Message-ID: <9b47a7cc0811052027g32e650d4ya672fba2d1dc115f@mail.gmail.com> Would it be possible to post the following on the list server? We are trying to research robotics researchers for the Intelligent Robotics position. Thanks -- Sudeep ----------------------------------------------------------- Assistant/Associate Professor Positions The Computer Science and Engineering Department (www.csee.usf.edu) at the University of South Florida, Tampa invites applications for two tenure track positions. One position is at the Assistant Professor level in Intelligent Robotics. The successful candidate will be expected to collaborate with the rehabilitation robotics group. The other position is at the Assistant or Associate Professor level in the Bioinformatics area in conjunction with the University's Diabetes initiative in collaboration with the Department of Pediatrics (http://usfpeds.hsc.usf.edu/divisions/biopec/index.htm). The College and Department strongly encourage cross-disciplinary research. The University of South Florida is among the nation's top 63 public research universities, is one of 39 community engaged public universities as designated by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, and placed among the nation's top 20 "up and coming universities" in the 2009 U.S. News & World Report annual college rankings. USF is one of Florida's top three research universities. The University was awarded $366 million in research contracts and grants last year. The university offers 219 degree programs at the undergraduate, graduate, specialist and doctoral levels, including the MD degree. The Department of Computer Science and Engineering (http://www.cse.usf.edu) is part of the College of Engineering, has 22 faculty members, and offers B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees. The department has an active graduate program serving over 65 doctoral students with 12 PhD graduates during 2007/2008 academic year. The research program is well supported by federal and state agencies including DoD, DoE, DoT, NIH, NSF, as well as industry. Partnerships for inter-disciplinary research exist with the other research centers within the College and University. The University has a $1.8 billion annual budget, an annual economic impact of $3.2 billion, and serves more than 45,000 students on campuses in Tampa, St. Petersburg, Sarasota-Manatee and Lakeland. USF is a member of the Big East Athletic Conference. For full consideration applications must be received by November 21, 2008, though they may be considered until the positions are filled. The application package should include a cover letter, curriculum vitae, brief statement outlining research and teaching goals, and the names and contact information of at least three references. These application materials are to be submitted online at http://www.cse.usf.edu/faculty-search/. For questions please send email to csesearch at cse.usf.edu.The University of South Florida is an Affirmative Action / Equal Opportunity employer. Women and minorities are strongly encouraged to apply. -- ------------------------------------------------------- Sudeep Sarkar, Professor Computer Science and Engineering University of South Florida 4202 E Fowler Ave., ENB 118 Tampa, FL 33620, USA Phone: 813 974 2113 Email: sarkar at cse.usf.edu http://www.cse.usf.edu/~sarkar/ From mapfn at bath.ac.uk Thu Nov 6 08:17:47 2008 From: mapfn at bath.ac.uk (Fabio Nemetz) Date: Thu, 06 Nov 2008 16:17:47 +0000 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Workshop on Human Interaction with Intelligent & Networked Systems Message-ID: <010101c9402b$34e87230$9eb95690$@ac.uk> Workshop on Human Interaction with Intelligent & Networked Systems http://www.cs.bath.ac.uk/hiins In conjunction with Intelligent User Interfaces conference (IUI2009): ?http://www.iuiconf.org February 8th, 2009, Sanibel Island, Florida http://www.cs.bath.ac.uk/hiins Important Dates Submission deadline: November 12th, 2008 ? Notification of acceptance: November 15th, 2008 Final camera ready submissions: November 28th, 2008 Workshop: February 8th, 2009 Submission Participants will be required to submit a 2-4 page position paper which will be reviewed by the workshop programme committee against the following criteria: - Relevance to topic - Novelty/Originality of contribution - Rigour in approach - Potential impact - Ability to communicate to other disciplines - Ability to appreciate other disciplines Submissions will be accepted in a CHI format (template downloadable from Workshop website).? Papers should be sent in PDF format to hiins at cs.bath.ac.uk ?Workshop Outputs The workshop will distribute the position papers to all attendees before the workshop. At the workshop the focus will be on developing links, identifying common themes, identifying common problems, developing opportunities for joint working and combining of approaches, identifying appropriateness of approaches to specific areas and problems. From the workshop we will produce a research agenda and a structure for combining the approaches, problems etc to identify opportunities for further joint research and joint publications. In summary we will produce: - Pre workshop position papers - Post workshop research agenda - Post workshop research collaborations leading to collaborative funding proposals. - Post workshop structure, themes, and contributing authors for a special journal issue. Workshop Format The workshop will have two distinct phases - first sharing attendees interests, research areas, research problems and research approaches. From this we will construct a capability map and identify where research problems, approaches, come together and cluster across the attendees. The second phase of the workshop will focus upon identifying a research agenda, where and how different approaches might be fruitfully brought together to address these research challenges, identify potential collaborative research projects, and identify the structure, themes and authors for a special issue of a journal. Aims and Scope Increasingly systems have the ability to undertake decisions and execute actions without reference to people in either the choice of decision or the course of action. Additionally such systems have the ability to work both alongside and with people. However how these systems manage and execute their work alongside people and with people and communicate and interact with those people is a subject of current research concern. Issues arise such as how do people who are in some sense part of a system that includes "autonomous" components communicate, coordinate and collaborate together to avoid conflict, failure or worse. Similarly, issues concern the recognition and communication of intent, and implication with respect to human-system interaction. Extending considerations to system - system interaction when we create system that must communicate, coordinate and collaborate with each other. These systems have to be designed but their behaviours and ongoing interactions are often not well understood and/or evolve as the systems develop. Examples of these systems are developing in many areas including health, agriculture, transport, energy and defence. The focus of this research is to bring together researchers from different disciplines who have interests in understanding, designing, deploying and assessing the such systems from the perspective of their interaction with people and how they communicate, coordinate and collaborate. Drawing out such issues as awareness, understanding, sharing and joint activity, and considering such aspects as intentions, states, goals, and resources, through mechanisms such as negotiation, planning, task-allocation and task sharing. This is a timely workshop and IUI is the main area that offers the chance for these different communities to come together to focus on the nature and form of human interaction with complex, networked and autonomous systems. (Note: because the boundaries between these systems are blurred we are not wishing to exclude any and while there are distinctions we do not want to use those to divide or exclude possible attendees). Objectives The following are the workshop objectives: - Bring together a community of researchers and practitioners to develop the research agenda needed to enhance human interaction with increasingly powerful and independent intelligent systems e.g. sensors networks, autonomous systems, agents and robotic systems. - This community will include but not be limited to those with interest in decision-making, human computer interaction, collaborative work, human-robot/agent interaction and sensor networks. - To define and harness the potential synergies between isolated communities of interest such that they can collaborate to identify and tackle the higher-level problems/research questions relating both to the current generation of complex, powerful, independent, intelligent systems and the next. - To identify specific opportunities for exchange between PIM researchers and HCI researchers. Potential Participants The workshop will be of interest to researchers and practitioners from a number of communities. In particular we welcome and will attract attendees from different communities including those working in: - Human computer interaction - Intelligent systems and decision making - Sensors and networks - Human - Robot/Agent interaction - Collaborative systems Organisers Workshop chairs: Peter Johnson, University of Bath, UK Mark T. Maybury , Information Technology Division, MITRE, USA Rachid Hourizi, University of Bath, UK Christopher Middup, University of Bath, UK Program committee: Peter Johnson, University of Bath, UK Mark Maybury, MITRE, USA Jill Drury, CSIRO, Australia Cecile Paris, MITRE, USA Neil Carrigan, University of Bath, UK Hilary Johnson, University of Bath, UK Jo Thoms, BAE Systems, UK Steve Benford, University of Nottingham UK From guo at eng.kagawa-u.ac.jp Sat Nov 8 20:10:27 2008 From: guo at eng.kagawa-u.ac.jp (Shuxiang GUO) Date: Sun, 09 Nov 2008 13:10:27 +0900 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] CFP of IEEE ICMA 2009 (August 9-12, 2009) Message-ID: <4.2.0.58.J.20081109130902.02b024e0@smtp.eng.kagawa-u.ac.jp> Dear Colleague, The 2009 IEEE International Conference on Mechatronics and Automation (ICMA 2009) will take place in Changchun, Jilin, China from August 9 to August 12, 2009. Please visit the website http://www.ieee-icma.org/ for the detailed information. A renowned ancient city in China, Changchun is situated in northeastern China. As the capital of Jilin province, Changchun is known as the cradle of new China's automobile industry, applied chemistry and so on. It ranks predominantly China in terms of the research and development on optics, exactitude apparatus, laser technique, macromolecule material, biological super conduct and automobile, etc. The objective of ICMA2009 is to provide a forum for researchers, educators, engineers, and government officials involved in the general areas of mechatronics, robotics, automation and sensors to disseminate their latest research results and exchange views on the future research directions of these fields. The topics of interest include, but not limited to the following: - Intelligent mechatronics, robotics, biomimetics, automation and control systems - Opto-electronic elements and Materials, laser technology and laser processing - Elements, structures, mechanisms, and applications of micro and nano systems - Teleoperation, telerobotics, haptics, and teleoperated semi-autonomous systems - Sensor design, multi-sensor data fusion algorithms and wireless sensor networks - Biomedical and rehabilitation engineering, prosthetics and artificial organs - Control system modeling and simulation techniques and methodologies - AI, intelligent control, neuro-control, fuzzy control and their applications - Industrial automation, process control, manufacturing process and automation Important Dates: March 20, 2009: Full papers and organized session proposals May 1, 2009: Proposals for tutorials and workshops May 15, 2009: Notification of paper and session acceptance June 1, 2009: Submission of final papers in IEEE Contributed Paper: All paper must be submitted in PDF format prepared strictly following the IEEE PDF Requirments for Creating PDF Documents for the IEEE XploreR. The standard number of pages is 6 and the maximum page limit is 8 pages with extra payment for the two extra pages. See detailed instructions in the conference web site. All paper accepted by IEEE ICMA 2009 will be indexed by EI and included in IEEE XploreR. Organized Sessions: Proposals with the title, the organizers, and a brief statement of purpose of the session must be submitted to an OS Chair by March 20, 2009. Tutorials & Workshops: Proposals for tutorials and workshops that address related topics must be submitted to one of the Tutorial/Workshop Chairs by May 1, 2009. Best Paper Competition: IEEE ICMA conference has the following four categories of conference awards: 1) Best Conference Paper Award 2) Toshio Fukuda Best Award in Mechatronics 3) Best Paper Award in Automation 4) Best Student Paper Award The winner of the Best Paper Award will receive a certificate. You are expected to make contributions to this conference via contributing high quality papers and attending the conference. We are striving to make IEEE ICMA 2009 a high quality conference. Your strong support is greatly appreciated. Sincerely, yours Toshio Fukuda & Shuxiang Guo, General Chairs of IEEE ICMA 2009 Yong Yu, Program Chair of IEEE ICMA 2009 ---------------------------------------- Shuxiang GUO (PH.D, Professor, IEEE Senior Member) Founding Chair of IEEE ICMA Conference ( IEEE International Conference on Mechatronics and Automation) Intelligent Mechanical Systems Eng'g Dept. Fac. of Engineering, Kagawa University 2217-20, Hayashi-cho, Takamatsu, 761-0396, JAPAN Tel:+81-87-864-2333, Fax:+81-87-864-2369(2333) E-mail: guo at eng.kagawa-u.ac.jp URL:http://www.eng.kagawa-u.ac.jp/~guo/ URL:http://biomecha.eng.kagawa-u.ac.jp/ ----------------------------------------- From lagoudakis at intelligence.tuc.gr Tue Nov 11 01:56:49 2008 From: lagoudakis at intelligence.tuc.gr (Michail G. Lagoudakis) Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2008 11:56:49 +0200 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Call for Papers: RoboCup International Symposium 2009 Message-ID: <491956E1.3000702@intelligence.tuc.gr> ******************************************************************** >>> CALL FOR PAPERS >>> CALL FOR PAPERS <<< CALL FOR PAPERS <<< ******************************************************************** RoboCup International Symposium 2009 Gratz, Austria June 30 - July 3, 2009 http://www.robocup2009.org/202-0-symposium.html ******************************************************************** OVERVIEW The 13th annual RoboCup International Symposium will be held in conjunction with RoboCup 2009, during the Competitions and Demonstrations. The Symposium represents the core meeting for presentation and discussion of scientific contributions to a variety of research areas related to all RoboCup divisions (RoboCupSoccer, RoboCupRescue, RoboCup at Home, and RoboCupJunior). Its scope encompasses, but is not restricted to, research and educational activities within the fields of Robotics and Artificial Intelligence. Due to its interdisciplinary nature, the symposium offers a unique venue for exploring various and intimate connections of theory and practice across a wide spectrum of research fields. The experimental, interactive, and benchmark character of the RoboCup initiative presents the opportunity to disseminate novel ideas and promising technologies, which are rapidly adopted and field-tested by a large (and still growing) community. SUBMISSION We solicit submissions of papers reporting on high-quality, original research with relevance to the areas mentioned below. All researchers working in these areas, even if not actively participating in RoboCup teams, are urged to submit their work. Both papers describing real-world research and papers reporting theoretical results, as well as combinations thereof, are welcome. We also encourage the submission of high-quality overview articles for any field related to the general scope of RoboCup. The proceedings of the RoboCup International Symposium are published and archived within the Springer-Verlag Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence (LNAI) series. Submitted papers are limited to 12 pages formatted according to the LNAI requirements and must be electronically submitted through the symposium web site. All contributions are peer-reviewed by at least three reviewers using a blind review process. IMPORTANT DATES Submission of abstracts: February 2, 2009 23:59 PST Submission of papers: February 9, 2009 23:59 PST Notification to authors: April 13, 2009 Camera-ready papers: April 27, 2009 23:59 PST RoboCup Symposium 2009: June 30 - July 3, 2009 SYMPOSIUM CO-CHAIRS Jacky Baltes, University of Manitoba, Canada Michail G. Lagoudakis, Technical University of Crete, Greece Tadashi Naruse, Aichi Prefectural University, Japan Saeed Shiry, Amirkabir University of Technology, Iran AREAS OF INTEREST * Robot Hardware and Software -- mobile and humanoid robots -- sensors and actuators -- embedded and mobile devices -- robot construction and new materials -- robotic system integration -- robot software architectures -- robot programming environments and languages -- real-time and concurrent programming -- robot simulators * Perception and Action -- distributed sensor integration -- sensor noise filtering -- real-time image processing and pattern recognition -- motion and sensor models -- sensory-motor control -- robot kinematics and dynamics -- high-dimensional motion control * Robotic Cognition and Learning -- world modeling -- localization, navigation, and mapping -- planning and reasoning -- decision making under uncertainty -- reinforcement learning -- complex motor skill acquisition -- motion and sensor model learning * Multi-Robot Systems -- team coordination methods -- communication protocols -- learning and adaptive systems -- teamwork and heterogeneous agents -- dynamic resource allocation -- adjustable autonomy * Human-Robot Interaction -- human-robot interfaces -- speech synthesis and natural language generation -- visualization * Education and Edutainment -- Robotics and Artificial Intelligence education -- educational robotics -- robot kits and programming tools -- robotic entertainment * Applications -- disaster rescue information systems -- search and rescue robots -- robotic surveillance -- service robots -- robots at home ******************************************************************** From korniesi at ipvs.uni-stuttgart.de Tue Nov 11 05:20:05 2008 From: korniesi at ipvs.uni-stuttgart.de (Serge Kernbach) Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2008 14:20:05 +0100 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] OPEN PhD/PostDoc POSITIONS Message-ID: <058501c94400$3948a240$81d84581@pcardano> OPEN PhD/PostDoc POSITIONS ANNOUNCEMENT Dep. of Parallel and Distributed Systems University of Stuttgart, Germany ----------------------------------------- We have open research positions within the domain of multi-robot systems, reconfigurable and evolutionary robotics as well as underwater robots (EU-projects, see for example www.symbrion.eu). Applicants are expected to have a research background in mechanical/electronic design and in multi-robot/swarm algorithms. Excellent programming skills are also required. Applicants must show a strong interest for interdisciplinary/bio-inspired research. Send applications to Prof. P.Levi: paul.levi at ipvs.uni-stuttgart.de. Feel free to contact me in case of questions. Kind regards, Serge Kernbach ------------------------------------------------------------------ Dr.rer.nat. Serge Kernbach Institute of Parallel and Distributed Systems University of Stuttgart Universit?tsstr. 