- RoboCup-athome - lists.robocup.org

[jobs] Doctoral Network Researchers - Transparent Interpretable Neural Robots
by Stefan Wermter 03 Jan '23

03 Jan '23

At the University of Hamburg, Dept of Informatics, Knowledge Technology, we are looking for applications for 2 Doctoral Candidate Researchers (PhD students) in neural network technology, intelligent robotics and transparency/explainability in artificial intelligence. Project: TRAIL: TRAnsparent InterpretabLe robots (Doctoral Network, EU MSCA Project) Start date: 1 March 2023 or later as agreed, for 3 years Salary level: salary in accordance with the attractive EU MSCA Doctoral Network regulations for doctoral candidates Application deadline: 31 January 2023 The Doctoral Network TRAIL consists of 15 institutions including universities, research institutions and industry partners. The research area of TRAIL is neural network technology, intelligent robotics and transparency in artificial intelligence and is coordinated by Universität Hamburg. The focus of the research at Universität Hamburg is on neural networks and explainability for interactive social robotics. There are two Doctoral Candidate research positions at Universität Hamburg which will be filled in the context of transparency and interpretation of neural networks for interactive cognitive robots. The researchers will focus on the following topics: Researcher 1: Interpretable latent representations in deep learning architectures Researcher 2: Automated interpretation of neural class activation mapping The successful candidate will receive an attractive salary in accordance with the MSCA regulations for Early-Stage Researchers. The exact (net) salary will be confirmed upon appointment and is dependent on local tax regulations and on the country correction factor (to allow for the difference in cost of living in different EU Member States). The salary includes a living allowance, a mobility allowance and a family allowance (if applicable). Furthermore, TRAIL will offer to take advantage of joint scientific research trainings, transferable skills workshops, and international conferences. For more information about the project and consortium see https://www.inf.uni-hamburg.de/en/inst/ab/wtm/research/trail.html Requirements: MSc or equivalent in Artificial Intelligence, Computer Science or Engineering with a focus on Intelligent Systems, Intelligent Robotics or Neural Networks is required. Excellent programming skills (Python, C++, PyTorch, Machine Learning Frameworks, ROS etc.) are needed and expertise in at least one of neural networks or intelligent robotics is needed for these positions. The posts involve substantial traveling within Europe. Each PhD student will be expected to spend secondments at other partner sites and travel to international conferences. According to EU mobility rules, the doctoral researchers must not have resided or carried out their main activity (work, studies, etc.) in Germany for longer than 12 months in the 3 years immediately prior to their recruitment. Applicants who already have a doctoral degree are not eligible. Excellent English communication skills are an important requirement. Application: Upload your complete application documents (cover letter, curriculum vitae with details about where you resided or carried out your main activity [work, studies, etc.] in the three years immediately prior to the application deadline, copies of degree certificate[s], names and email contacts for two referees who would be willing to write a letter of support for your application, any English language certificates) via the online application form only. For more details on how to apply please go to: https://www.uni-hamburg.de/stellenangebote/ausschreibung.html?jobID=6cdcc9a… *********************************************** Professor Dr. Stefan Wermter Director of Knowledge Technology Department of Informatics University of Hamburg Vogt-Koelln-Str. 30 22527 Hamburg, Germany Email: stefan dot wermter AT uni-hamburg.de https://www.informatik.uni-hamburg.de/WTM/ ***********************************************

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[@Home2023] First Call For Participation (Deadline Extended)
by Mauricio Matamoros 27 Nov '22

