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IEEE WCCI Workshop on Intelligent Assistive Computing
by Francisco Javier Cruz Naranjo 09 Jan '18

09 Jan '18

Workshop on Intelligent Assistive Computing at IEEE WCCI - July 8th, 2018 http://www.wac2018.ecomp.poli.br/ *First call for paper* We kindly invite you to submit your contributions to the workshop to be held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Assistive technologies have the goal to provide greater quality of life and independence in domestic environments by enhancing or changing the way people perform activities of daily living (ADLs), tailoring specific functionalities to the needs of the users. Significant advances have been made in intelligent adaptive technologies that adopt state-of-the-art learning systems applied to assistive and health-care-related domains. Prominent examples are fall detection systems that can detect domestic fall events through the use of wearable physiological sensors or non-invasive vision-based approaches, and body gait assessment for physical rehabilitation and the detection of abnormal body motion patterns, e.g., linked to age-related cognitive declines. In addition to an adequate sensor technology, such approaches require methods able to process rich streams of (often noisy) information with real-time performance. Assistive technology has been the focus of research in the past decades. However, it flourished in the past years with the fast development of personal robots, smart homes, and embedded systems. The focus of this workshop is to gather neural network researchers, both with application and development focus, working on or being interested in building and deploying such systems. Despite the high impact and application potential of assistive systems for the society, there is still a significant gap between what is developed by researchers and the applicability of such solutions in real-world scenarios. This workshop will discuss how to alleviate this gap with help of the latest neural network research such as deep, self-organizing, generative and recurrent neural models for adaptable lifelong learning applications. In this workshop, we aim at collecting novel methods, computational models, and experimental strategies for intelligent assistive systems such as body motion and behavior assessment, rehabilitation and assisted living technologies, multisensory frameworks, navigation assistance, affective computing, and more accessible human-computer interaction. The primary list of topics covers the following topics (but not limited to): - Machine learning and neural networks for assistive computing - Behavioral studies on assistive computing - Models of behavior processing and learning - New theories and findings on assistive computing - human-machine, human-agent and human-robot interaction focused on assistive computing - Brain-machine interfaces for assistive computing - Crossmodal models for assistive computing *Invited speakers* - Igor Farkas, Comenius University - Giulio Sandini, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT) - Stefan Wermter, University of Hamburg *Call for contributions* Participants are required to submit a contribution as: - Extended abstract (maximum 2 pages) - Short paper (maximum 4 pages) Selected contributions will be presented during the workshop as spotlight talks and in a poster session. *Important dates* April 6, 2018 - Paper submission deadline May 4, 2018 - Notification of acceptance May 25, 2018 - Camera-ready version July 8, 2018 - Workshop *Organizers* Pablo Barros, University of Hamburg Francisco Cruz, Universidad Central de Chile German I. Parisi, University of Hamburg Bruno Fernandes, Universidade de Pernambuco See more details in: http://www.wac2018.ecomp.poli.br/ -- Dr. Francisco Cruz Research and Teaching Associate Universidad Central de Chile Santa Isabel 1186 8330601, Santiago Phone: +562 2582 6938 http://www.franciscocruz.cl

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Second Call for Participation (DSPL · OPL · SSPL)
by Mauricio Matamoros 08 Jan '18

