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First Call for Participation | RoboCup@Home 2024 (DSPL · OPL · SSPL)
by Sven Wachsmuth 12 Oct '23

12 Oct '23

*First Call for Participation* RoboCup@Home 2024 (DSPL · OPL · SSPL) July 15 to 21, 2024 (Eindhoven, Netherlands) https://2024.robocup.org https://athome.robocup.org/ https://athome.robocup.org/2024-cfp1-all/ <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 2024. Important dates: Oct. 12, 2023 Publication of the Call for Participation Oct. 30, 2023 Deadline for submission of participation intention. Nov. 27, 2023 Deadline for submission of qualification material. (Team Description Paper, Team Video, Team Website). Jan. 08, 2024 Qualification announcement Jan. 29, 2024 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 2024 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 2024 RoboCup@Home. The e-mail subject should be:[@Home2024-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: Monday, October. 30, 2023 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 2024 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:[@Home2024-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: Monday, Nov. 27, 2023 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 2024 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:[@Home2024-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: Monday, Jan. 29, 2024 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 video should not exceed the average time for a test (max. 10min) * 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. * Selected videos sent will be uploaded/displayed in the league’s youtube channelhttp://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 complex tasks relevant for @Home that exceed the minimum requirements. This may be inspired by any of the Stage II tests of the 2019, 2022, and 2023 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 theSpringer LNAI format <http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-6-793341-0>(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 maydownload a template for the TDP from https://github.com/RoboCupAtHome/TDPTemplate <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 * Links to the qualification materials (TDP, Video) for the oncoming RoboCup *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, completeness, 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 Eindhoven, The 2024 RoboCup@Home Organizing and Technical Committees Call for Participation <https://athome.robocup.org/category/cfp/>,Domestic Standard Platform League <https://athome.robocup.org/category/leagues/dspl/>,Leagues <https://athome.robocup.org/category/leagues/>,Open Platform League <https://athome.robocup.org/category/leagues/opl/>,Social Standard Platform League <https://athome.robocup.org/category/leagues/sspl/>

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[meetings] [TAHRI] Technological Advances in Human-Robot Interaction
by TAHRI Organizers 03 Oct '23

03 Oct '23

What: International Symposium on Technological Advances in Human-Robot Interaction (TAHRI) When: March 9–10, 2024 Where: Boulder, Colorado, USA Web: https://tahri.org — Dear colleagues, We are pleased to announce the 2024 International Symposium on Technological Advances in Human-Robot Interaction (TAHRI)! Overview: TAHRI aims to be the premiere symposium for HRI research focused on the advancement of the underlying technology enabling the interaction between a robot and a human. The inaugural event will be held on March 9–10, 2024 in Boulder, Colorado, USA, two days before and co-located with the 2024 HRI conference! Theme: The theme for the inaugural TAHRI is “Building Bridges Between Builders”, gathering HRI researchers and practitioners from academia, industry, government, and other research groups who are focused on the development of HRI technologies. Topics: TAHRI seeks technological HRI contributions from a broad range of perspectives, including, but not limited to, robots, platforms, hardware, software, sensors, actuators, perception, control, algorithms, models, mechanisms, methods, interfaces, architectures, frameworks, benchmarks, datasets, tools, techniques, or other technologies that, with reasonable effort, can be incorporated into the design, development, or deployment of an HRI system. Papers: TAHRI invites novel, high-quality technological HRI papers that will be peer-reviewed in a flexible process, presented live at the symposium, and indexed in archived proceedings. - Standard review papers are for technological HRI work that has not been previously submitted for review. - Rapid review papers are for technological HRI work that has been previously reviewed, but was either not indexed or not published. These papers are part of a new rolling review process (from Nov. 6th, 2023 to Jan. 19th, 2024), with a fast turnaround notification (~3 weeks) and a limited number of submissions! See the website for details. - Short papers are for recent, ongoing, or otherwise promising technological HRI work with some preliminary results. These papers will not be indexed in archived proceedings. Important Dates: - Nov. 6, 2023: Paper submission site opens - ~3 weeks after submission: Rapid review paper notification - Dec. 1, 2023: Standard review paper deadline - Jan. 19, 2024: Standard review paper notification / Rapid review paper deadline / Short paper deadline - Feb. 2, 2024: Revise-and-resubmit deadline - Feb. 9, 2024: Revise-and-resubmit notification / Short paper notification Connect: For more information or to stay up-to-date on TAHRI, please visit the website (https://tahri.org), email us (info(a)tahri.org), or follow us on social media: - Medium: https://medium.com/@TAHRIorg - X / Twitter: https://twitter.com/TAHRIorg - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/TAHRIorg - YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TAHRIorg Organizers - Ross Mead (Semio) - Shelly Bagchi (NIST) - Jason R. Wilson (Franklin & Marshall College) - Emmanuel Senft (Idiap Research Institute) - Reuth Mirsky (Bar-Ilan University) - Daniel Hernández García (Heriot-Watt University) - Jeremy Marvel (NIST) - Megan Zimmerman (NIST) - Justin Hart (University of Texas Austin) -- TAHRI Organizers <https://www.tahri.org/people#organizers> *organizers(a)tahri.org <organizers(a)tahri.org>* * <ross.mead(a)tahri.org>* * <ross.mead(a)tahri.org>*

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PhD scholarships @ Western Sydney Uni, Australia
by Oliver Obst 10 Aug '23

10 Aug '23

Dear all, We have a new round of PhD scholarships at Western Sydney, open for domestic and international candidates who can start next January. If you are interested to work with me in robotics, in particular around one of these areas: - robotic teams and learning of strategies, reinforcement learning, or real-time decision making - learning-based locomotion and whole body control for walking (biped or quadruped) robots - assistive robotics or have prior RoboCup experience please consider applying. Please check the criteria and apply on this page here: https://www.westernsydney.edu.au/schools/grs/scholarships/main_round_schola… If you do apply, make sure to contact me in advance. Cheers Oliver -- Oliver Obst, Associate Professor Centre for Research in Mathematics and Data Science Western Sydney University http://oliver.obst.eu/

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[meetings][CFP] [AI-HRI 2023] 2023 AAAI Fall Symposium on Artificial Intelligence for Human-Robot Interaction (AI-HRI)
by Hernandez Garcia, Daniel 05 Aug '23

05 Aug '23

The 10th annual AAAI Fall Symposium on Artificial Intelligence for Human-Robot Interaction (AI-HRI) will take place on October 25-27, 2023, at the Westin Arlington Gateway in Arlington, VA, USA. We are planning a hybrid in-person and online format to reach more people who would not be able to attend in person. Paper submissions will be due on August 13, 2023 (Anywhere on Earth) and can be made through https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=fss230. For more information and updates, please see below or visit the symposium website at https://ai-hri.github.io If you intend to submit a paper, please email us at ai4hri(a)gmail.com by the 8th of August. Use the subject line, “[AI-HRI] Intent to Submit”, and include the following in the body of the message: (1) a tentative title, (2) a tentative author list, and (3) tentative keywords. This step is optional, but will aid in our planning for reviewers. Important Dates - Submission: August 13th, 2023 (Anywhere on Earth) - Notification of Acceptance: September 1, 2023 - Registration Deadline: September 29, 2023 - Symposium: October 25-27, 2023 Overview Since 2014, the Artificial Intelligence for Human-Robot Interaction (AI-HRI) symposium has been a successful venue for discussion and collaboration on the topic of AI applied to HRI. In celebration of the 10th anniversary this year, we are reflecting on the achievements of the community as we transition to a new venue and spiritual successor, the International Symposium on Technological Advances in Human-Robot Interaction (TAHRI). We invite all contributions related to any topic on the intersection of AI and HRI, and we welcome new researchers who wish to take part in this thriving and growing community. With the success of past symposia, AI-HRI explores diverse challenges that impact a variety of communities and problems spanning academia, industry, and government. It has pioneered the discussions in recent trends and interests, and this year's AI-HRI Fall Symposium will continue to bring together researchers and practitioners from around the globe. In doing so, we hope to accelerate research in the field, support technology transition and user adoption, and determine future directions for our group and our research. Topics - Future of AI-HRI and TAHRI via “Blue Sky” ideas - Emergent abilities of LLMs in AI for HRI - Ethics, fairness, trust, and explainability in AI for HRI - Architectures, software tools, and systems supporting autonomous HRI - Interactive task learning, dialog systems, and natural language - Field deployments, studies, experimental, and empirical HRI - Safety and ergonomics in HRI - Robot planning, abstraction, and decision-making - AI for social robots - Safety and human comfort in HRI - Software tools for autonomous HRI - AI for social robots - Physical HRI - Knowledge representation and reasoning to support HRI - AI for HRI in teams and groups - Replication studies and reproducibility in AI for HRI - Test methods and metrics for AI-HRI - ...and many other topics relevant to the application of Artificial Intelligence to Human-Robot Interaction! Format This year's symposium will focus on the accomplishments in the field of AI-HRI as well as look to its future challenges, ranging from research directions to establishing an ongoing collaborative community. We will invite symposium participants to present their own work as it contributes to understanding what matters towards these goals, though all research on AI-HRI will be considered. We will continue to include AI-HRI’s signature community-building efforts into the schedule, including paper presentations, poster sessions, and breakout group discussions. These are ideal within the symposium community, which is small enough that we can all learn each other's names and faces, but large enough to draw an audience of people who have a real impact in our field. These discussions give perfect opportunities for new researchers in the field to meet senior members in a more informal setting and become more involved in future interactions and collaborations within the community. This year, we have the opportunity to gather in-person; however, for inclusiveness, we are planning in advance to implement a hybrid in-person and online format to reach more people who would not be able to attend in person. The diversity chair will lead the efforts for creating an inclusive community and will work with AAAI to manage the logistics for hybrid participation. Submissions All submissions should be 2-4 pages (not including references). Tracks for submissions include: - *Research papers* highlighting state-of-the-art or ongoing HRI-oriented AI research, HRI research focusing on the Future of AI-HRI, the use of autonomous AI systems, an overview of an AI-HRI research topic, an outline of new or controversial views on AI-HRI research, or the implementation of AI systems in commercial HRI products. - *Artifact papers* describing novel software, hardware, datasets, or other tools of interest to the AI-HRI community. - *Demo papers* introducing some portion of a tool, short, or full paper-level deliverable in the form of a public-facing experience. - *Blue Sky papers* fostering a forward-thinking discussion on the future at the intersection of AI and HRI. This year, we decided to encourage (but not enforce) double blind. If possible, the authors should try to anonymize their papers to support stronger fairness in the reviewing process. All accepted papers will be presented orally and published in their choice of the proceedings through ArXiv or AAAI’s symposium proceedings. All submissions will receive feedback to prepare a full follow-up submission for TAHRI, and accepted papers will have the opportunity for their follow-up submission for TAHRI to receive a fast-track evaluation. Authors will be notified as to whether they have been assigned a "full-length" or "lightning" presentation slot. Furthermore, accepted papers can be identified for fast-tracked review for TAHRI (https://tahri.org<https://tahri.org/>), the upcoming symposium on Technological Advances in Human-Robot Interaction, which will happen in March 2024. To ensure that your submission has the proper formatting, please see paper templates in the AAAI Author Kit: https://www.aaai.org/Publications/Templates/AuthorKit23.zip Contributions may be submitted through EasyChair now: <https://easychair.org/my/conference?conf=fss22> https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=fss230 For any extenuating circumstances that may result in a delayed submission, please contact us at ai4hri(a)gmail.com<mailto:ai4hri@gmail.com>. Diversity and Inclusion AI-HRI is committed to growing the diversity of our community and is actively pursuing ways to make our community more inclusive. Our efforts include diversifying the participation among our program committee, invited speakers, paper authors, and symposium attendees. If you have any questions or comments, please contact us at ai4hri(a)gmail.com. Organizing Committee - Richard G. Freedman (SIFT, USA) - Ross Mead (Semio, USA) - Muneeb I. Ahmad (Swansea University, UK) - Zhao Han (Colorado School of Mines, USA) - Justin W. Hart (University of Texas at Austin, USA) - ‪Daniel Hernández García (Heriot-Watt University, UK) - Ifrah Idrees (Brown University, USA) - Emmanuel Senft (Idiap Research Institute, Switzerland) - Jason R. Wilson (Franklin & Marshall College, USA) ________________________________ Founded in 1821, Heriot-Watt is a leader in ideas and solutions. With campuses and students across the entire globe we span the world, delivering innovation and educational excellence in business, engineering, design and the physical, social and life sciences. This email is generated from the Heriot-Watt University Group, which includes: 1. Heriot-Watt University, a Scottish charity registered under number SC000278 2. Heriot- Watt Services Limited (Oriam), Scotland's national performance centre for sport. Heriot-Watt Services Limited is a private limited company registered is Scotland with registered number SC271030 and registered office at Research & Enterprise Services Heriot-Watt University, Riccarton, Edinburgh, EH14 4AS. The contents (including any attachments) are confidential. If you are not the intended recipient of this e-mail, any disclosure, copying, distribution or use of its contents is strictly prohibited, and you should please notify the sender immediately and then delete it (including any attachments) from your system.

