From roderich.gross at epfl.ch Fri May 1 00:36:37 2009 From: roderich.gross at epfl.ch (Roderich GROSS) Date: Fri, 1 May 2009 09:36:37 +0200 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] *DEADLINE EXTENDED* CFP: Special Issue on Swarm Intelligence and Swarm Robotics of the Neural Computing & Applications journal Message-ID: [Apologies if you receive this more than once] Due to a large number of requests, it was decided to extend the paper submission deadline for this call. ------- EXTENDED DEADLINE ------- 2nd Call for Papers on ------- SWARM INTELLIGENCE AND SWARM ROBOTICS ------- for a special issue of the journal Neural Computing & Applications http://www.springer.com/journal/521 ------- AIM AND SCOPE ------- Swarm intelligence refers to the phenomenon of a system of spatially distributed individuals coordinating their actions in a decentralized and self-organized manner so as to exhibit complex collective behavior. Such systems tend to have large numbers of individual agents that interact with each other in simple ways. This allows swarm-intelligent systems to be inherently robust and flexible. Moreover, systems with these properties can range in size from the nano to the macro scale. Swarm-intelligent systems are common throughout nature. Examples are bacteria colonies, social insects, and flocks/herds of vertebrates. In addition, humans have produced a variety of (artificial) swarm systems ranging from swarm-based optimization algorithms to sensor networks, swarms of robots, and smart materials. In each of these natural or artificial systems, populations of agents change their spatiotemporal configuration (in computational space or the real world) solely based on the agents' local interactions with each other and the environment. This special issue aims to bring together contributions from studies of computational and physical swarm systems which leverage similar swarm-intelligent mechanisms. We thereby intend to help outline a common methodological framework for the design and analysis of swarm-intelligent systems. We are soliciting contributions on (but not limited to) the following topics: * Applications in swarm robotics (ad-hoc and sensor networks, coverage, actuator arrays, collective construction, etc.) * Large-scale reconfigurable robot systems, multi-robot systems, self-assembling systems, smart materials * Modeling natural or artificial swarms and mixed biological / artificial systems * Swarm-intelligent optimization techniques including Particle Swarm Optimization * Amorphous Computing, Spatial Computing, Organic Computing, Neural Computing * Design methodologies for swarm-intelligent systems (global-to-local programming, evolution of swarming algorithms and hardware, etc.) * Theoretical and empirical analysis and benchmarking (consensus, distributed optimization, flocking, shape changing, task allocation, etc.) ------- MANUSCRIPT SUBMISSION ------- Authors are encouraged to submit high-quality, original work that has neither appeared in, nor is under consideration by, other journals. Manuscripts should be submitted to: http://nca.edmgr.com/. Please select article type: "Swarm Intelligence and Swarm Robotics". Important dates: ***EXTENDED*** May 15, 2009, Submission deadline August 1, 2009, Notification of acceptance October 1, 2009, Revised / Final manuscript The special issue is expected to be published by Springer early 2010. ------- GUEST EDITORS ------- Dr. Nikolaus Correll (nikolaus at csail.mit.edu) Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA Prof. Zhihua Cui (cuizhihua at gmail.com) Taiyuan University of Science and Technology, P.R. China Dr. Xiao-Zhi Gao (gao at cc.hut.fi) Helsinki University of Technology, Finland Dr. Roderich Gross (roderich.gross at epfl.ch) Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), Switzerland -- Roderich GROSS, PhD Swiss Federal Institute of Technology EPFL, LSRO Station 9 CH-1015 Lausanne http://people.epfl.ch/roderich.gross From doetomo at unimelb.edu.au Fri May 1 18:43:05 2009 From: doetomo at unimelb.edu.au (Denny Oetomo) Date: Sat, 02 May 2009 11:43:05 +1000 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] ICRA 2009 Workshop on Agricultural Robotics - Call for Participation Message-ID: CALL FOR PARTICIPATION ICRA WORKSHOP ON AGRICULTURAL ROBOTICS 2009 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation Kobe, Japan May 12-17, 2009. TITLE Autonomous Agriculture TIME Wednesday, May 13 2009, 9:00-12:00, Half-day Workshop VENUE Room 401, Session WW-H1. SPEAKERS Professor Noboru NOGUCHI, Research Faculty of Agriculture, Hokkaido University, JAPAN Xavier Paolo Burgos-Artizzu, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas (CSIC), Madrid, Spain Professor Philippe Martinet, LASMEA, FRANCE Dra. Maria C.Garcia-Alegre, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas (CSIC), SPAIN. Dr Satoru Sakai, Chiba University, JAPAN ABSTRACT Automation is one of the most significant factors in the improvement of farming efficiency. At present, the maturing technologies within the robotics community pave the way for the exciting deployment of robust robotics systems in the semi-structured environment of large scale farming. This has the potential to increase productivity and the quality of agricultural facilities. The way farming the industry in general is modeled and executed may also be drastically modified. The autonomous operation of agricultural activities is discussed in this workshop, critically explored through the presentation of the new technologies available today. After a successful workshop in ICRA 2008, the IEEE RAS Technical Committee is proposing to organize another workshop at ICRA 2009, inviting a new set of speakers to present their work. While the presenters in the last workshop came mostly from the US and Australia (and just one presenter from Japan), the Technical Committee is seeking to widen its network by inviting more participation from Europe and Japan for this round of the workshop. This session is proposed as a half-day workshop at ICRA 2009. MOTIVATIONS AND OBJECTIVES * To present the concept of autonomous agriculture through the robust application of robotics and automation strategies. * To generate awareness and interest on the role and impact of robotics and automation in agricultural applications. * To present state-of-the-art technology in autonomous systems deployed on the agricultural tasks. List of topics TOPICS Topics of the workshop is focused on the technical concept and realization of autonomous agriculture, which can be focused on (but not limited to): * Modeling, planning, sensing, and control of autonomous field robots * Robots for automated inspection and handling of farm produce * Methods of sensing, identification, and localisation in the semi-structured farming environment * Strategies for effective human-machine coordination and cooperation in farming tasks * Algorithm for efficient interaction between the systems and the environment * Other novel ideas, concepts, applications that would be of significant contribution to the field of autonomous agriculture CONTACTS To ATTEND the workshop, go to: http://www.icra2009.org/program/tutorial-workshop.html Contact for Session organizers: Professor John Billingsley Faculty of Engineering & Surveying Mechanical & Mechatronic Engineering, University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba Qld 4350Australia Phone: + 61 7 4631 2513Email: billings at usq.edu.au Dr Denny Oetomo, Department of Mechanical Engineering The University of Melbourne VIC 3010 Australia Tel: +61 3 8344 6795 Fax: +61 3 9347 8784 Email: doetomo at unimelb.edu.au From gerkey at willowgarage.com Fri May 1 17:41:37 2009 From: gerkey at willowgarage.com (Brian Gerkey) Date: Fri, 1 May 2009 17:41:37 -0700 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] [2nd CFP] Workshop on Mobile Manipulation Message-ID: Just a week left for submissions! It's the perfect time to write up those latest results! CALL FOR PAPERS RSS 2009 Workshop: Mobile Manipulation in Human Environments When: Sunday, 28 June, 9.00am - 5.30pm Where: Robotics: Science and Systems Conference, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA. Website: http://www.willowgarage.com/rss09mm Submission deadline: 8 May 2009 The goal of this full-day workshop is to gather and discuss state of the art research in mobile manipulation. We emphasize mobile and manipulation: we will explore the problems that arise and the solutions that are developed when working with robots that move freely through, and manipulate objects in, human-centered environments. These problems must be solved to develop applications in real-world settings in health care, flexible factories, and domestic chores. We are especially interested in autonomous systems that integrate robust sensing and actuation to perform tasks in cluttered and uncertain environments, but we also welcome new ideas on teleoperation and mixed-mode systems. Empirical results showing integrated systems with physical hardware are preferred, even if preliminary. This workshop is the 5th installment in a series of manipulation-centered workshops at RSS. Previous RSS workshops were: * 2005: Humanoid Manipulation * 2006: Manipulation for Human Environments * 2007: Sensing and Adapting to the Real World * 2008: Robot Manipulation: Intelligence in Human Environments This workshop is also part of a broader movement of multiple communities toward mobile manipulation as a key interdisciplinary research topic. We encourage participation in other mobile manipulation meetings, such as the IJCAI 2009 Mobile Manipulation Challenge and the ICAPS 2009 Workshop on Bridging the Gap between Task and Motion Planning. Submissions: We solicit paper submissions, optionally accompanied by a video, both of which will be reviewed (not double-blind) by the program committee. The review criteria will be: technical quality, significance of system demonstration, and topicality. We aim to accept 9--12 papers for oral presentation at the meeting. Videos will be shown during an afternoon session open to the public. Accepted papers and videos will be assembled into proceedings and distributed in CD format at the workshop; they will also be archived at the Internet Archive. If there is sufficient interest, we will pursue publication of a special journal issue to include the best papers. Topics of interest include: * Integrated systems that can perform everyday tasks robustly * Visual or haptic feedback for manipulation * Task representation and planning for multi-step manipulation tasks * Integration of planning and control for complex manipulation tasks * Affordance identification and grasp planning * Semi-autonomous, human-in-the-loop control * Mobile manipulation with uncertain information * Manipulation of tools * Long-term autonomy for mobile manipulation systems * Safety and interaction with humans * Learning common manipulation capabilities * Object recognition and pose estimation Papers should be in PDF, conform to the IEEE Transactions style (same style used for RSS), and be maximum of 8 pages in length (shorter papers are welcome). Videos should be in the MPEG format, 3-5 minutes in length, and easily viewed with free video players (please try playing your video on a couple of different machines before submitting). Email submissions to: rss09mm at lists.willowgarage.com . Please do not attach video files to email; include a URL instead. Important Dates: * 8 May 2009: Submissions due * 22 May 2009: Notification of acceptance * 5 June 2009: Final papers due * 28 June 2009: Workshop Organizers: * Brian P. Gerkey, Willow Garage * Kurt Konolige, Willow Garage * Odest Chadwicke Jenkins, Brown University * Robert Platt, NASA Johnson Space Center * Neo Ee Sian, AIST Program Committee: * Sachin Chitta, Willow Garage * Matei Ciocarlie, Columbia University * Rod Grupen, UMass, Amherst * Sami Haddadin, DLR * Kaijen Hsiao, MIT * Charlie Kemp, Georgia Tech * Danica Kragic, KTH * James Kuffner, CMU * Francesco Nori, University of Genova * Morgan Quigley, Stanford University * Radu Rusu, Technical University of Munich * Siddhartha Srinivasa, CMU / Intel Research From jeedward at yahoo.com Sat May 2 04:43:11 2009 From: jeedward at yahoo.com (John Edward) Date: Sat, 2 May 2009 04:43:11 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Extended draft paper submission: ARCS-09 call for papers Message-ID: <978094.11640.qm@web45904.mail.sp1.yahoo.com> Extended draft paper submission: ARCS-09 call for papers ? This Extended Call for Papers is for those who didn't get a chance to submit the papers for the earlier call for papers. The papers received and accepted in response to this extended call for papers will be included in the final version of the respective conference proceedings. These proceedings will be either ready by the time of the conference (i.e., they will be available during the conference) or soon after the conference (before the end of August 2009), based how fast the proceedings can be prepared. Note: If you have already submitted a paper (whether accepted or rejected or currently under review) for MULTICONF-09, please DO NOT submit that paper again to this extended call for papers. IMPORTANT DATES: Draft paper submission date: May 11, 2009 Acceptance/rejection decision: May 21, 2009 Camera ready paper and copyright and pre-registration due: May 28, 2009 Conference dates: July 13-16, 2009 ? ? ? The 2009 International Conference on Automation, Robotics and Control Systems (ARCS-09) (website: http://www.PromoteResearch.org ) is very close from now. The conference will be held during July 13-16 2009 in Orlando, FL, USA.. The conference will take place at the same time and venue where several other international conferences are taking place. The other conferences include: ????????? International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Pattern Recognition (AIPR-09) ????????? International Conference on Bioinformatics, Computational Biology, Genomics and Chemoinformatics (BCBGC-09) ????????? International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems and Web Technologies (EISWT-09) ????????? International Conference on High Performance Computing, Networking and Communication Systems (HPCNCS-09) ????????? International Conference on Information Security and Privacy (ISP-09) ????????? International Conference on Recent Advances in Information Technology and Applications (RAITA-09) ????????? International Conference on Software Engineering Theory and Practice (SETP-09) ????????? International Conference on Theory and Applications of Computational Science (TACS-09) ????????? International Conference on Theoretical and Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science (TMFCS-09) ? The website http://www.PromoteResearch.org contains more details. ? Sincerely John Edward Publicity committee ? ? ? From anuj at iurs.org Mon May 4 06:47:48 2009 From: anuj at iurs.org (Anuj Sehgal) Date: Mon, 4 May 2009 15:47:48 +0200 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Summer School on Robotics Message-ID: <838ce8e10905040647q59cf7da2r1876dc74258fe22c@mail.gmail.com> Call for Participation: IURS Summer School on Robotics July 01-10, 2009 - New Delhi, India http://www.iurs.org/education.html Deadline for registration: June 15, 2009 Robotics is a field that draws upon concepts from many different areas and as such it can be hard to start working in this area without proper introduction to related concepts. Towards this goal, IURS, a non-profit research organization, building on its history of conducting summer courses for 3 years is now further extending its summer course concept to teach students not only theoretical concepts of robotics, but also practical methods. During the course the students will work in small teams to make their own robots, program them and compete against other teams. Each student participant will also be provided with a robotics kit that they may take home along with them to work on further. All concepts taught will include practical exercises to strongly reinforce the concepts of robotics, embedded systems, computer vision and machine intelligence. The topics that will be covered in this summer school include: - Introduction to Robotics - Robotic Locomotion - Introduction to Microcontrollers - Sensors and Sensor Arrays - Autonomous Systems - Computer Vision - Communication Systems Registration Early registration for Indian residents is Rs. 8,500 and they may use the registration form online to register. Foreign residents must contact Anuj Sehgal at anuj at iurs.org or Shekhar Mehta at shekhar at iurs.org for registration instructions. The registration charges will be US$ 280 for the entire summer school and assistance in securing accommodation for the period will also be provided. In case you have any further questions, please reply to this email and I will be happy to answer them. Warm Regards, Anuj Sehgal From anuj at iurs.org Mon May 4 06:40:21 2009 From: anuj at iurs.org (Anuj Sehgal) Date: Mon, 4 May 2009 15:40:21 +0200 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Summer School on Advanced Intelligent Systems Message-ID: <838ce8e10905040640m438ef7c4jb67d3526480aaa6f@mail.gmail.com> Call for Participation: IURS Summer School on Advanced Intelligent Systems July 01-10, 2009 - New Delhi, India http://www.iurs.org/summer2009adv.html Deadline for registration: June 25, 2009 Intelligent systems find applications in practically every field of study. With growing interest in robotics, wireless sensor networks, machine learning and other areas and also the boundaries between these different fields reducing due to many crossover concepts. It is now important for researchers from one of these fields to at least have an understanding of not only theoretical, but practical concepts from these areas as well. Towards this goal, IURS, a non-profit research organization, building on its history of conducting summer courses for 3 years is now also organizing an advanced intelligent systems summer school. At this school, students will not only get to hear lectures that teach them concepts from areas of intelligent systems, but they will also participate in practical exercises to learn about methods and practices as well. Furthermore, at the end of the summer school they will work along with the faculty on research projects that will have publishable goals. The topics that will be covered in this summer school include: - Sensor Networks - Robotic Sensing - Localization and Mapping - Computer Vision - Image Processing - Machine Learning - Applications of concepts The final project shortlisted at the moment involves (but is not limited to): - 3D point cloud registration - Robot localization - Map building - Uncertainty visualization - Invariant feature extraction from 3D point clouds Registration Registration for Indian residents is Rs. 6,500 and they may use the registration form online to register. Foreign residents must contact Anuj Sehgal at anuj at iurs.org or Shekhar Mehta at shekhar at iurs.org for registration instructions. The registration charges will be US$ 250 for the entire summer school and assistance in securing accommodation for the period will also be provided. In case you have any further questions, please reply to this email and I will be happy to answer them. Warm Regards, Anuj Sehgal From jdegea at informatik.uni-bremen.de Sun May 3 11:26:24 2009 From: jdegea at informatik.uni-bremen.de (Jose de Gea) Date: Sun, 3 May 2009 20:26:24 +0200 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] DFKI Robotics Research Group: Open Positions for Senior Researchers / Researchers in Service Robotics for Logistics Message-ID: <005101c9cc1c$acbcba50$06362ef0$@uni-bremen.de> 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 ?Centers of Excellence? worldwide. Within research projects at DFKI Bremen there are open positions for Senior Researchers / Researchers in Service Robotics for Logistics Candidates applying for this position will have the opportunity to work with mobile service robots in the field of logistics and production, e.g. our dual-arm system (please visit http://robotik.dfki-bremen.de/?id=semprom ). Besides strong C/C++ programming skills and the skill to work in small and medium size teams, preferably experience in more than one of the following topics are expected: * Experience in robot localization and mapping (SLAM) * Experience in task planning task decomposition and task execution * Experience in robot locomotion control * Experience in robot software architectures and/or communication * Experience in robot manipulation (mandatory at least two of the following): o kinematics and dynamics analysis o motion planning o grasping planning o dual and/or mobile manipulation * Experience in behaviour-based control systems * Experience in computer vision: object recognition and/or visual servoing There is the possibility for MSc to prepare a PhD thesis in that time frame, when applying for the Researcher position. Applications for the Senior Researcher position are open to post-doc candidates. 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, a CV, and two references in electronic form to: Prof. Dr. Frank Kirchner DFKI Bremen Robotics Lab c/o Ms. A. Hasse andrea.hasse(at)dfki.de www.dfki.de/robotik -- Jose de Gea Fernandez (Dipl.-Ing) Robotics Group University of Bremen Germany Email: jdegea at informatik.uni-bremen.de Tel.:? +49- (421)- 218- 64112 Fax :? +49- (421)- 218- 64150 Room:? 217 Postal address: DFKI GmbH Jose de Gea Robert-Hooke-Stra?e 5 28359 Bremen Germany Further information: http://www.informatik.uni-bremen.de/robotik From tapus at usc.edu Mon May 4 07:14:25 2009 From: tapus at usc.edu (Adriana Tapus) Date: Mon, 04 May 2009 16:14:25 +0200 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Last few seats available for ISRIS Summer School, Iasi Romania Message-ID: Attention: Researchers interested in Assistive Robots and Systems for Healthcare and Rehabilitation (graduate students, postdocs, etc) Only a few seats left for what will be a very unique event (see lecturers and also the accepted student profiles on the website. A very strong ISRIS class of 2009) International School in Robotics and Intelligent Systems, Iasi, Romania, July 22-26 www.isris.info/isris09.html (Please submit applications before May 15th, for what we estimate to the final round of evaluatiosn) Subject areas: Prosthetic Technologies, Recuperative Systems, Exoskeletons,Therapeutic/Surgery Robotics,Assistive and Caregiving Robotics, Bio-signal collection and information processing, Intelligence for robotics and prosthetic devices. Confirmed lecturers include: 1. Prof. Paolo Fiorini, University of Verona, Italy 2. Dr. Edward Tunstel, Applied Physics Lab, John Hopkins University, USA 3. Prof. Alberto Rovetta, Politechnico di Milano, Italy (Neuromotor rehabilitation with biorobotics device) 4. Prof Jos Vander Sloten, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium, (Musculoskeletal biomechanics, Computer integrated surgery) 5. I Staretu, U Brasov, Romania, Medical robotics and prosthetics, Mechanical design of prosthetic hands 6. Prof Dirk Lefeber, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium (From Conventional to Bionic Prosthetics, Exoskeletons for gait rehabilitation, Compliant actuators for robots in direct contact with humans) 7. Dr. Fr?d?ric Colledani, CEA, France (Exoskeletons for rehabilitation and assistance of impaired people, Surgicobot: Surgeon assistance and guidance for avoiding critical regions, On the acquisition, interpretation, storing and transfer of surgeon skills) 8. Dr. Adriana Tapus, University of Southern California, USA (Human robot interaction, Socially assistive robotics) 9. Prof Paul Botez, MD, University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Iasi,Romania (Orthopedic Surgery, Prosthetic arthroplasty of the hip, Prosthetic arthroplasty of the knee) 10. Prof Adrian Lobontiu, MD,Henri Mondor Hospital, Paris 12 University, France (Endoluminal Surgery, Robotic Surgery - cardiac, urology, general surgery and vascular surgery-, Tele-Surgery) 11. Hariton-Nicolae Costin, University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Iasi,Romania (Bio-signals, image processing and pattern recognition, Telemedicine) 12. Prof Dragos Arotaritei, University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Iasi, Romania (Soft computing,Robotics and nano manipulators, Optimization Techniques) 13. Prof Tughrul Arslan, University of Edinburgh,UK ( Microelectronics design of low-power high performance processing integrated systems, Micro and nano-systems: for medical devices: - Design aspects for a hearing aid, - Design aspects for an ingestible electronic pill for real time analytical measurements of the gastrointestinal tract) 14. Dr. Adrian Stoica, NASA-JPL (Roadmaping medical and healthcare robotic systems, Ethical aspects of medical and healthcare robotics, Collaborative projects) ____________________________________ ISRIS is held as part of the ATEQUAL (Advanced Technologies for Enhanced Quality of Life) Interdisciplinary Forum: (www.atequal.info/atequal09.html). This interdisciplinary meeting aims to bring together researchers in advanced technologies, from assistive robotics to breakthrough genetic therapies, that are revolutionizing healthcare, and that offer promises in assistance to elders, and cures for previously incurable diseases. The meeting will foster scientific exchange between technical scientists, life scientists and medical doctors who will share latest knowledge, present new techniques, and discuss future avenues in using technology to enhance quality of life. School Directors: Ioan Doroftei,Tech UnivIasi, Romania Ayanna Howard, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA Adrian Stoica, NASA-JPL, Caltech,USA Applicants should submit a CV and a short (up to one page) description of research interests to Adrian.stoica at jpl.nasa.gov, with subject ISRIS 2009 Application. Applications will be reviewed in the order received. The school will be limited to 40 students. Next round of applications should be received by May 15th. There are only a few seats left. The registration fee for ISRIS is 500 Euros __________________________________ Dr. Adriana Tapus Publicity Chair Email: tapus at usc.edu Webpage: http://www-robotics.usc.edu/~tapus From gaurav at usc.edu Mon May 4 11:52:56 2009 From: gaurav at usc.edu (Gaurav S. Sukhatme) Date: Mon, 4 May 2009 11:52:56 -0700 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Autonomous Robots 26(2-3) TOC Message-ID: <562c8ffd0905041152i13299881w50f590adb1a6eb89@mail.gmail.com> Volume 26 Number 2-3 of Autonomous Robots (selected papers from RSS 2008) is now available at the SpringerLink website (http://www.springerlink.com/content/0929-5593). SpringerLink allows free access to all paper abstracts. Full access (PDF) is by individual or institutional subscription. Thanks to the guest editors, Jos? Neira and Jeff Trinkle for their work in putting this issue together. ------------------------------------------------------------------- Autonomous Robots 26(2-3) Table of Contents ------------------------------------------------------------------- Guest editorial: selected papers from Robotics: Science and Systems 2008 Author(s): Jos? Neira and Jeff Trinkle DOI: 10.1007/s10514-009-9116-0 pp. 99-101 Finding multiple lanes in urban road networks with vision and lidar Author(s): Albert S. Huang, David Moore, Matthew Antone, Edwin Olson and Seth Teller DOI: 10.1007/s10514-009-9113-3 pp. 103-122 Model based vehicle detection and tracking for autonomous urban driving Author(s): Anna Petrovskaya and Sebastian Thrun DOI: 10.1007/s10514-009-9115-1 pp. 123-139 Classifying dynamic