27 Nov '22

*First Call for Participation* RoboCup@Home 2023 (DSPL · OPL · SSPL) July 6th–11th 2023 (Bordeaux, France) https://2023.robocup.org https://athome.robocup.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 page describes the preregistration and qualification procedure for RoboCup@Home 2023. Important dates: Oct. 16, 2022 Publication of the Call for Participation Oct. 30, 2022 Deadline for submission of participation intention. Nov. 27, 2022 Deadline for submission of qualification material. *Dec. 11, 2022* *Deadline for submission of qualification material. EXTENDED.* *(Team Description Paper, Team Video, Team Website).* Jan. 9, 2023 Qualification announcement Jan. 29, 2023 Deadline for Participation Confirmation The qualification procedure consists of the following steps: Step 1) Participation Intention Submission (advised) Teams are invited to send an email to the Organizing Committee (rc-home-oc[at]lists.robocup.org) stating their intention to participate in the qualification process for the RoboCup@Home 2023 event. Please fill in the following information: Team Name: League: [ DSPL | OPL | SSPL ] Country: Affiliation: Hereby team [Your Team Name] expresses its intention of taking part in the 2023 RoboCup@Home. The e-mail subject should be: [@Home2023-Participation] (YourTeamName) Considerations: - Please keep your team names short. - Only one league can be specified per team. - The email must be encoded in UTF-8 using only the ISO-8859-1 character set. ***** Deadline: Sunday, October. 30, 2022 23:59 GMT ****** Step 2) Qualification Material Submission (mandatory) The team ***MUST*** send an email to the Organizing Committee (rc-home-oc[at]lists.robocup.org) to participate in the qualification process for the RoboCup@Home 2023 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: [@Home2023-Qualification] (YourTeamName) Considerations: - Only one platform can be specified per team. - Only one team leader can be specified per team. - Only one team video url 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, Dec. 11, 2022 23:59 GMT ****** Step 3) Participation confirmation (mandatory) All qualified teams ***MUST*** send an email to the Organizing Committee (rc-home-oc[at]lists.robocup.org) to confirm (or cancel) their participation in the RoboCup@Home 2023 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 | forfeits] participation in the the RoboCup@Home [League]. The e-mail subject should be: [@Home2023-Confirmation] (YourTeamName) *Remark: *Qualified teams who miss the participation confirmation automatically waiver participation, freeing their for the Second Call for Participation. Teams can resubmit materials during the Second CFP ***** Deadline: Sunday, Jan. 29, 2023 23:59 GMT ****** Instructions for the Qualification Material 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. *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 as closed captions must be included. - We strongly suggest captioning the videos, particularly for the robot speech and participants with strong accents. - 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 ***MUST*** use the standard robot in their Team Video. *HINT:* It is strongly advised to show your robot(s) smoothly and accurately solving any of the Stage II tests of the 2018, 2019, and 2022 rulebooks. *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: - TDP - Group’s research focus and interests. - Innovative technology and scientific contribution - Please specify when your research is being used by other teams or research groups - Please specify when you are using software from other teams - Brief, general description of the system when solving a [domestic] task (applicability in the real world) - The impact of your research must be clearly visible - Maximum length is *8 pages* (including figures and citations) - Annex - Photo(s) of the robot - Brief, compact list of the 3rd party robot’s software (e.g. include MoveIt/YOLO) - Brief, compact description of all external computing devices, if any - Brief, compact description of the robot’s hardware (OPL Only) - Please mark with an asterisk home-made software solutions - Annex should be appended after the References - There is no page limit for annex, but a maximum of one page is strongly encouraged - TDP length is *****8 pages + annex***** (any submissions over this length will be disqualified). - *DSPL and SSPL:* The robot depicted in the TDP or Team Video must be the league’s standard one. 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>. *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. ***** Exceeding the number of pages will automatically void your application *****. 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: *No IP addresses will be accepted as website. *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. Qualification and evaluation criteria: In this first Call for Participation, up to 8 teams per league can be assigned a participation slot. In order to qualify, a team must meet the minimum selection requirements approved by the Executive Committee. However, meeting the minimum requirements won’t automatically grant a participation slot. Only the top 8 teams meeting the selection criterion will qualify for participation. Rejections are strongly advised to improve their qualification materials and apply in the second CFP. 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 (number of demonstrated abilities, integration, difficulty of the task, applicability in real world) - 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. With kind regards, and looking forward to see your team in Bordeaux, The 2023 RoboCup@Home Organizing and Technical Committees

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[@Home2023] First Call for Participation
by Mauricio Matamoros 16 Oct '22