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[CFP] [meetings] **Extended Deadline** AAAI 2023 Fall Symposium on “Unifying Representations for Robot Application Development” (UR-RAD)
by Ross Mead 28 Jul '23

28 Jul '23

Dear colleagues, We have extended the deadline for submissions for the 2023 AAAI Symposium on Unifying Representations for Robot Application Development <https://sites.google.com/view/aaai-ur-rad-symposium/home>(UR-RAD). The new deadline for submissions is August 14, 2023. The symposium will take place on October 25-27, 2023, in Arlington, VA, USA. Although we hope to see you in-person, the symposium will be in a hybrid format. ============= Key Information ============= Behind any robot task or interaction is a formal representation that should (a) enable sufficient contextualization; (b) support any existing predefined, learned, and/or reusable skills onboard the robot; (c) be verifiable at design time and behave consistently at run-time; and (d) can be tested, executed, and modified for reuse on a variety of different robot morphologies. Representations have long played a pivotal role in robot application development. Examples include behavior trees, finite state machines, hierarchical task networks, and many, many others. The problem is that there is a lack of consistency and uniformity in how these representations are selected and used by robotics researchers. The goals of the symposium will therefore be to (a) categorize current representational trends for robot application development, (b) discuss best practices for future adoption of languages, formal representations, development frameworks, etc. that integrate advances from the wider AI community, and (c) identify opportunities for collaboration between academia and industry. - Symposium Website: https://sites.google.com/view/aaai-ur-rad-symposium/home <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://sites.google.com/view/aaai-ur-rad-sympo…> - AAAI Fall Symposium Series Website: https://aaai.org/conference/fall-symposia/aaai-2023-fall-symposium-series/ <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://aaai.org/conference/fall-symposia/aaai-…> ========================= Submission Topics of Interest ========================= We invite submissions related, but not limited, to the following topics: - Existing representations for robot applications - Proposals for standardizing representations for robotics - Robot end-user development - Robot programming paradigms - Robot programming interfaces - Robot control interfaces and runtime environments - Standardized application development for different robot morphologies - Application development frameworks for robotics (e.g., ROS) - Formal methods in robotics - Representations, frameworks, and models for robot learning - Robot architectures and models of reasoning - AI planning for robotics - Open-source initiatives in robotics - Interfaces for human-robot interaction ============= Important Dates ============= - Submissions: August 14, 2023 **EXTENDED** - Acceptance: September 1st, 2023 - Camera-Ready: October 9th, 2023 ==================== Submission Information ==================== The submission link can be found on the symposium website. The submission format can be any of the following: - Regular Research Papers: (4-6 pages, AAAI double-column format) describing robotics work related to any of the themes above. - Artifact Papers: (4-6 pages, AAAI double-column format) describing artifacts (e.g., software tools or libraries) related to any of the themes above. - Position Papers: (2-4 pages, AAAI double-column format), directly discussing themes outlined above. If you intend to submit a paper, please email us at urrad.symposium(a)gmail.com. Use the subject line, “[UR-RAD] Intent to Submit”, and include the following in the body of the message: (1) a tentative title, (2) a tentative author list, and (3) tentative keywords. This step is optional, but will aid in our planning for reviewers. Note that at least one author from each paper will be expected to review 2-3 UR-RAD papers themselves. =================== Organizing Committee =================== - David Porfirio (US Naval Research Laboratory) - Ross Mead (Semio) - Laura M. Hiatt (US Naval Research Laboratory) - Mark Roberts (US Naval Research Laboratory) - Amin Atrash (Amazon Lab 126) - Nick DePalma (Independent Researcher) - Ruchen Wen (University of Maryland, Baltimore County) - Laura Stegner (University of Wisconsin–Madison) Please send any questions about the workshop to urrad.symposium(a)gmail.com. -- Ross Mead, PhD Founder and CEO ross(a)semio.ai +1 (618) 696-2600 <https://semio.ai>

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RoboCup Brazil Open 2023
by patricia.vergara＠robocup.org.br 27 Jul '23

27 Jul '23

The content of this message was lost. It was probably cross-posted to multiple lists and previously handled on another list.

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[CFP] [AI-HRI 2023] 2023 AAAI Fall Symposium on Artificial Intelligence for Human-Robot Interaction (AI-HRI)
by Hernandez Garcia, Daniel 13 Jul '23

13 Jul '23

The tenth annual AAAI Fall Symposium on Artificial Intelligence for Human-Robot Interaction (AI-HRI) will take place on October 25-27, 2023, at the Westin Arlington Gateway in Arlington, VA, USA. We are planning a hybrid in-person and online format to reach more people who would not be able to attend in person. Paper submissions will be due on August 6, 2023 (anywhere on Earth) and can be made through https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=fss230. For more information and updates, please see below or visit the symposium website at https://ai-hri.github.io/<https://ai-hri.github.io/>. Overview Since 2014, the Artificial Intelligence for Human-Robot Interaction (AI-HRI) Symposium has been a successful venue for discussion and collaboration on the topic of AI applied to HRI. In celebration of the tenth anniversary this year, we are reflecting on the achievements of the community as we transition to a new venue and spiritual successor, Technological Advances in Human-Robot Interaction (TAHRI). We invite all contributions related to any topic on the intersection of AI and HRI, and we welcome new researchers who wish to take part in this thriving and growing community. With the success of past symposia, AI-HRI explores diverse challenges that impact a variety of communities and problems spanning academia, industry, and government. It has pioneered the discussions in recent trends and interests, and this year's AI-HRI Fall Symposium will continue to bring together researchers and practitioners from around the globe. In doing so, we hope to accelerate research in the field, support technology transition and user adoption, and determine future directions for our group and our research. Topics - Future of AI-HRI and TAHRI via “Blue Sky” ideas - Emergent abilities of LLMs in AI for HRI - Ethics, fairness, trust, and explainability in AI for HRI - Architectures, software tools, and systems supporting autonomous HRI - Interactive task learning, dialog systems, and natural language - Field deployments, studies, experimental, and empirical HRI - Safety and ergonomics in HRI - Robot planning, abstraction, and decision-making - AI for social robots - Safety and human comfort in HRI - Software tools for autonomous HRI - AI for social robots - Physical HRI - Knowledge representation and reasoning to support HRI - AI for HRI in teams and groups - Replication studies and reproducibility in AI for HRI - Test methods and metrics for AI-HRI - ...and many other topics relevant to the application of Artificial Intelligence to Human-Robot Interaction! Format This year's symposium will focus on the accomplishments in the field of AI-HRI as well as look to its future challenges, ranging from research directions to establishing an ongoing collaborative community. We will invite symposium participants to present their own work as it contributes to understanding what matters towards these goals, though all research on AI-HRI will be considered. We will continue to include AI-HRI’s signature community-building efforts into the schedule, including paper presentations, poster sessions, and breakout group discussions. These are ideal within the symposium community, which is small enough that we can all learn each other's names and faces, but large enough to draw an audience of people who have a real impact in our field. These discussions give perfect opportunities for new researchers in the field to meet senior members in a more informal setting and become more involved in future interactions and collaborations within the community. This year, we have the opportunity to gather in person. However, for inclusiveness, we are planning in advance to implement a hybrid in-person and online format to reach more people who would not be able to attend in person. The diversity chair will lead the efforts for creating an inclusive community and will work with AAAI to manage the logistics for hybrid participation. Submissions All submissions should be 2-4 pages (not including references), introducing work that will receive feedback to prepare a follow-up submission to TAHRI. Tracks for submissions include: - *Research papers* highlighting state-of-the-art or ongoing HRI-oriented AI research, HRI research focusing on the Future of AI-HRI, the use of autonomous AI systems, an overview of an AI-HRI research topic, an outline of new or controversial views on AI-HRI research, or the implementation of AI systems in commercial HRI products. - *Tool papers* describing novel software, hardware, or datasets of interest to the AI-HRI community. - *Demo papers* introducing some portion of a tool, short, or full paper-level deliverable in the form of a public-facing experience. - *Blue Sky papers* fostering a forward-thinking discussion on the future at the intersection of AI and HRI. All accepted papers will be presented orally and published in their choice of the proceedings through ArXiv or AAAI’s symposium proceedings. Authors will be notified as to whether they have been assigned a "full-length" or "lightning" presentation slot. Please see the AAAI Author Kit (https://www.aaai.org/Publications/Templates/AuthorKit23.zip) for paper templates to ensure that your submission has the proper formatting. Contributions may be submitted through EasyChair now: <https://easychair.org/my/conference?conf=fss22> https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=fss230 . For any extenuating circumstances that may result in a delayed submission, please contact us at ai4hri(a)gmail.com. Important Dates - Submission: August 6, 2023 (anywhere on earth) - Notification of acceptance: September 1, 2023 - Registration deadline: September 29, 2023 - Symposium: October 25-27, 2023 Diversity & Inclusion at AI-HRI AI-HRI is committed to growing the diversity of our community and is actively pursuing ways to make our community more inclusive. Our efforts include diversifying the participation among our program committee, invited speakers, paper authors, and symposium attendees. If you are having difficulties, please contact us at ai4hri(a)gmail.com . Organizing Committee - Richard G. Freedman (SIFT, USA) - Ross Mead (Semio, USA) - Muneeb I. Ahmad (Swansea University, UK) - Zhao Han (Colorado School of Mines, USA) - Justin W. Hart (University of Texas at Austin, USA) - ‪Daniel Hernández García (Heriot-Watt University, UK) - Ifrah Idrees (Brown University, USA) - Emmanuel Senft (Idiap Research Institute, Switzerland) - Jason R. Wilson (Franklin & Marshall College, USA) ________________________________ Founded in 1821, Heriot-Watt is a leader in ideas and solutions. With campuses and students across the entire globe we span the world, delivering innovation and educational excellence in business, engineering, design and the physical, social and life sciences. This email is generated from the Heriot-Watt University Group, which includes: 1. Heriot-Watt University, a Scottish charity registered under number SC000278 2. Heriot- Watt Services Limited (Oriam), Scotland's national performance centre for sport. Heriot-Watt Services Limited is a private limited company registered is Scotland with registered number SC271030 and registered office at Research & Enterprise Services Heriot-Watt University, Riccarton, Edinburgh, EH14 4AS. The contents (including any attachments) are confidential. If you are not the intended recipient of this e-mail, any disclosure, copying, distribution or use of its contents is strictly prohibited, and you should please notify the sender immediately and then delete it (including any attachments) from your system.