08 Jan '18

*Important Notice: *This second Call for Participation is open to all teams targeting all leagues, including those teams who missed the previous calls or didn't attain qualification. Teams that already submitted qualification material and were not accepted can resubmit an improved version of it. ------------------------------ Second Call for Participation RoboCup@Home 2018 (DSPL · OPL · SSPL) June 16 - June 22, 2018 (Montreal, Canada) http://www.robocup2018.org http://www.robocupathome.org/ https://github.com/RoboCupAtHome/RuleBook RoboCup is an international scientific initiative with the goal to advance the state of the art of intelligent robots through competitions (RoboCup@Home, RoboCup Soccer, RoboCup Rescue, RoboCup@Work and RoboCup Junior). The RoboCup@Home league aims to develop service and assistive robot technology with high relevance for future personal domestic applications. It is the largest international annual competition for autonomous service robots and is part of the RoboCup initiative. A set of benchmark tests is used to evaluate the robots' abilities and performance in a realistic home environment setting. Focus lies on the following domains but is not limited to: Human-Robot-Interaction and Cooperation, Navigation and Mapping in dynamic environments, Computer Vision and Object Recognition under natural light conditions, Object Manipulation, Adaptive Behaviors, Behavior Integration, Ambient Intelligence, Standardization and System Integration. This message describes the preregistration and qualification procedure for RoboCup@Home League 2018. Important dates: Nov. 22, 2017 Publication of the Call for Participation Dec. 31, 2017 Deadline for Intention of Participation Jan. 15, 2018 Deadline for submission of qualification material and preregistration. (Team Description Paper, Team Video, Team Website). Jan. 31, 2018 Qualification announcement Feb. 25, 2018 Deadline for Participation Confirmation The qualification procedure consists of the following two steps: Step 1) Intention of Participation (strongly recommended) The team sends an email to the Organizing Committee (oc(a)robocupathome.org) to indicate your intention to participate in the RoboCup@Home 2018 event, including the following basic information: Team Name: League: [ DSPL | OPL | SSPL ] Country: Affiliation: Team Leader Name: Contact information (E-mail): Web site: Only one team leader can be specified per team. The e-mail subject should be: [@Home2018-Participation] (YourTeamName) Please check the email is encoded in UTF-8 using only the ISO-8859-1 character set. ***** Deadline: Sunday, 31th Dec. 2017 23:59 GMT ****** Step 2) Qualification Material Submission (mandatory) The team ***MUST*** send an email to the Organizing Committee ( oc(a)robocupathome.org) to participate in the qualification process for the RoboCup@Home 2018 event. Please fill in the following information: Team Name: League: [ DSPL | OPL | SSPL ] Country: Affiliation: Team Leader Name: Contact information (E-mail): Rank in local tournaments: Link to a team video: Link to a team web site devoted to their efforts: Team Description Paper (TDP) attached to the email based on the official template. The e-mail subject should be: [@Home2018-Qualification] (YourTeamName) Considerations: - Only one platform can be specified per team. - Only one team leader can be specified per team. - Only one contact email can be specified per team. - All the publications and software to be evaluated for qualification ***MUST*** be in the team's website. - The email must be encoded in UTF-8 using only the ISO-8859-1 character set. ***** Deadline: Monday, Jan. 15, 2018 23:59 GMT ****** Step 3) Participation confirmation (mandatory) All qualified teams ***MUST*** send an email to the Organizing Committee ( oc(a)robocupathome.org) to confirm (or cancel) their participation in the RoboCup@Home 2018 event. Confirming attendance implies that the team has sufficient resources to register, and commits to attend to the event. To confirm participation, please fill in the following information: Team Name: League: [ DSPL | OPL | SSPL ] Country: Hereby [Team Name] of [Country] confirms/revokes its attendance to the RoboCup@Home [League]. The e-mail subject should be: [@Home2018-Confirmation] (YourTeamName) *Remark: *Qualified teams who miss the participation confirmation will be disqualified automatically and may be banned from the 2019 event. ***** Deadline: Sunday, Feb. 25, 2018 23:59 GMT ****** Instructions for the Team Video =========================== In order to proof a running hardware, each team has to provide a qualification video. As a minimum requirement for qualification, the video must show the robot(s) successfully solving a task involving the integration of at least 5 different abilities, such as: environmental reasoning, high-level task planning, human-robot interaction, localization, manipulation, object recognition, people recognition, etc. Is strongly advised to show at least one Stage 2 test of the current or last year's rulebook. *Remarks:* - The shown task execution must look continuous, smooth, and robust. - When speeding-up video, the speed factor must be indicated. - The language spoken and shown in the video must be English. When using any other languages, translations must be included. - We strongly suggest upload videos to Youtube. - Videos sent will be uploaded/displayed in the league's youtube channel http://www.youtube.com/channel/UChkdCpT0xrFMMt-_N8wSVew/playlists" <http://www.youtube.com/channel/UChkdCpT0xrFMMt-_N8wSVew/playlists> - *Standard Platforms Only:* Teams are allowed to use any robot in their Team Video, but the use of the standard robot is advised. *Copyright note:*When sending videos for qualification, teams implicitly grant permission to RoboCup @Home and the RoboCup Federation to copy, modify, distribute, upload, publish, and use the multimedia material to promote the event and the league at convenience. Instructions for the TDP ======================== The TDP is an 8-pages long scientific paper, detailing information on the technical and scientific approach of the team's research, while including also the following: - Innovative technology and scientific contribution - Focus of research/research interests - Re-usability of the system for other research groups - Applicability of the robot in the real world - TDP length is 8 pages + annex. - Photo(s) of the robot (in annex). - Brief, compact list of the 3rd party robot's software (e.g. ROS vision should be included, but not OpenCV. In annex). - Brief, compact description of all external computing devices, if any (in annex). - *OPL Only:* Brief, compact description of the robot's hardware (in annex). - *DSPL and SSPL:* When the robot depicted in the TDP or Team Video is different from the league's standard one, the TDP must clearly state how the addressed approach and described software will be adapted to the standard platform robot. For the TDP, please use the Springer LNAI format <http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-6-793341-0> used in the RoboCup Symposium submissions and limit yourself to 8 pages without altering margins or spacing (including references but excluding the annex). You may download a template for the TDP from here <https://github.com/RoboCupAtHome/TDPTemplate>. Exceeding the number of pages will automatically void your application. *Remark: *The language for the TDP, its graphics, tables, images, and all additional content must be English. Content in other languages must be translated. *Copyright note:*All TDPs sent for qualification may be made publicly available in the RoboCup @Home Wiki for further reference. On submitting, teams implicitly grant permission to RoboCup @Home and the RoboCup Federation to copy, distribute, upload, publish, and use the manuscript to promote the event and the league at convenience. Instructions for the Web site ========================== While the TDP goes into detail about the technical and scientific approach of the team's research, the website should be designed for a broader audience, including: - Photos of the robot(s) - Videos of the robot(s) - Description of the approaches and information on scientific achievements - Relevant publications (last 5 years, preferably available to download) - Link to repositories with software for the community - Team members - Previous participation in RoboCup - Participation and rankings in local RoboCup tournaments *Remark: *Only documented active software repositories are considered as contributions to the league. It must be clear and straightforward to other teams how to use your software. Evaluation criteria: ================= Qualification materials will be judged by the following criteria: - Team description paper (clarity, scientific contributions, re-usability by the league, applicability in real world) - Performance in local tournaments and previous competitions. - Qualification Video (navigation, human-robot interaction, people/object recognition, object manipulation and new features) - Website (multimedia, publications from last 5 years, downloadable content, open-source software and other contributions) - Relevant Scientific contribution/publications (downloadable papers and open-source software) - Novelty of approach (what you do is new for @Home) We encourage teams to produce self-explicative videos for a general audience where complex tasks are solved. For Team Description Papers focus on the scientific contribution and avoid brief descriptions of the overall system. *Note to experienced competitors:* Major changes are being done in the rulebook. You may download the latest version from: https://github.com/RoboCupAtHome/RuleBook. With kind regards, and looking forward to see your team in Montreal, The 2018 RoboCup@Home Organizing and Technical Committees