16 Oct '22

Online version: https://athome.robocup.org/2023-cfp1-all/ *First Call for Participation* RoboCup@Home 2023 (DSPL · OPL · SSPL) July 6th–11th 2023 (Bordeaux, France) https://2023.robocup.org https://athome.robocup.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 page describes the preregistration and qualification procedure for RoboCup@Home 2023. Important dates: Oct. 16, 2022 Publication of the Call for Participation Oct. 30, 2022 Deadline for submission of participation intention. Nov. 27, 2022 Deadline for submission of qualification material. (Team Description Paper, Team Video, Team Website). Jan. 9, 2023 Qualification announcement Jan. 29, 2023 Deadline for Participation Confirmation The qualification procedure consists of the following steps: Step 1) Participation Intention Submission (advised) Teams are invited to send an email to the Organizing Committee (rc-home-oc[at]lists.robocup.org) stating their intention to participate in the qualification process for the RoboCup@Home 2023 event. Please fill in the following information: Team Name: League: [ DSPL | OPL | SSPL ] Country: Affiliation: Hereby team [Your Team Name] expresses its intention of taking part in the 2023 RoboCup@Home. The e-mail subject should be: [@Home2023-Participation] (YourTeamName) Considerations: * Please keep your team names short. * Only one league can be specified per team. * The email must be encoded in UTF-8 using only the ISO-8859-1 character set. /***** Deadline: Sunday, October. 30, 2022 23:59 GMT ******/ Step 2) Qualification Material Submission (mandatory) The team ***MUST*** send an email to the Organizing Committee (rc-home-oc[at]lists.robocup.org) to participate in the qualification process for the RoboCup@Home 2023 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: [@Home2023-Qualification] (YourTeamName) Considerations: * Only one platform can be specified per team. * Only one team leader can be specified per team. * Only one team video url 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. 27, 2022 23:59 GMT ******/ Step 3) Participation confirmation (mandatory) All qualified teams ***MUST*** send an email to the Organizing Committee (rc-home-oc[at]lists.robocup.org) to confirm (or cancel) their participation in the RoboCup@Home 2023 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 | forfeits] participation in the the RoboCup@Home [League]. The e-mail subject should be: [@Home2023-Confirmation] (YourTeamName) *Remark: *Qualified teams who miss the participation confirmation automatically waiver participation, freeing their for the Second Call for Participation. Teams can resubmit materials during the Second CFP /***** Deadline: Sunday, Jan. 29, 2023 23:59 GMT ******/ Instructions for the Qualification Material 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. *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 as closed captions must be included. * We strongly suggest captioning the videos, particularly for the robot speech and participants with strong accents. * 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 ***MUST*** use the standard robot in their Team Video. *HINT:* It is strongly advised to show your robot(s) smoothly and accurately solving any of the Stage II tests of the 2018, 2019, and 2022 rulebooks. *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: * TDP o Group's research focus and interests. o Innovative technology and scientific contribution + Please specify when your research is being used by other teams or research groups + Please specify when you are using software from other teams o Brief, general description of the system when solving a [domestic] task (applicability in the real world) + The impact of your research must be clearly visible o Maximum length is *8 pages* (including figures and citations) * Annex o Photo(s) of the robot o Brief, compact list of the 3rd party robot's software (e.g. include MoveIt/YOLO) o Brief, compact description of all external computing devices, if any o Brief, compact description of the robot's hardware (OPL Only) o Please mark with an asterisk home-made software solutions o Annex should be appended after the References o There is no page limit for annex, but a maximum of one page is strongly encouraged * TDP length is *****8 pages + annex***** (any submissions over this length will be disqualified). * *DSPL and SSPL:* The robot depicted in the TDP or Team Video must be the league's standard one. 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>. *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. ***** Exceeding the number of pages will automatically void your application *****. 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: *No IP addresses will be accepted as website. *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. Qualification and evaluation criteria: In this first Call for Participation, up to 8 teams per league can be assigned a participation slot. In order to qualify, a team must meet the minimum selection requirements approved by the Executive Committee. However, meeting the minimum requirements won't automatically grant a participation slot. Only the top 8 teams meeting the selection criterion will qualify for participation. Rejections are strongly advised to improve their qualification materials and apply in the second CFP. 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 (number of demonstrated abilities, integration, difficulty of the task, applicability in real world) * 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. With kind regards, and looking forward to see your team in Bordeaux, The 2023 RoboCup@Home Organizing and Technical Committees

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Call for Papers: Intelligence and Safety for Humanoid Robots: Design, Control, and Applications (Frontiers in Neurorobotics, IF: 3.493)
by Keke Tang 01 Sep '22