objects: An unsupervised learning approach Author(s): Matthias Luber, Kai O. Arras, Christian Plagemann and Wolfram Burgard DOI: 10.1007/s10514-009-9112-4 pp. 141-151 A generative framework for fast urban labeling using spatial and temporal context Author(s): Ingmar Posner, Mark Cummins and Paul Newman DOI: 10.1007/s10514-009-9110-6 pp. 153-170 Clustering sensor data for autonomous terrain identification using time-dependency Author(s): Philippe Giguere and Gregory Dudek DOI: 10.1007/s10514-009-9114-2 pp. 171-186 Learning gas distribution models using sparse Gaussian process mixtures Author(s): Cyrill Stachniss, Christian Plagemann and Achim J. Lilienthal DOI: 10.1007/s10514-009-9111-5 pp. 187-202 ------------------------------------------------------------------- Gaurav S. Sukhatme Editor-in-Chief Autonomous Robots http://robotics.usc.edu/~gaurav From monica.reggiani at unipd.it Mon May 4 21:51:56 2009 From: monica.reggiani at unipd.it (Monica Reggiani) Date: Tue, 5 May 2009 06:51:56 +0200 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] ICAR 2009: Early registration ends May 11, 2009 (Call for Participation) Message-ID: <956760ea0905042151m27265702ob5731473d77ebff9@mail.gmail.com> ---- This is a reminder for those of you who plan to attend ---- the ICAR 2009 conference and have still to register: ---- May 11, 2009 is the last day for "early registration". ====================================================================== Call for Participation ====================================================================== ICAR 2009 14th International Conference on ADVANCED ROBOTICS http://www.icar2009.org June 22-26, 2009 Munich, Germany ====================================================================== Important Dates ---------------- Early Registration Deadline: May 11, 2009 Hotel Registration Deadline: May 25, 2009 Conference Overview ------------------- We cordially invite you to participate to the 14th International Conference on Advanced Robotics (ICAR2009) that will be held in Munich, Germany during June 22-26, 2009. The theme of the conference is "able robots", as 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. Local Information ----------------- All sessions and activities of the ICAR 2009 conference will be held at the Munich Marriott Hotel, Berliner Strasse 93, Munich, Germany. We have negotiated a special rate with the hotel for conference attendees. Please book early to secure the reduced rate. A boat cruise on the Lake Starnberg with dinner is planned. Technical Program ----------------- The tecnical program will be available soon at the conference web site ( http://www.icar2009.org/program/ ). Invited Speakers: - Yoshiyuki Sankai, Director (CEO) of CYBERDYNE Inc., - Gerd Hirzinger, Director of the DLR Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics, - Gerhard A. Runshaug, Managing Director of RoboMop International AS Sponsors -------- Sponsored by the German Robotics Society (DGR) Technically Co-sponsored by IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (RAS) From elebox10 at nus.edu.sg Mon May 4 22:21:45 2009 From: elebox10 at nus.edu.sg (Social Robotics Lab) Date: Tue, 5 May 2009 13:21:45 +0800 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] International Journal of Social Robotics - Table of Contents Message-ID: <000601c9cd41$62486610$26d93230$@edu.sg> ************************************************************************ International Journal of Social Robotics Volume 01, Number 02, 2009 ************************************************************************ The Second Issue is now available online at: http://www.springerlink.com/content/m72222012836/?p=7763afa5e5784c75b3d7aa3d 36f513db&pi=0 These articles are freely available online for the first two years. The Table of Contents for the Second Issue is as follows: 2nd International Conference on Human-Robot Personal Relationships Tilburg University, The Netherlands June 11?12, 2009?????? ??????Announcement Call for papers ??????http://www.springerlink.com/content/p2480k2x1p205511/fulltext.pdf The Autonomous City Explorer: Towards Natural Human-Robot Interaction in Urban Environments ??????Andrea Bauer, Klaas Klasing, Georgios Lidoris, Quirin M?hlbauer, ??????Florian Rohrm?ller, Stefan Sosnowski, Tingting Xu, Kolja K?hnlenz, ??????Dirk Wollherr and Martin Buss ??????http://www.springerlink.com/content/c04732439q011771/fulltext.pdf How Quickly Should a Communication Robot Respond? Delaying Strategies and Habituation Effects ??????Toshiyuki Shiwa, Takayuki Kanda, Michita Imai, Hiroshi Ishiguro and Norihiro Hagita ??????http://www.springerlink.com/content/t575551x8151nw0p/fulltext.pdf Humanoid Robots as a Broadcasting Communication Medium in Open Public Spaces ??????Daisuke Sakamoto, Kotaro Hayashi, Takayuki Kanda, Masahiro Shiomi, Satoshi Koizumi, Hiroshi Ishiguro, Tsukasa Ogasawara and Norihiro Hagita ??????http://www.springerlink.com/content/64707h4g142q8482/fulltext.pdf Experimenting False Alarm Demand for Human Robot Interactions in Humanoid Soccer Robots ??????Mohan Rajesh Elara, Wijerupage Sardha Wijesoma, Carlos Antonio Acosta Calderon and Changjiu Zhou ??????http://www.springerlink.com/content/045410512j413338/fulltext.pdf ?Like-Me? Simulation as an Effective and Cognitively Plausible Basis for Social Robotics ??????William G. Kennedy, Magdalena D. Bugajska, Anthony M. Harrison and J. Gregory Trafton ??????http://www.springerlink.com/content/3156571qg146p18u/fulltext.pdf Does the Design of a Robot Influence Its Animacy and Perceived Intelligence? ??????Christoph Bartneck, Takayuki Kanda, Omar Mubin and Abdullah Al Mahmud ??????http://www.springerlink.com/content/b84723258wm67783/fulltext.pdf You are cordially invited to submit your original research and discoveries on scientific, technological and philosophical advances in social robots for the ongoing issues. 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: On-Line Submission: 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 Previous issues: http://www.springerlink.com/content/121282/?p=e7b2f61a449a491da312e81c17bcde 63&pi=0 Yours sincerely, S.S. Ge Social Robotics Lab, Interactive Digital Media Institute and Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore 117576, Singapore e-mail: samge at nus.edu.sg M.J. Mataric Viterby School of Engineering (VSoE), University of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA e-mail: maja at pollux.usc.edu From agrawal at UDel.Edu Tue May 5 06:10:30 2009 From: agrawal at UDel.Edu (Sunil K. Agrawal) Date: Tue, 05 May 2009 09:10:30 -0400 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Openings for robotics Post Docs/Graduate Students for World Class University Project .... Message-ID: <4A003AC6.4040002@udel.edu> We have multiple openings immediately within a World Class University Project at Hanyang University (Korea). The candidates will be jointly supervised by Prof. Sunil K. Agrawal (University of Delaware, webpage: http://mechsys4.me.udel.edu) and Prof. G. J. Park (Hanyang University, webpage: http://adl.hanyang.ac.kr). The projects include novel aspects of control and design of mechanical and structural systems including rehabilitation robots, flapping wing flying robots, mobile vehicles, and others. Please send your letters of interest, CV, and dates of availability to Sunil K. Arawal (agrawal at udel.edu) and Prof. G. J. Park (gjpark at hanyang.ac.kr). -- Sunil K. Agrawal, PhD Professor of Mechanical Engineering University of Delaware Newark, DE 19716 Phone: (302) 831-8049 Email: agrawal at udel.edu http://mechsys4.me.udel.edu From sigalbe at bgu.ac.il Tue May 5 08:21:30 2009 From: sigalbe at bgu.ac.il (Sigal Berman) Date: Tue, 5 May 2009 18:21:30 +0300 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Graduate Student Opportunity: Robot Control based on Discrete Chaotic Dynamics Message-ID: <021201c9cd95$2abb29e0$80317da0$@ac.il> ================================================================== Graduate student opportunity at the Ben-Gurion University, Israel Topic: Robot Control based on Discrete Chaotic Dynamics Starting date: Immediately Language requirement: English ================================================================== The Intelligent systems Labratory at the department of Industrial Engineering and Management at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (http://www.bgu.ac.il ) is seeking a graduate student. Execution of purposeful arm movements such as pointing, reaching and grasping involves high computational complexities. This is because more degrees of freedom (DOF) are available in the arm than are actually needed for reaching a target in space. The current research involves the development of a novel robotic controller based on paradigms which belong to the modern science of complexity such as cellular automata, self-organizing and self-synchronization networks and discrete chaotic dynamics (DCD). We have developed some results for mathematical modeling of brain neuronal networks by DCD algorithms which have been demonstrated principle ability for multi-component system control and navigation. These results could be used for the developing of controller for robotic arm and hand motion control. Candidates with engineering, computer science or mathematics background are sought. Candidates must have solid knowledge in mathematics and computer programming. Knowledge in control, an robotics is advantageous. ============================================================ How to apply ============================================================ Please send your CV to Sigal Berman (sigalbe at bgu.ac.il) or to Vladimir Gontar (galita at bgu.ac.il). If you have any questions related to the project, please don't hesitate to contact Dr. Berman or Prof. Gontar by e-mail. Sincerely, Sigal Berman, Ph.D. Department of Industrial Engineering and Management Ben-Gurion University of the Negev P.O.B 653, Beer-Sheva 84105, Israel Phone: +972 8 647 9785 Fax: +972 8 647 2958 Email: sigalbe at bgu.ac.il http://www.bgu.ac.il/~sigalbe From stefanw at acfr.usyd.edu.au Wed May 6 14:32:12 2009 From: stefanw at acfr.usyd.edu.au (Stefan Williams) Date: Thu, 07 May 2009 07:32:12 +1000 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Final Program: ICRA 2009 Workshop on Visual Mapping and Navigation in Outdoor Environments Message-ID: <4A0201DC.2000408@acfr.usyd.edu.au> ----------------------------------------------------------- CALL FOR PARTICIPATION IEEE ICRA 2009 Workshop on Visual Mapping and Navigation in Outdoor Environments ----------------------------------------------------------- The full-day workshop "Visual Mapping and Navigation in Outdoor Environments" will be held during the 2009 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) in Kobe, Japan, on May 12, 2009. The problem of navigation and mapping using vehicles equipped with sensors has been an extremely active research area in robotics during the last 20 years. Excellent results have been reported by many researchers, but until recently the most successful systems required the use of laser range-finder sensors and predominantly aimed to build 2D maps of planar environments. More recently, researchers have started to tackle larger and less structured environments by taking their vehicles outdoors. At the same time, the price of digital cameras has fallen steeply with a comparable increase in resolution and speed, opening the possibility of using such information rich sensors to obtain much more detail from the environments, beyond the capabilities of bulkier and more expensive laser sensors. This full-day workshop will present recent advances in this field, with a focus on the use of visual sensors for navigation and mapping in challenging outdoor environments: urban, suburban, offroad, underwater, and airborne. FINAL PROGRAM ------------- Time Speakers and title of the talk 9:00 - 9:05 Inauguration 9:05 - 9:30 View-Based maps: Kurt Konolige - Willow Garage, USA 9:30 - 9:55 Outdoor Navigation. Mapping and Understanding with Vision and Laser: Paul Newman - Oxford University, UK 9:55 - 10:20 Fast Relative Motion Estimation from a Single Feature Correspondence by Exploiting Nonholonomic Constraints: Davide Scaramuzza - ETH Zurich, Switzerland 10:20 - 10:45 Coffee 10:45 - 11:10 Monocular and Stereo SLAM in Large Environments: Juan D. Tard?s - University of Zaragoza, Spain 11:10 - 11:35 A Random Set Approach to SLAM: Martin Adams - Nanyang Technological University, Singapore 11:35 - 12:00 A Relative Formulation for Scalable Real-time 6DOF Visual SLAM: Gabe Sibley - Oxford University, UK 12:00 - 13:30 Lunch 13:30 - 13:55 EKF-based Sequential Bayesian Structure From Motion: J.M.M. Montiel - University of Zaragoza, Spain 13:55 - 14:20 Learning Efficient Policies for Vision-based Navigation: Maren Bennewitz - University of Freiburg, Germany: 14:20 - 14:45 Finding Multiple Lanes with Vision and Lidar: Albert Huang - Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA 14:45 - 15:10 Coffee 15:10 - 15:35 Multi-Dimensional Mapping, Tracking and Classification using Inertial/Vision/GPS on a UAV: Salah Sukkarieh - University of Sydney, Australia: 15:35 -16:00 Monocular Vision-Based SLAM for Autonomous Underwater Vehicles: An Application to Autonomous Ship Hull Inspection: Ryan Eustice - University of Michigan, USA: 16:00 - 16:25 Simultaneous Localisation and Mapping and Dense Stereoscopic Sea?oor Reconstruction using an AUV: Stefan Williams and Ian Mahon - University of Sydney, Australia 16:25 - 17:00 Discussion and concluding remarks WORKSHOP HOMEPAGE ----------------- http://webdiis.unizar.es/~neira/icra2009/index.html ORGANIZERS ---------- * Jose Neira, University of Zaragoza, Spain * Cyrill Stachniss, University of Freiburg, Germany * Stefan Williams, University of Sydney, Australia PROCEEDINGS AND SPECIAL ISSUE ----------------------------- The workshop proceedings will be published electronically as a pdf file. The Journal of Field Robotics is considering a request to publish a special issue on Visual Mapping and Navigation Outdoors in connection with this workshop. An open call for papers will be issued after the workshop and submissions will go through a separate peer review process. Should you have any questions about the workshop, please do not hesitate to contact the organizers. Stefan, Jose and Cyrill From kegreen8 at earthlink.net Wed May 6 14:55:34 2009 From: kegreen8 at earthlink.net (Green Keith) Date: Wed, 6 May 2009 17:55:34 -0400 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] CfP: ARCHIBOTS --: An International Workshop on Architectural Robotics at Ubicomp 2009 Message-ID: <380-2200953621553431@earthlink.net> This CfP might be of interest to some in the wider robotics community: ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- CfP: ARCHIBOTS : Intelligent and Adaptable Built Environments An International Workshop on Architectural Robotics at Ubicomp 2009 date and venue: September 30, 2009 in Orlando, Florida at Ubicomp 2009. workshop URL: www.archibots.org papers due: 5pm EST on June 25, 2009 (see below) organizers: Keith Evan Green (Clemson U.) and Mark Gross (Carnegie Mellon U.) call: Robotics embedded in our built environment will increasingly support and augment everyday work, school, entertainment, and leisure activities in an increasingly digital society. A full-day workshop offering at Ubicomp, the International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing, Archibots aims to identify opportunities and challenges in research and education in the emerging area of ?Architectural Robotics? - intelligent and adaptable physical environments at all scales. For Archibots 2009, we seek position papers representing diverse perspectives from the extended ubicomp community exploring possibilities and defining an agenda for Architectural Robotics for the year 2019 and beyond. Workshop participants will discuss these perspectives and then, in teams, sketch short videos to envision possible futures. The collected videos of the workshop are intended to stream to the Video Program of the conference. The organizers plan to publish selected position papers as an edited book or a special issue of a journal, and also further relations with industry and allied disciplines. scope: We solicit position papers envisioning opportunities and challenges for Architectural Robotics to support and enhance human needs and desires, including, but not limited to: ? specific applications (e.g., work, health, play, elderly, disabled, children). ? re-configurable and modular robotics in buildings, public places, furniture... ? sociological and psychological implications of architectural robotics. ? programming buildings that sense, infer, and respond to human needs. ? intelligent building structures and systems with embedded robotics. ? the software and hardware infrastructure needed to realize archibots. ? teaching and learning architectural robotics. We encourage papers that go beyond a mere presentation of accomplished works; instead, we seek contributions to this emerging field that openly communicate techniques, methods and assemblies of architectural robotics and, more broadly, the challenges and prospects of architectural robotics which we recognize as technical, social and aesthetic. submissions: Paper submissions must be formatted according to the Ubicomp supplementary proceedings template and submitted in PDF to both kegreen at clemson.edu and mdgross at cmu.edu no later than 5pm EST on June 25, 2009. Papers must not exceed 6 pages and 10MB, including abstract, all figures, and references. Each submission should have one designated author who will participate in the conference, should the submission be accepted. [The organizers acknowledge support for this workshop from the U.S. National Science Foundation.] ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------ k e i t h . e v a n . g r e e n , R A , P h D Professor of Architecture Director, IMSA / Intelligent Materials & Systems for Architecture 165 Lee Hall, Box 340503 Clemson University, Clemson SC 29634-0503 USA 864.656.3887 TEL 864.656.1810 FAX kegreen at clemson.edu EML www.imsa-research.org WEB From samir.bouabdallah at mavt.ethz.ch Thu May 7 00:06:51 2009 From: samir.bouabdallah at mavt.ethz.ch (Bouabdallah Samir) Date: Thu, 7 May 2009 09:06:51 +0200 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] IROS 2009 Workshop on Micro Aerial Vehicles from Technologies to Commercialization: Ready or not ready? Message-ID: <20B3DFB65FB4244A869D91798B18FC9002FA2F62@EX2.d.ethz.ch> ======================================================================= CALL FOR PARTICIPATION: IROS'2009 Workshop ======================================================================= Half-day workshop on: Micro Aerial Vehicles from Technologies to Commercialization: Ready or not ready? In conjunction with IROS'09. October 2009, St. Louis, MO, USA ======================================================================= MOTIVATION and OBJECTIVES ========================= The field of Micro Aerial Vehicles is gaining an important interest from the scientific, industrial and hobbyist communities. These flying systems can be of high value in surveillance, search, rescue and many other missions. The multidisciplinary nature of MAVs makes it challenging for a research group to master the numerous related scientific problems. Therefore, workshops which regroup scientists from different disciplines of aerial vehicles represent an excellent opportunity to exchange ideas and discuss progress and challenges. The proposed workshop is such an opportunity. It will focus on several research questions on fixed-wing, rotary-wing and other types of MAVs, especially identifying mature and promising technologies that will bridge the gap between research and market-ready MAVs. The workshop shall also help to identify current and future challenges and review future research directions. This event will be the meeting place for aerial-robotic researchers who are interested in theoretical and practical problems of MAVs. IMPORTANT DATES ================ July 13th, 2009 -- Extended abstract / poster submission July 31st, 2009 -- Notification of acceptance August 17th, 2009 -- Camera ready extended abstract / poster submission LIST of TOPICS ============ * Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAV) design and concepts * MAV control strategies * MAV navigation algorithms * Smart sensors for MAVs * Innovative actuators for MAVs * Smart materials for MAVs * Miniature power sources for MAVs SUBMISSIONS ============ Prospective participants should submit an extended abstract (max. 2 pages) describing recent and innovative work. An MS word template is available on the website (see below). A similar Latex template can be used. Authors of selected extended abstracts will be invited to give an oral presentation. All submissions are due in PDF format to Samir Bouabdallah, samir.bouabdallah(AT)ieee.org. INVITED SPEAKERS ================ * Daniela Rus (MIT) * George Vachtsevanos (Georgia Tech) * Tarek Hamel (UNICE) * Eric Frew (Univ. of Colorado) * Jean Christoph Zufferey (EPFL) PROGRAM COMMITTEE ==================== * Clark Taylor (BYU) * Dario Floreano (EPFL) * Tarek Hamel (UNICE) * Bernard Mettler (UMN) * Robert Wood (HARVARD) * Christian Bermes (ETHZ) * Roland Siegwart (ETHZ) ORGANIZERS (IEEE Technical Committee on Aerial Robotics and UAVs - TCAR) ================================================================= Samir Bouabdallah (contact person) Autonomous Systems Lab - ETH Z?rich, Switzerland Phone: +41 44 632 89 06 Fax: +41 44 632 11 81 Email: samir.bouabdallah(AT)ieee.org Kimon Valavanis Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Denver, CO 80208, USA Phone: (303) 871-2586 Fax: (303) 871-2194 Email: kimon.valavanis(AT)du.edu WEBSITE ======= http://www.flyingrobots.org/mavws2009/ From m.witkowski at imperial.ac.uk Thu May 7 02:59:35 2009 From: m.witkowski at imperial.ac.uk (Witkowski, Mark) Date: Thu, 7 May 2009 10:59:35 +0100 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Final CFP Towards Autonomous Robotic Systems (TAROS-09) - DEADLINE 15 MAY Message-ID: <70DC1B6F54D9184D90F31EC995B7A373063B2CDD@icexm6.ic.ac.uk> TAROS 2009 - Towards Autonomous Robotic Systems Final call for papers - DEADLINE 15 MAY 2009 August 31st - September 2nd, 2009 University of Ulster, Derry www.taros.org.uk TAROS-09 is a platform for robot researchers with a wide range of interests from the U.K., Europe and worldwide. TAROS welcomes paper submissions on a range of topics related to the principles and practice of robotics. Submissions of papers are invited in any of the following or related areas: * Advanced applications of autonomous robots (industrial and research) * Advanced materials * Advanced medical robotics, robots for surgery * Analysis of robot-environment interaction * Autonomous assembly robotics * Biologically inspired robotics * Cognitive robotics * Collective robots * Developmental robotics * Hardware issues, devices and techniques, advanced sensor and actuator hardware * Learning and adaptation * Modelling and analysis of robot models * Navigation, localization, map building and path planning * Personal robotics and human-robot interface * Robot autonomy * Robot vision, sensing and perception * Robot control architectures * Robots in education, the arts and entertainment * Space and planetary robotics TAROS-09 welcomes submissions from senior researchers and research students alike, and will specifically provide opportunities for research students and young research scientists to present their work to the scientific community. TAROS-09 will be held at the University of Ulster, Derry, August 31st - September 2nd, 2009. On campus accommodation will be available. Registration will include a guided tour of historic Derry City Wall and a civic reception by the Mayor in the Guildhall. An optional excursion to the Giant?s Causeway and Bushmills distillery will be available on Thursday, September 3rd. TAROS-09 keynote speakers are: Nobel Laureate Prof. Dr. Bert Sakmann (Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology, Munich and University of Ulster) ?Mechanisms of decision making and sensory initiated behaviour in the cerebral cortex?, Prof. Roger Hubbold (University of Manchester) ?Creating 3D Computer Models from Images?, and Prof. Raymond Tallis (University of Manchester) ?Myth-Information. A Critique of the Computational Theory of Mind?. The deadline for the submission of papers is 15th May 2009. Refereed papers from the conference will be published in a proceedings volume, and be made available on the WWW. Submission instructions may be found on the conference website: www.taros.org.uk. From julie.a.adams at vanderbilt.edu Thu May 7 13:38:30 2009 From: julie.a.adams at vanderbilt.edu (Julie A. Adams) Date: Thu, 7 May 2009 15:38:30 -0500 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Post Doctoral Position in Human-robotic interaction Message-ID: Immediate opening for a post-doctoral position at Vanderbilt University?s Human-Machine Teaming Laboratory in Nashville, Tennessee, USA. Vanderbilt University?s Human-Machine Teaming Laboratory is currently seeking applicants for a single post-doctoral position in the area of human-robotic interaction with large numbers of robots for mass casualty event response. The overall research objective is to advance the state-of-the art for human-robotic interaction (HRI) with large numbers of ground and aerial robots. The goal is to develop visualization and interaction techniques that provide a single, scalable interface incorporating integrated and easily understood information, thus permitting supervision of large, mixed-type robotic systems. Our research has focused on developing a system of interfaces to support (a) the integration of multiple robot systems into the event response and (b) support the response personnel command hierarchy?s ability to conduct the response. This is part of a highly visible research project and the successful applicant will be expected to collaborate the research effort with graduate and undergraduate students. Applicants should have a Ph.D. in computer science, or a related field. Experience with robotics, working with representative system users, and user evaluation experimental design is essential. Prior research in robotics for first response or human factors is preferred, but not necessary. The position is open immediately (6/1/09) and is guaranteed for a year with a possible second year extension. Instructions: Please submit a CV, brief statement of research interests, and a list of three references (including email addresses) to Julie.a.adams at vandebrilt.edu. Please do not submit preprints or other large files; instead please include URLs. In the email subject header, please use the words POSTDOC: ?Your last name?. From tduckett at lincoln.ac.uk Fri May 8 03:02:25 2009 From: tduckett at lincoln.ac.uk (Tom Duckett) Date: Fri, 8 May 2009 11:02:25 +0100 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Lecturer position at the University of Lincoln Message-ID: <08EC78E748D4534BB97FFAD4136097B069414F@AEXCMS03.network.uni> Immediate opening for a lecturer position (equivalent to Assistant Professor) in Computer Science at the University of Lincoln: applications from researchers in robotics are especially welcome. Further details can be found online: http://www.jobs.ac.uk/jobs/AI174/Lecturer_Senior_Lecturer/ Closing date: 20 May 2009. Applicants are expected to contribute to one of our rapidly growing research Centres in Vision and Robotics (CVARR) or Social Computing (LiSC) or our research Groups in Distributed Software Engineering, Digital Content Analysis or Computer Education. See also