March 2025 - RoboCup-worldwide

[meetings] [news] 2nd CfP: The 4th Benchmark for Autonomous Robot Navigation (BARN) Challenge -- ICRA 2025 Competition
by Xuesu Xiao 14 Mar '25

14 Mar '25

IROS 2025 deadline is behind us. So it’s time to work on The BARN Challenge at ICRA 2025! Submission Form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfYFw_BVg-7lpXNVxQIX_xQKpFrU2m4jrX… Competition Website: https://cs.gmu.edu/~xiao/Research/BARN_Challenge/BARN_Challenge25.html Participation Instructions: https://github.com/Daffan/nav-competition-icra2022 Lessons Learned from The BARN Challenge 2024: https://cs.gmu.edu/~xiao/papers/barn24_report.pdf Lessons Learned from The BARN Challenge 2023: https://cs.gmu.edu/~xiao/papers/barn23_report.pdf Lessons Learned from The BARN Challenge 2022: https://cs.gmu.edu/~xiao/papers/barn22_report.pdf Dear roboticists, are you interested in agile robot navigation in highly constrained spaces with a lot of obstacles around, e.g., cluttered households or after-disaster scenarios? Do you think mobile robot navigation is mostly a solved problem? Are you looking for a hands-on project for your robotics class, but may not have (sufficient) robot platforms for your students? If your answer is yes to any of the above questions, we sincerely invite you to participate in The 4th BARN Challenge at ICRA 2025 (https://cs.gmu.edu/~xiao/Research/BARN_Challenge/BARN_Challenge25.html)! The BARN Challenge aims at evaluating state-of-the-art autonomous navigation systems to move robots through highly constrained environments in a safe and efficient manner. The task is to navigate a standardized Clearpath Jackal robot from a predefined start to a goal location as quickly as possible without any collision. The challenge will take place both in the simulated BARN dataset and in physical obstacle courses at ICRA 2025. 1. The competition task is designing ground navigation systems to navigate through all 300 BARN environments (https://cs.gmu.edu/~xiao/Research/BARN/BARN.html) and physical obstacle courses constructed at ICRA 2025 as fast as possible without collision. 2. The 300 BARN environments can be the training set for learning-based methods, or to design classical approaches in. During the simulation competition, we will generate another 50 unseen environments unavailable to the participants before the competition. 3. We will standardize a Jackal robot in the Gazebo simulation, including a Hokuyo 2D LiDAR, motor controller of 2m/s max speed, etc. 4. Participants can use any approaches to tackle the navigation problem, such as using classical sampling-based or optimization-based planners, end-to-end learning, or hybrid approaches. We will provide baselines for reference. 5. A standardized scoring system is provided on the website. 6. We will invite the top teams in simulation to compete in the real world. The team who achieves the fastest collision-free navigation in the physical obstacle courses wins. If you are interested in participating, please submit your navigation system at https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfYFw_BVg-7lpXNVxQIX_xQKpFrU2m4jrX… Co-Organizers: Xuesu Xiao (George Mason University) Zifan Xu (UT Austin) Aniket Datar (George Mason University) Saad Abdul Ghani (George Mason University) Peter Stone (UT Austin / Sony AI) Sponsor: Clearpath Robotics, https://clearpathrobotics.com/ Thanks Xuesu ----------------------- Xuesu Xiao, Ph.D. -- Assistant Professor Department of Computer Science George Mason University xiao(a)gmu.edu https://cs.gmu.edu/~xiao/ https://robotixx.cs.gmu.edu/

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[meetings][cfp] Extended deadline for RO-MAN 2025 Special Session on Theory of Mind
by alexarossi＠gmail.com 14 Mar '25