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Group photo
by Okada Hiroyuki 13 Jul '23

13 Jul '23

Hi, Did you all get home safely? please find photos of all the @Home league that I made here: https://photos.app.goo.gl/nJrGeZNbzD4cWWCZ9 Group photo https://photos.app.goo.gl/uTdrxupwQo169Pqj9 May be used freely. Best!, Hiroyuki

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[CFP] [meetings] AAAI 2023 Fall Symposium on “Unifying Representations for Robot Application Development” (UR-RAD)
by Ross Mead 05 Jul '23

05 Jul '23

Dear colleagues, We are inviting submissions and participation in the 2023 AAAI Symposium on Unifying Representations for Robot Application Development <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://sites.google.com/view/aaai-ur-rad-sympo…> (UR-RAD). The symposium will take place on October 25-27, 2023, in Arlington, VA, USA. ============= Key Information ============= Behind any robot task or interaction is a formal representation that should (a) enable sufficient contextualization; (b) support any existing predefined, learned, and/or reusable skills onboard the robot; (c) be verifiable at design time and behave consistently at run-time; and (d) can be tested, executed, and modified for reuse on a variety of different robot morphologies. Representations have long played a pivotal role in robot application development. Examples include behavior trees, finite state machines, hierarchical task networks, and many, many others. The problem is that there is a lack of consistency and uniformity in how these representations are selected and used by robotics researchers. The goals of the symposium will therefore be to (a) categorize current representational trends for robot application development, (b) discuss best practices for future adoption of languages, formal representations, development frameworks, etc. that integrate advances from the wider AI community, and (c) identify opportunities for collaboration between academia and industry. - Symposium Website: https://sites.google.com/view/aaai-ur-rad-symposium/home <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://sites.google.com/view/aaai-ur-rad-sympo…> - AAAI Fall Symposium Series Website: https://aaai.org/conference/fall-symposia/aaai-2023-fall-symposium-series/ <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://aaai.org/conference/fall-symposia/aaai-…> ========================= Submission Topics of Interest ========================= We invite submissions related, but not limited, to the following topics: - Existing representations for robot applications - Proposals for standardizing representations for robotics - Robot end-user development - Robot programming paradigms - Robot programming interfaces - Robot control interfaces and runtime environments - Standardized application development for different robot morphologies - Application development frameworks for robotics (e.g., ROS) - Formal methods in robotics - Representations, frameworks, and models for robot learning - AI planning for robotics - Open-source initiatives in robotics - Interfaces for human-robot interaction ==================== Submission Information ==================== - Submissions: August 4th, 2023 - Acceptance: September 15th, 2023 - Camera Ready: October 9th, 2023 The submission link can be found on the symposium website. The submission format can be any of the following: - Regular Research Papers: (4-6 pages, AAAI double-column format) describing robotics work related to any of the themes above. - Artifact Papers: (4-6 pages, AAAI double-column format) describing artifacts (e.g., software tools or libraries) related to any of the themes above. - Position Papers: (2-4 pages, AAAI double-column format), directly discussing themes outlined above. =================== Organizing Committee =================== - David Porfirio (US Naval Research Laboratory) - Ross Mead (Semio) - Laura M. Hiatt (US Naval Research Laboratory) - Mark Roberts (US Naval Research Laboratory) - Amin Atrash (Amazon Lab 126) - Nick DePalma (Independent Researcher) - Ruchen Wen (University of Maryland, Baltimore County) - Laura Stegner (University of Wisconsin–Madison) Please send any questions about the workshop to urrad.symposium(a)gmail.com -- Ross Mead, PhD Founder and CEO ross(a)semio.ai +1 (618) 696-2600 <https://semio.ai>

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Fwd: [rc-home-tc] [RoboCup Committee] Newsletter #3: Welcoming Booklet
by Mauricio Matamoros 02 Jul '23

02 Jul '23

Dear RoboCuper, We're only a few days away from the start of the competitions, in order to welcome you , we'd like to share with you this welcome booklet containing all the important information for this edition. Please find enclosed the Welcome booklet. This booklet contains information about on-site registration, the site map, the program, and much more. Best regards, The organizing committee

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Fwd: [rc-home-tc] [RoboCup Committee] Form of consent
by Mauricio Matamoros 02 Jul '23

02 Jul '23

Dear RoboCuper, We're delighted to welcome you in a few days to the 2023 edition of the RoboCup . The next few days will mark the start of competitions that we hope will suit you. However, before you can access the competitions, we *need* you to *read* and *sign* the *consent form attached to this mail*. This form is *to be handed in at the reception desk of the exhibition center* as soon as you arrive. We wish you a good day and a safe journey to Bordeaux, For *underage people*, we draw your attention to the fact that your *legal guardians must sign it *. Newsletter number 3 will be send shortly and will take the form of a welcome kit containing all the information you need to prepare for your arrival. Best regards, The 2023 Organizing Committee

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Fwd: [rc-home-tc] [RoboCup Committee] Urgent information: RoboCup 2023
by Mauricio Matamoros 02 Jul '23

02 Jul '23

Dear RoboCuper, We know that some of you are worried about the situation in France. We are in close connection with authorities, and we are monitoring the events in realtime. The competition will take place in compliance with safety standards and at the moment the schedule is maintained. We will keep you informed of the developments at least on a daily basis by email and via the discord platform. • Discord | #⌠🗣⌡random | RoboCup 2023 <https://discord.com/channels/1088577847326675054/1088577847918075978> Best regards, The 2023 organizing committee

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RoboCup Brazil Open 2023
by Patricia Vergara 29 Jun '23

29 Jun '23

Good morning! Registrations are now open for RoboCup Brazil Open 2023! The event will occur from October 7th to 12th at the* Salvador Convention Center in Salvador, Bahia*. Registrations can be made through the website: http://olimpo.robocup.org.br/. RoboCup Brazil Open is a large event that also includes the Brazilian Robotics Competition, the Brazilian Robotics Olympiad, and the Brazilian Robotics Exhibition. In addition, the following meetings will be held during the event: XV Brazilian Robotics Symposium XIV Workshop on Educational Robotics Thesis and Dissertation Workshop in Robotics Thesis and Dissertation Contest in Robotics IEEE Latin American Robotics Symposium All rules and challenges for each category are available on our website, as well as the updated registration fees and deadlines for TDP submission. >> Some categories will be in a hybrid format, allowing teams to participate remotely when necessary. >> All information is available on our website: www.cbrobotica.org and www.robotica.org.br ________________________________ Best regards, Robocup Brazil Team -- Patrícia Vergara Comunicação RoboCup Brasil (11) 9.8686-4993 (apenas whatsapp) www.robocup.org.br

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National Robotics Festival - Portugal
by Patricia Vergara 29 Mar '23

29 Mar '23

Hello good morning: We are almost ready for the 23rd edition of the National Robotics Festival - Portugal - FNR’2023 event. We are pleased to address this invitation to invite you to participate in the 2023 Portuguese Robotics Open (FNR'2023) which is promoted by the Polytechnic Institute of Tomar (IPT) and the Portuguese Robotics Society (SPR) and which will take place at the Municipal Pavilion of Tomar, from April 28 to 30, 2023. Categories: Major: DRAGSTAR FREEBOTS MANIPULADORES ROBÓTICOS ROBOT@FACTORY LITE ROBOT@FACTORY 4.0 CONDUÇÃO AUTÓNOMA LIGA DE SIMULAÇÃO 3D @HOME Junior: RCJ RESCUE SIMULATION ROBOT@FACTORY LITE FIRST CHALLENGER FREEBOTS JÚNIOR ONSTAGE BUSCA E SALVAMENTO – LINHA BUSCA E SALVAMENTO – LABIRINTO ROBOCUP SOCCER (MSL) The registration form is now available on the event's website! If you register before April 2nd, in addition to guaranteeing your spot, you are entitled to a discount on your team's registration. Click the button below for more details and access to our website! https://www.festivalnacionalrobotica.pt/2023/ If you have any questions, you can contact the organization through the official email: info(a)festivalnacionalrobotica.pt We look forward to your participation and present our best regards, The Organizing Committee -- Patrícia Vergara

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Fw: Fall 2023 fully-funded Ph.D. positions in human-robot interaction (HRI) at the University of South Florida (USF), Tampa, FL, USA
by Zhao Han 21 Mar '23

21 Mar '23

Joining the University of South Florida<https://www.usf.edu/> (USF) in August, Dr. Zhao Han<https://zhaohanphd.com/> invites applications for up to two fully funded Ph.D. positions (Research Assistants) starting as early as Fall 2023 in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering Ph.D. program<https://www.usf.edu/engineering/cse/graduate/phd-program.aspx> (catalog<https://catalog.usf.edu/preview_program.php?catoid=18&poid=7770>) at USF in Tampa, Florida, USA. The deadline for Fall 2023 admission is April 15. This posting is also available at https://zhaohanphd.com/phd-positions/. Strong candidates are highly motivated, comfortable with programming, eager to learn, hard-working, and demonstrate an interest in the emerging and interdisciplinary field of human-robot interaction (HRI), including robot explanation/transparency, augmented reality/virtual reality (AR/VR), collaborative mobile manipulation/robotics, robot platform and interaction design, AI, cognitive science/psychology, or an area related to Dr. Han’s expertise<https://zhaohanphd.com/expertise/>. Successful candidates will be mentored and trained as prolific and independent researchers, publishing at top-tier international conferences and journals. Dr. Han has a strong publication record<https://zhaohanphd.com/publications/> and extensive mentoring experience<https://zhaohanphd.com/cv/#mentoring> with an inclusive excellence and supportive approach. You will work on real robot platforms using popular robotics frameworks. Students from underrepresented and underserved groups that are traditionally disadvantaged are strongly encouraged to apply. This position includes tuition waivers and stipends. ________________________________ Dr. Zhao Han is an incoming Assistant Professor in the Computer Science and Engineering department at the University of South Florida, joining the faculty in August 2023. He is currently a Post-Doctoral Fellow at Colorado School of Mines. His research lies broadly in human-robot interaction (HRI), robotics, artificial intelligence (AI), and augmented reality (AR). He focuses on designing, developing, and evaluating novel robotic systems and interactions, for embodied robots to be more capable and understandable while interacting and collaborating with humans. He received the best long-paper award at INLG 2022 and the best late-breaking report third prize at HRI 2022. Previously, he had led teams to win multiple international and national robot competitions, including first place in the Panasonic Prototype 3D LiDAR Challenge and second place in the FetchIt Mobile Manipulation Challenge at ICRA 2019. In addition to research, he received a university-wide Mines Diversity, Inclusion, and Access (DI&A) Award in 2022. He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from UMass Lowell, advised by AAAI Fellow Dr. Holly Yanco. He received his M.S. and B.S. degrees in Computer Science from the University of Manitoba in Canada. The University of South Florida (USF)<https://www.usf.edu/> is a high-impact global research university dedicated to student success and has an annual budget of 2.34 billion (2022-2023). Ranked top 100 in U.S. News & World Report’s national university rankings, no other public university in the US has risen faster than USF in the past decade. USF is classified among “R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity”, and according to the National Science Foundation, USF spent $568 million on research and development in 2019, ranking it 43rd in the US and 25th among public universities. Serving over 49,000 students, USF is designated as one of three Preeminent State Research Universities<https://admissions.usf.edu/blog/what-is-preeminence-and-why-it-matters-to-y…> by the Florida Board of Governors, receiving additional financial support from the state of Florida for student success and research. Learn more on USF’s about page<https://www.usf.edu/about-usf/index.aspx>. USF is located in the City of Tampa on the west coast of the Sunshine State of Florida. Full of opportunities and possibilities, the Tampa Bay area has around 3 million people and is one of the top places to live. Learn more about Florida Gulf Coast Living<https://www.usf.edu/admissions/freshmen/why-usf/our-campuses/gulf-coast-liv…> for why over 49,000 students have chosen USF as well as the US<https://www.visittheusa.com/destination/tampa-bay>, state<https://www.visitflorida.com/places-to-go/central-west/tampa/>, and local<https://www.visittampabay.com/> resources. ________________________________ A complete application package includes: * Unofficial Transcripts (including the grade sheet and diploma, if applicable) * If admitted, official transcripts and test scores will need to be submitted to Graduate Admissions but unofficial transcripts/scores can be used in reviewing the application. * PDF of GRE Scores * CV/Resume * Statement of Purpose * 3 Letters of Recommendation (Must be on official letterhead with recommender’s title and contact) * PDF of English Proficiency Scores, if applicable For consideration, please mention Dr. Zhao Han in your application materials and apply through the USF graduate student admission process<https://www.usf.edu/admissions/graduate/admission-information/>. The current admission cycle is Spring 2024. To be admitted to Fall 2023, you must also 1. Email your application package without the recommendation letters to zhaohan(a)mines.edu 2. Ask each of your three recommendation letter writers to email their letter to zhaohan(a)mines.edu By applying in the USF’s admissions portal, any other interested faculty member can also review your application. All applications and recommendation letters must be submitted to the USF admissions portal and emailed to Dr. Zhao Han by April 15. Applications will be considered starting immediately. International students should apply soon because visa applications require additional time. Once an admission offer is accepted, Research Assistantship offer decisions will be made once Dr. Zhao Han arrives at USF in August. --- Zhao Han, Ph.D.<https://zhaohanphd.com/> (he/him<https://pronouns.org/>) Post-Doctoral Fellow, Computer Science, Brown Hall, 280M Colorado School of Mines, Golden, CO 80401, USA zhaohanphd.com<https://zhaohanphd.com/> | @hanzhao<https://twitter.com/hanzhao> <https://twitter.com/hanzhao>

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[meetings] [CFP] RO-MAN 2023 Special Session on “HRI in Academia and Industry: Bridging the Gap”
by Ross Mead 07 Mar '23