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[CFP] ICAS 2018: Intelligent Autonomous Systems for the Future of Retail
by António J. R. Neves 08 Jan '18

08 Jan '18

Special track: *IASFR: Intelligent Autonomous Systems for the Future of Retail* ICAS 2018, 20--24 May, 2018 - Nice, France Fourteenth International Conference on Autonomic and Autonomous Systems http://www.iaria.org/conferences2018/ICAS18.html ************************************************************* [Apologies for any cross-posting] Dear Colleague, The Fourteenth International Conference on Autonomic and Autonomous Systems ICAS 2018, will take place next May in Nice, France and will include several special sessions, namely one on "Intelligent Autonomous Systems for the Future of Retail". The retail industry is experiencing what might be called a digital revolution, in which intelligent autonomous systems are reshaping traditional retail practices. Ubiquitous devices, either built as robots or, widely put, intelligent systems, are helping retailers realize the digitization potential of Internet of Things, by reducing labor costs, improving efficiency or delivering the most diverse customer experiences. As these systems become more autonomous, capable and cost effective, we are increasingly seeing them having a significant impact on almost every aspect of the retail chain, from internal operations to customer-facing service. Whether it is automating processes, improving shelf conditions and inventory accuracy, helping customers find what they are looking for or simply providing a fun experience, intelligent systems are on the rise and are playing an important role in current retail. Prospective authors are invited to submit original papers on topics including, but not limited to: - Warehouses and Distribution Centers - Store Surveillance - Customer Service - Smart Advertising - Customer Experience Enhancement *Important Deadlines* - Inform the Chairs: As soon as you decided to contribute - Submission: February 7, 2018 - Notification: March 7, 2018 - Registration: March 21, 2018 - Camera ready: April 2, 2018 Note: These deadlines are somewhat flexible, providing arrangements are made ahead of time with the chair. *Contribution Types* - Regular papers [in the proceedings, digital library] - Short papers (work in progress) [in the proceedings, digital library] - Posters: two pages [in the proceedings, digital library] - Posters: slide only [slide-deck posted on www.iaria.org] - Presentations: slide only [slide-deck posted on www.iaria.org] - Demos: two pages [posted on www.iaria.org] *Paper Format* - See: http://www.iaria.org/format.html - Before submission, please check and comply with the editorial rules: http://www.iaria.org/editorialrules.html *Publications* - Extended versions of selected papers will be published in IARIA Journals: http://www.iariajournals.org - Print proceedings will be available via Curran Associates, Inc.: http://www.proceedings.com/9769.html - Articles will be archived in the free access ThinkMind Digital Library: http://www.thinkmind.org *Paper Submission* - https://www.iariasubmit.org/conferences/submit/newcontributi on.php?event=ICAS+2018+Special - Please select Track Preference as IASFR *Registration* - Each accepted paper needs at least one full registration, before the camera-ready manuscript can be included in the proceedings. - Registration fees are available at http://www.iaria.org/registration.html *Contacts Chairs:* - Alina Trifan, alina.trifan(a)ua.pt - Antonio José Ribeiro Neves, an(a)ua.pt - SIGNAL logistics, steve(a)iaria.org Best regards, Alina Trifan Antonio Neves

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[CFP] SIGNAL 2018 - Body Language Estimation through Computer Vision
by António J. R. Neves 08 Jan '18

08 Jan '18

Special track: *BLECV: Body Language Estimation through Computer Vision* SIGNAL 2018, 20--24 May, 2018 - Nice, France Third International Conference on Advances in Signal, Image and Video Processing http://www.iaria.org/conferences2018/SIGNAL18.html ************************************************************* [Apologies for any cross-posting] Dear Colleague, The Third International Conference on Advances in Signal, Image and Video Processing , SIGNAL 2018, will take place next May in Nice, France and will include several special sessions, namely one on "Body Language Estimation through Computer Vision". As humans, we can often understand a lot about a person by just looking at him/her. Their facial expression, posture, eye focus and gestures can say a lot without any words being employed. In the recent years lots of effort is being conducted towards implementing this capability through machine vision. The problem that computer vision for body language is trying to tackle is a very complex one, but progress is being made. We aim at empowering machines with this “sense” of understanding the mood, intention and eventually future actions of a person through visual cues. This capability could ease human-machine interactions and pave the way for more interactive virtual reality or intuitive user interfaces, as well as human robot interaction, among others. For this special track, we expect contributions on Computer Vision approaches for the following related topics, but not limited to: - Pose Estimation - Emotion Detection - Face Recognition and Tracking - Human Robot Interaction - Virtual and Augmented Reality Based on Body Detection *Important Deadlines* - Inform the Chairs: As soon as you decided to contribute - Submission: February 7, 2018 - Notification: March 7, 2018 - Registration: March 21, 2018 - Camera ready: April 2, 2018 Note: These deadlines are somewhat flexible, providing arrangements are made ahead of time with the chair. *Contribution Types* - Regular papers [in the proceedings, digital library] - Short papers (work in progress) [in the proceedings, digital library] - Posters: two pages [in the proceedings, digital library] - Posters: slide only [slide-deck posted on www.iaria.org] - Presentations: slide only [slide-deck posted on www.iaria.org] - Demos: two pages [posted on www.iaria.org] *Paper Format* - See: http://www.iaria.org/format.html - Before submission, please check and comply with the editorial rules: http://www.iaria.org/editorialrules.html *Publications* - Extended versions of selected papers will be published in IARIA Journals: http://www.iariajournals.org - Print proceedings will be available via Curran Associates, Inc.: http://www.proceedings.com/9769.html - Articles will be archived in the free access ThinkMind Digital Library: http://www.thinkmind.org *Paper Submission* - https://www.iariasubmit.org/conferences/submit/newcontribu tion.php?event=SIGNAL+2018+Special - Please select Track Preference as BLECV *Registration* - Each accepted paper needs at least one full registration, before the camera-ready manuscript can be included in the proceedings. - Registration fees are available at http://www.iaria.org/registration.html *Contacts Chairs:* - Antonio José Ribeiro Neves, an(a)ua.pt - Alina Trifan, alina.trifan(a)ua.pt - SIGNAL logistics, steve(a)iaria.org Best regards, Antonio Neves Alina Trifan