http://www.lincoln.ac.uk/home/research/index.htm Please visit our website at www.lincoln.ac.uk/vacancies to apply online. Alternatively, email jobs at lincoln.ac.uk or telephone (01522) 886629. -- Dr. Tom Duckett Reader in Computer Science University of Lincoln Brayford Pool Lincoln LN6 7TS Phone: +44 1522 837113 Fax: +44 1522 886974 From chiestand at salk.edu Wed May 6 15:52:19 2009 From: chiestand at salk.edu (Chris Hiestand) Date: Wed, 6 May 2009 15:52:19 -0700 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] NIPS 2009 Call For Papers Message-ID: Submissions are solicited for the Twenty-Third Annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems, an interdisciplinary conference that brings together researchers in all aspects of neural and statistical information processing and computation. The conference is a highly selective, single track meeting that includes invited talks as well as oral and poster presentations of refereed papers. Submissions by authors who are new to NIPS are encouraged. Preceding the main conference will be one day of tutorials (December 7), and following will be two days of workshops at the Whistler/Blackcomb ski resort (December 11-12). Deadline for Paper Submissions: Friday June 5, 2009, 23:59 Universal Time (UTC, 4:59pm Pacific Daylight Time). Technical Areas: Papers are solicited in all areas of neural information processing and statistical learning, including, but not limited to: * Algorithms and Architectures: statistical learning algorithms, kernel methods, graphical models, Gaussian processes, neural networks, dimensionality reduction and manifold learning, model selection, combinatorial optimization, relational and structured learning. * Applications: innovative applications or fielded systems that use machine learning, including systems for time series prediction, bioinformatics, systems biology, text/web analysis, multimedia processing, and robotics. * Brain Imaging: neuroimaging, cognitive neuroscience, EEG (electroencephalogram), ERP (event related potentials), MEG (magnetoencephalogram), fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging), brain mapping, brain segmentation, brain computer interfaces. * Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence: theoretical, computational, or experimental studies of perception, psychophysics, human or animal learning, memory, reasoning, problem solving, natural language processing, and neuropsychology. * Control and Reinforcement Learning: decision and control, exploration, planning, navigation, Markov decision processes, game playing, multi-agent coordination, computational models of classical and operant conditioning. * Hardware Technologies: analog and digital VLSI, neuromorphic engineering, computational sensors and actuators, microrobotics, bioMEMS, neural prostheses, photonics, molecular and quantum computing. * Learning Theory: generalization, regularization and model selection, Bayesian learning, spaces of functions and kernels, statistical physics of learning, online learning and competitive analysis, hardness of learning and approximations, statistical theory, large deviations and asymptotic analysis, information theory. * Neuroscience: theoretical and experimental studies of processing and transmission of information in biological neurons and networks, including spike train generation, synaptic modulation, plasticity and adaptation. * Speech and Signal Processing: recognition, coding, synthesis, denoising, segmentation, source separation, auditory perception, psychoacoustics, dynamical systems, recurrent networks, language models, dynamic and temporal models. * Visual Processing: biological and machine vision, image processing and coding, segmentation, object detection and recognition, motion detection and tracking, visual psychophysics, visual scene analysis and interpretation. Papers that balance new algorithmic contributions with a more applied focus, with substantial evaluation on real-world problems, are particularly encouraged. Evaluation Criteria: Submissions will be refereed on the basis of technical quality, novelty, potential impact, and clarity. Submission Instructions: All submissions will be made electronically, in PDF format. As in previous years, reviewing will be double-blind -- the reviewers will not know the identities of the authors. Papers are limited to eight pages, including figures and tables, in the NIPS style. However, this year an additional ninth page containing only cited references is allowed. Complete submission and formatting instructions, including style files, are available from the NIPS website, http://nips.cc. Electronic submissions will be accepted until June 5, 2009, 23:59 Universal Time (UTC, 4:59 pm Pacific Daylight Time). Note that this year, final papers will be due in advance of the conference. Demonstrations: There is a separate Demonstration track at NIPS. Authors wishing to submit to the Demonstration track should consult the Call for Demonstrations. Policy on Dual Submissions: Submissions that are substantially similar to papers that have been previously published or accepted for publication, in either a journal or conference proceedings, are not acceptable. During the NIPS review period, a submitted paper may not be under review in parallel for another conference with a published Proceedings; the NIPS review period begins June 19 and ends September 4, 2009. Submission is permitted of a short version of a paper that has been submitted, but not yet accepted, to a journal. Workshops: The workshops will be held at the Whistler/Blackcomb ski resort from December 11-12. The upcoming workshop proposal will provide details. Program Committee: Jean-Yves Audibert (Ecole des Ponts ParisTech) David Blei (Princeton University) Kwabena Boahen (Stanford University) Michael Bowling (University of Alberta) Nicolo Cesa-Bianchi (University of Milan) Aaron Courville (University of Montreal) Koby Crammer (University of Pennsylvania) Nathaniel Daw (New York University) David Dunson (Duke University) Paolo Frasconi (University of Florence) Nir Friedman (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) Arthur Gretton (Carnegie Mellon University and Max Planck Institute) Matthias Hein (Saarland University) Aapo Hyvarinen (University of Helsinki) Thorsten Joachims (Cornell University) Mark Johnson (Brown University) Charles Kemp (Carnegie Mellon University) John Lafferty (Carnegie Mellon University) [co-chair] Wee Sun Lee (National University of Singapore) Tai Sing Lee (Carnegie Mellon University) Jon McAuliffe (University of Pennsylvania) Yael Niv (Princeton University) Robert Nowak (University of Wisconsin, Madison) Pascal Poupart (University of Waterloo) Carl Rasmussen (University of Cambridge) Erik Sudderth (Brown University) Ben Taskar (University of Pennsylvania) Antonio Torralba (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) Bill Triggs (Laboratoire Jean Kuntzmann, CNRS) Sethu Vijayakumar (University of Edinburgh) Chris Williams (University of Edinburgh) [co-chair] Andrew Zisserman (University of Oxford) From giovanni.indiveri at unisalento.it Fri May 8 13:46:30 2009 From: giovanni.indiveri at unisalento.it (Giovanni Indiveri) Date: Fri, 08 May 2009 22:46:30 +0200 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Early CFP IFAC-IAV2010 7th Symposium on Intelligent Autonomous Vehicles, September 6-8, 2010, Lecce, Italy. Message-ID: <4A049A26.1080207@unisalento.it> Apologies for multiple postings ------------------------------- Dear All, please find below the CFP of the IFAC 7th Symposium on Intelligent Autonomous Vehicles, IAV 2010 - September 6-8, 2010, Lecce, Italy. Kind regards, Giovanni Indiveri http://iav2010.unile.it/ IFAC 7th Symposium on Intelligent Autonomous Vehicles IAV 2010 - September 6-8, 2010, Lecce, Italy The Symposium will consider generic methodologies and techniques applicable to intelligent autonomous vehicles. These include mobile robots on land, at sea, in air or in space, multi vehicle systems and networks of autonomous vehicles.It will address sensing, sensor integration and perception, architectures, planning, mission and motion control, navigation and cooperative navigation techniques, SLAM, teleoperation, human and vehicle interaction and practical applications. The focus of the Symposium will span from intelligent vehicle control to auxiliary systems support. Key topics will include (but not be limited to): # Architectures for intelligent autonomous systems including teams of autonomous vehicles; # Control, Guidance, and Navigation of autonomous robots (indoors, outdoors, land, air, space, marine): modeling and control, trajectory tracking and path following, navigation systems, planning, recognition, localization, map building, SLAM; # Sensors and sensor integration in autonomous robots; # Intelligent transportation systems; # Service robotics, domestic robotics, rehabilitation and biomedical robotics, field robotics, entertainment robotics, ocean exploration robots; # Redundant robots; # Multiple Vehicle Systems and Networks of Autonomous Vehicles: cooperative navigation and control of homogeneous and heterogeneous teams, cooperative control under severe communication constraints, cooperative perception, communications. Submission of Draft Paper: 14 December 2009 SPONSORS IFAC Technical Committee 7.5 on Intelligent Autonomous Vehicles (IAV) Co-Sponsored by: IFAC Technical Committee TC 1.3 - Discrete Event and Hybrid Systems IFAC Technical Committee TC 4.1 - Components and Technologies for Control IFAC Technical Committee TC 4.3 ? Robotics IFAC Technical Committee TC 7.1 - Automotive Control IFAC Technical Committee TC 7.2 - Marine Systems IFAC Technical Committee TC 7.3 ? Aerospace Technically Co-Sponsored by: IEEE RAS - Robotics and Automation Society IPC-Chairs Antonio M. Pascoal, Instituto Superior T?cnico (IST), Lisbon, Portugal and Giovanni Indiveri, DII - Dipartimento Ing. Innovazione, University of Salento, Lecce, Italy For a list of IPC members, NOC members, submission details and further information please refer to the Symposium Web Page http://iav2010.unile.it/ -- _____________________________________________ Dr. Giovanni Indiveri, voice: +39 0832 297 220 University of Salento, fax: +39 0832 297 733 Department of Innovation Engineering, Via per Monteroni, 73100 Lecce, Italy. __________ giovanni.indiveri at unisalento.it ____________________________ http://persone.dii.unile.it/indiveri/ ___________________________________________ http://cor.unile.it/ From glyang at SIMTech.a-star.edu.sg Fri May 8 21:59:28 2009 From: glyang at SIMTech.a-star.edu.sg (Yang Guilin Dr) Date: Sat, 9 May 2009 12:59:28 +0800 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] AIM2009 online registration is open now Message-ID: Dear Colleague, AIM2009 is pleased to announce that the online registration system is open now. Please check the following link about the conference registration information: http://www.aim2009.org/registration.html The tutorial registration is also open. The detailed tutorial introduction is listed in the following link: http://www.aim2009.org/tutorial.html Look forward to seeing you in Singapore in the AIM 2009 conference. Best regards, Guilin Yang Publicity Co-Chair, AIM 2009 From raj.madhavan at nist.gov Wed May 6 12:22:42 2009 From: raj.madhavan at nist.gov (Raj Madhavan) Date: Wed, 06 May 2009 15:22:42 -0400 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] =?iso-8859-1?q?Call_for_Papers=3A_2009_Perfo?= =?iso-8859-1?q?rmance_Metrics_for_Intelligent_Systems_Workshop_=28PerMIS?= =?iso-8859-1?q?=9209=29?= Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20090506152235.02458cf8@mailhub.mel.nist.gov> CALL FOR PAPERS 2009 Performance Metrics for Intelligent Systems Workshop (PerMIS'09) September 21-23, 2009 http://www.isd.mel.nist.gov/PerMIS_2009/ GENERAL CHAIR Elena Messina, NIST PROGRAM CHAIR Raj Madhavan, ORNL/NIST PUBLICITY CHAIR E. Tunstel, JHU-APL USA SPONSORS NIST, DARPA, ACM, IEEE (W/NV Robotics and Automation Chapter) The Performance Metrics for Intelligent Systems workshop is the only one of its kind dedicated to defining measures and methodologies of evaluating performance of intelligent systems. Started in 2000, the PerMIS series focuses on applications of performance measures to practical problems in commercial, industrial, homeland security, and military applications. It has proved to be an excellent forum for discussions and partnerships, dissemination of ideas, and future collaborations between researchers, graduate students, and practitioners from industry, academia, and government agencies. The main theme of the ninth iteration of the workshop, PerMIS'09, seeks to address the question: "Does performance measurement accelerate the pace of advancement for intelligent systems?" In addition to the main theme, as in previous years, the workshop will focus on applications of performance measures to practical problems in commercial, industrial, homeland security, and military applications. Topic areas include, but are not limited to: * Defining and measuring aspects of a system: The level of autonomy Human-robot interaction Collaboration & coordination Taxonomies Biologically inspired models * Evaluating components within intelligent systems: Sensing and perception Knowledge representation, world models, ontologies Planning and control Learning and adapting Reasoning * Infrastructural support for performance evaluation: Testbeds and competitions for intercomparisons Instrumentation and other measurement tools Simulation and modeling support * Technology readiness measures for intelligent systems * Benchmarks and applied performance measures in various domains, e.g., Industrial and manufacturing systems Intelligent transportation systems Emergency response robots (e.g., search and rescue, bomb disposal) Homeland security systems Defense robotics Intelligent systems for hazardous environments (e.g., nuclear remediation) Smart grid Space robotics Medical robotics & assistive devices The Proceedings of PerMIS are indexed by INSPEC, Compendex, ACM Digital Library, and are released as a NIST Special Publication. Selected papers from past workshops have been published as special issues with the Journal of Integrated Computer-Aided Engineering (PerMIS'04) and the Journal of Field Robotics (PerMIS'06) and as a Springer Edited Book Volume (PerMIS'08). LOCATION Washington, D.C. (The workshop will be held at NIST, Gaithersburg MD 20899) SUBMISSION INFORMATION Prospective authors are requested to submit a draft paper (max. 8 pages) or an extended abstract (1-2 pages) for review. Invited session proposals can also be submitted as draft papers but should contain 1) a session title and a brief statement of purpose, 2) name and affiliation of the organizer(s), and 3) a preliminary list of speakers. All submissions must be written in English, starting with a succinct statement of the problem, the results achieved, their significance, and a comparison with previous work. Papers are to be submitted at http://www.isd.mel.nist.gov/PerMIS_2009/submission.htm/ using the specified templates. IMPORTANT DATES Submission of full papers June 10, 2009 Proposal for invited sessions June 17, 2009 Notification of acceptance July 24, 2009 Final papers due August 21, 2009 --------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 hirata at irs.mech.tohoku.ac.jp Mon May 11 02:13:04 2009 From: hirata at irs.mech.tohoku.ac.jp (Yasuhisa Hirata) Date: Mon, 11 May 2009 18:13:04 +0900 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Advanced Robotics : Vol. 23, No. 6 issue Message-ID: <4A07EC20.9030005@irs.mech.tohoku.ac.jp> ************************************************************************ The Official International Journal of the Robotics Society of Japan Advanced Robotics Volume 23, Number 6, 2009 Regular Issue ************************************************************************ 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/2009/00000023/00000006 Table of Contents Human Tracking System Integrating Sound and Face Localization Using an Expectation-Maximization Algorithm in Real Environments pp. 629-653(25) Authors: Kim, Hyun-Don; Komatani, Kazunori; Ogata, Tetsuya; Okuno, Hiroshi G. Design and Control of a Hydraulic Simulator for a Flexible-Joint Robot pp. 655-679(25) Authors: Fotouhi, R.; Salmasi, H.; Dezfulian, S.; Burton, R. Minimizing Energy Consumption in Hexapod Robots pp. 681-704(24) Authors: de Santos, P. Gonzalez; Garcia, E.; Ponticelli, R.; Armada, M. Conceptual Warehouse Design Algorithm Using a Network Flow Model pp. 705-724(20) Authors: Nikaido, Makoto; Kobayashi, Toyokazu; Ito, Tomio; Higashi, Toshimitsu; Tamura, Hirofumi; Ota, Jun Visual Control of Robots with Delayed Images pp. 725-745(21) Authors: Perez-Vidal, Carlos; Gracia, Luis; Garcia, Nicolas; Cervera, Enric Factors Involved in Tactile Texture Perception Through Probes pp. 747-766(20) Authors: Yoshioka, Takashi; Zhou, Julia Design and Development of an Emotional Interaction Robot, Mung pp. 767-784(18) Authors: Kim, Eun Ho; Kwak, Sonya S.; Hyun, Kyung Hak; Kim, Soo Hyun; Kwak, Yoon Keun 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 Tetsunari Inamura (National Institute of Informatics) Committee Chair of RSJ International Journal e-info at rsj.or.jp From stephane.doncieux at isir.fr Mon May 11 04:43:01 2009 From: stephane.doncieux at isir.fr (=?UTF-8?B?U3Rlwo5waGFuZSBEb25jaWV1eA==?=) Date: Mon, 11 May 2009 13:43:01 +0200 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] IROS'09 Workshop on Evolutionary Design of Robots Message-ID: <4A080F45.5070304@isir.fr> CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS Half-day workshop: "Exploring New Horizons in Evolutionary Design of Robots (EvoDeRob)" to be held as part of the IEE-IROS conference (IROS 2009) October 11, afternoon, St Louis, Missouri USA http://www.isir.fr/evoderob PAPER SUBMISSION DEADLINE: July, 1st, 2009 ------------------------------- SUBMISSION GUIDELINES Authors should submit a 2 to 8 pages article (IEEE double column format) describing the poster to evoderob at isir.fr All accepted papers will be published in the CD proceedings of the IROS workshops. Authors will have the opportunity to present the main lines of their contributions during a poster spotlight session and will have to prepare a poster to encourage specific scientific discussion. ------------------------------- INVITED TALKS: * "Resilient machines", J. Bongard * "Abandoning Objectives and the Search for Novelty", K. Stanley * "Evolutionary algorithms for the design of complex robotics systems", P. Bidaud ------------------------------- DESCRIPTION Robot design usually follows a reductionist approach where mechanics, electronics, control loops and software are designed in sequential order, without much ?feedback? from higher level components. While impressive results have been achieved with this methodology, and it is arguably the best suited to human engineers, it neglects numerous situations in which, for instance, a minor change in mechanics can substantially simplify software and/or electronics. Conversely, evolution allows living organisms to take full advantage of interactions across levels, because it provides a automatic and integrated design process that relies only on the effectiveness of its results as a whole. Loosely inspired by nature, Evolutionary Algorithms (EAs) now provide mature optimization tools that have successfully been applied to the design of many artifacts, from antennas to complete robots. In robotics, it has culminated in the Evolutionary Robotics research field. Modular robotics, swarm robotics or any robot with non-conventional mechanics (high redundancy, dynamic motion, multi-modality) are challenging robotics applications for which such an integrated approach could prove useful. The workshop will present the most recent fundamental developments of ER, including some not yet transferred to real robotics applications. It also aims at facilitating discussions on ER applications between researchers of the field and potential users. Compared to the main conference, the emphasis will be on fundamental issues rather than on practical implementations. ------------------------------- LIST OF TOPICS * Benchmarks & applications in evolutionary robotics (ER): o what robotics application challenges for future work? o what could be the killer app of ER? * Methodological issues related to ER use in the context of automatic engineering: fitness, genotype, phenotype, selection pressure, algorithm design o bootstrap & premature convergence o genotype and phenotype abstraction level in relation to the problem to be solved o statistical tools relevant in the context of population-based dynamics o models of ecological evolution * Multi-objective approaches * Diversity and novelty in evolutionary robotics * Modularity in genotype, phenotype and selection pressure * Evolution and development * Behavior description * On-line evolutionary robotics * Evolution of swarm robotics ------------------------------- ORGANIZATION * S. Doncieux, Univ. Pierre et Marie Curie, ISIR/CNRS, France. * N. Bredeche, Univ. Paris-Sud, TAO/INRIA, LRI/CNRS, France. * J.-B. Mouret, Univ. Pierre et Marie Curie, ISIR/CNRS, France. ------------------------------- PROGRAM COMMITEE * J. Bongard, University of Vermont. USA. * A.E. Eiben, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands. * E. Haasdijk, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands. * J.-A. Meyer, Univ. Pierre et Marie Curie, ISIR/CNRS, France. * A. Philippides, University of Sussex, UK. * M. Schoenauer, TAO/INRIA, France. ------------------------------- IMPORTANT DATES * Submission deadline: July, 1st, 2009 * Notification of acceptance: July, 31th, 2009 * Camera-ready: August, 15th, 2009 * Workshop: October, 11th, pm ------------------------------- CONTACT evoderob at isir.fr From gerkey at willowgarage.com Mon May 11 07:33:00 2009 From: gerkey at willowgarage.com (Brian Gerkey) Date: Mon, 11 May 2009 07:33:00 -0700 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Extended deadline: RSS Workshop on Mobile Manipulation Message-ID: ************************************** In response to numerous requests, and in light of ICRA happening this week, the submission deadline has been extended to May 17th. ************************************** CALL FOR PAPERS (deadline extended) RSS 2009 Workshop: Mobile Manipulation in Human Environments When: Sunday, 28 June, 9.00am - 5.30pm Where: Robotics: Science and Systems Conference, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA. Website: http://www.willowgarage.com/rss09mm Submission deadline: 17 May 2009 The goal of this full-day workshop is to gather and discuss state of the art research in mobile manipulation. We emphasize mobile and manipulation: we will explore the problems that arise and the solutions that are developed when working with robots that move freely through, and manipulate objects in, human-centered environments. These problems must be solved to develop applications in real-world settings in health care, flexible factories, and domestic chores. We are especially interested in autonomous systems that integrate robust sensing and actuation to perform tasks in cluttered and uncertain environments, but we also welcome new ideas on teleoperation and mixed-mode systems. Empirical results showing integrated systems with physical hardware are preferred, even if preliminary. This workshop is the 5th installment in a series of manipulation-centered workshops at RSS. Previous RSS workshops were: * 2005: Humanoid Manipulation * 2006: Manipulation for Human Environments * 2007: Sensing and Adapting to the Real World * 2008: Robot Manipulation: Intelligence in Human Environments This workshop is also part of a broader movement of multiple communities toward mobile manipulation as a key interdisciplinary research topic. We encourage participation in other mobile manipulation meetings, such as the IJCAI 2009 Mobile Manipulation Challenge and the ICAPS 2009 Workshop on Bridging the Gap between Task and Motion Planning. Submissions: We solicit paper submissions, optionally accompanied by a video, both of which will be reviewed (not double-blind) by the program committee. The review criteria will be: technical quality, significance of system demonstration, and topicality. We aim to accept 9--12 papers for oral presentation at the meeting. Videos will be shown during an afternoon session open to the public. Accepted papers and videos will be assembled into proceedings and distributed in CD format at the workshop; they will also be archived at the Internet Archive. If there is sufficient interest, we will pursue publication of a special journal issue to include the best papers. Topics of interest include: * Integrated systems that can perform everyday tasks robustly * Visual or haptic feedback for manipulation * Task representation and planning for multi-step manipulation tasks * Integration of planning and control for complex manipulation tasks * Affordance identification and grasp planning * Semi-autonomous, human-in-the-loop control * Mobile manipulation with uncertain information * Manipulation of tools * Long-term autonomy for mobile manipulation systems * Safety and interaction with humans * Learning common manipulation capabilities * Object recognition and pose estimation Papers should be in PDF, conform to the IEEE Transactions style (same style used for RSS), and be maximum of 8 pages in length (shorter papers are welcome). Videos should be in the MPEG format, 3-5 minutes in length, and easily viewed with free video players (please try playing your video on a couple of different machines before submitting). Email submissions to: rss09mm at lists.willowgarage.com . Please do not attach video files to email; include a URL instead. Important Dates: * 17 May 2009: Submissions due * 27 May 2009: Notification of acceptance * 5 June 2009: Final papers due * 28 June 2009: Workshop Organizers: * Brian P. Gerkey, Willow Garage * Kurt Konolige, Willow Garage * Odest Chadwicke Jenkins, Brown University * Robert Platt, NASA Johnson Space Center * Neo Ee Sian, AIST Program Committee: * Sachin Chitta, Willow Garage * Matei Ciocarlie, Columbia University * Rod Grupen, UMass, Amherst * Sami Haddadin, DLR * Kaijen Hsiao, MIT * Charlie Kemp, Georgia Tech * Danica Kragic, KTH * James Kuffner, CMU * Francesco Nori, University of Genova * Morgan Quigley, Stanford University * Radu Rusu, Technical University of Munich * Siddhartha Srinivasa, CMU / Intel Research From Bijan.Shirinzadeh at eng.monash.edu.au Tue May 12 00:33:44 2009 From: Bijan.Shirinzadeh at eng.monash.edu.au (Bijan Shirinzadeh) Date: Tue, 12 May 2009 17:33:44 +1000 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Postdoctoral Research Positions Message-ID: <4A092658.2010106@eng.monash.edu.au> Postdoctoral Research Fellow(s) in Robotics and Mechatronics The Robotics & Mechatronics Research Laboratory (RMRL), Monash University (Australia) is seeking to appoint Research Assistants and Postdoctoral Researchers in the areas of robotics, intelligent sensing and control (intelligent mechatronics), biomedical and biomechatronics, and autonomous systems. Applicants should have a Ph.D degree in Electrical/Electronic and Computer Systems Engineering, Mechatronics Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, or a related field, and a good research track record. The successful candidate(s) will be actively involved in fundamental research in the areas of micro/nano manipulation, biomechatronics, robotic micro/nano surgery and haptics, kinematics/dynamics (parallel mechanisms), systems modeling/analysis, sensor fusion and control, and multi-agent-based mobile robotics and autonomous systems. High