February 2024 - RoboCup-worldwide

Call for paticipation - RoboCup ARM Challenge 2024
by Jose Avendano Arbelaez 10 Apr '24

10 Apr '24

Call for Participation 2024 RoboCup Autonomous Robot Manipulation (ARM) Challenge https://arm.robocup.org/ The RoboCup Autonomous Manipulation Challenge is live and accepting registrations for the 2024 season. This is a great opportunity to learn about robot manipulation or get a certificate to demonstrate your existing skills! Live information session on learning robotic manipulation and this competition will take place on March 13th. Prizes Certificate of Achievement for demonstrating skills in programming, control, simulation, and perception of robotic pick-and-place and grasping applications in dynamic environments. RCF Sponsored Research Grant for 2025 (Up to 5000 USD) Important Dates February 15th - Registration Opens March 13th - Live challenge kickoff and Q&A April 18th - Technical Support and Development Q&A for teams May 26th - Submission deadline for the qualification round May 30th - Announcement of teams qualified for finals July 18-21 - In-person finals with UR5e Robot (RoboCup 2024 Eindhoven) Registration All teams must pre-register using the online form on the website. Registration deadline: May 5th, 2024 Submission Participating teams will complete a submission form providing links to their code/files and a video of their algorithm in action. Questions? roboticsarena(a)mathworks.com<mailto:roboticsarena@mathworks.com> or j.j.olthuis(a)tue.nl<mailto:j.j.olthuis@tue.nl>

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[News] Robotics Developer Masterclass 2024-Batch 1
by Yuhong Lin 08 Apr '24

08 Apr '24

Dear all, Enrollment for the Robotics Developer Masterclass 2024-Batch 1 is currently available! This program offers comprehensive training in robot programming centered on ROS and development, equipping participants with the skills needed to prepare for employment at top robotics companies. *Registration link*: roboticsdeveloper.ai <https://www.theconstructsim.com/robotics-developer/?utm_source=robocup_worl…> *Early-Bird Registration Deadline*: December 31, 2023 Throughout this Masterclass, you’ll have the exclusive opportunity to work on innovative remote real robot labs, including: 1. *City World Lab*: Work with a real mobile robot, the TurtleBot3, to perform basic ROS tasks, gaining hands-on experience in basic robot programming. 2. *Warehouse Lab*: Apply your knowledge to create an entire pick-and-place task using real warehouse collaborative robots, including the RB1-Base and UR3e Arm. 3. *Cyber World Lab*: Engage in designing and developing navigation algorithms for a wheeled mobile robot, specifically the ROSbot XL. Explore the challenges and intricacies of robot navigation in different environments. 4. *Startbots Cafeteria Lab*: Showcase your skills in a real-world multi-robot scenario by designing and presenting a complete robotics project for the StarBots Cafeteria Lab. Develop robots that can prepare and deliver coffee to tables while maintaining battery levels and cleaning the space. The curriculum covers a wide range of essential topics and practical skills, empowering you to thrive in robotics development. Key areas covered in the program include: - *Collaborative software development with Git* - *C++ programming skills for robotics* - *ROS 1 and ROS 2 basics* - *Robot modeling with URDF – ROS2* - *Robot frame transformations with TF ROS2* - *Creating robot simulations with Gazebo (Ignition)* - *Advanced ROS2 concepts* - *Robot navigation with ROS2* - *Robot perception with ROS2* - *Object manipulation with ROS2* - *Building robot controllers with ROS2* - *Essential math for robotics* - *Mobile robot kinematics* - *Robot arm kinematics* - *Robot dynamics* - *Kalman filters* - *Path planning algorithms* - *Programming web interfaces for ROS2* - *Containerizing your software with Docker* - *Automating development tasks with Jenkins* - *Ensuring code integrity with continuous integration (CI)* - *Designing, developing, and presenting complete robotics projects from scratch* Upon successful completion of the Masterclass, you will be guaranteed an online or onsite internship placement with one of the world’s leading robotics companies. Our esteemed partners who have accepted our students for internships include: - Mujin Corp (Japan) - Robotnik (Spain) - PAL Robotics (Spain) - Eurecat (Centre Tecnològic de Catalunya-Spain) - Rover Robotics (US) - Stogl Robotics (Germany) - Karelics (Finland) - Neobotix (Germany) - Husarion (Poland) - Perpetuum Progress (Germany) - Robotise (Germany) - Robotec AI (Poland) - ICRA (Instituto Colombiano de Robótica Avanzada - Colombia) - Akara Robotics (Ireland) - Orbital Composites (US) - Knightscope (US) - A*STAR (Agency for Science, Technology and Research - Singapore) - Asimovo (Netherlands) - Anybotics (Switzerland) - Rigbetellabs (India) - PaceRobotics (India) To register and learn more about the program, please visit the following link: roboticsdeveloper.ai <https://www.theconstructsim.com/robotics-developer/?utm_source=robocup_worl…> If you have any questions or require further assistance, please do not hesitate to contact us at info(a)theconstructsim.com. Best regards,

