- RoboCup-worldwide - lists.robocup.org

[meetings] Robot Fleet Management with Open-RMF Training 2024 | June 26-28
by Sonia W 15 May '24

15 May '24

Robot Fleet Management with Open-RMF Training 2024 | June 26-28 Dear Roboticists, Don't miss out on the final chance to secure your spot at the upcoming 5th edition of "Mastering Robot Fleet Management with Open-RMF Training," scheduled to be held online from June 26 to 28, 2024. *Training Details:* - *Dates*: June 26 - 28, 2024 - *Location*: Live Online Classes + Remote Real Robot Practice - *Time*: 9:00 – 18:00 Central European Summer Time (CEST) - *Limited Seats:* Only 15 participants - *Website*: https://www.theconstruct.ai/robot-fleet-management-ros2-open-rmf-training/ <https://www.theconstruct.ai/robot-fleet-management-ros2-open-rmf-training/?…> *About the Training:* Join industry mentors for a 3-Day Live Training: Gain practical skills in configuring, deploying, and managing robot fleets with open-source software (Open-RMF), while learning how to apply it to your real multi-robot scenarios. *What You Will Learn:* - RMF basic structure - How to create a compliant RMF simulation - How to set up Free Fleet for autonomous mobile robots - How to set up basic tasks like Deliver, Clean, Patrol, and Charge - How to create your own custom fleet adapter to integrate API and ROS2 systems of your robot into RMF. - How to dock in RMF - How to clean with RMF - How to create a GUI for humans to interact with RMF *Training Highlights:* - Expert instruction from industry professionals - Hands-on experience with real robots - Interactive exercises with simulated robots - Practical application in a real multi-robot environment – Starbots Coffee Lab *Practical Sessions @ Starbots Coffee Lab:* Throughout the training, you will have the opportunity to apply your newfound knowledge in real-world scenarios at the Starbots Coffee Lab, a multi-robot system application. Learn more at https://www.theconstruct.ai/robot-fleet-management-ros2-open-rmf-training/ <https://www.theconstruct.ai/robot-fleet-management-ros2-open-rmf-training/?…> . This training is organized by TheConstruct.ai <https://www.theconstruct.ai/>. For any questions please email us at info(a)theconstruct.ai. Best regards, The Construct team

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Deadline Extension: 8th International Conference on Algorithmic Decision Theory - ADT 2024
by Nicholas Mattei 10 May '24