38, D-70569 Stuttgart, Germany Phone: +49-711-7816-373 Fax: +49-711-7816-250 E-mail: serge.kernbach at ipvs.uni-stuttgart.de ------------------------------------------------------------------ From rjwood at eecs.harvard.edu Tue Nov 11 06:20:52 2008 From: rjwood at eecs.harvard.edu (Rob Wood) Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2008 09:20:52 -0500 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] postdoc position, Harvard Microrobotics Lab Message-ID: <5435C26F-BB44-4C12-9683-A90B472A256C@eecs.harvard.edu> The Harvard Microrobotics Lab is currently seeking applicants for a postdoc position pertaining to the development of artificial muscles for soft robotics applications. There is a renewed interest in compliant robots that move in novel ways and are capable of dramatic changes in body morphology. Such a device will require quantum advances in scalable, fast, efficient, compliant actuation. We anticipate that the high performance artificial muscles generated in this effort will be applicable to many existing platforms, and also enable a new class of mobile robots: 'chemical robots'. 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. Applicants should have a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering, chemical engineering, chemistry, or a related field. Experience with microfabrication techniques is essential. The position is open immediately (12/1/08) and is guaranteed for a year with a possible second year extension. 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 Prof. Wood: rjwood at seas.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 jmh at cs.utah.edu Wed Nov 12 10:37:17 2008 From: jmh at cs.utah.edu (John Hollerbach) Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2008 11:37:17 -0700 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Demonstration papers due Nov 15 for World Haptics 2009 Message-ID: <491B225D.8040207@cs.utah.edu> Dear colleague, Two-page demonstration papers, describing a hands-on demo proposed for World Haptics 2009, are due on November 15 for World Haptics 2009. Please visit http://www.worldhaptics2009.org/Submission.html for information on how to submit. Sincerely yours, John Hollerbach General Chair From kanda at atr.jp Wed Nov 12 17:19:40 2008 From: kanda at atr.jp (Takayuki Kanda) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2008 10:19:40 +0900 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Call for Papers: RO-MAN2009 Message-ID: <002501c9452d$e8fd9eb0$baf8dc10$@jp> *** Call for Papers *** 18th IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN2009) Toyama, Japan, Sep. 27 - Oct. 2, 2009 "Interaction Design based on Robotics for Our Society" RO-MAN 2009 will be held in Toyama, Japan, during Sep. 27 to Oct.2, 2009. RO-MAN addresses fundamental issues in coexistence of robots and humans from psychological and philosophical aspects over interaction and communication mechanisms to technological systems and architectures. Authors will have choice of ordinary "oral session" or "interactive oral session" that requires 1 min. of plenary talk, poster and exhibition of robots/systems. Toyama city is located in the center of Japan, and surrounded by beautiful nature such as the Japan Sea and Alps. One can travel to the three big cities, Tokyo, Osaka, or Nagoya in only a few hours by JR train. There are international flights to Seoul, Vladivostok, Dalian and Shanghai. Please visit the website http://ro-man2009.org for the detailed information. ** Important Dates ** Feb. 15 '09 Proposals for special sessions and workshops/tutorials Feb. 28'09 Notification of special sessions and workshops/tutorials Mar. 15'09 Submission of full-length paper and/or video Jun. 15'09 Notification of paper acceptance Jul. 15'09 Submission of camera-ready final papers *** Robot Week in Toyama, Japan *** - Japan Robot Festival: Sep. 25-27, 2009 - IEEE RO-MAN: Sep. 27-Oct. 2, 2009 - Techno Fair: Oct. 1-3, 2009 ** Relevant Topics ** Fundamental Interaction Components - Auditory cognition: cognition/interpretation of voice, sound, or language - Haptic interaction - Motion planning and navigation in the vicinity of humans - Novel interfaces and interaction modalities - Robot software architecture and development tool - Visual sensing and cognition: gesture, posture, face, facial expression Intelligence and Emotion - Context awareness and intention understanding - Knowledge and inference processing - Machine learning and adaptation in human-robot interaction - Motivations and emotions in robots Social/Ethical/Aesthetic Issues - Evaluation methods and new methodologies - Human factors and ergonomics in human-robot interaction - Innovative robot designs for human-robot interaction - Sociality/personality of robots or virtual characters Case Studies and Applications - Androids and other applications - Assistive robotics for supporting the elderly or people with special needs - Robotic companions and social robots - Robots in art, education and entertainment - Virtual and augmented tele-presence applications From mmxie at ntu.edu.sg Wed Nov 12 19:18:35 2008 From: mmxie at ntu.edu.sg (Xie Ming (Assoc Prof)) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2008 11:18:35 +0800 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Two Ph.D Scholarship in Humanoid Robotics Message-ID: <93859E1D3F846D4C918E01B2094A2A3604B7F6CE@EXCHANGE21.staff.main.ntu.edu.sg> Nanyang Technological University now offers two Ph.D scholarships for outstanding candidates to work on the government funded research project on humanoid robots (http://www.ntu.edu.sg/home/mmxie/ht.html). We would like to invite qualified candidates with strong interest and belief in humanoid robots to apply and to join our dynamic team. We do not restrict the topics of research as long as they are focused on the broad scope of humanoid robotics (planning, learning, control, perception, cognition, decision-making, cooperation, intelligence, etc). Interested candidates can visit http://www.ntu.edu.sg to know more about NTU. The ideal candidates will have: - B.Eng or M.Eng from well-recognized institutions in one of these areas such as robotics, mechatronics, control, computer science, or applied mathematics. - Self-motivation. - Innovative mind in either theoretical or practical aspect. - Good communication skill in English. Send any inquiry to ming.xie at robotics.sg From aude.billard at epfl.ch Wed Nov 12 23:06:21 2008 From: aude.billard at epfl.ch (Aude Billard) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2008 08:06:21 +0100 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] HRI09: CFP LATE BREAKING PAPERS / VIDEO Message-ID: <1931471061CF4B76B8129C2127D4C84F@lasalap1> ******************************************************************************************* CALL FOR VIDEOS and LATE BRAKING SHORT PAPERS 4th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI'09) http://hri2009.org March 11-13, 2009, San Diego, CA ******************************************************************************************* IMPORTANT DATES: 01 December 2008 Submission of videos 12 December 2008 Notification of acceptance of videos 15 December 2008 Submission of late-breaking short papers 15 January 2009 Notification of acceptance of late-breaking papers ******************************************************************************************* CFP LATE BREAKING SHORT PAPERS Authors are encouraged to submit their late-breaking results for short papers (two pages) which will not appear in the proceedings but which will be presented in a special poster session. Detailed instructions are available on the conference web site: http://www.hri2009.org. ******************************************************************************************* CFP VIDEO SESSION We invite videos related to all aspects of HRI. This is a peer-reviewed session: besides the importance of the lessons learned and the novelty of the situation, the entertainment value will be judged. The videos will be published in the conference proceedings and archived in the ACM Digital Library. Guidelines and Requirements a.. Videos should be self explanatory. There will be no live narration or introduction. b.. No revisions will be accepted. Submit the final version. c.. Videos should not exceed 3 minutes in length. We recommend titles and credits last less than 3 seconds each. d.. The video cannot exceed 30MB (upload capped). e.. The video should play on standard PC and Macintosh computers with no 3rd party codecs added. Use Windows .avi, QuickTime.mov, or .mp4. f.. Do not use DRM. g.. Start the filename with the lead author's last name. h.. The videos will be played on a projected screen. Therefore, please use a horizontal resolution of at least 640 pixels. If you can use a higher resolution and still stay under the MB cap, please do so. i.. If accepted, ACM requires video authors to sign a release. Copyright remains with author but 3rd party material must have verified copyright. Therefore, copyrighted media (music, video, etc) should not be included unless permission has been obtained. Authors are responsible for obtaining such permission. j.. As this is peer-reviewed and archival, the chairs strongly discourage videos which contain advertisements or are heavily promotional in nature. Submission instructions Submitting a video to the HRI 2009 Video Session is a two part process. 1.. Upload video: Use the upload method on http://www.hri-metrics.org/hri09videos/ to submit your movie. Please make sure the workspace below reports a successful upload. 2.. Email details to the chairs: Send the following in a plain text email to Aaron Steinfeld, astein+videos at cs.cmu.edu. This content will be included in the ACM Digital Library with the video. a.. Video title b.. Author 1, Affliation and email address c.. Author n, Affliation and email address d.. 350 word abstract For example: a.. A Happy Robot b.. Aaron Steinfeld, Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, steinfeld at cmu.edu c.. This video shows a robot which is happy when surrounded by friendly people. It becomes sad when everyone leaves. ******************************************************************************************* General Co-Chairs Matthias Scheutz (mscheutz at indiana.edu) Indiana University Fran?ois Michaud (Francois.Michaud at USherbrooke.ca) Universit? de Sherbrooke Program Co-Chairs Pamela Hinds (phinds at stanford.edu) Stanford University Brian Scassellati (scaz at cs.yale.edu) Yale University Video Session Co-Chairs Aaron Steinfeld (steinfeld at cmu.edu) Carnegie Mellon University Christoph Bartneck (c.bartneck at tue.nl) Eindhoven University of Technology Publicity Co-Chairs Aude Billard (aude.billard at epfl.ch) Ecole Polytechnique F?d?rale de Lausanne (EPFL) Christine Lisetti (lisetti at cis.fiu.edu) Florida International University Patrick Rau (rpl at mail.tsinghua.edu.cn) Tsinghua University From jaydev at umd.edu Tue Nov 11 13:07:16 2008 From: jaydev at umd.edu (Jaydev P. Desai) Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2008 16:07:16 -0500 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Post-Doc in Surgical Robotics at University of Maryland, College Park: Project: Robot-enabled OCT and MRI guided breast biopsy/RFA. Message-ID: <4919F404.8010706@umd.edu> *We currently have 3 Post-Doc openings and this is one of the three positions - Details at: http://rams.umd.edu -- Position description:* Research Associate (Post-Doc) position in Surgical Robotics for the design, development, and implementation of a teleoperated robotic system with real-time optical imaging capability using Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) for guiding breast biopsy (Bx) and radio-frequency ablation (RFA) probe within the breast under continuous Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) is available at the University of Maryland, College Park. This project is a collaborative effort between the Department of Mechanical Engineering of University of Maryland, College Park, Fischell Department of Bioengineering, and Department of Radiology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. *Required expertise:* Expertise in one or more of the areas relating to: robot kinematics and dynamics, teleoperated needle guidance and steering, hands-on experience in optics design and fabrication, fiber-optics, and micro-optics is desired. Strong hardware design and integration skills and expertise in C++ is a pre-requisite. Selection of potential candidates will begin immediately. *Application package:* Interested candidates should submit the following by email in a single PDF file to jaydev at umd.edu. 1. Curriculum vitae with a list of at least 3 references 2. At least three papers which could be either published, accepted for publication, or in-preparation which demonstrate some of the required expertise mentioned above. 3. Relevant courses taken during Ph.D studies 4. Expected date of graduation (for those who are currently pursuing a Ph.D) 5. Doctoral dissertation topic 6. A one-page summary of research background and interests and how it aligns with the current position. -- Dr. Jaydev P. Desai Associate Professor RAMS Laboratory Department of Mechanical Engineering Room 0160, Bldg 088, Glenn L. Martin Hall University of Maryland College Park, MD 20742 Phone: 301-405-4427 Fax: 301-314-9477 Web: http://rams.umd.edu From esposito at usna.edu Tue Nov 11 13:00:58 2008 From: esposito at usna.edu (Joel Esposito) Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2008 16:00:58 -0500 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Beta Release of the Matlab Toolbox for the iRobot Create (MTIC), US Naval Academy Message-ID: <0A3E4E110DE44402B2AC6C4E58EFDFF4@dynamic.usna.edu> iRobot's Create ( http://store.irobot.com/shop/index.jsp?categoryId=3311368 ) is a popular, highly affordable (130 USD) , mobile robotics platform based on the popular Roomba vacuum cleaner robot. It is well suited for education, research and outreach. The Create can be connected to a base station PC via wired or wireless serial connection; or via a Bluetooth adapter. MTIC provides a set of intuitive, high-level Matlab functions that allow you to control the actuators and sensors from a base station running the Matlab programming environment. The toolbox also has limited compatibility with older Roomba platforms. Download MTIC at http://www.usna.edu/Users/weapsys/esposito/roomba.matlab/ We welcome all feedback on the beta version at esposito at usna.edu Enjoy, ================================== Assoc. Professor Joel M. Esposito Dept. of Systems Engineering US Naval Academy Annapolis, MD USA http://www.usna.edu/Users/weapsys/esposito/ From jaydev at umd.edu Thu Nov 13 06:53:43 2008 From: jaydev at umd.edu (Jaydev P. Desai) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2008 09:53:43 -0500 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Post-Doc in RAMS Lab in "Cell Manipulation and Imaging" at University of Maryland, College Park Message-ID: <491C3F77.7050804@umd.edu> *We currently have 3 Post-Doc openings and this is one of the three positions - Details at: http://rams.umd.edu -- ** Position Description:* A postdoctoral position is available (starting early 2009) for a motivated individual to work in a collaborative 3D imaging project between the laboratories of Dr. Jaydev Desai at the University of Maryland (Robotics, Automation, Manipulation, and Sensing (RAMS) - http://rams.umd.edu) and Dr. Sriram Subramaniam at the National Cancer Institute (http://electron.nci.nih.gov). The successful candidate will join an interdisciplinary team working on a project that involves combining (i) recent advances in technology for 3D cellular imaging using light and electron microscopy with (ii) advances in mass spectrometry and force mapping of cell surfaces using MEMS and (iii) advanced computational tools to develop robust, automated technologies for the mapping of cellular architecture at molecular resolution. *Required Expertise:* We seek applications from outstanding candidates who have completed their Ph.D. in electrical or mechanical engineering within the last 3 years, with an interest in extending their interests to work on problems of fundamental relevance to HIV/AIDS and cancer research. No prior expertise in biology or medicine is required, but a strong background in MEMS, nanofabrication, and physical sciences is desired. *Application package:* Interested candidates should submit the following by email in a single PDF file to jaydev at umd.edu. 1. Curriculum vitae with a list of at least 3 references 2. At least three papers which could be either published, accepted for publication, or in-preparation which demonstrate some of the required expertise mentioned above. 3. Relevant courses taken during Ph.D studies 4. Expected date of graduation (for those who are currently pursuing a Ph.D) 5. Doctoral dissertation topic 6. A one-page summary of research background and interests and how it aligns with the current position. *Contact Information:* Jaydev P. Desai Associate Professor Director - Robotics, Automation, Manipulation, and Sensing (RAMS) Laboratory Department of Mechanical Engineering Room 0160, Bldg 088, Glenn L. Martin Hall University of Maryland College Park, MD 20742 Phone: 301-405-4427 Fax: 301-314-9477 Web: http://rams.umd.edu/ From trinkle at gmail.com Thu Nov 13 07:23:13 2008 From: trinkle at gmail.com (jeff trinkle) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2008 10:23:13 -0500 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Information Meeting in DC for new NSF Program on Cyber-Physical Systems Message-ID: <4f5f4cd20811130723y550d929ane85cd7ecf6602269@mail.gmail.com> A public information meeting on the newly announced NSF research program on Cyber-Physical Systems will be held December 15, 2008, in northern Virginia, near NSF. Registration is now open at http://varma.ece.cmu.edu/InfoCPS. Seating will be limited - so, please register early. Probable webcast arrangements will also be available at the website. New Program on Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS). The National Science Foundation's Directorates for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) and Engineering (ENG) are spearheading a groundbreaking program in Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) because of its scientific and technological importance as well as its potential impact. The term cyber-physical systems refer to the tight conjoining of and coordination between computational and physical resources. CPS grand challenges exist in a number of sectors critical to U.S. security and competitiveness, as has been highlighted in recent reports from the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the President's Council of Advisors on Science and TechTo Whom It May Concern:To Whom It May Concern:nology (PCAST). These sectors include aerospace, automotive, chemical production, civil infrastructure, energy, healthcare, manufacturing, materials and transportation. The CPS program is seeking proposals that address research challenges in three CPS themes: Foundations; Methods and Tools; and Components, Run-time Substrates, and Systems. We would like to draw your attention to the CPS Program Solicitation (NSF 08-611), which is available at: http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=503286 You may also find the report from a workshop on Robotics and CPS held at IROS 2008 useful: http://www.ece.cmu.edu/~webk/IROS_CPS/. -- Jeff Trinkle Prof. and Head Dept of Computer Science Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (518) 276-8291 From monica.reggiani at unipd.it Fri Nov 14 00:10:08 2008 From: monica.reggiani at unipd.it (Monica Reggiani) Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2008 09:10:08 +0100 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] CfP: ICAR 2009 (14th International Conference on Advanced Robotics) Message-ID: <956760ea0811140010k1e91d269o7c04224c400ac79c@mail.gmail.com> ** Apologies for cross-postings. ** ** Please send to interested colleagues and students.