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Fwd: RoboCup German Open 2018: Registration is open
by Sven Wachsmuth 13 Dec '17

13 Dec '17

-------- Weitergeleitete Nachricht -------- Betreff: RoboCup German Open 2018: Registration is open Datum: Mon, 16 Oct 2017 11:30:43 +0200 Von: RoboCup German Open 2018 <info(a)robocupgermanopen.de> Antwort an: RoboCup German Open 2018 <info(a)robocupgermanopen.de> An: RoboCup German Open 2018 <info(a)robocupgermanopen.de> Dear team leader, we are happy to announce, that the registration for the 16th RoboCup German Open 2018 has been opened at https://robocupgermanopen.de/en/major/teaminfos. Please see the call for participation below. The registration deadline is December 15, 2017. We hope to meet all of you and new teams in Magdeburg. Best regards, Ansgar (on behalf of the Major OC) --------------------------------------------------------------------- RoboCup German Open 2018 Call for Participation https://robocupgermanopen.de 27 - 29 April 2018 MESSE MAGDEBURG, Germany The RoboCup German Open 2018 will be the 16th open RoboCup competition held in Germany. The event will take place in Magdeburg at MESSE MAGDEBURG. -- RoboCup Major Leagues (international teams) ---------------------- Competitions are offered in the following leagues: - RoboCupSoccer Standard Platform League - RoboCupSoccer Humanoid League (Kid-Size) - RoboCupRescue Robot League - RoboCup@Home League - RoboCupIndustrial Logistics League - RoboCupIndustrial RoboCup@Work League The registration opens *** 15 October 2017 ***. The registration deadline is *** 15 December 2017 ***. Visit https://robocupgermanopen.de to register your RoboCup Major League team. Details on the registration (fee, accommodation, rules) are available on the web site. Booking of blocked accommodation with special rates is possible after your registration. The Major Leagues Organising Committee: - Thomas Röfer (Standard Platform League) - Reinhard Gerndt (Humanoid League) - Johannes Pellenz (Rescue Robot League) - Sven Wachsmuth, Raphael Memmetsheimer (RoboCup@Home League) - Ulrich Karras (Logistics League) - Sebastian Zug (RoboCup@Work League) -- RoboCup Junior ---------------------------------------------------- The German RoboCup Junior qualification for RoboCup 2018 is performed in two steps. German teams qualify in seven local tournaments in Bad Zwischenahn, Berlin, Hamburg, Hannover, Mannheim, Sankt Augustin and Vöhringen for the final of the 18th German RoboCup Junior Championship which is held within the RoboCup German Open 2018. The best Junior teams will qualify for RoboCup 2018 in Canada. -- Important dates -------------------------------------------------- 15.09.2017 Publication of Call for Participation 15.10.2017 Registration opens 15.12.2017 Registration deadline RoboCup Major teams 15.02.2018 Registration deadline team members with names 15.04.2018 Registration fee due 25.04.2018 Set-up day Major League teams 26.04.2018 Set-up day Major League teams 27.04.2018 Competition day (open to public) 28.04.2018 Competition day (open to public) 29.04.2018 Competition day, finals (open to public) Please contact info(a)robocupgermanopen.de for any questions. See you all again at the 16th RoboCup German Open 2018! Best regards, Ansgar Bredenfeld (Chair RoboCup German Open) RoboCup German Open is organized on behalf of the German RoboCup Committee by Landeshauptstadt Magdeburg and Dr. Bredenfeld UG. -- Besten Gruß Das RoboCup German Open Orga-Team 2018

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[@Home-CFP] Second Call for Participation (DSPL · OPL · SSPL)
by Mauricio Matamoros 23 Nov '17

