Dear Colleagues,
We are glad to inform you that the *deadline* for submissions of the *GenR
2021* *workshop* "Gendering Robots: Ongoing (Re)configurations of Gender in
Robotics" has been extended until *JULY 7th*! The workshop will be
held on *August
12th* from 3:00 PM to 7:00 PM CEST within the RO-MAN 2021 conference. Below,
you can find the call for papers with all the information you need
regarding the workshop's topics of interest, paper format, panelists, and
keynote speakers.
Please, feel free to contact us in case you have any questions and help us
circulate the call within your network.
Kindest regards,
Giulia Perugia
================================
*CALL FOR PAPERS - IEEE RO-MAN 2021 GenR WORKSHOP *
*GENDERING ROBOTS: Ongoing (Re)configurations of Gender in Robotics*
*IMPORTANT DATES & INFO*
Deadline for Paper Submission: July 7th, 2021
Paper Acceptance Notification: July 21st, 2021
Camera Ready Paper: July 28th, 2021
Main Conference Date: August 8th-12th, 2021
Workshop Date: August 12th, 2021 (3:00 PM - 7:00 PM)
Workshop Website: https://sites.google.com/view/ro-man21-genr-workshop/home
Twitter: @GenR_ROMAN <https://twitter.com/GenrRoman>
Submission page: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=genr2021
Full call for papers: https://easychair.org/cfp/GenR2021
STATEMENT OF OBJECTIVES
Within the GenR workshop, we aim to provide researchers investigating
gender in robotics with a platform to share their work and invite
interested scholars to reflect with us on inclusive and ethical practices
in robot gendering. We hope to explore motivations for robot gendering, and
understand how robot gendering might impact human-robot interaction in the
face of its risks with regards to stereotype propagation. Furthermore, we
would like to inspire discussions about the mindful use of robots in
society and promote the possibility to use robots to oppose/challenge
harmful social practices (gender stereotypes, gender inequality, etc.). To
this end, we invite those working in related domains (e.g., Social
Robotics, and Gender Studies) to discuss with us best practices to
re-configure gender in robotics and shed light on issues of gender from a
multidisciplinary perspective. Our goal is to bridge the communication gap
we observed between disciplines addressing the topic of gender in robotics
and the lack of spaces to converse with and learn from one another.
Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
-
Gendering practices in Social Robotics
-
Experimental studies on gendered robots
-
Feminist robotics
-
Robot’s gender design
-
Norm-critical design
-
Queer design in HRI
-
Sex Robots
-
Ethics of Gendered Robots
-
Normative deviance in relation to robot gender
-
Societal implications and applications of gendered robots
-
Performative arts encompassing a reflection on gender in robotics
-
Non-binary perspectives on robot gender
SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
Since our workshop aims at bringing researchers from different fields
together and starting a conversation on the process of gendering robots,
we are open to two formats of submissions: abstracts (1 page) and short
papers (2-4 pages). We particularly encourage multidisciplinary submissions
presenting works in progress, as accepted authors will be invited to
identify discussion points and questions they would like to put to our
panelists and other attendees. In line with the intent of the workshop, we
accept different types of submissions: empirical papers, experimental
design protocols, philosophical essays, studies with preliminary results
and more conclusive papers.
Authors should submit their papers formatted according to the IEEE
two-column format <http://ras.papercept.net/conferences/support/support.php>,
the same as the main conference (LaTeX
<http://ras.papercept.net/conferences/support/tex.php> or MS-Word
<http://ras.papercept.net/conferences/support/word.php> templates).
Authors should submit a PDF of their paper through EasyChair
<https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=genr2021>.
Submissions will be evaluated according to their fit to the workshop theme,
their thought-provoking content, and their adherence to the scientific
standards of the discipline of origin. The reviews will consist of
constructive feedback mindful of the authors’ multidisciplinary background.
We will prefer qualitative evaluations to score-based numerical ones.
The workshop proceedings will be published on ArXiv and the authors will be
invited to submit their work in a SPECIAL ISSUE
<https://www.springer.com/journal/12369/updates/19292566?IFA> on the
International Journal of Social Robotics.