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2nd Call for Papers: 12th ICAPS Workshop on Planning and Robotics
by Iman Awaad 27 Feb '24

27 Feb '24

** CALL FOR PAPERS ** Twelfth ICAPS Workshop on Planning and Robotics (PlanRob‚ 2024) https://icaps24.icaps-conference.org/program/workshops/planrob/ Banff, Canada, June 2-3, 2024 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- * Topics and Objectives AI Planning & Scheduling (P&S) methods are key to enabling intelligent robots to perform autonomous, flexible, and interactive behaviours. Researchers in the P&S community have continued to develop approaches and produce planners, representations, as well as heuristics that robotics researchers can make use of. However, there remain numerous challenges complicating the uptake, use and successful integration of P&S technology in robotics, many of which have been addressed by robotics researchers with novel solutions. Strong collaboration and synergy between researchers in both communities is vital to the continued growth of the fields in a way that provide mutual benefits to the two communities. To foster this, the PlanRob workshop aims to provide a stable, long-term forum (having been held annually at ICAPS since 2013) where researchers from both the P&S and Robotics communities can openly discuss relevant issues, research and development progress, future directions and open challenges related to P&S when applied to Robotics. In addition to the usual paper submissions, the workshop’s format naturally lends itself to preliminary results, position papers as well as to work focused on challenges in using and integrating planners in robotics systems. * Topics of Interest Topics of interest include (but are not limited to): - human-aware planning and execution in human-robot interaction, - real-world planning applications for autonomous and intelligent robots, - planning domain representations for robotics applications, - optimising behaviour in large scale automated or semi-automated systems, - integrated planning and execution in robot architectures, - learning methods for robot planning and scheduling, - P&S methods for optimisation and adaptation in robotics, - mission, path, and motion planning for robots, - formal methods for robot planning and control, - challenges and solutions in using P&S technology in robotics, - open problems for P&S in robotics, - coordination of multi-robot teams, - benchmark planning domains for robots, - adversarial action planning in competitive robot domains, - mixed-initiative planning and sliding autonomy for robotic systems. < Papers from last year’s workshop can be found here: https://icaps23.icaps-conference.org/program/workshops/planrob/ <https://icaps23.icaps-conference.org/program/workshops/planrob/> > * Important Dates Paper submission: ***Monday, 25 March 2024*** Notification of acceptance: Friday, 26 April 2024 Camera-ready version due: Friday 24 May 2024 Workshop Date: June 2-3, 2024 The reference time-zone for all deadlines is UTC-12: Your submissions will be on time so long as there is still some place in the world where the deadline has not yet passed. * Submission Details There are two types of submissions: - short position papers (four pages) - regular papers (up to 10 pages) Papers may have an additional page containing references. Regular papers may be scheduled with more time in the final program. A poster session may be considered to provide a further presentation opportunity. The guidelines for formatting are the same as is used for ICAPS 2024 papers (typeset in the AAAI style as described at: http://www.aaai.org/Publications/Author/author.php), but with the AAAI copyright removed. The papers must be submitted in PDF format via the EasyChair system (https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=icapswsplanrob24). Please note that papers under review (e.g. which have been submitted to IJCAI-2024) are also welcome, however, in order to avoid potential conflicts, these manuscripts should be prepared as anonymous submissions for a double blind reviewing process. Accepted papers will be published on the workshop’s website. The organisers are investigating the availability of journal editors in order to invite a selection of accepted papers from the workshop to a special issue or post-proceedings volume. * Organizers Iman Awaad, Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University of Applied Sciences, Germany iman.awaad(a)h-brs.de Alberto Finzi, Università di Napoli "Federico II", Italy alberto.finzi(a)unina.it AndreA Orlandini  Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies (ISTC-CNR), Italy andrea.orlandini(a)istc.cnr.it (Sent on behalf of the organising committee of PlanRob 2024)