quality publication record and experience in experimental research would be advantageous. The successful candidates will have excellent programming skills in one or more of the following: C/C++/C#, Windows RTX, microprocessor/microcontroller and embedded programming, and MATLAB, together with knowledge of operating systems such as Windows, Unix/Linux, and QNX. The appointment(s) will be made at a level appropriate to the successful applicant?s qualifications, experience and in accordance with Monash University?s classification standards. Further information may be obtained from Associate Professor Bijan Shirinzadeh (Tel: +61 3 9905-1565, email: bijan.shirinzadeh at eng.monash.edu.au ). Applications including a CV and the names of three references should be sent to Associate Professor Bijan Shirinzadeh, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, PO Box 31, Monash University, VIC 3800, Australia. From F.Wahl at tu-bs.de Tue May 12 07:57:09 2009 From: F.Wahl at tu-bs.de (F. Wahl) Date: Tue, 12 May 2009 16:57:09 +0200 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Call for Participation: German Workshop on Robotics, Braunschweig, June 9-10 2009 Message-ID: <4A098E45.3090106@tu-bs.de> ---------------------------------------------------------------- Please feel free to forward this message to interested colleagues. We apologize if you receive this email more than once. ----------------------------------------------------------------- ======================================================= CALL FOR PARTICIPATION GERMAN WORKSHOP ON ROBOTICS (GWR09) ======================================================= Dear colleagues and friends, I am pleased to announce the Call for Participation of the German Workshop on Robotics 2009 to be held at the Technische Universitaet Braunschweig, Germany, during June 9-10, 2009. As the number of participants is limited to 80, I would like to encourage you to register early for this high-quality, single-track conference. The conference program as well as all further information about the conference can be found at: http://www.gwr09.org With best regards, Friedrich M. Wahl Chair GWR09 From tpadir at WPI.EDU Tue May 12 07:00:00 2009 From: tpadir at WPI.EDU (Taskin Padir) Date: Tue, 12 May 2009 10:00:00 -0400 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Call for Papers: 2009 IEEE TePRA Message-ID: <4A0980E0.3000604@wpi.edu> IEEE International Conference on Technologies for Practical Robot Applications (TePRA) November 9-10, 2009 Greater Boston Area, Massachusetts, USA www.ieeerobot-tepra.org CALL FOR PAPERS The 2nd Annual IEEE International Conference on Technologies for Practical Robot Applications (TePRA) will be held in the Greater Boston Area, Massachusetts, USA from November 9-10, 2009. TePRA is aimed at catalyzing the development of enabling technologies and encouraging their adoption by robot designers. With an emphasis on practical applications and industrial participation, TePRA provides researchers, innovators, entrepreneurs and robotics professionals with a forum balanced between an academic conference and an exhibition, while presentations are selected through IEEE's rigorous peer-review process. The conference theme this year will be new technologies in robotics and automation and their practical applications. While papers are solicited in all related areas of robotics and automation, the conference tracks include:: Robot Applications -Military -Medical -Consumer -Industrial -Service Robot Technologies -Sensing -Actuation -Computation -Power -Communication Prospective authors are invited to submit an extended abstract of their proposed contributions electronically in PDF or MS Word format. Detailed instructions for abstract submission can be found on the conference website. Sponsorship, exhibit and demonstration opportunities are available. Please see the conference website for further details. www.ieeerobot-tepra.org IMPORTANT DATES July 1, 2009: Submission of abstracts August 15, 2009: Notification of acceptance September 15, 2009: Submission of final contributions Email: info at ieeerobot-tepra.org Website: www.ieeerobot-tepra.org From yangl at HLT.UTDALLAS.EDU Tue May 12 08:23:11 2009 From: yangl at HLT.UTDALLAS.EDU (Yang Liu) Date: Tue, 12 May 2009 10:23:11 -0500 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] CFP: Workshop on Child, Computer, and Interation at ICMI-MLMI 2009 Message-ID: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed X-Greylist: Sender IP whitelisted, not delayed by milter-greylist-2.1.12 (hlt.utdallas.edu [127.0.0.1]); Tue, 12 May 2009 10:23:11 -0500 (CDT) Apologies for multiple copies. WORKSHOP ON CHILD, COMPUTER AND INTERACTION NOVEMBER 5, 2009 http://wocci2009.fbk.eu post-conference workshop of ICMI/MLMI 2009 http://icmi2009.acm.org/ CALL FOR PAPERS The Workshop on Child, Computer and Interaction will be held in Cambridge, Boston area, on November 5, 2009. The Workshop is a satellite event of the Tenth International Conference on Multimodal Interfaces, this year jointly with Machine Learning multi-modal interaction (ICMI-MLMI 2009) that will take place in the same venue on November 2-4, 2009. This edition follows the first edition of the Wocci Workshop which was held in Crete in October 2008. This Workshop aims at bringing together researchers and practitioners from universities and industry working in all aspects of multimodal child-machine interaction with particular emphasis on, but not limited to, speech interactive interfaces. Children are special both at the acoustic/linguistic level but also at the interaction level. The Workshop provides a unique opportunity for bringing together different research communities to demonstrate various state-of-the-art components that can make up the next generation of child centred computer interaction. These technological advances are increasingly necessary in a world where education and health pose growing challenges to the core well being of our societies. Noticeable examples are remedial treatments for children with or without disabilities, and first and second language learning. The Workshop should serve for presenting recent advancements in all core technologies for multimodal child-machine interaction as well as experimental systems and prototypes. PROGRAM COMMITTEE Kay Berkling, Inline GmbH, Germany Diego Giuliani, Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Italy Shrikanth Narayanan, University of Southern California, USA Alex Potamianos, Technical University of Crete, Greece Elmar Noeth, University of Erlangen, Germany Martin Russell, University of Birmingham, UK Hiromichi Kawanami, Nara Institute of Science and Technology, Japan Justine Cassell, Northwestern University, USA John Hansen, University of Texas, USA Abeer Alwan, University of California LA, USA Bryan Pellom, Rosetta Stone Inc, USA Matteo Gerosa, Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Italy Serdar Yildirim, Mustafa Kemal University, Turkey Stefan Steidl, University of Erlangen, Germany TECHNICAL SCOPE The technical scope of the Workshop includes, but it is not limited to: - Speech Interfaces: acoustic and linguistic analysis of children's speech, discourse analysis of spoken language in child-machine interaction, age-dependent characteristics of spoken language, automatic speech recognition for children and spoken dialogue systems. - Multi-modality and Robotics: multi-modal child-machine interaction, multi-modal input and output interfaces, including robotic interfaces, intrusive, non-intrusive devices for environmental data processing, pen or gesture/visual interfaces. - User Modelling: user modelling and adaptation, usability studies accounting for age preferences in child-machine interaction Cognitive Models: internal learning models, personality types, user-centred and participatory design. - Application Areas: training systems, educational software, gaming interfaces, medical conditions and diagnostic tools. SUBMISSIONS Authors are invited to submit papers in any technical areas relevant to the Workshop. The technical committee will select papers for oral/poster-presentation. Accepted papers will be included in a CDROM with proceedings of the Workshop. Proceedings of the Workshop will be published by ACM. Instructions for paper submission will be available at the Workshop website. The official language of the Workshop is English. Demos are especially welcome. DEADLINES: two-page abstract: June 1, 2009 notification of acceptance: June 30, 2009 final submission (4-page paper): August 24, 2009 From aweitzenfeld at poly.usf.edu Fri May 15 10:19:20 2009 From: aweitzenfeld at poly.usf.edu (Weitzenfeld, Alfredo (USF Polytechnic)) Date: Fri, 15 May 2009 13:19:20 -0400 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] LARS 2009 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4CF69EE3687127428F9354FCA245B9921271174A@USFMB1.forest.usf.edu> Dear Colleague, On behalf of the Latin American Robotics Symposium (LARS) Organizing Committee, I would like to invite you to submit paper contributions to LARS 2009. LARS 2009 will be held October 29-30, 2009 in Valparaiso, Chile, in conjunction with the Latin American Robotics Contest and the RoboCup Latin American Open. This is LARS sixth event and as in previous years we expect it to have IEEE and RAS technical co-sponsorship (pending approval) with proceedings published by IEEE Explore. Web site is http://robotica.elo.utfsm.cl/lars2009 Call for papers is http://robotica.elo.utfsm.cl/simposio/cfp_lars2009.pdf Important Dates: July 13: Deadline for Full Paper Submissions. August 10: Notification of Acceptance/Rejection. August 24: Final, Camera Ready Papers, Due. We look forward to your participation! Best regards, Alfredo Weitzenfeld Chair LARS 2009 From cetto at iri.upc.edu Thu May 14 06:08:03 2009 From: cetto at iri.upc.edu (Juan Andrade Cetto) Date: Thu, 14 May 2009 15:08:03 +0200 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Offer: Research assistant position available in the Consolider Ingenio MIPRCV project Message-ID: <4A0C17B3.80508@iri.upc.edu> OFFER. RESEARCH ASSISTANTSHIP AT IRI, BARCELONA Date of this call: May 15, 2009 The position is to be filled immediately Offer: Research assistant position available in the Consolider Ingenio MIPRCV project (http:// http://miprcv.iti.upv.es/ ) Project: Multimodal Interaction in Patterns Recognition and Computer Vision Deadline: June 15th , 2009 Topic: Perception, Multimodal Interaction and Human Robot Interaction in Mobile Robots Duration: 3 years Contact Person: Alberto Sanfeliu (sanfeliu at iri.upc.edu) Nationality: Any. (Work Permit Required for Non-EU Residents). DETAILED INFORMATION The Robotics Group at the Institut de Robotica i Informatica Industrial, CSIC-UPC, Barcelona, seeks a qualified candidate for a research assistantship in the field of mobile robotics. The applicant will work within the Consolider Ingenio project MIPRCV. Further information on the group's research lines and history can be found in: http://www-iri.upc.es/english/robotics.php http://miprcv.iti.upv.es/ The ideal candidate will hold a degree in computer or electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, computer science, mathematics, or related fields. She/he should have a good background in systems theory, linear algebra, and algorithms, as well as excellent programming skills in C, C++, and Matlab. A good English level is required. Additional knowledge of Catalan and/or Spanish will be helpful, but not mandatory. Appointment for the research assistant position is for 36 months, provided that successful progress is made. Additionally, and if desired, the candidate will have the opportunity of pursuing a PhD degree under the guidance from one professor from our group. The starting date of the assistantship is immediate. Interested candidates can apply for this position directly by contacting at Alberto Sanfeliu at sanfeliu @iri.upc.edu, sending a letter of motivation, a detailed CV and academic curricula, and the names of two references. -- Juan Andrade Cetto Institut de Rob?tica i Inform?tica Industrial CSIC-UPC Llorens i Artigas 4-6, 2a pl. 08028 Barcelona, Spain Tel. +34 934010775 Fax. +34 934015750 cetto at iri.upc.edu From Gary.Berg-Cross at pentagon.af.mil Thu May 14 12:53:31 2009 From: Gary.Berg-Cross at pentagon.af.mil (Berg-Cross, Gary Ctr SAF/XCPAB) Date: Thu, 14 May 2009 15:53:31 -0400 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Call for Papers on Implications for a Theory of Mind on Intelligent (ToM) for Adaptive, Intelligent Systems Message-ID: <0F453BEF978314498EE8CB0A7A8135F5081DD4@bloodymary.pentagon.ncr.ds.af.mil> As part of the 9th ninth iteration of the Performance Metrics for Intelligent Systems workshop (PerMIS'09) is seeking to organize a session that more directly addresses how a "Theory of Mind" (ToM), which predicts external behavior of others by attributing internal states, such as knowledge, beliefs, and intentions may affect performance and adaptability of intelligent systems. This follows the 2008 PerMIS session dealing with Biologically Inspired Models of Intelligent Systems which discussed bio-Inspiration and cognitive development approaches to intelligence as an emergent phenomenon based on dynamic interaction between a physical body, the properties of its environment, its cognitive and motivational biases and its personal history. A ToM seems particularly relevant to the eventual goal of highly competent systems able to achieve goals in a relatively autonomous way, but the bulk of its research to date has been a mix of child development studies along with evidence from brain function (e.g. viewing specific brain regions as a component of ToM) or clinical studies or autism, schizophrenia, Asperger and Williams syndrome. Proposals addressing the theme overall themes of PerMIS to address performance issues are strongly encouraged. This year a major focus is "Does performance measurement accelerate the pace of advancement for intelligent systems?" However, as NIST's Jim Abbus has expressed at recent workshops there are scientific and practical goals to consider. One concerns the larger goal of a "Scientific Theory of Mind" - to "extend the frontiers of human knowledge to include a scientific understanding of the processes in the human brain that give rise to the phenomenon of mind. The other considers computational theory of mind as an emerging phenomena with the practical possibility that such intelligent machines could "help produce wealth i.e., goods and services that people want and need." We therefore welcome proposals dealing with both research and applied interests including innovative theoretical, methodological, or practical questions on topics like a ToM. Contributions to the discussion are most welcome from the diverse disciplines that study intelligent systems including computer science, AI, simulation & modeling, cognitive science and psychology, behavioral and social science, neuroscience (neurophysiology, brain modeling), and the biomedical sciences as well as philosophy. Possible topics include, but are not limited to: * Developmental issues to better understand the consistent path of ToM * For example, the interactions and mix of higher-order, executive functions (e.g. self-regulatory cognitive processes, working memory and control of attention along with resistance to interference) and lower cognitive abilities needed for a ToM to develop, o The relation of joint attention, communication, imitation, declarative point or episodic memory to a ToM, o Modular vs. explanatory theory formulations of a ToM. * Robotic tests of a ToM o The use of developmental robots to test how a ToM might be learned through their interactions with a surrounding environment. * ToM and levels of autonomy, * Cognitive architectures to support a ToM, * The role of social involvement , language and understanding including: o Human-robot and robot-robot interaction, o Collaboration & coordination * The importance of embodiment in a ToM, * The role of a ToM in developmental progression of social skills & more complex cognitive abilities, * Taxonomies & conceptions and beliefs about people, about human behavior, about social interactions, rules, and roles supporting a ToM * Observational methods (e.g. false belief task) to test a ToM including work with Primates Please forward paper proposals of not more than 500 words in .doc format, and with the email subject line PerMIS ToM Proposal, to Gary Berg-Cross at gbergcross at gmail.com by Wed June 10th, 2009. All applicants will be notified of a decision by early July. ------------------------------------------------------------ Workshop Location NIST Campus, Gaithersburg MD, 20899, September 21-23, 2009 First Call for Papers Call Deadline: 10-June-2009 For information on this year's schedule see http://www.isd.mel.nist.gov/PerMIS_2009/index.htm * Information on the Overall Workshop * In addition to the main theme ( "Does performance measurement accelerate the pace of advancement for intelligent systems?"), as in previous years, the workshop will focus on applications of performance measures to practical problems in commercial, industrial, homeland security, and military applications. PerMIS workshops generally concern "methodologies of evaluating performance of intelligent systems and has used a working definition of functional intelligence as "the ability to act appropriately in an uncertain environment." Within this we've tried to encourage discussion of topics like developmental robots as "useful tools for studying theory of mind " and have something on this a topic at the workshop each year With its NIST and DARPA connections PerMIS has proved to be an excellent forum for discussions and partnerships, dissemination of ideas, and future collaborations in an informal setting. Attendees usually include researchers, graduate students, practitioners from industry, academia, and government agencies. Additional information Proposal for invited sessions June 17, 2009 Notification of acceptance July 24, 2009 Final papers due August 21, 2009 Gary Berg-Cross, Ph.D. PerMIS Program Committee gbergcross at gmail.com http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?GaryBergCross SOCoP Executive Secretary Principal, EM&I Semantic Technology Potomac, MD From ming.xie at robotics.sg Tue May 12 18:37:17 2009 From: ming.xie at robotics.sg (Ming Xie) Date: Wed, 13 May 2009 09:37:17 +0800 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Research positions Message-ID: <200905130937146712187@robotics.sg> Several Positions of Junior Research Engineers The humanoid robotics research group in Singapore has several open positions for Junior Research Engineers, who will work on a speech-based human-robot interaction project. Candidates with - good knowledge in robotics, - good knowledge in computer vision, - good knowledge in artificial intelligence, - strong interest in speech recognition/understanding/learning/synthesis, and - strong C/C++ programming skills, are welcome to apply. Qualified candidates with Master degrees and good English proficiency will have the option of pursuing Ph.D degrees at the Nanyang Technological University. Interested applicants should send CV, cover letter and two references to Dr. Ming XIE at ming.xie at robotics.sg From samir.bouabdallah at mavt.ethz.ch Tue May 12 09:20:09 2009 From: samir.bouabdallah at mavt.ethz.ch (Bouabdallah Samir) Date: Tue, 12 May 2009 18:20:09 +0200 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Last days for early bird registration to UAV'09 symposium. June 8-10, Reno, Nevada, USA. Message-ID: <20B3DFB65FB4244A869D91798B18FC9002FA30A5@EX2.d.ethz.ch> Dear colleagues, The early bird registration to UAV'09 symposium will be closed in a couple of days (May 15th). If you are planning to attend, please proceed with the registration asap. Registration web page: http://www.uavconferences.com/registration.html Conference website: http://www.uavconferences.com/index.html Best regards, __________________________ Dr. Samir Bouabdallah Autonomous Systems Lab Institute of Robotics and Intelligent Systems ETH Zentrum, Tannenstrasse 3 Office: CLA E 16.2 CH-8092 Z?rich, e-mail: samir.bouabdallah at ieee.org Phone: +41 44 632 89 06 Fax: +41 44 632 11 81 ___________________________ Project Leader of: http://www.mufly.org Co-chair of IEEE TC on Aerial Robotics: http://www.flyingrobots.org/ Spin-off: http://www.skybotix.com From rus at csail.mit.edu Tue May 12 07:21:37 2009 From: rus at csail.mit.edu (Daniela Rus) Date: Tue, 12 May 2009 10:21:37 -0400 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Postdoctoral Positions at MIT Message-ID: <10626CF1-5C74-41ED-805E-C0E1F9A5DC60@csail.mit.edu> At least two postdoctoral research positions are available in the Distributed Robotics Laboratory at CSAIL, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge MA USA The PI is Prof. Daniela Rus. See URL: groups.csail.mit.edu/drl Each appointment duration is 12 months, with a possible extension of another 12 months. Position 1 ======== The research will be focused on designing small soft robots capable of locomotion and internal deformation, in order to squeeze through holes narrower than the robot body. The research will investigate the role of new materials and non- traditional actuation in designing and controlling such machines. The research will also investigate control and planning algorithms for this type of system. This project is a collaboration between MIT, Harvard, and iRobot. For this position we are looking for applicants with robotics background. Applicants with chemical engineering background can also be a good fit. We are looking for candidates with knowledge of mechanism design and control, demonstrated creativity, and experience with building robots. Position 2 ======== The research will be focused on decentralized control of multi-robot systems. We are looking for creative candidates with strong background in control theory, estimation theory, and experience with implementing algorithms on hardware platforms. Some knowledge of computer networking is also desirable. Applications ========== Applicants for both positions should hold a PhD in a robotics-related discipline. Interested applicants should send a CV (with a brief research statement) and a list of references by email to Rebecca Yadegar ryadegar at csail.mit.edu From plagemann at stanford.edu Wed May 13 13:47:26 2009 From: plagemann at stanford.edu (Christian Plagemann) Date: Wed, 13 May 2009 13:47:26 -0700 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Robotics research engineer position at Stanford AI Lab Message-ID: The Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab is soliciting applications for a Robotics research engineer (full-time) staff position. The successful candidate will become part of an active team of researchers and students headed by Prof. Sebastian Thrun and Prof. Andrew Ng working on autonomous driving technology, indoor and outdoor robotics, machine learning, and control. The position will focus on the development and maintenance of robotic hardware and electronics, interfacing to computers, and driver-level software programming. Concretely, the candidate will be responsible for the maintenance, extension, and demonstration of the robotic car Junior, which completed the DARPA Urban Challenge second-best in 2007, as well as for various hardware-related projects in the context of STAIR, the Stanford AI Robot. The requirements for this position are a M.Sc. degree in a related engineering discipline and significant practical experience in electronics hardware and software development. The candidate should be familiar with micro-controllers, power systems, and the Linux operation system. Additional software skills, such as C++, Python, graphical user interfaces, SVN, etc. are a strong plus. To apply for this position, please go to http://jobs.stanford.edu and search for job number 34102. Upload your Resume and a cover letter including three references and a description of your experience in the above-mentioned topics. *** Please forward this email to interested *** colleagues which might not be on this *** mailing list. -- Christian Plagemann Stanford University, AI Lab Computer Science Department Gates Building - Office 244 353 Serra Mall, Stanford CA 94305-9010 Phone: +1 (650) 723-9558 Fax: +1 (650) 725-1449 http://plagemann.net From scheding at acfr.usyd.edu.au Thu May 14 22:07:10 2009 From: scheding at acfr.usyd.edu.au (Steve Scheding) Date: Fri, 15 May 2009 15:07:10 +1000 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] CFP: Australasian Conference on Robotics and Automation Message-ID: <693D84F7FB4C4ACA8C1F7F69E157FBF0@acfr.usyd.edu.au> Call For Participation: 2009 Australasian Conference on Robotics and Automation 2-4 December 2009 Sydney, Australia http://www.araa.asn.au/acra/acra2009/ Dear Roboticists, The 2009 Australasian Conference on Robotics and Automation (ACRA'09) will be held at the Sydney University, during 2-4 December 2009. Please distribute this to your colleagues and students. The important dates are: ---------------------------------------------------- Submission of papers: 4 September 2009 Notification of acceptance: 5 October 2009 Camera ready papers due: 6 November 2009 ACRA 2009: 2-4 December 2009 ---------------------------------------------------- We hope to see you in Sydney in December. Dr. Steve Scheding ACRA 2009 General Chair From devin at cs.dartmouth.edu Sun May 17 19:04:42 2009 From: devin at cs.dartmouth.edu (Devin Balkcom) Date: Sun, 17 May 2009 22:04:42 -0400 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] RSS 2009: Call for Participation Message-ID: <1BFDE5BA-DCF0-4CA2-99A1-261D4F8CE3A5@cs.dartmouth.edu> 2009 Robotics: Science and Systems Conference Sunday, June 28 - Wednesday, July 1 University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA. http://www.roboticsconference.org Early registration deadline: May 31, 2009. Call for participation: The Robotics: Science and Systems Conference will bring together researchers working on algorithmic or mathematical foundations of robotics, robotics applications, and analysis of robotic systems. The conference will be single track to allow attendees an opportunity to experience the best research in all areas of robotics. The program includes invited talks as well as oral and poster presentations of refereed papers. The Organizing Committee highly encourages students to attend the RSS conference. We offer discount registration fees for student attendees, and we are proud to announce the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) Student Fellowship to further reduce the cost of student participation. Further information about registratrion and the technical program may be found on the conference website: Registration: http://www.roboticsconference.org/registration.html Technical Program: http://www.roboticsconference.org/program.html Invited talks: http://www.roboticsconference.org/invited.html Accomodations: http://www.roboticsconference.org/accommodations.pdf From jiang at gradschool.uni-luebeck.de Mon May 18 00:43:42 2009 From: jiang at gradschool.uni-luebeck.de (Chaoqun Jiang) Date: Mon, 18 May 2009 09:43:42 +0200 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] =?iso-8859-15?q?PhD_positions_in_Neuroengine?= =?iso-8859-15?q?ering=2C_Robotics_and_Navigation=2C_University_of_L=FCbec?= =?iso-8859-15?q?k=2C_Germany?