INVITED SPEAKERS
Prof. Robert SPARROW, Monash University, Australia
Prof. Friederike EYSSEL, University of Bielefeld, Germany
PANEL DISCUSSION
Prof. Ericka JOHNSON - Linköping University (Sweden)
Dr. Katherine HARRISON- Linköping University (Sweden)
Prof. Verena RIESER- Heriot Watt University (UK)
Dr. Megan STRAIT - University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (USA)
Prof. James E. *YOUNG* - University of Manitoba (Canada)
COMMITTEE
Dr. Giulia PERUGIA (main organiser), Uppsala University, Sweden,
giulia.perugia(a)it.uu.se
Dr. Katie WINKLE, KTH, Sweden, winkle(a)kth.se
Ryan Blake JACKSON, Colorado School of Mines, USA, rbjackso(a)mymail.mines.edu
Dominika LISY, Linköping University, Sweden, dominika.lisy(a)liu.se
TL;DR - Please send photos/videos and complete survey: https://forms.gle/Es1DfR4H8ubyt54c7
Dear RoboCuppers,
Back in November, when the board of trustees and I made the difficult
decision to hold RoboCup 2021 remotely, we had no idea if it would work.
In many of the leagues, there were neither rules nor infrastructure to
support remote competitions. We knew that it was risky, but we also
suspected that the RoboCup community would rise to the challenge.
Now that the event has concluded, I am pleased to report that RoboCup
2021 was an unmitigated success! Every single league held a successful
competition of some sort, and we had more than 2,000 registered
participants - a similar number to our usual in-person attendance.
I feel like I've said this so many times to so many people over the past
few days. But I also don't think it can be said enough. So once more,
Thank you! We couldn't have done it without you: the members of the
event organizing committee, the executive committee, the technical
committees, the organizing committees, and indeed all of the
participants! No matter where your team finished in the league
rankings, RoboCup couldn't have without your participation. I hope and
trust that you've also gained something from the experience, both
intellectually and personally.
In case you were too busy programming to catch the symposium, I
encourage you now to go back to the underline site and find recordings
of the events on June 23rd, 25th, and 28th:
https://underline.io/events/108/schedule
I'd also like to ask all participants to fill out this short survey,
which will help with our future planning:
https://forms.gle/Es1DfR4H8ubyt54c7
And finally, to help us commemorate RoboCup 2021 in the future, please
consider sharing with us any photos or videos that we can put into the
RoboCup archive. There is one link for each league below. We request
that:
- they are free to use by RoboCup Federation and also partners of RoboCup on websites, press releases, etc.
- you could/should send also information of the source, for giving credits (you can upload a text file with the author's names per
picture, or list of pictures).
Here are the links:
Soccer Humanoid: https://cloud.robocup.org/s/ktyQcBFxGt8s3wc
Soccer Standard Platform: https://cloud.robocup.org/s/B42aKfDi3adr7ce
Soccer Middle Size: https://cloud.robocup.org/s/XAsJaqqwiadjp3X
Soccer Small Size: https://cloud.robocup.org/s/ktHR4PRtgqCeRd5
Soccer Simulation: https://cloud.robocup.org/s/6qDd9HqwdWwnrPP
Rescue Robot: https://cloud.robocup.org/s/3tgQjymcwNWNx5x
Rescue Simulation: https://cloud.robocup.org/s/9xQ8zNcsG8WeKfy
@Home: https://cloud.robocup.org/s/5yNefc5j8nRggMq
Industrial @Work: https://cloud.robocup.org/s/dXfLz68BDGMBJnD
Industrial Logistics: https://cloud.robocup.org/s/yHwpAwpYdXf3ydL
Junior Soccer: https://cloud.robocup.org/s/iDiTpYCxAGEgNZn
Junior OnStage: https://cloud.robocup.org/s/k969FLXDbMBiHbM
Junior Rescue: https://cloud.robocup.org/s/YBbg9L5WzzGkd7F
I look forward to seeing all of you in person in Thailand next year!
