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[meetings] CALL for posters to IROS 2019 Workshop: Semantic Policy and Action Representations for Autonomous Robots (SPAR)
by Karinne Ramirez-Amaro 16 Sep '19

16 Sep '19

*4th Workshop on Semantic Policy and Action Representations for Autonomous Robots (SPAR)* November 8, 2019 - IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems - Macau, China ----*Call for Papers* We are calling for contributions to our IROS 2019 workshop. We would like to invite the attendees of this workshop to submit an extended abstract explaining their current work or developed systems on the areas of reasoning, perception, control, planning, and learning applied to robotic systems. This workshop is intended for roboticists interested in improving the reliability and autonomy of robots. We hope to bring together outstanding researchers and graduate students to discuss current trends, problems, and opportunities in semantic action (policy) representations, encouraging communication and common practices such as sharing data-sets among scientists in this field. We encourage 1-2 pages extended abstract of relevant work that has been previously published, or is to be presented at the main conference. The accepted abstracts will be posted on the workshop website in a compiled yearbook and will not appear in the official IEEE proceedings. We encourage researchers as well as companies (both hardware and software companies) to contribute to the workshop. The reviewing is single blind, and will be carried out by the workshop chairs. Please submit your abstract to the workshop official email address spar.workshop(a)gmail.com before *September 27*, 2019. The accepted papers will have the opportunity to present their work/ideas in a poster session. Two selective submissions will give a 15 min talk at the workshop. Please indicate in your email if you want to present as a poster or oral presentation. ----*Important Dates* Paper submission deadline: September 27, 2019 Notification of acceptance: October 20, 2019 Camera ready submission: October 31, 2019 Workshop day: November 08, 2019 ----*Workshop URL* https://sites.google.com/view/spar2019/home Contact email: spar.workshop(a)gmail.com ----*Workshop objectives* It has been a long-standing question whether robots can reach human level of intelligence that understands the essence of observed actions and imitates them even under different circumstances. Contemporary research in robotics and machine learning has attempted to solve this question from two different perspectives: One in a bottom-up manner by, for instance, solely relying on perceived continuous sensory data, whereas the other by approaching rather from the symbolic level in a top-down fashion. Although there have been shown encouraging results in both flows, understanding and imitation of actions have yet to be fully solved. Action semantics stands as a potential glue for bridging the gap between a symbolic action representation and its corresponding continuous signal level description. Semantic representation provides a tool for capturing the essence of action by revealing the inherent characteristics. Thus, semantic features help robots to understand, learn, and generate policies to imitate actions even in various styles with different objects. Thus, more descriptive semantics yields robots with greater capability and autonomy. In this full-day workshop, we aim at answering two major questions. 1. What have we learned from action semantics? In recent years, there has been a substantial contribution in semantic policy and action representation in the fields of robotics, computer vision, and machine learning. In this respect, we would like to invite experts in academia and motivate them to comment on the recent advances in semantic reasoning by addressing the problem of linking continuous sensory experiences and symbolic constructions to couple perception and execution of actions. This is of fundamental importance to ease the symbol grounding problem in robotics. 2. How much of semantic policy and action representation have been transferred from controlled lab setups to industrial environments? We would like to invite researchers from industry and initiate a discussion between academic and industrial communities. Such a provocative discussion catalyzes the interaction between the two communities by addressing the scalability and generalization problems which still remain unsolved. In this respect, we would like to discuss how to transfer our current knowledge and experience about semantic policies to new domains, for instance, industrial assembly tasks, with very little human intervention. This workshop focuses on new technologies that allow robots to learn generic semantic models for different tasks. In this workshop, we will bring together researchers from diverse fields, including robotics, computer vision, and machine learning in order to overview the most recent scientific achievements and the next break-through topics, and also to propose new directions in the field. ----The topics that are indicative but by no means exhaustive are as follows: ● AI-Based Methods o Learning and adaptive systems o Probability and statistical methods o Action grammars/libraries o Machine learning techniques for semantic representations o Spatiotemporal event encoding ● Reasoning Methods in Robotics and Automation o Signal to symbol transition (Symbol grounding/Object anchoring) o Different levels of abstraction o Semantics of manipulation actions o Semantic policy representation o Context modeling methods o Concept formulation ● Human Behavior Recognition o Learning from demonstration o Object-action relations o Bottom-up and top-down perception ● Task, Geometric, and Dynamic Level Plans and Policies o PDDL high-level planning o Task and motion planning methods ● Human-Robot Interaction o Prediction of human intentions o Linking linguistic and visual data ----*Invited Speakers (all confirmed)* * Kei Okada, The University of Tokyo. Japan. http://www.jsk.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~k-okada/index-e.html * Tanja Schultz, University of Bremen. https://www.uni-bremen.de/en/csl/team/staff/prof-dr-ing-tanja-schultz/ * Georg von Wichert, Siemens. Germany. https://www.linkedin.com/in/georg-von-wichert-7a74796/ * Stefanos Nikolaidis, University of Southern California. USA https://stefanosnikolaidis.net/ * Xiaoping Chen, University of Science and Technology of China. http://ai.ustc.edu.cn/en/people/xpchen.php * Joseph Lim, University of Southern California. https://viterbi-web.usc.edu/~limjj/ * Darius Burschka, Technical University of Munich. http://robvis01.informatik.tu-muenchen.de/ * Chris Paxton, Nvidia Robotics lab. https://research.nvidia.com/person/chris-paxton * Jesse Thomason, University of Washington https://jessethomason.com/ ----*Organizers* * Karinne Ramirez-Amaro, Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden * Eren Erdal Aksoy, Halmstad University, Sweden * Yezhou Yang, Arizona State University, USA * Shiqi Zhang, SUNY Binghamton, USA ----*Advisory Board* * Michael Beetz, University Bremen, Germany * Yiannis Aloimonos, University of Maryland, USA * Tamim Asfour, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany * Florentin Wörgötter, University of Göttinngen, Germany -- Asst. Prof. Karinne Ramirez Amaro Chalmers University of Technology Department of Electrical Engineering Systems and Control Division Mechatronics Group IEEE Associate Vice President - Conference Operations E-mail:karinne@chalmers.se Office telephone: +46-31-772-1074 Address: SE-412 96 Göteborg, Sweden www.chalmers.se

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RoboCup Asia-Pacific (RCAP) 2019: Pre-registration Extended!
by Asad Norouzi 02 Sep '19

02 Sep '19

######################## 2nd Call for Participation ##################### The 3rd RoboCup Asia-Pacific (RCAP 2019) Competition and Symposium 6 – 10 November 2019, Competition 11 November 2019, Symposium Moscow, Russia http://www.robocupap2019.org ###################### RoboCup Asia Pacific 2019 ###################### The 3rd RoboCup Asia Pacific (RCAP) Competition and Symposium will be held in Moscow, Russia, 6-11 November 2019. This is the third official RoboCup Super Regional event in the Asia-Pacific region. *The pre-registration deadline has been extended to the 8th of September.* *Leagues* The RoboCup Asia-Pacific 2019 (RCAP 2019) competition leagues are as follows: *RoboCupSoccer:* - Humanoid Leagues - Kid Size - Small Size League - Standard Platform League *RoboCup@Home:* - RoboCup@Home Education *RoboCupIndustrial:* - RoboCup@Work *RoboCupJunior:* - Soccer - Lightweight Primary - Lightweight Secondary - Open - Rescue - Rescue Line Primary - Rescue Line Secondary - Rescue Maze Primary - Rescue Maze Secondary - Rescue Simulation Primary - Rescue Simulation Secondary - OnStage - Preliminary Primary - Preliminary Secondary - Advanced Secondary *RoboCup Asia Pacific (RCAP) Challenges* The RCAP 2019 Organizing Committee will be organizing RCAP Industry Sponsored Leagues and RCAP Challenges. The RCAP Challenges will be as follows: - RCAP CoSpace Grand Prix Challenge - RCAP CoSpace Rescue Challenge - RCAP Junior Humanoid - RCAP RoboCup@Home Education - RCAP Junior @Home Education - RTC Cup *Participation* All teams (including RC Junior teams) are required to pre-register through the online form here: https://forms.gle/ENjvpQnFH7Gqbwmt8 The pre-registered teams are required to submit the relevant qualification materials as per the leagues requirements. Teams are requested to contact their league’s technical committee for more information about submission of qualification materials. Junior teams must take note that they should also submit a Team Description Paper (TDP). *Important dates* - Pre-Registration: 12 August – 08 September, 2019 - Announcement of qualified teams: 15 September, 2019 - Regular Registration: 16 September – 06 October, 2019 For further information please visit our official website at http://www.robocupap2019.org For inquiries please contact us via the hereunder email addresses: General Enquiries and Travel Support: rusrcap(a)gmail.com Registration, Competition, Leagues: moscow2019(a)robocupap.org Regards, RoboCup Asia-Pacific (RCAP) Office RoboCup Asia-Pacific 2019 (RCAP 2019) Organizing Committee

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Call for Participation – Join the ANA Avatar XPRIZE | USD $10 million robotics competition
by Colin Peartree 24 Aug '19

24 Aug '19

Dear RoboCup @Home league, This message is to encourage you to join the ANA Avatar XPRIZE<http://avatar.xprize.org/>, a four-year USD $10 million competition focused on the development of a robotic avatar system that will transport a human’s senses, actions, and presence to a remote location in real time. The winning team will integrate multiple emerging technologies such as robotics, haptics, advanced sensors, artificial intelligence, virtual and augmented reality and more to enable a human operator to see, hear, and interact within a remote environment in a manner that feels as if he or she is truly present there. This is a highly challenging competition that we believe can change the way we interact with each other across the world. The ANA Avatar XPRIZE is currently in the Team Recruitment phase of the competition, which is open through September 30, 2019. We are seeking highly skilled teams to join the 69 other teams from 17 countries who are currently registered to compete. XPRIZE competitors come from a diversity of backgrounds, with teams forming out of universities, start-ups, major companies and individuals alike. Joining an XPRIZE is an excellent opportunity to become involved in an international cross-disciplinary project to develop cutting-edge technology, and your work in the RoboCup @Home League is a clear path toward developing Avatar technology. If you want to be part of this challenge, check out the links below for more information, and remember to register by September 30, 2019. TO REGISTER, OR FOR MORE INFORMATION: VISIT OUR WEBSITE<http://avatar.xprize.org/> + VIEW OUR FACT SHEET<https://drive.google.com/file/d/1SlqiTSMnKVdcF4MRP4pImr20T8y-8lvq/view?usp=…> + EMAIL US<mailto:avatar@xprize.org?subject=Partcipating%20in%20the%20ANA%20Avatar%20XPRIZE> FIND A WINNER: Not interested in competing, but know someone who has what it takes to win? Through our Find a Winner Program, you can refer competitors to take on this challenge. If the team you refer goes on to win the competition, you’ll be awarded with USD $25,000! Refer a competitor by clicking here<https://www.xprize.org/prizes/avatar/findawinner>. If you want to talk more about participating in the ANA Avatar XPRIZE, we would be glad to continue the conversation with you. Please send us a message at Avatar(a)XPRIZE.org<mailto:avatar@xprize.org?subject=Partcipating%20in%20the%20ANA%20Avatar%20XPRIZE>. We look forward to hearing from you! Best regards, Colin Peartree, ANA Avatar XPRIZE Team Liaison

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[jobs] Neural Ego-Noise Reduction for Interactive Robots
by Stefan Wermter 22 Aug '19

22 Aug '19

The Faculty of Mathematics, Informatics and Natural Sciences / Department of Informatics invites applications for a RESEARCH ASSOCIATE Ego-Noise Reduction for Interactive Robots - SALARY LEVEL 13 TV-L - The position in accordance with Section 28 subsection 1 of the Hamburg higher education act (Hamburgisches Hochschulgesetz, HmbHG) commences on the earliest possible date. This is a fixed term contract in accordance with Section 2 of the academic fixed-term labor contract act (Wissenschaftszeitvertragsgesetz, WissZeitVG). The initial fixed term is three years. The position calls for 75% of standard work hours per week. (Full-time positions currently comprise 39 hours per week.) Responsibilities: Research associates will be expected primarily to teach and conduct research. The research associate will also have the opportunity to pursue further academic qualifications, in particular a doctoral dissertation. At least one-third of set working hours will be made available for the research associate’s own academic work. Specific Duties: The candidate will work in the Signal Processing and the Knowledge Technology groups and will do research on modern methods for single and multichannel speech enhancement for human-robot interfaces. The particular task is to take the specific ego-noise of an interactive robot into account, such as the sound of the motors and the cooling systems of specific robotic platforms. Teaching duties are expected to be 3 hours/week at the BSc Informatics level. Requirements: A university degree in a relevant field. Examples are Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Robotics or Electrical Engineering. We require the candidate to have excellent knowledge in signal processing and neural network learning as well as good programming skills in Python and neural network frameworks. Experience in speech processing is helpful. Fluent English, spoken and written, and good communications skills are mandatory. Knowledge of German is desired; we expect the willingness to learn German for non-native German speakers. The University aims to increase the number of women in research and teaching and explicitly encourages women to apply. Equally qualified female applicants will receive preference in accordance with the Hamburg act on gender equality (Hamburgisches Gleichstellungsgesetz, HmbGleiG). Qualified disabled candidates or applicants with equivalent status receive preference in the application process. For further information, please contact Stefan Wermter (stefan.wermter(a)informatik.uni-hamburg.de) or Timo Gerkmann (timo.gerkmann(a)uni-hamburg.de) or consult our website athttp://www.informatik.uni-hamburg.de/WTM/ orhttp://uhh.de/inf-sp. Applications should include a cover letter, a tabular curriculum vitae, and copies of degree certificate(s). Please send applications by 25.08.2019 to:sp-office@informatik.uni-hamburg.de in a single PDF document. Please start the subject of your Email with [Application Kooperationspromotion]. Please do not submit original documents as we are not able to return them. *********************************************** Professor Dr. Stefan Wermter Director of Knowledge Technology Department of Informatics University of Hamburg Vogt-Koelln-Str. 30 22527 Hamburg, Germany Email: wermter AT informatik.uni-hamburg.de http://www.informatik.uni-hamburg.de/WTM/ ***********************************************