** ===================================================================== FIRST CALL FOR PAPERS 14th International Conference on Advanced Robotics (ICAR 2009) Munich, Germany, June 24th to 26th, 2009 Theme: Able Robots http://www.icar2009.org/ http://www.icar2009.org/download/ICAR2009_CPF.pdf Paper submission deadline: March 13, 2009 Sponsored by the German Robotics Society (DGR) Technically Co-sponsored by IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (RAS) ====================================================================== ------------------------------------------------------------ CONFERENCE THEME ------------------------------------------------------------ The theme of ICAR 2009 will be "able robots", where "able" is the lexical intersection of "cap-able", "depend-able", "measur-able", "afford-able". These adjectives stand as synonyms for four rather fundamental and important features of robots which are supposed to deliver useful and economically competitive services in everyday environments under everyday conditions. Robots need to be "cap-able" of performing functions, which are considered to be of real use to a customer. These functions and capabilities have to be shown in a "depend-able" manner 24 hours per day, 7 days per week and 52 weeks per year. Service robots, which have become products, have become "measur-able" because their price performance ratio determines their competitiveness. Measurability of functions, components, system designs is needed to develop competitive service robot products. Finally, attention must be paid not only to the development of high technology but also to "afford-able" technology, which leads to a competitive price performance ratio of the eventual service robotics products. We solicit original high-quality contributions particularly, but not exclusively addressing the following scientific and technological issues: * cap-able * motion planning and navigation, reactive and sensor-based planning, visual navigation, mapping and localization, robot control, kinematics and dynamics, behavior based systems, robot architectures, distributed robot systems, sensing and perception, scene understanding, situation awareness, force and tactile sensing, haptics, sensor fusion, visual servoing, tracking, manipulation, mobile manipulation, grasping, reasoning, learning, interaction, service robotics, domestic robotics, home automation, field and service robotics * afford-able * low-cost localization, low-cost sensing and 3D perception, low-cost wide-area navigation, low-cost collision detection and obstacle avoidance, low-cost manipulation and grasping, low-cost actuation, low-cost coverage, low-cost robot design * measur-able * performance measures and procedures, benchmarks, experimental robotics, standards * depend-able * robust autonomy, error recovery, remote diagnosis and monitoring, self-modeling, self-monitoring, self-repair Special sessions will be organized for the following topics (amongst others): * disposable robots * robotic learning by experimentation * benchmarking and best practice in robotics ------------------------------------------------------------ SUBMISSION OF PAPERS AND WORKSHOP/TUTORIAL PROPOSALS ------------------------------------------------------------ Authors are encouraged to submit their papers electronically in PDF format through http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=icar2009 The page limit for submission is six pages in the double-column publication format (including figures, tables, and references). A maximum of two additional pages are permitted at an extra charge payable at the time of submitting the final, camera ready version of the paper. At least one author of each accepted paper should attend the conference to present the paper. ICAR 2009 is also currently inviting workshop and tutorial proposals for the Workshop Program. A proposal with title, a brief description of the workshop/tentative call for papers, and organizers' names and affiliations should be submitted to the Workshop Chair by February 15, 2009. For detailed up-to-date information and step-by-step instructions, please visit the official ICAR website: http://www.icar2009.org/authorsarea/ ------------------------------------------------------------ IMPORTANT DATES ------------------------------------------------------------ Workshop/Tutorial Submission Deadline: February 15, 2009 Paper Submission Deadline: March 13, 2009 Notification of Acceptance: April 24, 2009 Camera-ready Paper Submission: May 15, 2009 ------------------------------------------------------------ COMMITTEES ------------------------------------------------------------ * Honorary Chairs Rolf Dieter Schraft, Fraunhofer IPA Gerd Hirzinger, DLR Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics * General Chair Erwin Prassler, Bonn-Rhein-Sieg Univ. of Applied Sciences * Program Chair Paolo Fiorini, Univ. of Verona * Workshop and Tutorial Chair Gerhard Kraetzschmar, Bonn-Rhein-Sieg Univ. of Applied Sciences * Financial Chair Rainer Bischoff, KUKA Roboter GmbH * Publication Chair Martin H?gele, Fraunhofer IPA * Publicity Chair Monica Reggiani, Univ. of Padua * Industrial Liaison Chair Gisbert Lawitzky, Siemens AG * International Steering Committee J. Angeles (Canada) A.K. Bejczy (USA) A. Casals (Spain) P. Dario (Italy) B. Espiau (France) G. Giralt (France) J.O. Gray (UK) G. Hirzinger (Gemany) O. Khatib (USA) G. Sandini (Italy) R.D. Schraft (Gemany) J. Trevelyan (Australia) Y. Umetani (Japan) * Local Organizer Corinna Noltenius, GPS Gesellschaft f?r Produktionssysteme GmbH ------------------------------------------------------------ VENUE ------------------------------------------------------------ All sessions and activities of the ICAR 2009 conference will be held at the Munich Marriott Hotel, Berliner Strasse 93, Munich, Germany ------------------------------------------------------------ FURTHER INFORMATION ------------------------------------------------------------ Inquiries may be sent by e-mail message to the general chair: Erwin Prassler, Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University of Applied Sciences E-Mail: erwin.prassler at fh-brs.de Detailed information on the Conference is available at the Conference web page: http://www.icar2009.org/ From ssingh at ri.cmu.edu Thu Nov 13 15:58:58 2008 From: ssingh at ri.cmu.edu (Sanjiv Singh) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2008 18:58:58 -0500 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] JFR special issue on DARPA Urban Challenge Part 3 (FREE Access) Message-ID: <5E31EEC3-CCB2-453D-A358-1D92F011874F@ri.cmu.edu> **** All articles in Part 3 can be accessed for free. **** Special Issue on the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge, Part 3 Issue Edited by Martin Buehler, Karl Lagnemma, Sanjiv Singh Volume 25 Issue 10 (October 2008) The Journal of Field Robotics announces the last of three parts of a special issue comprising 13 papers in total describing all of the vehicles that competed as finalists in the DARPA Urban Challenge (DUC). The current issue presents the last four papers from this series, leading off with a description of the MIT entry. The next paper presents an analysis of the collision between the MIT and Cornell vehicles, followed by a description of the Cornell entry. The ?nal paper describes the entry by the Oshkosh team. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ** Editorial Martin Buehler, Karl Iagnemma, Sanjiv Singh http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/121477119/PDFSTART ** A perception-driven autonomous urban vehicle John Leonard, Jonathan How, Seth Teller, Mitch Berger, Stefan Campbell, Gaston Fiore, Luke Fletcher, Emilio Frazzoli, Albert Huang, Sertac Karaman, Olivier Koch, Yoshiaki Kuwata, David Moore, Edwin Olson, Steve Peters, Justin Teo, Robert Truax, Matthew Walter, David Barrett, Alexander Epstein, Keoni Maheloni, Katy Moyer, Troy Jones, Ryan Buckley, Matthew Antone, Robert Galejs, Siddhartha Krishnamurthy, Jonathan Williams http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/121420967/ PDFSTART ** The MIT-Cornell collision and why it happened Luke Fletcher, Seth Teller, Edwin Olson, David Moore, Yoshiaki Kuwata, Jonathan How, John Leonard, Isaac Miller, Mark Campbell, Dan Huttenlocher, Aaron Nathan, Frank-Robert Kline http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/121477122/ PDFSTART ** A perspective on emerging automotive safety applications, derived from lessons learned through participation in the DARPA Grand Challenges J. R. McBride, J. C. Ivan, D. S. Rhode, J. D. Rupp, M. Y. Rupp, J. D. Higgins, D. D. Turner, R. M. Eustice http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/121477123/ PDFSTART ** TerraMaxTM: Team Oshkosh urban robot Yi-Liang Chen, Venkataraman Sundareswaran, Craig Anderson, Alberto Broggi, Paolo Grisleri,, Pier Paolo Porta, Paolo Zani, John Beck http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/121477146/PDFSTART ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Journal of Field Robotics seeks to promote scholarly publications dealing with the fundamentals of robotics in unstructured and dynamic environments. Articles describing robotics research with applications to the environment, construction, forestry, agriculture, mining, subsea, intelligent transportation, search and rescue, military, and space (orbital and planetary) are encouraged. Papers in sensing, sensors, mechanical design, computing architectures, communication, planning, learning, and control, applied to field applications are encouraged. Visit www.interscience.wiley.com/robotics to find out about subscribing to the journal, and to register with Wiley InterScience to receive email table of contents alerts every time the journal publishes online, by selecting the "Set E-Mail Alert" link. Details for authors are available at: http://journalfieldrobotics.org From raj.madhavan at nist.gov Thu Nov 13 13:19:05 2008 From: raj.madhavan at nist.gov (Raj Madhavan) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2008 16:19:05 -0500 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Call for Participation: IEEE/NIST Virtual Manufacturing Automation Competition Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20081113161644.02381828@mailhub.mel.nist.gov> CALL FOR PARTICIPATION IEEE/NIST Virtual Manufacturing Automation Competition: Advancing Robotic Research through an Open Source High-Fidelity Simulation Framework and Competition (See CfP Flyer available from the competition website at: http://vmac.hood.edu/attachments/064_VMAC2008Flyer.pdf). BACKGROUND Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs) represent an integral component of today's manufacturing processes. They are widely used on factory floors for intra-factory transport of goods between conveyors and assembly sections, parts and frame movements, and truck-trailer loading/unloading. Automating these systems to operate in unstructured environments presents an exciting area of current research in robotics and automation. Unfortunately, the traditional entry barrier into this research area is quite high. Researchers need an extensive physical environment, robotic hardware, and knowledge in research areas ranging from mobility and mapping to behavior generation and scheduling. An accepted approach to lowering this entry barrier is through the use of simulation systems and open source software. The IEEE Robotics and Automation Society has recognized the importance of this area by forming a new robot challenge competition that will take place annually at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA). In addition, the National Institute of Standards and Technology will be administering a National Virtual Manufacturing Automation Competition (VMAC) that will provide an opportunity for well qualified teams to try their algorithms on actual robotic platforms. It is our belief that competitions are an effective means of stimulating interest and participation among students by providing exciting technological problems to tackle. WHO CAN PARTICIPATE? Under this effort, we are soliciting faculty members and their interested students from universities and community colleges to be introduced to this time-critical research area at a workshop to be held at UC Merced. Student involvement is strongly encouraged This competition is based on the successful VMAC competition ( http://vmac.hood.edu) held in April 2008 and the RoboCup Rescue Virtual Competitions (http://www.robocup-us.org/). Since all code used in these competitions is open source, participants are able to learn from their competitors and self-sustain their research in their areas of expertise. Researchers from multi-agent cooperation, robotic mapping and localization, communications networks, and sensory processing backgrounds are particularly encouraged to participate. The participants will be provided with the necessary knowledge needed to join the robotics and automation research community in the area of manufacturing automation and will be provided with all relevant software. A full day tutorial will take place at each of the following three venues to introduce and discuss the simulation platforms and other associated details: * Carnegie Mellon University/University of Pittsburgh: October 23rd 2008 * Georgia Institute of Technology: December 4th 2008 * University of California, Merced: December 11th 2008 INTERESTED? Please RSVP with a succinct statement of how you expect to benefit from your participation. This year's National VMA Competition will be held at the NIST campus in Gaithersburg MD, and the International Competition will be held during ICRA '09 in Kobe Japan. For both events, virtual participation is possible. BEYOND THE COMPETITION ... Using a metrics-driven competition model, advancements in the various technologies comprising the AGV control system are quantified, helping the community gauge as well as target progress. It is our belief that these competitions will serve as a model for establishing a university-community focused on a real-world practical problem. This effort is administered under the IEEE Washington/Northern Virginia Section Robotics & Automation Society Chapter. RAS Chapters from across the United States are invited to be a sponsor of this competition by spreading the word among their members and helping us with the local organization of the regional tutorials. CONTACT DETAILS: Dr. Stephen Balakirsky Dr. Raj Madhavan Mr. Chris Scrapper Intelligent Systems Division National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8230. Email: robosim at nist.gov --------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 ftobe at therobotreport.com Fri Nov 14 07:13:22 2008 From: ftobe at therobotreport.com (Robot (ftobe)) Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2008 07:13:22 -0800 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] A New Robotics Research Resource Message-ID: <92CA4218-6A4A-47BC-8D79-10AAB9C5D936@therobotreport.com> In 2011, more than 18 million robots will populate the world - up from 6.5 million in 2007. Most of the growth will be in the robotic service sectors. I'm fascinated by this industry and am researching ways to make money from that research. The first result is a comprehensive news and links website: THE ROBOT REPORT dot com is a new website dedicated to tracking the business of robotics. It is a resource for news and links to and about this growing industry: ? Service Robots for Governmental and Corporate Use ? Service Robots for Personal and Private Use ? Industrial Robots ? Ancillary Businesses ? Educational and Research Facilities THE ROBOT REPORT dot com will be updated as often as there is news - and continually for the addition and maintenance of links. THE ROBOT REPORT dot com, in January, will begin daily updates of it's new ROBO-STOX(TM) index, comparing international publicly-traded robotic stocks to the S&P500. You can help make THE ROBOT REPORT dot com a success by telling your friends and colleagues about the site, sending stories and links, and suggesting new ideas and improvements. A viral marketing plan would certainly be appreciated. Perhaps even advertise on the site. Please visit and explore this new site. Tell your friends. Send in stories, ideas and links. Tell me what you think. And forward this announcement to all your friends and colleagues. Thank you. Frank Tobe http://www.therobotreport.com Santa Barbara, CA 805 895-4141 From emg at dei.unipd.it Fri Nov 14 12:57:25 2008 From: emg at dei.unipd.it (Emanuele Menegatti) Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2008 21:57:25 +0100 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] CfP: Special Issue on Omnidirectional Robot Vision (RAS Journal) Message-ID: ===Robotics and Autonomous Systems (Elsevier) ====== ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Special Issue: Omnidirectional Robot Vision ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Guest Editors: * Emanuele Menegatti (University of Padua, Italy) * Tomas Pajdla, (Czech Technical University in Prague, Czech Republic) CALL FOR PAPER Omnidirectional vision research has always been greatly stimulated by mobile robotics and it has been finding its major applications there. Significant progresses have been made since the pioneer works which used shielded light bulbs or steel spheres as mirrors. Nowadays, several companies are selling high quality omnidirectional mirrors and cameras. Recently, a broader community has started working with omnidirectional sensors and commercial applications appeared also in surveillance and automotive industry. The increase of resolution of modern cameras overcome one of the major limitations of omnidirectional vision, the low resolution of omnidirectional images. The increase of computational power on board of nowadays robots and vehicles enables the use of more complex robot vision algorithms. Therefore, more computer vision algorithms are now applicable to omnidirectional images and the new approaches show their effectiveness in moving robots or autonomous or semi-autonomous vehicles. In this special issue, we wish to collect examples of active collaboration of computer vision and robotic researchers to develop more robust, practical and applicable systems in robotics and elsewhere. The core of the special issue will be a selection of papers presented to the ?Workshop on Omnidirectional Robot Vision? at SIMPAR 2008. http://www.dei.unipd.it/~emg/omniRoboVis2008/ Authors of papers published at the workshop will be asked for an extended version of their paper to go through a new peer-review process. Nevertheless, the special issue is open also to contribution not previously submitted to the workshop. **Topics of interest - Omnidirectional sensors for robotics - Omnidirectional vision for mobile robots, flying robots and manipulators - Omnidirectional vision for robot navigation and safety - Omnidirectional vision for multi-robot teams (including RoboCup leagues) - Omnidirectional visual odometry - Omnidirectional SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping) - Omnidirectional vision in industrial robotics and automotive industry **IMPORTANT DATES (of special issue): Deadline for submission of paper: January 30, 2009 Notification of acceptance: March 25, 2009 Submission of final camera ready papers: April 25, 2009 **SUBMISSION: Please send your contribution by email directly to the Guest Editors at the following addresses emanuele.menegatti at dei.unipd.it, pajdla at cmp.felk.cvut.cz in PDF format following the template you can find at: http://ees.elsevier.com/robot/ The number of pages of the single paper can range between 15 and 24. Best regards, Emanuele Menegatti and Tomas Pajdla - RAS Guest Editors - ------------------------------------------ Emanuele Menegatti, Ph.D. Intelligent Autonomous Systems Laboratory (IAS-Lab) Department of Information Engineering The University of Padua via ognissanti 72 I-35129 Padova - ITALY Skype: emanuele.menegatti Phone: ++39 049 827 7840 FAX: ++39 049 827 7826 http://www.dei.unipd.it/~emg ------------------------------------------ ========================================================== This email comes from the EURON-DIST mailinglist. You can edit your personal mailinglist profile (including unsubscription) via https://lists.iais.fraunhofer.de/sympa/info/euron-dist From julie.a.adams at vanderbilt.edu Fri Nov 14 16:35:55 2008 From: julie.a.adams at vanderbilt.edu (Julie A. Adams) Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2008 18:35:55 -0600 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Faculty Positions: EECS Vanderbilt University Message-ID: THE DEPARTMENT OF ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING AND COMPUTER SCIENCE (EECS) AT VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY is seeking candidates for one or more potential faculty appointments each in CS and EE. Appointments at all ranks will be considered, with a preference for appointment at the assistant professor level. Search areas of emphasis in CS are software