Best Regards,
Peter Stone
President, RoboCup Federation
*Neural Computing and Applications (NCAA) Special Issue **on Interpretation
of Deep Learning: Prediction, Representation, Modeling and Utilization*
https://www.springer.com/journal/521/updates/19187658
Aims, Scope and Objective
While Big Data offers the great potential for revolutionizing all aspects
of our society, harvesting of valuable knowledge from Big Data is an
extremely challenging task. The large scale and rapidly growing information
hidden in the unprecedented volumes of non-traditional data requires the
development of decision-making algorithms. Recent successes in machine
learning, particularly deep learning, has led to breakthroughs in
real-world applications such as autonomous driving, healthcare,
cybersecurity, speech and image recognition, personalized news feeds, and
financial markets.
While these models may provide the state-of-the-art and impressive
prediction accuracies, they usually offer little insight into the inner
workings of the model and how a decision is made. The decision-makers
cannot obtain human-intelligible explanations for the decisions of models,
which impede the applications in mission-critical areas. This situation is
even severely worse in complex data analytics. It is, therefore, imperative
to develop explainable computation intelligent learning models with
excellent predictive accuracy to provide safe, reliable, and scientific
basis for determination.
Numerous recent works have presented various endeavors on this issue but
left many important questions unresolved. The first challenging problem is
how to construct self-explanatory models or how to improve the explicit
understanding and explainability of a model without the loss of accuracy.
In addition, high dimensional or ultra-high dimensional data are common in
large and complex data analytics. In these cases, the construction of
interpretable model becomes quite difficult and complex. Further, how to
evaluate and quantify the explainability of a model is lack of consistent
and clear description. Moreover, auditable, repeatable, and reliable
process of the computational models is crucial to decision-makers. For
example, decision-makers need explicit explanation and analysis of the
intermediate features produced in a model, thus the interpretation of
intermediate processes is requisite. Subsequently, the problem of efficient
optimization exists in explainable computational intelligent models. These
raise many essential issues on how to develop explainable data analytics in
computational intelligence.
This Topical Collection aims to bring together original research articles
and review articles that will present the latest theoretical and technical
advancements of machine and deep learning models. We hope that this Topical
Collection will: 1) improve the understanding and explainability of machine
learning and deep neural networks; 2) enhance the mathematical foundation
of deep neural networks; and 3) increase the computational efficiency and
stability of the machine and deep learning training process with new
algorithms that will scale.
Potential topics include but are not limited to the following:
- Interpretability of deep learning models
- Quantifying or visualizing the interpretability of deep neural networks
- Neural networks, fuzzy logic, and evolutionary based interpretable
control systems
- Supervised, unsupervised, and reinforcement learning
- Extracting understanding from large-scale and heterogeneous data
- Dimensionality reduction of large scale and complex data and sparse
modeling
- Stability improvement of deep neural network optimization
- Optimization methods for deep learning
- Privacy preserving machine learning (e.g., federated machine learning,
learning over encrypted data)
- Novel deep learning approaches in the applications of image/signal
processing, business intelligence, games, healthcare, bioinformatics, and
security
Guest Editors
Nian Zhang (Lead Guest Editor), University of the District of Columbia,
Washington, DC, USA, nzhang(a)udc.edu
Jian Wang, China University of Petroleum (East China), Qingdao, China,
wangjiannl(a)upc.edu.cn
Leszek Rutkowski, Czestochowa University of Technology, Poland,
leszek.rutkowski(a)pcz.pl
Important Dates
Deadline for Submissions: March 31, 2022
First Review Decision: May 31, 2022
Revisions Due: June 30, 2022
Deadline for 2nd Review: July 31, 2022
Final Decisions: August 31, 2022
Final Manuscript: September 30, 2022
Peer Review Process
All the papers will go through peer review, and will be reviewed by at
least three reviewers. A thorough check will be completed, and the guest
editors will check any significant similarity between the manuscript under
consideration and any published paper or submitted manuscripts of which
they are aware. In such case, the article will be directly rejected without
proceeding further. Guest editors will make all reasonable effort to
receive the reviewer’s comments and recommendation on time.
