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[jobs] Postdoctoral Position: NICT Japan
by Komei Sugiura 08 Jun '17

08 Jun '17

Advanced Speech Technology Lab. at NICT, Japan has an open *Postdoctoral* position. ## ABOUT NICT-UCRI (NICT Universal Communication Research Institute) NICT is a Japanese national research institute that focuses on information and communications technology. NICT employs 900 researchers/engineers/staffs, and has ten research centers. NICT-UCRI is one of them, and is situated 30km south of Kyoto, a historical city of Japan. ## ABOUT THE POSITION - The position is offered at a one-year basis, and is renewable until March 2021. - The salary will depend on qualifications and experience. - The successful candidate will have access to our software engines and large-scale corpora for spoken dialogue studies. ## HOW TO APPLY http://www.nict.go.jp/en/general_affairs/employment/index-e-top2016-10.html Closing date: July 4, 2017. ## POSITION (1) Reference: 2017R-30 * Research Topic: "Spoken Language Understanding and Motion Generation Using Linguistic and Non-Linguistic Information for Domestic Service Robots" * Abstract: The objective of this project is to investigate spoken language understanding methods using linguistic and non-linguistic information for domestic service robots. As a successful candidate, you will focus on applying machine learning methods to train probabilistic models with large-scale linguistic and non-linguistic data obtained from physical/cyber spaces, as well as on language understanding, dialogue, and motion generation that are dependent on the situations and users. * Minimum Qualifications - Ph.D. in computer science, informatics, robotics, or a related field - Strong publication record in the fields related to robot learning, machine learning, spoken language processing, computer vision, human-computer interaction, artificial intelligence - Good communication skills in spoken and written English * Preferred Qualifications - Extensive programming skills in Python/JavaScript/MATLAB/C++ - Independent and persistent personality, as well as a team player * Details http://www2.nict.go.jp/employment/tempstaffinfo/exr-e/H29/2017R-30.pdf -- ***************************************************************** Komei Sugiura, Ph.D. Senior Researcher, National Institute of Information and Communications Technology 3-5 Hikaridai, Seika, Soraku, Kyoto 619-0289, Japan Email: komei.sugiura(a)nict.go.jp URL: http://komeisugiura.jp/index_en.html *****************************************************************

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[meetings] IROS 2017 Workshop: Semantic Policy and Action Representations for Autonomous Robots (SPAR)
by Karinne Ramirez Amaro 06 Jun '17

06 Jun '17

********************************************************************************************** ****2nd Workshop on Semantic Policy and Action Representations for Autonomous Robots (SPAR)*** ********************************************************************************************** ----Call for Posters and Demonstrations--- We are calling for contributions to our IROS 2017 workshop. We would like to invite the attendees of this workshop to submit an extended abstract explaining their current work or developed systems in the areas of reasoning, perception, control, planning, and learning applied to robotic systems. This workshop is intended for roboticists interested in improving the reliability and autonomy of robots. We hope to bring together outstanding researchers and graduate students to discuss current trends, problems, and opportunities in semantic action (policy) representations, encouraging communication and common practices such as sharing datasets among scientists in this field. *** Important Dates ***: Paper submission deadline: 25th July 2017 Notification of acceptance: 15th August 2017 Camera ready submission: 1st September 2017 Workshop day: 24th September 2017 *** Call for contributions *** We encourage 1-2 pages extended abstract of relevant work that has been previously published, or is to be presented at the main conference. The accepted abstracts will be posted on the workshop website in a compiled yearbook and will not appear in the official IEEE proceedings. Furthermore, we particularly call for live demonstrations to be presented on the workshop day. We encourage researchers as well as companies (both hardware and software companies) to contribute to the workshop. The reviewing is single blind and will be carried out by the workshop chairs. Please submit your abstract to the workshop official email address <spar.workshop(a)gmail.com> before July 25, 2017. The accepted demonstrations can show their systems and its benefits to a broader audience. The accepted papers will have the opportunity to present their work/ideas in a poster session. Two selective submissions will give a 15 min talk at the workshop. Please indicate in your email if you want to present as a poster, oral, and/or live demonstration. Furthermore, a selective number of papers from the poster sessions will be invited to submit their novel work to the Special Issue we are proposing in the journal “Robotics and Autonomous Systems”. This special issue will cover the main topics of interest of this workshop. ***Workshop URL*** https://www.ics.ei.tum.de/workshop-iros-spar17/ Contact email: spar.workshop(a)gmail.com *** Workshop objectives *** The aim of this one-day workshop is two-fold. First, we intend to highlight to the robotics community the recent developments in semantic reasoning representations and semantic policy generation from low level (sensory signal) to high level (planning and execution). More importantly, we want to reconcile and integrate various bottom-up and top-down approaches for semantic action perception and executions in different domains. Second, 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 assumedly different approaches for autonomous capability and reliability. For this, we would like to propose and define different data sets that could be potentially used as benchmarks to compare the presented methods. We would like to take advantage of the recent efforts that some laboratories took by making their testing data sets publicly available. In addition, we would like to encourage this best practice to the participants of this workshop. This workshop will present the main benefits of this new emerging type of methods such as allowing robots to learn generalized semantic models for different domains. We will also like to discuss 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 *** Invited Speakers *** (in alphabetical order, all confirmed) 1) Yiannis Aloimonos University of Maryland, USA 2) Tamim Asfour Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany 3) Heni Ben Amor Arizona State University, USA 4) Gordon Cheng Technische Universität München, Germany 5) Gregory D. Hager, Johns Hopkins University, USA 6) Tetsunari Inamura, National Institute of Informatics, Japan 7) Lydia E. Kavraki, Rice University, USA 8) Manuela M. Veloso, Carnegie Mellon University, USA *** Organizers *** 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, Rice University, http://www.neil.dantam.name Eren Erdal Aksoy, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, http://h2t.anthropomatik.kit.edu/english/21_947.php 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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One week more for deadline: ERL Service Robots - Call for Participation in Major Tournament in Lisbon, co-located with IEEE RO-MAN 2017
by Pedro U Lima 02 Jun '17