engineering, graphics/human-computer interactions, artificial intelligence, and/or web technologies. Search areas of emphasis in electrical engineering are nanoelectronics/photonics, and/or signal/image processing. In both CS and EE, we seek opportunities to add to department capabilities in high performance computing/computational science. A Ph.D. in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a closely related field is required, as is experience commensurate with the level of appointment sought. The EECS has 32 full-time faculty members, 225 undergraduate students, and 170 graduate students. Research awards to the Department average ~ $600k per tenure/tenure-track faculty member. For more information, please visit our web site: http://eecs.vuse.vanderbilt.edu. Applications consisting of a cover letter specifying the areas of particular interest in EE or CS, a statement of planned research activity and teaching interests, a complete curriculum vitae, and the addresses of four references should be sent to Professor Daniel M. Fleetwood, Chair, EECS Department, Vanderbilt University, PO Box 92, Station B, Nashville, TN 37235-0092. Founded in 1873, Vanderbilt is a private, coeducational university with approximately 6,000 undergraduates and 5,000 graduate and professional students. Vanderbilt University is an equal-opportunity, affirmative-action employer. Julie A. Adams Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Vanderbilt University From oli at cs.umass.edu Mon Nov 17 08:44:07 2008 From: oli at cs.umass.edu (Oliver Brock) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2008 11:44:07 -0500 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] CFP: Autonomous Mobile Manipulation Message-ID: <2330F00E4A3C924AB7F7297AE42D353530BE3D@zor.ads.cs.umass.edu> ========================================= Deadline in less than one month from now! ========================================= 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 prahlad at nus.edu.sg Mon Nov 17 18:06:53 2008 From: prahlad at nus.edu.sg (Prahlad Vadakkepat) Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2008 10:06:53 +0800 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] 6th Int. Conf. on Computational Intelligence, Robotics and Autonomous Systems References: <200811151551.mAFFpEQ5087362@APPLY.CSAIL.mit.edu> <82D169AB2230FA459E2832C4BD0C7A59061AD457@MBX03.stf.nus.edu.sg> Message-ID: <2E4AC16A5332964ABC35AE3FD2CC998E09CD2EC4@MBX03.stf.nus.edu.sg> 6th International Conference on Computational Intelligence, Robotics and Autonomous Systems 16-18 AUGUST 2009, INCHEON, KOREA http://ciras.nus.edu.sg The 6th International Conference on Computational Intelligence, Robotics and Autonomous Systems (CIRAS) will be held in Incheon, Korea in August 2009 under the auspicious of FIRA RoboWorld Congress 2009 [http://robotics.nus.edu.sg/fira2009/] -------- The Congress proceedings will be published by Springer. Selected good papers will be published in the following two International Journals: (1) International Journal of Social Robotics (2) International Journal of Intelligent Computing and Cybernetics -------- TOPICS OF INTEREST: We look forward to receive your paper submission in the areas including, but not limited to: Intelligent Control and Real Time Control Autonomous Systems, Survivability, Multi-Agent Systems Neuro-computing, DNA Computing and Life Science Fuzzy Systems, Neural-Fuzzy Systems, and Neural Networks (NN) Distributed Systems, Embedded systems, Power Systems, and Evolutionary Systems Educational Technology, Humanoids, Rough Sets, and Evolvable Hardware Interaction and collaboration between robots, Robot-ethics in human society Systems Design Automation, Multimodal Sensor Fusion, Data Mining, and Evolutionary Logistics Cooperative Robotics, Evolutionary Robotics and Robot Soccer Systems Hybrid CI Algorithms, Genetic Algorithm, and Multi-objective Evolutionary Algorithm Evolutionary Computation (EC), Distributed? and Real Time Evolutionary Computation PAPER SUBMISSION: Authors are invited to submit the complete manuscripts in PDF format. [The online submission URL will be made available on the conference homepage]. ? IMPORTANT DATES SUBMISSION? ????????: 01 Feb 2009 ACCEPTANCE ????????: 10 Mar 2009 FINAL SUBMISSION : 01 April 2009 SPECIAL SESSIONS: The Congress solicits special session proposals. The special sessions are intended to usher in, in-depth discussions in special areas relevant to the conference theme. The session organizers will coordinate the associated review process. The conference proceedings will include all papers from the special sessions. RELATED EVENTS: 12th FIRA RoboWorld Congress 2009 Korea, 16-18 August, 2009 14th FIRA RoboWorld Cup 2009 Korea, 18-20 August 2009 Global Fair and Festival 2009, Incheon, Korea, 7 August-25 October 2009 From hirata at irs.mech.tohoku.ac.jp Tue Nov 18 04:54:43 2008 From: hirata at irs.mech.tohoku.ac.jp (Yasuhisa Hirata) Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2008 21:54:43 +0900 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Advanced Robotics : Vol. 22, No. 13-14 issue Message-ID: <4922BB13.2050701@irs.mech.tohoku.ac.jp> ************************************************************************ The Official International Journal of the Robotics Society of Japan Advanced Robotics Volume 22, Number 13-14, 2008 ************************************************************************ You have free access to the abstracts of all papers below from the following link, and can access the pdf files if you or your institution is subscribing to Advanced Robotics: http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/vsp/arb/2008/00000022/f0020013 Table of Contents Mobile Robot Control Architecture for Reflexive Avoidance of Moving Obstacles pp. 1397-1420(24) Authors: Hong, Keum-Shik; Tamba, Tua Agustinus; Song, Jae-Bok Driving Mode Decision in the Obstacle Negotiation of a Variable Single-Tracked Robot pp. 1421-1438(18) Authors: Jeong, Hae Kwan; Choi, Keun Ha; Kim, Soo Hyun; Kwak, Yoon Keun Cooperative Strategy for a Wheelchair and a Robot to Climb and Descend a Step pp. 1439-1460(22) Authors: Ikeda, Hidetoshi; Katsumata, Yoshihito; Shoji, Michihiko; Takahashi, Takayuki; Nakano, Eiji Realization of a Pheromone Potential Field for Autonomous Navigation by Radio Frequency Identification pp. 1461-1478(18) Authors: Herianto,; Sakakibara, Toshiki; Koiwa, Tomoaki; Kurabayashi, Daisuke Bi-criteria Velocity Minimization of Robot Manipulators Using a Linear Variational Inequalities-Based Primal-Dual Neural Network and PUMA560 Example pp. 1479-1496(18) Authors: Zhang, Yunong; Cai, Binghuang; Zhang, Lei; Li, Kene Positive Span of Force and Torque Components in Three-Dimensional Four-Finger Force-Closure Grasps pp. 1497-1520(24) Authors: Niparnan, Nattee; Sudsang, Attawith; Chongstitvatana, Prabhas A System for Robotic Heart Surgery that Learns to Tie Knots Using Recurrent Neural Networks pp. 1521-1537(17) Authors: Mayer, Hermann; Gomez, Faustino; Wierstra, Daan; Nagy, Istvan; Knoll, Alois; Schmidhuber, Juergen Steady Crawl Gait Generation Algorithm for Quadruped Robots pp. 1539-1558(20) Authors: Hwang, Heeseon; Youm, Youngil Dynamic Analysis and Control Synthesis of Grasping and Slippage of an Object Manipulated by a Robot pp. 1559-1584(26) Authors: Jazi, Shahram Hadian; Keshmiri, Mehdi; Sheikholeslam, Farid Scrub Nurse Robot for Laparoscopic Surgery pp. 1585-1601(17) Authors: Takashima, Kazuto; Nakashima, Hiromichi; Mukai, Toshiharu; Hayashi, Shuji These are the relevant links to Advanced Robotics: http://www.rsj.or.jp/AR/index_e.html [Advanced Robotics Home Page] http://www.rsj.or.jp/AR/Subscribe_e.html [How to Subscribe] http://www.rsj.or.jp/AR/Submit_e.html [Paper Submission] -- Shigeki Sugano (Waseda University, Japan) Editor-in-Chief, Advanced Robotics Takashi Yoshimi (Toshiba Corporation, Japan) Committee Chair of RSJ International Journal e-info at rsj.or.jp From timo.henne at fh-bonn-rhein-sieg.de Thu Nov 20 04:37:45 2008 From: timo.henne at fh-bonn-rhein-sieg.de (Timo Henne) Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2008 13:37:45 +0100 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] PhD and Post-Doc positions in Autonomous Systems Message-ID: <49255A19.4040801@fh-bonn-rhein-sieg.de> The Bonn-Aachen International Center for Information Technology (B-IT) at the University of Applied Sciences Bonn-Rhein-Sieg has several positions for Research Assistants and Doctoral Students (PhD positions and/or Post-Doc positions) in Autonomous Systems B-IT is a joint research center cooperating with the University of Bonn, RWTH Aachen University, University of Applied Sciences Bonn-Rhein-Sieg and the Fraunhofer Institute Center at Birlinghoven Castle. Supported by the B-IT foundation and complementary state resources, the center offers highly selective international master programs in Applied IT as well as summer schools for qualified computer science students. Applicants should have solid experiences in at least two of the following areas: . data mining applied to raw sensor data . machine learning and statistical learning theory . model-based design methods applied to robotics . agile software engineering methods . autonomous mobile robots for service applications Opportunities are provided to conduct high quality research in the aforementioned areas leading to a PhD, or to do post-doctoral research in a highly networked research group involved in multiple national and European research projects. Candidates are also expected to support University of Applied Sciences Bonn-Rhein-Sieg in enhancing the quality of teaching. Experiences in the following areas would be advantageous: . e-learning and blended learning . management of a social environment for students . marketing of educational content The positions will initially be limited to a term of 3 years with the possibility of an extension depending on the future funding situation. The salary follows the categories of German public services (up to E14 TV-L). Part-time employment is possible. For further information see http://www.inf.fh-bonn-rhein-sieg.de or contact Prof. Paul G. Pl?ger (paul.ploeger at fh-bonn-rhein-sieg.de). Handicapped applicants will be preferred if equally qualified. The Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University of Applied Sciences strives to increase the share of female academic staff and therefore encourages women to apply. Please send your application by 1.12.2008 to Fachhochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg, Personaldezernat, Grantham-Allee 20, 53757 Sankt Augustin, Germany. From jiang at gradschool.uni-luebeck.de Thu Nov 20 01:33:40 2008 From: jiang at gradschool.uni-luebeck.de (Chaoqun Jiang) Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2008 10:33:40 +0100 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] 16 PhD Scholarships for Computing in Medicine and Life Sciences at the Graduate School Luebeck, Germany Message-ID: <49252EF4.1070804@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 the University of Luebeck is now offering Ph.D. scholarships for the following 16 projects: Brach I: Neuroengineering, Robotics and Navigation I 1b - Correction of Susceptibility caused Distortions in Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging I 1c - Endoscopic Optical Coherence Tomography in the Deep Brain I 1e - Transcranial sonography (TCS) in monogenic forms of Parkinsonism I 2a - Stroke Rehabilitation Robot I 2b - Parallel mode of action control: from human studies to intelligent robotic interfaces I 2d - Cardiac pacemaker localisation I 3b - Brain Modelling I 4c - Robot assisted navagation guided OCT operating microscope I 5a - Definition of cortical networlks for the control of eye and hand movements I 5c - 3-dimensional kinematic principles of eye, head and limb movements I 6a - Interfaces based on EEG, ECoG and DBS Brach II: Computing in Structural and Cell Biology II 2 - Inhibitor Design II 3b - Efficient Methods of Exact Solutions of Complex Problems in Molecular Biology II 3c - Synaptic Plasticity: Regulatory Mechanisms in Receptor Trafficking II 5 - Computational analysis of RNA structure II 7 - Analysis of adult stem cells by computer vision Please visit our website www.gradschool.uni-luebeck.de for more detailed descriptions of the projects. Ph.D. scholarships amounts to 1250 ? per month. Students with a master's degree in computer science, mathematics or engineering are invited to apply for admission. The application deadline is January 15, 2009. In certain cases, students must submit, as part of their application, the results of one of the acknowledged language tests to prove their English proficiency. Do not hesitate to contact us if you have any further questions via email: management at gradschool.uni-luebeck.de before sending your application. From benoit.girard at college-de-france.fr Thu Nov 20 06:33:52 2008 From: benoit.girard at college-de-france.fr (Benoit Girard) Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2008 15:33:52 +0100 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Post-Doc announcement Message-ID: <49257550.2010707@college-de-france.fr> Dear colleague, I would like to transmit to following post-doc position announcement to the robotics worldwide mailing list : *Head stabilization and top-down control of humanoid robots* Keywords : Humanoid robotics, neuroscience, movement control, stabilized vision, vestibulo-ocular reflex, locomotion. A post-doc position is available on bio-inspired walking control of humanoid robots. The position will be hosted at the Laboratory of Physiology of Perception and Action (LPPA, College de France, Paris) and will be conducted in close collaboration with the Laboratory for Analysis and Architecture of Systems (LAAS, Toulouse France) and the Aldebaran Robotics company (Paris). The position could begin in January 2009. The 1 year contract could be renewed twice for a total of three years. It is part of the humanoid robot ROMEO project, gathering several French robotics laboratories and companies. Humanoid robots are complex mechanical systems that include several kinematic chains in tree structure and contain a high number of degrees of freedom. To localize and control such systems, it is necessary to measure the angular value of each joint and determine the position and orientation of at least one reference frame, attached to the robot, with respect to the environment. To this end, roboticists usually consider a reference frame located in the chest, as it constitutes the central node of simple independent kinematic chains (i.e. the members and the head) and is close to the center of gravity of the robot. Considering this spatial reference, control strategies based on generalized inverse pendulum models have been proposed to control the center of gravity within an horizontal plane in order to make the Zero Moment Point (ZMP) follow a prescribed trajectory defined by successive planned steps. As efficient as it could be, this control strategy turns out to be in contradiction with available knowledge about human locomotion. Indeed, during walking, the center of gravity strongly oscillates while the head appears to be stabilized. Experimental studies tend to show that this stabilization concerns the head orientation with respect to the gravity (Pozzo et al, 1990) as well as the gaze stabilization using the vestibulo-ocular reflex. It appears then that the central nervous system rather plans a stable head trajectory, while the rest of the body implements this plan according to the local constraints (Hicheur et al., 2005, 2007). Furthermore, because of the conjunction of visual, auditory and vestibular sensory systems, the head constitutes an excellent multi-sensory spatial reference and, as a consequence, an ideal base for controlling the whole body motion. In addition, contrary to a reference located in the chest, which would require coordinates transformation, the spatial information is directly delivered at the head level by the sensors, providing better precision and control robustness. Following this reasoning, the objective of this post-doctoral work is to develop an innovative bio-inspired ?top-down? control architecture that guarantees the stabilization of the head and uses this reference for controlling the locomotion of the whole body. A NAO humanoid robot developed by Aldebaran robotics, with a modified head including an actuated visual system and inertial sensors, will be available from the beginning of the project. The candidate must have a strong background in robotics and a real interest for investigating bio-inspired approaches. * Pozzo, T., Berthoz, A. and Lefort, L. (1990). Head stabilization during various locomotor tasks in humans. Experimental Brain Research 82(1):97-106. * Hicheur, H., Pham, Q.-C., Arechavaleta, G., Laumond, J.-L. And Berthoz, A. (2007). The formation of trajectories during goal-oriented locomotion in humans. I. A stereotyped behaviour. European Journal of Neuroscience 26(8):2376-2390. * Hicheur, H., Vieilledent, S. and Berthoz, A. (2005). Head motion in humans alternating between straight and curved walking path: Combination of stabilizing and anticipatory orienting mechanisms. Neuroscience Letters 383:87?92. Contacts : * B. Girard _benoit.girard at college-de-france.fr _ * A. Berthoz _alain.berthoz at college-de-france.fr _ * Ph. Sou?res _soueres at laas.fr _ -- Beno?t Girard, LPPA - CNRS / Coll?ge de France 11 place Marcelin Berthelot 75231 Paris Cedex 05 http://benoit.girard.free.fr/ http://www.lppa.college-de-france.fr/equipes/people/Girard/ From pgoncalves at est.ipcb.pt Thu Nov 20 08:36:15 2008 From: pgoncalves at est.ipcb.pt (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Paulo_Jorge_Sequeira_Gon=E7alves?=) Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2008 16:36:15 +0000 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Call for Papers: Robotica'2009 - 9th CONFERENCE ON AUTONOMOUS ROBOT SYSTEMS AND COMPETITIONS In-Reply-To: <851a09ac0811190418l27c85fe5kf4a88976a9e18885@mail.gmail.com> References: <851a09ac0811190418l27c85fe5kf4a88976a9e18885@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <851a09ac0811200836h7e771b5cp461dcd1003eb456@mail.gmail.com> ********************************************************************************************************* ---- CALL FOR PAPERS ---- CALL FOR PAPERS ------ CALL FOR PAPERS ------ ********************************************************************************************************* 9th CONFERENCE ON AUTONOMOUS ROBOT SYSTEMS AND COMPETITIONS http://www.est.ipcb.pt/robotica2009/ec/index.htm with IEEE-RAS Technical co-sponsorship The 9th Conference on Autonomous Robot Systems and Competitions is the 2009 edition of the scientific meeting of the Portuguese Robotics Open - ROB?TICA'2009 (http://www.est.ipcb.pt/robotica2009/), and will take place at the Polytechnic Institute of Castelo Branco, Portugal, on May 7th, 2009. This conference aims to disseminate scientific contributions in areas of relevance to Autonomous Robotics. Its scope encompasses, but is not restricted to the fields of Artificial Intelligence, Robotics and Education. Topics ====== Artificial Intelligence Architectures and Middleware for Autonomous Robots Motion and Actuation Systems Sensorimotor Control System Integration and Software Engineering Computer Vision and Image Processing Recognition, Localization and Tracking Planning, Reasoning and Modelling Navigation and Control of Mobile Robots Simultaneous Localization and Mapping Mobile Robots and Humanoids Multi-agent and Multi-robot Systems Cooperative Perception and Navigation Robot Team Coordination Learning and Adaptive Systems Field and Service Applications Robotic Competitions Simulation and Visualization Computer and Robotic Entertainment Edutainment Robotics Submission =========== Authors are kindly invited to submit electronically their contributions by February 1st, 2009. Each contribution consists of a full-length paper with a possibly attached video. Detailed instructions on the electronic submission process and formats can be found at the conference website: http://www.est.ipcb.pt/robotica2009/ec/index.htm Submissions will be peer reviewed by the International Program Committee and selected on the basis of quality and relevance to the topics of the conference. Important Dates =============== Submission of full-length papers 1st February, 2009 Notification of acceptance 16th March, 2009 Camera Ready papers 26th March, 2009 Robotica'2009 begins 7th May, 2009 Publication and Prizes ====================== All accepted contributions, either presented orally or in the poster session, will be published in the conference proceedings (DVD and book). Videos included in an accepted contribution will also be published in the conference DVD. The 9th Conference on Autonomous Robot Systems and Competitions will award prizes based on the reviewers comments and respective Committees. The final selection will be announced during the conference and in the conference web site. Organizers ========== Paulo Gon?alves (IPCB - PT) Paulo Torres (IPCB - PT) best regards, -- Paulo Jorge Sequeira Gon?alves www.est.ipcb.pt/pessoais/paulog From terry.fong at nasa.gov Thu Nov 20 10:07:24 2008 From: terry.fong at nasa.gov (Terry Fong) Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2008 10:07:24 -0800 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] software developer (NASA Ames Intelligent Robotics Group) Message-ID: <4925A75C.90400@nasa.gov> Position: Software Developer Location: Intelligent Robotics Group NASA Ames Research Center (Moffett Field, CA) We are looking for a full-time developer to help NASA send robots to the Moon. If you want to make a difference in space exploration, come join us! Ideal candidates will have a solid history of implementing and deploying complex software systems that integrate multiple languages and libraries on multiple platforms. Responsibilities: - Develop software tools for remotely controlling a rolling-walking robot. This project includes interactive 3D graphics, GUI design, middleware, and working with multi-language/multi-platform components. - Develop software sysetms for processing satellite imagery of the Moon into maps and 3D models. This work involves creating very high-performance processing pipelines and innovative geospatial user interfaces. Applicants should hold a B.S. (or higher) in Computer Science or Robotics and have solid experience in software design and implementation. A strong background in UNIX-based development is required. In addition, knowledge in one (or more) of the following areas is greatly preferred: - Structured software engineering and process including use of UML, OOP, and design patterns - Advanced proficiency with C++, Eclipse, Java/JNI, Linux development (GNU tools, svn, etc), shell scripting, and complex build systems (using Makefiles, Ant, and CMake) - Experience writing software for distributed and multi-threaded applications, including interprocess communications and middleware - Web-based web programming and scripting experience (javascript, python/zope, django, etc.) - Team-based product development experience (configuration management, build management, regression testing, and documentation) If you are interested in applying for this position, please send the following via email: 1. A letter describing your background and software experience 2. A detailed resume (PDF or text) 3. Contact details for at least two references to Terry Fong . *** *** U.S. citizenship or Permanent Resident status is REQUIRED *** The NASA Ames Intelligent Robotics Group (IRG) is dedicated to enabling humans and robots to explore and learn about extreme environments, remote locations, and uncharted worlds. IRG conducts applied research in a wide range of areas with an emphasis on robotics systems science and field testing. IRG's expertise includes applied computer vision (navigation, 3D surface modeling, automated science support), human-robot interaction, interactive 3D user interfaces, robot software architecture, and planetary rovers. For more information, please visit: http://irg.arc.nasa.gov From PatrickPfaff at kuka-roboter.de Thu Nov 20 14:11:51 2008 From: PatrickPfaff at kuka-roboter.de (Pfaff Patrick) Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2008 23:11:51 +0100 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] 2nd CFP: Journal of Field Robotics, Special Issue on Three-Dimensional Mapping, DEADLINE EXTENSION Message-ID: <9188EBADF1DD1A44AEE31CD4E0E78BB5034FA2F5@deau1svmail1.roboter.kuka.de> 2nd Call for Papers on -------------------------------------------------- Three-Dimensional Mapping -------------------------------------------------- for a special issue of the Journal of Field Robotics http://www.journalfieldrobotics.org/ Special Issue Guest Editors: Patrick Pfaff, Kuka Roboter GmbH, Wolfram Burgard, University of Freiburg. Recently, three-dimensional representations of environments have gained substantial interest in the robotics community as such maps provide better support for a wide variety of tasks including navigation, localization, and perception. For example, robots that know about the three-dimensional structure of the environment can better avoid obstacles, can more reliably localize themselves, and can more robustly detect objects. Accordingly, three-dimensional representations provide benefits in all applications in which robots are deployed in real-world scenarios. Additionally, three-dimensional models of environments are envisioned to be useful in a wide area of applications, which goes far beyond robotics, like architecture, emergency planning, interaction, and visualization. In all of these application domains, there is a need for methods that can automatically construct 3D-models. The goal of this special issue of the Journal of Field Robotics is to collect recent advances and state-of-the-art results in the area of learning three-dimensional maps with mobile robots with a particular emphasis on fielded systems and systems that operate in unstructured and dynamic environments. We particularly seek papers that both cover fundamental aspects of mapping along with those that describe the acquisition or maintenance of three-dimensional representations in natural, unstructured environments. Authors are invited to submit papers that cover relevant areas of three-dimensional mapping for field robotic systems including (but not limited to) stereo vision, autonomous cars, navigation, dynamic objects, cooperative systems, approximation and reconstruction techniques, and 3D-SLAM. Important Dates: EXTENDED DEADLINES!!!! January 5 , 2009 - Submission of manuscripts April 5, 2009 - Reviews sent to the authors July 5 , 2009 - Final manuscripts due for publication For comments, suggestions, or requests, please send email to Pfaff Patrick > or Wolfram Burgard > From zivi at usna.edu Fri Nov 21 08:56:55 2008 From: zivi at usna.edu (Edwin Zivi) Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2008 11:56:55 -0500 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Faculty Position: United States Naval Academy Message-ID: The Systems Engineering Department at the United States Naval Academy invites applications for a full-time, tenure-track faculty position at the Assistant Professor level. The department teaches a major that emphasizes applied automatic control in a laboratory intensive, ABET accredited curriculum. We seek candidates who can contribute to a broad field of study, which currently includes robotics, dynamics and control, applied microcomputers, and signal processing. Of special interest are qualifications that could expand the program in new directions such as bioengineering, MEMS, and engineering management. The Naval Academy is an undergraduate institution dedicated to teaching excellence. Class sizes are small and laboratories are generously equipped. In addition to teaching, the successful candidate is expected to publish scholarly work and play a significant role in advising student design projects. An earned doctorate in engineering or a related field is required. Excellent opportunities exist for collaboration with faculty within the department as well as nearby research organizations. Filling the position is contingent on availability of funding. Preference will be given to U.S. citizens and permanent residents. The Naval Academy is an equal opportunity, affirmative action employer, and provides reasonable accommodation to qualified applicants with disabilities. Women and minority candidates are encouraged to apply. Send a cover letter and resume to: Search Committee, c/o Kiriakos Kiriakidis, Weapons and Systems Engineering Department, 105 Maryland Ave., Annapolis, MD 21402-5025. http://www.usna.edu/WSE/ From david.filliat at ensta.fr Fri Nov 21 01:21:35 2008 From: david.filliat at ensta.fr (David FILLIAT) Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2008 10:21:35 +0100 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Postdoc positions in vision for mobile robots navigation at ENSTA, Paris Message-ID: <49267D9F.8090209@ensta.fr> The Laboratory of Electronics and Computer Engineering at ENSTA (Ecole Nationale Superieure de Techniques Avancees, Paris) is opening two positions for postdoctoral researchers on two projects in the field of vision based navigation: - The first project concerns automatic design of low-level vision algorithms for mobile robots. Recent experiments developed in our team have shown that convenient obstacle avoidance and corridor centering behaviors can be obtained in the mobile robot, using vision algorithms produced by off-line genetic programming, based on the "imitation" of recorded video sequences. The work in the Post-Doc project will first consist in improving the existing imitation strategy, in order to allow the robot to wander autonomously in more complex environments. It will also include the conception and implementation of a new model using reactive (e.g. reinforcement) learning, allowing the robot to adapt/optimize on-line its vision algorithms, to address the problem of changing/evolving environment. - The second project concerns appearance based topological navigation. We have developed an incremental, real-time topological mapping algorithm using monocular vision based on loop-closure detection. The work for the post-doc will consist in developing theory and application for the inclusion of metric information in the existing algorithm. This information should enhance the reactivity and precision of the loop closure detection and support guidance of the robot. The work will include the embedding and validation of this approach on a small autonomous robot. The candidates are expected to hold a PhD degree in a domain covering -preferably- at least 2 amongst the following themes: machine learning, computer vision, and mobile robotics. Good skills in C++ software development are required. The postdoctoral positions are opened immediately for a duration of one year. Application: Interested candidates should send a short letter of motivation, along with their detailed CV, copy of two of their most recent and relevant publications and names of 2 references to Dr Antoine Manzanera (antoine.manzanera at ensta.fr) for the first project or Dr David Filliat (david.filliat at ensta.fr) for the second project. References: Laboratory : http://uei.ensta.fr Appearance based navigation project : http://cogrob.ensta.fr/loopclosure.html Automatic algorithm design : http://www.ensta.fr/~barate/generated/publications_en.html -- --------------------------------------------------------------- David FILLIAT - Enseignant-Chercheur / Assistant Professor ENSTA/UEI Lab http://uei.ensta.fr/filliat Cognitive Robotics Theme http://cogrob.ensta.fr 32, Boulevard Victor Ph.: +33/0 1 45 52 54 13 F75739 Paris Cedex 15, France Fax: +33/0 1 45 52 83 27 --------------------------------------------------------------- From elebox10 at nus.edu.sg Thu Nov 20 18:46:40 2008 From: elebox10 at nus.edu.sg (Social Robotics Lab) Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2008 10:46:40 +0800 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] 3rd CFP for International Journal of Social Robotics Message-ID: <000901c94b83$61acbfc0$25063f40$@edu.sg> Call For Paper: Third Issue for International Journal of Social Robotics, Springer http://www.editorialmanager.com/soro/ Dear Authors, With the great response for both the Inaugural and the Second Issue for International Journal of Social Robotics, we are pleased to announce the Call for Papers in the Third Issue for International Journal of Social Robotics which is scheduled for publication on 1st August 2009. You are cordially invited to submit your original research and discoveries on scientific, technological and philosophical advances in social robots, and their interactions and communications with humans, especially innovative ideas and concepts, new discoveries and improvements, as well as novel applications on the latest fundamental advances in the core technologies that form the backbone of Social Robotics, distinguished developmental projects, as well as seminal works in aesthetic design, ethics and philosophy, studies on social impact and influence pertaining to, and its interaction and communication with human beings and its social impact on our society. Topics of interest for the scientific papers and letters include but are not limited to: - Affective and cognitive sciences for socially interactive robots - Context awareness, expectation and intention understanding - Design philosophies and socially appealing design methodologies - Biomechatronics, neuro-robotics, and biomedical robotics - Human factors and ergonomics in human-robot interactions - Intelligent control and artificial intelligence for Social Robotics - Knowledge representation, information acquisition, and decision making - Learning, adaptation and evolution of intelligence - Interaction and collaboration between robots, humans and environments - Multimodal sensor fusion and communication - Robot-ethics in human society - Interactive robotic arts - Social acceptance and impact in the society - Compliance, safety and compatibility in the design of social Robots "living" with humans - Software architecture and development tools - Human-robot interaction and robot-robot interaction - Models of human and animal social behaviour as applied to robots - Applications in education, entertainment, gaming, and healthcare. The Editorial Board is committed to speedy review, fast publication, and high scientific impact. For more information, please visit: Submission On-Line: http://www.editorialmanager.com/soro/ Description of the Journal: http://www.springer.com/engineering/journal/12369 Aims and Scope: http://www.springer.com/engineering/journal/12369?detailsPage=aimsAndScopes Important Dates: Submission of Manuscripts (latest by): 1 February 2009 Notification of Acceptance: 1 April 2009 Submission of Final Paper: 1 May 2009 Final Publication: 1 August 2009 Yours sincerely, Shuzhi Sam Ge, Editor-in-Chief, International Journal of Social Robotics, Springer. Maja Mataric, Co-Editor-in-Chief, International Journal of Social Robotics, Springer. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Professor Shuzhi Sam GE, FIEEE, PhD, DIC, BSc, PEng Director, Social Robotics Lab, Interactive Digital Media Institute, and Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering The National University of Singapore, Singapore 117576 Tel: +65 6516 6821, Fax: +65 6779 1103, e-mail: samge at nus.edu.sg -------------------------------------------------------------------- Professor Maja Mataric, FAAAS, PhD, S.M., B.S. Director, Centre for Robotics and Embedded Systems (CRES), and Computer Science Department & Neuroscience Program University of Southern California Tel: +1 213 740-1169, Fax: +1 213 821-5696, e-mail: mataric at usc.edu -------------------------------------------------------------------- From choset at cs.cmu.edu Fri Nov 21 22:48:35 2008 From: choset at cs.cmu.edu (Howie Choset) Date: Sat, 22 Nov 2008 01:48:35 -0500 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Job opening in embedded Systems of Robotics Startup Message-ID: <4927AB43.5090901@cs.cmu.edu> Please forward correspondences to both jmccormick at cardiorobotics.com and choset at cs.cmu.edu *Software Job Description* **The successful candidate will be part of a small team that will design, implement, debug and verify embedded real-time software for a surgical robotic device. The candidate must be able to report progress and milestones relative to the overall development project. He or she must demonstrate initiative and sound judgment in making design decisions for new product development. _Roles and Responsibilities_ ? Contribute to multiple areas of software development including: inter-processor communications, development of graphical user interfaces, motor control, software architecture for real-time devices and integration of external OEM devices. ? Perform formal risk analysis and develop and verify software mitigations. ? Verification and validation of software for a regulated industry (ie. Medical or military) _Requirements_ ? At least 7 years experience with embedded software development for medical or military products.__ ? Software development in C/C++.__ ? Demonstrated experience in and comfortable with all phases of the product development life cycle including design, implementation, debug, verification and transfer to manufacturing.__ ? Strong inter-disciplinary understanding (electrical, controls and mechanical principles).__ ? Hands-on engineering experience with proven ability to work well in a team.__ ? Experience with real-time embedded operating systems.__ ? Experience with Matlab for real-time systems analysis.__ ? Excellent written and oral skills.__ ? Bachelors in Software, Electrical, Mechanical or Computer Engineering; Masters preferred.