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RoboCup Asia-Pacific (RCAP) 2019: Call For Participation
by Asad Norouzi 15 Aug '19

15 Aug '19

######################## Call for Participation ######################### The 3rd RoboCup Asia-Pacific (RCAP 2019) Competition and Symposium 6 – 10 November 2019, Competition 11 November 2019, Symposium Moscow, Russia http://www.robocupap2019.org ###################### RoboCup Asia Pacific 2019 ###################### The 3rd RoboCup Asia Pacific (RCAP) Competition and Symposium will be held in Moscow, Russia, 6-11 November 2019. This is the third official RoboCup Super Regional event in the Asia-Pacific region. *Leagues* The RoboCup Asia-Pacific 2019 (RCAP 2019) competition leagues are as follows: *RoboCupSoccer:* - Humanoid Leagues - Kid Size - Small Size League - Standard Platform League *RoboCup@Home:* - RoboCup@Home Education *RoboCupIndustrial:* - RoboCup@Work *RoboCupJunior:* - Soccer - Lightweight Primary - Lightweight Secondary - Open - Rescue - Rescue Line Primary - Rescue Line Secondary - Rescue Maze Primary - Rescue Maze Secondary - Rescue Simulation Primary - Rescue Simulation Secondary - OnStage - Preliminary Primary - Preliminary Secondary - Advanced Secondary *RoboCup Asia Pacific (RCAP) Challenges* The RCAP 2019 Organizing Committee will be organizing RCAP Industry Sponsored Leagues and RCAP Challenges. The RCAP Challenges will be as follows: - RCAP CoSpace Grand Prix Challenge - RCAP CoSpace Rescue Challenge - RCAP Junior Humanoid - RCAP RoboCup@Home Education - RCAP Junior @Home Education - RTC Cup *Participation* All teams (including RC Junior teams) are required to pre-register through the online form here: https://forms.gle/ENjvpQnFH7Gqbwmt8 The pre-registered teams are required to submit the relevant qualification materials as per the leagues requirements. Teams are requested to contact their league’s technical committee for more information about submission of qualification materials. Junior teams must take note that they should also submit a Team Description Paper (TDP). *Important dates* - Pre-Registration: 12 August – 01 September, 2019 - Announcement of qualified teams: 15 September, 2019 - Regular Registration: 16 September – 06 October, 2019 For further information please visit our official website at http://www.robocupap2019.org For inquiries please contact us via the hereunder email addresses: General Enquiries and Travel Support: rusrcap(a)gmail.com Registration, Competition, Leagues: moscow2019(a)robocupap.org Regards, RoboCup Asia-Pacific (RCAP) Office RoboCup Asia-Pacific 2019 (RCAP 2019) Organizing Committee

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Past year's publications relating to RoboCup, or other big activities
by Justin W Hart 09 Aug '19

09 Aug '19

Teams! Did you publish a paper in the past year based on your work for RoboCup@Home? Did you do a big demo or make another big scientific achievement? Please drop me an email (hart(a)cs.utexas.edu) explaining what it is that you did. This is for reporting up the chain in the RoboCup organization and showing off the accomplishments of our league. Thanks! Justin

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Call for Participation – Join the ANA Avatar XPRIZE | USD $10 million robotics competition
by Colin Peartree 02 Aug '19

02 Aug '19

Dear RoboCup @Home league, This message is to encourage you to join the ANA Avatar XPRIZE<http://avatar.xprize.org/>, a four-year USD $10 million competition focused on the development of a robotic avatar system that will transport a human’s senses, actions, and presence to a remote location in real time. The winning team will integrate multiple emerging technologies such as robotics, haptics, advanced sensors, artificial intelligence, virtual and augmented reality and more to enable a human operator to see, hear, and interact within a remote environment in a manner that feels as if he or she is truly present there. This is a highly challenging competition that we believe can change the way we interact with each other across the world. The ANA Avatar XPRIZE is currently in the Team Recruitment phase of the competition, which is open through September 30, 2019. We are seeking highly skilled teams to join the 69 other teams from 17 countries who are currently registered to compete. XPRIZE competitors come from a diversity of backgrounds, with teams forming out of universities, start-ups, major companies and individuals alike. Joining an XPRIZE is an excellent opportunity to become involved in an international cross-disciplinary project to develop cutting-edge technology, and your work in the RoboCup @Home League is a clear path toward developing Avatar technology. If you want to be part of this challenge, check out the links below for more information, and remember to register by September 30, 2019. TO REGISTER, OR FOR MORE INFORMATION: VISIT OUR WEBSITE<http://avatar.xprize.org/> + VIEW OUR FACT SHEET<https://drive.google.com/file/d/1SlqiTSMnKVdcF4MRP4pImr20T8y-8lvq/view?usp=…> + EMAIL US<mailto:avatar@xprize.org?subject=Partcipating%20in%20the%20ANA%20Avatar%20XPRIZE> FIND A WINNER: Not interested in competing, but know someone who has what it takes to win? Through our Find a Winner Program, you can refer competitors to take on this challenge. If the team you refer goes on to win the competition, you’ll be awarded with USD $25,000! Refer a competitor by clicking here<https://www.xprize.org/prizes/avatar/findawinner>. If you want to talk more about participating in the ANA Avatar XPRIZE, we would be glad to continue the conversation with you. Please send us a message at Avatar(a)XPRIZE.org<mailto:avatar@xprize.org?subject=Partcipating%20in%20the%20ANA%20Avatar%20XPRIZE>. We look forward to hearing from you! Best regards, Colin Peartree, ANA Avatar XPRIZE Team Liaison [X] CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: This message is intended only for the use of the individual or entity to which it is addressed, and may contain information that is privileged, confidential and exempt from disclosure under applicable law. If you have received this message by error, please delete it from your records.

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[CFP] AI-HRI 2019: Artificial Intelligence for Human-Robot Interaction
by Ross Mead 19 Jul '19

19 Jul '19

UPDATES: Please note the following updates for this 2nd call for papers: • Submission deadline extended to July 31, 2019 • Changed link to the paper template material (AAAI 2019 author kit) CALL FOR PAPERS: The sixth annual AAAI Fall Symposium on Artificial Intelligence for Human-Robot Interaction (AI-HRI) will take place on November 7-9 at the Westin Arlington Gateway in Arlington, VA, USA, and is now open for paper submissions as indicated below. For more information, please visit the symposium website (https://ai-hri.github.io). IMPORTANT DATES: • SUBMISSION: July 31, 2019 (EXTENDED) • NOTIFICATION: August 10, 2019 • SYMPOSIUM: November 7-9, 2019 OVERVIEW: The past few years have seen rapid progress in the development of service robots. Universities and companies alike have launched major research efforts toward the deployment of ambitious systems designed to aid human operators performing a variety of tasks. These robots are intended to make those who may otherwise need to live in assisted care facilities more independent, to help workers perform their jobs, or simply to make life more convenient. Service robots provide a powerful platform on which to study Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) in the real world. Research sitting at the intersection of AI and HRI is crucial to the success of service robots if they are to fulfill their mission. This symposium seeks to highlight research enabling robots to effectively interact with people autonomously while modeling, planning, and reasoning about the environment that the robot operates in and the tasks that it must perform. AI-HRI deals with the challenge of interacting with humans in environments that are relatively unstructured or which are structured around people rather than machines, as well as the possibility that the robot may need to interact naturally with people rather than through teach pendants, programming, or similar interfaces. TOPICS: • Architectures and systems supporting autonomous HRI • Interactive learning • Interactive dialog systems and natural language • Field studies, experimental, and empirical HRI • Tools for autonomous HRI • Design ethnography for service robots • Development, fielding, and experimentation for service robots • Physical human-robot interaction • Knowledge representation and reasoning to support HRI and robot tasking • Applications of autonomous service robots FORMAT: In addition to oral and poster presentations of accepted papers, the symposium will include panel discussions, position talks, keynote presentations, and a hack session with ample time for networking. • SPEAKERS: Keynote talks will give different perspectives on AI-HRI and showcase recent advances towards humans interacting with robots on everyday tasks. Moderated discussions and debates will allow participants to engage in collaborative public discussion on controversial topics and issues of interest to the AI-HRI community. • NETWORKING: A large part of this effort is to bring together a community of researchers, strengthen old connections, and build new ones. Ample time will be provided for networking and informal discussions. PRESENTATION AND PUBLICATION: All accepted full and short papers will be presented orally and published in the proceedings through Arxiv. Authors will be notified as to whether they have been assigned a “full-length” or “lightning” presentation slot. Authors assigned to full-length talks will be invited to participate in a panel discussion. Authors assigned to lightning talks will be invited to participate in a poster session. SUBMISSIONS: Authors may submit under one of these paper categories: • FULL PAPERS (6-8 pages) highlighting state-of-the-art HRI-oriented interacting learning research, HRI research focusing on the use of autonomous AI systems, or the implementation of AI systems in commercial HRI products. • SHORT POSITION PAPERS (2-4 pages) outlining new or controversial views on AI-HRI research or describing ongoing AI-oriented HRI research. In addition, philosophy and social science researchers are encouraged to submit short papers suggesting AI advances that would facilitate the design, implementation, or analysis of HRI studies. Industry professionals are encouraged to submit short papers suggesting AI advances that would facilitate the development, enhancement, or deployment of HRI technologies in the real world. Please see the AAAI Author Kit ( https://www.aaai.org/Publications/Templates/AuthorKit19.zip) for paper templates to ensure that your submission has proper formatting. Contributions may be submitted here: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=aihri2019 Kind regards, The AI-HRI 2019 program chairs • Justin W. Hart (UT Austin) • Nick DePalma (Samsung Research of America) • Richard G. Freedman (Smart Information Flow Technologies and UMass Amherst) • Luca Iocchi (Sapienza University of Rome) • Matteo Leonetti (University of Leeds) • Katrin Lohan (Heriot-Watt University) • Ross Mead (Semio) • Emmanuel Senft (Plymouth University) • Jivko Sinapov (Tufts University) • Elin A. Topp (Lund University) • Tom Williams (Colorado School of Mines) -- Ross Mead, PhD Founder and CEO Semio <http://semio.ai> ross(a)semio.ai +1 (618) 696-2600

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[CFP] AI-HRI 2019: Artificial Intelligence for Human-Robot Interaction
by Justin W Hart 19 Jun '19

19 Jun '19

Hi everyone! Apologies if you see this posting multiple times. I'm the lead organizer of this years AI-HRI, and the theme is Service Robots. I think that this will be really relevant to participants in the league. Let me know if you have any questions. CALL FOR PAPERS: The sixth annual AAAI Fall Symposium on Artificial Intelligence for Human-Robot Interaction (AI-HRI) will take place on November 7-9 at the Westin Arlington Gateway in Arlington, VA, USA, and is now open for paper submissions as indicated below. For more information, please visit the symposium website (https://ai-hri.github.io). IMPORTANT DATES: • SUBMISSION: July 20, 2019 • NOTIFICATION: August 10, 2019 • SYMPOSIUM: November 7-9, 2019 OVERVIEW: The past few years have seen rapid progress in the development of service robots. Universities and companies alike have launched major research efforts toward the deployment of ambitious systems designed to aid human operators performing a variety of tasks. These robots are intended to make those who may otherwise need to live in assisted care facilities more independent, to help workers perform their jobs, or simply to make life more convenient. Service robots provide a powerful platform on which to study Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) in the real world. Research sitting at the intersection of AI and HRI is crucial to the success of service robots if they are to fulfill their mission. This symposium seeks to highlight research enabling robots to effectively interact with people autonomously while modeling, planning, and reasoning about the environment that the robot operates in and the tasks that it must perform. AI-HRI deals with the challenge of interacting with humans in environments that are relatively unstructured or which are structured around people rather than machines, as well as the possibility that the robot may need to interact naturally with people rather than through teach pendants, programming, or similar interfaces. TOPICS: • Architectures and systems supporting autonomous HRI • Interactive learning • Interactive dialog systems and natural language • Field studies, experimental, and empirical HRI • Tools for autonomous HRI • Design ethnography for service robots • Development, fielding, and experimentation for service robots • Physical human-robot interaction • Knowledge representation and reasoning to support HRI and robot tasking • Applications of autonomous service robots FORMAT: In addition to oral and poster presentations of accepted papers, the symposium will include panel discussions, position talks, keynote presentations, and a hack session with ample time for networking. • SPEAKERS: Keynote talks will give different perspectives on AI-HRI and showcase recent advances towards humans interacting with robots on everyday tasks. Moderated discussions and debates will allow participants to engage in collaborative public discussion on controversial topics and issues of interest to the AI-HRI community. • NETWORKING: A large part of this effort is to bring together a community of researchers, strengthen old connections, and build new ones. Ample time will be provided for networking and informal discussions. PRESENTATION AND PUBLICATION: All accepted full and short papers will be presented orally and published in the proceedings through Arxiv. Authors will be notified as to whether they have been assigned a “full-length” or “lightning” presentation slot. Authors assigned to full-length talks will be invited to participate in a panel discussion. Authors assigned to lightning talks will be invited to participate in a poster session. SUBMISSIONS: Authors may submit under one of these paper categories: • FULL PAPERS (6-8 pages) highlighting state-of-the-art HRI-oriented interacting learning research, HRI research focusing on the use of autonomous AI systems, or the implementation of AI systems in commercial HRI products. • SHORT POSITION PAPERS (2-4 pages) outlining new or controversial views on AI-HRI research or describing ongoing AI-oriented HRI research. In addition, philosophy and social science researchers are encouraged to submit short papers suggesting AI advances that would facilitate the design, implementation, or analysis of HRI studies. Industry professionals are encouraged to submit short papers suggesting AI advances that would facilitate the development, enhancement, or deployment of HRI technologies in the real world. Please see the AAAI Author Kit ( http://www.aaai.org/Publications/Templates/AuthorKit18.zip) for paper templates to ensure that your submission has proper formatting. Contributions may be submitted here: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=aihri2019 Kind regards, The AI-HRI 2019 program chairs • Justin W. Hart (UT Austin) • Nick DePalma (Samsung Research of America) • Richard G. Freedman (Smart Information Flow Technologies and UMass Amherst) • Luca Iocchi (Sapienza University of Rome) • Matteo Leonetti (University of Leeds) • Katrin Lohan (Heriot-Watt University) • Ross Mead (Semio) • Emmanuel Senft (Plymouth University) • Jivko Sinapov (Tufts University) • Elin A. Topp (Lund University) • Tom Williams (Colorado School of Mines)