02 Jun '17

================================================ Call for Participation European Robotics League (ERL) Service Robots Major Tournament during RO-MAN 2017 28.08 - 31.08.2017 Institute for Systems and Robotics at Instituto Superior Técnico (ISR/IST), U. Lisbon Lisboa, Portugal Web: https://sites.google.com/site/erlsrroman2017/ ================================================ The European Robotics League is an innovative concept for robot competitions which stems from its predecessor, the RoCKIn@Home competition, and focuses on tasks that service robots execute in a real home environment. The ERL is composed of multiple "Local tournaments", held in different research labs across Europe, with certified test beds, and a few competitions as part of "Major tournaments" such as RoboCup. Teams participate in a minimum of two tournaments (Local and/or Major) per year and get scores based on their performances. Scores of the best two participations in tournaments for each team are added and teams are ranked based on their cumulative score. Prizes for the top teams are awarded during the next year’s European Robotics Forum (ERF). For more information, please visit https://eu-robotics.net/robotics_league/. We are pleased to announce the second Major Tournament on the ERL Service Robots (ERL-SR) challenge, to be held between 28-21 August 2017 at the Institute for Systems and Robotics of IST, University of Lisbon, Portugal, simultaneously with the IEEE RO-MAN 2017 Conference. Important dates: ########## 09 Jun 2017 - Deadline for application and request for travel support 16 Jun 2017 - Qualification announcement 28 Aug 2017 - Competition begins 31 Aug 2017 - Competition ends Rules: ###### The rules of the competition can be found in https://eu-robotics.net/robotics_league/upload/about/ERL_Service.compressed…. NOTE: the rules can still be updated in the upcoming weeks, so as to adapt the Task Benchmarks shared with RoboCup@Home. For the Local ERL-SR Tournaments, the following task and functionality benchmarks will be (tentatively) considered: • TBM1: Getting to Know My Home • TBM4: Visit My Home • TBM5 General Purpose Service Robot (shared with RoboCup@Home) • FBM1: Object Perception • FBM2: Navigation • FBM3: Speech Recognition Application: ####### Applicant teams must send an email to erl.service(a)robotics-league.eu expressing their intention to participate in the Tournament and providing the following information about the team: - Team name - Team Leader name - Total number of team members (including the team leader) - Affiliation - Contact information (e-mail and phone of team leader) - Website - Qualification material (see below). Qualification Material - applicants are required to submit (template and form can be downloaded from https://www.eu-robotics.net/robotics_league/erl-service/about/index.html): - Team Description Paper (max. 4 pages, LNCS [3]) explaining the team’s approach to the technical challenges - including: i) the list of TBMs and FBMs the team intends to participate in; ii) a brief description of the robot system software and hardware architectures, and iii) the relation with the team research - including a list of relevant publications - Video showing evidence of some performance in the tasks and/or functionalities selected by the team - Filled travel support request form requesting and justifying travel support, if needed Selection Criteria: ####### Teams will be selected for participation and travel support based on _ number of available slots for team participation in the tournament (5 / five, in this case); _ available funds for travel support (maximum of 2K€ per team per year); _ team research quality, as measured from the TDP and list of relevant publications; _ team financial needs (as declared by the team request for travel support). ================================================================================================