__ From K.Dautenhahn at herts.ac.uk Mon Nov 24 08:18:35 2008 From: K.Dautenhahn at herts.ac.uk (Kerstin Dautenhahn) Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2008 16:18:35 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [robotics-worldwide] CFP: New Frontiers in Human-Robot Interaction (Symposium at AISB2009) Message-ID: ----apologies if you receive multiple copies of this email------ NEW FRONTIERS IN HUMAN-ROBOT INTERACTION A two-day symposium, 8-9 April 2009, at AISB 2009, Edinburgh, Scotland http://homepages.feis.herts.ac.uk/~comqkd/HRI-AISB2009-Symposium.html Motivation and Background: Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) is a growing research field with many application areas that could have a big impact not only economically, but also on the way we live and the kind of relationships we may develop with machines. Due to its interdisciplinary nature different views and approaches towards HRI need to be nurtured. This symposium will provide a platform to discuss collaboratively recent findings and challenges in HRI. Different categories of submissions are encouraged that reflect the different types of research studies that are being carried out. The symposium will encourage a diversity of views on HRI and different approaches taken. In the highly interdisciplinary research field of HRI, a peaceful dialogue among such approaches is expected to contribute to the synthesis of a body of knowledge that may help HRI sustain its creative inertia that has drawn to HRI during the past 10 years many researchers from HCI, robotics, psychology, the social sciences, and other fields. Topics of interest include but are not limited to: - Developments towards robot companions - User-centred robot design - Robots in personal care and health care - Robots in search and rescue - Sensors and interfaces for HRI - Human-aware robot perception - Dialogue and multi-modal human-robot interaction - Robot architectures for socially intelligent robots - HRI field studies in naturalistic environments - Robot assisted therapy - Robots in HRI collaborative scenarios - Robots in schools and in other educational environments - Robots as personal assistants and trainers - Robot and human personality - New methods and methodologies to carry out and analyze human-robot interaction - Robots as companions and helpers in the home - Robots as assistive technology - Long-term or repeated interaction with robots - Creating relationships with robots - Expressiveness in robots - Sustaining the engagement of users - Personalizing robots and HRI interfaces - Human-robot teaching - Robots that learn socially and adapt to people - User experience in HRI - User needs and requirements for HRI - Robots as autonomous companions - Robots as remote-controlled tools - Embodied interfaces for smart homes - Ethnography and field studies - Cross-cultural studies Note, articles that are specifically addressing ethical issues in HRI are encouraged to submit to the AISB09 Symposium on .Killer robots or friendly fridges: the social understanding of Artificial Intelligence. (http://www.macs.hw.ac.uk/~ruth/krff.html), and may consider to attend both symposia which will run back to back. The symposium encourages submissions in any of the following categories. The submission should clearly state which category the article falls under: *N* Completed empirical studies reporting novel research findings In this category we encourage submissions where a substantial body of findings has been accumulated based on precise research questions or hypotheses. Such studies are expected to fit within a particular experimental framework (e.g. using qualitative or quantitative evaluation techniques) and the reviewing of such papers will apply relevant (statistical and other) criteria accordingly. Findings of such studies should provide novel insights into human-robot interaction studies. *E* Exploratory studies Exploratory studies are often necessary to pilot and fine-tune the methodological approach, procedures and measures. In a young research field such as HRI with novel applications and various robotic platforms, exploratory studies are also often required to derive a set of concrete research questions or hypothesis, in particular concerning issues where there is little related theoretical and experimental work. Although care must be taken in the interpretation of findings from such studies, they may highlight issues of great interest and relevance to peers. *S* Case studies Due to the nature of many HRI studies, a large-scale quantitative approach is often neither feasible nor desirable. However, case study evaluation can provide meaningful findings if presented appropriately. Thus, case studies with only one participant, or a small group of participants, are encouraged if they are carried out and analyzed in sufficient depth. *P* Position papers While categories N, E and S require reporting on HRI studies or experiments, position papers can be conceptual or theoretical, providing new interpretations of known results. Also, in this category we consider papers that present new ideas without having a complete study to report on. Papers in this category will be judged on the soundness of the argument presented, the significance of the ideas and the interest to the HRI community. *R* Replication of HRI studies To develop as a field, HRI findings obtained by one research group need to be replicated by other groups. Without any additional novel insights, such work is often not publishable. Within this category, authors will have the opportunity to report on studies that confirm or disconfirm findings from experiments that have already been reported in the literature. This category includes studies that report on negative findings. *D* Live HRI Demonstrations Contributors may have an opportunity to provide live demonstrations (live or via Skype), pending the outcome of negotiations with the local organization team. The demo should highlight interesting features and insights into HRI. Purely entertaining demonstrations without significant research content are discouraged. If authors feel that their particular paper does not fit any of the above mentioned categories, then they should indicate this when submitting their paper so that the reviewing process can take this into consideration. Symposium Chair: Kerstin Dautenhahn, Adaptive Systems Research Group, School of Computer Science, University of Hertfordshire, UK (use K.Dautenhahn "@" herts "." ac "." uk for any inquiries regarding the workshop) Submission of Contributions: We invite unpublished, original work as extended abstracts (up to 3 pages) or full papers of up to 8 pages (double column). In category *D* we invite one page descriptions detailing the demo and its associated research questions. Please send the PDF submissions to HRI-AISB09 (aisb-hri "@" herts "."ac "." uk) (files bigger than 2MB will not be accepted) AND send an email to Kerstin Dautenhahn (K.Dautenhahn "@" herts "." ac "." uk) with the following information: title of paper, author list, contact email, file name (as submitted to HRI-AISB09). All submissions will be peer reviewed. Proceedings: Authors of accepted contributions will be asked to prepare the final versions (up to 8 pages) for inclusion in the symposium proceedings. A special journal issue will be considered and/or a book publication. Important Dates: - 5th January 2009 : Submission deadline - 2th February 2009: Deadline for notifications sent to authors - 23rd February 2009 : Camera read copies due - 8-9 April 2009: Symposium Programme Committee: Takayuki Kanda, ATR, Japan Ben Krose, UVA, the Netherlands Aude Billard, EPFL, Switzerland Kerstin Severinson Eklundh, KTH, Sweden Takanori Shibata, AIST, Japan Henrik I. Christensen, Georgia Tech, USA Nuno Otero, University of Minho, Portugal Michael Beetz, TUM, Germany Greg Trafton, Naval Research Laboratory, USA Yiannis Demiris, Imperial College, UK Hatice Kose-Bagci, University of Hertfordshire, UK Kolja Kuehnlenz, TUM, Germany Michael A. Goodrich, Brigham Young University, USA Yoshihiko Nakamura, University of Tokyo, Japan Christoph Bartneck, Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands Michael L. Walters, University of Hertfordshire, UK Karl F. MacDorman, Indiana University, USA Hisato Kobayashi, Hosei University, Japan Tatsuya Nomura, Ryukoku University, Japan Dirk Wollherr, TUM, Germany Kheng Lee Koay, University of Hertfordshire, UK Astrid Weiss, University of Salzburg, Austria Monica Nicolescu, University of Nevada, Reno, USA Sandra Hirche, TUM, Germany Ben Robins, University of Hertfordshire, UK Christine Lisetti, Florida International University, USA Holly Yanco, University of Massachusetts-Lowell, USA Aaron Steinfeld, Carnegie Mellon University, USA Yoshihiro Miyake, Tokio Institute of Technology, Japan Tomio Watanabe, Okayama Prefectural University, Japan Haizhou Li, Institute for Infocomm Research, Singapore Adriana Tapus, USC, USA Andrea Thomaz, Georgia Tech, USA Jong-Hwan Kim, KAIST, South Korea Sylvain Calinon, EPFL, Switzerland Reid Simmons, Carnegie Mellon University, USA Julie Adams, Vanderbilt University, USA Aris Alissandrakis, Tokio Institute of Technology, Japan Yorick Wilks, University of Sheffield, UK Shuzhi Sam Ge, The National University of Singapore Odest Chadwicke Jenkins, Brown University, USA Dong-Soo Kwon, KAIST, South Korea Wolfram Erlhagen, University of Minho, Portugal Illah Nourbakhsh,Carnegie Mellon University, USA Catherina Burghart, University of Karlsruhe, Germany Manfred Tscheligi, University of Salzburg, Austria Matthias Scheutz, Indiana University Bloomington, US ----------------------------------------------------- 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 jmh at cs.utah.edu Mon Nov 24 10:28:43 2008 From: jmh at cs.utah.edu (John Hollerbach) Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2008 11:28:43 -0700 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] IJRR November-December 2008 issue Message-ID: <492AF25B.1090905@cs.utah.edu> A new issue of The International Journal of Robotics Research is available online: 1 November 2008; Vol. 27, No. 11-12 The below Table of Contents is available online at: http://ijr.sagepub.com/content/vol27/issue11-12/?etoc Special Issue on the Seventh International Workshop on Algorithmic Foundations of Robotics Srinivas Akella, Nancy M. Amato, Wesley Huang, and Bud Mishra The International Journal of Robotics Research 2008;27 1173-1174 http://ijr.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/27/11-12/1173 Path Deformation Roadmaps: Compact Graphs with Useful Cycles for Motion Planning L?onard Jaillet and Thierry Simeon The International Journal of Robotics Research 2008;27 1175-1188 http://ijr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/27/11-12/1175 Convexly Stratified Deformation Spaces and Efficient Path Planning for Planar Closed Chains with Revolute Joints Li Han, Lee Rudolph, Jonathon Blumenthal, and Ihar Valodzin The International Journal of Robotics Research 2008;27 1189-1212 http://ijr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/27/11-12/1189 Planning High-quality Paths and Corridors Amidst Obstacles Ron Wein, Jur van den Berg, and Dan Halperin The International Journal of Robotics Research 2008;27 1213-1231 http://ijr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/27/11-12/1213 Sampling-based Falsification and Verification of Controllers for Continuous Dynamic Systems Peng Cheng and Vijay Kumar The International Journal of Robotics Research 2008;27 1232-1245 http://ijr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/27/11-12/1232 Efficient Cell Labelling and Path Non-existence Computation using C-obstacle Query Liangjun Zhang, Young J. Kim, and Dinesh Manocha The International Journal of Robotics Research 2008;27 1246-1257 http://ijr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/27/11-12/1246 Nonparametric Second-order Theory of Error Propagation on Motion Groups Yunfeng Wang and Gregory S. Chirikjian The International Journal of Robotics Research 2008;27 1258-1273 http://ijr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/27/11-12/1258 Planning Time-Minimal Safe Paths Amidst Unpredictably Moving Obstacles Jur van den Berg and Mark Overmars The International Journal of Robotics Research 2008;27 1274-1294 http://ijr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/27/11-12/1274 Planning Among Movable Obstacles with Artificial Constraints Mike Stilman and James Kuffner The International Journal of Robotics Research 2008;27 1295-1307 http://ijr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/27/11-12/1295 Caging Polygons with Two and Three Fingers Mostafa Vahedi and A. Frank van der Stappen The International Journal of Robotics Research 2008;27 1308-1324 http://ijr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/27/11-12/1308 Motion Planning for Legged Robots on Varied Terrain Kris Hauser, Timothy Bretl, Jean-Claude Latombe, Kensuke Harada, and Brian Wilcox The International Journal of Robotics Research 2008;27 1325-1349 http://ijr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/27/11-12/1325 Visibility-based Pursuit?Evasion with Bounded Speed Benjam?n Tovar and Steven M. LaValle The International Journal of Robotics Research 2008;27 1350-1360 http://ijr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/27/11-12/1350 Motion Planning Under Uncertainty for Image-guided Medical Needle Steering Ron Alterovitz, Michael Branicky, and Ken Goldberg The International Journal of Robotics Research 2008;27 1361-1374 http://ijr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/27/11-12/1361 From jitan at mtu.edu Mon Nov 24 12:50:13 2008 From: jitan at mtu.edu (Jindong Tan) Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2008 15:50:13 -0500 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] IROS 2009 --- Call For Papers Message-ID: <073FF571-3C33-49B1-918F-AA0D935E5572@mtu.edu> ---IROS 2009 Call For Papers--- The 2009 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) will be held at the Hyatt Regency St. Louis Riverfront at St. Louis, Missouri, USA, from October 11 to 15, 2009. St. Louis is known as the "Gateway City", as it is seen as the Eastern/Western US dividing mark. It?s also called "Gateway to the West" on behalf of the many people who migrated west through St. Louis via the Missouri River. Following the exploration spirit of St. Louis, the conference theme is ?Exploring New Horizons in Intelligent Robots and Systems,? reflecting the growing spectrum and recent developments in intelligent robots and systems. Papers are solicited in all related areas in robotics and intelligent systems. All papers must be in PDF format prepared strictly following the IEEE PDF Requirements for Creating PDF Documents for Xplore. The standard number of pages is 6 and the page limit is 8 with extra payment for pages beyond 6. Detailed instructions are available on the conference website. We also solicit organized/special sessions on emerging areas and innovative applications of new technologies. Papers in organized/special sessions must be submitted through the regular submission process, while the proposals must be submitted to the co- chairs. Proposals for tutorials and workshops are welcome, and are encouraged to address the conference theme, to discuss new technologies in robots and intelligent systems, and to attract industrial participations. Proposals must be submitted directly to one of the co-chairs of workshop/tutorials. Important Dates: February 15, 2009: Proposals for organized/special sessions March 1, 2009: Submission of full-length papers and videos March 1, 2009: Proposals for tutorials/workshops May 31, 2009: Notification of paper and video acceptance Website: http://www.iros09.mtu.edu Ning Xi, General Chair, Michigan State University, USA William R. Hamel, Program Chair, University of Tennessee, USA -------------------------------------------------------------------- Jindong Tan Associate Professor, Computer Engineering Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering 121 EERC, 1400 Townsend Drive Houghton, MI 49931-1295 Phone: (906) 487-3115(O), (906) 281-6989(Cell) Fax: 906 487 2949 email: jitan at mtu.edu -------------------------------------------------------------------- From raj.madhavan at nist.gov Mon Nov 24 13:09:51 2008 From: raj.madhavan at nist.gov (Raj Madhavan) Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2008 16:09:51 -0500 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Call for Participation: IEEE/NIST National Virtual Manufacturing Automation Competition Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20081124160256.0230ab78@mailhub.mel.nist.gov> CALL FOR PARTICIPATION IEEE/NIST Virtual Manufacturing Automation Competition: Advancing Robotic Research through an Open Source High-Fidelity Simulation Framework and Competition DATE & VENUE DECEMBER 4TH Georgia Institute of Technology Technology Square Research Building 85 5th Street (Rooms 132-134) Atlanta, GA 30308. BACKGROUND Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs) represent an integral component of today's manufacturing processes. They are widely used on factory floors for intra-factory transport of goods between conveyors and assembly sections, parts and frame movements, and truck-trailer loading/unloading. Automating these systems to operate in unstructured environments presents an exciting area of current research in robotics and automation. Unfortunately, the traditional entry barrier into this research area is quite high. Researchers need an extensive physical environment, robotic hardware, and knowledge in research areas ranging from mobility and mapping to behavior generation and scheduling. An accepted approach to lowering this entry barrier is through the use of simulation systems and open source software. The IEEE Robotics and Automation Society has recognized the importance of this area by forming a new robot challenge competition that will take place annually at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA). In addition, the National Institute of Standards and Technology will be administering a National Virtual Manufacturing Automation Competition (VMAC) that will provide an opportunity for well qualified teams to try their algorithms on actual robotic platforms. It is our belief that competitions are an effective means of stimulating interest and participation among students by providing exciting technological problems to tackle. WHO CAN PARTICIPATE? Under this effort, we are soliciting faculty members and their interested students from universities and community colleges to be introduced to this time-critical research area at a workshop to be held at UC Merced. Student involvement is strongly encouraged This competition is based on the successful VMAC competition ( http://vmac.hood.edu) held in April 2008 and the RoboCup Rescue Virtual Competitions (http://www.robocup-us.org/). Since all code used in these competitions is open source, participants are able to learn from their competitors and self-sustain their research in their areas of expertise. Researchers from multi-agent cooperation, robotic mapping and localization, communications networks, and sensory processing backgrounds are particularly encouraged to participate. The participants will be provided with the necessary knowledge needed to join the robotics and automation research community in the area of manufacturing automation and will be provided with all relevant software. A full day tutorial will take place at each of the following three venues to introduce and discuss the simulation platforms and other associated details: * Carnegie Mellon University/University of Pittsburgh: October 23rd 2008 * Georgia Institute of Technology: December 4th 2008 * University of California, Merced: December 11th 2008 INTERESTED? For the December 4th tutorial at Georgia Tech., please RSVP by December 1st with a succinct statement of how you expect to benefit from your participation. This year's National VMA Competition will be held at the NIST campus in Gaithersburg MD, and the International Competition will be held during ICRA '09 in Kobe Japan. For both events, virtual participation is possible. BEYOND THE COMPETITION ... Using a metrics-driven competition model, advancements in the various technologies comprising the AGV control system are quantified, helping the community gauge as well as target progress. It is our belief that these competitions will serve as a model for establishing a university-community focused on a real-world practical problem. This effort is administered under the IEEE Washington/Northern Virginia Section Robotics & Automation Society Chapter. RAS Chapters from across the United States are invited to be a sponsor of this competition by spreading the word among their members and helping us with the local organization of the regional tutorials. CONTACT DETAILS: Dr. Stephen Balakirsky Dr. Raj Madhavan Mr. Chris Scrapper Intelligent Systems Division National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8230. Email: robosim at nist.gov --------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 ansgar.bredenfeld at iais.fraunhofer.de Mon Nov 24 11:33:47 2008 From: ansgar.bredenfeld at iais.fraunhofer.de (Ansgar Bredenfeld) Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2008 20:33:47 +0100 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] RoboCup German Open 2009 - Annoucement Message-ID: <492B019B.5020107@iais.fraunhofer.de> RoboCup German Open 2009 Call for Participation http://www.robocup-german-open.de 20 ? 