07 Mar '23

[CALL FOR PAPERS] SPECIAL SESSION on “HRI in Academia and Industry: Bridging the Gap” @ IEEE RO-MAN 2023 - Submission Website: http://ro-man2023.org/paperSubmission/papersubmission - Special Session Submission Code: an7c7 IMPORTANT DATES - *NEW* Paper Submission Deadline: March 31, 2023 (AoE) - Notification of Acceptance: May 26, 2023 - Final Paper Submission: June 30, 2023 AIM AND SCOPE The use of robots that operate in spaces where humans are present is growing at a dramatic rate. We are seeing more and more robots in warehouses, on streets, and even in our homes. All of these robots will, as part of their primary function, interact with humans in some way. In order to be successful, their interactions with humans will have to be carefully designed. The field of Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) has been growing at the intersection of robotics, AI, psychology, and a number of other fields. However, until quite recently, it has been a largely academic area, with university researchers proposing, implementing, and reporting on experiments at a limited scale. With the current increase of commercially-available robots, HRI is starting to make its way into industry in a meaningful way. This special session is intended to bring together HRI researchers and practitioners from both academia and industry, to discuss how these areas are different in their needs and approaches, and to figure out how HRI researchers and practitioners in these areas can work together – How can we make academic HRI research and education more relevant to industrial needs? How can industry support and contribute to more science-focused HRI? The special session will attract contributions on four broad themes, outlined below, in an attempt to build a new community interested in how these two active areas of HRI research and practice can work more closely together, and support each other in practical terms. We welcome research and case study papers with at least one section devoted to addressing some of the questions outlined below in the discussion section. We also invite survey and position paper contributions that directly surveys or discusses some of the below questions. - The Constraints and Needs of HRI in Industry - What are the constraints of deploying HRI at scale in consumer robots? - What are the pressing HRI problems that the industry wants to solve? Why? - How do we measure the success of HRI in a consumer product? - What HRI research can we do in an industry setting that we can’t do in academia? - The Relevance and Innovation of Academic HRI - What are the constraints of HRI research in an academic environment? - What industrial or consumer applications drive interesting academic HRI research? - How do we measure the success of academic HRI beyond controlled experiments and p-values? - What HRI research can we do in an academic setting that we can’t do in industry? - Interaction between Academic and Industrial HRI: Publications, Conferences, Tools/Technology Resources, and Experiments - What are the constraints of publishing in industry, and how do we address them? - How can academic & industrial HRI researchers collaborate meaningfully across the IP boundary? - How can industry HRI research benefit more from science-driven approaches? - How can academic HRI research benefit more from real-world problems? - HRI Education and Training: What does Academia and Industry Need? - What does it mean to be an HRI researcher? What are required skill sets in industry & academia? - How should we be training future HRI researchers for industry and academic career paths? - Since HRI can touch on all aspects of a robot system, how much HRI should robot hardware and software developers know? - How can HRI researchers with interdisciplinary backgrounds integrate successfully with hardware and software development teams? How much technical background do they need to know? Contributions The special session contributions will go through the same peer review process as regular track papers, and the accepted manuscripts will appear in the Ro-Man23 proceedings. Please follow the directions as provided in the conference website: http://ro-man2023.org/paperSubmission/papersubmission In Steps 3 and 4, select "Special Session Paper" under the First Submission category, and enter the following code to submit to our session. - Special Session Submission Code: an7c7 Organizers - Hae Won Park (Amazon Lab126 and MIT) - Bill Smart (Amazon Lab126 and Oregon State University) - Ross Mead (Semio) - Chien-Ming Huang (Johns Hopkins University) - Anastasia K. Ostrowski (MIT) -- Ross Mead, PhD Founder and CEO ross(a)semio.ai +1 (618) 696-2600 <https://semio.ai>

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[meetings][CFP] RO-MAN 2023 - Special Session "To err is robotic: Understanding, preventing and resolving robots' failures in HRI"
by Alessandra Rossi 15 Feb '23

15 Feb '23

*Apologies for any cross-posting* Dear colleagues, We are very pleased to invite you to the Special Session called *To err is robotic: Understanding, preventing and resolving robots' failures in HRI *( code u3f1h)*.* This special session welcomes works: 1) focusing on how people from perceive robot's failures in short- and long-term interactions, and highlight how different failures influence their perceptions and emotions toward the robots, and 2) exploring different techniques (e.g. inner speech, predictability and transparency of robotic behaviours, Theory of Mind, robot etiquette, Verification Methods, explanations) can foster a natural human-robot communication to reduce the perception of failures and/or help people understand the implications, risks, and goals of robot behaviour. This Special Session is organised within the 32nd IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (IEEE RO-MAN 2023) will be held at Paradise Hotel in Busan, South Korea from August 28 to 31, 2023. Please find attached the full call for papers for the Special Session "*To err is robotic: Understanding, preventing and resolving robots' failures in HRI*". Kindest regards Alessandra Rossi, Kheng Lee Koay, Kerstin S. Haring ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SPECIAL SESSION To err is robotic: Understanding, preventing and resolving robots' failures in HRI Code u3f1h Robots placed in human-oriented dynamic environments, such as private homes, shopping malls, healthcare facilities, are likely to exhibit occasional behaviours which are perceived by people as unexpected, failures, or actual errors. Robots' errors can negatively affect people's perception of the robotic behaviours, in terms of usefulness, functionalities and capabilities, trustworthiness and acceptability. Robotics errors and how these are perceived by people do not only depend on robot self, but they are also a consequence of other factors. For example, they may be a consequence of human errors, or an unclear and non-transparent communication, or they may depend on a misunderstanding and miscommunication of the social, psychological and cognitive conventions expected by people. Moreover, there are also some cases in which these behaviours may be perceived as if robots intentionally deceive or cheat people. As a consequence, these may result in people wrongly interpreting and predicting the robots’ intents and behaviours, and negatively affecting Human-Robot Interaction (HRI). This session will focus on examine how people from perceive robot's failures in short- and long-term interactions, and highlight how different failures influence their perceptions and emotions toward the robots. This will help with subject related to classifying of robot errors from the aspect of human (e.g. intentional, voluntarily, perceived vs. real errors -- recklessness, forgetfulness, poor motivation --) and robot dimensions (e.g. actual error - algorithms, sensors, actuators). Moreover, while dealing with robotic failures, it is fundamental to consider two different strategies. The first one is oriented to prevent robots from exhibiting unintended behaviours, which in some extreme cases may even endanger people’s, pets’ safety, or break objects. Some examples are meant to enable robots to adapt and recover from any erroneous behaviour, such as the use of Software Verification Methods, Theory of Mind, robot etiquette. Others are focused on mitigating the effects of robot errors with apologies, promises or creating transparent robotic behaviours. This session will explore how different techniques can be used to enhancing natural human-robot communication (such as inner speech, legibility, predictability and transparency of robotic behaviours, explicit and non-explicit strategies) to help people understand the implications, risks, and goals of robots' behaviours and to mitigate the perception of the failures. In this session, we also want to explore strategies both to prevent robots from exhibiting unintended behaviours, and to mitigate the effects of robot errors on human-robot interaction. The topics covered in this special session are in line with the main theme of the conference (i.e., “Design New Bridge for H-R-I”). In particular, we want to start by fostering the [R] Robotic Recovery and Reconnection to allow [I] Intelligent Interface and Interaction for the [H] Human Health, Happiness and Hope. Notably, accepted topics include, but are not limited to: - Explainable AI (XAI) in HRI - Multi-modal situation awareness and spatial cognition - Social intelligence for robots in interactive and non-interactive tasks - Verifications Methods for autonomous agents - Legibility, Predictability and Transparency in HRI - Cognitive robotics - Deception in HRI - Robot cheating in HRI - Theory of Mind, Mental models in HRI - Robot etiquette - Modelling Trust and Acceptance in HRI Important Dates All dates are in UTC Time Standard Initial Paper Submission Deadline: March 17, 2023 Notification of Acceptance: May 26, 2023 Final Paper Submission: June 30, 2023 How to submit Authors should submit their papers electronically in PDF format via the Papercept submission site. For the initial submission, a manuscript can be of 6-8 pages including references. For the final submission, a manuscript should be of 6 pages, With 2 additional pages allowed with an extra charge (TBA). All papers are reviewed using a single-blind review process. All papers are reviewed using a single-blind review process: authors declare their names and affiliations in the manuscript for the reviewers to see, but reviewers do not know each other's identities, nor do the authors receive information about who has reviewed their manuscript. Authors should use the templates provided by the electronic submission system. The templates for US Letter format paper should be used. Please use the following templates: Templates: LaTeX <https://ras.papercept.net/conferences/support/tex.php> or MSWord <https://ras.papercept.net/conferences/support/word.php> Papers should be submitted on http://ras.papercept.net/ under the "Submit a contribution to RO-MAN 2023", by selecting special session paper, and use the code: u3f1h Do not forget the code and to select the special session paper. Organisers Dr. Alessandra Rossi - University of Naples Federico II, Italy - alessandra.rossi(a)unina.it Kheng Lee Koay - University of Hertfordshire, UK - k.l.koay(a)herts.ac.uk Kerstin Sophie Haring - University of Denver, USA - b.d.researcher(a)ieee.org For further information, please do not hesitate to contact us!

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[call-for-participation] ICRA2023 Preparation and dish Up of an English Breakfast with Robots (PUB.R) competition
by Francesco Del Duchetto 14 Feb '23

14 Feb '23

======================================================= **** Call for Participation ***** ICRA2023 Preparation and dish Up of an English Breakfast with Robots (PUB.R) competition May 29 to June 2, 2023 (In-person: Excel London, UK) https://lcas.lincoln.ac.uk/wp/pubr ======================================================= Within the framework of the 2023 edition of the ICRA conference, we invite teams to test the design and control of their robots in the Preparation and dish Up of an English Breakfast with Robots (PUB.R) competition. The competition will showcase the last advancements in food handling and preparation by challenging traditional robotics domains, including navigation, manipulation, and scene understanding, but also proposing novel scientific challenges, such as robotic food tasting, communication, creativity, and art. Teams may comprise any combination of students, academic members, private partners, government institutions, etc., without restriction on the number of participants per team. One member of the team must be elected as Team Leader (TL) and will act as a contact point for the team. The PUB.R competition comprises three different scenarios: Shopping, Cooking, and Serving – each challenging different research aspects integrated into a single overarching goal. In the first scenario (Shopping), a subset of spices and sauces should be collected from a pantry area, and brought to the cooking station to prepare the desired recipe. In the second scenario (Cooking), the food has to be prepared, cooked and arranged on the plate by taking into consideration taste and appearance of the final dish. In the last scenario (Serving), a robot has to serve the meal to a table for judging preparation and plate arrangement, it has to explain the dish, and answer simple questions. For all scenarios, teams are invited to bring their own robot. However, a Tiago robot and a Baxter will be provided if requested. Each scenario is split down into tasks: points are awarded by executing partially or completely each task. The team earning the maximum number of points will be considered the winner of the PUB.R Competition 2023. *** Competition Website Additional information about the competition, rules and registration are available at https://lcas.lincoln.ac.uk/wp/pubr *** Important Dates April 14, 2023 Deadline for submitting application and qualification material April 15, 2023 Acceptance notification April 21, 2023 Deadline for accepted teams to confirm their participation May 30-June 2, 2023 Competition *** Organisers University of Lincoln: - Marcello Calisti, Associate Professor in Agri-Robotics, Lincoln Institute for Agri-Food Technology - Francesco Del Duchetto, Lecturer in Robotics and Autonomous Systems, Lincoln Centre for Autonomous Systems - Marc Hanheide, Professor of Intelligent Robotics & Interactive Systems, Lincoln Centre for Autonomous Systems - Elizabeth Sklar, Professor in Agri-Robotics, Lincoln Institute for Agri-Food Technology University of Cambridge: - Fulvio Forni, Associate Professor in Engineering, Department of Engineering - Fumiya Iida, Professor of Robotics, Department of Engineering *** Contacts For any additional request or information, please contact: Marcello Calisti mcalisti(a)lincoln.ac.uk or Francesco Del Duchetto fdelduchetto(a)lincoln.ac.uk. We look forward to your unique and exceptional solutions and seeing your robots showcase their skills at ICRA!

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[@Home2023-Qualification] (Tinker)
by 秦馨瑶 11 Feb '23

11 Feb '23

Dear Sir: Sorry that I have some trouble when sending our email to the committee through rc-home-oc(a)lists.robocup.org.I was always informed that my email was being held because I was not in the member list. I wonder if you could please help me submit our information to the committee. Team Name: Tinker League: OPL Country: China Affiliation: Tsinghua University Team Leader Name: Xinyao Qin Contact information (E-mail): qinxy20(a)mails.tsinghua.edu.cn Rank in local tournaments:9 Link to a team video: https://cloud.tsinghua.edu.cn/d/1ae2b3d968ac4fdea094/ Link to a team web site devoted to their efforts: 2022.tinker.tsinghua-furoc.com Our TDP is attached to the email based on the official template. Because China has adjusted the policy of epidemics, we ensure that we can go to the offline competition this year. Looking forward to your reply! Thank you!