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CFP: IJCAI 2017 - HUMAN-ROBOT ENGAGEMENT
by Mary-Anne Williams 31 May '17

31 May '17

=================================================================== *IJCAI 2017 **WORKSHOP* *HUMAN-ROBOT ENGAGEMENT in the Home, Workplace and Public Spaces * =================================================================== 26th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence <http://ijcai-17.org/> Melbourne, Australia — Aug 19-25 2017 Workshop Date to be Advised: August 19, 20 or 21, 2017 *{INVITED SPEAKERS}* *Holly Yanco <http://www.cs.uml.edu/~holly/>*, Founder of the Robotics Lab <http://robotics.cs.uml.edu/>, University of Massachusetts Lowell, and Director New England Robotics Validation and Experimentation (NERVE <http://nerve.uml.edu/>) *Amit Kumar Pandey*, <http://www.amitkpandey.com/> Chief Scientist, Softbank Robotics <http://www.softbank.jp/en/robot/> Europe *{IMPORTANT DATES} *Submissions open: *March 10, 2017 * Paper Submission Deadline: *June 15, 2017 (EXTENDED DEADLINE)* Acceptance Notification: *June 20, 2017* Camera-Ready Version: *June 22, 2017 * Website: http://ijcaihumanrobotengagement.webnode.com Contact: Mary-Anne Williams <http://mary-annewilliams.com/>, The Magic Lab <http://themagiclab.org/>, UTS *{ABOUT}* Social robots are poised to have a profound impact on business, society and the global economy. They are a disruptive technology. A self-driving vehicle is an example of a social robot, not only does it need to drive on the road safely but it must also create enjoyable experiences for humans inside the vehicle, while at the same time communicating with and anticipating nearby cars, pedestrians, city infrastructure, land and space based technologies. The key to success of any social robot is how well it can engage people around it as it pursues its design goals. The critical research question is how can we design social robots to enhance the human experience and improve people's lives? The purpose of this workshop is to explore how social robots can generate value and create engaging experiences for people in the home, workplace and public spaces. The workshop will focus on social robots in the home, workplace and public spaces. Robot encounters in public spaces will be different to those in workplaces where a robot is a long-term partner and expected to help humans be more productive. The key research challenges are autonomy, proactivity and intelligence, sociability. Social robotics is a field involving several disciplines. We seek to bring together research interests that are not traditionally 'close'. In particular, the workshop will provide a venue for fruitful discussion between artificial intelligence researchers exploring pervasive computing, social robotics, cognitive science, software engineering, law, AI planning and knowledge representation. In addition to presented papers the Workshop will involve practical Design Thinking session and much lively discussion and debate on the applications and implications of social robotics. Relevant topics include, but are not limited, to the following: - Human-robot interaction and collaboration - Social intelligence for proactive autonomous robots - Law abiding autonomous robots - Engagement and disengagement in HRI - Human attention, proactive decision making and behaviour - Autonomy, learning and intelligence - Joint attention and emotional connection - Social