23 Nov '17

[Source: http://www.robocupathome.org/call-for-participation/cfp-all-2018] *Important Notice: *This second Call for Participation is open to all teams targeting all leagues, including those teams who missed the previous calls or didn't attain qualification. Teams that already submitted qualification material and were not accepted can resubmit an improved version of it. ------------------------------ Second Call for Participation RoboCup@Home 2018 (DSPL · OPL · SSPL) June 16 - June 22, 2018 (Montreal, Canada) http://www.robocup2018.org http://www.robocupathome.org/ https://github.com/RoboCupAtHome/RuleBook RoboCup is an international scientific initiative with the goal to advance the state of the art of intelligent robots through competitions (RoboCup@Home, RoboCup Soccer, RoboCup Rescue, RoboCup@Work and RoboCup Junior). The RoboCup@Home league aims to develop service and assistive robot technology with high relevance for future personal domestic applications. It is the largest international annual competition for autonomous service robots and is part of the RoboCup initiative. A set of benchmark tests is used to evaluate the robots' abilities and performance in a realistic home environment setting. Focus lies on the following domains but is not limited to: Human-Robot-Interaction and Cooperation, Navigation and Mapping in dynamic environments, Computer Vision and Object Recognition under natural light conditions, Object Manipulation, Adaptive Behaviors, Behavior Integration, Ambient Intelligence, Standardization and System Integration. This message describes the preregistration and qualification procedure for RoboCup@Home League 2018. Important dates: Nov. 22, 2017 Publication of the Call for Participation Dec. 31, 2017 Deadline for Intention of Participation Jan. 15, 2018 Deadline for submission of qualification material and preregistration. (Team Description Paper, Team Video, Team Website). Jan. 31, 2018 Qualification announcement Feb. 25, 2018 Deadline for Participation Confirmation The qualification procedure consists of the following two steps: Step 1) Intention of Participation (strongly recommended) The team sends an email to the Organizing Committee (oc(a)robocupathome.org) to indicate your intention to participate in the RoboCup@Home 2018 event, including the following basic information: Team Name: League: [ DSPL | OPL | SSPL ] Country: Affiliation: Team Leader Name: Contact information (E-mail): Web site: Only one team leader can be specified per team. The e-mail subject should be: [@Home2018-Participation] (YourTeamName) Please check the email is encoded in UTF-8 using only the ISO-8859-1 character set. ***** Deadline: Sunday, 31th Dec. 2017 23:59 GMT ****** Step 2) Qualification Material Submission (mandatory) The team ***MUST*** send an email to the Organizing Committee ( oc(a)robocupathome.org) to participate in the qualification process for the RoboCup@Home 2018 event. Please fill in the following information: Team Name: League: [ DSPL | OPL | SSPL ] Country: Affiliation: Team Leader Name: Contact information (E-mail): Rank in local tournaments: Link to a team video: Link to a team web site devoted to their efforts: Team Description Paper (TDP) attached to the email based on the official template. The e-mail subject should be: [@Home2018-Participation] (YourTeamName) Considerations: - Only one platform can be specified per team. - Only one team leader can be specified per team. - Only one contact email can be specified per team. - All the publications and software to be evaluated for qualification ***MUST*** be in the team's website. - The email must be encoded in UTF-8 using only the ISO-8859-1 character set. ***** Deadline: Monday, Jan. 15, 2018 23:59 GMT ****** Step 3) Participation confirmation (mandatory) All qualified teams ***MUST*** send an email to the Organizing Committee ( oc(a)robocupathome.org) to confirm (or cancel) their participation in the RoboCup@Home 2018 event. Confirming attendance implies that the team has sufficient resources to register, and commits to attend to the event. To confirm participation, please fill in the following information: Team Name: League: [ DSPL | OPL | SSPL ] Country: Hereby [Team Name] of [Country] confirms/revokes its attendance to the RoboCup@Home [League]. The e-mail subject should be: [@Home2018-Confirmation] (YourTeamName) *Remark: *Qualified teams who miss the participation confirmation will be disqualified automatically and may be banned from the 2019 event. ***** Deadline: Sunday, Feb. 25, 2018 23:59 GMT ****** Instructions for the Team Video =========================== In order to proof a running hardware, each team has to provide a qualification video. As a minimum requirement for qualification, the video must show the robot(s) successfully solving a task involving the integration of at least 5 different abilities, such as: environmental reasoning, high-level task planning, human-robot interaction, localization, manipulation, object recognition, people recognition, etc. Is strongly advised to show at least one Stage 2 test of the current or last year's rulebook. *Remarks:* - The shown task execution must look continuous, smooth, and robust. - When speeding-up video, the speed factor must be indicated. - The language spoken and shown in the video must be English. When using any other languages, translations must be included. - We strongly suggest upload videos to Youtube. - Videos sent will be uploaded/displayed in the league's youtube channel http://www.youtube.com/channel/UChkdCpT0xrFMMt-_N8wSVew/playlists" <http://www.youtube.com/channel/UChkdCpT0xrFMMt-_N8wSVew/playlists> - *Standard Platforms Only:* Teams are allowed to use any robot in their Team Video, but the use of the standard robot is advised. *Copyright note:*When sending videos for qualification, teams implicitly grant permission to RoboCup @Home and the RoboCup Federation to copy, modify, distribute, upload, publish, and use the multimedia material to promote the event and the league at convenience. Instructions for the TDP ======================== The TDP is an 8-pages long scientific paper, detailing information on the technical and scientific approach of the team's research, while including also the following: - Innovative technology and scientific contribution - Focus of research/research interests - Re-usability of the system for other research groups - Applicability of the robot in the real world - TDP length is 8 pages + annex. - Photo(s) of the robot (in annex). - Brief, compact list of the 3rd party robot's software (e.g. ROS vision should be included, but not OpenCV. In annex). - Brief, compact description of all external computing devices, if any (in annex). - *OPL Only:* Brief, compact description of the robot's hardware (in annex). - *DSPL and SSPL:* When the robot depicted in the TDP or Team Video is different from the league's standard one, the TDP must clearly state how the addressed approach and described software will be adapted to the standard platform robot. For the TDP, please use the Springer LNAI format <http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-6-793341-0> used in the RoboCup Symposium submissions and limit yourself to 8 pages without altering margins or spacing (including references but excluding the annex). You may download a template for the TDP from here <https://github.com/RoboCupAtHome/TDPTemplate>. Exceeding the number of pages will automatically void your application. *Remark: *The language for the TDP, its graphics, tables, images, and all additional content must be English. Content in other languages must be translated. *Copyright note:*All TDPs sent for qualification may be made publicly available in the RoboCup @Home Wiki for further reference. On submitting, teams implicitly grant permission to RoboCup @Home and the RoboCup Federation to copy, distribute, upload, publish, and use the manuscript to promote the event and the league at convenience. Instructions for the Web site ========================== While the TDP goes into detail about the technical and scientific approach of the team's research, the website should be designed for a broader audience, including: - Photos of the robot(s) - Videos of the robot(s) - Description of the approaches and information on scientific achievements - Relevant publications (last 5 years, preferably available to download) - Link to repositories with software for the community - Team members - Previous participation in RoboCup - Participation and rankings in local RoboCup tournaments *Remark: *Only documented active software repositories are considered as contributions to the league. It must be clear and straightforward to other teams how to use your software. Evaluation criteria: ================= Qualification materials will be judged by the following criteria: - Team description paper (clarity, scientific contributions, re-usability by the league, applicability in real world) - Performance in local tournaments and previous competitions. - Qualification Video (navigation, human-robot interaction, people/object recognition, object manipulation and new features) - Website (multimedia, publications from last 5 years, downloadable content, open-source software and other contributions) - Relevant Scientific contribution/publications (downloadable papers and open-source software) - Novelty of approach (what you do is new for @Home) We encourage teams to produce self-explicative videos for a general audience where complex tasks are solved. For Team Description Papers focus on the scientific contribution and avoid brief descriptions of the overall system. *Note to experienced competitors:* Major changes are being done in the rulebook. You may download the latest version from: https://github.com/RoboCupAtHome/RuleBook. With kind regards, and looking forward to see your team in Montreal, The 2018 RoboCup@Home Organizing and Technical Committees