= Message-ID: <4A1111AE.8050104@gradschool.uni-luebeck.de> The Graduate School for Computing in Medicine and Life Sciences (http://www.gradschool.uni-luebeck.de/) at the University of L?beck invites applications for 3-year PhD scholarships in the fields of Brain Imaging, Robotics, Brain Plasticity, Navigation Methods, Neuroanatomy, Human-Computer Interfacing, Minimal Invasive Interventions. Application deadline: June 30, 2009. Project titles: I1a - Diffusion Tensor methods I1b - Correction of Susceptibility caused Distortions in Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging I1c - Endoscopic Optical Coherence Tomography in the Deep Brain I1d - Small animal brain imaging with nano CT I1e - Transcranial sonography (TCS) in monogenic forms of Parkinsonism I1f - Combined motion detection and motion correction medical imaging I1g - Neurochemical whole-brain mapping using magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) I2a - Stroke Rehabilitation Robot I2b - Parallel mode of action control: from human studies to intelligent robotic interfaces I2c - Learning to See Better I2d - Cardiac pacemaker localisation I3a - Memory enhancement by transcranial brain stimulation I3b - Brain Modelling I3c - Relationship between brain activity and peripheral glucose metabolism - combining experimentally acquired data with a mathematical model I4a - Robotic micromanipulator for small animal studies I4b - Navigation and electrophysiological recordings in Deep Brain Surgery I4c - Robot assisted navigation guided OCT operating microscope I5a - Definition of cortical networks for the control of eye and hand movements I5b - Wavelet-Based TMS-EEG Data Analysis I5c - 3-dimensional kinematic principles of eye, head and limb movements I6a - Interfaces based on EEG, ECoG and DBS I6b - Nonlinear and multivariate EEG analysis I6c - Basics in deep brain stimulation (DBS) I6d - Next generation auditory prosthesis I7 - Computer assisted minimally invasive interventions Requirements: Candidates are expected to have a master's degree (or its equivalent) in computer science, mathematics or engineering. Prior experiences in scientific publishing (during the university study or industry employment) are of advantage. Please prepare all the necessary documents and submit your application online: http://www.gradschool.uni-luebeck.de/?q=node/20. For further information, send email to: management at gradschool.uni-luebeck.de or visit our website at http://www.gradschool.uni-luebeck.de/. From mouri at gifu-u.ac.jp Mon May 18 02:45:54 2009 From: mouri at gifu-u.ac.jp (Tetsuya MOURI) Date: Mon, 18 May 2009 18:45:54 +0900 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Advanced Registration: 9th International IFAC Symposium on Robot Control in Gifu (SYROCO2009) Message-ID: <200905180945.AA05608@robota.gifu-u.ac.jp> (apologies for multiple postings) Dear Colleague, SYROCO'09 - http://www.syroco2009.org/ (the 9th International IFAC Symposium on Robot Control) will be held in Gifu, Japan on September 9-12, 2009. SYROCO2009 will be held on the following schedule. July 1, 2009: Deadline for Advance Registration September 9-12, 2009: SYROCO 2009 Registration website has been opened. Please refer to the following website. http://www.syroco2009.org/index.php?page_name=registration Please make Advance Registration no later than July 1, 2009. Looking forward to your registration. Sincerely, Haruhisa Kawasaki National Organizing Committee Chair ***************************************************** SYROCO2009 9th International IFAC Symposium on Robot Control Nagaragawa Convention Center, Gifu, Japan September 9-12, 2009 http://www.syroco2009.org/ ***************************************************** From fabio.bonsignorio at heronrobots.com Mon May 18 04:35:45 2009 From: fabio.bonsignorio at heronrobots.com (Fabio Bonsignorio) Date: Mon, 18 May 2009 13:35:45 +0200 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Call for Participation and Program: 2009 Robotics: Science and Systems Workshop on GOOD EXPERIMENTAL METHODOLOGY IN ROBOTICS Message-ID: Apologies for multiple postings --------------------------------------------------------- Dear All, this is to invite you to attend the RSS2009 Workshop on GOOD EXPERIMENTAL METHODOLOGY IN ROBOTICS. It will be an highly interactive workshop on a hot topic. You will find the program here below All the best Fabio CALL FOR PARTICIPATION 2009 Robotics: Science and Systems Workshop on GOOD EXPERIMENTAL METHODOLOGY IN ROBOTICS Full-day workshop held in conjuntion with the 2009 Robotics: Science and Systems Conference in Seattle, WA, USA on June 28. http://www.roboticsconference.org/index.html Rationale and goals As the complexity of current robotic and embodied intelligent systems grows, it is more and more necessary to define proper experimental approaches and benchmarking procedures. The Special interest group on Good Experimental Methodology was formed by EURON in response to a wide perception -- evidenced by some 90 responses to an email call for interest -- that roboticists could do much better at performing and, particularly, reporting experimental work. A major output of the Special Interest Group is a set of guidelines for good experimental (reporting) practice, which we believe supports the community's wish to produce better experimental work. Equally significant is a series of workshops on Benchmarking and Good Experimental Methodology held at major Robotics conferences. Good experimental work is not novel in robotics: there are many good experimental scientists in our community. However, uniformly good experimental work and reporting has not yet been achieved. The evidence of community interest in the topic mentioned above suggests that the community is willing to take steps to improve in this area. Thus we propose to take the work of good experimental robotics groups and use it to illustrate high-quality experimental work and reporting The workshop will draw out the strengths (and weaknesses) of presented work and encourage sharing and adoption of good practices. It will mix invited and regular presentations and will encourage the discussion and interaction between the participants List of topics - Design of Experiments in Robotics - Execution of Experiments in Robotics - Reporting Experiments in Robotics - Examples of Good Practice - Evaluation of Experimental Robotics Work - Proposals for Promotion of Good Experimental Work Format: The workshop will consist of presentations interleaved with a significant amount of additional time for discussions between the presentations and at the end of the full day single track sessions. Proceedings: The workshop will generate proceedings; selected contributions may be invited to submit to a journal special issue on good experimental robotics. PROGRAM Sunday, June 28th 2009 Coffee at 8:00 and registration Session 1: 9:00 - 10:30 9:00 - 9:10 Introduction 9:10 - 09:30 Publishing Identifiable Experiment Code And Configuration Is Important, Good and Easy Jens Wawerla Richard T. Vaughan School of Computing Science, Simon Fraser University 9:30 - 9:50 Toward a Science of Robotics: Goals and Standards for Experimental Research L. Takayama Willow Garage 9:50 -10:10 Experiment Design for Large Multi-Robot Systems J. McLurkin Computer Science and Engineering University of Washington 10:10 - 10:30 Towards Establishing Clinical Credibility for Rehabilitation and Assistive Robots Through Experimental Design Katherine M. Tsui Holly A. Yanco University of Massachusetts Lowell Break: 10:30 - 11:00 Session 2: 11:00 - 12:30 11:00 - 11:20 Experimental Identification of Friction and Dynamic Coupling in a Dual Actuator Testbed D. Rabindran D. Tesar Robotics Research Group Department of Mechanical Engineering The University of Texas at Austin, USA 11:20 - 11:40 Good Experimental Methodologies for Mobile Robot Olfaction Lino Marques Institute of Systems and Robotics University of Coimbra 11:40 - 12:00 A Proposal of a Set of Metrics for Collective Movement of Robots I. Navarro F. Mat?a Intelligent Control Group Universidad Politecnica de Madrid 12:00 - 12:20 A Traceable Inertial Calibration Parameter Estimation Procedure Suited for Mobile Robots Surya P. N. Singh Australian Centre for Field Robotics, at the School of Aerospace, Mechanical, and Mechatronic Engineering University of Sydney 12:20 - 13:00 : Discussion Lunch: 13:00 - 2:00 Session 3: 2:00 - 3:30 2:00 2:10 Morning recap 2:10-2:30 Datasets for the Evaluation of Multi-Sensor Perception in Natural Environments with Challenging Conditions Thierry Peynot and Steve Scheding ARC Centre of Excellence for Autonomous Systems Australian Centre for Field Robotics The University of Sydney 2:30 - 2:50 Acquisition of 2-D ground truth data in multirobot experiments M. Delaine Anderson The University of Alabama 2:50 - 3:10 Evaluating the Performance of Robot Mapping Systems E. Olson, University of Michigan M. Kaess, MIT 3:10 - 3:30 Evaluation of Adaptive Technology Algorithms in Small Robotic Platforms M. Farmer,J. Pippine, C. Sullivan,C. Valdez,A. Watson System Planning Corporation Break: 3:30 - 4:00 Session 4: 4:00 - 5:30 4:00 - 4:30 Defining the requisites of a replicable robotics experiment F.P. Bonsignorio Heron Robots A.P Del Pobil University Jaume I Castellon J. Hallam South Denmark University Odense 4:30 - 5:45: Discussion 5:45 - 6:00: Wrap-up Relates workshops: Previous workshops on the related topic of Benchmarking have been organized successfully at IROS (and one is being organized at next IROS in St. Louis) and RSS conferences. Workshop Organizers: Fabio Bonsignorio, Heron Robots, Italy, Angel P. del Pobil, Universitat Jaume I, Spain, John Hallam, University of Southern Denmark, -- Fabio P. Bonsignorio Ceo Heron Robots s.r.l. Via R.Ceccardi 1/18 I-16121 Genova Italy www.heronrobots.com From jiyeongl at hanyang.ac.kr Mon May 18 04:38:18 2009 From: jiyeongl at hanyang.ac.kr (Ji Yeong Lee) Date: Mon, 18 May 2009 20:38:18 +0900 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] CFP: The 6th International Conference on Ubiquitous Robots and Ambient Intelligence (URAI 2009) Message-ID: <4A1148AA.7060303@hanyang.ac.kr> *Dear Colleague,* *The **6th International Conference on Ubiquitous Robots and Ambient Intelligence (URAI 2009) * * **October 28 - 31, 2009, Gwangju, Republic of Korea* *http://www.kros.org* _*/urai2009/***_ The 6th International Conference on Ubiquitous Robots and Ambient Intelligence (URAI 2009), hosted by Korea Robot Society (KROS) will be held on October 28-31, 2009 at Kimdaejung Convention Center, Gwangju, Korea. Other robot related events (Automobile-Robot Exhibition and World Light Exposition) will be also held during this week. The aim of this conference is to bring together researchers, engineers and practitioners to present their ideas and recent works related to the various aspects of ubiquitous robots, ambient intelligence, HRI, mobile robotics, sensors and networks. Four days conference consists of one day?s workshop, two days? technical program, and one-day?s unforgettable cultural tour program around Gwangju. We are pleased to invite you to submit papers and video, propose the organized sessions, and attend the URAI 2009. The TOPICS covered by the conference are, but not limited to: *MAIN TOPICS* *Division I : Ubiquitous Robots * Network-based Robotics, Ambient Intelligence, Intelligent Space / Environment Technologies, Human-Robot Interaction, Robot Vision and Audition, Robot Intelligence and Learning, Robotic Agents, Sensor Network and Sensor Fusion * * *Division II : Robotic Mechanisms and Systems * Navigation / Localization, Robot Kinematics and Dynamics, Robotic Mechanisms and Design, Humanoid Robots, Haptics / Teleoperation, Sensors and Actuators, Medical / Rehabilitation Robotics, Biorobotics, Control Architecture and Middleware ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ *AUTHOR SCHEDULE: Important dates* June 1, 2009: _Initial submission of short papers (2 pages) or video_ July 1, 2009 : Notification of Acceptance August 15, 2009 : Submission of camera ready papers/video ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- *SUBMISSION OF PAPERS*: In the initial submission, authors are required to submit a short paper: 1. Regular and work in progress papers : 2 pages 2. Video papers : 1 page plus video If accepted, authors select one of the following three submission types in the final submission,. 1. Regular papers (4-5 pages), which report novel and significant contribution 2. Work in progress papers (2-3 pages), which present recent ideas and on-going works 3. Video papers (1 pages+video), which report successful implementation. Please submit your papers or video written in English to http://www.kros.org/urai2009/ where templates for both Word and Latex formats can be found. The presented papers will be further screened for possible publication in Journal of Intelligent Service Robots. *Sponsors* Sponsored by Korea Robotics Society Technically co-sponsored by IEEE Robotics and Automation Society, Robotics Society of Japan(RSJ), Robotics Society of Taiwan(RST) *All inquiries related to the conference to Secreteriat :* Ji Yeong Lee (Hanyang Univ., Korea) e-mail : jiyeongl at hanyang.ac.kr Tel: +82-31-400-5253 Byung-Ju Yi, Ph.D. General Chair of URAI 2009 Hanyang University Korea From stulp at cs.tum.edu Mon May 18 06:33:42 2009 From: stulp at cs.tum.edu (Freek Stulp) Date: Mon, 18 May 2009 15:33:42 +0200 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Call for Participation - ICAR'09 Workshop on Robust and Legible Manipulation in Human Environments Message-ID: <200905181533.42971.stulp@cs.tum.edu> ----------------------------------------------------------- CALL FOR PARTICIPATION ICAR'09 Workshop on Robust and Legible Manipulation in Human Environments ----------------------------------------------------------- The full-day workshop "Robust and Legible Manipulation in Human Environments" will be held during the 14th International Conference on Advanced Robotics (ICAR 2009) in Munich, Germany, on June 23, 2009. http://www.icar2009.org/ http://www.icar2009.org/download/workshops/04_ICAR2009_RobustLegibleManipulation_StulpBeetzPaulus.pdf ----------------------------------------------------------- PROGRAM 09:15 -- 09:45 Introduction 09:45 -- 10:30 Gordon Cheng - Technische Universitat M?nchen 10:30 -- 11:00 Coffee Break 11:00 -- 11:45 Tim Guhl - KUKA Roboter GmbH 11:45 -- 12:30 Andreas Pott - Fraunhofer Institut f?r Produktionstechnik und Automatisierung IPA 12:30 -- 14:00 Lunch Break 14:00 -- 14:45 Radu Rusu - Willow Garage / Technische Universitat M?nchen 14:45 -- 15:30 Michael Beetz - Technische Universitat M?nchen 15:30 -- 16:00 Coffee Break 16:00 -- 18:00 Panel Discussion TOPICS Robotics in human environments, manipulation, mobile manipulation, unstructured environments, humanoid robots, intention recognition MOTIVATION Although robots are currently faster, stronger, and more accurate than humans, they are still far from achieving human-like performance when manipulating objects. The main reason is that the brain as a motion controller is far superior over robotic controllers in terms of flexibility, autonomous learning abilities, and reliability. In the long run, such characteristics are necessary requirements for robots too; as, for instance, needed in elderly care. With a steadily increasing percentage of elderly people, and therefore the increased prevalence of chronic diseases and disabilities, there is great potential for such robots to help where human resources are insufficient. In order to achieve robots that have human-like manipulation performance, the computational aspects of everyday manipulation tasks need to be well-understood, and requires the thorough study of the interaction of perceptual, learning, reasoning, planning, and control mechanisms. The challenges to be met include cooperation with humans, uncertainty in both task and environments, real-time action requirements, and the use of tools. The challenges cannot be met by merely improving the software engineering and programming techniques. Rather the systems need built-in capabilities to deal with these challenges. Looking at natural intelligent systems, the most promising approach for handling them is to equip the systems with more powerful cognitive mechanisms. Interesting topics for discussion might be: Which aspects of human environments should robots know before being deployed, and which aspects should it acquire during operation through modeling and learning? Which role should imitation play? Another aspect of robots in human environments we want to address is legibility of robot behavior, i.e. how well humans can interpret a robot's intentions. For humans to interact naturally with robot, it is not an absolute necessity to have robots with the exact same morphology as humans. This might even have the contrary effect, known as the 'uncanny valley'. Rather, natural interaction depends on a robot's -behavior-, which should be predictable, consistent, efficient and goal-directed. In this context, we will address questions such as: How much should/must robot behavior mimic that of humans? Should robots mimic all idiosyncrasies of humans? Which rules of politeness should robots respect, and how can such rules be represented? Does (near) optimal behavior facilitate the interpretation of intentions by others? OBJECTIVES The goal of the proposed workshop is to make progress towards closing the gap between human and robot manipulation in uncertain environments inhabited by humans. We will do this by considering application domains that are too complex for current robotic system, such as a kitchen robot that can set the table, or a robot that assists caretakers in elderly homes. WORKSHOP ORGANIZERS Freek Stulp, Technische Universitat M?nchen, Garching, Germany Michael Beetz, Technische Universitat M?nchen, Garching, Germany Jan Paulus, Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University of Applied Science, Germany ------------------------------------------------------- From gaurav at usc.edu Mon May 18 14:06:39 2009 From: gaurav at usc.edu (Gaurav S. Sukhatme) Date: Mon, 18 May 2009 14:06:39 -0700 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Autonomous Robots 26(4) TOC Message-ID: <562c8ffd0905181406n12c8a0cfoaf325ae6228772b3@mail.gmail.com> Volume 26 Number 4 of Autonomous Robots is now available at the SpringerLink website (http://www.springerlink.com/content/0929-5593). SpringerLink allows free access to all paper abstracts. Full access (PDF) is by individual or institutional subscription. ------------------------------------------------------------------- Autonomous Robots 26(4) Table of Contents ------------------------------------------------------------------- On the use of likelihood fields to perform sonar scan matching localization Authors: Antoni Burguera, Yolanda Gonz?lez and Gabriel Oliver DOI: 10.1007/s10514-009-9108-0 pp. 203-222 Contact type dependency of texture classification in a whiskered mobile robot Authors: Charles W. Fox, Ben Mitchinson, Martin J. Pearson, Anthony G. Pipe, and Tony J. Prescott DOI: 10.1007/s10514-009-9109-z pp. 223-239 Maneuvering and control of a biomimetic autonomous underwater vehicle Author: Jenhwa Guo DOI: 10.1007/s10514-009-9117-z pp. 241-249 ------------------------------------------------------------------- Gaurav S. Sukhatme Editor-in-Chief Autonomous Robots http://robotics.usc.edu/~gaurav From jmh at cs.utah.edu Wed May 20 14:10:10 2009 From: jmh at cs.utah.edu (John Hollerbach) Date: Wed, 20 May 2009 15:10:10 -0600 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] IJRR June 2009 issue Message-ID: <4A1471B2.5050902@cs.utah.edu> A new issue of The International Journal of Robotics Research is available online: Special Issue on the Tenth International Symposium on Experimental Robotics: 1 June 2009; Vol. 28, No. 6 The below Table of Contents is available online at: http://ijr.sagepub.com/content/vol28/issue6/?etoc Special Issue on the Tenth International Symposium on Experimental Robotics Oussama Khatib, Vijay Kumar, and Daniela Rus The International Journal of Robotics Research 2009;28 683-684 http://ijr.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/28/6/683 Robot Navigation in Multi-terrain Outdoor Environments Guilherme A. S. Pereira, Luciano C. A. Pimenta, Alexandre R. Fonseca, Leonardo de Q. Corr?a, Renato C. Mesquita, Luiz Chaimowicz, Daniel S. C. de Almeida, and Mario F. M. Campos The International Journal of Robotics Research 2009;28 685-700 http://ijr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/28/6/685 Sensor-based Behavior Control for an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Junaed Sattar, Philippe Gigu?re, and Gregory Dudek The International Journal of Robotics Research 2009;28 701-713 http://ijr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/28/6/701 Cooperative Localization for Autonomous Underwater Vehicles Alexander Bahr, John J. Leonard, and Maurice F. Fallon The International Journal of Robotics Research 2009;28 714-728 http://ijr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/28/6/714 Online Walking Control System for Humanoids with Short Cycle Pattern Generation K. Nishiwaki and S. Kagami The International Journal of Robotics Research 2009;28 729-742 http://ijr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/28/6/729 Control for Localization of Targets using Range-only Sensors Ethan Stump, Vijay Kumar, Ben Grocholsky, and Pedro M. Shiroma The International Journal of Robotics Research 2009;28 743-757 http://ijr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/28/6/743 Dynamic Rolling for a Modular Loop Robot Jimmy Sastra, Sachin Chitta, and Mark Yim The International Journal of Robotics Research 2009;28 758-773 http://ijr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/28/6/758 Driver Inattention Detection based on Eye Gaze?Road Event Correlation Luke Fletcher and Alexander Zelinsky The International Journal of Robotics Research 2009;28 774-801 http://ijr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/28/6/774 Visual Servoing in the Large Daniele Fontanelli, Antonio Danesi, Felipe A. W. Belo, Paolo Salaris, and Antonio Bicchi The International Journal of Robotics Research 2009;28 802-814 http://ijr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/28/6/802 Experiments with Cooperative Control of Underwater Robots Matthew Dunbabin, Peter Corke, Iuliu Vasilescu, and Daniela Rus The International Journal of Robotics Research 2009;28 815-833 http://ijr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/28/6/815 A New Actuation Approach for Haptic Interface Design Fran?ois Conti and Oussama Khatib The International Journal of Robotics Research 2009;28 834-848 http://ijr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/28/6/834 From ashakh2m at fh-bonn-rhein-sieg.de Thu May 21 05:42:30 2009 From: ashakh2m at fh-bonn-rhein-sieg.de (Azamat Shakhimardanov) Date: Thu, 21 May 2009 14:42:30 +0200 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] ICAR 2009 Workshop: "Rapid Application Development in Robotics: On the role of re-use and adaptation of system components, middleware, and control architectures" Message-ID: <4A154C36.8000409@fh-bonn-rhein-sieg.de> CALL FOR PARTICIPATION: ICAR 2009 Workshop: "Rapid Application Development in Robotics: On the role of re-use and adaptation of system components, middleware, and control architectures". Marriott Hotel, Munich Germany, June 22nd 2009 ABSTRACT: The concept of ?reusability? and ?configurability? of software components is becoming more and more important in the development of modern robotic systems. These much-neglected nonfunctional requirements are key enablers of the innovative, multi-vendor, high added value robotics research, industrial manufacturing and professional services. Reuse and related concepts are the main driving force in defining the ability of a software system to respond to demands of changing robotics trends. RoSta Middleware and Architecture activities performed exhaustive survey and comparison of the existing state of the art in robot software. The results of the survey confirm that most of the approaches are ?from the scratch? systems without extra notable progress in research. One of the main reasons was that most of the previously produced results (in the form of software and experimental data) were barely interchangeable (inconsistent syntax/semantics) or reusable/inter-operable (no common software models for communication, components etc). One of the main objectives of this workshop is to address this issue of ?reusable/interoperable/ interchangeable? software by defining initial guidelines/decisions and identifying trade-off points and future research projects. WORKSHOP PROGRAM: 9:00 -? 9.05 Welcome 9:05 ?- 9:30 Erwin Prassler and Azamat Shakhimardanov: The Use of Reuse: A White Paper, 09:30 ? 10:00 Herman Bruyninckx: A reusable API for sensor-based robot motion specification and control, 10:00 ? 10:30 Geoffrey Biggs: Reuse of robot software in GearBox, Player and OpenRTM 10:30 ?11:00Coffee break 11:00 ? 11:30 Anthony Mallet: Building middleware-independent robotics software components 11:30 ? 12:00 Klas Nilsson: Principles for layered software in robot control architectures and middleware 12:00 ? 12:30 Davide Brugali: Techniques to build and reuse software artifacts, 12:30 ? 13:00 Rainer Bischoff: BRICS ? Best Practise in Robotics. 13:00 ? 14:00 Lunch 14:00 ? 15:25 Discussion and Recommendations 15:30 ? 15:55 Coffee break 16:00 ? 16:15 Discussion and closing WORKSHOP ORGANIZERS: Erwin Prassler, Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg, Germany Azamat Shakhimardanov, Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg, Germany Klas Nilsson, University of Lung, Sweden INVITED SPEAKERS: Geoffrey Biggs, AIST, Japan Anthony Mallet, LAAS CNRS, France Herman Bruyninckx, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium Davide Brugali, University of Bergamo FOR further information on the workshop please visit http://www.icar2009.org/workshopstutorials/ -- B-IT Bonn-Aachen International Center for Information Technology, University of Applied Sciences Bonn-Rhein-Sieg, Dept. Autonomous Systems Grantham-Allee 20 53757 Sankt Augustin Germany phone: +49 2241 865-468 fax: +49 2241 865-8468 mobile +49 178 147-8343 azamat.shakhimardanov at fh-brs.de http://www.b-it-center.de http:/www.fh-bonn-rhein-sieg.de From erwin.prassler at h-brs.de Thu May 21 12:00:44 2009 From: erwin.prassler at h-brs.de (Erwin Prassler) Date: Thu, 21 May 2009 21:00:44 +0200 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Idea contest on affordable robots - call for participation - deadline: June 15, 2009 Message-ID: <4A15A4DC.8020803@h-brs.de> Dear Robotics Researchers and Developers, crises like the one that we are going through in these days have not only drawbacks. They also offer the opportunity to think the unthinkable and to adjust our horizons a little. For decades the robotics community has promised and announced that robots will pervade our daily lives and serve humans wherever dirty, dull and dangerous tasks need to be done. But how many robots providing a reasonable service at a reasonable price can you buy today in a warehouse? After fifty years of robotics research and development there is only a handful of such robots out there. Robotics today has the reputation of not only being high technology but also being highly expensive. However, if robots really shall serve humankind at large, then they must become *affordable*. What we badly need are the "tin lizzies" and the "beetles" of robotics. The current situation virtually screams for an adjustment of the horizon in robotics research and development. This message is an appeal to the robotics community to leave at least for a short moment the established paths of robotics research and development and to think the unthinkable. We would like to invite the entire robotics community - researchers as well as developers and engineers, juniors as well as seniors - to an *idea contest on affordable robots*. We cordially invite you to tell us, what you consider the most badly needed robot, the robot which you would buy immediately, if you only saw it in a warehouse and if it did not cost a fortune. What about * a robotic bookshelf de-duster for 299 EUR/USD, which removes the dust from your bookshelves, or * a last seen radar for 199 EUR/USD, which tracks the objects in your house and can tell you where you left your glasses or your keys, or * a robotic fly swatter for 49 EUR/USD, which spots the bugs hovering around your ears at nighttime and gets them before they bite you? Participants in this idea contest, should sketch their ideas on a three slide presentation with the following content and email it to mailto:contest at affordable-robots.org *until June 15, 2009*. The first slide should be a title slide naming the idea, the inventors, and their affiliation. The second slide should contain a drawing of the robot and describe in form of a bulleted list the service and functions, which it is supposed to provide. The third slide should describe again with a few bullets how the idea could possibly be implemented, the technology required and how much the robot would eventually cost. The submissions should meet the following criteria: 1. They should describe an idea, which is original. 