01 Sep '22

Dear colleges, As a guest editor, it is my great honor to invite you to submit your high-quality work to our special issue: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/38532/intelligence-and-safety-f… If you are interested, please submit your paper to this special issue with selecting me (Keke Tang) as the handling editor. Best regards, Keke Tang Guangzhou University, China ======================================================================== Humanoid robots attract growing research interests from different communities, both as tools for artificial intelligence research and neurocognitive interaction assessment and, as enabling technology with high societal impacts as personal robots for health, education, and entertainment. These robots, modeled on the basis of the embodiment of neural systems in software and hardware devices, are characterized by a high number of degrees of freedom, complex end effectors and locomotion mechanisms on the hardware side. On the control side, they are characterized by the intrinsic and complex variety of their behavioral skills that are learned (imitation, reinforcement, statistical), for instance, learning-by-demonstration, data-driven approaches to humanoid arm programming, and the most recent AI-based approaches to manipulation and locomotion control. Targeting co-existence or physical interactions with humans, both intelligence and safety are of great importance for service-oriented humanoid robots. Intelligence and safety correspond to software and hardware levels of humanoid robots, respectively. There has been recent progress in both areas, such as the quick emergence of learning-based artificial intelligence and soft robotics, bringing paradigm changes to the brain-inspired humanoid design, control, and applications. This second volume focuses on the intelligence and safety of humanoid robots, and the interest extends to the interactions between the two areas: 1) Intelligence resulting from safety: mechanically programmable intelligence for soft humanoid robots that does not put heavy reliance on control; 2) Safety resulting from intelligence: cybersecurity challenges and solutions arising from intelligent humanoids with learning and adaptation capabilities. We welcome manuscript submissions addressing the design, control, and application of safe and intelligent humanoid parts and systems. Topics include but are not limited to the following: - Design of soft and compliant humanoid robots, for instance, robotic fingers, hands, arms, legs. - Decentralized control or high-level control of humanoid robotic fingers, hands, arms, legs with neural networks. - Intelligent interaction between human and humanoid robots for human-robot cooperative tasks, for instance, lifting the table. - Techniques to guarantee safety between human and humanoid robots, corresponding to the software and hardware levels.

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[Call for Participation] LACORO 2023 – Latin American Summer,School on Cognitive Robotics
by Nicolás Navarro-Guerrero 15 Aug '22

15 Aug '22

Dear All, We are excited to announce the 2nd Latin American Summer School on Cognitive Robotics (LACORO), which aims at making cutting-edge knowledge on Artificial Intelligence for Robotics Applications accessible in the Southern Hemisphere. Our aims are: - to build a sustainable community of students and researchers in the area of Artificial Intelligence for Robotics, particularly Cognitive Inspired Aspects of AI. - to foster intercultural student collaboration within and outside the Americas. Format: LACORO will include cutting-edge lectures and tutorials on Artificial Intelligence and Robotics and aspects of Human Cognition. Moreover, we will host tutorial and mentoring sessions for both scientific topics and other aspects of the academic research world. Date and Location: LACORO will be held in-person from the 3rd to 6th of January, 2023 at the Facultad de Ingeniería, Universidad Andrés Bello (UNAB), Santiago, Chile. Applications: Please visit our website, where you can find more information regarding costs, travel, lodging, along with an application form. If you have any questions about the school or the application process, please contact the organizing committee: lacoro(a)innovacionyrobotica.com Best regards from the organizing committee, -- Dr. rer. nat. Nicolás Navarro-Guerrero https://nicolas-navarro-guerrero.github.io/

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Call for participation in IROS2022 Workshop on “Evaluating Motion Planning Performance: Metrics, Tools, Datasets, and Experimental Design”
by Carlos Andres Quintero Peña 04 Aug '22