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[journals] RAS special issue: Semantic Policy and Action Representations for Autonomous Robots (SPAR)
by Karinne Ramirez Amaro 15 Nov '17

15 Nov '17

********************************************************************************************** **** Robotics and Autonomous Systems Special Issue on Semantic Policy and Action Representations for Autonomous Robots*** ********************************************************************************************** ----Call for Papers--- It is our pleasure to announce the Robotics and Autonomous Systems (RAS) special issue on Semantic Policy and Action Representations for Autonomous Robots (SPAR). This special issue is a follow-up outcome of two successful IROS workshops held in 2015 and 2017. We would like to invite all interested researchers to submit their papers in the areas of reasoning, perception, control, planning, and learning applied to robotic systems. ***RAS-SPAR Special issue URL*** http://www.ics.ei.tum.de/en/www.ics.ei.tum.de/workshopiros/ras-special-issu… Contact email: spar.workshop(a)gmail.com *** Important Dates ***: Paper submission deadline: 25th March 2018 Notification of acceptance: 15th June 2018 Final Submission: 3rd August 2018 Publication date: September 2018 *** Special issue objectives *** Service and industrial robots are expected to be more autonomous and work effectively around/ alongside humans. This implies that robots should have special capabilities, such as interpreting and understanding human intentions in different domains. The major challenge is to find appropriate mechanisms to explain the observed raw sensor signals such as poses, velocities, distances, forces, etc., in a way that robots are able to make informative and high-level descriptive models out of that. These models will, for instance, permit the understanding of, what is the meaning of the observations/demonstrations, infer how they could generate/produce a similar behavior in other conditions/domains?, and more importantly, allow robots to communicate with the user/operator about why they infer that behavior. One promising way to achieve that is using high-level semantic representations. Several methods have been proposed, for example, linguistic approaches, syntactic approaches, graphical models, etc. This special issue is focused on highlighting the recent developments in semantic reasoning representations and semantic policy generation from low level (sensory signal) to high level (planning and execution). More importantly, this special issue will gather information about various bottom-up and top-down approaches for semantic action perception and executions in different domains. Furthermore, we are aiming to compare various state-of-the-art approaches for generic action and reasoning representations in both computer vision and robotic communities, looking for a common ground to combine assumable different approaches for autonomous capability and reliability. Overall, this special issue aims to present the main benefits of this new emerging type of methods such as allowing robots to learn generalized semantic models for different domains as well as the next breakthrough topics in this area, e.g. the scalability of the learned models that can adapt to new scenarios/domains in a way that the robot can transfer all the acquired knowledge and experience from existing data to new domains with very little human intervention. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to: *AI-Based Methods --Learning and adaptive systems & Probability and statistical methods --Action grammars/libraries & Spatiotemporal event encoding --Machine learning techniques for semantic representations *Reasoning Methods in Robotics and Automation --Signal to symbol transition (Symbol grounding) & Different levels of abstraction --Semantics of manipulation actions & Semantic policy representation --Context modeling methods *Human Behavior Recognition --Learning from demonstration & Object-action relations --Bottom-up and top-down perception *Task, Geometric, and Dynamic Level Plans and Policies --PDDL high-level planning & Task and motion planning methods *Human-Robot interaction --Prediction of human intentions & Linking linguistic and visual data *** Guest editors *** Karinne Ramirez-Amaro, Technical University of Munich, https://www.ics.ei.tum.de/people/ramirez Yezhou Yang, Arizona State University, USA, https://yezhouyang.engineering.asu.edu Neil T. Dantam, Colorado School of Mines, USA, http://www.neil.dantam.name/ Eren Erdal Aksoy, Lund University, Sweden, http://www.lunduniversity.lu.se/lucat/user/er0201ak Gordon Cheng, Technical University of Munich, https://www.ics.ei.tum.de/en/people/cheng -- Dr.-Ing. Karinne Ramirez Amaro Institute for Cognitive Systems Technische Universitaet Muenchen Address: Karlstr. 45, 2.OG. 80333 Munich, Germany Room: 2008 Web page: http://web.ics.ei.tum.de/~karinne/Ramirez/index.html email: karinne.ramirez(a)tum.de Telephone: +49-89-289-26791