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Two full-time PhD positions in AI and robotics @Chalmers
by Karinne Ramirez 03 May '19

03 May '19

Dear Colleagues, We are pleased to announce two PhD research positions at the Chalmers Institute of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden. The *application deadline is 15 July* 2019. We are looking for two talented and motivated researchers that would like to pursue a PhD in the areas of AI and Robotics. Both positions will start in September 2019 or soon after that. Each position is limited to a maximum of five years. We are looking for candidates for the following topics: **Topic one:* Intelligent Agents that Learn from their Past Experiences (Ref 20190206) *Description:* Embodied Artificial Intelligence is a multidisciplinary area that requires the cooperation of different fields such as computer science, engineering, robotics and dynamical systems. This PhD thesis will develop a novel learning algorithm to allow high-level intelligence, such as problem-solving and reasoning to be applied to real-world physical systems, e.g. robots. Mainly, this work will be focused on investigating learning methods on the semantic aspects of intelligence to develop general purpose solutions for robotic applications. The goal of this PhD thesis is to develop compact and flexible model representations to allow robots the transference of their past experiences to current situations. These compact models should be human-readable to provide adequate feedback to the person interacting with the intelligent agent, e.g. a robot. This feedback should provide information to users, in an efficient form, about possibly hazardous situations and potential errors, by predicting ahead-of-time the actions performed by either a human or a robot to infer their potential consequences. Thus, the communication between the users and the robots should be meaningful and bi-directional. *Further information about this position*, please visit: http://www.chalmers.se/en/about-chalmers/Working-at-Chalmers/Vacancies/Page… **Topic two:* Learning & Understanding Human-Centred Robotic Manipulation Strategies (Ref 20190182) *Description:* Human-robot collaboration is one of the most promising applications of autonomous robots. For this, robots need to interact with humans in a meaningful, flexible and adaptable manner, especially when new situations are faced. Currently, the new emerging technologies such as virtual reality and wearable devices allow capturing natural human movements of multiple users. Then, the next generation of learning methods should take advantage of and bootstrap the learning of new activities by adapting to the massive processing of information obtained from these enhanced sensors. The goal of this PhD project is to develop semantic-based learning algorithms able to cope with a large amount of data generated from multi-modal/multi-level sensors and react to dynamically changing environments in real-time to produce robots with enhanced autonomy levels and manipulation capabilities. The massive collection of data will also contain information about the different styles of human demonstrations which will help in developing a more human-centred control solution. *Further information about this position*, please visit: http://www.chalmers.se/en/about-chalmers/Working-at-Chalmers/Vacancies/Page… Both PhD positions are offered at the Department of Electrical Engineering in the area of Systems and Control within the Mechatronics group. We offer a dynamic and international work environment with about 200 employees from more than 20 countries, and with extensive national and international research collaborations with academia, industry and society. Chalmers offers a cultivating and inspiring working environment in the dynamic city of Gothenburg. **Qualifications** By the starting date, the applicant should have a Master of Science degree or equivalent in Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, Applied Math or in a related discipline. A successful applicant should have a strong background in machine learning methods and robotics as well as be familiar with reasoning methods and AI tools. Programming skills in C++ are strongly required and knowledge in ROS (Robot Operating System), Python, Prolog, Unity, and C# are welcome. A genuine interest and curiosity in the subject, excellent oral and written English communication skills are needed. **Application procedure** The application should be marked with Ref XXXX (depending on the topic, see above) and written in English. The application should be performed with the link provided earlier. Please include the following documents: CV: (Please name the document: CV, Family name, Ref. number) • CV • Other, for example, previous employment or leadership qualifications and positions of trust. • Two references that we can contact. Personal letter: (Please name the document as: Personal letter, Family name, Ref. number) • 1-3 pages where you introduce yourself and present your qualifications. • Previous research fields and main research results. • Future goals and research focus. Are there any specific projects and research issues you are primarily interested in? Other documents: • Copies of bachelor and/or master’s thesis. • Attested copies and transcripts of completed education, grades and other certificates, e.g. TOEFL test results. ***Application deadline: 15 July 2019*** Please, do not hesitate to contact me for further information. Best regards, Karinne

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Procter & Gamble Dishwasher Challenge Award
by Caleb Rascon 25 Apr '19

25 Apr '19

Greetings, We are happy to announce that the Procter & Gamble Dishwasher Challenge Award that is linked to the "Clean the Table" task of the Housekeeper scenario in Stage 2, will come with a 2,000 € for support for the winning team's research. We are very excited to see what teams are able to accomplish in this task, and delighted to support the winning team's future endeavors. It is important to mention that this support is expected to be used as a type of travel grant (for academic conferences or future RoboCup@Home related events). Sincerely, RoboCup@Home Executive Committee

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Research/Develop funding opportunity
by Martinez Ramirez, Luz Maria 24 Apr '19

24 Apr '19

Dear @Home teams, RobMoSys’s main goal is to create and consolidate an EU Digital Industrial Platform for Robotics to establish a common methodology for model-based software development, improve tools and foster interoperability by model interchange and composability. The Open Calls for Contributions to RobMoSys is one of the means implemented to achieve this goal. During the course of RobMoSys project runtime, a new Open Call will offer you the possibility to contribute to the RobMoSys ecosystem with great research funding opportunities. The second RobMoSys Open Call is scheduled to close on May 7th, 2019. (extended deadline!) The selected projects will be ready to start in autumn 2019. A budget of 2,55 Mio € is available for cascaded funding. More information in https://robmosys.eu/open-call-2/. "Get involved NOW! in the RobMoSys Community Forum: discourse.robmosys.eu" Luz Martínez Technische Universität München Department of Informatics VI Robotics, Artificial Intelligence and Embedded Systems Schleißheimer Str. 90a 85748 Garching bei München Germany Telefon | Phone: +49 89 289-18071 Office: 0.018 http://www6.in.tum.de/

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Research funding opportunity
by Martinez Ramirez, Luz Maria 23 Apr '19

23 Apr '19

Dear @Home teams, RobMoSys’s main goal is to create and consolidate an EU Digital Industrial Platform for Robotics to establish a common methodology for model-based software development, improve tools and foster interoperability by model interchange and composability. The Open Calls for Contributions to RobMoSys is one of the means implemented to achieve this goal. During the course of RobMoSys project runtime, a new Open Call will offer you the possibility to contribute to the RobMoSys ecosystem with great research funding opportunities. The second RobMoSys Open Call is scheduled to close on May 7th, 2019. (extended deadline!) The selected projects will be ready to start in autumn 2019. A budget of 2,55 Mio € is available for cascaded funding. More information in https://robmosys.eu/open-call-2/. "Get involved NOW! in the RobMoSys Community Forum: discourse.robmosys.eu" Luz Martínez Technische Universität München Department of Informatics VI Robotics, Artificial Intelligence and Embedded Systems Schleißheimer Str. 90a 85748 Garching bei München Germany Telefon | Phone: +49 89 289-18071 Office: 0.018 http://www6.in.tum.de/

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European Robotics League Smart Cities Robotics challenge
by Pedro U Lima 19 Apr '19

19 Apr '19

====================================== Call for Participation European Robotics League (ERL) Smart Cities Robotics Challenge 16th – 22nd September 2019 Middleton Hall, Centre:MK Milton Keynes, United Kingdom https://sciroc.eu/challenge-description/ https://sciroc.eu/call-for-participation/ ====================================== The European Robotics League - Smart CIties RObotics Challenge (ERL SciRoc Challenge) is an innovative concept for robotics competitions that aims to show how robots will integrate in the cities of the future. This novel biennial challenge held in Smart Cities across Europe offers a unique opportunity for consumer, professional and emergency service robots to come together and interact with the smart infrastructure of a familiar urban setting. The SciRoc EU-H2020 project consortium has carefully designed a series of episodes where humans and robots interact in a real smart-city shopping mall. We invite international teams from universities, research labs and robotics companies to demonstrate their technologies and systems in a realistic smart city environment. Moreover, we are glad to announce that we will provide financial support, up to £1000, to each team taking part in the competition. The first SciRoc Challenge will take place from 16-22 September 2019 at the Middleton Hall (Centre:MK) in Milton Keynes (UK). For more information on the European Robotics League, please visit www.robotics-league.eu Rules: The episodes selected for the competition are the following: (E03) Deliver coffee shop orders (E04) Take the elevator (E07) Serve goodies (E10) Open the door (E12) Fast delivery of emergency pills Application: Applicant teams can pre-register using the form here: https://sciroc.eu/call-for-participation/ The SciRoc Consortium https://sciroc.eu/ -- The Open University is incorporated by Royal Charter (RC 000391), an exempt charity in England & Wales and a charity registered in Scotland (SC 038302). The Open University is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority in relation to its secondary activity of credit broking.

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EU@HomeEdu 2019 - Call for Participation
by Luca Iocchi 11 Jan '19

11 Jan '19

Dear @Home teams, as you probably know, RoboCup@Home Education is an educational initiative aiming at promoting RoboCup@Home and service robot development through creation of new teams. So this call is not for you (you already have an @Home team), but for institutions, schools, former RoboCupJunior members who may be interested in setting up a new young @Home team. Please feel free to forward this call to any group you think may be interested. Thank you. Best regards, Luca.

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Reminder - Second Call for Participation for RoboCup@Home 2019
by Maxime St-Pierre 10 Jan '19

10 Jan '19

This is a reminder for the Second Call for Participation for RoboCup@Home 2019 Second Call for Participation [RoboCup at Home](http://lists.robocup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/robocup-athome) 2019 (DSPL · OPL · SSPL) July 02 - July 08, 2019 (Sydney, Australia) [http://www.robocup2019.org](http://www.robocup2019.org/) http://www.robocupathome.org/ https://github.com/RoboCupAtHome/RuleBook -== Text-only version ==_ HTML version available at http://www.robocupathome.org/call-for-participation/cfp2-all-2019 RoboCup is an international scientific initiative with the goal to advance the state of the art of intelligent robots through competitions ([RoboCup at Home](http://lists.robocup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/robocup-athome), RoboCup Soccer, RoboCup Rescue, [RoboCup at Work](http://lists.robocup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/robocup-athome) and RoboCup Junior). The [RoboCup at Home](http://lists.robocup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/robocup-athome) league aims to develop service and assistive robot technology with high relevance for future personal domestic applications. It is the largest international annual competition for autonomous service robots and is part of the RoboCup initiative. A set of benchmark tests is used to evaluate the robots' abilities and performance in a realistic home environment setting. Focus lies on the following domains but is not limited to: Human-Robot-Interaction and Cooperation, Navigation and Mapping in dynamic environments, Computer Vision and Object Recognition under natural light conditions, Object Manipulation, Adaptive Behaviors, Behavior Integration, Ambient Intelligence, Standardization and System Integration. This message describes the preregistration and qualification procedure for [RoboCup at Home](http://lists.robocup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/robocup-athome) 2019. Important dates: Dec. 30, 2018 Publication of the Call for Participation Jan. 20, 2019 Deadline for Intention of Participation Feb. 17, 2019 Deadline for submission of qualification material and preregistration. (Team Description Paper, Team Video, Team Website). Mar. 10, 2019 Qualification announcement Mar. 31, 2019 Deadline for Participation Confirmation The qualification procedure consists of the following two steps: Step 1) Intention of Participation (strongly recommended) The team sends an email to the Organizing Committee ([oc at robocupathome.org](http://lists.robocup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/robocu…) to indicate your intention to participate in the [RoboCup at Home](http://lists.robocup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/robocup-athome) 2019 event, including the following basic information: Team Name: League: [ DSPL | OPL | SSPL ] Country: Affiliation: Team Leader Name: Contact information (E-mail): Web site: Only one team leader can be specified per team. The e-mail subject should be: [@Home2019-Participation] (YourTeamName) Please check the email is encoded in UTF-8 using only the ISO-8859-1 character set. **** Deadline: Sunday, 20th of January, 2019 23:59 GMT ***** Step 2) Qualification Material Submission (mandatory) The team ***MUST*** send an email to the Organizing Committee ([oc at robocupathome.org](http://lists.robocup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/robocu…) to participate in the qualification process for the [RoboCup at Home](http://lists.robocup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/robocup-athome) 2019 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: [@Home2019-Qualification] (YourTeamName) Considerations: Only one platform can be specified per team. Only one team leader can be specified per team. Only one contact email can be specified per team. Only one team video url 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, 17th of February, 2019 23:59 GMT ***** Step 3) Participation confirmation (mandatory) All qualified teams ***MUST*** send an email to the Organizing Committee ([oc at robocupathome.org](http://lists.robocup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/robocu…) to confirm (or cancel) their participation in the [RoboCup at Home](http://lists.robocup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/robocup-athome) 2019 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 at Home](http://lists.robocup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/robocup-athome) [League]. The e-mail subject should be: [@Home2019-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, 31st of March, 2019 23:59 GMT ***** Instructions for the Team Video ============================ In order to proof a running hardware, each team has to provide a qualification video. As a minimum requirement for qualification, the video must show the robot(s) successfully solving a task involving the integration of at least 5 different abilities, such as: environmental reasoning, high-level task planning, human-robot interaction, localization, manipulation, object recognition, people recognition, etc. Is strongly advised to show at least one Stage 2 test of the current or last year's rulebook. Remarks: The shown task execution must look continuous, smooth, and robust. When speeding-up video, the speed factor must be indicated. The language spoken and shown in the video must be English. When using any other languages, translations must be included. We strongly suggest upload videos to Youtube. Videos sent will be uploaded/displayed in the league's youtube channel http://www.youtube.com/channel/UChkdCpT0xrFMMt-_N8wSVew/playlists" Standard Platforms Only: Teams ***MUST*** use the standard-platform robot in their Team Video. SPL teams featuring a non standard-platform robot will have their application voided. 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. MoveIt/YOLO should be included, but not OpenCV) 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 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. Exceeding the number of pages will automatically void your application. Remark: The language for the TDP, its graphics, tables, images, and all additional content must be English. Content in other languages must be translated. Copyright note:All TDPs sent for qualification may be made publicly available in the RoboCup @Home Wiki for further reference. On submitting, teams implicitly grant permission to RoboCup @Home and the RoboCup Federation to copy, distribute, upload, publish, and use the manuscript to promote the event and the league at convenience. Instructions for the Web site ========================== While the TDP goes into detail about the technical and scientific approach of the team's research, the website should be designed for a broader audience, including: Photos of the robot(s) Videos of the robot(s) Description of the approaches and information on scientific achievements Relevant publications (last 5 years, preferably available to download) Link to repositories with software for the community Team members Previous participation in RoboCup Participation and rankings in local RoboCup tournaments Remark: 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: ================================ Teams must meet the minimum selection requirements approved by the Executive Committee in order to qualify. However, meeting the minimum requirements won't automatically grant a participation slot. Only the top nl teams meeting the selection criterion can qualify for participation, being nlthe number of available slots in league l. 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. Note to experienced competitors: Major changes are being done in the rulebook. You may download the latest version from: https://github.com/RoboCupAtHome/RuleBook. You're encouraged to be part of the discussion of its ongoing development. With kind regards, and looking forward to see your team in Sydney, The 2019 [RoboCup at Home](http://lists.robocup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/robocup-athome) Organizing and Technical Committees