2. They should describe an economically meaningful service. 3. The proposed idea should have a realistic chance of being implemented. 4. A realistic price estimate of the final product should be in the order of 1000 EUR or less. All submissions, which meet the above criteria, will be published on www.affordable-robots.org. The top 10 will be presented during a town hall meeting on "affordable robots" at ICAR 2009 (www.icar2009.org) in Munich. At the end of the meeting the participants will choose a winner, who will be awarded a prize of 1000 EUR. Think the unthinkable Erwin Prassler PS: Please, forward this message to your students!!! -- B-IT Bonn-Aachen International Center for Information Technology Applied Science Institute, Dept. Autonomous Systems Grantham-Allee 20 53757 Sankt Augustin Germany erwin.prassler at h-brs.de http://www.b-it-center.de http://www.brsu.de From james_r_b_morrison at hotmail.com Fri May 22 00:38:40 2009 From: james_r_b_morrison at hotmail.com (James Morrison) Date: Fri, 22 May 2009 16:38:40 +0900 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] IEEE RAS Special Issue Deadline Extended to June 15, 2009: Equipment & Operations Automation in the Semiconductor Industry Message-ID: Dear Colleagues, The submission deadline for the IEEE TASE special issue on Equipment and Operations Automation in the Semiconductor Industry has been extended to June 15, 2009 - approximately 3 weeks from today! The IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering (IEEE TASE) is a publication of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society. The special issue is scheduled for publication mid 2010. Example topics of interest include the scheduling of wafer handling robots to optimize cluster tool throughput, design of equipment and robot structure, factory modeling, decision support systems and the control of robotics for system and/or equipment productivity. Papers addressing topics from the theory and application of robotics and automation in the semiconductor industry are welcome. A more extensive list containing topics of interest is provided below. Important dates follow: - June 15, 2009: PAPER SUBMISSION DEADLINE. - September 15, 2009: Completion of the first round paper review. - January 1, 2010: Completion of the second round paper review. - March 1, 2010: Final manuscripts due. - July 1, 2010: Tentative publication date. The CFP is available at http://xs3d.kaist.edu/TC-SMA. We welcome high quality papers from both industry and academia. Topics of interest include but are not limited to the following: - Decision technologies for equipment automation (e.g., scheduling of wafer handling robots) - Design concepts for equipment and related automation (e.g., equipment and wafer handling robot structure) - Design for manufacturing (DFM) - Factory modeling, analysis and performance evaluation - Algorithms for planning, scheduling and coordination - Wafer release and dispatch policies - Equipment productivity improvement - Automated material handling systems (AMHS) - Factory/cell/equipment-level controller design - Manufacturing execution systems (MES) - Advanced process control (APC) - Decision support systems (DSS) - Yield enhancement systems and e-Diagnosis - Data mining for yield and production improvement - Equipment engineering systems (EES) - Fully automated factory and remote operation center - Mobile and wireless applications (RFID) - Agent based intelligent systems - Engineering chains and supply chains - Factory of the future - Benchmark and case studies - Automation in 300mm prime/450mm wafer generations (e.g., issues in robotics for future wafer size generations) I look forward to your contribution! Best regards, Jim ================================================================================================================== James R. Morrison, Ph.D. Assistant Professor, Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, KAIST, South Korea Co-chair of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Technical Committee on Semiconductor Manufacturing Automation ================================================================================================================== E-mail: james.morrison at kaist.edu, TEL: +82-42-350-3127 xS3D Lab homepage: http://xs3d.kaist.edu IEEE Technical Committee on Semiconductor Manufacturing Automation: http://xs3d.kaist.edu/TC-SMA ================================================================================================================== _________________________________________________________________ More than messages?check out the rest of the Windows Live?. http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowslive/ From bowling at cs.ualberta.ca Fri May 22 07:07:05 2009 From: bowling at cs.ualberta.ca (Michael Bowling) Date: Fri, 22 May 2009 08:07:05 -0600 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] AI Video Awards at IJCAI (Extended Deadline) Message-ID: The submission deadline for the AI Video Awards has been extended to May 31, 2009. This means there's still time to create an entry by showing off your cool new robot, explaining a new piece of research, or even teaching about a well-known technique. This is the Oscars for AI research videos, with cash prizes and a big ceremony. Let's show the IJCAI people how much fun robotics is, and how robotics research will change the world. See www.aivideo.org ------------------------------------ IJCAI-09 Video Competition ------------------------------------ IJCAI is pleased to announce the IJCAI-09 AI Video Competition. The goal of this competition is to show the world how much fun AI+robotics is by documenting exciting artificial intelligence advances in research, education, and application. The rules are simple: Compose a short video about an exciting AI/robotics project, and narrate it so that it is accessible to a broad online audience. Accepted videos will be screened in the IJCAI-09 registration area during the conference. After the Computers and Thought Award lecture on July 14 2009, we will hold a multi-media ceremony where the developers of the best videos will be formally presented with awards. We strongly encourage student participation. So: go ahead and make a cool online video about your AI project, and get a ton of attention! Video format: Either 1 minute (max) "short video" or a 5 minute (max) "long video", with narration in English (or English subtitles). Consider combining screen shots, interviews, and video of a system in action. Make the video self-contained, so that newcomers to AI can understand and learn from it. We encourage a good sense of humor, though we will only accept submissions with serious AI content. Your video might cover contemporary research, or document seminal AI research in the past. Creativity is encouraged! New for 2009: A Music Video track Submissions: Place your video at a publicly-accessible www site & notify the co-chairs: David Aha Michael Bowling Videos must not contain any copyrighted video, audio, or characters. Developers of accepted videos will be asked to sign release forms. Submissions are due May 31 2009. Accepted videos will be announced on the competition site by June 13, and will be screened at IJCAI-09. Awards will be presented in the following (tentative) categories: Best (Long), Best Short, Best Student, Most Informative, Best Educational, Most Innovative, and Best Narration. Award winners will be presented with a handsome trophy, named in honor of SRI's Shaky and its inspirational video. The complete Call for Video Submissions, including review criteria, is available at http://www.aivideo.org. We look forward to your participation in this exciting event! From Daniel.Pack at usafa.edu Fri May 22 12:57:05 2009 From: Daniel.Pack at usafa.edu (Pack, Daniel J Dr. Civ USAFA/DFEC) Date: Fri, 22 May 2009 13:57:05 -0600 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Post-doc opportunities Message-ID: <2CEF0956C541E44B952F448EF8546F3B5DE807351C@AFAEDUMAIL01.usafa.ds.af.edu> ================================================================== Post Doctoral Opportunities at US Air Force Academy Topic: Cooperative Control, Sensing, and Communication Starting date: Immediately Language requirement: English ================================================================== The Academy Center for Unmanned Aerial Systems Center at the Air Force Academy is searching for candidates to fill a post-doc position that will be available in September 2009. The position availability is contingent upon an internal budget approval process. The individual will work with center faculty and researchers on a number of unmanned system projects. In particular, we are looking for someone who will contribute toward our efforts in (1) cooperative control, (2) UAV sensor networks, and (3) communication networks for robust, reliable communication. In addition, the person will be responsible to assist in cadet senior design projects. The individual should have a strong background in one of the following research areas: signals and systems, linear and nonlinear control, sensor technologies, or networking/communications. The individual should also have a strong background in software development skills. The compensation is competitive and negotiable. Being a US citizen is preferable but not required. ============================================================ How to apply ============================================================ Please send your CV to Prof. Daniel Pack at daniel.pack at usafa.edu. Prof. Daniel J. Pack, P.E., Ph.D. Dir. Academy Center for UAS Research Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering HQ USAFA/DFEC 2354 Fairchild Drive, Suite 2F6 USAF Academy, CO 80840-6236 Voice: (719) 333-6967 Fax: (719) 333-3756 From jakebeal at bbn.com Thu May 21 13:28:31 2009 From: jakebeal at bbn.com (Jake Beal) Date: Thu, 21 May 2009 16:28:31 -0400 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Call for Papers: Spatial Computing Workshop at IEEE SASO 2009 Message-ID: <91C5FD39-08F7-46A4-89E6-9D63872441B0@bbn.com> We are pleased to announce a workshop on Spatial Computing, to be held on September 14th, 2009 at this year's IEEE International Conference on Self-Adaptive and Self-Organizing Systems. We expect this workshop to be of interest to many robotics researchers, as prime examples of spatial computers include robotic swarms and modular robotics. The submission deadline is July 10th, 2009. The Call for Papers is attached below, and more information is available at: http://scw09.spatial-computing.org/ Thanks, -Jake Beal (on behalf of the organizing committee) Spatial Computing Workshop 2009 Description Many self-organizing or self-adaptive systems are ?spatial computers? ? collections of local computational devices distributed through a physical space, in which: * the difficulty of moving information between any two devices is strongly dependent on the distance between them, and * the ?functional goals? of the system are generally defined in terms of the system's spatial structure. Systems that can be viewed as spatial computers are abundant, both natural and man-made. For example, in wireless sensor networks and animal or robot swarms, inter-agent communication network topologies are determined by the distance between devices, while the agent collectives as a whole solve spatially-defined problems like ?analyze and react to spatial temperature variance? or ?surround and destroy an enemy.? Similarly, in reconfigurable microchip platforms, moving data between adjacent logic blocks is much faster than moving it across the chip, which in turn favors problems with spatial structure like stream processing. In biological embryos, each developing cell's behavior is controlled only by its local chemical and physical environment, but the eventual structure of the organism is a global property of the cellular arrangement. Moreover, a variety of successful established techniques for self-organization and self-adaptation arise from explicitly spatial metaphors, e.g., self-healing gradients. On the other hand, not all spatially distributed systems are spatial computers. The Internet and peer-to-peer overlay networks may not in general best be considered as spatial computers, both because their communication graphs have little relation to the Euclidean geometry in which the participating devices are embedded, and because most applications for them are explicitly defined independent of network structure. Spatial computers, in contrast, tend to have more structure, with specific constraints and capabilities that can be used in the design and analysis of algorithms. The goal of this workshop is to explicitly identify the idea of ?spatial computing? as a theme in self-organizing and self-adaptive systems, and further to develop the study of spatial computation as a subject in its own right. We believe that progress towards identifying common principles, techniques, and research directions ? and consolidating the substantial progress that is already being made ? will benefit all of the fields in which spatial computing takes place. And, as the impact of spatial computing is recognized in many areas, we hope to set up frameworks to ensure portability and cross- fertilization between solutions in the various domains. We are soliciting submissions on any aspect of spatial computing. Examples of topics of interest include, but are by no means limited to: * Languages for programming spatial computers and describing spatial tasks and patterns * Methods for compiling global programs to local rules that produce the desired global effect * Characterization of spatial self-organization phenomena as algorithmic building blocks * Characterization of error in spatial computers (e.g., error from approximating continuous space with networks of devices) * Analysis of tradeoffs between system parameters (e.g., communication radius vs. device memory consumption) * Studies of the relationship between time, propagation of information through the spatial computer, and computational complexity * Application of spatial computing principles to novel areas, or generalization of area-specific techniques * Device motion in spatial computing algorithms (e.g. the relationship between robot speed and gradient accuracy in multi-robot swarms) We encourage authors to submit papers in one of two formats: (1) Papers that develop ?unifying? principles or techniques in spatial computing ? these papers should be suitable in format and quality for a conference track, but avoid incrementalism. (2) Papers that demonstrate how a technique or problem from a specific area of application can usefully be generalized ? these papers should be a combination of review paper and position paper, presenting the material from one area in a form comprehensible to researchers of another area, as well as a coherent technical argument generalizing the material to other areas. Although our interests are broad, we discourage authors from submitting reviews of particular application areas unless the paper explicitly connects the material to the larger technical issues of spatial computing. Format and Submission Papers should be no longer than 6 pages in standard IEEE two-column format. All manuscripts should be submitted in PDF form to scw09 at spatial-computing.org . Please direct all questions to scw09 at spatial-computing.org. Important Dates * July 10, 2009: Submission deadline * August 5, 2009: Acceptance notification: * September 14, 2009: Workshop held at IEEE SASO in San Francisco, CA, USA. Organization Organizers: Dr. Jacob Beal (BBN Technologies, USA) Dr. William Butera (Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories, USA) Dr. Marco Mamei (Universita di Modena e Reggio Emilia, Italy) Prof. Olivier Michel (Univ. Paris 12, France) Program Committee: Dr. Jonathan Bachrach (Makani Power, USA) Prof. Cristian Borcea (New Jersey Institute of Technology, USA) Prof. Daniel Coore (University of West Indies, Mona, Jamaica) Prof. Andre deHon (U Penn, USA) Prof. Murat Demirbas (SUNY Buffalo, USA) Prof. Giovanna Di Marzo Serugendo (Univ. London, UK) Prof. Chris Dwyer (Duke, USA) Dr. Rene Doursat (Institut des Systemes Complexes, France) Dr. Seth Gilbert (EPFL, Switzerland) Prof. Frederic Gruau (University Paris Sud, France) Prof. David Hales (University of Bologna, Italy) Prof. Mark Jelasity (Hungarian Academy of Sciences and University of Szeged, Hungary) Prof. Pietro Lio' (University of Cambridge, UK) Prof. Ulrik Pagh Schultz (University of Southern Denmark, Denmark) Dr. Antoine Spicher (Univ. Paris 12, France) Prof. Gerald Jay Sussman (MIT, USA) Prof. Christof Teuscher (Portland State University, USA) Prof. Ron Weiss (Princeton, USA) Dr. Danny Weyns (K.U.Leuven, Belgium) Dr. Eiko Yoneki (University of Cambridge, UK) Chih-Han Yu (Harvard, USA) Prof. Franco Zambonelli (Universita di Modena, Italy) From denis at icmc.usp.br Tue May 26 06:39:47 2009 From: denis at icmc.usp.br (Denis Wolf) Date: Tue, 26 May 2009 10:39:47 -0300 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] ROBOT Track - ACM SAC 2010 - First CFP Message-ID: <4A1BF123.4090909@icmc.usp.br> ACM SAC 2010 - CALL FOR PAPERS Track: Intelligent Robotic Systems (ROBOT) http://www.icmc.usp.br/~lrm/sac2010/ The 25th Annual ACM Symposium on Applied Computing (SAC 2010) Lausanne, Switzerland - March 22-26, 2010 http://www.acm.org/conferences/sac/sac2010/ For the past twenty-four years, the ACM Symposium on Applied Computing has been a primary gathering forum for applied computer scientists, computer engineers, software engineers, and application developers from around the world. For the third year, the ACM SAC will have a specific track on robotics. It aims to be a forum for researchers to share experiences, expose issues, and discuss about this exciting research field. Robotics is a multidisciplinary area of study that presents an enormous commercial and research potential. While industrial robotics covers the study, design, and use of robot systems for manufacturing, mobile robotics concerns about developing systems that are capable of making decisions and acting autonomously in real and unpredictable environments to accomplish determined tasks. In the last decade, technological advances made possible the development of very efficient sensors and electronic devices at affordable prices. This fact has great impact on robotics research, allowing the development of efficient and relatively cheap sensors and computing devices. It also allows robots to accomplish more complex tasks, posing new challenges to scientists and engineers. This track focuses on all aspects of robotics, including related areas and applications. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to: Rehabilitation Robotics Humanoid Robotics Underwater Robots Search and Rescue Robots Entertainment Robots Multi-robot Coordination Active Perception and Vision Coverage and Deployment Learning Autonomous systems Navigation Localization and Mapping Evolutionary Robotics Grasping Control Architectures and Programming Bio-Inspired Robots Aerial Robotics Contact Modeling and Touching Educational Robotics Smart Actuators Micro/nano robotics Embedded Systems architectures Reconfigurable robotic platforms Vision-based Systems Multi-robot systems Simulation Important dates: Sep. 8, 2009: Paper submissions Oct. 19, 2009: Author notification Nov. 2, 2009: Camera-Ready Copy Denis Wolf, Eduardo Marques, and Fernando Osorio Intelligent Robotics Systems (ROBOT) Track Chairs ACM Symposium on Applied Computing 20010 From emanuele.guglielmino at iit.it Mon May 25 03:04:40 2009 From: emanuele.guglielmino at iit.it (Guglielmino Emanuele) Date: Mon, 25 May 2009 12:04:40 +0200 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] =?utf-8?q?Post-Doc_at_Italian_Institute_of_T?= =?utf-8?q?echnology=3A_Design_of_a_Soft_Bodied_Robot_=E2=80=9COcto?= =?utf-8?b?cHVz4oCd?= Message-ID: <5B2D6D6DDD42414A91B85B082D7C5FC4693C69@EDEN-CLU.netexchange.int.netscalibur.it> Italian Institute of Technology (An English Language Research Institute) Department of Advanced Robotics Post-Doctoral Researcher: Design of a Soft Bodied Robot ?Octopus? The Department of Advanced Robotics at the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT) is seeking to appoint a full-time postdoctoral research fellow with experience of actuation systems, novel mechanical/robot design, or fluid power systems to work on the EU funded project ?Octopus?. The project focuses on novel design principles and technologies for a new generation of high dexterity soft-bodied robots inspired by the morphology and behaviour of the octopus (http://www.octopusproject.eu/ ). The successful applicant will join and help to develop a team studying novel approaches in robot design that encompasses humanoid platforms such as the iCub, dextrous manipulators, and biomimetically inspired robots. Within an international environment, the candidate will work on the development and control of the actuation modules for the mechatronic robotic octopus arm. The research will explore both novel and revisited conventional actuation technology and mechatronic designs such as fluidic actuation (magnetorheological fluids, hydraulics and pneumatics), braided pneumatic Muscle Actuators, Shape Memory Alloys, compliant actuation. The successful candidate should have a degree and a PhD in Mechanical or Mechatronic Engineering or closely related area expertise in some of the following areas: ? Experience in fluid power actuation, particularly for micro fluidic applications, in magnetorheological technology and magnetic circuit design. Experience in compliant actuation and/or any other conventional or unconventional actuation technology would be an asset, including good knowledge of state-of-the-art mechanical and hydraulic components. ? Experience in robot or mechanism design. Experience in analysis and control of hyper redundant or continuum robot arms would be advantageous. ? Lateral thinking attitude and capability to explore unconventional design solutions as well as good practical lab and organisational skills. ? A good knowledge of English. The salary will depend on qualifications and experience, will be in the range ?30k-40k per year with additional pension, health, etc benefits. This post will be offered on a fixed-term contract of up to 4 years with possible future career options and advancement on successful completion. International applications are encouraged and will receive logistic support with visa issues, relocation, etc. To apply please send by June 15th a covering letter outlining experience and qualifications for the post and CV to Sara Pittaluga: sara.pittaluga at iit.it , stating ?OCTOPUS? in the object of the e-mail. Emanuele Guglielmino PhD Team leader Department of Advanced Robotics Actuation Group Fondazione Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (Italian Institute of Technology) Via Morego, 30 - 16163 Genoa, Italy Phone: +39 010 71781 511 Fax: +39 010 720321 E-mail: emanuele.guglielmino at iit.it Web: http://www.iit.it From kyamane at disneyresearch.com Tue May 26 07:58:10 2009 From: kyamane at disneyresearch.com (Katsu Yamane) Date: Tue, 26 May 2009 10:58:10 -0400 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Call for Posters: WS on Computer Vision for Humanoid Robots in Real Environments at ICCV2009 Message-ID: <20090526105624.E2A4.1B3C6057@disneyresearch.com> -------- Call for Poster Presentations -------- First IEEE Workshop on Computer Vision for Humanoid Robots in Real Environments in conjunction with ICCV 2009 September 27, 2009, Kyoto, Japan Objectives The goal of this workshop is to bring together experts from the fields of computer vision and robotics that are working on humanoid robots with vision as one of the primary modalities. Topics of interest include and are not limited to: * Human Robot Interaction * Grasping and Manipulation * Learning by Demonstration * Task Learning for Robots * Activity Recognition and Discovery for Robot * Humanoid Navigation in Real Environments * Vision Devices and Systems for Robot Applications * Application of Humanoid Robots (Indoor/Outdoor, Entertainment) Researchers from the robotics community are particularly encouraged to attend. This is the first attempt at a workshop that crosses from Humanoids Research to Computer Vision Research. Workshop Format The workshop will consist of about six invited talks as well as open poster presentations by the attendees. Every attendee is invited to bring a poster describing the work to facilitate open discussions among the attendees. ***Those who plan to present a poster are recommended to send the title and presenter's name, affiliation and email address to Dr. Katsu Yamane (kyamane at disneyresearch.com) by August 31, 2009.