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[@Home] 2023 Rulebook Draft
by Mauricio Matamoros 21 Jan '23

21 Jan '23

Dear all, Please find attached the latest draft of the 2023 RoboCup@Home Rulebook. The rulebook is also available in the @Home website <https://athome.robocup.org/rules/> and here <https://athome.robocup.org/wp-content/uploads/2023_rulebook_draft.pdf>. The format of the competition has changed from previous years. During Stage I competitors will test their robots in all 5 predefined tests. The top 50% will advance to Stage II and be challenged with 4 tests. The top performers will advance to the finals where the victor will be elected. Unlike former years, all tests have a fixed schedule and teams have a single try with a restart. With kind regards, and looking forward to see you give your best in the arena, Mauricio Matamoros In behalf of the RoboCup@Home TC

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[@Home] 2023 Rulebook Draft
by Mauricio Matamoros 21 Jan '23

21 Jan '23

Dear all, Please find attached the latest draft of the 2023 RoboCup@Home Rulebook. The rulebook is also available in the @Home website <https://athome.robocup.org/rules/> and here <https://athome.robocup.org/wp-content/uploads/2023_rulebook_draft.pdf>. The format of the competition has changed from previous years. During Stage I competitors will test their robots in all 5 predefined tests. The top 50% will advance to Stage II and be challenged with 4 tests. The top performers will advance to the finals where the victor will be elected. Unlike former years, all tests have a fixed schedule and teams have a single try with a restart. With kind regards, and looking forward to see you give your best in the arena, Mauricio Matamoros In behalf of the RoboCup@Home TC

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Rulebook changes 2023
by Dooren, Peter van 21 Jan '23

21 Jan '23

Dear Robocup teams, The TC has been in discussion for a few months now on the rulebook for Robocup 2023. We have decided to change the format of the competition. In previous years teams were allowed to choose which challenges they participated in in a given timeslot. This year we will revert to the format of 2017 where we have set challenges in each timeslot. This means some challenges will no longer be part of the league. We understand that this is a major change so below we will provide our reasoning. Having teams choose their own challenges meant that teams could focus on their own strengths. However over the past couple of years we noticed some drawbacks to this format as well. Teams would choose the challenges where it was easiest to score points and challenges that were difficult but very scientifically interesting would not be chosen as they were too risky. Furthermore it became hard to compare the performance of teams as extra emphasis had to be placed on making sure the points that could be scored had to be ‘balanced’ across challenges. This was already a difficult task but especially when teams can choose their challenges it makes the competition a game of ‘who can score the most points’ rather than ‘whose robot is the best’. With the new format we hope to see teams participate in the same challenges. This makes it easier to align “scoring points” and “the robot being the best”, allowing teams to focus on making the best robot rather than what scores the most points. The challenges that will be part of the Robocup 2023 tournament: 1. Carry my luggage 2. Receptionist 3. Storing groceries 4. Serve breakfast 5. GPSR 6. Clean the table 7. Restaurant 8. Stickler for the rules 9. EGPSR The TC may make some more minor changes to these challenges and the final rulebook will be published on March 31st. Kind regards, the Technical Commission

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[@Home2022] SECOND Call for Participation
by Mauricio Matamoros 14 Jan '23

14 Jan '23

Online version: https://athome.robocup.org/2023-cfp2-all/ Apologies for duplicates ------------------------------------------------------------------------ *Second 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, second term. Important dates: Jan. 9, 2023 Publication of the Second Call for Participation Feb. 12, 2023 Deadline for submission of qualification material. (Team Description Paper, Team Video, Team Website). Mar. 12, 2023 Qualification announcement The qualification procedure consists of a single step: Step 1) 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. * Emails with attachments over 8MB bounce automatically. *IMPORTANT:* Teams that didn't obtain qualification during the first CFP are allowed to submit their improved materials, addressing the comments from the reviewers. /***** Deadline: Sunday, February 12, 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. 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 must use the standard robot in their Team Video. *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 Second Call for Participation, all open participation slots will be assigned. 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 teams meeting the selection criterion will qualify for participation. The number of open participation slots varies per league with a saturation number of 12 teams per league 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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[@Home2022] SECOND Call for Participation
by Mauricio Matamoros 12 Jan '23

12 Jan '23

Online Version: https://athome.robocup.org/2023-cfp2-all/ Apologies for duplicates. -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- Second 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 condi- tions, Object Manipulation, Adaptive Behaviors, Behavior Integra- tion, Ambient Intelligence, Standardization and System Integration. -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- This page describes the preregistration and qualification procedure for RoboCup@Home 2023, second term. Important dates: Jan. 9, 2023 Publication of the Second Call for Participation Feb. 12, 2023 Deadline for submission of qualification material. (Team Description Paper, Team Video, Team Website). Mar. 12, 2023 Qualification announcement The qualification procedure consists of a single step: Step 1) 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: The Team Description Paper (TDP) shall be attached to the email and be based on the official template. Please mind the 8MB limit of the mailing list. Teams are allowed to provide an alternate download link to their hi-quality TDP. 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. — Emails with attachments over 8MB bounce automatically. IMPORTANT: Teams that didn’t obtain qualification during the first CFP are allowed to submit their improved materials, addressing the comments from the reviewers. **** Deadline: Sunday, February 12, 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. Is strongly advised to show at least one Stage 2 test of the current or last year’s rulebook. Remarks: — The task executed 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. If any other languages are used, 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” — Standard Platforms Only: Teams must use the standard robot in their Team Video. Copyright note:When sending videos for qualification, teams implicit- ly grant permission to RoboCup @Home and the RoboCup Federation to copy, modify, distribute, upload, publish, and use the multimedia ma- terial 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 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. 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 8 pages automatically voids 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 Second Call for Participation, all open participation slots will be assigned. 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 teams meeting the selection criterion will qualify for participation. The number of open participation slots varies per league with a saturation number of 12 teams per league 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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[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 05 Aug '22

05 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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[CFP] IROS 2022 Special Session on Computational Advances in Human-Robot Interaction
by Zhao Han 24 Feb '22

24 Feb '22

IROS 2022 Special Session on Computational Advances in Human-Robot Interaction https://ai-hri.github.io/2022-IROS-SS/ Note: All manuscripts will undergo the same peer review and decision process as all other IROS2022 regular papers and, if accepted, will be published in the proceedings. The goal of this special session is for the groups of researchers at the intersection of AI and HRI to have a dedicated session to meet and facilitate a collaborative forum for discussion of current efforts in robotic and AI systems, and especially conducting interdisciplinary research in this community. The overarching themes of the contributing papers are the technological advances that improve humans’ experience and interactions with robots. As robots increasingly enter our society and encounter humans, the human element is important to consider when developing robot technologies. Through this special session, we will focus on technical research being done in the field of interactive robotics. Topics including but not limited to Artificial intelligence, robot learning, collaborative manipulation, social navigation, human intent modeling, social robotics, shared autonomy, linguistic robotics, robot ethics, inclusive robotics, assistive robotics, explainable AI, trust in robotics Submission Process As is the case for regular papers, the submission deadline for special session papers is March 1, 2022. The submission can be either a RA-L with IROS option paper or an IROS only paper. After your special session paper is submitted, please send your submission ID to the principal special session organizers: Zhao Han <zhaohan(a)mines.edu>, Shelly Bagchi <shelly.bagchi(a)nist.gov>, Daniel Hernández García <d.hernandez_garcia(a)hw.ac.uk>. All manuscripts will undergo the same peer review and decision process as all other IROS2022 regular papers and, if accepted, will be published in the proceedings. The submission details are the same as the IROS 2022 submission process<https://iros2022.org/call-for-papers/>. Organizers * Zhao Han <zhaohan(a)mines.edu>, Colorado School of Mines, USA * Shelly Bagchi <shelly.bagchi(a)nist.gov>, National Institute of Standards and Technology, USA * Daniel Hernández García <d.hernandez_garcia(a)hw.ac.uk>, Heriot-Watt University, UK * Jason R. Wilson <jrw(a)fandm.edu>, Franklin & Marshall College, USA * Reuth Mirsky <reuthde(a)gmail.com>, Bar-Ilan University, Israel * Megan Zimmerman <megan.zimmerman(a)nist.gov>, National Institute of Standards and Technology, USA --- Zhao Han, Ph.D. (he/him) Post-Doctoral Fellow, Computer Science, Brown Hall, 280M Colorado School of Mines, Golden, CO 80401, USA zhaohanphd.com<https://zhaohanphd.com/> | @hanzhao<https://twitter.com/hanzhao> | LinkedIn<https://www.linkedin.com/in/zhaohan-robotics/>

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[CFP] IROS 2022 Special Session on Computational Advances in Human-Robot Interaction
by Zhao Han 14 Feb '22

14 Feb '22

IROS 2022 Special Session on Computational Advances in Human-Robot Interaction Note: All manuscripts will undergo the same peer review and decision process as all other IROS2022 regular papers and, if accepted, will be published in the proceedings. The goal of this special session is for the groups of researchers at the intersection of AI and HRI to have a dedicated session to meet and facilitate a collaborative forum for discussion of current efforts in robotic and AI systems, and especially conducting interdisciplinary research in this community. The overarching themes of the contributing papers are the technological advances that improve humans’ experience and interactions with robots. As robots increasingly enter our society and encounter humans, the human element is important to consider when developing robot technologies. Through this special session, we will focus on technical research being done in the field of interactive robotics. Topics including but not limited to Artificial intelligence, robot learning, collaborative manipulation, social navigation, human intent modeling, social robotics, shared autonomy, linguistic robotics, robot ethics, inclusive robotics, assistive robotics, explainable AI, trust in robotics Submission Process As is the case for regular papers, the submission deadline for special session papers is March 1, 2022. The submission can be either a RA-L with IROS option paper or an IROS only paper. After your special session paper is submitted, please send your submission ID to the principal special session organizers: Zhao Han <zhaohan(a)mines.edu>, Shelly Bagchi <shelly.bagchi(a)nist.gov>, Daniel Hernández García <d.hernandez_garcia(a)hw.ac.uk>. All manuscripts will undergo the same peer review and decision process as all other IROS2022 regular papers and, if accepted, will be published in the proceedings. The submission details are the same as the IROS 2022 submission process<https://iros2022.org/call-for-papers/>. Organizers * Zhao Han <zhaohan(a)mines.edu>, Colorado School of Mines, USA * Shelly Bagchi <shelly.bagchi(a)nist.gov>, National Institute of Standards and Technology, USA * Daniel Hernández García <d.hernandez_garcia(a)hw.ac.uk>, Heriot-Watt University, UK * Jason R. Wilson <jrw(a)fandm.edu>, Franklin & Marshall College, USA * Reuth Mirsky <reuthde(a)gmail.com>, Bar-Ilan University, Israel * Megan Zimmerman <megan.zimmerman(a)nist.gov>, National Institute of Standards and Technology, USA

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[CFP] 8th International Workshop on Artificial Intelligence and Cognition (AIC 2022), Joint with SweCog 2022
by Alessandro Saffiotti 21 Jan '22