The submitted papers must provide original research that has not been
published nor currently under review by other venues. Previously published
conference papers should be clearly identified by the authors at the
submission stage and an explanation should be provided about how such
papers have been extended to be considered for this special issue (with
at least 30% difference from the original works).
Submission Guidelines
Paper submissions for the special issue should strictly follow the
submission format and guidelines (
https://www.springer.com/journal/521/submission-guidelines). Each
manuscript should not exceed 16 pages in length (inclusive of figures and
tables).
Manuscripts must be submitted to the journal online system at
https://www.editorialmanager.com/ncaa/default.aspx.
Authors should select “TC: Interpretation of Deep Learning” during the
submission step ‘Additional Information’.
Dear RoboCuppers,
Congratulations to everyone on what by all appearances was a very
successful set of competitions!
While the competitions have completed, Monday brings the RoboCup
Symposium, our community's main scientific event.
Please tune in on the Underline mainstage starting at 9am UTC for a fun
and interesting program. Each paper will be presented with a short
5-minute video. There will be time to talk with the authors and ask
questions afterwards at the interactive sessions in Gather Town. You
can browse the posters and videos in Gather Town at your convenience any
time.
At 11am UTC, there will be a panel on building a research career in
RoboCup with representatives from different stages of their careers.
Between noon and 2pm UTC, there will be the RoboCup Junior awards
ceremony (noon), the Handover ceremony for everyone with a preview of
RoboCup 2022 (12:45), and the RoboCup Major awards ceremony (1:15). All
participants are strongly encouraged to attend - whether or not you won
an award!
Immediately following, we will have our final keynote speech, by
Stefanie Tellex: "Towards Complex Language in Partially Observed
Environments."
At the end of the day, there will be a panel reflecting back on 25 years
of RoboCup.
I look forward to seeing you all there!
Best,
Peter Stone
President, RoboCup Federation
Dear all,
on behalf of Frank Förster, I'd like to bring to your notice this PhD
opportunity (deadline for applications 30. June 2021):
PhD studentship
MACHINE LEARNING FOR HUMAN-ROBOT INTERACTION
Adaptive Systems Research Group
Centre for Computer Science and Informatics Research
School of Physics, Engineering and Computer Science
University of Hertfordshire, UK
Contact: Frank Foerster (f.foerster(a)herts.ac.uk)
============
Short-listings will start on 30 June 2021*
Bursary £15,285 p.a.
* application before this date is strongly encouraged
We invite applications for a PhD studentship at the University of
Hertfordshire, UK, under the supervision of Dr. Frank Foerster in the area
of robotic language acquisition or symbol grounding as well as approaches
to implement repair mechanisms in human-robot interaction more generally.
We are particularly interested in pursuing research that connects to the
following two topics, but alternative ideas will be considered too.
Research Topics
Topic 1: Socially driven Machine Learning in Robotic Language Acquisition
Topic 2: Repair Mechanisms in Interaction
More information including relevant papers are provided in the following
PDF:
https://www.herts.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/331737/ML_HRI.pdf
Independent of the particular topic, we have recently become member of the
HomeBank corpora, and would strongly encourage interaction and
collaboration with developmental psychologists and psycholinguists.
Person Profile
You will have an excellent first degree and a very keen interest and
motivation in human-machine interaction in general or in language
acquisition in particular. Optimally you should have
an excellent background in Computer Science, Computational/Cognitive
Robotics, (computational) linguistics, Artificial intelligence, or similar
disciplines with a considerable quantitative/computational component.
Due to the interdisciplinary nature of the topic we will also consider
applicants with a background in (developmental) psychology, philosophy, or
pragmatics as long as you have
some experience in programming, machine learning, or dialogue systems.
Prior experience with topics such as reinforcement learning, or statistical
learning more generally is highly desirable, but not essential if the
quantitative background is otherwise very strong. The knowledge of later
Wittgenstein is a big plus.