24 April 2009 Co-located to HANNOVER MESSE 2009, Germany The RoboCup German Open 2009 will be the eighth open RoboCup competition held in Germany. The event will take place during HANNOVER MESSE 2009 sharing hall 22 with an exhibition on "Mobile Robots & Autonomous Systems" (http://www.hannovermesse.de/roboter_e). -- RoboCup Senior --------------------------------- Competitions will be held in the following leagues: - RoboCupSoccer Middle-Size - RoboCupSoccer Small-Size - RoboCupSoccer Standard Platform (Nao only) - RoboCupSoccer Humanoid - RoboCupSoccer Simulation 2D - RoboCupRescue Robot - RoboCupRescue Simulation Virtual Rescue - RoboCup at Home Visit http://www.robocup-german-open.de to pre-register your RoboCup Senior team. Pre-registration starts 1 December 2008, the deadline is *** 8 January 2009 ***. Details on the final registration will be announced after the end of the pre-registration period. The final registration period will commence in mid January and end by mid February. Only pre-registered teams will be allowed to register for the event. We strongly recommend to book accomodation as soon as possible. -- RoboCupJunior ---------------------------------- German RoboCupJunior teams have to qualify for participation in the RoboCup German Open in one of three regional events held in Magdeburg (13-15 February 2009), at the N?rburgring (28 February - 1 March 2009) and in F?rstenfeldbruck near Munich (13-15 March 2009). The registration will be opened 1 December 2008, the deadline is strict *** 19 December 2008 ***. Please visit www.robocup-german-open.de for updated information on these events. You may register for the newsletter or contact the organisation team at info at robocup-german-open.de. See you all again at the RoboCup German Open 2009! Best regards, Your OC Ansgar Bredenfeld (Chair) Philipp Baer (Middle-Size) Tim Laue (Small Size) Thomas R?fer (Standard Platform Nao) Sven Behnke (Humanoid) Holger Endert (Simulation 2D) Adam Jacoff (RoboCupRescue Robot) Andreas Birk (Simulation Virtual Rescue) Paul Pl?ger (RoboCup at Home) Manuela Kanneberg, Johannes Klotz, Martin Bader (RoboCupJunior) The organizing team are students of the University of Magdeburg RoboCup German Open 2009 is a cooperation of Fraunhofer IAIS and Deutsche Messe on behalf of the German National RoboCup Committee -- _____________________________________________________________________ Dr. Ansgar Bredenfeld Fraunhofer IAIS Schloss Birlinghoven 53754 Sankt Augustin Telefon: 02241-14-2841 ansgar.bredenfeld at iais.fraunhofer.de Fax: 02241-14-4-2841 http://www.iais.fraunhofer.de _____________________________________________________________________ From karankhokar at hotmail.com Mon Nov 24 21:54:05 2008 From: karankhokar at hotmail.com (Karan Khokar) Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2008 11:24:05 +0530 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Regarding Open Faculty Position at University of South Florida Message-ID: Hi, This is a request to post the following advertisement of an Open Faculty Position at Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of South Florida on the Robotics World-wide List serve. Thank you, Karan Khokar. -- M.S. student & Research Assistant, Rehabilitation Robotics Lab, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida, USA. ********************************************************************************************************************** Assistant Professor Department of Mechanical Engineering The Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of South Florida invites applications for one tenure-track position at the Assistant Professor level starting August 2009. The position requires an earned doctorate in Mechanical Engineering or a closely related field. The candidate is expected to collaborate in the interdisciplinary research thrust areas in robotics and biomechanics. The University has a Center for Rehabilitation Engineering & Technology with research emphasis on Rehabilitation Robotics, Prosthetics & Orthotics, and Assistive Technologies. The candidate will be expected to establish a strong externally funded research program and demonstrate commitment to both undergraduate and graduate teaching. The Department strongly encourages applications from women and under-represented minorities. The University of South Florida is among the nation's top 63 public research universities, one of 39 community engaged public universities as designated by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, and placed among the nation?s top 20 "up and coming universities" in the 2009 U.S. News & World Report annual college rankings. USF is one of Florida's top three research universities. The University was awarded $366 million in research contracts and grants last year. The university offers 219 degree programs at the undergraduate, graduate, specialist and doctoral levels, including the MD degree. The university has a $1.8 billion annual budget, an annual economic impact of $3.2 billion, and serves more than 45,000 students on campuses in Tampa, St. Petersburg, Sarasota-Manatee and Lakeland. USF is a member of the Big East Athletic Conference. The Department has 13 faculty members and offers B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Mechanical Engineering. There are approximately 90 undergraduate, 130 masters and 30 doctoral students. The Department has strong collaborations with all departments in the College of Engineering, the Colleges of Medicine, Nursing, Public Health, and College of Arts & Sciences. The Department also has strong ties with various centers and institutes such as the Center for Rehabilitation Engineering & Technology, Nanomaterials and Nanomanufacturing Research Center, H. Lee Moffit Cancer Center and Research Institute, and Clean Energy Research Center etc. Further information about the Department can be found at http://me.eng.usf.edu. Please submit by mail: 1) a signed letter of application, 2) detailed resume, 3) a one page statement of teaching interests, 3) a one to two page research plans, 4) reprints of at least three publications, and 5) a list of four references to: Professor Ashok Kumar Chair, Faculty Search Committee Department of Mechanical Engineering 4202 E. Fowler Ave, ENB 118 University of South Florida Tampa, FL 33620-5350 Reviews of applications will begin immediately. Full consideration will be given to complete applications received by November 21, 2008. Applications will considered until the position is filled. The State of Florida has a Public Meetings Law and a Public Records Law; all university searches are conducted under the terms thereof. Applicants who need disability accommodations to participate in the selection process should notify Brett Annette, EOL Coordinator at (813) 974-7736 or TDD (813) 974-2218 at least seven working days in advance of need. USF is an equal opportunity/equal access/affirmative action institution. ********************************************************************************************************************** _________________________________________________________________ Search for videos of Bollywood, Hollywood, Mollywood and every other wood, only on Live.com http://www.live.com/?scope=video&form=MICOAL From hanafiah at nuem.nagoya-u.ac.jp Tue Nov 25 01:18:13 2008 From: hanafiah at nuem.nagoya-u.ac.jp (Hanafiah Yussof) Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2008 18:18:13 +0900 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] CFP: International Conference on Advances in Mechanical Engineering ICAME09 Message-ID: <200811250918.AA02010@P3C.nuem.nagoya-u.ac.jp> ----apologies if you receive multiple copies of this email------ International Conference on Advances in Mechanical Engineering ICAME09 Dear robotics-worldwide members, The Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM), Malaysia will be hosting the International Conference on Advances in Mechanical Engineering (ICAME2009). This conference will bring together researchers, academicians, and engineers for presentations and discussions on various advances in mechanical engineering. The conference will be held at Concorde Hotel, Shah Alam, Malaysia from 24 June to 25 June 2009. Further detail about this conference is available at: http://fme.uitm.edu.my/icame/ The topics to be covered include but are not limited to: Automotive Computational Modeling and Analysis Design and Manufacturing Energy and Environment Materials Performance and Integrity Dynamic, Control, Automation and Robotic Strategic and Defense Technology Engineering Education Four Short Lectures/Courses on Advanced Topics in Mechanical Engineering will be offered in conjuction with this conference: Vehicle Dynamics and Stabilization Nano material technology Dynamics and Control of Robots Vision Analysis Datelines: Abstract submission deadline 31/12/08 Notification of acceptance 2/1/09 Submission of full paper 1/04/09 ============================================================= Dr. Hanafiah Yussof JSPS Posdoctoral Fellow Nagoya University Graduate School of Information Science Department of Complex Systems Science Furo-cho Chikusa-ku Nagoya 464-8601, Japan E-mail: hanafiah at nuem.nagoya-u.ac.jp hanafi3013 at hotmail.com Tel: +81-52-789-4251, Fax: +81-52-789-4800 or 3129 http://ns1.ohka.cs.is.nagoya-u.ac.jp/ohka_lab2/index_eng.html ============================================================= From wamageed at umiacs.umd.edu Tue Nov 25 02:56:35 2008 From: wamageed at umiacs.umd.edu (Wael Abd-Almageed) Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2008 05:56:35 -0500 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] 2nd IEEE HDMP CFP Message-ID: 2nd IEEE Workshop on Human Detection from Mobile Platforms (IEEE HDMP 2009) in conjunction with IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, Kobe, Japan, 12?17 May, 2009. Workshop Website: http://www.umiacs.umd.edu/conferences/hdmp/ Workshop Theme: The robot's ability to detect, identify and interact with surrounding humans is of unequivocal importance in many applications. When interaction with humans is imminent, safety and reliability are critical conditions before robots can be widely deployed in livable societies. For example, in health/elderly care communities, where robots interact with humans with less-thanperfect health conditions, reliable performance cannot be tolerated. Also, safe operation is major barrier before large-scale deployment of smart vehicles. Human detection, tracking and identification have been focus areas for many computer/robot vision researchers. However, many practical aspects of these problems have yet to be addressed in order to create robots capable of seamlessly interacting in livable societies, mainly because the nature of such applications requires high accuracy at very high processing rates. Computer vision and robotics researchers are invited to submit original contributions in related topics such as, but not limited to: ? Human detection in bad weather conditions ? Night-time human detection ? Multimodal human detection ? Detecting humans in non-upright postures ? Exploiting GPUs and FPGAs in human detection systems ? Recognizing dynamic human gestures ? Human tracking from mobile platforms Important Dates: Submission deadline 11:59 PST January 15th, 2009 Notification of Acceptance/Rejection 11:59 PST February 15th, 2009 Camera-ready version 11:59 PST March 1st, 2009 Workshop date May 17th, 2009 Workshop Chairs: ? Dr. Wael Abd-Almageed, University of Maryland at College Park, USA ? Dr. Larry Matthies, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, USA From Astrid.Weiss at sbg.ac.at Tue Nov 25 05:35:12 2008 From: Astrid.Weiss at sbg.ac.at (Astrid.Weiss at sbg.ac.at) Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2008 14:35:12 +0100 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] CFP: Workshop on "Societal Impact: How Socially Accepted Robots Can be Integrated in our Society" - HRI2009 Message-ID: Workshop on "Societal Impact: How Socially Accepted Robots Can be Integrated in our Society" http://workshops.icts.sbg.ac.at/hri2009societal/ at ? 4th ACM/IEE International Conference on Human Robot Interaction 2009 http://hri2009.org/ 10th of March ?2008 San Diego, CA ?????????????????????? Call for Papers (apologies for multiple postings): ? The workshop on "Societal Impact: How Socially Accepted Robots Can be Integrated in our Society" will be held in San Diego, CA at the ACM/IEEE HRI2009 conference. This half-day workshop will discuss possible methodological approaches to evaluate social acceptance and societal impact of Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) with a special focus on collaboration with robots. This workshop will be held as * Follow-up to the workshop "Robots as Social Actors: Evaluating Social Acceptance and Societal Impact of Robotic Agents" http://workshops.icts.sbg.ac.at/roman2008social/ which was held during IEEE Ro-Man 2008 and * In conjunction with the Workshop "Social Responsibility in HRI: Conducting our Research, Changing the World" http://www.rpi.edu/%7Efreien/hri2009workshop which will be held beforehand at this year's HRI conference. *Important dates* ? Submission of informal position papers (between 1 and max 4 pages):Sunday, 15th January 2009 Feedback to authors: Saturday, 28th February 2009 ? ? *Workshop topics* ? Submissions are invited addressing one or more of the following questions: 1. What kind of metrics already exist in the field of HRI for measuring social acceptance, like physiological measurements, behaviour observations, surveys etc.? 2. What are the pros and cons of existing evaluation methods and what are the innovations potentials toward other methods? 3. Do existing evaluation methods address needs for introducing robotic agents into "real life"? 4. How to support acceptance in Human-Robot Collaboration? 5. Which interdisciplinary approaches are used in HRI to address social acceptance and societal impact? 6. Which ethical issues should be concerned in the development of robotic agents, like legal aspects, psychological aspects etc. 7. How can the development of robotic agents be sustainable? 8. Which cultural differences exist in terms of societal impact on future Western and Asian societies? ? *Guidelines for submission* Workshop candidates should send a position paper (no longer than 4 A4 pages) before 15.01.2009 about a research or study they have been involved with (related to the topics described above) to astrid.weiss at sbg.ac.at. All position papers must be submitted in PDF format! *Organizing Committee* ? * Astrid Weiss, ICT&S Center - University of Salzburg, * Manfred Tscheligi, ICT&S Center - University of Salzburg, * Aude Billard, LASA Laboratory - EPFL Lausanne, From deluca at dis.uniroma1.it Fri Nov 28 01:37:10 2008 From: deluca at dis.uniroma1.it (Alessandro De Luca) Date: Fri, 28 Nov 2008 10:37:10 +0100 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] TOC of IEEE Transactions on Robotics: October 2008 issue Message-ID: Could you please distribute this? Thanks Alessandro De Luca BEGIN================== IEEE Transactions on Robotics Volume: 24 Issue: 5 Date: October 2008 SPECIAL ISSUE ON VISUAL SLAM - 14 papers in the Special Issue part - 13 papers in the normal part - Multimedia attachments to 15 papers will be available for download in about one week From the link below you have free access to all abstracts of the papers, and can access the pdf files if you or your institution is subscribing to T-RO in IEEE Xplore. http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/RecentIssue.jsp?puNumber=8860 [IEEE Xplore, RSS feed available] These are the relevant links to the IEEE Transactions on Robotics: http://www.ieee-ras.org/tro [IEEE Transactions on Robotics (T-RO) home page] http://ras.papercept.net/journals/tro [T-RO PaperCept submission page] Table of Content Guest Editorial Special Issue on Visual SLAM Neira, J.; Davison, A. J.; Leonard, J. J. Page(s): 929-931 Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TRO.2008.2004620 SPECIAL ISSUE REGULAR PAPERS Inverse Depth Parametrization for Monocular SLAM Civera, J.; Davison, A. J.; Montiel, J. M. M. Page(s): 932-945 (with Multimedia) Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TRO.2008.2003276 Large-Scale 6-DOF SLAM With Stereo-in-Hand Paz, L. M.; Pini?s, P.; Tardos, J. D.; Neira, J. Page(s): 946-957 (with Multimedia) Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TRO.2008.2004637 Fusing Monocular Information in Multicamera SLAM Sol?, J.; Monin, A.; Devy, M.; Vidal-Calleja, T. Page(s): 958-968 (with Multimedia) Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TRO.2008.2004640 An Efficient Direct Approach to Visual SLAM Silveira, G.; Malis , E.; Rives, P. Page(s): 969-979 (with Multimedia) Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TRO.2008.2004829 Discovering Higher Level Structure in Visual SLAM Gee, A P.; Chekhlov, D.; Calway, A.; Mayol-Cuevas, W. Page(s): 980-990 (with Multimedia) Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TRO.2008.2004641 A Minimalistic Approach to Appearance-Based Visual SLAM Andreasson, H.; Duckett, T.; Lilienthal, A. J. Page(s): 991-1001 Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TRO.2008.2004642 Efficient View-Based SLAM Using Visual Loop Closures Mahon, I.; Williams, S. B.; Pizarro , O.; Johnson-Roberson, M. Page(s): 1002-1014 (with Multimedia) Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TRO.2008.2004888 Appearance-Guided Monocular Omnidirectional Visual Odometry for Outdoor Ground Vehicles Scaramuzza, D.; Siegwart, R. Page(s): 1015-1026 (with Multimedia) Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TRO.2008.2004490 Fast and Incremental Method for Loop-Closure Detection Using Bags of Visual Words Angeli, A.; Filliat, D.; Doncieux, S.; Meyer, J-A. Page(s): 1027-1037 (with Multimedia) Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TRO.2008.2004514 Mapping a Suburb With a Single Camera Using a Biologically Inspired SLAM System Milford, M. J.; Wyeth, G. F. Page(s): 1038-1053 (with Multimedia) Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TRO.2008.2004520 Attentional Landmarks and Active Gaze Control for Visual SLAM Frintrop, S.; Jensfelt, P. Page(s): 1054-1065 Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TRO.2008.2004977 FrameSLAM: From Bundle Adjustment to Real-Time Visual Mapping Konolige, K.; Agrawal, M. Page(s): 1066-1077 (with Multimedia) Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TRO.2008.2004832 Information-Efficient 3-D Visual SLAM for Unstructured Domains Zhou, W.; Valls Miro', J.; Dissanayake, G. Page(s): 1078-1087 Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TRO.2008.2004834 SPECIAL ISSUE SHORT PAPER Visual SLAM for Flying Vehicles Steder, B.; Grisetti, G.; Stachniss, C.; Burgard, W. Page(s): 1088-1093 (with Multimedia) Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TRO.2008.2004521 REGULAR PAPERS Large-Scale SLAM Building Conditionally Independent Local Maps: Application to Monocular Vision Pini?s P.; Tardos, J. D. Page(s): 1094-1106 (with Multimedia) Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TRO.2008.2004636 Divide and Conquer: EKF SLAM in O(n) Paz, L. M.; Tardos, J. D.; Neira, J. Page(s): 1107-1120 (with Multimedia) Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TRO.2008.2004639 Sparse Local Submap Joining Filter for Building Large-Scale Maps Huang, S.; Wang, Z.; Dissanayake, G. Page(s): 1121-1130 Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TRO.2008.2003259 Analytical Inverse Kinematic Computation for 7-DOF Redundant Manipulators With Joint Limits and Its Application to Redundancy Resolution Shimizu, M.; Kakuya, H.; Yoon, W.-K.; Kitagaki, K.; Kosuge, K. Page(s): 1131-1142 Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TRO.2008.2003266 A Kalman Filter-Based Algorithm for IMU-Camera Calibration: Observability Analysis and Performance Evaluation Mirzaei, F. M.; Roumeliotis, S. I. Page(s): 1143-1156 Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TRO.2008.2004486 Artificial Whiskers Suitable for Array Implementation: Accounting for Lateral Slip and Surface Friction Solomon, J. H.; Hartmann, M. J. Z. Page(s): 1157-1167 Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TRO.2008.2002562 Optimal Motion Strategies for Range-Only Constrained Multisensor Target Tracking Zhou, K.; Roumeliotis, S. I. Page(s): 1168-1185 Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TRO.2008.2004488 Planning 3-D Collision-Free Dynamic Robotic Motion Through Iterative Reshaping Yoshida, E.; Esteves, C.; Belousov, I.; Laumond, J.