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[jobs] two PhD positions in marine robotics
by Andreas Birk 27 Feb '24

27 Feb '24

Two PhD positions in marine robotics are available at Constructor University under the supervision of Prof. Andreas Birk and Prof. Francesco Maurelli. The compensation of the positions is with competitive stipends, which allow some freedom in the research direction of the candidate. Topics of interest are in the areas of perception and mapping with marine robots as well as autonomy and fault tolerance of marine robots. Applicants should have a background in robotics or related areas. They should be experienced with the Robot Operating System (ROS), ideally ROS2. If not, they at least need a strong C++ / Pyton programming expertise on Linux. Previous work in the area of marine robotics is a strong plus. Furthermore, knowledge in any of the following areas is an asset: computer vision, ideally underwater vision; signal processing, ideally with sonar; SLAM, ideally by using factor graphs; autonomy, ideally including aspects of fault tolerance. Please submit your application via Google Forms using the following link: https://forms.gle/qFT2oTu41MVoTKyi8 For any questions, please feel free to contact Prof. Andreas Birk <abirk(a)constructor.university> and Prof. Francesco Maurelli <fmaurelli(a)constructor.university> -- ================================================================================ Prof. Dr. Andreas Birk ================================================================================ Constructor University Robotics Group Campus Ring 1, 28759 Bremen, Germany https://robotics.constructor.university/ ================================================================================ Commercial registry: Amtsgericht Bremen, HRB 18117 Chairs of the Executive Board (Vorsitzende der Geschäftsführung): Dr. Stanislav Protasov (President/Präsident), Oznur Bell (Chancellor/Kanzlerin) Managing Directors (Geschäftsführung): Prof. Dr. Thomas Auf der Heyde, Maja Laetitia Feldt Chairman of the Board of Governors (Aufsichtsratsvorsitzender): Dr. Serg Bell ================================================================================

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Final Call for Papers: Call for Papers: The 6th Games, Agents, and Incentives Workshop (GAIW)@AAMAS 2024
by Nicholas Mattei 25 Feb '24