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Second Call for Participation (DSPL · OPL · SSPL)
by Maxime St-Pierre 20 Dec '18

20 Dec '18

Second Call for Participation RoboCup@Home 2019 (DSPL · OPL · SSPL) July 02 - July 08, 2019 (Sydney, Australia) http://www.robocup2019.org http://www.robocupathome.org/ https://github.com/RoboCupAtHome/RuleBook -== Text-only version ==_ HTML version available at http://www.robocupathome.org/call-for-participation/cfp2-all-2019 RoboCup is an international scientific initiative with the goal to advance the state of the art of intelligent robots through competitions (RoboCup@Home, RoboCup Soccer, RoboCup Rescue, RoboCup@Work and RoboCup Junior). The RoboCup@Home league aims to develop service and assistive robot technology with high relevance for future personal domestic applications. It is the largest international annual competition for autonomous service robots and is part of the RoboCup initiative. A set of benchmark tests is used to evaluate the robots' abilities and performance in a realistic home environment setting. Focus lies on the following domains but is not limited to: Human-Robot-Interaction and Cooperation, Navigation and Mapping in dynamic environments, Computer Vision and Object Recognition under natural light conditions, Object Manipulation, Adaptive Behaviors, Behavior Integration, Ambient Intelligence, Standardization and System Integration. This message describes the preregistration and qualification procedure for RoboCup@Home 2019. Important dates: Dec. 30, 2018 Publication of the Call for Participation Jan. 20, 2019 Deadline for Intention of Participation Feb. 17, 2019 Deadline for submission of qualification material and preregistration. (Team Description Paper, Team Video, Team Website). Mar. 10, 2019 Qualification announcement Mar. 31, 2019 Deadline for Participation Confirmation The qualification procedure consists of the following two steps: Step 1) Intention of Participation (strongly recommended) The team sends an email to the Organizing Committee (oc(a)robocupathome.org) to indicate your intention to participate in the RoboCup@Home 2019 event, including the following basic information: Team Name: League: [ DSPL | OPL | SSPL ] Country: Affiliation: Team Leader Name: Contact information (E-mail): Web site: Only one team leader can be specified per team. The e-mail subject should be: [@Home2019-Participation] (YourTeamName) Please check the email is encoded in UTF-8 using only the ISO-8859-1 character set. **** Deadline: Sunday, 20th of January, 2019 23:59 GMT ***** Step 2) Qualification Material Submission (mandatory) The team ***MUST*** send an email to the Organizing Committee (oc(a)robocupathome.org) to participate in the qualification process for the RoboCup@Home 2019 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: [@Home2019-Qualification] (YourTeamName) Considerations: Only one platform can be specified per team. Only one team leader can be specified per team. Only one contact email can be specified per team. Only one team video url 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, 17th of February, 2019 23:59 GMT ***** Step 3) Participation confirmation (mandatory) All qualified teams ***MUST*** send an email to the Organizing Committee (oc(a)robocupathome.org) to confirm (or cancel) their participation in the RoboCup@Home 2019 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: [@Home2019-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, 31st of March, 2019 23:59 GMT ***** Instructions for the Team Video ============================ In order to proof a running hardware, each team has to provide a qualification video. As a minimum requirement for qualification, the video must show the robot(s) successfully solving a task involving the integration of at least 5 different abilities, such as: environmental reasoning, high-level task planning, human-robot interaction, localization, manipulation, object recognition, people recognition, etc. Is strongly advised to show at least one Stage 2 test of the current or last year's rulebook. Remarks: The shown task execution must look continuous, smooth, and robust. When speeding-up video, the speed factor must be indicated. The language spoken and shown in the video must be English. When using any other languages, translations must be included. We strongly suggest upload videos to Youtube. Videos sent will be uploaded/displayed in the league's youtube channel http://www.youtube.com/channel/UChkdCpT0xrFMMt-_N8wSVew/playlists" Standard Platforms Only: Teams ***MUST*** use the standard-platform robot in their Team Video. SPL teams featuring a non standard-platform robot will have their application voided. 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. MoveIt/YOLO should be included, but not OpenCV) 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 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. Exceeding the number of pages will automatically void your application. Remark: The language for the TDP, its graphics, tables, images, and all additional content must be English. Content in other languages must be translated. Copyright note:All TDPs sent for qualification may be made publicly available in the RoboCup @Home Wiki for further reference. On submitting, teams implicitly grant permission to RoboCup @Home and the RoboCup Federation to copy, distribute, upload, publish, and use the manuscript to promote the event and the league at convenience. Instructions for the Web site ========================== While the TDP goes into detail about the technical and scientific approach of the team's research, the website should be designed for a broader audience, including: Photos of the robot(s) Videos of the robot(s) Description of the approaches and information on scientific achievements Relevant publications (last 5 years, preferably available to download) Link to repositories with software for the community Team members Previous participation in RoboCup Participation and rankings in local RoboCup tournaments Remark: 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: ================================ Teams must meet the minimum selection requirements approved by the Executive Committee in order to qualify. However, meeting the minimum requirements won't automatically grant a participation slot. Only the top nl teams meeting the selection criterion can qualify for participation, being nlthe number of available slots in league l. 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. Note to experienced competitors: Major changes are being done in the rulebook. You may download the latest version from: https://github.com/RoboCupAtHome/RuleBook. You're encouraged to be part of the discussion of its ongoing development. With kind regards, and looking forward to see your team in Sydney, The 2019 RoboCup@Home Organizing and Technical Committees

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[jobs] Research Associate Intelligent Adaptive Systems (e.g neural networks, nlp or robotics)
by Wermter, Stefan 06 Dec '18

06 Dec '18

The Knowledge Technology Research Institute at the University of Hamburg invites applications for a Research Associate (Postdoc or postdoc-level/ final year PhD candidate) in accordance with Section 28 subsection 2 of the Hamburg Higher Education Act (Hamburgisches Hochschul- gesetz, HmbHG). The position commences on 1 Feb 2019 or as soon as possible and is for three years plus a three year extension option subject to the availability of resources. Responsibilities: Duties include teaching and research in the knowledge technology institute. Research associates can also pursue independent research and further academic qualifications as well as acquire teaching experience. These duties are intended to promote academic achieve- ment. Therefore, at least one-third of set working hours will be made available for the associate's own academic work. Specific Duties: The successful candidate will manage the international Master Programme in Computer Science (Intelligent Adaptive Systems) as well as contribute to teaching (4hrs/teaching week). Furthermore, the candidate is expected to conduct research in the area of Knowledge Technology and Intelligent Systems. Requirements: A university degree in a relevant subject plus doctorate prefered. Academic degree preferably in computer science qualifying the post holder to carry out the above-mentioned responsibilities. In particular, an MSc or PhD in Artificial Intelligence or Computer Science is essential. This post is open to Postdocs or experienced PhD candidates. Your demonstrated research interests should be in the areas of Knowledge Technology and Intelligent Systems (e.g. Neural Networks, Robotics, Natural Language Processing, Vision, or Knowledge Representation etc). You should have published in a field relevant to this post. We are also looking for very good communication skills and teamwork; a very good command of both German and English is a requirement. Experience with teaching or organisation of MSc programmes is considered an advantage. The job is remunerated at the salary level TV-L 13. The position is full-time and comprises 39 hours per week. The fixed-term nature of this contract is based upon Section 2 of the Academic Fixed-Term Labor Contract Act (Wissenschaftszeitver- tragsgesetz, WissZeitVG). The initial fixed term is three years. The contract provides for a maximum extension of another three years de- pending on the associate's achievements during the first stage. The University aims to increase the number of women in research and teaching and explicitly encourages women to apply. Equally qualified female applicants will receive preference in accordance with the Hamburg Equality Act (Hamburgisches Gleichstellungsgesetz, HmbGleiG). Severely disabled applicants will receive preference over equally qualified non-disabled applicants. For further information, please contact Prof. Dr. Stefan Wermter, Head of Knowledge Technology Institute or consult our website at https://www.informatik.uni-hamburg.de/wtm/ https://www.inf.uni-hamburg.de/en/inst/ab/wtm/about/job/files/open-position… Applications should include an application letter, full curriculum vitae, pdf of best international publications, copies of degree certificates, evidence for required German and English language. The application deadline is 19 Dec 2018. Please email applications in a single pdf file to: Ms Katja Koesters, katja.koesters(a)informatik.uni-hamburg.de *********************************************** Professor Dr. Stefan Wermter Director of Knowledge Technology Department of Informatics University of Hamburg Vogt Koelln Str. 30 22527 Hamburg, Germany Email: wermter AT informatik.uni-hamburg.de http://www.informatik.uni-hamburg.de/~wermter/ http://www.informatik.uni-hamburg.de/WTM/ ***********************************************

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Call for Participation: RoboCup German Open (May 3-5, 2019), Registration Deadline Nov 30, 2018!
by Sven Wachsmuth 22 Nov '18

22 Nov '18

Dear teams, please note that the deadline for the registration of major teams is *Nov 30, 2018*! There is no qualification procedure, but you should propose a web-link where we can find information about your team. RoboCup German Open 2019 Call for Participation https://robocupgermanopen.de 3 - 5 May 2019 MESSE MAGDEBURG, Germany The RoboCup German Open 2019 will be the 17th open RoboCup competition held in Germany. The event will take place in Magdeburg at MESSE MAGDEBURG. -- RoboCup Major Leagues (international teams) ---------------------- Competitions are offered in the following leagues: - RoboCupSoccer Standard Platform League - RoboCupSoccer Humanoid League (Kid-Size) - RoboCupRescue Robot League - RoboCup@Home League - RoboCupIndustrial Logistics League - RoboCupIndustrial RoboCup@Work League The registration opens *** 15 October 2018 ***. The registration deadline is *** 30 November 2018 ***. Visithttps://robocupgermanopen.de to register your RoboCup Major League team. Details on the registration (fee, accommodation, rules) are available on the web site. Booking of blocked accommodation with special rates is possible after your registration. The Major Leagues Organizing Committee: - Thomas Röfer (Standard Platform League) - Reinhard Gerndt (Humanoid League) - Johannes Pellenz, Stefan May (Rescue Robot League) - Sven Wachsmuth, Raphael Memmesheimer (RoboCup@Home League) - Ulrich Karras (Logistics League) - Sebastian Zug (RoboCup@Work League) -- RoboCup Junior ---------------------------------------------------- The German RoboCup Junior qualification for RoboCup 2019 is performed in two steps. German teams qualify in eight local tournaments in Bad Zwischenahn, Berlin, Hamburg, Hannover, Kassel, Mannheim, Sankt Augustin and Vöhringen for the final of the 19th German RoboCup Junior Championship which is held within the RoboCup German Open 2019. The best Junior teams will qualify for RoboCup 2019 in Australia. -- Important dates -------------------------------------------------- 15.10.2018 Registration start 30.11.2018 Registration deadline RoboCup Major teams 15.02.2019 Invoices are sent to team leaders 15.03.2019 Registration deadline names of team members 15.04.2019 Registration fee due 01.05.2019 Set-up day Major League teams (venue opens 12:00) 02.05.2019 Set-up day Major League teams 03.05.2019 Competition day (open to the public) 04.05.2019 Competition day (open to the public) 05.05.2019 Competition day, finals (open to the public) Please contactinfo(a)robocupgermanopen.de for any questions. See you all again at the 17th RoboCup German Open 2019! Best regards, Ansgar Bredenfeld (Chair RoboCup German Open) RoboCup German Open is organized on behalf of the German RoboCup Committee by Landeshauptstadt Magdeburg and Dr. Bredenfeld UG.