robots in an Internet of Things ecosystem - Privacy and security for Social Robotics - Legal and ethical implications of social robots *{SUBMISSION DETAILS}* Submitted papers must be original work of no more than 6 pages in length and formatted according to IJCAI guidelines and submitted electronically through the Workshop submission site: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=whre2017 Formatting Guidelines, LaTeX Styles and Word Template can be downloaded from the following link: <http://ijcai-17.org/FormattingGuidelinesIJCAI-17.zip> http://ijcai-17.org/FormattingGuidelinesIJCAI-17.zip Submissions must be in electronic form. Additional material such as videos may also be submitted. At least one author of each accepted paper is required to attend the workshop to present the work. Submissions received after the deadline or that do not meet the length or formatting requirements will not be considered for review. No email or fax submissions will be accepted. Notification of receipt of an electronically submitted paper will be emailed to the designated contact author soon after receipt. *{ORGANIZING COMMITTEE}* * Mary-Anne Williams*, University of Technology Sydney and CodeX Stanford University (Chair) * Benjamin Johnston*, University of Technology Sydney * William Judge*, Commonwealth Bank of Australia * Amit Kumar Pandey*, Softbank Robotics Europe * Meg Tonkin*, University of Technology Sydney *Jonathan Vitale,* University of Technology Sydney *Xun Wang*, University of Technology Sydney and Commonwealth Bank of Australia *{PROGRAM COMMITTEE}* * Nic Carey*, Harvard University, USA * Xiaoping Chen*, University of Science and Technology of China * Jesse Clark,* University of Technology Sydney, Australia * Tony Cohn*, Leeds University, UK * Kate Darling*, MIT, USA * Peter Gärdenfors*, Lund University, Sweden * Georg Gottlob*, Oxford University, UK * Daniel Grollman*, Sphero, USA * Michael Genesereth*, CodeX and the Dept of Computer Science, Stanford University, USA * Hatice Gunes*, University of Cambridge, UK * George Konidaris*, Brown University, USA * Eryk Korfel*, Commonwealth Bank of Australia * Mahya Knox*, University of Technology Sydney, Australia * Séverin Lemaignan*, University of Plymouth, UK * William Mailer*, Commonwealth Bank of Australia * Lilia Moshkina*, Neato Robotics, USA * Yukie Naga*i, Osaka University, Japan * Bernhard Nebel*, University of Freiburg, Germany * Suman Ojha*, University of Technology Sydney, Australia * David Parkes*, Harvard University, USA * Pavlos Peppas*, Patras University, Greece * Sammy Pfeiffer*, University of Technology Sydney, Australia * Brian Scassellati*, Yale University, USA * Julie Shah*, MIT, USA *Harry Surden,* University of Colorado and Stanford University, USA *Manuela Veloso*, Carnegie Mellon University, USA *Roland Vogl*, CodeX and the Law School, Stanford University, USA *Holly Yanco*, UMass Lowell, USA *Xun Wang*, University of Technology Sydney and Commonwealth Bank of Australia *Mary-Anne Williams <http://mary-annewilliams.com/>* *Distinguished Professor* *Director, Disruptive Innovation* Office of the Provost and Senior Vice President University of Technology Sydney (UTS) Founder and Director, Innovation and Enterprise Research Lab <http://themagiclab.org/> (The Magic Lab) Fellow, Stanford University <https://law.stanford.edu/directory/mary-anne-williams/> Twitter: @SwizzleFish <https://twitter.com/swizzlefish>