25 Feb '24

Last Call for Papers @ GAIW! TL;DR: Webpage: https://preflib.github.io/gaiw2024 - Submission Deadline: February 26, 2024 (AoE). - Acceptance Notification: March 28, 2024. - Camera Ready: April 15, 2024 (AoE). - Workshop: May 6 or 7, 2024 (TBA). Call for Papers: We invite submissions to the 6th iteration of the Games, Agents and Incentives Workshop, co-located with AAMAS 2024 in Auckland, New Zealand. Games, Agents and Incentives is a confederated workshop which focuses on agents and incentives in AI. In particular, it promotes approaches that deal with game theory (cooperative and non-cooperative), social choice, and agent-mediated e-commerce aspects of AI systems. The confederated workshop merges multiple workshops that have been associated with AAMAS in the past, which considered different aspects of the general interplay between AI and economics: • CoopMAS: Cooperative Games in Multi-agent Systems • AMEC: Agent-Mediated Electronic Commerce • EXPLORE: Exploring Beyond the Worst Case in Computational Social Choice Over the past two decades, the focus of agent incentives in decentralised and centralised AI systems has increased dramatically. These issues come up when designing preference aggregation mechanisms and markets; computing equilibria and bidding strategies; facilitating cooperation among agents; and fairly dividing resources. ********************************************************** PAPER SUBMISSION ********************************************************** Authors should submit full papers electronically in PDF format at https://cmt3.research.microsoft.com/GAIW2024 Formatting Guidelines: Please format papers according to the AAMAS 2024 format (author kit <https://www.aamas2024-conference.auckland.ac.nz/calls/submission-instructio…>). Optionally, one may submit in LNCS format as well (LaTeX template). Paper Length: Papers can be at most 8 pages long in AAMAS format, or 12 pages long in LNCS format. Additional pages may be used for references. Supplemental material can be appended at the end of the paper. However, reviewers are instructed to make their evaluations based on the main submission, and are not obligated to consult the supplemental material. Multiple Submissions: To widen participation and encourage discussion, there will be no formal publication of workshop proceedings. We will, however, post the accepted papers online to the benefit of the participants to the workshop. Therefore, submission of preliminary work and papers to be submitted or in preparation for submission to other major venues in the field are encouraged. Past Submissions: In order to strike a balance between new work and work that may have been presented, but not widely seen, we ask that if authors want to submit published work they do so non-anonymously and clearly indicate when and where the work was published. We will only accept work which has been published in the last calendar year (e.g., IJCAI 2023, NeurIPS 2023, AAAI 2023, AAAI 2024 and any conference held strictly after February 2023). We invite papers on topics of game theory, mechanism design, fair allocation, computational social choice, and their applications to multi-agent systems: - Algorithmic mechanism design - Auctions - Behavioral Game Theory - Bounded rationality - Cooperative Games - Computational advertising - Computational aspects of equilibria - Computational social choice - Coalitions, coordination, collective action, and cooperation - Economic aspects of security and privacy - Economic aspects of distributed and network computing - Equilibrium computation - Empirical approaches to e-market - Fairness (in ML & elsewhere) - Fair Division - Incentives in machine learning - Information and attention economics - Learning in games (e.g., solution concepts and equilibria) - Matching and Matching Markets - Negotiation - Price differentiation and price dynamics - Social networks - Trading agent design and analysis - Uncertainty in AI and economics Best Presentation Award: The organizing committee of GAIW will be giving two awards (first-place and runner up) for best paper presentations. The award criteria include the clarity of presentation, the level of engagement, the content, and discussion handline. Inquiries: If you have any questions, direct them to alan.tsang(a)carleton.ca. ********************************************************** IMPORTANT DATES ********************************************************** - Submission Deadline: February 26, 2024 (AoE). - Acceptance Notification: March 28, 2024. - Camera Ready: April 15, 2024 (AoE). - Workshop: May 6 or 7, 2024 (TBA). ********************************************************** ORGANIZATION ********************************************************** Program Chairs Ben Abramowitz, Tulane University Haris Aziz, UNSW Sydney and Data61 John P. Dickerson, University of Maryland Hadi Hosseini, Penn State University Nicholas Mattei, Tulane University Svetlana Obraztsova, Carleton University Zinovi Rabinovich, Carleton University Alan Tsang, Carleton University Tomasz Wąs, Penn State University -- *Nicholas Mattei* Assistant Professor, Tulane University nsmattei(a)tulane.edu | www.nickmattei.net Stanley Thomas Hall | 305B +1 504 865 5782 Department of Computer Science Tulane University 6823 St Charles Ave New Orleans, LA 70118

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Call for Participation - RoboCup 2024 Soccer Simulation 2D - Extended Pre-Registration Deadline
by MROA 18 Feb '24