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Call for Participation (DSPL · OPL · SSPL)
by Mauricio Matamoros 16 Oct '18

16 Oct '18

First Call for Participation RoboCup@Home 2019 (DSPL · OPL · SSPL) July 02 - July 08, 2019 (Sydney, Australia) http://www.robocup2019.org http://www.robocupathome.org/ https://github.com/RoboCupAtHome/RuleBook RoboCup is an international scientific initiative with the goal to advance the state of the art of intelligent robots through competitions (RoboCup@Home, RoboCup Soccer, RoboCup Rescue, RoboCup@Work and RoboCup Junior). The RoboCup@Home league aims to develop service and assistive robot technology with high relevance for future personal domestic applications. It is the largest international annual competition for autonomous service robots and is part of the RoboCup initiative. A set of benchmark tests is used to evaluate the robots' abilities and performance in a realistic home environment setting. Focus lies on the following domains but is not limited to: Human-Robot-Interaction and Cooperation, Navigation and Mapping in dynamic environments, Computer Vision and Object Recognition under natural light conditions, Object Manipulation, Adaptive Behaviors, Behavior Integration, Ambient Intelligence, Standardization and System Integration. This message describes the preregistration and qualification procedure for RoboCup@Home League 2019. Important dates: Sept. 15, 2018 Publication of the Call for Participation Sept. 30, 2018 Deadline for Intention of Participation Oct. 28, 2018 Deadline for submission of qualification material and preregistration. (Team Description Paper, Team Video, Team Website). Nov. 15, 2018 Qualification announcement Jan. 20, 2019 Deadline for Participation Confirmation The qualification procedure consists of the following two steps: Step 1) Intention of Participation (strongly recommended) The team sends an email to the Organizing Committee (oc(a)robocupathome.org) to indicate your intention to participate in the RoboCup@Home 2019 event, including the following basic information: Team Name: League: [ DSPL | OPL | SSPL ] Country: Affiliation: Team Leader Name: Contact information (E-mail): Web site: Only one team leader can be specified per team. Please provide only one e-mail for contact purposes and double-check you can receive emails there. The e-mail subject should be: [@Home2019-Participation] (YourTeamName) Please check the email is encoded in UTF-8 using only the ISO-8859-1 character set. ***** Deadline: Sunday, 30th Sept. 2018 23:59 GMT ****** Step 2) Qualification Material Submission (mandatory) The team ****MUST**** send an email to the Organizing Committee ( oc(a)robocupathome.org) to participate in the qualification process for the RoboCup@Home 2019 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: [@Home2019-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, Oct. 28, 2018 23:59 GMT ****** Step 3) Participation confirmation (mandatory) All qualified teams ****MUST**** send an email to the Organizing Committee ( oc(a)robocupathome.org) to confirm (or cancel) their participation in the RoboCup@Home 2019 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: [@Home2019-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. 20, 2019 23:59 GMT ****** Instructions for the Team Video ============================ In order to proof a running hardware, each team has to provide a qualification video. As a minimum requirement for qualification, the video must show the robot(s) successfully solving a task involving the integration of at least 5 different abilities, such as: environmental reasoning, high-level task planning, human-robot interaction, localization, manipulation, object recognition, people recognition, etc. Is strongly advised to show at least one Stage 2 test of the current or last year's rulebook. *Remarks:* - The shown task execution must look continuous, smooth, and robust. - When speeding-up video, the speed factor must be indicated. - The language spoken and shown in the video must be English. When using any other languages, translations must be included. - We strongly suggest upload videos to Youtube. - Videos sent will be uploaded/displayed in the league's youtube channel http://www.youtube.com/channel/UChkdCpT0xrFMMt-_N8wSVew/playlists" <http://www.youtube.com/channel/UChkdCpT0xrFMMt-_N8wSVew/playlists> - *Standard Platforms Only:* Teams are allowed to use any robot in the Team Video. However, using the standard platform one is advised. *Copyright note:*When sending videos for qualification, teams implicitly grant permission to RoboCup @Home and the RoboCup Federation to copy, modify, distribute, upload, publish, and use the multimedia material to promote the event and the league at convenience. Instructions for the TDP ====================== The TDP is an 8-pages long scientific paper, detailing information on the technical and scientific approach of the team's research, while including also the following: - 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. MoveIt/YOLO should be included, but not OpenCV.). - 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*. - *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>. *Exceeding the number of pages will automatically void your application*. *Remark: *The language for the TDP, its graphics, tables, images, and all additional content must be English. Content in other languages must be translated. *Copyright note:*All TDPs sent for qualification may be made publicly available in the RoboCup @Home Wiki for further reference. On submitting, teams implicitly grant permission to RoboCup @Home and the RoboCup Federation to copy, distribute, upload, publish, and use the manuscript to promote the event and the league at convenience. Instructions for the Web site ========================== While the TDP goes into detail about the technical and scientific approach of the team's research, the website should be designed for a broader audience, including: - Photos of the robot(s) - Videos of the robot(s) - Description of the approaches and information on scientific achievements - Relevant publications (last 5 years, preferably available to download) - Link to repositories with software for the community - Team members - Previous participation in RoboCup - Participation and rankings in local RoboCup tournaments *Remark: *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, innovation (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. *Note to experienced competitors:* Major changes are being done in the rulebook. You may download the latest version from: https://github.com/RoboCupAtHome/RuleBook. You're encouraged to be part of the discussion of its ongoing development. Step 4) 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 ( spl-sc(a)robocupathome.org). *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. With kind regards, and looking forward to see your team in Sydney, The 2019 RoboCup@Home Organizing and Technical Committees

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[journal][CFP] Special Issue of Interaction Studies - Social Behaviour and Communication in Biological and Artificial Systems Journal
by Alessandra Rossi 01 Oct '18

01 Oct '18

A Special Issue of *Interaction Studies - Social Behaviour and Communication in Biological and Artificial Systems Journal* https://benjamins.com/catalog/is/main <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__benjamins.com_catalog_…> based on the *Social Cues in Robot Interaction, Trust and Acceptance* - SCRITA Workshop @ IEEE RO-MAN 2018 *http://scrita.herts.ac.uk <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__scrita.herts.ac.uk_&d=D…>* *DESCRIPTION* This Special Issue will focus on human users trust in robots. We aim to explore difference aspects of Human-Robot Interaction that can affect, enhance, undermine and recovery of humans’ trust in robots, such as the use of social cues, behaviour transparency (goals and actions), etc.. In particular, this session will bring together leading researchers in the fields to share ideas and findings to guide the design and development of robots that human users would accept and trust. *INTENDED AUDIENCE* Authors of the accepted papers to the workshop will be invited to submit an extended/revised version. We also strongly encourage submissions from leading researchers in the fields including, but are not limiting to, the following topics of interest: - Impact of Social Cues on Trust in Human-Robot Interaction; - Measuring Trust in Human-Robot Interaction; - Trust Violation and Recovery Mechanism in HRI; - Effects of Humans’ Acceptance on Trust of Robots; - Humans Sense of Control and Trust in Robots; - Trust and Assistive Robotics; - Overtrust in Robots; - Antecedent of Trust and Robot Trust; - Enhancing Humans Trust in Robots; - Enhancing Trust in a Robot Companion; - User Profiling and Trust in Human-Robot Interaction *HOW TO SUBMIT & TO HAVE MORE INFO* Interested authors should please contact the guest editors at *scrita(a)herts.ac.uk <scrita(a)herts.ac.uk>* or Alessandra Rossi at *a.rossi(a)herts.ac.uk <a.rossi(a)herts.ac.uk>*. For more information, please visit the website *http://scrita.herts.ac.uk <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__scrita.herts.ac.uk_&d=D…>* or contact the guest editors at the above emails. Each paper will receive three reviews, including one by the guest editors. *GUEST EDITORS* *Name *Alessandra Rossi *Affiliation *University of Hertfordshire *Email address *a.rossi(a)herts.ac.uk *Name *Kheng Lee Koay *Affiliation *University of Hertfordshire *Email address *k.l.koay(a)herts.ac.uk *Name *Sílvia Moros *Affiliation *University of Hertfordshire *Email address *s.moros(a)herts.ac.uk *Name *Patrick Holthaus *Affiliation *University of Hertfordshire *Email address *p.holthaus(a)herts.ac.uk *Name *Marcus Scheunemann *Affiliation *University of Hertfordshire *Email address *m.scheunemann(a)herts.ac.uk

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[@Home2019] Call for Participation (DSPL · OPL · SSPL)
by Mauricio Matamoros 17 Sep '18

17 Sep '18

First Call for Participation RoboCup@Home 2019 (DSPL · OPL · SSPL) July 02 - July 08, 2019 (Sydney, Australia) http://www.robocup2019.org http://www.robocupathome.org/ https://github.com/RoboCupAtHome/RuleBook RoboCup is an international scientific initiative with the goal to advance the state of the art of intelligent robots through competitions (RoboCup@Home, RoboCup Soccer, RoboCup Rescue, RoboCup@Work and RoboCup Junior). The RoboCup@Home league aims to develop service and assistive robot technology with high relevance for future personal domestic applications. It is the largest international annual competition for autonomous service robots and is part of the RoboCup initiative. A set of benchmark tests is used to evaluate the robots' abilities and performance in a realistic home environment setting. Focus lies on the following domains but is not limited to: Human-Robot-Interaction and Cooperation, Navigation and Mapping in dynamic environments, Computer Vision and Object Recognition under natural light conditions, Object Manipulation, Adaptive Behaviors, Behavior Integration, Ambient Intelligence, Standardization and System Integration. This message describes the preregistration and qualification procedure for RoboCup@Home League 2019. Important dates: Sept. 15, 2018 Publication of the Call for Participation Sept. 30, 2018 Deadline for Intention of Participation Oct. 28, 2018 Deadline for submission of qualification material and preregistration. (Team Description Paper, Team Video, Team Website). Nov. 15, 2018 Qualification announcement Jan. 20, 2019 Deadline for Participation Confirmation The qualification procedure consists of the following two steps: Step 1) Intention of Participation (strongly recommended) The team sends an email to the Organizing Committee (oc(a)robocupathome.org) to indicate your intention to participate in the RoboCup@Home 2019 event, including the following basic information: Team Name: League: [ DSPL | OPL | SSPL ] Country: Affiliation: Team Leader Name: Contact information (E-mail): Web site: Only one team leader can be specified per team. Please provide only one e-mail for contact purposes and double-check you can receive emails there. The e-mail subject should be: [@Home2019-Participation] (YourTeamName) Please check the email is encoded in UTF-8 using only the ISO-8859-1 character set. ***** Deadline: Sunday, 30th Sept. 2018 23:59 GMT ****** Step 2) Qualification Material Submission (mandatory) The team ****MUST**** send an email to the Organizing Committee ( oc(a)robocupathome.org) to participate in the qualification process for the RoboCup@Home 2019 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: [@Home2019-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, Oct. 28, 2018 23:59 GMT ****** Step 3) Participation confirmation (mandatory) All qualified teams ****MUST**** send an email to the Organizing Committee ( oc(a)robocupathome.org) to confirm (or cancel) their participation in the RoboCup@Home 2019 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: [@Home2019-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. 20, 2019 23:59 GMT ****** Instructions for the Team Video ============================ In order to proof a running hardware, each team has to provide a qualification video. As a minimum requirement for qualification, the video must show the robot(s) successfully solving a task involving the integration of at least 5 different abilities, such as: environmental reasoning, high-level task planning, human-robot interaction, localization, manipulation, object recognition, people recognition, etc. Is strongly advised to show at least one Stage 2 test of the current or last year's rulebook. *Remarks:* - The shown task execution must look continuous, smooth, and robust. - When speeding-up video, the speed factor must be indicated. - The language spoken and shown in the video must be English. When using any other languages, translations must be included. - We strongly suggest upload videos to Youtube. - Videos sent will be uploaded/displayed in the league's youtube channel http://www.youtube.com/channel/UChkdCpT0xrFMMt-_N8wSVew/playlists" <http://www.youtube.com/channel/UChkdCpT0xrFMMt-_N8wSVew/playlists> - *Standard Platforms Only:* Teams are allowed to use any robot in the Team Video. However, using the standard platform one is advised. *Copyright note:*When sending videos for qualification, teams implicitly grant permission to RoboCup @Home and the RoboCup Federation to copy, modify, distribute, upload, publish, and use the multimedia material to promote the event and the league at convenience. Instructions for the TDP ====================== The TDP is an 8-pages long scientific paper, detailing information on the technical and scientific approach of the team's research, while including also the following: - 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. MoveIt/YOLO should be included, but not OpenCV.). - 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*. - *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>. *Exceeding the number of pages will automatically void your application*. *Remark: *The language for the TDP, its graphics, tables, images, and all additional content must be English. Content in other languages must be translated. *Copyright note:*All TDPs sent for qualification may be made publicly available in the RoboCup @Home Wiki for further reference. On submitting, teams implicitly grant permission to RoboCup @Home and the RoboCup Federation to copy, distribute, upload, publish, and use the manuscript to promote the event and the league at convenience. Instructions for the Web site ========================== While the TDP goes into detail about the technical and scientific approach of the team's research, the website should be designed for a broader audience, including: - Photos of the robot(s) - Videos of the robot(s) - Description of the approaches and information on scientific achievements - Relevant publications (last 5 years, preferably available to download) - Link to repositories with software for the community - Team members - Previous participation in RoboCup - Participation and rankings in local RoboCup tournaments *Remark: *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, innovation (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. *Note to experienced competitors:* Major changes are being done in the rulebook. You may download the latest version from: https://github.com/RoboCupAtHome/RuleBook. You're encouraged to be part of the discussion of its ongoing development. Step 4) 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 ( spl-sc(a)robocupathome.org). *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. With kind regards, and looking forward to see your team in Sydney, The 2019 RoboCup@Home Organizing and Technical Committees

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RoboCup Asia-Pacific (RCAP) 2018: 2nd Call For Participation
by Asad Norouzi 07 Sep '18

07 Sep '18

######################## Call for Participation ######################### The 2nd RoboCup Asia-Pacific (RCAP 2018) Competition and Symposium 5 – 9 December 2018, Competition 10 December 2018, Symposium Kish, Iran http://www.robocupap2018.org ###################### RoboCup Asia-Pacific 2018 ###################### The 2nd RoboCup Asia Pacific (RCAP) Competition and Symposium will be held in Kish, Iran, 5-10 December 2018. This is the second official RoboCup Super Regional event in the Asia Pacific region. *Leagues* The RoboCup Asia-Pacific 2018 (RCAP 2018) competition leagues are as follows: *RoboCupSoccer:* - Humanoid Leagues - Kid Size - Teen Size - Adult Size - Middle Size League - Small Size League - Standard Platform League - Simulation League 2D - Simulation League 3D *RoboCupRescue:* - Rescue Robot League - Rescue Simulation League - Rescue Simulation Agent - Rescue Simulation Virtual Robot *RoboCup@Home:* - RoboCup@Home Open Platform - RoboCup@Home Social Standard Platform - RoboCup@Home Domestic Standard Platform *RoboCupIndustrial:* - RoboCup@Work - RoboCup Logistics *RoboCupJunior:* - Soccer - Lightweight Primary - Lightweight Secondary - Open - Rescue - Rescue Line - Rescue Maze - CoSpace - Primary - Secondary - OnStage - Primary - Secondary *RoboCup Asia Pacific (RCAP) Challenges* The RCAP 2018 Organizing Committee will be organizing RCAP Industry Sponsored Leagues and RCAP Challenges. The RCAP Challenges will be as follows: - RCAP CoSpace Grand Prix Challenge - Primary - Secondary - RCAP CoSpace Rescue Challenge - Primary - Secondary - University - RCAP CoSpace Logistics Challenge - Primary - Secondary - University - RCAP SSL Challenge - Secondary - University - RoboCup Asia-Pacific (RCAP) Trial Leagues - UAV - ROV *Participation* All teams (including RC Junior teams) are required to pre-register through the online form available in the website ( https://robocupap2018.org/?page_id=10). The pre-registered teams should then submit the relevant qualification materials as per the leagues requirements. Teams are requested to contact their league’s technical committee for more information about submission of qualification materials. Junior teams must take note that they should also submit a Team Description Paper (TDP). More details can be found in the website soon. *Important dates* - Pre-Registration: 21 August – 21 September, 2018 - Announcement of qualified teams: 01 October, 2018 - Early Registration: 01 October – 15 October, 2018 (not available for RC Junior teams) - Regular Registration: 16 October – 16 November, 2018 - Late Registration: 17 November – 30 November, 2018 NOTE: No team registration will be accepted after 16 November 2018 For further information please visit our official website at http://www.robocupap2018.org For inquiries please contact us via the hereunder email addresses: General Enquiries: info(a)robocupap2018.org Registration, Competition, Leagues, Travel Support: registration(a)robocupap.org Regards, RoboCup Asia-Pacific (RCAP) Office RoboCup Asia-Pacific 2018 (RCAP 2018) Organizing Committee