10 May '24

[Apologies for Multiple Postings!] *We have extended the deadline for ADT 2024 to May 24th, 2024 for abstract registration and May 31st, 2024 for full papers!!* *Note that we have an Abstract Only track where we encourage in process or under review work that can be submitted later to other venues! This is a great opportunity to increase the reach of your research!* *The 8th International Conference on Algorithmic Decision Theory - ADT 2024 <https://preflib.github.io/adt2024/index> will be held October 14-16, 2024, at the Center for Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science (DIMACS) at Rutgers University.* *We've got a great lineup of invited speakers including Xiao (Tracy) Liu, Herve Moulin, and Jenn Wortman Vaughan!* Website: https://preflib.github.io/adt2024/ ADT 2024 focuses on algorithmic decision theory broadly defined, seeking to bring together researchers and practitioners coming from diverse areas of Computer Science, Economics, and Operations Research in order to improve the theory and practice of modern decision support. The conference topics include research in: Algorithms, Argumentation Theory, Artificial Intelligence, Computational Social Choice, Database Systems, Decision Analysis, Discrete Mathematics, Game Theory, Machine Learning and Adversarial Machine Learning, Matching, Multi-agent Systems, Multiple Criteria Decision Aiding, Networks, Optimization, Preference Modeling, Risk Analysis and Adversarial Risk Analysis, and Utility Theory. *Important Dates* *Title and Abstract Submission*: May 10, 2024 --> May 24, 2024 *Full Paper Submission*: May 17, 2024 --> May 31, 2024 *Notification*: July 19, 2024 *Final Version of Accepted Papers*: August 9, 2024 *Conference Dates*: October 14-16, 2024 *Submissions* Submissions are invited on significant, original, and unpublished research on all aspects of Algorithmic Decision Theory. Papers must be at most 15 pages long in the LNCS format (including references). The formal proceedings of ADT 2024 will be published by Springer Verlag in the Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence (LNAI) <http://www.springer.com/lncs>. ADT 2024 will not accept any paper that, at the time of submission, has already been published in a journal or another venue with formally published proceedings. However, in order to accommodate the publication norms of the many fields that work on decision theory, papers can be submitted but not already published elsewhere (i.e., are under review) provided the authors note they are submitting for the non-proceedings track at the top of their submission. All papers will be peer-reviewed by a double-blind procedure. Therefore, papers must be submitted anonymously as pdf documents via the Microsoft CMT <https://cmt3.research.microsoft.com/ADT2024> system. It is important and required that authors do not reveal their identities in submitted papers. Since the review process is double blind, authors must take measures to ensure that their identity is not easily revealed from the submission itself. Authors should include the submission number (as assigned by the conference system) in the author field of the submission, and refer to their prior work in a neutral manner (i.e., instead of saying “We showed” say “XYZ et al. showed”). It is acceptable to submit work that has been presented in public or has appeared on arXiv, provided the submission itself is anonymized. Submission Format: Authors should consult Springer’s authors’ guidelines and use their proceedings templates <https://www.springer.com/gp/computer-science/lncs/conference-proceedings-gu…>, either for LaTeX or for Word, for the preparation of their papers. Note that at least one author of each accepted paper is required to attend the conference to present the work. Authors will be required to agree to this requirement at the time of submission. In addition, the corresponding author of each accepted paper that will appear in the proceedings, acting on behalf of all of the authors of that paper, will need to complete and sign a Consent-to-Publish form, through which the copyright for their paper is transferred to Springer. To accommodate the publishing traditions of different fields, ADT 2024 will accept two types of submissions: Submissions with full text in the proceedings: Papers of this type will be accepted for either oral or poster presentation, or both. Each accepted paper of this type will be allocated at most 15 pages in the proceedings and there will be no distinction between papers accepted for oral or poster presentation in the conference proceedings. Submissions with one-page abstract in the proceeding: Papers of this type will be accepted for either oral or poster presentation, or both. Each accepted paper of this type will appear as a one-page abstract in the proceedings, along with a URL pointing to the full paper (on ArXiv or other service). This option is available to accommodate subsequent publication in venues that would not consider results that have been published in formal proceedings. Such papers must be formatted just like papers submitted for full-text publication, at the submission time, but authors are required to write “submission without proceedings” into the author field of their paper (instead of author names), if they choose this category. Otherwise, it will be assumed, by default, that their paper is submitted in the first category (submissions with full-text in the proceedings). Rupert Freeman and Nicholas Mattei ADT 2024 Program Co-Chairs David Pennock and Lirong Xia ADT 2024 General Chairs -- *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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Code Release
by Antonio Bono 07 May '24

07 May '24

Dear Colleagues, We are pleased to announce the code release of Open Access NAO (OAN): a ROS2-based software framework for HRI applications with the NAO robot. Github: https://github.com/antbono/OAN Demonstration video: https://youtu.be/LxboNtHfDJg?si=fg9sl_HBgyTdWeC- Starting from the ability to run ROS2 on board the robot, we developed an open-source framework for the sixth version of NAO that is independent of the manufacturer's APIs. In addition to the basic skills of a humanoid robot such as walking or performing gestures, OAN provides NAO with: - Speech recognition/synthesis via Google Cloud Platform. - Face and object recognition via YOLOv8. - Use of Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT) model for conversation thanks to ChatGPT. The developed code is therefore configured as a ready-to-use but also highly expandable and improvable tool thanks to the possibilities provided by the ROS community. All the necessary software is open-source or publicly available. For questions, please contact antonio.bono(a)unical.it *Antonio Bono*, Ph.D. Research Fellow Department of Computer Science, Modeling, Electronics and Systems Engineering (DIMES) University of Calabria Web: Google Scholar <https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=lGLDascAAAAJ&hl=it&authuser=1>, Linkedin <http://www.linkedin.com/in/bnontn89/> -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Il banner è generato automaticamente dal servizio di posta elettronica dell'Università della Calabria <https://www.unical.it/5x1000>