18 Feb '24

Dear RoboCuppers, *Quick update:* We're extending the pre-registration deadline for the RoboCup 2024 Soccer Simulation 2D League to accommodate all interested teams. *New Deadline: February 29th*, 2024, 23:59 UTC. Now, you have more time to get your team pre-registered and submit your qualification materials. If you are already pre-registered, you don't need to pre-register again. *Qualification Notification: *Expect to hear from us regarding your team's qualification status by *March 16th, 2024*. Use the *online pre-registration form* by this link: https://forms.gle/hGe1gtnqpXrBtD8G8 For all the details, check out the *Call for Participation* document: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1O02gc-9HZ3x95NnirHg45S3Z0uiZVIKwIKfXi1G… . If you have any questions, Reach out to us anytime - [emails are in CFP] or join the SS2D official discord at https://discord.gg/yFxkCcatGe. Thanks for your patience and enthusiasm! Best, Omid Amini, Nader Zare, RoboCup2024 Soccer Simulation 2D League Organizing Committee

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[jobs] Postdoc Position at the Interactive Robotics Laboratory, Arizona State University (ASU)
by Fabian Weigend 17 Feb '24

17 Feb '24

The Interactive Robotics Laboratory [1] at Arizona State University (ASU) is currently seeking a highly qualified postdoc to join our team with a focus on vision-based indoor navigation. The successful applicant will work on machine learning approaches for context-aware robot navigation in dynamic home environments shared with humans. Location:ASU-Tempe Campus, Arizona, United States (Open to Worldwide Applicants) Minimum Qualification Requirements:* A PhD degree in Computer Science or any other robotics-associated discipline* Available to start in mid/late March* Able to work on-site in Tempe, Arizona Additional Requirements (some of the following):* Experience with machine learning in robotics* Human-robot interaction* Imitation learning in robotics* Experience in depth estimation from monocular RGB cameras* 3D simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM)* Path planning in dynamic environments* Real-time semantic segmentation and object detection* Optimizing machine learning models for fast inference on embedded systemsApplications:Deadline is the 1st of March. Kindly send your CV to fweigend(a)asu.edu. We will review applications that satisfy the essential requirements and proceed to schedule an online interview for further consideration. Please detail your achievements/experience in the aforementioned research domains, along with a description of your research interests. About Us:The Interactive Robotics Laboratory is directed by Prof. Heni Ben Amor. We explore the intersection of robotics, artificial intelligence, and human-robot interaction. Our primary focus is on developing machine learning methods that empower robots to exhibit intelligent and autonomous behaviors. The lab has established strong collaborations with leading robotics and machine learning research groups globally, and our methods have been applied to robots in the US, Europe, and Japan. We look forward to hearing from you![1]https://interactive-robotics.engineering.asu.edu/ <https://interactive-robotics.engineering.asu.edu/>

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Call for Participation: WRS Future Convenience Store Challenge in CyberSpace
by Tetsunari Inamura 16 Feb '24