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SciRoc: 1st Smart CIties RObotics Challenge
by Luca Iocchi 05 Sep '18

05 Sep '18

Dear @Home teams, I am sure this new competition within the framework of European Robotics League has challenges that are very close to your research focus and is a good opportunity to improve participations in robot competitions and maximize the investment of setting up a team. We hope to receive many potentially interested teams from the RoboCup community as well. Best regards, Luca ====================================================== Call for Expression of Interest The 1st Smart CIties RObotics Challenge (The 1st SciRoc challenge) as part of the European Robotics League (ERL) Smart Cities Sept 16th to Sept 22nd 2019 The Centre:MK, Milton Keynes, United Kingdom Web: http://sciroc.eu/the-sciroc-challenge/ ====================================================== Smart cities are an innovative urban paradigm aiming at improving the city’s services and the citizens’ quality of life using a variety of technological infrastructures. The ERL Smart Cities introduces a new robotics challenge, focusing on showing how robots will integrate in the cities of the future as physical agents living in them. Leveraging the functionalities developed within the other challenges of the European Robotics League (ERL Consumer, ERL Professional and ERL Emergency), robots will cooperate with the smart city infrastructure and interact with its citizens -- assisting customers, providing professional services and supporting during emergency situations. The 1st Smart CIties RObotics Challenge (The SciRoc challenge) will be held in Milton Keynes (UK) from Sept 16th to Sept 22nd 2019. The challenge will be divided into *several episodes*, each consisting in a task to be performed through addressing specific research challenges. Teams are expected to participate in one or more episodes according to their research interests. We solicit teams interested in taking part to the 1st SciRoc challenge to provide*their input on the design and format of the competition. *A preliminary set of episodes has been identified by the SciRoc’s consortium, as listed below. In order to maximise attendance, we invite all interested teams to express their preferences on the episodes they would be willing to compete in, through submitting their EoI via the online form at *http://sciroc.eu/expression-of-interest/***. *List of episodes* E01 - Attract a customer : https://sciroc.eu/e01-attract-a-customer/ E02 - Shopping guide : http://sciroc.eu/e02-shopping-guide/ E03 - Delivering of coffee shop orders : http://sciroc.eu/e03-delivering-coffee-shop-orders/ E04 - Take the elevator : http://sciroc.eu/e04-take-the-elevator/ E05 - Unattended item : http://sciroc.eu/e05-unattended-item/ E06 - Wiping a poured drink : http://sciroc.eu/e06-wiping-a-poured-drink/ E07 - Serving goodies : https://sciroc.eu/e07-serving-goodies/ E08 - At the checkout desk : https://sciroc.eu/e08-at-the-checkout-desk/ E09 - Cart push : https://sciroc.eu/e09-cart-push/ E10 - Open the door : https://sciroc.eu/e10-open-the-door/ E11 - Finding a lost dog with a drone : https://sciroc.eu/e11-finding-a-lost-dog-with-a-drone/ E12 - Fast delivery of emergency pills : https://sciroc.eu/e12-fast-delivery-of-emergency-pills/ *Important dates * Expression of interest: Sep 01 - Oct 10, 2018 Rulebook publication: Dec 15, 2018 Qualification process: Dec 15, 2018 - Jan 31, 2019 Notification to teams: Feb 15, 2019 Registration: Mar 01 - Mar 31, 2019 For any further enquiries: info(a)sciroc.eu

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[Meetings] [ICSR 2018] Robot Design Competition 2018 - Second Call for Entries and deadline extension
by Amit Kumar PANDEY 05 Sep '18

05 Sep '18

Dear Colleagues, Apologies for any cross-postings. Based on various requests, the deadline for ICSR 2018 Robot Design Competition has been extended to *15th September 2018* (firm deadline). The authors of already submitted entries, if they wish, can refine and update their submissions by the revised deadline with the subject line [ICSR 2018 Competition] Submission update <Submission ID>. Please refer below for the details of the call for entries. 10th International Conference on Social Robotics (ICSR 2018) ( http://uconf.org/ICSR2018) invites entries for its flagship Robot Design Competition (http://uconf.org/ICSR2018/competition.html). The International Conference on Social Robotics (ICSR) brings together researchers and practitioners working on the interaction between humans and robots and on the integration of robots into our society. This year the conference will be held on November 28th-30th, 2018, Qingdao, China The ICSR Robot Design Competition 2018 (http://uconf.org/ICSR2018/com petition.html) ================================== How can the robots be part of our life to assist, serve, accompany, educate or entertain us? What is the next “Big Thing” and the next “Killer App” for robots? Where is the new generation of social robots heading and what could be the innovative societal applications? Have a solid idea/working prototype, send your entries to ICSR 2018 Robot Design Competition. Whatever your background or experience, this competition is a great way to present your work to an international multidisciplinary R&D community as well as representatives from robotics and AI industries, and get their valuable feedback, and above all get recognized. Submission ========= The ICSR 2018 robot design competition welcomes applicants from any background. Each submission should have a (maximum) 2 page summary including a concise abstract/synopsis of a maximum of 50 words. Additionally a single link of related video be included (maximum duration of the video is 3 minutes). Competition chairs, with the help from experts and reviewers, will select the finalists. Each finalists is supposed to present their entry at a dedicated event in the conference, which will be evaluated by the Jury of peers. Finalists will also get opportunity to exhibit during the conference (optional). Email your submission to Amit Kumar Pandey, akpandey(a)softbankrobotics.com and Ali Meghdari meghdari(a)sharif.edu with the subject line starting with: [ICSR 2018 Competition] The authors of already submitted entries, if they wish, can refine and update their submissions by the revised deadline with the subject line starting with [ICSR 2018 Competition] Submission update <Submission ID>. Submission ID can be found in the acknowledgement of the original submission. Dates ===== Submission deadline (revised): September 15, 2018 (firm) Notification: September 30, 2018 Categories & Prizes =============== The winners certificates will be awarded in two categories: - Innovation in software, applications and interaction modalities - Innovation in hardware, design and interfaces All the submissions will be considered for both the categories. ============= Thanks & Regards, Amit Kumar Pandey and Ali Meghdari ICSR 2018 Competition chairs ---- ========================= Amit Kumar Pandey (Ph.D.) Head Principal Scientist (Chief Scientist) (R&D) Scientific Coordinator- Collaborative Projects (Human Robot Interaction, Socially Intelligent Robots, AI) SoftBank Robotics (formerly Aldebaran Robotics) Paris, France Founding coordinator of euRobotics Topic Group on- Socially Intelligent Robots and Societal Applications (SIRo-SA) http://fr.linkedin.com/in/amitkrpandey http://amitkpandey.com https://www.ald.softbankrobotics.com/en https://www.eu-robotics.net/sparc/topic-groups/index.html ========================== -- *This email and any attachment thereto are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed. If you are not the intended recipient, please be advised that disclosing, copying, distributing or taking any action in reliance on the contents of this email is strictly prohibited. In such case, please immediately advise the sender, and delete all copies and attachment from your system. This email shall not be construed and is not tantamount to an offer, an acceptance of offer, or an agreement by SoftBank Robotics Europe on any discussion or contractual document whatsoever. No employee or agent is authorized to represent or bind SoftBank Robotics Europe to third parties by email, or act on behalf of SoftBank Robotics Europe by email, without express written confirmation by SoftBank Robotics Europe’ duly authorized representatives. * *Ce message électronique et éventuelles pièces jointes sont confidentiels, et exclusivement destinés à la personne ou l'entité à qui ils sont adressés. Si vous n'êtes pas le destinataire visé, vous êtes prié de ne pas divulguer, copier, distribuer ou prendre toute décision sur la foi de ce message électronique. Merci d'en aviser immédiatement l'expéditeur et de supprimer toutes les copies et éventuelles pièces jointes de votre système. Ce message électronique n'équivaut pas à une offre, à une acceptation d’offre, ou à un accord de SoftBank Robotics Europe sur toute discussion ou document contractuel quel qu’il soit, et ne peut être interprété comme tel. Aucun employé ou agent de SoftBank Robotics Europe n'est autorisé à représenter ou à engager la société par email, ou à agir au nom et pour le compte de la société par email, sans qu’une confirmation écrite soit donnée par le représentant légal de SoftBank Robotics Europe ou par toute autre personne ayant reçu délégation de pouvoir appropriée. * **

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RoboCup Asia-Pacific (RCAP) 2018: Call For Participation
by Asad Norouzi 28 Aug '18

28 Aug '18

######################## Call for Participation ######################### The 2nd RoboCup Asia-Pacific (RCAP 2018) Competition and Symposium 5 – 9 December 2018, Competition 10 December 2018, Symposium Kish, Iran http://www.robocupap2018.org ###################### RoboCup Asia Pacific 2018 ###################### The 2nd RoboCup Asia Pacific (RCAP) Competition and Symposium will be held in Kish, Iran, 5-10 December 2018. This is the second official RoboCup Super Regional event in the Asia Pacific region. *Leagues* The RoboCup Asia-Pacific 2018 (RCAP 2018) competition leagues are as follows: *RoboCupSoccer:* - Humanoid Leagues - Kid Size - Teen Size - Adult Size - Middle Size League - Small Size League - Standard Platform League - Simulation League 2D - Simulation League 3D *RoboCupRescue:* - Rescue Robot League - Rescue Simulation League - Rescue Simulation Agent - Rescue Simulation Virtual Robot *RoboCup@Home:* - RoboCup@Home Open Platform - RoboCup@Home Social Standard Platform - RoboCup@Home Domestic Standard Platform *RoboCupIndustrial:* - RoboCup@Work - RoboCup Logistics *RoboCupJunior:* - Soccer - Lightweight Primary - Lightweight Secondary - Open - Rescue - Rescue Line - Rescue Maze - CoSpace - Primary - Secondary - OnStage - Primary - Secondary *RoboCup Asia Pacific (RCAP) Challenges* The RCAP 2018 Organizing Committee will be organizing RCAP Industry Sponsored Leagues and RCAP Challenges. The RCAP Challenges will be as follows: - RCAP CoSpace Grand Prix Challenge - Primary - Secondary - RCAP CoSpace Rescue Challenge - Primary - Secondary - University - RCAP CoSpace Logistics Challenge - Primary - Secondary - University - RCAP SSL Challenge - Secondary - University - RoboCup Asia-Pacific (RCAP) Demonstrations - UAV - ROV *Participation* All teams (including RC Junior teams) are required to pre-register through the online form available in the website ( https://robocupap2018.org/?page_id=10). The pre-registered teams should then submit the relevant qualification materials as per the leagues requirements. Teams are requested to contact their league’s technical committee for more information about submission of qualification materials. Junior teams must take note that they should also submit a Team Description Paper (TDP). More details can be found in the website soon. *Important dates* - Pre-Registration: 21 August – 7 September, 2018 - Announcement of qualified teams: 15 September, 2018 - Early Registration: 15 September – 15 October, 2018 (not available for RC Junior teams) - Regular Registration: 16 October – 16 November, 2018 - Late Registration: 17 November – 30 November, 2018 NOTE: No team registration will be accepted after 16 November 2018 For further information please visit our official website at http://www.robocupap2018.org For inquiries please contact us via the hereunder email addresses: General Enquiries: info(a)robocupap2018.org Registration, Competition, Leagues, Travel Support: registration(a)robocupap.org Regards, RoboCup Asia Pacific (RCAP) Office RoboCup Asia Pacific 2018 (RCAP 2018) Organizing Committee

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Please help our RoboCup@Home research - RSVP by Tuesday
by Justin W Hart 24 Aug '18

24 Aug '18

Dear RoboCup@Home teams, One of the advantages of working in the RoboCup@Home domain is that so many of us around the world are motivated by, and working on, the same challenging problem. With this message, we're asking for a small amount of your time (but with some urgency) to help our research and to magnify our community as a whole. In particular, we're writing a paper that we plan to submit to AAAI on our knowledge representation system, and as part of our discussion we would like to explore the differences between how systems in RoboCup@Home model EEGPSR tasks. We're including the survey below, and we hope that you can take 5-10 minutes to let us know how your system would handle a particular utterance. If possible, we would like you to run a query through the top of your EEGPSR system, however this isn't necessary. If your system does not handle the command, please also respond saying so. ================================================================= EEGPSR Command: Could you navigate to the kitchen, spot the apple, and give it to Patricia at the couch. At a high level, please summarize the steps your system takes to resolve the query... 1. ... in the case that the apple is on the counter. 2. ... in the case that there is not an apple on the counter. In your responses, please describe how you model the problem, what your plan looks like (if your system generates a plan), and how the robot would behave while executing it (assuming that perception, navigation, and manipulation work perfectly). Please send your response to jiangyuqian(a)utexas.edu ================================================================= If you're able to do this, we'll acknowledge your support in the paper. Please let us know if you would like your system named specifically, or identified anonymously as "Participant X". Regardless, of course we'll be more than happy to help you with any similar requests about our system. Thanks in advance! Justin Hart, Yuqian Jiang, Nick Walker, & Peter Stone