-P.; Sakaguchi, T.; Yokoi , K. Page(s): 1186-1198 (with Multimedia) Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TRO.2008.2002312 Real-Time Adaptive Motion Planning (RAMP) of Mobile Manipulators in Dynamic Environments With Unforeseen Changes Vannoy, J.; Xiao, J. Page(s): 1199-1212 (with Multimedia) Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TRO.2008.2003277 Connectedness Preserving Distributed Swarm Aggregation for Multiple Kinematic Robots Dimarogonas, D. V.; Kyriakopoulos, K. J. Page(s): 1213-1223 Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TRO.2008.2002313 Fundamental Limitations on Designing Optimally Fault-Tolerant Redundant Manipulators Roberts, R.G.; Yu, H.G.; Maciejewski, A.A. Page(s): 1224-1237 Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TRO.2008.2003269 A New Kalman-Filter-Based Framework for Fast and Accurate Visual Tracking of Rigid Objects Yoon, Y.; Kosaka, A.; Kak, A. C. Page(s): 1238-1251 Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TRO.2008.2003281 SHORT PAPER The Influence of Teleoperator Stiffness and Damping on Object Discrimination Christiansson , G. A. V.; van der Linde, R. Q.; van der Helm, F. C. T. Page(s): 1252-1256 Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TRO.2008.2003274 ==============END -- Alessandro De Luca Dipartimento di Informatica e Sistemistica "A. Ruberti" Universita' di Roma "La Sapienza" Via Ariosto 25 00185 Roma, Italy tel: +39 06 77274052 fax: +39 06 77274033 email: deluca at dis.uniroma1.it url: http://www.dis.uniroma1.it/labrob/people/deluca/deluca.html From robert.webster at vanderbilt.edu Tue Nov 25 09:47:21 2008 From: robert.webster at vanderbilt.edu (Robert J. Webster, III) Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2008 11:47:21 -0600 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] ME Faculty Position at Vanderbilt in Robotics/Design/Control Message-ID: <492C3A29.3070405@vanderbilt.edu> Faculty Positions Mechanical Engineering Department Vanderbilt University The Department of Mechanical Engineering at Vanderbilt University invites applications for one or more faculty positions to begin Fall 2009. Applications will be considered for positions at all ranks commensurate with qualifications. Applicants must possess a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering or closely related discipline and have expertise and research interests that are synergistic with existing research areas in the department including combustion, microfluidics, nanotechnology, mechatronics, portable power, and robotics. Successful candidates will be expected to build a strong, externally-funded research program and make a significant contribution to the department?s research activities. The candidate should also have a marked interest in and talent for teaching in both the undergraduate (B.E.) and graduate (M.S. and Ph.D.) programs. Vanderbilt University is ranked among the top 20 universities in the nation. The Department of Mechanical Engineering offers B.E., M.E., M.S. and Ph.D. degrees and has a student body of about 265 undergraduates and 40 Ph.D. students. Applications consisting of a cover letter, a complete curriculum vitae, statements of teaching and research interests, and the addresses of four references (include email address) should be sent to Professor Michael Goldfarb, Chair, Search Committee, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Vanderbilt University, Box 1592, Station B, Nashville, TN 37235-1592 (or preferably send electronically to: michael.goldfarb at vanderbilt.edu). Vanderbilt University is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer. Women and minorities are encouraged to apply. From jan.albiez at dfki.de Thu Nov 27 10:02:42 2008 From: jan.albiez at dfki.de (Jan Christian Albiez) Date: Thu, 27 Nov 2008 19:02:42 +0100 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Open position in low-level control at the DFK in Bremen, Germany Message-ID: <21E1BB79-8AFB-4453-9CA5-F7701DE2651A@dfki.de> Hello! At the DFKI Robotics Lab in Bremen, Germany, the following position is open from now on: In the field of innovative software technologies, the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) is the leading research institution in Germany, and in the international science community the DFKI ranks among the most important ?Centres of Excellence? worldwide. The Robotics Laboratory at the location in Bremen (Prof. Frank Kirchner) starts a new project on intelligent mobility. The robot system will be the successor of ASGUARD (http://robotik.dfki-bremen.de/en/research/robotsystems/asguard-ii.html ) and CESAR (http://robotik.dfki-bremen.de/en/research/robotsystems/cesar.html ). Within this project we are looking for a person with interest in low- level control of an advanced robotic system. Her/his task will be the following: * Development of locomotion/driving concepts for different kinds of unstructured terrains * Extensive testing and analysis of these locomotion concepts (mainly outdoors) * Elaboration of improved hardware and software designs Candidates should have a master or equivalent in engineering or computer sciences. They should have a strong background in control engineering, an interest in alternative control methods, good programming skills (C/C++) and a strong interest in using experimental robot systems. This work will be done in a project team with mechanical, electrical and software engineers. The willingness for working in a highly motivated team is therefore a necessity. The position is open for post-docs as well as MSc. Starting in the first quarter of 2009, the project is expected to run for three years, giving the opportunity for MSc to prepare a PhD thesis within that time frame. The DFKI Robotics Laboratory offers a competitive salary and the opportunity to work with a dynamic, continuously growing team in an interesting research environment. The DFKI is an equal opportunity employer. Women are especially encouraged to apply. Handicapped applicants with equal qualification will be given preferential treatment. Applicants should send a letter of interest and a CV in electronic form to: Prof. Dr. Frank Kirchner DFKI Robotic Labor c/o Ms. Andrea Hasse andrea.hasse at dfki.de www.dfki.de/robotik -- Dr. Jan Christian Albiez --- Underwaterrobotics --- DFKI Bremen Robert-Hooke-Stra?e 5, 28359 Bremen, Germany Phone: +49 421 218-64118 Fax: +49 421 218-64150 Email: jan.albiez at dfki.de Further Information: http://www.dfki.de/robotics ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Deutsches Forschungszentrum fuer Kuenstliche Intelligenz GmbH Firmensitz: Trippstadter Stra?e 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 yon at cim.mcgill.ca Fri Nov 28 16:29:35 2008 From: yon at cim.mcgill.ca (yon) Date: Fri, 28 Nov 2008 19:29:35 -0500 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Research Position (Engineer or Postdoc) at McGill University on walking interfaces in VR Message-ID: Research engineer or postdoctoral position at McGill University (Montreal, Canada) on haptic and multisensory interaction methods for walking in virtual and augmented reality environments The Centre for Intelligent Machines at McGill University seeks applicants for a research position on walking in haptic and multisensory virtual and augmented reality environments. The aim is to investigate novel methods and interfaces for interaction via walking, and for the role of multisensory cues in improving such interactions in real and virtual environments. There are several possible sub-projects the researcher may engage with, depending on interests and expertise: - Engineering of haptic and multisensory augmented floor interfaces - Non-visual sensing methods - Machine learning applied to human locomotion signatures - Haptic and auditory interaction with simulated ground materials (e.g., soil, sand, stone) - Measurement based contact interaction modeling - Perception and/or usability The candidate should have a PhD in a related discipline, and should possess experience in one or more of the following areas: - Robotic systems - Haptic device engineering - Multisensory rendering - Multimodal sensor information processing and machine learning - Computational analysis of human motion - Other relevant topics Work will take place in the context of the project NIW: Natural Interactive Walking, funded by the European Commission 7th Framework and the Minist?re du D?veloppmeent, ?conomique, Innovation et Exportation (Qu?bec). The project is being undertaken in partnership with several leading European research institutions, with significant exchange between them. The position is initially for two years. It will be based in the Shared Reality Environments lab of the Centre for Intelligent Machines at McGill University. The lab is also affiliated with the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology. The position is available effective immediately. A short list of candidates will be interviewed, either in person or by videoconference. Interested candidates should send their CV, selected publications, and contact information for three references to: Jeremy Cooperstock niw-jobs at cim.mcgill.ca Associate Professor Centre for Intelligent Machines and Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering McGill University 3480 University Street, Room 424 Montreal, QC, H3A 2A7, Canada From J.L.Herder at tudelft.nl Fri Nov 28 13:36:27 2008 From: J.L.Herder at tudelft.nl (Just Herder - 3ME) Date: Fri, 28 Nov 2008 22:36:27 +0100 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] December: ReMAR 2009 Extended Deadline - The ASME/IFToMMInternationalConference on Reconfigurable Mechanisms and Robots (ReMAR 2009) References: <64FF9F20B1ED9741972E1024E3812411037573E6@wbmts12.wbmt.tudelft.local> Message-ID: <9390A3433EDEAD459F6C6871FFA073220E5AB0@SRV503.tudelft.net> EXTENDED DEADLINE 10 DECEMBER ReMAR 2009 The ASME/IFToMM International Conference on Reconfigurable Mechanisms and Robots (ReMAR 2009) will take place during June 22 - 24, 2009 at King's College London, University of London. We invite you to submit a paper or to make a proposal for a special session and to come to ReMAR 2009 All details including submission (template for 'full paper'), scientific programme, social programme, venue and accommodation can be found on the website http://www.remar2009.com/ Please note the extended deadline for submission of regular papers is 10 December, 2008 Looking forward to welcome you in London The more details are as follows: With the development of science and technology and with space exploration, hazardous environment work, and production requirements of small batch and quick change-over, traditional concepts of mechanisms and robots development are facing a challenge in the 21st century for adaptability and reconfigurability. This led to continuous effort from researchers since 1990s of generating new ideas and concepts for new mechanisms and machines including robots for reconfigurability. It is now felt by the wide community in mechanisms, robotics and design that it is a good time to hold this international conference for people in this field to express their views and for people from the community to discuss the research in this reconfigurable mechanisms and robots and to discuss the future direction in this rising field in reconfigurable mechanisms and robots. The ASME/IFToMM International Conference on Reconfigurable Mechanisms and Robots (ReMAR 2009) is to provide an international forum for presenting and discussing new mechanisms and robots developed in the past decade for their new properties in changing topological structure and therefore the mobility of a mechanism/robot and for discussing their uses for domestic, hazardous, out-space and manufacturing environments for adaptability and reconfiguration. The main areas of this conference include, but not limit to, following subjects: Novel Mechanism Design Reconfiguration and Adaptability Metamorphic Mechanisms Reconfigurable Mechanisms Reconfigurable Topology Metamorphic Robotics Reconfigurable Manufacturing Bio-design Technics Bio-metamorphic Robotics Reconfigurable Robots Kinematics and Dynamics of Reconfiguration Bio-reconfiguration Engineering Various Topology Modeling Modular Devices Biological Self-Assembly Mechanisms Biomimetics Artiomimetics There are currently three proposals for the special sessions on Reconfigurable Manipulation Systems for Soft and Limb Materials, on Reconfigurable Production Automation and Control/Innovative Future Manufacturing, on Novel Mechanisms for Space Exploration, and on Reconfigurable Computing for Reconfigurable Robots. There are currently two awards on best paper on reconfigurable mechanisms and best paper on reconfigurable robots. The ReMAR 2009 will be held at King's College London, University of London, which is situated at the heart of London, UK, in conjuction to the celebration of 171 Years of Engineering at King's College London. King's is one of the oldest and most prestigious UK universities with 13,000 undergraduate students and 9,200 graduates in nine schools of study with 2,700 academic staff and 2,700 other staff. The Engineering was established at King's in 1838 and is arguably the oldest established engineering school in England. King's College London was ranked in the top 25 of the world leading universities. You are very welcome to submit your work to this conference. Your submission will be reviewed by members of our Programme Committee and selected external reviewers. The special issues of Robotica and Journal of Mechanical Engineering Science will be followed. More detailed information about this event can be found in conference official website: www.remar2009.com The important dates are 1 December 2008, Proposal for the Special Sessions and Workshops 10 December 2008, Final Paper Submission Due 2 February 2009, Acceptance Notification 2 March 2009, Final Manuscript Submission Due I will look forward to your attendance with us! Sincerely yours, Professor Jian S Dai General Chair ASME/IFToMM International Conference on Reconfigurable Mechanisms and Robots (ReMAR 2009) www.remar2009.com Chair in Mechanisms and Robotics Head of Centre for Mechatronics and Manufacturing Systems CEng, IMechE Fellow, CertEd(HE) School of Physical Sciences and Engineering King's College London University of London Strand, London WC2R 2LS, UK +44 (0) 20 7848 2321 www.kcl.ac.uk/cmms/jsd From yoky at cs.washington.edu Fri Nov 28 17:26:01 2008 From: yoky at cs.washington.edu (Yoky Matsuoka) Date: Fri, 28 Nov 2008 17:26:01 -0800 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Call for Papers: RO-MAN 2009 in Toyama, Japan Message-ID: <49309A29.5080002@cs.washington.edu> Call for Papers RO-MAN 2009 http://ro-man2009.org Important Dates Feb. 15 2009 Proposals for special sessions and workshops/tutorials Feb. 28 2009 Notification of special sessions and workshops/tutorials Mar. 15 2009 Submission of full-length paper and/or video Jun. 15 2009 Notification of paper acceptance Jul. 15 2009 Submission of camera-ready final papers Sep. 27 -- Oct. 02 2009 Conference and workshop RO-MAN addresses fundamental issues in coexistence of robots and humans from psychological and philosophical aspects over interaction and communication mechanisms to technological systems and architectures. Authors will have choice of ordinary "oral session" or "interactive oral session" that requires 3min. of plenary talk, poster and exhibition of robots/systems. Toyama city is located in the center of Japan, and surrounded by beautiful nature such as the Japan Sea and Alps. One can travel to the three big cities, Tokyo, Osaka, or Nagoya in only a few hours by JR train. There are international flights to Seoul, Vladivostok, Dalian and Shanghai. Relevant Topics: Fundamental Interaction Components ? Auditory cognition: cognition/interpretation of voice, sound, or language ? Haptic interaction ? Motion planning and navigation in the vicinity of humans ? Novel interfaces and interaction modalities ? Robot software architecture and development tool ? Visual sensing and cognition: gesture, posture, face, facial expression Intelligence and Emotion ? Context awareness and intention understanding ? Knowledge and inference processing ? Machine learning and adaptation in human-robot interaction ? Motivations and emotions in robots Social/Ethical/Aesthetic Issues ? Evaluation methods and new methodologies ? Human factors and ergonomics in human-robot interaction ? Innovative robot designs for human-robot interaction ? Sociality/personality of robots or virtual characters Case Studies and Applications ? Androids and other applications ? Assistive robotics for supporting the elderly or people with special needs ? Robotic companions and social robots ? Robots in art, education and entertainment ? Virtual and augmented tele-presence applications Please see more details at http://ro-man2009.org/html/Call20for20Papers.html We look forward to seeing you in Toyama. General Chair: Takanori Shibata Program Committee Chair: Hideki Hashimoto Publicity Co-Chairs: Norihiro Hagita Abderrahmane Kheddar Joo-Ho Lee Yoky Matsuoka From Kanna.Rajan at mbari.org Sun Nov 30 11:53:22 2008 From: Kanna.Rajan at mbari.org (Kanna Rajan) Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2008 11:53:22 -0800 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Postdoc position Autonomous Systems MBARI, California Message-ID: <8FE010B9-1E39-4C2D-BCBB-432C3FBA05BF@mbari.org> [apologies for multiple messages] The Autonomous System group at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) invites applications for 1 two-year postdoc position. MBARI (http://www.mbari.org) is a private non-profit Oceanographic research institute located in Moss Landing, California, in the heart of the largest marine sanctuary in the United States, just outside Silicon Valley. The institute is an inter-disciplinary research institution guided by a strong peer relationship between scientists, engineers and marine operations staff. MBARI pioneered the use of Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs http://www.mbari.org/dmo/vessels_vehicles/tiburon/tiburon.html) and Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVshttp://www.mbari.org/auv/default.htm) for deep ocean research and continues to be at the cutting edge of marine robotics, marine sensor development, ocean chemistry, marine geology, micro-biology and ecology. Research Focus: The Autonomous Systems group is uniquely placed as being the only Artificial Intelligence group within an operational oceanographic setting anywhere. The focus of the groups effort is in automated reasoning for embodied robust intelligence for AUVs with a focus on Automated Planning, Execution, Constraint-Based Reasoning and Machine Learning. The core development effort is to enable adaptive control for AUVs to survey, sample and characterize dynamic and episodic ocean phenomenon such as Harmful Algal Blooms, Fronts and Thin Layers which have substantial societal impact (http://www.mbari.org/autonomy/ TREX/). Further efforts are underway to study the feasibility of goal- based commanding for underwater feature-based SLAM, mixed-initiative platform control and multi-vehicle coordination. Research Environment: The Autonomous Systems group was established in 2005 by researchers from NASA with extensive background in commanding spacecraft including the twin Mars Rovers Spirit and Opportunity. A strong inter- disciplinary effort with biological oceanographers at MBARI and others outside has driven the design and deployment of a hybrid executive* which enables an AUV to adaptively sample the environment using Planning and Machine Learning techniques to inform dynamic in-situ behavior. Publishing in peer-reviewed conferences and journals in AI, Robotics and the Ocean Sciences and interacting with scientists in the fields of biology, chemistry, ecology, genetics, ocean physics, marine robotics is an important aspect of the research effort. The group collaborates with AI and Robotics researchers in academia in the US and Europe and hosts visiting graduate students and researchers from within the US and Europe. Key topic areas of interest for this position are: 1. Automated Planning and Execution 2. Scheduling 3. Machine Learning 4. Constraint-based Reasoning 5. Distributed Planning Applicants are encouraged to communicate with the PI for project feasibility and relevance to ongoing MBARI research. Women and minorities are strongly encouraged to apply. Details of the application process are at http://www.mbari.org/oed/jobs/Postdocs-2009.html . The deadline for applications is December 11th 2008. * 1. McGann, C., Py, F., Rajan, K., Ryan, J., Thomas, H., Henthorn, R., and McEwen, R. ?Preliminary Results for Model-Based Adaptive Control of an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle? Intnl. Symposium on Experimental Robotics (ISER) (Athens, Greece, 2008). 2. McGann, C., Py, F., Rajan, K., Ryan, J., and Henthorn, R. ?Adaptive Control for Autonomous Underwater Vehicles? In Proc. Assoc. for the Advancement of Arti?cial Intelligence, National Conference (AAAI) (Chicago, IL, 2008). 3. McGann, C., Py, F., Rajan, K., Thomas, H., Henthorn, R., and McEwen, R. ?A Deliberative Architecture for AUV Control? In Proc. IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) (Pasadena, CA, May 2008). 4. McGann, C., Py, F., Rajan, K., Thomas, H., Henthorn, R., and McEwen, R., ?Automated Decision Making For a New Class of AUV Science?, In ASLO/Ocean Sciences, Florida, 2008. 5. Py, F., Ryan, J., Rajan, K., McGann, C., Fox, M, ?Adaptive Water Sampling from an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle based on Unsupervised Clustering?, In ASLO/Ocean Sciences, Florida, 2008 _______________________________________________