16 Feb '24

######################################################## Call for Participation WRS Future Convenience Store Challenge in CyberSpace (ICRA 2024 Competition) May 13th - 15th, 2024 Yokohama, Japan ######################################################## The Future Convenience Store Challenge in CyberSpace, which is a new type of robot competition in cyberspace will be held at ICRA 2024, Yokohama Japan. Every regional and international Major team is cordially invited to take part in the event. Visit https://sites.google.com/view/fcsc-cyberspace/home for more detailed information. Details on the registration (rules, software systems) are available on the website. Organizers Tetsunari Inamura (Tamagawa University, Japan) Kazuyoshi Wada (Tokyo Metropolitan University, Japan) Yukiyasu Domae (National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, Japan) -------------- Future Convenience Store Challenge in Cyberspace ---------------- The aim of this competition is to enhance the quality of customer service provided by intelligent robots in environments such as retail stores and shopping malls, and to realize new forms of services. Specifically, the competition will assess the ability of robots to engage in natural and friendly communication in the context of customer service, as well as their capability for cooperative work with human staff. While conventional competitions have primarily evaluated physical functionalities such as object recognition, human behavior recognition, navigation, and object manipulation using real robots, there have been limitations in smoothly conducting competitions when focusing on intellectual interactions, such as intention recognition, natural language understanding, conversation control, and resolving ambiguity. Therefore, this competition aims to improve the quality of dialogue systems for service robots collaborating with humans in retail stores and to achieve new interactive service systems by focusing on tasks that emphasize dialogue intelligence rather than physical functionality. Furthermore, this competition features a unique structure where robots in cyber space engage in dialogue with humans in real-world environments. We also welcome proposals that contribute to the realization of new services through the integration of metaverses, digital twins, cyber-physical systems, and robotics. As such, the competition is designed based on the simulator "SIGVerse," which enables robots to engage in embodied and social interaction in virtual reality (VR) environments. Participants will benefit from focusing solely on software development without the need to develop physical robots. -------------------------------- Important dates ------------------------------------ 2024-02-15 Team registration starts 2024-02-29 1st Call: Participation declaration 2024-03-14 First on-line meeting (tentative schedule) 2024-03-31 2nd Call: Participation declaration deadline (detailed team information should be fixed) 2024-04-17 Second on-line meeting (tentative schedule) 2024-05-13 Set-up day 2024-05-14 Competition Day 1 2024-05-15 Competition Day 2 , Award Ceremony ------------------------------ Competition Tasks -------------------------------------- This competition focuses on realizing robots that provide customer service in a conversational format at convenience stores. The emphasis is on the interaction capabilities with customers. Task 1: Interactive Customer Service In this task, functionalities such as image recognition, human state recognition, and location identification, which involves recognizing the customer's location in the store, their gestures, and the placement of items, are not evaluated. Instead, the focus is on engaging in accurate dialogue with customers in response to ambiguous requests and delivering the desired products to them. Customers convey their desired purchases to the service robot and request them to be placed in the shopping basket, using both natural language expressions and image presentation. The participants should build software to realize such an intelligent dialogue system for customer service robots. The participants can use OpenAI API or related LLM tools; however, we cannot guarantee the Internet connection quality at the competition site. If you use such an external cloud calculator, you must manage the risk yourself. Please note that installing your own wireless router will not be allowed. Task 2: Future Convenience Store Visionary Design In this competition, instead of completing tasks according to predefined rules, participants will propose possibilities for customer service and intelligent human-robot collaboration systems in future convenience stores in a presentation format based on their own creative ideas. The novelty, feasibility, and technical challenges of their ideas will be evaluated. The evaluation will focus on intelligent systems, service systems, and other systems mainly involving human interaction, which are expected to be useful in future convenience stores. Tasks involving no interaction with humans, such as autonomously cleaning toilets, are not included. Teams are encouraged to demonstrate the latest research and development on new approaches and applications related to customer service and employee support systems in a cyber environment. Specific examples of systems/proposals subject to evaluation include but are not limited to: - Planning systems that dynamically change and optimize the roles of service robots and employees. - Interactive service robot systems that recognize customer intentions and provide accurate services. - Training systems that determine appropriate training menus based on the skill levels of new employees. - Algorithms that observe customer purchasing behavior/movement paths and determine the optimal display layout. - Planning systems that dynamically change tasks to be executed based on the congestion status inside the store. Participants can use various types of systems and devices, including actual robot systems, but the primary focus of the final demonstration is on utilizing virtual spaces or Cyber-Physical Systems for the realization of intelligent service robots. Examples include digital twin systems supporting customer service action planning by intelligent robots and information presentation systems using wearable devices for efficient employee tasks. ------------------------------ Awards --------------------------------------------- Based on the ranking, the top three teams will be awarded certificates and prize money as follows: 1st place: 100,000 JPY + certificate 2nd place: 50,000 JPY + certificate 3rd place: 30,000 JPY + certificate ------------------------------ How to apply -------------------------------------------- Please access the following form to input detailed information about your team and team leader. The first deadline is the end of February; however, a tentative declaration of participation is welcome. We would appreciate you deciding the details of the team members by the end of March. Required information - Team name - Name/Affiliation/Grade/Email address of the team leader - Optional information - Estimated number of team members - Past experience and achievements in AI/Robot competitions - Web page of the team Please input the above information at the Google form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1zkfZG-fcxOt_emXUkZRTylih8J45a70TcPnM2a7Amp… 1st participation declaration: 28th Feb. (Tentative application is welcome) 2nd participation declaration: 31st Mar. (Confirmation of detailed team information) ----------------------- Contact. --------------------------------------- Please contact fcsc-info-ml(a)ml.tmu.ac.jp for any questions. See you all at ICRA 2024 in Yokohama! Best regards, ------------------------------------------------ Tetsunari Inamura Professor, Brain Science Institute, Tamagawa University, JAPAN TEL : +81-42-739-8679 URL : http://researchmap.jp/inamura/?lang=english Email : inamura(a)lab.tamagawa.ac.jp