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Call for Participation: RoboCup@Home Education Challenge 2017 @ RCAP 2017
by Jeffrey Tan 17 Oct '17

17 Oct '17

=== RoboCup@Home Education Challenge 2017 @ RCAP 2017 === December 12 ~ 18, 2017 Bangkok, Thailand http://www.robocupathomeedu.org <<Introduction>> RoboCup@Home Education is a special education program providing support for new teams in the context of a simplified RoboCup@Home competition oriented on forming new teams and preparing them to the main competitions. After running successfully for 3 years in RoboCup Japan Open 2015, 2016, 2017, the RoboCup@Home Education Challenge will be hosted in RoboCup Asia-Pacific 2017 [http://www.robocup-ap2017.org]. With the educational purpose and to promote new team participation, robot building workshop sessions will be conducted before the competition to facilitate inexperienced teams. - Workshop and Setup: December 12 ~ 14, 2017 - Competition: December 15 ~ 17, 2017 For more details and competition rules, please visit http://www.robocupathomeedu.org/challenges/robocup-home-education-challenge… <<How to Participate>> 1. Interested teams are required to apply by sending an email with the following information to the Organizing Committee oc(a)robocupathomeedu.org - Team Name: - Country/Region: - Affiliation: - Team Leader Name: - E-mail: The e-mail subject should be: [@HomeEDU2017] (Your Team Name) 2. A registration code will be sent to the e-mail above to proceed the registration at http://www.robocup-ap2017.org/en/registration.php <<Important Dates>> Application: October 10 - November 10, 2017 Registration: October 10 - December 8, 2017 Please visit the official website for more information. You can contact us via oc(a)robocupathomeedu.org Best Regards, RoboCup@Home Education Challenge 2017 Organizing Committee

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[@Home2018] Call for Participation: Open Platform League
by Mauricio Matamoros 12 Oct '17