21 Jan '22

CALL FOR PAPERS ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ AIC 2022: 8th International Workshop on Artificial Intelligence and Cognition Joint with SweCog 2022: the conference of the Swedish Cognitive Science Society ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Örebro University, Örebro, Sweden 15-17 June 2022 Submission deadline: 18th March 2022 Workshop website: https://aic20.aass.oru.se About AIC 2022 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ AIC 2022 is the 8th international appointment of the International Workshop Series AIC on "Artificial Intelligence and Cognition". The AIC series started in 2013, stemming from the need of creating an international scientific forum for the discussion and the presentation of the theoretical and applied research developments in the field of cognitively inspired Artificial Intelligence. In this spirit, the AIC 2022 workshop aims at putting together researchers coming from different domains (e.g., artificial intelligence, cognitive science, computer science, philosophy, social sciences, etc.) working on the interdisciplinary field of cognitively inspired artificial systems. AIC 2022 will take place in the Centre for Applied Autonomous Sensor Systems (AASS) at Örebro University, Sweden, 15-17 June 2022, joint with SweCog 2022, the conference of the Swedish Cognitive Science Society. Submission Guidelines ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ All submissions must be written in English and must be formatted according to the information for LNCS Authors. All papers must present original work that is not currently under review. We welcome the following types of contributions: + Full research papers (8 to 14 pages) + Short research papers (4 to 7 pages) + Extended abstracts of recently published journal papers (1 to 2 pages) Submission link: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=aic20200 Important Dates ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ + Full research papers: ++ March 18th, 2022: Paper submission ++ April 25th, 2022: Notification of acceptance + Short papers or extended abstracts: ++ April 29th, 2022: Paper submission ++ May 9th, 2022: Notification of acceptance List of Topics ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ + Knowledge Representation and Cognition (e.g. Neural Networks models, Conceptual Spaces, Ontologies and representation of common sense) + Cognitive Architectures (e.g. SOAR, ACT-R) and Cognitive modelling for Artificial Systems + B.I.C.A. (Biologically Inspired Cognitive Architectures) and systems + Cognitive Robotics + Human-Robot Interaction + Evaluation of cognitively driven AI systems compared with other AI approaches + Cognition and Semantic Web + Methodological open questions on AI and Cognition + Automated reasoning: deductive, probabilistic, diagnostic, causal and analogical inference + Historical and theoretical relation among Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence + Knowledge discovery and acquisition + Modelling of human learning and knowledge acquisition in complex domains + Computational Linguistics, Natural Language Processing & Understanding + Logic and Reasoning + Evolutionary Computation + Spatial Cognition and Computation + Cognitively inspired Machine Learning + Computational Theories of Learning + Computational Creativity + Cognitive and the Moving Imag + Computational Models of Narrative Understanding (Visuo-Auditory Narrativity, Perception, Cognitive Film Studies) + Decision Support Systems Venue ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The conference is supposed to be held physically in Örebro University with the opportunity to attend online. However, this may change due to the Covid-19 restrictions. Organizing committee ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ + Alessandro Saffiotti, Örebro University, Sweden + Amy Loutfi, Örebro University, Sweden + Antonio Lieto, University of Turin, Italy + Hadi Banaee, Örebro University, Sweden Contact ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ More information can be found on the workshop website: https://aic20.aass.oru.se All questions about submissions should be emailed to: hadi.banaee(a)oru.se SweCog website: http://www.swecog.se Twitter: https://twitter.com/aic_swecog

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[RoboCup 2022 Thailand] RoboCup Participation Survey
by fengkpsc 11 Jan '22

11 Jan '22

[Sorry for multiple emails] Dear AT-Home-Community, As the RoboCup 2022 planning is underway, On the behalf of RoboCup 2022 Thailand Organizing Team, I would like to ask all teams to fill out the following participation survey. RoboCup Participation Survey https://forms.gle/FKJMMRaqWK6rSPLq9 Deadline for submission is January 30th. Thank you, KANJANAPAN LOC -- Asst.Prof.Dr. Kanjanapan Sukvichai Deputy Head of the integrated innovation and artificial intelligence center Dept. of Electrical Engineering Kasetsart University

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Participation Survey for RoboCup 2022, Bangkok, Thailand
by fengkpsc 03 Jan '22

03 Jan '22

Happy new year RoboCuppers! On the behalf of RoboCup 2022 Thailand Organizing Team, I would like to take a survey for preparing RoboCup. Please help us response to the questions and give us feedbacks for your concern about RoboCup 2022 in Bangkok. Here is the survey link: https://forms.gle/GGWps2aAKaEXT7289 Thank you, KANJANAPAN -- Asst.Prof.Dr. Kanjanapan Sukvichai Deputy Head of the integrated innovation and artificial intelligence center Dept. of Electrical Engineering Kasetsart University

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[@Home2022] First Call for Participation (Deadline extended)
by Mauricio Matamoros 29 Nov '21

29 Nov '21

Online version: https://athome.robocup.org/2022-cfp1-all/ ========================================================================= *First Call for Participation* RoboCup@Home 2022 (DSPL · OPL · SSPL) Summer 2022 (Bangkok, Thailand) 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 2022. Important dates: Oct. 31, 2021 Publication of the Call for Participation *Dec. 12, 2021* *EXTENDED Deadline for submission of qualification material.* *(Team Description Paper, Team Video, Team Website).* Jan. 10, 2022 Qualification announcement Jan. 30, 2022 Deadline for Participation Confirmation The qualification procedure consists of the following steps: Step 1) Qualification Material Submission (mandatory) The team ***MUST*** send an email to the Organizing Committee (oc[at] robocupathome.org) to participate in the qualification process for the RoboCup@Home 2022 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: [@Home2022-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 EXTENDED: Sunday, Dec. 12, 2021 23:59 GMT ****** Step 2) Participation confirmation (mandatory) All qualified teams ***MUST*** send an email to the Organizing Committee (oc[at]robocupathome.org) to confirm (or cancel) their participation in the RoboCup@Home 2022 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: [@Home2022-Confirmation] (YourTeamName) *Remark: *Qualified teams who miss the participation confirmation will be disqualified automatically and the participation slots freed for the Second Call for Participation. ***** Deadline: Sunday, Jan. 30, 2022 23:59 GMT ****** Step 3) Robot Acquisition (Standard Platform Leagues): Qualified Teams must contact the supplier as soon as the Qualification Notification arrives to start the acquisition procedure. Teams selected to receive Standard-Platform robots have to make an agreement with the supplier in compliance with the supplier’s instructions. The suppliers are not allowed to sell, export, lease and/or ship their products to natural or legal persons and to entities and countries which are subject to international sanctions or prohibitions. Since Selection Committee cannot answer this issue, please ask the supplier directly. *Remark:* Failing to acquire a Standard-Platform will void the qualification of the SSPL/DSPL. It won’t not possible for SSPL/DSPL to change to OPL. 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 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. However, the use of the standard robot is advised. *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 2020 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 Bangkok, The 2022 RoboCup@Home Organizing and Technical Committees

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AtHome2022 - First Call for Participation
by Mauricio Matamoros 31 Oct '21

31 Oct '21

Online version: https://athome.robocup.org/2022-cfp1-all/ ==================================================================== First Call for Participation RoboCup@Home 2022 (DSPL · OPL · SSPL) Summer 2022 (Bangkok, Thailand) 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 2022. Important dates: Oct. 31, 2021 Publication of the Call for Participation Nov. 28, 2021 Deadline for submission of qualification material. (Team Description Paper, Team Video, Team Website). Jan. 10, 2022 Qualification announcement Jan. 30, 2022 Deadline for Participation Confirmation The qualification procedure consists of the following steps: ****Step 1) Qualification Material Submission (mandatory)**** The team ***MUST*** send an email to the Organizing Committee (oc [at]robocupathome.org) to participate in the qualification process for the RoboCup@Home 2022 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: [@Home2022-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. 28, 2021 23:59 GMT ***** ****Step 2) Participation confirmation (mandatory)**** All qualified teams ***MUST*** send an email to the Organizing Committee (oc[at]robocupathome.org) to confirm (or cancel) their participation in the RoboCup@Home 2022 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: [@Home2022-Confirmation] (YourTeamName) Remark: Qualified teams who miss the participation confirmation will be disqualified automatically and the participation slots freed for the Second Call for Participation. **** Deadline: Sunday, Jan. 30, 2022 23:59 GMT ***** ****Step 3) Robot Acquisition (Standard Platform Leagues):**** Qualified Teams must contact the supplier as soon as the Qualification Notification arrives to start the acquisition procedure. Teams selected to receive Standard-Platform robots have to make an agreement with the supplier in compliance with the supplier’s instructions. The suppliers are not allowed to sell, export, lease and/or ship their products to natural or legal persons and to entities and countries which are subject to international sanctions or prohibitions. Since Selection Committee cannot answer this issue, please ask the supplier directly. Remark: Failing to acquire a Standard-Platform will void the qualification of the SSPL/DSPL. It won’t not possible for SSPL/DSPL to change to OPL. ****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 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” · Standard Platforms Only: Teams are allowed to use any robot in their Team Video. However, the use of the standard robot is advised. 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 2020 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 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. 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 RoboCups · 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 Bangkok, The 2022 RoboCup@Home Organizing and Technical Committees

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KR 2021: Final Call for Participation (Online event, free registration until Friday, October 15)
by Thanh Dinh 13 Oct '21

13 Oct '21

FINAL CALL FOR PARTICIPATION 18th International Conference on Principles of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning (KR 2021) November 3-12, 2021 - Virtual https://kr2021.kbsg.rwth-aachen.de/ *** Registration is free but mandatory (deadline: October 15, 2021) *** Knowledge Representation and Reasoning (KR) is a well-established and lively field of research. In KR, a fundamental assumption is that an agent's knowledge is explicitly represented in a declarative form, suitable for processing by dedicated reasoning engines. This assumption, that much of what an agent deals with is knowledge-based, is common in many modern intelligent systems. Consequently, KR has contributed to the theory and practice of various areas in AI, including automated planning and natural language understanding, and to fields beyond AI, including databases, verification, software engineering, and robotics. In recent years, KR has contributed also to new and emerging fields, including the semantic web, computational biology, cyber security, and the development of software agents. The KR conference series is the leading forum for timely in-depth presentation of progress in the theory and principles underlying the representation and computational management of knowledge. CONFERENCE FORMAT AND REGISTRATION KR 2021 will be organized as a virtual conference and welcomes all researchers interested in KR to participate! We are happy to announce that participation is *free*. The deadline for registering is October 15, 2021. Information about how to register for the main conference and associated events can be found at: https://kr2021.kbsg.rwth-aachen.de/page/registration There will be also be a limited-capacity *live gathering* in Rome to watch the conference and exchange with other participants. For details, consult: https://kr2021.kbsg.rwth-aachen.de/page/live_gathering_in_rome The list of papers accepted at the main conference and the Doctoral Consortium can also be found on the conference webpage. INVITED TALKS Martin Grohe (RWTH Aachen University, Germany) > The Logic of Graph Neural Networks Jochen Renz (Australian National University, Australia) > Spatial and Physical Reasoning: From Angry Birds to Open World AI Uli Sattler (University of Manchester, UK) > Description Logic and OWL: A Tale of Discoveries, Design Choices, Challenges, and Lessons Learnt (Great Moments in KR) Joshua Tenenbaum (MIT, USA) > Reverse Engineering Human Cognitive Development: What Do We Start With, and How Do We Learn The Rest? Francesca Toni (Imperial College, UK) > The Interactionist View of Reasoning for Explainable AI TRACKS & SPECIAL SESSIONS * Applications and Systems Track * Recent Published Research Track * Special Session: KR and Machine Learning * Special Session: KR and Robotics * Special Session: Diversity and Inclusion WORKSHOPS * Explainable Logic-Based Knowledge Representation (XLoKR) * Computational Machine Ethics (CME) * Knowledge Representation for Hybrid and Compositional AI (KRHCAI) * Ontology Uses and Contribution to Artificial Intelligence (OnUCAI) * Second-Order Quantifier Elimination and Related Topics (SOQE) * Semantics-Powered Health Data Analytics (SEPDA) TUTORIALS * Answer Set Programming: From Theory to Practice by Roland Kaminski, Javier Romero, Torsten Schaub & Philipp Wanko * Belief Revision and Judgment Aggregation in Ontologies by Jake Chandler and Richard Booth * Completeness, Recall, and Negation in Open-World Knowledge Bases by Simon Razniewski, Hiba Arnaout, Shrestha Ghosh & Fabian M. Suchanek * Complex Event Recognition and Forecasting by Elias Alevizos and Alexander Artikis * KR&R Meets Cyber-Physical Systems: Formalization, Behavior, Trustworthiness by Marcello Balduccini, Edward Griffor & Tran Cao Son * Planning with multi-agent, flexible, temporal, epistemic & contingent (MAFTEC) aspects by Aurélie Beynier, Frédéric Maris & Francois Schwarzentruber * Proof-Theoretic Approaches to Logical Argumentation by Ofer Arieli & Christian Strasser * Solving equations in modal and description logics by Philippe Balbiani CO-LOCATED EVENTS * NMR 2021 (20th International Workshop on Non-Monotonic Reasoning) CONFERENCE CHAIRS General: * Esra Erdem (Sabanci University, Turkey) Program: * Meghyn Bienvenu (CNRS & University of Bordeaux, France) * Gerhard Lakemeyer (RWTH Aachen University, Germany) Applications and Systems Track: * Martin Gebser (University of Klagenfurt, Austria) * Ulrike Sattler (University of Manchester, UK) Recently Published Research Track: * Vladimir Lifschitz (University of Texas at Austin, USA) * Pierre Marquis (Artois University & Institut Universitaire de France, France) Special Session on KR & Machine Learning: * Vaishak Belle (University of Edinburgh, UK) * Luc de Raedt (KU Leuven, Belgium) Special Session on KR & Robotics: * Alessandro Saffioti (University of Örebro, Sweden) * Mary-Anne Williams (University of Technology Sydney, Australia) Workshop and Tutorials: * Markus Kroetzsch (TU Dresden, Germany) * Yongmei Liu (Sun Yat-sen University, China) Doctoral Consortium: * Jens Classen (Simon Fraser University) * Magdalena Ortiz (TU Vienna, Austria) Local Organization: * Giuseppe De Giacomo (Sapienza University, Italy) * Son Tran (New Mexico State University, USA) * Long Tran-Thanh (University of Warwick, UK) * Thanh Van Dinh (East Asia University of Technology, Vietnam) Virtual Conference Arrangements: * Stefan Borgwardt (TU Dresden, Germany) * Marco Console (Sapienza University Italy) * Long Tran-Thanh (University of Warwick, UK) Sponsorship: * Kuldeep S. Meel (NUS, Singapore) * Zeynep G. Saribatur (TU Wien, Austria) Publicity: * Thanh Van Dinh (East Asia University of Technology, Vietnam) * Paolo Felli (Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy) Diversity and Inclusion: * Magdalena Ortiz (TU Vienna, Austria) * Maria Vanina Martinez (Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina) * Marco Maratea (University of Genova, Italy)