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Call for Papers: 12th ICAPS Workshop on Planning and Robotics
by Iman Awaad 11 Feb '24

11 Feb '24

** CALL FOR PAPERS ** Twelfth ICAPS Workshop on Planning and Robotics (PlanRob‚ 2024) https://icaps24.icaps-conference.org/program/workshops/planrob/ Banff, Canada, June 2-3, 2024 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- * Topics and Objectives AI Planning & Scheduling (P&S) methods are key to enabling intelligent robots to perform autonomous, flexible, and interactive behaviours. Researchers in the P&S community have continued to develop approaches and produce planners, representations, as well as heuristics that robotics researchers can make use of. However, there remain numerous challenges complicating the uptake, use and successful integration of P&S technology in robotics, many of which have been addressed by robotics researchers with novel solutions. Strong collaboration and synergy between researchers in both communities is vital to the continued growth of the fields in a way that provide mutual benefits to the two communities. To foster this, the PlanRob workshop aims to provide a stable, long-term forum (having been held annually at ICAPS since 2013) where researchers from both the P&S and Robotics communities can openly discuss relevant issues, research and development progress, future directions and open challenges related to P&S when applied to Robotics. In addition to the usual paper submissions, the workshop’s format naturally lends itself to preliminary results, position papers as well as to work focused on challenges in using and integrating planners in robotics systems. * Topics of Interest Topics of interest include (but are not limited to): - human-aware planning and execution in human-robot interaction, - real-world planning applications for autonomous and intelligent robots, - planning domain representations for robotics applications, - optimising behaviour in large scale automated or semi-automated systems, - integrated planning and execution in robot architectures, - learning methods for robot planning and scheduling, - P&S methods for optimisation and adaptation in robotics, - mission, path, and motion planning for robots, - formal methods for robot planning and control, - challenges and solutions in using P&S technology in robotics, - open problems for P&S in robotics, - coordination of multi-robot teams, - benchmark planning domains for robots, - adversarial action planning in competitive robot domains, - mixed-initiative planning and sliding autonomy for robotic systems. * Important Dates Paper submission: ***Monday, 25 March 2024*** Notification of acceptance: Friday, 26 April 2024 Camera-ready version due: Friday 24 May 2024 Workshop Date: June 2-3, 2024 The reference time-zone for all deadlines is UTC-12: Your submissions will be on time so long as there is still some place in the world where the deadline has not yet passed. * Submission Details There are two types of submissions: - short position papers (four pages) - regular papers (up to 10 pages) Papers may have an additional page containing references. Regular papers may be scheduled with more time in the final program. A poster session may be considered to provide a further presentation opportunity. The guidelines for formatting are the same as is used for ICAPS 2024 papers (typeset in the AAAI style as described at: http://www.aaai.org/Publications/Author/author.php), but with the AAAI copyright removed. The papers must be submitted in PDF format via the EasyChair system (https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=icapswsplanrob24). Please note that papers under review (e.g. which have been submitted to IJCAI-2024) are also welcome, however, in order to avoid potential conflicts, these manuscripts should be prepared as anonymous submissions for a double blind reviewing process. Accepted papers will be published on the workshop’s website. The organisers are investigating the availability of journal editors in order to invite a selection of accepted papers from the workshop to a special issue or post-proceedings volume. * Organizers Iman Awaad, Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University of Applied Sciences, Germany iman.awaad(a)h-brs.de Alberto Finzi, Università di Napoli "Federico II", Italy alberto.finzi(a)unina.it AndreA Orlandini  Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies (ISTC-CNR), Italy andrea.orlandini(a)istc.cnr.it (Sent on behalf of the organising committee of PlanRob 2024)