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ERL Service Robots - Call for Participation in Major Tournament in Lisbon, co-located with IEEE RO-MAN 2017
by Pedro U Lima 03 May '17

03 May '17

================================================ Call for Participation European Robotics League (ERL) Service Robots Major Tournament during RO-MAN 2017 28.08 - 31.08.2017 Institute for Systems and Robotics at Instituto Superior Técnico (ISR/IST), U. Lisbon Lisboa, Portugal Web: https://sites.google.com/site/erlsrroman2017/ ================================================ The European Robotics League is an innovative concept for robot competitions which stems from its predecessor, the RoCKIn@Home competition, and focuses on tasks that service robots execute in a real home environment. The ERL is composed of multiple "Local tournaments", held in different research labs across Europe, with certified test beds, and a few competitions as part of "Major tournaments" such as RoboCup. Teams participate in a minimum of two tournaments (Local and/or Major) per year and get scores based on their performances. Scores of the best two participations in tournaments for each team are added and teams are ranked based on their cumulative score. Prizes for the top teams are awarded during the next year’s European Robotics Forum (ERF). For more information, please visit https://eu-robotics.net/robotics_league/. We are pleased to announce the second Major Tournament on the ERL Service Robots (ERL-SR) challenge, to be held between 28-21 August 2017 at the Institute for Systems and Robotics of IST, University of Lisbon, Portugal, simultaneously with the IEEE RO-MAN 2017 Conference. Important dates: ########## 31 May 2017 - Deadline for application and request for travel support 05 Jun 2017 - Qualification announcement 28 Aug 2017 - Competition begins 31 Aug 2017 - Competition ends Rules: ###### The rules of the competition can be found in https://eu-robotics.net/robotics_league/upload/about/ERL_Service.compressed…. NOTE: the rules can still be updated in the upcoming weeks, so as to adapt the Task Benchmarks shared with RoboCup@Home. For the Local ERL-SR Tournaments, the following task and functionality benchmarks will be (tentatively) considered: • TBM1: Getting to Know My Home • TBM4: Visit My Home • TBM5 General Purpose Service Robot (shared with RoboCup@Home) • FBM1: Object Perception • FBM2: Navigation • FBM3: Speech Recognition Application: ####### Applicant teams must send an email to erl.service(a)robotics-league.eu expressing their intention to participate in the Tournament and providing the following information about the team: - Team name - Team Leader name - Total number of team members (including the team leader) - Affiliation - Contact information (e-mail and phone of team leader) - Website - Qualification material (see below). Qualification Material - applicants are required to submit (template and form can be downloaded from https://www.eu-robotics.net/robotics_league/erl-service/about/index.html): - Team Description Paper (max. 4 pages, LNCS [3]) explaining the team’s approach to the technical challenges - including: i) the list of TBMs and FBMs the team intends to participate in; ii) a brief description of the robot system software and hardware architectures, and iii) the relation with the team research - including a list of relevant publications - Video showing evidence of some performance in the tasks and/or functionalities selected by the team - Filled travel support request form requesting and justifying travel support, if needed Selection Criteria: ####### Teams will be selected for participation and travel support based on _ number of available slots for team participation in the tournament (5 / five, in this case); _ available funds for travel support (maximum of 2K€ per team per year); _ team research quality, as measured from the TDP and list of relevant publications; _ team financial needs (as declared by the team request for travel support). ================================================================================================

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3rd Version of Rule Book
by Caleb Rascon 08 Apr '17

08 Apr '17

Hello all, Attached is the official 3rd version of the RoboCup@Home rule book. The major changes to consider are: - Since Pepper can't Set-A-Table-and-Tidy-Up very well, it may try to be a Tour Guide instead. - A continue rule for manipulation was added. Additionally, lots of clarifications and typos were fixed in great part thanks to the community contributions. Finally, please continue contributing to the rule book, as there is so much errors/typos a few pairs of eyes can spot in a given time. To do this, head on to GitHub, where the rulebook is currently discussed and revised: https://github.com/RoboCupAtHome/RuleBook Cheers, RoboCup Executive and Technical Committee

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Call for papers: ICIRA 2017, International Workshop on Benchmarking and Measuring Service Robots
by Wei Shuai 30 Mar '17

30 Mar '17

Call for Papers The Second International Workshop on Benchmarking and Measuring Service Robots The 2nd International Workshop on Benchmarking and Measuring Service Robots will be held in Wuhan, China on August 15-18, 2017. It is organized jointly with the 10th International Conference on Intelligent Robotics and Applications (ICIRA 2017, http://www.icira2017.org). All papers accepted to be presented at the conference as well as the workshop are to be published in LNAI/LNCS series of Springer (indexed in EI Engineering Index). The CFP for ICIRA 2017 can be found at http://www.icira2017.org/index.php?id=paper1&cate=call-for-papers Important Dates Paper Submission Due: April 20 Acceptance Notice: May 10 Final Version Submission Due: May 31 Conference: August 15 - 18 Keynote Speakers (Confirmed) David Hsu, Professor of National University of Singapore, Singapore Xiaogang Song, Acting President of China Robot Industry Alliance, China Topics The related themes or topics of this workshop include but do not limit to: - Methodologies of benchmarking and measuring service robots - Quantitative measurement and/or analysis on navigation, SLAM, manipulation, task planning, vision, robot design, human-robot interaction, etc. - Quantitative measurement and analysis on performance of service robots - Autonomous calibration for service robots - Standard platforms and test-beds for service robots - Techniques and applications based on motion perception of service robots Guideline of Submission http://www.icira2017.org/index.php?id=paper1&cate=paper-submission Organization Committee Xiaoping Chen, University of Science and Technology of China Luca Iocchi, Sapienza University of Rome, Italy Feng Wu, University of Science and Technology of China Wanmi Chen, Shanghai University, China -- Regards Multi-Agent System Lab University of Science and Technology of China W. Shuai

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[@Home217] Third Call For Participation
by Mauricio Matamoros 12 Mar '17