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KR 2021: Call for Participation (Deadline to register: October 15)
by Thanh Dinh 27 Sep '21

27 Sep '21

CALL FOR PARTICIPATION 18th International Conference on Principles of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning (KR 2021) November 3-12, 2021 - Virtual https://kr2021.kbsg.rwth-aachen.de/ *** Registration is free but mandatory (deadline: October 15, 2021) *** Knowledge Representation and Reasoning (KR) is a well-established and lively field of research. In KR, a fundamental assumption is that an agent's knowledge is explicitly represented in a declarative form, suitable for processing by dedicated reasoning engines. This assumption, that much of what an agent deals with is knowledge-based, is common in many modern intelligent systems. Consequently, KR has contributed to the theory and practice of various areas in AI, including automated planning and natural language understanding, and to fields beyond AI, including databases, verification, software engineering, and robotics. In recent years, KR has contributed also to new and emerging fields, including the semantic web, computational biology, cyber security, and the development of software agents. The KR conference series is the leading forum for timely in-depth presentation of progress in the theory and principles underlying the representation and computational management of knowledge. CONFERENCE FORMAT AND REGISTRATION KR 2021 will be organized as a virtual conference and welcomes all researchers interested in KR to participate! We are happy to announce that participation is *free*. The deadline for registering is October 15, 2021. Information about how to register for the main conference and associated events can be found at: https://kr2021.kbsg.rwth-aachen.de/page/registration There will be also be a limited-capacity *live gathering* in Rome to watch the conference and exchange with other participants. For details, consult: https://kr2021.kbsg.rwth-aachen.de/page/live_gathering_in_rome The list of papers accepted at the main conference and the Doctoral Consortium can also be found on the conference webpage. INVITED SPEAKERS * Martin Grohe (RWTH Aachen University, Germany) * Jochen Renz (Australian National University, Australia) * Uli Sattler (University of Manchester, UK) * Joshua Tenenbaum (MIT, USA) * Francesca Toni (Imperial College, UK) TRACKS & SPECIAL SESSIONS * Applications and Systems Track * Recent Published Research Track * Special Session: KR and Machine Learning * Special Session: KR and Robotics * Special Session: Diversity and Inclusion WORKSHOPS * Explainable Logic-Based Knowledge Representation (XLoKR) * Computational Machine Ethics (CME) * Knowledge Representation for Hybrid and Compositional AI (KRHCAI) * Ontology Uses and Contribution to Artificial Intelligence (OnUCAI) * Second-Order Quantifier Elimination and Related Topics (SOQE) * Semantics-Powered Health Data Analytics (SEPDA) TUTORIALS * Answer Set Programming: From Theory to Practice by Roland Kaminski, Javier Romero, Torsten Schaub & Philipp Wanko * Belief Revision and Judgment Aggregation in Ontologies by Jake Chandler and Richard Booth * Completeness, Recall, and Negation in Open-World Knowledge Bases by Simon Razniewski, Hiba Arnaout, Shrestha Ghosh & Fabian M. Suchanek * Complex Event Recognition and Forecasting by Elias Alevizos and Alexander Artikis * KR&R Meets Cyber-Physical Systems: Formalization, Behavior, Trustworthiness by Marcello Balduccini, Edward Griffor & Tran Cao Son * Planning with multi-agent, flexible, temporal, epistemic & contingent (MAFTEC) aspects by Aurélie Beynier, Frédéric Maris & Francois Schwarzentruber * Proof-Theoretic Approaches to Logical Argumentation by Ofer Arieli & Christian Strasser * Solving equations in modal and description logics by Philippe Balbiani CO-LOCATED EVENTS * NMR 2021 (20th International Workshop on Non-Monotonic Reasoning) CONFERENCE CHAIRS General: * Esra Erdem (Sabanci University, Turkey) Program: * Meghyn Bienvenu (CNRS & University of Bordeaux, France) * Gerhard Lakemeyer (RWTH Aachen University, Germany) Applications and Systems Track: * Martin Gebser (University of Klagenfurt, Austria) * Ulrike Sattler (University of Manchester, UK) Recently Published Research Track: * Vladimir Lifschitz (University of Texas at Austin, USA) * Pierre Marquis (Artois University & Institut Universitaire de France, France) Special Session on KR & Machine Learning: * Vaishak Belle (University of Edinburgh, UK) * Luc de Raedt (KU Leuven, Belgium) Special Session on KR & Robotics: * Alessandro Saffioti (University of Örebro, Sweden) * Mary-Anne Williams (University of Technology Sydney, Australia) Workshop and Tutorials: * Markus Kroetzsch (TU Dresden, Germany) * Yongmei Liu (Sun Yat-sen University, China) Doctoral Consortium: * Jens Classen (Simon Fraser University) * Magdalena Ortiz (TU Vienna, Austria) Local Organization: * Giuseppe De Giacomo (Sapienza University, Italy) * Son Tran (New Mexico State University, USA) * Long Tran-Thanh (University of Warwick, UK) * Thanh Van Dinh (East Asia University of Technology, Vietnam) Virtual Conference Arrangements: * Stefan Borgwardt (TU Dresden, Germany) * Marco Console (Sapienza University Italy) * Long Tran-Thanh (University of Warwick, UK) Sponsorship: * Kuldeep S. Meel (NUS, Singapore) * Zeynep G. Saribatur (TU Wien, Austria) Publicity: * Thanh Van Dinh (East Asia University of Technology, Vietnam) * Paolo Felli (Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy) Diversity and Inclusion: * Magdalena Ortiz (TU Vienna, Austria) * Maria Vanina Martinez (Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina) * Marco Maratea (University of Genova, Italy)

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[CFP] AI LA Panel on “HRI in Healthcare”
by Ross Mead 26 Sep '21

26 Sep '21

Call for Participation: AI LA Panel on “HRI in Healthcare” *********************************************************************** AI LA Special Interest Group: Human-Robot Interaction in Healthcare September 27, 2021 @ 7pm-8pm Pacific (Virtual) https://ailacommunity.notion.site/Special-Interest-Group-Public-24345a418ce… *********************************************************************** *** FREE REGISTRATION *** https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZMkfuigrjooGtc0MVCl7EWM5ogCPV8QjJ… *** OVERVIEW *** In this panel, we will discuss the AI-driven technological advances in human-robot interaction (HRI) and their applications in healthcare. Our panelists represent robotics companies paving the way for robots in our everyday lives. How will we unlock the potential of healthcare robots to improve our quality of life? *** PANELISTS *** * Mike Dooley, Co-founder and CEO at Labrador Systems * Jillian Greczek, Senior Software Engineer at Catalia Health * Dr. Stefan Scherer, CTO at Embodied * Moderator: Dr. Ross Mead, Founder and CEO at Semio, and Vice President at AI LA *** CONTACT *** For more information, contact the AI LA Executive Board: * Todd Terrazas, AI LA (todd(a)joinai.la) * Dr. Ross Mead, Semio (ross(a)semio.ai) *** ABOUT *** AI LA is a Los Angeles-based 501(c)(3) non-profit organization with a mission to catalyze innovation through education, conversation, and collaboration. Since 2016, we have facilitated community events related to AI and its applications to education, environmental sustainability, healthcare, life sciences, the ethical and fair use of technology, and more! Learn more at https://joinai.la! -- Ross Mead, PhD Founder and CEO ross(a)semio.ai +1 (618) 696-2600 <https://semio.ai>

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International Semantic Intelligence Conference (ISIC 2022)
by SARIKA JAIN 16 Sep '21

16 Sep '21

Dear Sir/Madam International Semantic Intelligence Conference (ISIC 2022) May 17-19, 2022, Georgia Southern University (Armstrong Campus), Savannah, Georgia, United States Paper Submission: Oct 30, 2021 Web: https://www.ifis.uni-luebeck.de/~groppe/isic/ ********************************************************** ** Publication and Indexing ** All accepted and presented papers will be included in proceedings published in the Springer LNEE series (already approved). Selected papers (extended versions) will be reviewed for possible double publication in SCIE/SCOPUS/WoS indexed journals.. Indexing: ISIC Proceedings in Springer LNEE will be made available to the following indexing services: Scopus, Scimago Journal & Country Rank, and Google Scholar; and will also be submitted to dblp computer science bibliography for inclusion. ** Topics ** Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning; Semantic Web Engineering; Ontology-based Data Access; Explainability and Interpretability; Natural Language Understanding; Multimodal and Multilingual Access; Machine to Machine Communications and Interoperability; Knowledge Extraction and Ontology Learning from the Web; Multimodal and Multilingual Approach to Computing; Computational Paradigms and Computational Intelligence; Intelligent Computing and Applications, Case Studies and Tools; Contributions of Semantic Web Technologies (SWT) to the Society; Cyber-Physical Systems; Knowledge representation and Engineering; Security Issues in Semantic Web; Applications, Opportunities, Challenges; Reasoning and Intelligent Processing (Semantic Search Paradigms, Semantic Web Mining, Semantic Sentiment Analysis, Semantic Web Services, Visualization, Query Answering, Semantic Information Access); Mapping Knowledge bases; Leveraging Artificial Intelligence in Global Epidemics; Human-Computer Interaction; Data Analytics; Social Networks; Distributed and Mobile Systems; Computational Linguistics; Large Scale and Complex Information Management; Any other related topic... ** Tracks ** The submissions are divided into three tracks, namely the Research Track, the Trends and Perspectives Track, and the Applications and Deployment Track. The contributors are advised to choose the track that best suits their work. 1. The Research Track: The Research Track incorporates papers that present novel work contributing significantly to the advancement of Semantic Intelligence. The submissions should list the research gaps and research contributions filling the said gaps. A section comparing the results of the research with existing benchmarks is highly desirable. 2. The Trends and Perspectives Track: The Trends and Perspectives Track explores the state of the art in the mentioned disciplines. 3. The Applications and Deployment Track: The Applications and Deployment Track accepts papers showcasing the latest advancements and applications of semantic intelligence. Once any technology or methodology originates from the research community, its challenges and benefits are explored by its concrete usage in a practical setting. The application of any research in real-world use cases sets the stage for its visibility. The Applications and Deployment Track is exactly for this purpose. This track seeks submission for applied semantic intelligence. The submissions should list the benefits; the presented application reaps from SITs. In addition to the real-world, the Applications and Deployment Track also welcomes Resources such as the vocabularies, datasets, evaluation benchmarks, and software. ** Submission Guidelines ** Submission link: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=isic2022. Submitted papers must follow the guidelines and templates provided by Springer: Springer LNEE Guidelines and Templates: https://www.springer.com/us/authors-editors/conference-proceedings/conferen…. Every paper will be assessed by the track chair and reviewed by at least three program committee members. The review process will be Single-Blind review. Submissions in all tracks must be in English with the following page length (pages of around 400 words each): * Full papers (12-16 pages including references) * Short papers (6-8 pages including references) ** Chairs ** General Chairs: - Sarika Jain, National Institute of Technology, Kurukshetra, Haryana, India - Sven Groppe, University of Lübeck, Germany Organizing Chairs: - Atef Mohamed (Shalan), Allen E. Paulson College of Engineering and Computing, Georgia Southern University, United States - Hossain Shahriar, Associate Professor, Institute for Cybersecurity Workforce Development, Marietta, GA 30060, United States ** Important Dates ** Workshop Proposals: Oct 10, 2021 Workshop Proposals Notifications: Oct 20, 2021 Full length Papers in all tracks of main conference: Oct 30, 2021 Paper notifications in all tracks of main conference: Dec 15, 2021 Workshop papers submission: Dec 30, 2022 Workshop papers notifications: Jan 20, 2022 Main Conference: May 17-19, 2022 ** Previous Editions ** ISIC 2021 has been held successfully in Hybrid mode at Delhi, India during Feb 25-27, 2020. The proceedings of ISIC 2021 are already indexed by Scopus, DBLP, and Google Scholar. ** Contact * If you have any questions, do not hesitate to contact any one of the following along with your contact details and the issue: Sarika Jain, National Institute of Technology, Kurukshetra, Haryana, India, jasarika(a)nitkkr.ac.in. Sven Groppe, University of Lübeck, Germany, groppe(a)ifis.uni-luebeck.de. Atef Mohamed (Shalan), Georgia Southern University, United States, amohamed(a)georgiasouthern.edu. Best Regards Conference Committee - ISIC 2022