12 Oct '17

Call for Participation RoboCup@Home Open Platform League 2018 June 16 - June 22, 2018 (Montreal, Canada) http://www.robocup2018.org http://www.robocupathome.org/ https://github.com/RoboCupAtHome/RuleBook *Note:* The qualification procedure for RoboCup@Home 2018 will be differentiated for the three sub-leagues (OPL, DSPL, SSPL) to better accommodate different organization needs. For each call please visit http://www.robocupathome.org/. --------------------------------------------- RoboCup is an international scientific initiative with the goal to advance the state of the art of intelligent robots through competitions (RoboCup@Home, RoboCup Soccer, RoboCup Rescue, RoboCup@Work and RoboCup Junior). The RoboCup@Home league aims to develop service and assistive robot technology with high relevance for future personal domestic applications. It is the largest international annual competition for autonomous service robots and is part of the RoboCup initiative. A set of benchmark tests is used to evaluate the robots' abilities and performance in a realistic home environment setting. Focus lies on the following domains but is not limited to: Human-Robot-Interaction and Cooperation, Navigation and Mapping in dynamic environments, Computer Vision and Object Recognition under natural light conditions, Object Manipulation, Adaptive Behaviors, Behavior Integration, Ambient Intelligence, Standardization and System Integration. This message describes the preregistration and qualification procedure for RoboCup@Home League 2018. Important dates: Sept. 22, 2017 Publication of the Call for Participation Oct. 15, 2017 Deadline for Intention of Participation Nov. 5, 2017 Deadline for submission of qualification material and preregistration. (Team Description Paper, Team Video, Team Website). Nov. 26, 2017 Qualification announcement Feb. 25, 2018 Deadline for Participation Confirmation The qualification procedure consists of the following two steps: Step 1) Intention of Participation (strongly recommended) The team sends an email to the Organizing Committee (oc(a)robocupathome.org) to indicate your intention to participate in the RoboCup@Home 2018 event, including the following basic information: Team Name: League: Open Platform League Country: Affiliation: Team Leader Name: Contact information (E-mail): Web site: Only one team leader can be specified per team. The e-mail subject should be: [@Home2018-Participation] (YourTeamName) Please check the email is encoded in UTF-8 using only the ISO-8859-1 character set. ***** Deadline: Sunday, 15th Oct. 2017 23:59 GMT ****** Step 2) Qualification Material Submission (mandatory) The team ***MUST*** send an email to the Organizing Committee ( oc(a)robocupathome.org) to participate in the qualification process for the RoboCup@Home 2018 event. Please fill in the following information: Team Name: League: Open Platform League Country: Affiliation: Team Leader Name: Contact information (E-mail): Rank in local tournaments: Link to a team video: Link to a team web site devoted to their efforts: Team Description Paper (TDP) attached to the email based on the official template. The e-mail subject should be: [@Home2018-Participation] (YourTeamName) Considerations: - Only one platform can be specified per team. - Only one team leader can be specified per team. - Only one contact email can be specified per team. - All the publications and software to be evaluated for qualification ***MUST*** be in the team's website. - The email must be encoded in UTF-8 using only the ISO-8859-1 character set. ***** Deadline: Sunday, Nov. 5, 2017 23:59 GMT ****** Step 3) Participation confirmation (mandatory) All qualified teams ***MUST*** send an email to the Organizing Committee ( oc(a)robocupathome.org) to confirm (or cancel) their participation in the RoboCup@Home 2018 event. Confirming attendance implies that the team has sufficient resources to register commits to attend to the event. To confirm participation, please fill in the following information: Team Name: League: Open Platform League Country: Hereby [Team Name] of [Country] confirms/revokes its attendance to the RoboCup@Home Open Platform League. The e-mail subject should be: [@Home2018-Confirmation] (YourTeamName) *Remark:* Qualified teams who miss the participation confirmation will be disqualified automatically. ***** Deadline: Sunday, Feb. 25, 2018 23:59 GMT ****** Instructions for the Team Video =========================== In order to proof a running hardware, each team has to provide a qualification video. As a minimum requirement for qualification, the video must show the robot(s) successfully solving a task involving the integration of at least 5 different abilities, such as: environmental reasoning, high-level task planning, human-robot interaction, localization, manipulation, object recognition, people recognition, etc. Is strongly advised to show at least one Stage 2 test of the current or last year's rulebook. *Remarks:* - The shown task execution must look continuous, smooth, and robust. - When speeding-up video, the speed factor must be indicated. - The language spoken and shown in the video must be English. When using any other languages, translations must be included. - We strongly suggest upload videos to Youtube. - Videos sent will be uploaded/displayed in the league's youtube channel http://www.youtube.com/channel/UChkdCpT0xrFMMt-_N8wSVew/playlists" <http://www.youtube.com/channel/UChkdCpT0xrFMMt-_N8wSVew/playlists> *Copyright note:*When sending videos for qualification, teams implicitly grant permission to RoboCup @Home and the RoboCup Federation to copy, modify, distribute, upload, publish, and use the multimedia material to promote the event and the league as we find convenient. Instructions for the TDP ======================== The TDP is an 8-pages long scientific paper, detailing information on the technical and scientific approach of the team's research, while including also the following: - Innovative technology and scientific contribution - Focus of research/research interests - Re-usability of the system for other research groups - Applicability of the robot in the real world - Photo(s) of the robot (in annex). - Brief, compact list of the 3rd party robot's software (e.g. ROS vision should be included, but not OpenCV. In annex). - Brief, compact description of the robot's hardware (in annex). - Brief, compact description of all external computing devices, if any (in annex). For the TDP, please use the Springer LNAI format <http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-6-793341-0> used in the RoboCup Symposium submissions and limit yourself to 8 pages without altering margins or spacing. You may download a template for the TDP from here <https://github.com/RoboCupAtHome/TDPTemplate>. *Remark: *The language for the TDP, its graphics, tables, images, and all additional content must be English. Content in other languages must be translated. Instructions for the Web site ========================== While the TDP goes into detail about the technical and scientific approach of the team's research, the website should be designed for a broader audience, including: - Photos of the robot(s) - Videos of the robot(s) - Description of the approaches and information on scientific achievements - Relevant publications (last 5 years, preferably available to download) - Link to repositories with software for the community - Team members - Previous participation in RoboCup - Participation and rankings in local RoboCup tournaments Evaluation criteria: ================= Qualification materials will be judged by the following criteria: - Team description paper (clarity, scientific contributions, re-usability by the league, applicability in real world) - Qualification Video (navigation, human-robot interaction, people/object recognition, object manipulation and new features) - Performance in local tournaments and previous competitions. - Website (multimedia, publications from last 5 years, downloadable content, open-source software and other contributions) - Relevant Scientific contribution/publications (downloadable papers and open-source software) - Novelty of approach (what you do is new for @Home) We encourage teams to produce self-explicative videos for a general audience where complex tasks are solved. For Team Description Papers focus on the scientific contribution and avoid brief descriptions of the overall system. *Note to experienced competitors:* Major changes are being done in the rulebook. You may download the latest version from: https://github.com/ RoboCupAtHome/RuleBook. With kind regards, and looking forward to see your team in Montreal, The 2018 RoboCup@Home Organizing and Technical Committees

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RCAP2017 @HOME League Qualified team announcement
by Dr. KANJANAPAN SUKVICHAI 12 Oct '17

12 Oct '17

Dear @Home Teams, As the LOC of RCAP2017, I am glad to announce the qualified team who qualified for participating in the RoboCup Asia Pacific 2017 RoboCup@Home League. Here is the list of qualified teams: @Home Open Platform & EDU * DONGYANG Thailand * KameRider OPL China * Machinilog Pakistan * MRL@home Iran * Skuba JR Thailand * Sun@Home China @Home Social Standard Platform * Center for Robolution India * KameRider SSPL China Our general qualifying process is based on the team qualification materials (Videos & TDP). Qualified Team Videos show robots solving complex tasks that require full integration of most abilities used in @Home Teams the registration code, visa info., invitation letter and etc, will be provided by RCAP 2017 office (info(a)robocup-ap2017.org [1] ) See you in Bangkok Thank you, -- Dr. KANJANAPAN SUKVICHAI RoboCitizen Laboratory. Dept. of Electrical Engineering. Kasetsart University. Links: ------ [1] mailto:info@robocup-ap2017.org

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