12 Mar '17

Call for Participation RoboCup -2017 RoboCup@Home League July 25 - July 30, 2017 (Nagoya, Japan) http://www.robocup2017.org http://www.robocupathome.org/ http://wiki.robocup.org/wiki/@Home_League 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 Behaviours, Behaviour Integration, Ambient Intelligence, Standardization and System Integration. The RoboCup@Home league is itegrated by three Leagues officially referred as - Domestic Standard Platform League [DSPL] (Toyota HSR) - Social Standard Platform League [SSPL] (SoftBank Robotics Pepper) - Open Platform League [OPL] This message describes the preregistration and qualification procedure for RoboCup@Home League 2017. Important dates: Feb. 12, 2017 Intention of Participation (Extended) Mar. 12, 2017 *Deadline for submission of qualification material* and preregistration (Team Description Paper, Team Video, Team Website, Information in @Home Wiki). Mar. 26, 2017 Qualification announcement 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 2017 event, including the following basic information: Team Name: League: Country: Affiliation: Team Leader Name: Contact information (E-mail): Web site: Only one platform can be specified per team. The e-mail subject should be: [@Home2017-Participation] (YourTeamName) Please check the email is encoded in UTF-8 using only the ISO-8859-1 character set. ***** Deadline: Sunday, 5th Feb. 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 2017 event. Please fill in the following information: Team Name: League: Country: Affiliation: Team Leader Name: Contact information (E-mail): Web site: 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: [@Home2017-Participation] (YourTeamName) Considerations: - Only one platform 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. *Important Notice:* As platforms are independent, you must send an application email for each platform you want to compete in, specifying different team names in each. Qualification Material (e.g. video and TDP) must match the robot to qualify. ***** Deadline: Sunday, Mar. 12, 2017 23:59 GMT ****** Instructions for the Team Video =========================== As a proof of running hardware, each team has to provide a qualification video. As a minimum requirement for qualification, we consider showing the robot(s) successfully solving at least one test of the current or last year's rulebook. *[Standard Platforms Only]* If the robot shown in the video is a Standard Platform one (Toyota HSR or SoftBank Robotics Pepper), it must not be altered or modified in any way. However, *teams are allowed to use any * other* robot for the video* but, in that case, the TDP must clearly state how your approach will be adapted to fit into a SPL robot (e.g., stereo vision instead of an active RGB-D commercial camera for a popular videogame). 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 - Photo(s) of the robot - Focus of research/research interests - Re-usability of the system for other research groups - Applicability of the robot in the real world - Brief, compact list of the 3rd party robot's software (e.g. ROS vision should be included, but not OpenCV). - *[Open Platform Only]* Brief, compact description of the robot's hardware. - *[Standard Platforms Only]* Specify all external computing devices, if any. 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 [Standard Platforms Only]: *If the robot shown in the Team Video for Qualification is not a standard one, the TDP must also specify the approach used to adapt what is shown in the video and explained in the TDP into the Standard Platform Robot. 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 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) - 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 Nagoya, The 2017 RoboCup@Home Organizing and Technical Committees

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RO-MAN 2017 Intention in Social Robotics Special Session
by Mary-Anne Williams 05 Mar '17

05 Mar '17

26th IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication, RO-MAN 2017 <http://www.ro-man2017.org/>, will be held in Lisbon, Portugal, from 28 to 31 of August 2017. We are organizing a special session on *Intention in Social Robotics <http://www.ro-man2017.org/site/node/12>. * The *submission* *due date is March 26*. If you would like to submit a paper to our special the session, please use the code (588fb) in the paper submission system. Submission instructions are available at the main RO-MAN conference website <http://www.ro-man2017.org/>. Imagine an intelligent robot with social skills that was fun to work with and that could help you achieve tasks efficiently, i.e. a social robot. Social robots are a disruptive technology, poised to have a profound impact on business, society and the global economy. This exciting RO-MAN Special Session on Intention in Social Robotics <http://www.ro-man2017.org/site/node/12> will focus on predicting and exploiting Intention in Social Robotics. A self-driving vehicle is a social robot, not only does it need to drive on the road safely but it must communicate with and anticipate the behaviour of nearby cars and people; a delivery robot has to anticipate the behaviour of people in workplaces. Understanding human intention is critical to anticipating human behaviour. The critical research question is how can we design social robots able to understand human intention and anticipate human motion and desires. Conversely, the question of how robots can indicate intention to help humans is also important. The purpose of this special session is to explore how social robots can understand and predict people's intention without requiring humans to explicitly indicate or express what they are trying to do or about to do next. Relevant topics include, but are not limited to: ● Human-robot interaction and collaboration ● Human and/or Robot attention and intention ● Natural low cognitive load methods for signaling intention ● Privacy and security ● Legal and ethical implications of social robots The goal of special sessions at RO-MAN is to provide a forum for oral presentations that are highly specialized in some particular theme, focused on new topics or innovative applications of established approaches. A special session consists of four to six papers, which, addresses a particular theme or consist of work done in some particular international project. Best wishes, *Tony Cohn* (Leeds University) *William Judge* (Commonwealth Bank of Australia) *Reid Simmons* (Carnegie Mellon University) *Mary-Anne Williams* (University of Technology Sydney) *Professor Mary-Anne Williams <http://mary-annewilliams.com>* *Director, Disruptive Innovation* University of Technology Sydney (UTS) Founder and Director, Innovation and Enterprise Research Lab <http://themagiclab.org/> (The Magic Lab) Fellow, Stanford University <https://law.stanford.edu/directory/mary-anne-williams/> Twitter: @SwizzleFish <https://twitter.com/swizzlefish>