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[meetings] AAAI Fall Symposium: Interactive learning in Artificial Intelligence for Human-Robot Interaction (AI-HRI) - Last CFP
by Luca Iocchi 17 Jul '18

17 Jul '18

[Apologies for cross-posting] *********************************************************************** AAAI Fall Symposium: Interactive learning in Artificial Intelligence for Human-Robot Interaction (AI-HRI) Arlington, Virginia USA, October 18-20, 2018 https://ai-hri.github.io/ *********************************************************************** The goal of this year's Artificial Intelligence (AI) for Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) symposium is to bring together the large community of researchers working on interactive learning scenarios for interactive robotics. While current HRI research involves investigating ways for robots to effectively interact with people, HRI's overarching goal is to develop robots that are autonomous while intelligently modeling and learning from humans. These goals greatly overlap with some central goals of AI and interactive machine learning such that HRI is an extremely challenging problem domain for interactive learning and will elicit fresh problem areas for robotics research. Our symposium will focus on one common area of interest within the broader scope of HRI is an AI problem and AI is an HRI problem: interactive machine learning for interactive robotics. We believe that the fusion of HRI and interactive learning may provide new insights and discussions that could benefit both fields. The symposium will include research talks and discussions both to share work in this intersectional area, guidance for how to best frame AI-centric HRI work within AI venues, and a great deal of community building through discussion and tutorials. ***PAPER CATEGORY*** Authors may submit under one of three paper categories: * Full papers (6–8 pages) highlighting state-of-the-art HRI-oriented interactive learning research, HRI research focusing on the use of autonomous AI systems, or the implementation of AI systems in commercial HRI products. * Short position papers (3–4 pages) outlining new or controversial views on AI-HRI research or describing ongoing AI-oriented HRI research. * Tool papers (1–2 pages) describing novel software, hardware, or datasets of interest to the AI-HRI community. In addition, philosophy and social science researchers are encouraged to submit short papers suggesting AI advances that would facilitate the design, implementation, or analysis of HRI studies. Industry professionals are encouraged to submit short papers suggesting AI advances that would facilitate the development, enhancement, or deployment of HRI technologies in the real world. ***SUBMISSION WEBSITE*** Information about submission are available in the symposium web site https://ai-hri.github.io/ Submission site: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=fss18 *** IMPORTANT DATES *** SUBMISSION: July, 20, 2018, 11:59 PM PT (UTC-7) NOTIFICATION: August 10, 2018 SYMPOSIUM: October 18-20, 2018 in Arlington, VA For more information, visit https://ai-hri.github.io or contact the AI-HRI submissions chair: Emmanuel Senft, Plymouth University: emmanuel.senft(a)plymouth.ac.uk *** ORGANIZING COMMITTEE *** Kalesha Bullard (Georgia Institute of Technology) Nick DePalma (Samsung Research of America) Richard G. Freedman (University of Massachusetts Amherst/SIFT) Bradley Hayes (University of Colorado Boulder) Luca Iocchi (Sapienza University of Rome) Katrin Lohan (Heriot-Watt University) Ross Mead (Semio) Emmanuel Senft (Plymouth University) Tom Williams (Colorado School of Mines)

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[KR 18 workshop] Call for participants and contributions, 27th October 2018 - Tempe, Arizona
by Yezhou Yang 13 Jul '18

13 Jul '18

Call For Papers and Participants We invite research papers, including but not limited, to the following topics. * Integration of reasoning and Learning * Probabilistic Logical Reasoning * Reasoning in Computer Vision, Natural Language, Robotics * Integrating knowledge using Deep Learning (Knowledge Distillation, Relational Reasoning) * Commonsense knowledge and Reasoning * Inference in Knowledge Bases If the papers are under review elsewhere, please indicate that during submission. In case of doubt, please contact the workshop chairs. Papers must be submitted in AAAI style and PDF format. We allow only one kind of submissions: * short papers describing applications, systems or demos, of up to 4 pages including abstract, figures, and appendices (if any) but excluding references and acknowledgments, which may take up to one additional page. Please note that the page limit will be strictly enforced. Submissions should be e-mailed to IAD18Workshop(a)gmail.com<mailto:IAD18Workshop@gmail.com>. For more information, please see the attached flyer or https://sites.google.com/view/r2k2018/home Yezhou Yang, Ph.D. Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Engineering School of Computing, Informatics and Decision Systems Engineering (CIDSE) Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering, Arizona State University Office: Brickyard 562, Phone:(480) 7270741<tel:%28480%29%20965-4182> Web:http://yezhouyang.engineering.asu.edu<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__yezhouyang.engineering.…>

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[meetings] AAAI Fall Symposium: Interactive learning in Artificial Intelligence for Human-Robot Interaction (AI-HRI) - Reminder
by Luca Iocchi 04 Jul '18

04 Jul '18

*********************************************************************** AAAI Fall Symposium: Interactive learning in Artificial Intelligence for Human-Robot Interaction (AI-HRI) Arlington, Virginia USA, October 18-20, 2018 https://ai-hri.github.io/ *********************************************************************** The goal of this year's Artificial Intelligence (AI) for Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) symposium is to bring together the large community of researchers working on interactive learning scenarios for interactive robotics. While current HRI research involves investigating ways for robots to effectively interact with people, HRI's overarching goal is to develop robots that are autonomous while intelligently modeling and learning from humans. These goals greatly overlap with some central goals of AI and interactive machine learning such that HRI is an extremely challenging problem domain for interactive learning and will elicit fresh problem areas for robotics research. Our symposium will focus on one common area of interest within the broader scope of HRI is an AI problem and AI is an HRI problem: interactive machine learning for interactive robotics. We believe that the fusion of HRI and interactive learning may provide new insights and discussions that could benefit both fields. The symposium will include research talks and discussions both to share work in this intersectional area, guidance for how to best frame AI-centric HRI work within AI venues, and a great deal of community building through discussion and tutorials. ***PAPER CATEGORY*** Authors may submit under one of three paper categories: * Full papers (6–8 pages) highlighting state-of-the-art HRI-oriented interactive learning research, HRI research focusing on the use of autonomous AI systems, or the implementation of AI systems in commercial HRI products. * Short position papers (3–4 pages) outlining new or controversial views on AI-HRI research or describing ongoing AI-oriented HRI research. * Tool papers (1–2 pages) describing novel software, hardware, or datasets of interest to the AI-HRI community. In addition, philosophy and social science researchers are encouraged to submit short papers suggesting AI advances that would facilitate the design, implementation, or analysis of HRI studies. Industry professionals are encouraged to submit short papers suggesting AI advances that would facilitate the development, enhancement, or deployment of HRI technologies in the real world. ***SUBMISSION WEBSITE*** Information about submission are available in the symposium web site https://ai-hri.github.io/ Submission site: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=fss18 *** IMPORTANT DATES *** SUBMISSION: July, 20, 2018, 11:59 PM PT (UTC-7) NOTIFICATION: August 10, 2018 SYMPOSIUM: October 18-20, 2018 in Arlington, VA For more information, visit https://ai-hri.github.io or contact the AI-HRI submissions chair: Emmanuel Senft, Plymouth University: emmanuel.senft(a)plymouth.ac.uk *** ORGANIZING COMMITTEE *** Kalesha Bullard (Georgia Institute of Technology) Nick DePalma (Samsung Research of America) Richard G. Freedman (University of Massachusetts Amherst/SIFT) Bradley Hayes (University of Colorado Boulder) Luca Iocchi (Sapienza University of Rome) Katrin Lohan (Heriot-Watt University) Ross Mead (Semio) Emmanuel Senft (Plymouth University) Tom Williams (Colorado School of Mines)

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Pepper leasing
by Cristopher Andrés Gómez 16 Jun '18

16 Jun '18

Hello everybody, Is there any new information about when the Peppers will arrive? Thanks in advance. Regards, Cristopher.

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[CFP] AAAI Fall Symposium: Interactive learning in Artificial Intelligence for Human-Robot Interaction (AI-HRI)
by Luca Iocchi 08 Jun '18

08 Jun '18

*********************************************************************** AAAI Fall Symposium: Interactive learning in Artificial Intelligence for Human-Robot Interaction (AI-HRI) Arlington, Virginia USA, October 18-20, 2018 https://ai-hri.github.io/ *********************************************************************** The goal of this year's Artificial Intelligence (AI) for Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) symposium is to bring together the large community of researchers working on interactive learning scenarios for interactive robotics. While current HRI research involves investigating ways for robots to effectively interact with people, HRI's overarching goal is to develop robots that are autonomous while intelligently modeling and learning from humans. These goals greatly overlap with some central goals of AI and interactive machine learning such that HRI is an extremely challenging problem domain for interactive learning and will elicit fresh problem areas for robotics research. Our symposium will focus on one common area of interest within the broader scope of HRI is an AI problem and AI is an HRI problem: interactive machine learning for interactive robotics. We believe that the fusion of HRI and interactive learning may provide new insights and discussions that could benefit both fields. The symposium will include research talks and discussions both to share work in this intersectional area, guidance for how to best frame AI-centric HRI work within AI venues, and a great deal of community building through discussion and tutorials. ***PAPER CATEGORY*** Authors may submit under one of three paper categories: * Full papers (6–8 pages) highlighting state-of-the-art HRI-oriented interactive learning research, HRI research focusing on the use of autonomous AI systems, or the implementation of AI systems in commercial HRI products. * Short position papers (3–4 pages) outlining new or controversial views on AI-HRI research or describing ongoing AI-oriented HRI research. * Tool papers (1–2 pages) describing novel software, hardware, or datasets of interest to the AI-HRI community. In addition, philosophy and social science researchers are encouraged to submit short papers suggesting AI advances that would facilitate the design, implementation, or analysis of HRI studies. Industry professionals are encouraged to submit short papers suggesting AI advances that would facilitate the development, enhancement, or deployment of HRI technologies in the real world. ***SUBMISSION WEBSITE*** Information about submission will be available in the symposium web site https://ai-hri.github.io/ *** IMPORTANT DATES *** SUBMISSION: July, 20, 2018, 11:59 PM PT (UTC-7) NOTIFICATION: August 10, 2018 SYMPOSIUM: October 18-20, 2018 in Arlington, VA For more information, visit https://ai-hri.github.io or contact the AI-HRI submissions chair: Emmanuel Senft, Plymouth University: emmanuel.senft(a)plymouth.ac.uk *** ORGANIZING COMMITTEE *** Kalesha Bullard (Georgia Institute of Technology) Nick DePalma (FutureWei Technologies) Richard G. Freedman (University of Massachusetts Amherst/SIFT) Bradley Hayes (University of Colorado Boulder) Luca Iocchi (Sapienza University of Rome) Katrin Lohan (Heriot-Watt University) Ross Mead (Semio) Emmanuel Senft (Plymouth University) Tom Williams (Colorado School of Mines)

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Fwd: [robocup-worldwide] Call for Participation: RoboCup@Home Education Challenge @ European RoboCupJunior Championship (EURCJ) 2018
by Luca Iocchi 04 May '18

04 May '18

Dear @Home teams, there are still a couple of slots available for @Home Education challenge during the European RoboCupJunior Championship (EURCJ) 2018 http://www.robocupathomeedu.org/challenges/robocup-home-education-challenge… If you have a junior team (either high-school under 19, or undergraduate under 22) willing to participate, let us know and fill the pre-registration in the web page above. The challenge is in the format workshop+competition, not requiring specific experience on robot programming (just basic knowledge of Python and Matlab) and we'll provide robots to teams, so there's no need to bring one. Tasks are taken from RoboCup@Home rulebook, so these activities will also boost RoboCup@Home major teams. All the teams are recruited in these last weeks before the competition, and they will all be at the same level in terms or preparation. The winner will be "European RoboCup@Home Education Champion" and the prize will be given by President of RoboCup Federation Daniel Polani. There will be also other prizes. Extended deadlines: Intention of Participation due: May 10, 2018 Registration due: May 15, 2018 For any question, do not hesitate to contact us. Best regards, Luca and Jeffrey. -------- Messaggio Inoltrato -------- Oggetto: [robocup-worldwide] Call for Participation: RoboCup@Home Education Challenge @ European RoboCupJunior Championship (EURCJ) 2018 Data: Wed, 18 Apr 2018 02:48:42 +0800 Mittente: Jeffrey Tan <i(a)jeffreytan.org> A: robocup-worldwide(a)cc.gatech.edu, euron-dist(a)iais.fraunhofer.de, robocup-junior(a)cc.gatech.edu === RoboCup@Home Education Challenge @ European RoboCupJunior Championship (EURCJ) 2018 === May 29 ~ June 1, 2018 Centro Congressi, Montesilvano, Italy http://www.robocupjunior.eu/ <<Introduction>> The European RoboCupJunior Championship (EURCJ) is a new super-regional RoboCup event that has the objective of organizing RoboCupJunior competition at European level. EURCJ 2018 is the first edition of EURCJ and is organized by the Italian RoboCupJunior Regional Committee and by the Italian RoboCup Regional Committee, in collaboration with other European RoboCupJunior regional committees. RoboCup@Home Education is an educational initiative that promotes educational efforts to boost RoboCup@Home participation and service robot development. RoboCup@Home Education takes inspiration from @Home tasks and aims at forming teams that may become @Home teams in the future. This education initiative plays the role to bridge between Major @Home league and RoboCupJunior, providing an educational platform to let Junior teams to participate and gain experience, in order to prepare themselves for the step up @Home league. With this inspiring motivation, we are honored to host the RoboCup@Home Education Challenge in the European RoboCupJunior Championship (EURCJ) 2018 on this coming May 2018 for the participation from European community. The Education Challenge will be conducted in a Workshop+Competition format to encourage totally inexperienced but interested participants to learn how to build the robot in the workshop and take part in the competition. http://www.robocupathomeedu.org/challenges/robocup-home-education-challenge… <<Schedule>> 5/29 (Tue) - AM Workshop 1 Navigation - PM Competition Task: Help-me-carry 5/30 (Wed) - AM Workshop 2 Speech, Vision - PM Competition Task: Speech and Person Recognition 5/31 (Thu) - AM Workshop 3 Arm, System Integration - PM Competition Task: Restaurant 6/1 (Fri) - AM Finals <<How to Participate>> Step 1 - Intention of Participation Fill in and submit the online Intention of Participation form below (each per team). If you have any difficulty to submit online, please contact oc(a)robocupathomeedu.org Intention of Participation form: https://goo.gl/forms/oPmjpmZnYri4Pxsj1 Step 2 - Registration The OC will review your entry and response by email after you have submitted the online form in Step 1. Complete the registration procedure according to the instruction in the email. <<Important Dates>> Intention of Participation due: April 30, 2018 Registration due: May 10, 2018 Please visit the official website for more information. You can contact us via oc(a)robocupathomeedu.org Best Regards, RoboCup@Home Education Challenge 2018 Organizing Committee _______________________________________________ robocup-worldwide mailing list robocup-worldwide(a)cc.gatech.edu https://mailman.cc.gatech.edu/mailman/listinfo/robocup-worldwide