04 Aug '22

Dear RoboCup@home community, We are excited to announce the inaugural workshop on “Evaluating Motion Planning Performance: Metrics, Tools, Datasets, and Experimental Design” at the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, (IROS) 2022. The workshop will focus on state of the art motion planning evaluations, trends, and problems. We are inviting researchers and practitioners in robotics and AI to contribute relevant submissions. The workshop will host leaders in academia and industry as invited speakers. We are pleased to welcome broader participation and engagement within the robotics and AI communities. The workshop will be hybrid wherein we will support participation for those who join us at IROS 2022 in Kyoto as well as virtual attendance. We are exploring options for streaming the event as well as archiving relevant resources. Please feel free to share our cordial invitation to your colleagues at the RoboCup community to submit contributions, participate, or attend the workshop. If you have questions, see our website (https://motion-planning-workshop.kavrakilab.org/) or contact us at motionplanningworkshop(a)gmail.com. Looking forward to seeing you at the workshop! Carlos Quintero Peña On behalf of the organizers: Constantinos Chamzas, Rice University Dr. Zachary Kingston, Rice University Dr. Khen Elimelech, Rice University Dr. Wil Thomason, Rice University Carlos Quintero-Peña, Rice University Dr. Rahul Shome, Rice University Professor Lydia Kavraki, Rice University

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IROS2022 Interactive Service Robot Competition in Cyberspace
by Tetsunari Inamura 29 Jul '22

29 Jul '22

======================================================= **** Call for Participation ***** IROS2022 Interactive Service Robot Competition in Cyberspace October 24 to 25, 2022 (Hybrid: Kyoto, JAPAN / Online) https://sites.google.com/view/robocup-athome-sim/competition-at-iros2022 ======================================================= This competition evaluates how well intelligent robots can engage in natural and friendly communication with users and achieve various support behaviors in daily-life environments. The competition is designed based on the SIGVerse simulator, which enables robots to make embodied and social interactions in virtual reality (VR) environments. Competitors submit their software of service robots on AWS (Amazon Web Service). Human test subjects in the real space interact with a robot in the virtual space to evaluate the interactive support ability. One of the competition tasks is a Vision-Language Navigation task to be solved by a human. In other words, the robot needs to explain clearly to the human how to get to the destination, and the competition setting aims to connect the XAI and HRI research. Furthermore, by discussing and examining the fusion and interface between robotics and the metaverse, digital twin, and cyber-physical systems that have been attracting attention in recent years, we believe that this event will provide a valuable opportunity to explore the direction of further development in robotics research. *** Competition website: https://iros2022.org/program/competition/#toggle-id-2 https://sites.google.com/view/robocup-athome-sim/competition-at-iros2022 *** Important dates: Aug. 10, 2022 Deadline for submission of qualification material Aug. 24, 2022 Qualification announcement Oct. 24-25,2022 Competition *** Rulebook (tentaive): https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Jor8UZXW6xFtBZmMvmZmJlUWtryMW7rQ/view *** Qualification Material Submission (mandatory): The team MUST send an email to the organizers (robocup.at.home.simulation[at]gmail.com) to participate in the qualification process for the competition. Due to the space limitation of the competition venue, the organizers will select excellent teams that have enough skill and knowledge to develop interactive service robots. The number of team members may be limited depending on the available space. Please fill in the following information and attach a Team Description Paper (TDP): - Team Name: - Country: - Affiliation: - Participation style: on-site or virtual (remote) - Number of team members: - Team Leader Name: - Contact information (E-mail): - Link to a team website: - Rank in previous competitions: - Link to a team video (optional): Important notes: Only one team leader can be specified per team. Only one contact email can be specified per team. *** Instructions for TDP: Team Description Paper (TDP) is a scientific paper, detailing information on the technical and scientific approach of the team’s research, while also including the following: - Group’s research focus and interests. - Innovative technology and scientific contribution - Brief, general description of the system when solving a task - Brief, compact list of the 3rd party robot’s software (e.g. include MoveIt/YOLO) Maximum length is 8 pages (including figures and citations). Please use a free format and limit yourself to 8 pages. The language for the TDP, its graphics, tables, images, and all additional content must be English. Content in other languages must be translated. *** Selection criteria Qualification materials will be judged by the following criteria: - Team description paper (clarity, scientific contributions, - re-usability by the HRI community, applicability in both virtual/real worlds) - 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 - Performance in previous related competitions (optional) - Team Video (optional) *** Registration: Participants who come to Kyoto/Japan need to register for the IROS conference. https://iros2022.org/registrationvisa/registration/ If you prefer to participate remotely, the registration fee will not be required. This competition will be held jointly with RoboCup Japan Open 2022. The qualified teams are recommended to register for the RoboCup Japan Open. The teams that have never participated in the RoboCup Japan Open before are FREE OF CHARGE. Registration for the RoboCup Japan Open will be announced on the competition website. *** SIGVerse - software platform for the virtual space: All the tasks in the competition will be performed based on the SIGVerse platform. Please check the details of the SIGVerse system at http://www.sigverse.org/wiki/en/. This is an open-source platform distributed at Github https://github.com/RoboCupatHomeSim including sample programs (template source codes) of each task. Tutorials and install documents are included in the above Rulebook. With kind regards, and looking forward to see your team in IROS2022, Organizers: Tetsunari Inamura, National Institute of Informatics, Japan Yoshiaki Mizuchi, Tamagawa University, Japan Please feel free to email to inamura(a)nii.ac.jp if you have any questions. ------------------------------------------------ Tetsunari Inamura (Associate Professor) National Institute of Informatics, JAPAN The Graduate University for Advanced Studies, SOKENDAI, JAPAN TEL : +81-3-4212-2518 FAX : +81-3-4212-2035 URL : http://researchmap.jp/inamura/?lang=english Email : inamura(a)nii.ac.jp