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DEADLINE EXTENDED TO MAY 15! - 2024 Call for Nominations for Silvia Coradeschi and Gerhard K. Kraetzschmar Awards
by Amy Eguchi 05 May '24

05 May '24

*THE DEADLINE EXTENDED TO MAY 15!* 2024 Call for Nominations for Silvia Coradeschi and Gerhard K. Kraetzschmar Awards Prof. Silvia Coradeschi (d. Feb 5, 2014) was a founding trustee of RoboCup and an early visionary in the RoboCup initiative. She served as General Chair of RoboCup 1999 in Stockholm, Sweden, was a frequent competition participant, and was an exemplar of the RoboCup ideal of engaging in cutting-edge AI and Robotics research. Prof. Gerhard K. Kraetzschmar (d. July 24, 2019) joined RoboCup since its beginning in 1997 and significantly contributed to the development of the RoboCup Federation (Trustee since 2004, Vice-President from 2008 to 2016). He was involved in the organization of many of the leagues, with major contributions to RoboCupJunior, RoboCup@Home, and RoboCup@Work. He was General Chair of RoboCup 2016 in Leipzig, Germany. To honor their extraordinary contributions to RoboCup and to honor their memories, the RoboCup Federation created “The Silvia Coradeschi RoboCup Award” in 2014 (https://www.robocup.org/silvia_coradeschi <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.robocup.org_silvia…>), for a young female RoboCup student or post-doctoral researcher, with distinguishing research and the “The Gerhard Kraetzschmar RoboCup Distinguished Service Award” in 2021 (https://www.robocup.org/gkk_award <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.robocup.org_gkk-5F…>), to recognize the outstanding contributions of an individual for his/her exceptional leadership, service, and dedication that benefit RoboCup in any of its leagues. We are now calling for candidates for the 2024 Awards. The award recipients, to be named at RoboCup 2024 will receive: - a certificate - a US$1,000 honorarium Nominations for the “Silvia Coradeschi Award”: Eligible candidates for the “Silvia Coradeschi Award” are female graduate students and post-doctoral researchers who received the degree within the past 3 years and who will register for RoboCup 2024. The two criteria are: 1. Distinguishing research as evidenced by, for example, refereed publications. 2. RoboCup leadership, either within a team and/or in the broad RoboCup community. To nominate a female student or post-doctoral researcher for the “Silvia Coradeschi Award”, the individual's professor should fill out the nomination form <https://forms.gle/VT2j8SsXHCfn9XkT9> by *May 15,* 2024. The submission should include: - A letter of recommendation that addresses both criteria. - An additional letter of recommendation from a RoboCup community member not affiliated with the nominee’s team is recommended (but not required) to support the nomination. Please upload the letters to the form by the professor recommending the candidate. Nominations for the “Gerhard Kraetzschmar RoboCup Distinguished Service Award”: Eligible candidates for the “Gerhard Kraetzschmar RoboCup Distinguished Service Award” are RoboCup members with an outstanding record of service in one or more of the RoboCup Leagues, including as Technical and Organizing Committees, Executive Committee, and/or Board of Trustees. To nominate a RoboCup member for the “Gerhard Kraetzschmar RoboCup Distinguished Service Award”, a person nominating a candidate should fill out the nomination form <https://forms.gle/VT2j8SsXHCfn9XkT9>* by May 15 2024*. The nomination must include - a letter of recommendation that addresses the individual’s impact of service and contributions to RoboCup, including diversity, quality, and length of the work done for RoboCup. - One or two additional letter(s) of recommendation from RoboCup community members to support the nomination. Please upload the letters to the form by the person nominating the candidate. Warmly, the Silvia Coradeschi and Gerhard K. Kraetzschmar Award Committee Daniele Nardi Minoru Asada Claude Sammut Ubbo Visser Amy Eguchi ****************************************************************** Amy Eguchi, Ph.D. Associate Teaching Professor, Computer Science Education Transforming Education in a Diverse Society Department of Education Studies, UC San Diego a2eguchi(a)ucsd.edu *Pronouns: she / her / hers* **********************Peace on Earth******************* *UC San Diego was built on the unceded territory of the Kumeyaay Nation. The Kumeyaay people continue to maintain their political sovereignty and cultural traditions as vital members of the San Diego community. We are honored to share this space with them and thank them for their stewardship. *