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Call for Participation: RoboCup@Home Education Challenge 2018 @ RoboCup 2018 Montreal
by Jeffrey Tan 04 Apr '18

04 Apr '18

=== RoboCup@Home Education Challenge 2018 @ RoboCup 2018 Montreal === June 16 ~ 21, 2018 Montreal, Canada http://www.robocupathomeedu.org <<Introduction>> RoboCup@Home Education is an educational initiative that promotes educational efforts to boost RoboCup@Home participation and service robot development. We have started @Home Education activities since 2015, organized various competitions in Japan Open 2015, 2016, 2017, and RoboCup Asia-Pacific 2017, which generated more than 10 new teams with more than 50 participants in @Home participation. As an educational effort, since 2016 we have also conducted more than 8 workshops in domestic Japan and overseas. The workshop audiences were ranging from 20~70 participants, not limited to technical university students, but also inexperienced high school students and general public. Last December, in collaboration with MathWorks, we had organized the Education Challenge at RoboCup Asia-Pacific 2017 Bangkok, in a combined workshop and competition event. It was a great success in transforming totally inexperienced participants to be able to build robot and ace the competition. With this inspiring motivation, we are honored to host the RoboCup@Home Education Challenge 2018 Workshop & Competition in the Innovation Summit of RoboCup 2018 Montreal on this coming June 2018 for the participation from worldwide RoboCup community. http://www.robocup2018.org/?page=innovationsummit&lang=en <<Schedule & Rules>> - Workshop and Setup: June 16 ~ 18, 2018 - Competition: June 19 ~ 21, 2018 For more details and competition rules, please visit http://www.robocupathomeedu.org/challenges/robocup-home-education-challenge… <<How to Participate>> Step 1 - Entry Application Fill in and submit the online entry form below (each per team). If you have any difficulty to submit online, please contact oc(a)robocupathomeedu.org Online Entry Form: https://goo.gl/forms/pcquv54mYbbWIprf2 Step 2 - Registration Get the registration code from the OC. Usually, it will take a couple of days for the OC to review your entry and to response by email after you have submitted the online form in Step 1. Complete the registration procedure with the registration code according to the instruction in the email. <<Important Dates>> Entry Application: March 26 ~ April 30, 2018 Registration: March 26 ~ May 18, 2018 * Due to the availability of the robot hardware provided to the teams during the event, there are limited amount of team slots available for registration. The registration will be closed once the team slots are filled up even before the above due date. Please visit the official website for more information. You can contact us via oc(a)robocupathomeedu.org Best Regards, RoboCup@Home Education Challenge 2018 Organizing Committee

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RoboCup Iran Open 2018: Call for participation in @Home league (April 03-07).
by Reza Javanmard 02 Feb '18

02 Feb '18

Call for participation in RoboCup Iran Open 2018- @Home league (April 03-07). *>> Introduction * The 13th RoboCup IranOpen competitions will be held in April 03-07, 2018. Having had the experience of 12 years successful organization of these competitions, we look forward to an even more glorious event with more teams competing in this major robotics event from all over the world. Last year, 392 teams were qualified from 630 pre-registered teams from China, Germany, Japan, Iran, Netherlands, Peru, Singapore, South Korea, Turkey, UK, and USA. RoboCup IranOpen is an attempt to further promote AI and Robotics research. These competitions will provide a chance for all researchers to present and share their experiences and achievements. *>> How to Participate:* Interested teams are required to register in the website ( http://2018.iranopen.ir) All teams are required to pre-register through the online form available in the website. The pre-registered teams should then submit the relevant qualification materials. *>> Important dates:* - Pre-Registration: December 20, 2017 - January 30, 2018 - Submission of qualification materials: refer to your league's page in the website - Qualification: January 31 - February 15, 2018 - Early Registration: February 16 - 28, 2018 - Late Registration: March 01 - 11, 2018 *>> General links:* For further information please visit our official website at http://2018.iranopen.ir For inquiries please contact us via the below email addresses: - General Inquiries & Travel Support: info(a)iranopen.ir - Registration: registration(a)iranopen.ir - Visa & International Affairs: visa(a)iranopen.ir Reza Javanmard, TC member- @Home league RoboCup Iranopen 2018

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Call For Participation - RoboCup IranOpen 2018
by Asad Norouzi 24 Jan '18

24 Jan '18

*Apologies for duplicate messages* *Call For Participation* *RoboCup IranOpen 2018* *April 03 - 07* The 13th RoboCup IranOpen competitions will be held in April 03-07, 2018. Having had the experience of 12 years successful organization of these competitions, we look forward to an even more glorious event with more teams competing in this major robotics event from all over the world. Last year, we had 320 teams from China, Germany, Japan, Iran, Netherlands, Peru, Singapore, South Korea, Turkey, UK, and USA. RoboCup IranOpen is an attempt to further promote AI and Robotics research. These competitions will provide a chance for all researchers to present and share their experiences and achievements. The RoboCup IranOpen 2018 competitions leagues are as follows: - RoboCupSoccer - Humanoid (Kid Size, Teen Size, Adult Size) - Middle Size - Small Size - Standard Platform - Soccer 3D Simulation - Soccer 2D Simulation - RoboCupRescue - Rescue Robot - Rescue Simulation - Rescue Virtual Robot - RoboCup@Home - RoboCupIndustrial - RoboCup@Work - RoboCupJunior - Junior Soccer Open - Junior Soccer Lightweight - Junior Rescue Line Primary - Junior Rescue Line Secondary - Junior Rescue Maze - Junior CoSpace Rescue Primary - Junior CoSpace Rescue Secondary The following leagues will be also be organized in conjunction with RoboCup IranOpen 2018: - Middle Size Intelligent Deminer Robots - Small Size Intelligent Deminer Robots - Tele-operated Deminer Robots - Deminer Technical Challenge - IranOpenUAV - Major Demo - Junior Demo Common Challenge - Junior Demo Open Challenge Participation: All teams are required to pre-register through the online form available in the website. The pre-registered teams should then submit the relevant qualification materials. Last year 392 teams were qualified from 630 pre-registered teams. Important dates: - Pre-Registration: December 20, 2017 - January 30, 2018 - Submission of qualification materials: refer to your league's page in the website - Qualification: January 31 - February 15, 2018 - Early Registration: February 16 - 28, 2018 - Late Registration: March 01 - 11, 2018 For further information please visit our official website at http://2018.iranopen.ir For inquiries please contact us via the below email addresses: - General Inquiries & Travel Support: info(a)iranopen.ir - Registration: registration(a)iranopen.ir - Visa & International Affairs: visa(a)iranopen.ir Regards On behalf of, Iranian RoboCup Regional Committee RoboCup IranOpen 2018 Organizing Committee

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[Meetings] Call for participation: Hackathon 2018 with Pepper robot at SoftBank Robotics Europe, Paris
by Amit Kumar PANDEY 22 Jan '18

22 Jan '18

Dear Colleagues, Apologies for cross-postings. SoftBank Robotics Europe is organizing it’s first Hackathon on the Pepper robot [23-25 March 2018, Paris, France] What is your vision about making a difference in people's life through humanoid robots? How would you like the robot to help you or your loved ones? Hackathon 2018 is a unique event and opportunity to showcase your creative skills on Humanoid robot, Pepper, and to interact with experts in the company. Centered on the theme, "Pepper: a robot for well-being?", it is the first opportunity for developers to bring their ideas to life and to contribute in designing a new world with us. Hackathon 2018 invites talents of all sorts to express themselves, where developers and UX/Marketing teams work hand in hand to create the most inspiring and useful well-being application using Pepper's new SDK for Android and loT. Each team will be composed of 5 persons maximum. The applications must use the new Pepper SDK for Android <http://android.ald.softbankrobotics.com/> to interact and communicate with the robot. IoT will be provided but you can bring your own. You're also welcome to use third-party SDKs and tools. Registration fees will be 100% reimbursed after the event for the participants who will have taken part in the hackathon. The winning team will earn great loT material. For more information and registration visit the website: https://www.ald. softbankrobotics.com/en/hackathon2018 For any query, contact hackathon(a)softbankrobotics.com Happy Hackathon!!! Regards, Amit Kumar Pandey with Marie Bouthors-Rolland -- Marie BOUTHORS-ROLLAND Happiness Manager and your contact for this Hackathon! ---- ========================= Amit Kumar Pandey (Ph.D.) Head Principal Scientist (Chief Scientist) (R&D) Scientific Coordinator- Collaborative Projects (Human Robot Interaction, Socially Intelligent Robots, AI) SoftBank Robotics (formerly Aldebaran Robotics) Paris, France Founding coordinator of euRobotics Topic Group on- Socially Intelligent Robots and Societal Applications (SIRo-SA) http://fr.linkedin.com/in/amitkrpandey http://amitkpandey.com https://www.ald.softbankrobotics.com/en https://www.eu-robotics.net/sparc/topic-groups/index.html ========================== SoftBank Robotics Europe 43, rue du Colonel Pierre Avia - 75015 Paris <https://maps.google.com/?q=43,+rue+du+Colonel+Pierre+Avia+-%C2%A075015+Pari…> -- *This email and any attachment thereto are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed.If you are not the intended recipient, please be advised that disclosing, copying, distributing or taking any action in reliance on the contents of this email is strictly prohibited. In such case, please immediately advise the sender, and delete all copies and attachment from your system.This email shall not be construed and is not tantamount to an offer, an acceptance of offer, or an agreement by SoftBank Robotics Europe on any discussion or contractual document whatsoever. No employee or agent is authorized to represent or bind SoftBank Robotics Europe to third parties by email, or act on behalf of SoftBank Robotics Europe by email, without express written confirmation by SoftBank Robotics Europe’ duly authorized representatives.* ------------------------------ *Ce message électronique et éventuelles pièces jointes sont confidentiels, et exclusivement destinés à la personne ou l'entité à qui ils sont adressés.Si vous n'êtes pas le destinataire visé, vous êtes prié de ne pas divulguer, copier, distribuer ou prendre toute décision sur la foi de ce message électronique. Merci d'en aviser immédiatement l'expéditeur et de supprimer toutes les copies et éventuelles pièces jointes de votre système.Ce message électronique n'équivaut pas à une offre, à une acceptation d’offre, ou à un accord de SoftBank Robotics Europe sur toute discussion ou document contractuel quel qu’il soit, et ne peut être interprété comme tel. Aucun employé ou agent de SoftBank Robotics Europe n'est autorisé à représenter ou à engager la société par email, ou à agir au nom et pour le compte de la société par email, sans qu’une confirmation écrite soit donnée par le représentant légal de SoftBank Robotics Europe ou par toute autre personne ayant reçu délégation de pouvoir appropriée.*

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2017 SSPL Team AUPAIR Opensource
by 이범진 11 Jan '18

11 Jan '18

Dear all, This is Beom-Jin Lee, and I was the team leader for AUPAIR at RoboCup@Home SSPL held in Nagoya 2017. I am emailing to inform RoboCup@Home researchers that we have finally open- sourced our AUPAIR package for everyone’s use. The AUPAIR package is a Perception-Action-Learning System (PALs) which is a multi-modular system incorporated with state-of-the-art deep learning techniques. By using the PALs for pepper, you can demonstrate all the functions we used for the RoboCup@Home SSPL competition. I hope this contribution may ease some difficulties for research groups intending to participate in the future Social Standard Platform Leagues. We tried to add detail descriptions for any beginners to understand the code, however, if anyone has questions, feel free to contact me. Link: <https://github.com/soseazi/pal_pepper> https://github.com/soseazi/pal_pepper Best regards, Beom-Jin Lee

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

09 Jan '18

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

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

08 Jan '18

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

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

08 Jan '18

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

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

08 Jan '18

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

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

13 Dec '17

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

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

23 Nov '17

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

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

15 Nov '17

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

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

17 Oct '17

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

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

12 Oct '17

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

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

12 Oct '17

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

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Call for Participation: RoboCup@Home Social Standard Platform League 2018 - Deadline October 15, 2017
by Luca Iocchi 09 Oct '17

09 Oct '17

Dear @Home teams, if you are interested in participating in RoboCup@Home 2018 Social Standard Platform League (with SoftBank Pepper robot) in Montreal, please remind that the deadline to submit the qualification material is ***October 15, 2017*** More details are available in http://www.robocupathome.org/cfp-sspl-2018 Best regards, Luca Iocchi (on behalf of RoboCup@Home OC)

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Announcement of Qualified teams for the RoboCup Asia Pacific 2017 (RCAP2017) @Home Open Platform League.
by Dr. KANJANAPAN SUKVICHAI 03 Oct '17

03 Oct '17

Dear @Home Teams, As the LOC of RCAP2017, I glad to announce the qualified team who qualified for participating in the RoboCup Asia Pacific 2017 @Home Open Platform League. Here is the list of qualified teams: * DONGYANG Thailand * KameRider OPL China * Machinilog Pakistan * MRL@home Iran * Skuba JR Thailand * Sun@Home China Our general qualifying process is based on the team qualification materials (Videos & TDP). Qualified Team Videos show robots solving complex tasks that require full integration of most abilities used in @Home -- Dr. KANJANAPAN SUKVICHAI RoboCitizen Laboratory. Dept. of Electrical Engineering. Kasetsart University.

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