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RoboCup@Work 2024: Call for Participation
by Asad Norouzi 07 Feb '24

07 Feb '24

Call for Applications for Participation RoboCup 2024 – RoboCup at Work https://2024.robocup.org Venue: Eindhoven, The Netherlands Monday, July 15th through Monday, July 22nd, 2024 RoboCup at Work: Competing for the Factory of the Future RoboCup at Work is a league of the RoboCup competition that replicates the use of robots in autonomous, industrial scenarios. It aims to promote research and development that enables the use of innovative mobile robots with advanced manipulators for cutting-edge industrial applications. Such applications include complex tasks ranging from manufacturing, automation, and parts handling to general logistics, as well as interaction with human workers. The RoboCup at Work league is characterized by an industrial environment. This consists of manipulation objects including nuts and bolts, arena elements such as shelves, bins, and platforms of different sizes, and networked automation devices like conveyor belts and drilling machines. The actual competition tasks to be performed in the environment are defined in a set of so-called tests. Each test addresses various mobile manipulation capabilities such as grasping, transportation, precision placement, and visual serving. The complete rules of RoboCup@Work as well as further technical details are (will be) posted on the RoboCup@Work website (https://atwork.robocup.org). Participation in the Competition All teams that intend to participate in the competition have to perform the following steps: 1. Submission of qualification materials including a Team Description Paper and a video of their robot performance. Details are below. 2. Final registration (qualified teams only) Qualification The qualification process serves a dual purpose: It should allow the Technical Committee (aka TC) to assess the safety of the robots a team intends to bring to the competition, and it should allow ranking teams according to a set of evaluation criteria in order to select the most promising teams for a competition, if not all interested teams can be permitted. The TC will select the qualified teams according to the qualification materials provided by the teams. The evaluation criteria will include: - Team description paper - Relevant scientific contributions/publications - The professional quality of the robot and software - Novelty of approach - Relevance to industry - Performance in previous competitions - Contribution to RoboCup at Work league, e.g. by Organization of events and/or provision and sharing of knowledge - The quality of the robot's performance of a task (selected by the team) shown in a video - Team website Team Description Paper The Team Description Paper (TDP) is a central element of the qualification process and has to be provided by each team as part of the qualification process. The TDP should at least contain the following information in the author/title section of the paper: - Name of the team (title) - Team members (authors), including the team leader - Link to the team website - Contact information The body of the TDP should contain information on the following: - the focus of research/research interest - a description of the hardware, including an image of the robot(s) - a description of the software, esp. the functional and software architectures - innovative technology (if any) - reusability of the system or parts thereof - applicability and relevance to industrial tasks - usage of components (software or hardware) developed by other RoboCup at Work teams The team description paper should cover the technical and scientific approach in detail, while the team website should be designed for a broader audience. Both the website and the TDP have to be in English. All TDPs must be written using the following template: https://www.overleaf.com/latex/templates/springer-lecture-notes-in-computer… Submission and Evaluation All applications with the qualification material must be submitted by March 3rd, 2024 through the following online form: https://forms.gle/iaJnpiWKjCXpCnC49 Qualified teams will be tentatively announced by March 18th, 2024. Important Links of RoboCup@Work League Official Website: https://atwork.robocup.org Discord: https://discord.gg/WaBHRdZq LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/14158849/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/i/communities/1606361981937754115 Mailing List: https://lists.robocup.org/mm/lists/rc-work.lists.robocup.org/ Regards, RoboCup@Work EC/TC/OC

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