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Registrations are open for RoboCup Brazil Open
by Comunicação RoboCup 27 Jul '22

27 Jul '22

Registrations are open for RoboCup Brazil Open The event will be held in São Bernardo do Campo - São Paulo, Brazil, from october 17 to 22. Remote Participation is available in Simulation Leagues. Registrations are now open for teams all over the world.To participate, the teams must register until july 31, on the website: www.cbrobotica.org . The registration fee is US$ 170 per team or US$100 in simulation leagues. ============== Important Dates: ============== Pre-Registration Deadline: *July 31* TDP Submission: Check each league's schedule on the website or contact the league's chair by e-mail Early Registration:* September 1 to 23* Registration: *September 24 to October 9* If you have any doubt about the pre-registration or registration process, please contact organizacao(a)cbrobotica.org ======= Leagues ======= RoboCup Soccer Simulation 2D RoboCup Soccer Simulation 3D RoboCup Small Size Soccer (SSL) RoboCup Humanoid League RoboCup Standard Platform League RoboCup @Home RoboCupJunior RoboCup Brazil Flying Robots Trial League IEEE Humanoid Racing IEEE Open IEEE Standard Educational Kit IEEE Very Small Size Soccer 3x3 and 5x5 -- Patrícia Vergara Comunicação RoboCup Brasil (11) 9.8686-4993 www.robocup.org.br

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Robot Design Survey
by Eva Jahn 02 Jun '22

02 Jun '22

Dear RoboCup community, I do research on robot design and sympathy for some years now. My interest arose from RoboCup, where I conducted several surveys in Magdeburg at German Open and at the RoboCup World Cup 2016 in Leipzig. Currently, I am starting a survey for my PhD, which aims to uncover likability trends in the design evaluation of robots. The survey is quadrilingual and includes a colorful selection of robots with linked background information. For the evaluation I need as much data as possible and would like to invite you to participate. As a result the taste of future users should be revealed and for this the comparison between experts and non-experts is also very important. You are welcome to forward the link below to the survey with the text outside the community as well. *_Can service robots support us in our everyday lives and what should they look like?_* This is the question addressed by the Robot Design and Sympathy study. Whether you have direct experience with service robots or not, you are invited to rate a colourful selection of robot models. Please take 15-20 minutes to participate in the online survey. https://www.soscisurvey.de/roboterdesign/?q=LXX&r=TG16 <https://www.soscisurvey.de/roboterdesign/?q=LXX&r=TG16> Thank you for your support! Eva Theresa Jahn, M.A.: Studied communication psychology at Friedrich Schiller University in Jena, research assistant at TUM, MIRMI - Munich Institute of Robotics and Machine Intelligence. You can also find more information at https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Eva-Jahn-2 <https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Eva-Jahn-2> Best regards, Eva Theresa Jahn

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RoboCup International Symposium 2022 - Call for Papers
by Nuno Lau 03 Mar '22