*** This information will be used only to estimate the number of posters and there is no review process for the workshop. The poster format will be posted on the workshop website in early September. Confirmed Invited Speakers - Minoru Asada (Osaka University) - Masatoshi Ishikawa (University of Tokyo) - Shunsuke Kudoh (University of Tokyo) - Takeo Kanade (Carnegie Mellon University) - Erhan Oztop (ATR) - Philippe Soueres (LAAS/CNRS) Organizers - Irfan Essa (Georgia Tech) - Atsushi Nakazawa (Osaka University) - Siddhartha Srinivasa (Intel Research) - Rahul Sukthankar (Intel Research) - Katsu Yamane (Disney Research, Pittsburgh) Sponsors The workshop is partially supported by the JST-CNRS Strategic Japanese-French Cooperative Program. For more information, see workshop webpage: http://humanoidscv.ime.cmc.osaka-u.ac.jp/ ICCV 2009 webpage: http://www.iccv2009.org/ or contact Dr. Yamane (kyamane at disneyresearch.com) directly. ---- Katsu Yamane ---- Senior Research Scientist Disney Research, Pittsburgh ---- Adjunct Associate Professor The Robotics Institute Carnegie Mellon University From kyrki at lut.fi Mon May 25 01:13:43 2009 From: kyrki at lut.fi (Ville Kyrki) Date: Mon, 25 May 2009 11:13:43 +0300 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Post-doc position available Message-ID: <1243239223.7513.26.camel@ti521525> The Laboratory of Machine Vision and Pattern Recognition (MVPR) at the Department of Information Technology at the Lappeenranta University of Technology (LUT), Finland, announces a postdoctoral position in -------------------------------------------------- Learning in Sensor-based Grasping and Manipulation -------------------------------------------------- MVPR performs research in all aspects of computer vision and machine learning, including robotic systems. Tasks ----- The candidate will work in the context of European FP7 research project GRASP (www.grasp-project.eu). The focus of the research will depend on the background of the candidate and personal initiative. The research environment will offer possibilities for strong international collaboration. Requirements ------------ A candidate should hold a Ph.D. or equivalent or be a Ph.D. student in the final stage of their studies. Suitable disciplines include Computer Science, Robotics, Automatic Control, Mathematics, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and other related areas. Modelling expertise, especially probabilistic models, is considered an advantage. Candidates are also expected to be experienced with programming in C++ and Matlab. The appointment will be full time for a period of one year to two years. The appointment is available immediately. Application and further information ------------------------------------ Applications should include a letter of motivation, a curriculum vitae, a list of publications, and the names and contact information (email) of at least two references. For more information, contact Ville Kyrki at kyrki at lut.fi. Applications should be sent by email to kyrki at lut.fi. ------------------------------------------- Ville Kyrki (Adj. prof.) Department of Information Technology Lappeenranta University of Technology P.O. Box 20 FI-53851 Lappeenranta Finland http://www.lut.fi/~kyrki/ ------------------------------------------- From murphy at cse.tamu.edu Sat May 23 06:14:20 2009 From: murphy at cse.tamu.edu (Robin Murphy) Date: Sat, 23 May 2009 08:14:20 -0500 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Computing Innovation Fellow Mentors Message-ID: The Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Texas A&M has three faculty in robotics interested in mentoring Computing Innovation Fellows. The department is active in research in algorithms and artificial intelligence for robotics and works with a large suite of ground, aerial, and sea vehicles as well as sensors. Robotics at Texas A&M includes nine other researchers in Aerospace, Electrical, and Mechanical Engineering, providing significant multidisciplinary opportunities. Texas A&M also has unique facilities and a 52 acre Disaster City testbed for emergency response research. Prof. Nancy Amato works in motion planning with application to robotics, multi-agent systems, crowd control, VR, and computational biology. (amato at tamu.edu, http://parasol.tamu.edu/~amato/) Prof. Robin Murphy works in rescue robotics, concentrating on human-robot interaction and behavioral control of heterogeneous teams. ( murphy at cse.tamu.edu , http://faculty.cse.tamu.edu/murphy/) Prof. Dezhen Song works in networked robots, computer vision, autonomous navigation, and automation. (dzsong at cse.tamu.edu, http://faculty.cse.tamu.edu/dzsong) Information about the Computing Information Fellows program is at http://cifellows.org -- Prof. Robin R. Murphy, PhD Raytheon Professor of Computer Science & Engineering Texas A&M University office phone: 1-979-845-2015 location: HR Bright 333C http://faculty.cse.tamu.edu/murphy/ blog: rescuerobotics.blogspot.com From nikolaus at csail.mit.edu Tue May 19 08:48:40 2009 From: nikolaus at csail.mit.edu (Nikolaus Correll) Date: Tue, 19 May 2009 11:48:40 -0400 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] CfP: 4th Int. Conf on NANO NETWORKS, extended deadline June 15 Message-ID: <172f50ee0905190848n19dc9031sf7318336424012ce@mail.gmail.com> Fourth International ICST Conference on Nano-Networks Luzern/Lucerne, Switzerland 18-20 October, 2009 www.nanonets.org Extended Deadline: June 15, 2009 SCOPE: The Nano-Net conference positions itself at the intersection of two worlds, namely, emerging nanotechnologies on one side, and Information & Communication Technologies on the other side. One of the standing questions that this conference addresses is: What are the new communication paradigms that derive from the transition from micro- to nano-scale devices? The convergence of nano-technologies with established and novel engineering disciplines such as communication and network theory, sensors and actuators, and biomedical engineering is expected to radically shift our notions about efficient system and network design. Nano- Net provides a unique multidisciplinary forum for the discussion of novel techniques in modeling, design, simulation, and fabrication of nano-scale systems. Full call for papers: http://www.nanonets.org/cfp.shtml SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS: Prospective authors are encouraged to submit a PDF version of the full paper in English. Papers are limited to 5 pages (regular papers), or 2 pages (work-in-progress papers), and must fulfill the submission details listed at: http://www.nanonets.org/ (submission guideline); the Author's Kit for the LNICST style listed at: http://www.nanonets.org/ (author?s kit). Presentation will be either oral or in poster format, as deemed appropriate by the Technical Program Committee. PUBLICATION: All submitted papers will be subject to a rigorous peer-review. Accepted papers will be published by Springer in the Nano-Net Conference Proceedings, and made available online through Springer Lecture Notes LNICST, and ICST digital library, the European Union Digital Library. Selected high-quality papers will be invited to a post-conference journal publication in the IEEE Transactions on Nanotechnology, in extended form. WORKSHOP & TUTORIAL PROPOSALS: Proposals for Special Sessions, Panel Sessions, and Tutorials are encouraged. Potential Workshop and Tutorial organizers should submit a proposal of at most 5 pages, including scope/motivation of the session/tutorial, list of invited papers (still subject to peer-review) and shortbio of the organizer(s). Workshops and tutorial proposals should be submitted by e-mail to: alexandre.schmid at epfl.ch. GENERAL CHAIR Alexandre Schmid EPFL, CH TECHNICAL PROGRAM CHAIR Sanjay Goel U. Albany, USA TECHNICAL PROGRAM CO-CHAIRS Alexander Sergienko Boston U., USA Andrei Vladimirescu ISEP, FR Gabriel Molina-Terriza ICFO, Spain Sorin Cotofana Delft U. of Technology, NL Alhussein Abouzeid RPI, USA Maggie Cheng Missouri U. S&T, USA Sylvain Martel Ecole Polytech. Montr?al, CA Nikolaus Correll MIT, USA Costin Anghel ISEP, FR KEYNOTE TALK: Towards Nano Robots, Brad Nelson, ETH Zurich -- http://people.csail.mit.edu/nikolaus From nts at ks.informatik.uni-kiel.de Tue May 26 06:30:58 2009 From: nts at ks.informatik.uni-kiel.de (Nils Siebel) Date: Tue, 26 May 2009 15:30:58 +0200 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] 1st CFP: ERLARS 2009 @ IROS 2009: Evolutionary and Reinforcement Learning for Autonomous Robot Systems Message-ID: <20090526133059.0911C12CE12@qualle.ks.informatik.uni-kiel.de> [Apologies if you receive this more than once!] PLEASE NOTE THE CHANGE OF LOCATION AND DATES! ************************************************************************ ERLARS 2009 2nd INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP ON EVOLUTIONARY AND REINFORCEMENT LEARNING FOR AUTONOMOUS ROBOT SYSTEMS Held in conjunction with IROS 2009 in St. Louis, USA on October 15, 2009 Submission deadline: July 5, 2009 http://www.erlars.org/ ************************************************************************ CALL FOR PAPERS Objectives Learning is essential for an autonomous robot system. The range of unexpected situations it can handle while performing its task depends on its ability to adapt. Recent developments have taken autonomous robots beyond industrial settings, for example at home as toys and cleaners. However, production models usually interact with their environment following a fixed control strategy, which limits their range of application. More adaptable robots require control strategies that learn more and better from interactions with their environment. The ERLARS workshop addresses the challenge to develop efficient and versatile learning architectures for autonomous robot systems, with the main focus on adequate evolutionary and reinforcement learning algorithms. Relevant Topics Papers are invited on all aspects of learning methods for the control of autonomous robot systems, including, but not limited to: * Model-free visual servoing * Mobile robot navigation by means of reinforcement learning * Combining offline- and online learning methods for robot control * Reinforcement learning by evolutionary algorithms of neural network-based and other robot controllers * Hybrid systems that combine modelling and parameter estimation by reinforcement learning * Learning from scratch and cascaded learning architectures * Developmental and epigenetic robotics * Balancing exploration and exploitation of acquired knowledge * Simulated environments for autonomous robot learning scenarios Important Dates * July 5, 2009: Paper submission deadline * August 10, 2009: Notification of paper acceptance * August 23, 2009: Camera ready paper submission * October 15, 2009: Workshop takes place Workshop Chairs Nils T Siebel Cognitive Systems Group, Institute of Computer Science, Christian-Albrechts-University of Kiel Kiel, Germany Josef Pauli Intelligent Systems Group, Department of Computer Science, University of Duisburg-Essen Duisburg, Germany Programme Committee Andrew Barto (University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA) Peter D?rr (EPFL Lausanne, Switzerland) Christian Igel (Ruhr-Universit?t Bochum, Germany) Yohannes Kassahun (DFKI Lab Bremen, University of Bremen, Germany) Takanori Koga (Yamaguchi University, Japan) Tim Kovacs (University of Bristol, UK) Jun Ota (University of Tokyo, Japan) Josef Pauli (University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany) Jan Peters (MPI for Biological Cybernetics, T?bingen, Germany) Daniel Polani (University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, UK) Marcello Restelli (Politecnico di Milano, Italy) Stefan Schiffer (RWTH Aachen University, Germany) Juergen Schmidhuber (Swiss AI Lab IDSIA, Lugano, Switzerland) Marc Toussaint (TU Berlin, Germany) Nils T Siebel (Christian-Albrechts-University of Kiel, Germany) Jeremy Wyatt (University of Birmingham, UK) ************************************************************************ More information on the workshop website: http://www.erlars.org/ ************************************************************************ From Philippe.Lutz at ens2m.fr Mon May 25 00:25:34 2009 From: Philippe.Lutz at ens2m.fr (Philippe LUTZ (FEMTO-ST)) Date: Mon, 25 May 2009 09:25:34 +0200 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] JOB: Post Doc Position at FEMTO-ST, Besancon, France Message-ID: <4A1A47EE.3000901@ens2m.fr> Post Doc position at FEMTO-ST/AS2M, Besan?on, France Title: MEMS Design for Microrobotics A Post Doc position is available for design, development and characterization of actuated bi-stable mechanical MEMS in order to build a new kind of microrobots. Microrobotics deals with the design, the fabrication and the control of robots able to manipulate small size components (smaller than 1 millimeter). The laboratory started studying and designing a new generation of microfabricated microrobots using a modular concept and an open loop control strategy. These new microrobots, named ?digital microrobots? (or ?/dimibots/?) are based on the assembly in a finally monolithic system of several ?elementary modules? from a library of basic function modules. Several designed structures (Chen Qiao and al, IEEE/ASME MESA 2008)have demonstrated the relevance of this approach, but new developments and improvements are required. The objectives of the Post Doc position are: - to propose new actuated bi-stable mechanical structures microfabricated with clean room technologies; - to contribute to the design and microfabrication of these structures and monolithic microrobots (MEMS); - to contribute to the static and dynamic characterization of the microrobots. The Post Doc will take charge of the microfabrication in clean room and will use the microfabrication facilities available in FEMTO-ST. The candidate must be Ph.D graduated and have an experience in clean room microfabrication. A good knowledge in the design of mechanical structures and in microsystems is required. Interested candidates should submit a Curriculum Vitae, evidence of the required expertise (papers which could be either published, accepted for publication or in preparation), a summary of the research background and interests by e-mail to philippe.lutz at femto-st.fr and/or yassine.haddab at femto-st.fr . Review of applications will begin as soon as they are received. The position is available and the start date is as soon as possible. You can explore the various research activities at the FEMTO-ST at: http://www.femto-st.fr If you need further information, please contact: philippe.lutz at femto-st.fr yassine.haddab at femto-st.fr From raj.madhavan at nist.gov Sun May 24 18:52:05 2009 From: raj.madhavan at nist.gov (Raj Madhavan) Date: Sun, 24 May 2009 21:52:05 -0400 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] =?iso-8859-1?q?Call_for_Papers=3A_2009_Perfo?= =?iso-8859-1?q?rmance_Metrics_for_Intelligent_Systems_Workshop_=28PerMIS?= =?iso-8859-1?q?=9209=29?= Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20090524214019.01f77138@mailhub.mel.nist.gov> CALL FOR PAPERS 2009 Performance Metrics for Intelligent Systems Workshop (PerMIS'09) September 21-23, 2009 http://www.isd.mel.nist.gov/PerMIS_2009/ GENERAL CHAIR Elena Messina, NIST PROGRAM CHAIR Raj Madhavan, ORNL/NIST PUBLICITY CHAIR E. Tunstel, JHU-APL USA SPONSORS NIST, DARPA, ACM, IEEE (W/NV Robotics and Automation Chapter) & IEEE RAS-TC on Performance Evaluation and Benchmarking of Robotic and Automation Systems The Performance Metrics for Intelligent Systems workshop is the only one of its kind dedicated to defining measures and methodologies of evaluating performance of intelligent systems. Started in 2000, the PerMIS series focuses on applications of performance measures to practical problems in commercial, industrial, homeland security, and military applications. It has proved to be an excellent forum for discussions and partnerships, dissemination of ideas, and future collaborations between researchers, graduate students, and practitioners from industry, academia, and government agencies. The main theme of the ninth iteration of the workshop, PerMIS'09, seeks to address the question: "Does performance measurement accelerate the pace of advancement for intelligent systems?" In addition to the main theme, as in previous years, the workshop will focus on applications of performance measures to practical problems in commercial, industrial, homeland security, and military applications. Topic areas include, but are not limited to: * Defining and measuring aspects of a system: The level of autonomy Human-robot interaction Collaboration & coordination Taxonomies Biologically inspired models * Evaluating components within intelligent systems: Sensing and perception Knowledge representation, world models, ontologies Planning and control Learning and adapting Reasoning * Infrastructural support for performance evaluation: Testbeds and competitions for intercomparisons Instrumentation and other measurement tools Simulation and modeling support * Technology readiness measures for intelligent systems * Benchmarks and applied performance measures in various domains, e.g., Industrial and manufacturing systems Intelligent transportation systems Emergency response robots (e.g., search and rescue, bomb disposal) Homeland security systems Defense robotics Intelligent systems for hazardous environments (e.g., nuclear remediation) Smart grid Space robotics Medical robotics & assistive devices The Proceedings of PerMIS are indexed by INSPEC, Compendex, ACM Digital Library, and are released as a NIST Special Publication. Selected papers from past workshops have been published as special issues with the Journal of Integrated Computer-Aided Engineering (PerMIS'04), the Journal of Field Robotics (PerMIS'06), and as a Springer Edited Book Volume (PerMIS'08). LOCATION Washington, D.C. (The workshop will be held at NIST, Gaithersburg MD 20899) SUBMISSION INFORMATION Prospective authors are requested to submit a draft paper (max. 8 pages) or an extended abstract (1-2 pages) for review. Invited session proposals can also be submitted as draft papers but should contain 1) a session title and a brief statement of purpose, 2) name and affiliation of the organizer(s), and 3) a preliminary list of speakers. All submissions must be written in English, starting with a succinct statement of the problem, the results achieved, their significance, and a comparison with previous work. Papers are to be submitted at http://www.isd.mel.nist.gov/PerMIS_2009/submission.htm/ using the specified templates. IMPORTANT DATES Submission of full papers June 10, 2009 Proposal for invited sessions June 17, 2009 Notification of acceptance July 24, 2009 Final papers due August 21, 2009 --------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 dana.kulic at gmail.com Tue May 26 11:50:25 2009 From: dana.kulic at gmail.com (Dana Kulic) Date: Tue, 26 May 2009 14:50:25 -0400 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Call for Participation - RSS'09 Workshop on Bridging the gap between high-level discrete representations and low-level continuous behaviors Message-ID: --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CALL FOR PARTICIPATION RSS'09 Workshop on Bridging the gap between high-level discrete representations and low-level continuous behaviors ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The full-day workshop "Bridging the gap between high-level discrete representations and low-level continuous behaviors" will be held during the 2009 Robotics: Science and Systems Conference in Seattle, Washington, USA, on Sunday, June 28, 2009. This workshop is supported by the Technical Committee on Robot Learning of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society. http://learning-robots.de/TC/RSS2009 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- OBJECTIVES AND TOPICS Recently, robotics researchers have been investigating the modeling of human and robot behavior in terms of motion primitives. This research direction, based on biological and neuroscience findings, posits that human behavior is composed of motor primitive units, which can be acquired by a robot through imitation learning or practice. Motion primitives offer an approach for discretizing continuous behavior, representing a "bottom-up" approach for organizing robot behavior. On the other hand, in AI and planning fields, there has been a longstanding area of research in planning and acting in the discrete domain, or through modeling changes in the world as an instantaneous change in discrete state. This approach can be thought of as a "top-down" approach for organizing robot behavior. In this workshop, we propose to bring together researchers from both areas to discuss approaches for "bridging the gap" and combining continuous domain approaches with discrete representations. The aim of the workshop is to bring together researchers working on motion primitives as a way of discretizing continuous behavior, and discuss ways in which these approaches can be extended through hierarchical organization and combined with planning and other discrete domain approaches. Specific themes of the workshop include: - motion primitive representations and task abstractions - learning and parsing sequences and plans of motion primitives - imitation learning and learning from observation based on motion primitives - hierarchical reinforcement learning - apprenticeship learning of composed tasks - hybrid task control - hierarchical organization of behaviors - learning operator conditions for primitives - plan recognition - plan generation and modification The workshop will include talks by a number of the top researchers in the field, who will articulate current approaches and the progress to date. A key goal of the workshop is to provide a venue to allow discussion on how current approaches may be combined to integrate the capability for acting in the continuous domain while reasoning in the discrete domain. SPEAKERS Michael Beetz (TU Munich) Chad Jenkins (Brown) Danica Kragic (KTH) Jun Morimoto (ATR) Aude Billard (EPFL) Michael Pardowitz (U. Bielefeld) Tamin Asfour (U. Karlsruhe) Christopher Geib (Edinburgh) Rod Grupen (U Mass) Tetsunari Inamura (NII Japan) Volker Krueger (Aalborg University) Dieter Fox (U Washington) Andrew Ng (Stanford) Erion Plaku (Johns Hopkins) Bhaskara Marthi (Willow Garage) Hadas Kres-Grazit (Cornell) For a detailed program and schedule, please refer to the workshop website: http://learning-robots.de/TC/RSS2009 WORKSHOP ORGANIZERS Dana Kulic (U Waterloo) Pieter Abbeel (Berkeley) Jan Peters (Max Planck Institute) From dvprokhorov at gmail.com Tue May 26 18:21:00 2009 From: dvprokhorov at gmail.com (Danil Prokhorov) Date: Tue, 26 May 2009 21:21:00 -0400 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] AMD Workshop at IROS 2009, St. Louis, USA, October 11, 2009 Message-ID: IROS 2009 Workshop "Autonomous Mental Development for Intelligent Robots & Systems" http://amdworkshopiros09.googlepages.com/ http://www.iros09.mtu.edu/index.php/Workshops/Tutorials Autonomous mental development occurs in naturally intelligent systems whose brains are embodied and bodies are embedded in their environments through life-long learning. Artificially intelligent systems are still quite inferior to even the simplest of their natural counterparts. The workshop participants will discuss autonomous mental development and how it can help in creating more intelligent machines. Success stories and lessons learned from the field of autonomous mental development will be shared. Recent advances in computational intelligence, cognitive science, neuroscience, and robotics have stimulated the birth and rapid growth of the Autonomous Mental Development (AMD). New cross-disciplinary conference series, International Conference on Developmental Learning (ICDL), has been initiated and going strong for several years. The new IEEE Transaction on Autonomous Mental Development was established in 2008 to help bring together different communities of researchers to advance the AMD field. The goals of this workshop: 1) demonstrate direct relevance of the AMD to the conference theme "Exploring New Horizons in Intelligent Robots and Systems". 2) give a historic perspective and an overview of current activities in the AMD field. 3) discuss key architectural features that systems capable of autonomous development of mental capabilities should exhibit. 4) share success stories of the AMD community with the IROS community. 5) examine case studies from the AMD community. List of topics: - Computational modeling of mental development, including mental architecture, theories, algorithms, properties and experiments; - Experimental investigations relevant to the goal of achieving a computational understanding of developmental processes in humans and animals, especially those focusing on the role of experience and on the active exploration of the environment; - Engineering applications of autonomous mental development such as mechanisms enabling highly complex capabilities by robots and other intelligent artificial systems. Deadlines: July 15 - submission of papers for review August 15 - notification of acceptance September 1 - deadline for camera-ready submissions October 11 - workshop Please visit the workshop home page http://amdworkshopiros09.googlepages.com/ for more information. From daniel.renjewski at uni-jena.de Wed May 27 04:35:53 2009 From: daniel.renjewski at uni-jena.de (Daniel Renjewski) Date: Wed, 27 May 2009 13:35:53 +0200 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] PostDoc-Position in Biologically Insipired Walking Machines Message-ID: <4A1D2599.100@uni-jena.de> A post-doctoral research position is available in the Lauflabor Locomotion Laboratory (www.lauflabor.de) at the University of Jena to work on biologically inspired walking ma-chines. This research will involve evaluation of existing technical models, development and optimization of walking machines based on data of human gait from experiments and simula-tions, as well as validation of technical systems utilizing motion analysis. The successful can-didate will furthermore support and supervise graduate students in ongoing projects on con-cepts, design and testing of legged robots, trunk stability in bipeds and technical support of experimental setups. The opening will allow the successful applicant to develop her/his own line of research. An existing research plan, which fits the above scenario, is largely appreciated. We are looking for candidates with expertise in electronics and/or mechanical hardware design. Good pro-gramming skills are essential and strong interest in biology and biomechanics is highly desir-able. Review of applications will begin immediately. Please e-mail your application including CV, a brief motivation letter, publication list, research interests, and contact information of at least 2 professional references to Dr. A. Seyfarth (oas at uni-jena.de). -- Dipl.-Ing. Daniel Renjewski Lauflabor Tel. +49 (0)3641 9-45734 FSU Jena Fax. +49 (0)3641 9-45732 Dornburger Str. 23 07743 Jena http://www.kopf-an.de/ From ffernand at inf.uc3m.es Wed May 27 07:26:51 2009 From: ffernand at inf.uc3m.es (Fernando Fernandez Rebollo) Date: Wed, 27 May 2009 16:26:51 +0200 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] ICAPS-2009 Call for Workshop papers Message-ID: <4A1D4DAB.5090502@inf.uc3m.es> 19th International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling ICAPS-2009, http://icaps09.icaps-conference.org/ September 19-23, 2009, Thessaloniki, Greece [apologies for multiple posting] The Organizing Committee of the 19th International Conference on Automated Planning & Scheduling (ICAPS'09) invites paper submissions to the ICAPS-2009 Workshops. ICAPS-2009 workshop program consists of 10 workshops listed below. Submission deadlines for all workshops is uniform and at midnight June 23rd Pacific Time. Workshop List: WS1: 4th International workshop on Planning and Plan Execution for Real-World Systems co-chairs: Felix Ingrand and Frederic Py Web: http://www.mbari.org/autonomy/ICAPS09-workshop/ WS2: COPLAS'09: Workshop on Constraint Satisfaction Techniques for Planning and Scheduling Problems co-chairs: Miguel Salido and Roman Bartak Web: http://www.dsic.upv.es/~msalido/workshop-icaps09/index.html WS3: International Workshop on Intelligent Security co-chairs: Mark Boddy and Stefan Edelkamp Web: http://www.tzi.de/~edelkamp/secart/ WS4: AI P&S for Ontologies and Semantic Web co-chairs: Juan Fernandez, Laura Sebastia and Paolo Traverso Web: http://decsai.ugr.es/~faro/Workshop09 WS5: Verification and Validation of Planning and Scheduling Systems co-chairs: Saddek Bensalem, Klaus Havelund Kim and Guldstrand Larsen Web: http://www-vvps09.imag.fr/ WS6: Workshop on Planning and Learning co-chairs: Amanda Coles, Andrew Coles, Sergio Jimenez Celorrio, Susana Fernandez Arregui and Tomas de la Rosa Web: http://www.plg.inf.uc3m.es/learning-icaps09/ WS7: SPARK: Scheduling and Planning Applications woRKshop co-chairs: Luis Castillo, Gabriella Cortellessa and Neil Yorke-Smith Web: http://decsai.ugr.es/~lcv/SPARK/09/index.htm WS8: Workshop on Heuristics for Domain-independent Planning co-chairs: Carmel Domshlak, Malte Helmert and Joerg Hoffmann Web: http://ie.technion.ac.il/~dcarmel/heuristics-icaps09/ WS9: Bridging The Gap Between Task And Motion Planning co-chairs: Maxim Likhachev, Bhaskara Marthi, Conor McGann and David E. Smith Web: http://people.csail.mit.edu/bhaskara/icaps09-ws/ WS10: Generalized Planning: Macros, Loops, Domain Control co-chairs: Christian Fritz, Sheila McIlraith, Siddharth Srivastava and Shlomo Zilberstein Web: http://www.cs.umass.edu/~siddhart/genplan09 You can find more details for all workshops through their web-sites, that are accessible through the conference's site: http://icaps09.icaps-conference.org/workshops/workshops.htm. The workshop program will run prior to the main conference September 19 and 20, 2009. Paper length for each event is on the workshops web site. All workshops will use the ICAPS09 format available at http://www.aaai.org/Publications/Author/author.php Important Dates: * Workshop Paper Submission: June 23th, 2009 * Camera-ready proceedings: August 8th, 2009 * Workshops: September 19th and 20th, 2009 Workshop Program Chairs: * Kanna Rajan, Principal Researcher for Autonomy, Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, California * Ioannis Vlahavas, Professor Dept. of Informatics Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece Workshop Local Organizing Chair: * Dimitris Vrakas, Lecturer, Dept. of Informatics Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece Fernando Fernandez Publicity Chair From pierre at bu.edu Wed May 27 07:35:52 2009 From: pierre at bu.edu (Pierre Dupont) Date: Wed, 27 May 2009 10:35:52 -0400 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] =?iso-8859-1?q?Postdoctoral_Positions_in_Ima?