14 Mar '25

Dear everyone, It is my pleasure to invite you to submit your work at our special session on "*Theory of Mind in Human-Robot Interaction*" at the 34th IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication 2025 (IEEE RO-MAN 2025), which will take place in Eindhoven, Netherlands, from 25 to 29 August 2025. Please note that the deadline for submissions has been extended at *March 20th, 2025*. You can submit your works at our special sessions via https://ras.papercept.net/ by using the special session category and *code 'g19y9'*. Do not hesitate to get in touch with us for further information! Below you can also find the CFP. best regards Alessandra Dr Patrick Holthaus, University of Hertfordshire (UK), p.holthaus(a)herts.ac.uk Dr Alessandra Rossi, University of Naples Federico II (IT), alessandra.rossi(a)unina.it -- Alessandra Rossi, PhD Assistant Professor Fellow of the Higher Education Academy Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technologies - D.I.E.T.I. University of Naples Federico II Via Claudio, 21, 80125 - Naples, Italy w-page:https://alessandrarossi.net e-mail address:alessandra.rossi@unina.it e-mail address:a.rossi@herts.ac.uk X: @alhandra81 *SPECIAL SESSION @ RO-MAN 2025 * *Theory of Mind in Human-Robot Interaction* The ability to understand and acknowledge others' mental states is known as the Theory of Mind (ToM). Theory of Mind is a multi-modal system people use to communicate and understand each other naturally. A growing group of Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) research focuses on investigating whether people form ToM towards robots, and what level of ToM a robot should have to communicate transparently with the humans in their shared environment in a sociable and accepted way. Robots that encounter humans should be able to perform transparent motions and behaviours, and, at the same time, be able to clearly recognise the humans’ intentions and behaviours. In this session, we want to explore which cognitive skills a robot needs and how ToM affects communications in all aspects of human-robot interaction. We further want to investigate the principal components that can contribute to this research direction. In particular, we aim to define and explore the needed level of shared mental models between people and robots for effectively planning, navigating, manipulating objects and the environment, and transparently communicating. Topics of interest include (but are not limited to): Theory of Mind in HRI Cognitive robotics Mental models in HRI Robot etiquette Explainable AI in HRI Cooperation and collaboration in human-robot teams Detection and understanding of human activity Monitoring of behaviour and internal states of humans Motion planning and navigation in human-centred environments Multi-modal situation awareness and spatial cognition Social intelligence for robots in interactive and non-interactive tasks PDF Submissions will be possible via https://ras.papercept.net/ using the special session category and code 'g19y9'. Accepted papers will be included in the conference proceedings and submissions should follow the guidelines for regular paper submissions (https://www.ro-man2025.org/contributing/regularpaper), i.e. 6 (+2 paid extra) pages in the required IEEE US Letter format. Authors will have to declare that the research presented in the submitted papers complies with the IEEE Code of Ethics. *Read more at https://www.ro-man2025.org/paper-submission-qa.*

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IEEE-RAS TC on RoboCup Call for Student Representatives
by Raymond Sheh 13 Mar '25

13 Mar '25

Hi All! The IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (IEEE-RAS) Technical Committee on RoboCup is looking for a Student Representative volunteer! In summary, we're looking for a Ph.D. or M.S. research student who is active in RoboCup (as a team and/or committee member), is an IEEE-RAS student member, and would like to help us to further collaboration between RoboCup and the IEEE-RAS, particularly when it comes to student activities. Applications close March 25th. Please see https://robocup.org/news/178 for details. Cheers! - Raymond Sheh On behalf of the Co-Chairs of the IEEE-RAS TC on RoboCup -- https://raymondsheh.org

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Help us share your RoboCup News on Social Media!
by Maike Paetzel-Prüsmann 02 Mar '25

02 Mar '25

Dear RoboCuppers, One of the initiatives of the RoboCup Federation for 2025 is to expand our presence on social media. We aim to inform the general public about robotics and AI research and strengthen our connections with the broader scientific community beyond RoboCup. And of course, we would also like to help your team and league to expand their reach. To make this happen, we need your help! We want to showcase what's happening in the RoboCup community. Has your team recently published a paper? Did you organize a scientific workshop related to RoboCup? Has a local newspaper featured your team? We're always looking for great RoboCup-related content to share on our social media channels! Here are two easy ways to submit your content: (1) Fill out this form: https://cloud.robocup.org/apps/forms/s/HM6eDxTS8sWzktSRayANt34x (2) Use the #post-suggestions channel on the RoboCup Federation Discord server. You can suggest posts you've already shared on your own channels (in case we missed them) or submit ideas for original content. You don't need to write a full post yourself — just a few key details are enough. And if you have a picture to go with it, even better! You can upload images via Discord or in the form linked above. Thank you for helping us spread the word about RoboCup! Cheers Maike (for the RoboCup Federation)

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