03 Mar '22

Dear RoboCuppers; Please consider submitting your paper to this year's symposium! Call for papers RoboCup International Symposium 2022 https://2022.robocup.org/symposium-call-for-papers/ 17 July 2022 Bangkok, Thailand (hybrid setting) The 25th RoboCup International Symposium will be held on 17 July 2022, in conjunction with RoboCup 2022 (11 July to 17 July 2022) in a hybrid setting. We call for submissions of papers reporting innovative, original research with relevance to areas of robotics and artificial intelligence as listed below. Within the described scope of topics, we also encourage submissions of high-quality overview articles, papers describing real-world research, and papers reporting theoretical results. Researchers are invited to submit their work independently of whether they participate in the RoboCup competitions or have a RoboCup team. The symposium is planned to be held in person in Bangkok, Thailand, with remote participation options for both presenters and attendees. In addition to the regular track with regular research papers, there is the development track encouraging reports on innovative hardware developments, software frameworks, and open-source releases of software components. A review of papers describing these contributions will be based on technical aspects and benefits to the practice of communities working in the above fields in general and RoboCup in particular. IMPORTANT DATES Submission of full papers: 17 April 2022 Notification to authors: 5 June 2022 Submission of camera-ready copies: 26 June 2022 RoboCup Symposium 2022: 17 July 2022 (RoboCup on 11-17 July 2022) SUBMISSION AND PROCEEDINGS All papers will be peer-reviewed and evaluated by members of the senior program committee. The proceedings of the RoboCup International Symposium will be published and archived within the Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence (LNCS/LNAI) series by Springer-Verlag after the conference. Papers should be formatted following the LNAI author guidelines (https://www.springer.com/gp/computer-science/lncs/conference-proceedings-gu…) and must be electronically submitted through the EasyChair electronic submission system (https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=robocupsymposium2022). Submissions are limited to 12 pages including references. Springer’s proceedings LaTeX templates are also available in Overleaf: https://de.overleaf.com/latex/templates/springer-lecture-notes-in-computer-… TOPICS Topics of interest include, but are not limited to: * Robot Hardware and Software - mobile robotics - humanoid robotics - sensors and actuators - embedded and mobile devices - robot construction and new materials - robot system integration - robot software architectures - robot programming environments and languages - real-time and concurrent programming - robot simulators - sim2real learning * Perception and Action - 3D perception - distributed sensor integration - sensor noise filtering - real-time image processing and pattern recognition - motion and sensor models - sensory-motor control - robot kinematics and dynamics - high-dimensional motion control * Robot Cognition and Learning - world modelling and knowledge representation - learning from demonstration and imitation - localisation, navigation, and mapping - planning and reasoning - decision making under uncertainty - neural systems and deep learning - complex motor skill acquisition - reinforcement learning and optimisation - motion and sensor model learning * Human-Robot Interaction - robot social intelligence - fluency of interaction - speech synthesis and natural language generation - natural language recognition - explainable robot behaviours - emotion recognition and reaction - understanding human intent and behaviour - safety, security and dependability - enabling humans to predict robot behaviour * Multi-Robot Systems - team coordination methods - communication protocols - learning and adaptive systems - teamwork and heterogeneous agents - dynamic resource allocation - adjustable autonomy * Education and Edutainment - robotics and artificial intelligence education - educational robotics - robot kits and programming tools - robotic entertainment * Applications and Benchmarking - search and rescue robots - robot surveillance - service and social robots - robots at home, at work and in public spaces - robots in the real world - performance metrics - human-robot interaction DEVELOPMENT TRACK To encourage open-source release of hardware and software systems, the RoboCup International Symposium has included a development track in recent years. In 2021, we expand the scope of this track to include datasets and benchmarks. We encourage the submission of papers describing open-source hardware and software, tools and frameworks that facilitate development of robotics hardware and software, datasets that enable new robotic capabilities, as well as benchmarks that establish reproducible test beds and performance metrics to advance research. If applicable, contributions to the special track should include evidence of the released system or dataset, and highlight past, ongoing, and/or potential future impacts on the RoboCup community. A review of these contributions will be based on technical merit and benefits to the RoboCup community and the research topics listed above. PROGRAM CO-CHAIRS Maike Paetzel-Prüsmann, University of Potsdam, Germany Nuno Lau, University of Aveiro, Portugal Thanapat Wanichanon, Mahidol University, Thailand Amy Eguchi, University of California San Diego CONTACT robocupsymposium2022(a)easychair.org<mailto:robocupsymposium2022@easychair.org>

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