= =?iso-8859-1?q?ge-guided_Robotic_Surgery_=AD_Boston_University?= Message-ID: Several postdoctoral fellows are sought for National Institutes of Health sponsored projects in image-guided and robot-assisted beating-heart intracardiac surgery. Depending on the interests and backgrounds of the successful applicants, the positions will involve some combination of the following elements: ? Design of minimally invasive surgical robots and instruments ? Design of robot-delivered surgical tools and implants using MEMS and traditional manufacturing technologies ? Controller design & implementation for flexible surgical robots ? Image-based instrument tracking and servoing ? In vitro and in vivo prototype testing Our engineering team is tightly integrated with clinicians at Boston hospitals. This coupling ensures that we work on clinically important problems and enables us to rapidly transition engineering prototypes to a clinical setting for testing. More information on our projects can be found at: http://biorobotics.bu.edu Requirements for the positions are a PhD in engineering and experience in some combination of tool design, robot mechanical and control system design, ultrasound imaging, image processing and real-time control. Experience with medical applications is also desirable. The initial appointment will be for one year with the possibility of extension. Qualified applicants should respond by email as soon as possible to Prof. Pierre Dupont (pierre at bu.edu) with a description of their qualifications, academic background, PhD thesis, publications, career goals and availability. Pierre E. Dupont Professor Mechanical Engineering Biomedical Engineering Boston University biorobotics.bu.edu From e.burdet at imperial.ac.uk Wed May 27 08:07:08 2009 From: e.burdet at imperial.ac.uk (Etienne Burdet) Date: Wed, 27 May 2009 16:07:08 +0100 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] 4 postdoc/PhD positions at Imperial College London Message-ID: <9C83996D-76DA-42D0-93A3-7E3F60FF5F71@imperial.ac.uk> Dear Moderator, can you please pass to or post the job opening below to the robotics list? thank you very much, etienne IMPERIAL COLLEGE LONDON Department of Bioengineering 4 postdoc or Ph.D. positions at the interface of Neuroscience and Robotics We have recently received funding from the EU-FP7 for four positions to investigate how humans physically interact and adapt their control to perform efficient manipulation. Ideal candidates will have a strong background in robotics/ mechatronics, physics, control, or neurophysiology, neurorehabilitation or fMRI. They should have potential for excellent research and the capability to collaborate within an interdisciplinary research group with people from all these disciplines. They should be highly motivated to use robotics and control techniques for tackling fundamental issues in motor control/ learning, or in the rehabilitation after neurological disorders. Applicants for a postdoc position should have obtained, or be about to obtain, a PhD (or equivalent) in a relevant subject. Applicants for a Ph.D. position should have an MSc degree, although exceptional candidates with a BSc degree will be considered. Applicants with a bursary or a fellowship who want to participate in this research are also welcome. Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine (http:// www3.imperial.ac.uk/) is a leading technological university with a global reach and Neurotechnology has been selected as a strategic development area. The Human Robotics group at Imperial College (http://www.bg.ic.ac.uk/staff/burdet/Home.html) carries out research at the interface of robotics and neuroscience, from neurophysiological studies and computational modelling to robotic implementations, VR-aided neuro-rehabilitation and assistive devices. Enquiries about these positions or applications can be made to Etienne Burdet (http://www.bg.ic.ac.uk/staff/burdet/Home.html, e.burdet at imperial.ac.uk) adding the title ?Human Robotics Position? and your name as the subject of your email. To apply please submit a CV, a brief expression of interest describing why you are interested by this position and you qualify for it, the names of suitable referees, and scans of your academic transcripts should be sent to e.burdet at imperial.ac.uk. Etienne Burdet, PhD Department of Bioengineering Imperial College London e.burdet at imperial.ac.uk http://www.bg.ic.ac.uk/staff/burdet From hager at cs.jhu.edu Wed May 27 13:43:49 2009 From: hager at cs.jhu.edu (Gregory Hager) Date: Wed, 27 May 2009 16:43:49 -0400 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] CFP for Modeling in Medical Robotics and Computer-Integrated Surgery Message-ID: <6423CA0E-5C52-40FF-BE3C-467BF85B14A2@cs.jhu.edu> Please find below a CFP that should be of interest to the medical robotic community. Submissions describing the development of context-aware surgical robots, the modeling or monitoring of surgical procedures based on robots' sensor information, or the usage of robots in the data capture or evaluation of surgical skills, are highly welcomed. ***************** CALL FOR PAPERS ***************** 1st workshop on 'Modeling and Monitoring of Computer Assisted Interventions (M2CAI)' 20 September 2009, in conjunction with MICCAI, London, UK Web: http://campwww.informatik.tu-muenchen.de/M2CAI09 Important Dates ---------------- 5 June 2009: Paper due 20 July 2009: Notification of acceptance 5 August 2009: Camera ready version Organizers ----------- Gregory Hager, CIRL, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, USA Pierre Jannin, VisAGeS, Universit? de Rennes, Rennes, France Nassir Navab, CAMP, Technische Universit?t M?nchen, Munich, Germany Nicolas Padoy, CAMP, Technische Universit?t M?nchen, Munich, Germany Scope ------ The first workshop on 'Modeling and Monitoring of Computer Assisted Interventions (M2CAI)' aims at establishing a forum for discussing advanced methods for acquisition, analysis, modeling and monitoring of surgical / interventional procedures. These methods often aim at explicit representation, formal understanding and statistical modeling of the interventions. This new research field promises the design of a new generation of context-aware, dedicated and adaptive Computer Assisted Intervention (CAI) systems and solutions. Topics ------- Addressed topics include, but are not limited to: * Automatic surgery documentation * Context-aware operating rooms * Context-aware surgical robots * Modeling/Representation of surgical procedures * Modeling for surgical simulation and training * Modeling for surgical workflow evaluation and optimization * Recognition of surgical steps / actions / events * Semantic analysis of surgical interventions * Surgical sensor networks * Surgical skill assessment * Surgical workflow mining More information available on the website. Gregory D. Hager, Professor The Johns Hopkins University Department of Computer Science 121 CSEB, 3400 N. Charles St. Baltimore, MD 21218 Tel: 410-516-5521 Fax: 410-516-4410 Email: hager at cs.jhu.edu http://cirl.lcsr.jhu.edu/ From irmluaeu at gmail.com Thu May 28 09:49:13 2009 From: irmluaeu at gmail.com (Interactive Robots and Media Laboratory UAEU) Date: Thu, 28 May 2009 20:49:13 +0400 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] International Summer School in Interactive Robots and Media in Dubai Message-ID: International Summer School in Interactive Robots and Media ----------------------------------------------------------- Interactive Robots & Media Laboratory United Arab Emirates University Asst. Prof. Nikolaos Mavridis Director, IRML PhD, MIT Media Laboratory irmluaeu at gmail.com The Interactive Robots and Media Lab of the UAEU, next to Dubai, home of the Microsoft-chosen "FaceBots" social robotics project, (http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2008/may08/05-16HRI.mspx, recently covered on BBC and media of more than 20 countries worldwide) as well as "IbnSina", the world's first arabic speaking humanoid, part of the IbnSina interactive theatre installation, is organizing its second international summer school, which will take place in 2009 between July 5 and July 31 (four weeks). The summer-school will be mini-project based, with multiple teams of 2-3 students, and selected lectures will also take place. There will be free accommodation as well as a stipend for a limited number of applicants with excellent qualifications. Applicants can be at postdoctoral, graduate, and also undergraduate level. Excursions to local attractions (Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Fujeirah etc) will take place in the weekends, as well as tours of the region's numerous spectacular sights. To apply, please send CV as well as names and information of three referees to irmluaeu at gmail.com Desired qualifications ---------------------- - Relevant Background in CS, EE, or Interactive Media - Coding experience/expertise (C++ / Matlab / Java) - Engineering / real world troubleshooting skills - Interest and experience in one or more of the following technical areas: human-robot interaction, AI, computer vision, NLP, social networks - Interest in cognitive science and philosophy advantageous - Team working skills - Most importantly, desire, imagination, systematicity and persistance in order to create the interactive robots and media of the future The IRML Lab ------------ http://www.hafeet.uaeu.ac.ae/irml/ Core research areas include (but are not limited to): interactive and social robotics and media, humanoid robotics, robotics and media for the arts and digital cultural heritage The lab is equipped with multiple robots (mobile tour guide robots, manipulator arms, mini vehicles), state-of-the-art full-body motion capture, cybergloves and wireless 6DOF sensors, as well as advanced vision systems. Furthermore, IRML has continuous access to color 3D printing and 3D scanning, as well as to a machine shop, and microcontroller / electronics labs, for prototyping novel interactive devices. In terms of computational resources, a high-performance grid computer is available for use, as well as multiple workstations. There is also close contact with numerous world-class institutions and companies in the field, across three continents. The University -------------- UAEU is the oldest university in the country, and has recently been ranked as the second best research university in the Arab world. It is a fully-fledged university consisting of ten colleges and having more than 15000 students. The college of IT of UAEU has recently moved to an ultra-modern futuristically-equipped building, and is currently undergoing rapid expansion, with Eyad Abed of UMaryland (MIT/Berkeley graduate) assuming our deanship in the next months. The place --------- Al Ain is strategically located in one-hour driving distance from both Dubai and Abu Dhabi, and is a beautiful oasis city of half a million, and a favourite cultural retreat for residents of the UAE. It has an international airport, four ultra-modern shopping malls with ice-skating facilities, various recreational facilities, a picturesque traditional city centre, and a spectacular mountain, among many other attractions. Dubai, being easily accessible by car from Al Ain (one hour), is a vibrant liberal multicultural city, the main commercial hub of the middle east, and one of the most enjoyable places to visit, where imagination is realized everyday through projects that exist nowhere else in the world: the tallest building in the world (under construction), the most luxurious hotel in the world (Burj Al Arab), man-made island communities in the shapes of palms visible from space, rich shopping malls with artificial skiing centers. The world's finest cultural and artistic events also abound. In short, there are excellent opportunities for an exciting cosmopolitan lifestyle, in an exotic multicultural environment, where nothing is impossible. Dr. Nikolaos Mavridis PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Asst. Professor of IT, UAEU nmav at alum.mit.edu From jmh at cs.utah.edu Thu May 28 08:05:14 2009 From: jmh at cs.utah.edu (John Hollerbach) Date: Thu, 28 May 2009 09:05:14 -0600 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] IJRR OnlineFirst articles for 19-27 May 2009 Message-ID: <4A1EA82A.8040608@cs.utah.edu> New IJRR OnlineFirst articles have been made available (for the period 19 May 2009 to 27 May 2009): Design and Integration of a Telerobotic System for Minimally Invasive Surgery of the Throat Nabil Simaan, Kai Xu, Wei Wei, Ankur Kapoor, Peter Kazanzides, Russell Taylor, and Paul Flint The International Journal of Robotics Research published 27 May 2009, 10.1177/0278364908104278 http://ijr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/0278364908104278v1 A Framework for the Simulation and Haptic Display of Dynamic Systems Subject to Holonomic Constraints Adolfo Rodr?guez, Luis Basa?ez, J Edward Colgate, and Eric L Faulring The International Journal of Robotics Research published 27 May 2009, 10.1177/0278364909104841 http://ijr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/0278364909104841v1 Reduction-Based Control of Three-Dimensional Bipedal Walking Robots Robert D Gregg and Mark W Spong The International Journal of Robotics Research published 27 May 2009, 10.1177/0278364909104296 http://ijr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/0278364909104296v1 The raven - design and validation of a telesurgery system Mitchell J H Lum, Diana C W Friedman, Ganesh Sankaranarayanan, Hawkeye King, Kenneth Fodero, II, Rainer Leuschke, Blake Hannaford, Jacob Rosen, and Mika N Sinanan The International Journal of Robotics Research published 20 May 2009, 10.1177/0278364909101795 http://ijr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/0278364909101795v1 Real-time Motion Stabilization with B-mode Ultrasound Using Image Speckle Information and Visual Servoing Alexandre Krupa, Gabor Fichtinger, and Gregory D Hager The International Journal of Robotics Research published 20 May 2009, 10.1177/0278364909104066 http://ijr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/0278364909104066v1 From kai at nurobot.com Fri May 29 07:32:49 2009 From: kai at nurobot.com (Kai Oliver Arras) Date: Fri, 29 May 2009 16:32:49 +0200 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] CfP: Special Issue on People Detection and Tracking (J. Social Robotics) Message-ID: CALL FOR PAPER ----------------------------------------------------------- Special Issue on PEOPLE DETECTION AND TRACKING Springer International Journal of Social Robotics ----------------------------------------------------------- EDITORS ------- * Kai O. Arras, Social Robotics Lab, University of Freiburg, Germany * Oscar Martinez Mozos, Robotics and Real-Time Group, University of Zaragoza, Spain GOAL AND SCOPE -------------- As robots enter domains in which they interact and cooperate closely with humans, the ability of machines to detect and track humans is becoming a key technology for many areas in robotics. Interaction with people, recognition and understanding of human activities, pedestrians tracking or intruder detection are example tasks that rely heavily on the ability to robustly detect and track people. Recent advances in estimation theory, machine learning and computer vision as well as progress in sensor technology have enabled us to design people detection and tracking systems with good levels of robustness. However, there is great demand for even more robust systems, especially over a wider range of conditions, and an increasing interest from industry for intelligent cars, domestic robots or surveillance of public areas. After a very successful ICRA 2009 workshop on people detection and tracking, this special issue aims to bring together contributions from the computer vision community and the community that has mostly worked with range finders. The goal is to provide a representative survey of the state-of-the-art and to transfer knowledge within and across the communities. The issue will focus primarily on theoretical aspects (see list of topics) but we are also interested in practical questions and applications. TOPICS ------ Examples of topics of interest include, but are not limited to: * People detection and tracking with vision, laser and/or other sensors * Tracking of groups of people and/or interacting targets * Full body pose estimation and tracking * Human motion modeling and estimation in 2d and 3d * Learning and model-based approaches * Probabilistic frameworks for simultaneous segmentation, detection and tracking * Multi-sensor fusion/integration approaches * Advanced target tracking and data association methods * Advanced handling of occlusion, fragmentation, and merging * Multi-hypothesis model selection methods * Distributed sensors for people detection/tracking * Performance metrics and evaluation of people tracking systems * Applications: human-robot interaction, human activity recognition and understanding, intelligent cars, surveillance etc. IMPORTANT DATES --------------- * Submission of Manuscripts: 1-August-2009 * Notification of Acceptance: 15-Sep-2009 * Submission of Final Paper: 15-Oct-2009 * Final Publication: 1-Jan-2010 SUBMISSION ---------- * Manuscripts should be submitted to http://www.editorialmanager.com/soro. Please select option "People Detection and Tracking" * The recommended paper length is 8-14 pages * Templates for Latex and Word: http://www.springer.com/engineering/robotics/journal/12369 ?detailsPage=contentItemPage&CIPageCounter=512809 (remove line break for full address) LINKS ----- * International Journal of Social Robotics: http://www.springer.com/engineering/robotics/journal/12369 * ICRA 2009 Workshop: http://srl.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/conferences/icra09ws From glyang at SIMTech.a-star.edu.sg Fri May 29 11:35:56 2009 From: glyang at SIMTech.a-star.edu.sg (Yang Guilin Dr) Date: Sat, 30 May 2009 02:35:56 +0800 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] =?windows-1252?q?Call_for_Participation_=96_?= =?windows-1252?q?AIM_2009?= Message-ID: Dear colleagues, Call for Participation ? AIM 2009 The 2009 IEEE/ASME International Conference on Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics will be held on July 14-17, 2009 in Suntec International Convention and Exhibition Center, Singapore. The theme of the conference is "Mechatronics for Everyday Lives", reflecting the growing importance of mechatronic technology close to our daily living, not just in the factories. The Organizing Committee highly encourages researchers in the areas of mechatronics, robotics, and automation to attend the AIM 2009 conference. We have assembled a fruitful conference program for participants, such as plenary speeches, a 3-day multiple-track technical program, technical tours, tutorials and workshops. Further information about registration and conference programs can be found on the conference website: http://aim2009.org/index.html Looking forward to meeting you in AIM 2009 soon. With best regards, Guilin Yang Publicity Co-Chair of AIM 2009 From yabozj at zju.edu.cn Sat May 30 19:53:41 2009 From: yabozj at zju.edu.cn (Yabo Liu) Date: Sun, 31 May 2009 10:53:41 +0800 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] CFP: ICIRA 2009 Special Session "Ubiquitous and cooperative robots in smart space" In-Reply-To: <965da2f60905192001o29f29434s28e7f5958d763ffc@mail.gmail.com> References: <965da2f60905192001o29f29434s28e7f5958d763ffc@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <965da2f60905301953i7d0f50edwbd31cb545131cfdb@mail.gmail.com> Call for Papers ? ICIRA 2009 Special Session: Ubiquitous and cooperative robots in smart space 16 - 18 December, 2009, Orchard Hotel, Singapore http://icira2009.robotics.sg Description: It seems quite likely that robots, which have been charged with increasingly varied and difficult tasks, can be scattered everywhere and become a ubiquitous part of our day-to-day lives in the future. Smart space provides collaborative infrastructure for resources and devices, improving the ability of multi-robot systems to achieve tasks and goals. The goal of this special session is to bring together the researchers from academia and industry as well as practitioners to share ideas, problems and solutions relating to all aspects around networked robots in smart space, such as ubiquitous robotics, cooperative robotics, etc. Scope: The topics of interest include, but not limited to: 1.??? Networked robot systems 2.??? Ubiquitous robotics 3.??? Multi-robot cooperation 4.??? Multi-robot communication 5.??? Human robot interaction 6.??? Robots in smart spaces 7.??? Sensor networks for multi-robot system 8.??? Multiple robot systems 9.??? Networked robot platform 10.??? Embedded intelligent system Paper Submission Guidelines: The final paper should not exceed 10 pages (Springer's Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence (LNAI) format), including references and illustrations. Papers must be clearly presented in English, including tables and figures, with PDF format. Papers will be selected based on their originality, timeliness, significance, relevance, and clarity of presentation. All accepted papers will be included in the ICIRA 2009 main conference proceedings, and at least one of the authors must register and attend the workshop to present the work. The conference proceedings will be published in the Springer's Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence. All the accepted and published papers will be indexed in EI. Also, we will invite the authors of papers with high review scores to submit the extended versions of their papers, which will be reviewed and published in special issues of SCI/SCIE journals, such as: ??? * Industrial Robot: An International Journal ??? * Advanced Robotics ??? * International Journal of Humanoid Robotics Further information? http://icira2009.robotics.sg/Paper-Submissions.php Important Dates: Submission of Full Papers ??? 30 June 2009 Paper Acceptance??????????????? 15 August 2009 Submission of Final Papers?? 15 September 2009 Conference????????????????????????? 16 - 18 December 2009 Organizers: Prof. Zhaohui Wu, Zhejiang University, China Dr. Jianhua Yang, Zhejiang University, China Contacts: yabozj at zju.edu.cn From jaime.vallsmiro at eng.uts.edu.au Sun May 31 22:12:22 2009 From: jaime.vallsmiro at eng.uts.edu.au (Jaime Valls Miro) Date: Mon, 01 Jun 2009 15:12:22 +1000 Subject: [robotics-worldwide] Associate Professor/Senior Lecturer/Lecturer in HRI - fixed-term opening at the University of Technology, Sydney Message-ID: <4A236336.5090104@eng.uts.edu.au> Associate Professor/Senior Lecturer/Lecturer in Robotics, HRI (Job Ref: R270509) Faculty of Engineering & Information Technology, University of Technology, Sydney. (An on-line version of this opening can be found here: http://www.jobs.uts.edu.au/job/job_details.cfm?id=384966&from= ) The Centre for Autonomous Systems (CAS) was established in 2003 as an ARC Centre of Research excellence in collaboration with The University of Sydney and the University of New South Wales. Its vision is to become the world leader and the national focus for research, development and commercial application of intelligent autonomous systems. CAS is the largest Centre of its kind in Australia and is second by size internationally in the mobile robotics field. The Centre?s current research focus is in sensing and perception in unknown environments, and applications for autonomous robots in infrastructure maintenance, urban search and rescue and port automation. As part of the UTS research investment strategy, the UTS Node of the Centre is seeking to appoint up to three academic staff in the area of robotics, with expertise in human-robot interaction. Key areas of interest are intelligent and effective communication between humans and machines, and physical human interactive robots that are in direct contact with humans to conduct various tasks cooperatively. The level of appointment will be from Lecturer to Associate Professor, depending on the credentials of applicants. With a PhD or equivalent in a relevant field as well as a proven track record or capability to acquire a track record in research through successful competitive grant outcomes and peer reviewed publications. The successful applicant/s will also be supervising higher degree research students as well as make a contribution to the teaching activities of the Faculty, as negotiated. Appointment will be for a fixed-term period of 5 years. Appointee/s will be members of CAS (UTS Node) and the Faculty?s School of Electrical, Mechanical & Mechatronic Systems. Salary range: Associate Professor $107,597 to $118,422 pa Senior Lecturer $89,551 to $103,086 pa Lecturer $73,149 to $86,846 pa The University offers salary packaging plus attractive superannuation. Application procedure: Obtain selection criteria , which you need to address in your application here: http://www.jobs.uts.edu.au/position_description/486/Position%20Statement_Selection%20Criteria_Mechatronics.doc Please include details of three referees in your CV. To send through your application please follow the link: http://www.jobs.uts.edu.au/job/instructions.cfm?id=384966&from= Further details about CAS are available from the web at: http://www.cas.edu.au Information about the duties and responsibilities of the position as available from Professor Gamini Dissanayake, Director (UTS Node) at gdissa at uts.edu.au Closing Date: 30 June 2009 -- UTS CRICOS Provider Code: 00099F DISCLAIMER: This email message and any accompanying attachments may contain confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient, do not read, use, disseminate, distribute or copy this message or attachments. If you have received this message in error, please notify the sender immediately and delete this message. Any views expressed in this message are those of the individual sender, except where the sender expressly, and with authority, states them to be the views the University of Technology, Sydney. Before opening any attachments, please check them for viruses and defects.