If you have questions, have alternative suggestions for a related, but
distinct topic, and/or are generally interested in applying, please contact
Dr. Frank Foerster
f.foerster(a)herts.ac.uk
============
Research in Computer Science at the University of Hertfordshire has been
recognised as excellent by the latest Research Assessment Exercise, with
50% of the research submitted being rated as internationally excellent or
world leading.
The University of Hertfordshire provides a very stimulating environment,
offering a large number of specialised and interdisciplinary seminars as
well as general training and researcher development opportunities. The
University is situated in Hatfield, in the green belt just north of London.
Hatfield is close to Central London (less than 25 minutes by direct train
to Kings Cross), with convenient access to Stansted, Luton and Heathrow
airports, and, via the nearby historic town of St. Albans, also to Gatwick
airport.
Application forms and submission instructions are available under
https://www.herts.ac.uk/study/schools-of-study/physics-engineering-and-comp…
Eligibility
-----------
Applicants must submit or obtain:
- a completed application form, which can be obtained from website linked
above
- a research statement stating past experience/research background and
interest and motivation/research ambition for current project
- two academic references
- copies of qualification certificates and transcripts
- a copy of your passport
Applications from outside the UK or EU are eligible for this studentship.
The application form should be returned to:
doctoralcollegeadmissions(a)herts.ac.uk
Dear RoboCuppers,
Sunday brings our last day of competitions in RoboCup 2021.
Traditionally, we schedule the games sequentially so that we can all
watch the finals in all the leagues and then at the end of the day we
have the awards ceremony.
Due to people being in different time zones, we don't have such a
scripted finals day this year. But I still encourage you to watch the
top teams in as many leagues as possible.
We may be able to update the schedule on the website. But in case not,
I'm attaching a document with the timings and links of Sunday's games in
many of the leagues.
Meanwhile, we will hold the award ceremony in the middle of the
symposium on Monday. Please plan on being there.
Good luck to everyone on Sunday!
Best,
Peter Stone
President, RoboCup Federation
RoboCuppers,
I know I've said this already, but it really is thrilling to see the
videos and livestreams of the competitions from all around the world.
Kudos to all of you for keeping the RoboCup spirit alive this year!
On Friday, please tune in to the Underline main stage at 13:30 UTC for
the 2nd keynote talk of the symposium by Jean-Paul Laumond: "Robotics:
The Science of Motion."
Immediately after the talk, I will be in the gather.town space to meet
with some of my RoboCup friends. I hope you'll join us there as well!
Best,
Peter Stone
President, RoboCup Federation
Dear RoboCuppers,
I hope your competitions are all proceeding nicely.
In case you missed them, there are now recordings of the opening
ceremony and the first keynote talk available on the Underline page.
Click on the schedule for June 23rd to find them.
By the way, I've heard reports that the website works better in Firefox
and Chrome than in Safari. If you're having any trouble with it, you
may want to try switching browsers.
Good luck with your games on Thursday!
Best,
Peter Stone
President, RoboCup Federation
RoboCup participants,
In case it isn't clear, to access the main stage, click on the star in
the left navigation window of the Underline page.
The direct link is:
https://www.underline.io/events/108/mainstage
Best,
Peter
Dear RoboCuppers,
It's exciting to see some of the live streams from the leagues running.
Congratulations to everyone on getting to this point!
The opening ceremony will begin in just a few hours - at 13:30 UTC on
Wednesday. Please plan to tune in to the Underline mainstage at that
time, followed by the first symposium keynote by Dieter Fox "Toward
Robust Manipulation in Complex Environments" at 14:00.
Immediately after that (around 15:00), I encourage you to log in to
gather.town. Dieter intends to be there to answer questions, and you
will have an opportunity to also mingle with each other.
Remember that all the symposium posters and presentations are now
accessible in the symposium room. And next to the symposium room, there
is now a set of meeting rooms that you can use as needed (in addition to
the league rooms).
I've already enjoyed catching up with some of you in gather.town, and I
look forward to seeing more of you there over the coming days.
See you soon!
Peter Stone
President, RoboCup Federation