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LAST CALL - RoboCup Brazil Open
by Comunicação RoboCup 13 Sep '21

13 Sep '21

Hi teams, Last days to sign up for RoboCup Brazil Open! Do not leave to the last minute! The event will be online, streamed live on our youtube channels. Already registered? Did you check if everyone on the team is registered correctly? If you have any questions, please send it to us by email at organizacao(a)cbrobotica.org ! *Registrations are open for RoboCup Brazil Open* *The event will be virtual, with the same categories of RoboCup Federation* RoboCup Brazil launches the RoboCup Brazil Open, a virtual event with the same categories of the Robocup WorldWide. Registrations are now open for teams from all over the world. All the categories have been adapted and will happen in a fully remote format, using simulators, challenges and submission of articles written by the teams. Our goal is to disseminate the studies and technologies developed by universities in the field of robotics and IA. The event will happen in October 11th-15th, and will be broadcast through lives on the RoboCup Brazil Youtube channel. *Categories:* RoboCup Open Flying Robot Trial League Small Size Soccer Humanoid League Standard Plataform League (SPL) Simulation 2D Simulation 3D RoboCup at@Home IEEE Humanoid Robot Racing (HRR) IEEE Open IEEE Standard Educational Kit (SEK) IEEE Very Small Size Soccer RoboCup Junior Soccer Open RoboCup Junior Rescue Maze Primary RoboCup Junior Rescue Maze RoboCup Junior Rescue Simulation Primary RoboCup Junior Rescue Simulation Open * Registration* To participate, you and your team must register by september 15th, on the website: www.cbrobotica.org . The registration fee is US$ 50 per team. *RoboCup Brasil is a non-profit civil association, organized by volunteer professors and researchers. The association holds the Brazilian Robotics Olympiad, the Brazilian Robotics Competition and the National Robotics Show.-- Patrícia VergaraComunicação RoboCup Brasil(11) 9.8686-4993www.robocup.org.br <http://www.robocup.org.br>*

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CFP: RoboCup Asia-Pacific 2021 (RCAP 2021)
by Asad Norouzi 03 Sep '21

03 Sep '21

*Apologies for duplicate messages* ============== Call for Participation =============== *RoboCup Asia-Pacific 2021 (RCAP 2021)* 25-29 November 2021 https://2021.robocupap.org/eng/participation.html RoboCup Asia-Pacific 2021 Aichi Japan (RCAP 2021) will be held at Aichi Sky Expo (Aichi International Convention & Exhibition Center), November 25-29, 2021. RCAP 2021 will be held in a hybrid ON-SITE and VIRTUAL format. Due to the current uncertainties of Covid-19, ON-SITE competitions will only open to participants from Japan. - ON-SITE Competitions: Participants from Japan. - VIRTUAL Competitions: Participants from all over the world. *LEAGUES:* Virtual Competitions are open to participants from all over the world, with most of the leagues of RoboCup 2021 Worldwide. For details of leagues, please refer to: https://2021.robocupap.org/eng/leagues.html *REGISTRATION:* All teams are required to pre-register through the online form: https://2021.robocupap.org/eng/registration.html *IMPORTANT DATES:* - Deadline for pre-registration (both online and virtual competitions): 30 September 2021 - Announcement of qualified teams: 14 October 2021 - Deadline for registration: 4 November 2021 *REGISTRATION FEES:* The registration fee is waived for all Japanese teams/members. The registration fee for teams to participate in virtual competitions (except teams from Japan): - Major Team Registration Fee: Waived - Major Staff/Students: USD60/person - Junior Team Registration Fee: Waived - Junior Students/Mentors: USD40/person *SYMPOSIUM:* https://2021.robocupap.org/eng/symposium.html *CONTACT:* For inquiries please contact us via the hereunder email addresses: - Aichi Local Organizing Committee (General Enquiries, On-site competitions): - rcap2021(a)intergroup.co.jp - RCAP Office (Registration fees and payments, Virtual competitions): - office(a)robocupap.org For more information please visit our official website at https://2021 .robocupap.org/eng/index.html We look forward to welcoming you to RCAP 2021 Aichi Japan! Best Regards, RoboCup Asia-Pacific (RCAP) Office, RoboCup Asia-Pacific 2021 (RCAP 2021) Organizing Committee ____________________________________

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Call for KR 2021 Student Scholarship Applications
by Đinh Văn Thành 20 Aug '21

20 Aug '21

****************************************** Call for KR 2021 Student Scholarship Applications ****************************************** We are delighted to announce funding for KR 2021 student support. The purpose is to enable students to participate in the conference. To be eligible, you must be registered as a full-time student at a higher education institution (e.g. university). *You can submit your application at the following link:* ************** https://www.isurvey.soton.ac.uk/41031 ************** ** *Please submit your application by 6^th September 2021 via this form. We will notify you of our decision by 8^th September 2021.* In allocating awards, we will prioritise students who are listed as authors of a long or short paper accepted for KR 2021. Please note that attending the conference is a requirement for being supported. In addition, by participating in the student scholarship program, students are expected to support the conference as student volunteers: You may be asked to support the conference in various ways, e.g., to help with running a particular session. Due to NSF requirements, successful US applicants are also asked to participate in the Doctoral Consortium (DC) either as a presenter or as an attendee, with no obligation to have a paper accepted at the DC. US applicants are also asked to write a short report on their attendance at KR. If your application is successful, you will receive a code that you can then use upon registration as a conference fee waiver. Please wait to register for the conference until our notification. We will not reimburse already made payments. For any question, feel free to contact us at KR21virtual+registration(a)gmail.com <mailto:KR21virtual+registration@gmail.com> or contact Long Tran-Thanh directly at long.tran-thanh(a)warwick.ac.uk <mailto:long.tran-thanh@warwick.ac.uk>. Thank you, Tran Cao Son, New Mexico State University, US Long Tran-Thanh,University of Warwick, UK On the behalf of the KR 2021 organising committee.

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RoboCup Brazil Open
by Comunicação RoboCup 23 Jul '21

23 Jul '21

Hi teams, *Registrations are open for RoboCup Brazil Open* *The event will be virtual, with the same categories of RoboCup Federation* RoboCup Brazil launches the RoboCup Brazil Open, a virtual event with the same categories of the Robocup WorldWide. Registrations are now open for teams from all over the world. All the categories have been adapted and will happen in a fully remote format, using simulators, challenges and submission of articles written by the teams. Our goal is to disseminate the studies and technologies developed by universities in the field of robotics and IA. The event will happen in October 11th-15th, and will be broadcast through lives on the RoboCup Brazil Youtube channel. In 2020, more than 700 students from Latin American attended the event. *Categories:* RoboCup Open Flying Robot Trial League Small Size Soccer Humanoid League Standard Plataform League (SPL) Simulation 2D Simulation 3D RoboCup at@Home IEEE Humanoid Robot Racing (HRR) IEEE Open IEEE Standard Educational Kit (SEK) IEEE Very Small Size Soccer RoboCup Junior Soccer Open RoboCup Junior Rescue Maze Primary RoboCup Junior Rescue Maze RoboCup Junior Rescue Simulation Primary RoboCup Junior Rescue Simulation Open * Registration* To participate, you and your team must register by August 30th, on the website: www.cbrobotica.org . The registration fee is US$ 50 per team. *RoboCup Brasil is a non-profit civil association, organized by volunteer professors and researchers. The association holds the Brazilian Robotics Olympiad, the Brazilian Robotics Competition and the National Robotics Show.* -- Patrícia Vergara Comunicação RoboCup Brasil +55 (11) 9.8686-4993 www.robocup.org.br

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[CFP] Call for Participation - RoboCup Brazil Open - @Home Virtual 2021
by Fagner Pimentel 16 Jul '21

16 Jul '21

*Call for Participation* RoboCup Brazil Open - @Home Virtual 2021 *October 11 – October 15, 2021* (Online) http://www.cbrobotica.org/ *Important dates:* - Jul. 30, 2021 Deadline for submission of qualification material and preregistration. (Team Description Paper, Team Video, Team Website). - Aug. 15, 2021 Qualification announcement - Aug 30, 2021 Robot model reception *Committee members:* - Executive Committee: "Plinio Thomaz Aquino Jr." < plinio.aquino(a)fei.edu.br> - Technical Committee: "Fagner Pimentel <fpimentel(a)fei.edu.br>" - Organizing Committee: "Ana Patricia Magalhaes < anapatriciamagalhaes(a)gmail.com>" - Organizing Committee: "Rodrigo Techi <techicrodrigo(a)gmail.com>" RoboCup is an international scientific initiative with the goal to advance the state of the art of intelligent robots through competitions. The 2021 edition of the RoboCup Brazil Open will again be virtual. All categories will have new challenges, adapted so that you and your team can participate from anywhere in the world, broadcast live on our Youtube channel (https://www.youtube.com/competicaobrasileiraderobotica). The RoboCup Brazil Open @Home Virtual competition 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 virtual home environment setting. Focus lies on the following domains but is not limited to: Navigation and Mapping in virtual environments, Computer Vision and Object Recognition, Object Manipulation, Adaptive Behaviors, Behavior Integration, Ambient Intelligence, Standardization and System Integration. *This year we will have 4 slots (with the possibility of more) for teams outside Brazil to participate. * This page describes the preregistration and qualification procedure for RoboCup Brazil Open @Home 2021. The qualification procedure consists of two simple steps: *Step 1) Qualification Material Submission (mandatory)* The team *MUST* send an email to the @home committee (see above) to participate in the qualification process for the RoboCup Brazil Open @Home 2021 event. Please fill in the following information: Team Name: Country: Affiliation: Team Leader Name: Contact information (E-mail): 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 (http://www.cbrobotica.org/index.php/papers-tdps/). The e-mail subject should be: [@Home2021-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. ***** *Deadline: Sunday, July 30, 2021 23:59 BRT* ****** *Step 2) Robot Model Submission:* Qualified teams ***MUST*** send the robot model to be used during the competition via email to the @home committee (see above). Please follow the template below: Team Name: Country: Affiliation: Virtual robot model attached to the email based on the official simulator. The e-mail subject should be: [@Home2021-RModel] (YourTeamName) The Technical Committee will inspect the robot models to verify they are compatible with the simulator and that all sensing and actuation is performed at component level and not bypassed by reading the variables of simulator such as position, pixel collision, etcetera. ***** *Deadline: Sunday, August 30, 2021 23:59 BRT* ****** *Instructions for the Qualification Material and Instructions for the Team Video:* In order to proof a running virtual robot model, 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 following abilities robust full-stack navigation (navigation, self localization, online mapping and collision avoidance), object manipulation, and object recognition. *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. *Copyright note:*When sending videos for qualification, teams implicitly grant permission to RoboCup Brazil Open @Home and the RoboCup Brasil 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 a 6-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 (portability to the real world) - The impact of your research must be clearly visible - Maximum length is *6 pages* (including figures and citations) - TDP length is *****6 pages***** (submissions over this hard limit will be discarded). *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 Brazil Open @Home Wiki for further reference. On submitting, teams implicitly grant permission to RoboCup Brazil Open @Home and the RoboCup Brasil 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 virtual and/or real robot(s) - Videos of the virtual and/or real 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. *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, portability to the 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. On behalf of RoboCup Brazil Open @Home Virtual Competition 2021 Organizing Committee. -- Fagner de Assis Moura Pimentel Ph.D. candidate at FEI University Center.

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