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[@Home2017] Third Call For Participation
by Mauricio Matamoros 02 Mar '17

02 Mar '17

Call for Participation RoboCup -2017 RoboCup@Home League July 25 - July 30, 2017 (Nagoya, Japan) http://www.robocup2017.org http://www.robocupathome.org/ http://wiki.robocup.org/wiki/@Home_League 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 Behaviours, Behaviour Integration, Ambient Intelligence, Standardization and System Integration. The RoboCup@Home league is itegrated by three Leagues officially referred as - Domestic Standard Platform League [DSPL] (Toyota HSR) - Social Standard Platform League [SSPL] (SoftBank Robotics Pepper) - Open Platform League [OPL] This message describes the preregistration and qualification procedure for RoboCup@Home League 2017. Important dates: Feb. 12, 2017 Intention of Participation (Extended) Mar. 12, 2017 *Deadline for submission of qualification material* and preregistration (Team Description Paper, Team Video, Team Website, Information in @Home Wiki). Mar. 26, 2017 Qualification announcement 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 2017 event, including the following basic information: Team Name: League: Country: Affiliation: Team Leader Name: Contact information (E-mail): Web site: Only one platform can be specified per team. The e-mail subject should be: [@Home2017-Participation] (YourTeamName) Please check the email is encoded in UTF-8 using only the ISO-8859-1 character set. ***** Deadline: Sunday, 5th Feb. 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 2017 event. Please fill in the following information: Team Name: League: Country: Affiliation: Team Leader Name: Contact information (E-mail): Web site: 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: [@Home2017-Participation] (YourTeamName) Considerations: - Only one platform 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. *Important Notice:* As platforms are independent, you must send an application email for each platform you want to compete in, specifying different team names in each. Qualification Material (e.g. video and TDP) must match the robot to qualify. ***** Deadline: Sunday, Mar. 12, 2017 23:59 GMT ****** Instructions for the Team Video =========================== As a proof of running hardware, each team has to provide a qualification video. As a minimum requirement for qualification, we consider showing the robot(s) successfully solving at least one test of the current or last year's rulebook. *[Standard Platforms Only]* If the robot shown in the video is a Standard Platform one (Toyota HSR or SoftBank Robotics Pepper), it must not be altered or modified in any way. However, *teams are allowed to use any * other* robot for the video* but, in that case, the TDP must clearly state how your approach will be adapted to fit into a SPL robot (e.g., stereo vision instead of an active RGB-D commercial camera for a popular videogame). 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 - Photo(s) of the robot - Focus of research/research interests - Re-usability of the system for other research groups - Applicability of the robot in the real world - Brief, compact list of the 3rd party robot's software (e.g. ROS vision should be included, but not OpenCV). - *[Open Platform Only]* Brief, compact description of the robot's hardware. - *[Standard Platforms Only]* Specify all external computing devices, if any. 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 [Standard Platforms Only]: *If the robot shown in the Team Video for Qualification is not a standard one, the TDP must also specify the approach used to adapt what is shown in the video and explained in the TDP into the Standard Platform Robot. 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 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) - 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 Nagoya, The 2017 RoboCup@Home Organizing and Technical Committees

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