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UKRI AI Centre for Doctoral Training in Dependable and Deployable AI for Robotics (CDT-D2AIR)
by Ram Ramamoorthy 04 May '24

04 May '24

We are delighted to announce that applications are now open for the UKRI AI Centre for Doctoral Training in Dependable and Deployable AI for Robotics (CDT-D2AIR), a 4-year PhD programme jointly offered by Heriot-Watt University and the University of Edinburgh. CDT-D2AIR will train students in the latest methods in AI, verification, design, and robotics, while also ensuring that students have the technical skills to develop and deploy safe robotic systems. Please visit our website to learn more about the programme and read details of how to apply. You can find the main application page at: https://www.edinburgh-robotics.org/apply. If you have any questions about CDT-D2AIR, please e-mail one of the CDT-D2AIR Directors. Questions or problems with the application system may be directed to enquiries(a)edinburgh-robotics.org<mailto:enquiries@edinburgh-robotics.org>. --- Professor Subramanian Ramamoorthy Chair of Robot Learning and Autonomy Director, Institute of Perception, Action and Behaviour Director, UKRI AI CDT in Dependable and Deployable AI for Robotics School of Informatics | University of Edinburgh http://rad.inf.ed.ac.uk The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, with registration number SC005336. Is e buidheann carthannais a th' ann an Oilthigh Dh?n ?ideann, cl?raichte an Alba, ?ireamh cl?raidh SC005336.

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Call for Papers: 8th International Conference on Algorithmic Decision Theory - ADT 2024
by Nicholas Mattei 30 Apr '24

30 Apr '24

*ADT** 2024 - CALL FOR PAPERS* The 8th International Conference on Algorithmic Decision Theory - ADT 2024 <https://preflib.github.io/adt2024/index> will be held October 14-16, 2024, at the Center for Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science (DIMACS) at Rutgers University. We've got a great lineup of invited speakers including Xiao (Tracy) Liu, Herve Moulin, and Jenn Wortman Vaughan! Website: https://preflib.github.io/adt2024/ ADT 2024 focuses on algorithmic decision theory broadly defined, seeking to bring together researchers and practitioners coming from diverse areas of Computer Science, Economics, and Operations Research in order to improve the theory and practice of modern decision support. The conference topics include research in: Algorithms, Argumentation Theory, Artificial Intelligence, Computational Social Choice, Database Systems, Decision Analysis, Discrete Mathematics, Game Theory, Machine Learning and Adversarial Machine Learning, Matching, Multi-agent Systems, Multiple Criteria Decision Aiding, Networks, Optimization, Preference Modeling, Risk Analysis and Adversarial Risk Analysis, and Utility Theory. *Important Dates* *Title and Abstract Submission*: May 10, 2024 *Full Paper Submission*: May 17, 2024 *Notification*: July 19, 2024 *Final Version of Accepted Papers*: August 9, 2024 *Conference Dates*: October 14-16, 2024 *Submissions* Submissions are invited on significant, original and previously unpublished research on all aspects of Algorithmic Decision Theory. Papers must be at most 15 pages long in the LNCS format (including references). The formal proceedings of ADT 2024 will be published by Springer Verlag in the Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence (LNAI) <http://www.springer.com/lncs>. ADT 2024 will not accept any paper that, at the time of submission, has already been published in a journal or another venue with formally published proceedings. However, in order to accommodate the publication norms of the many fields that work on decision theory, papers can be submitted but not already published elsewhere provided the authors note they are submitting for the non-proceedings track at the top of their submission. All papers will be peer-reviewed by a double-blind procedure. Therefore, papers must be submitted anonymously as pdf documents via the Microsoft CMT <https://cmt3.research.microsoft.com/ADT2024> system. It is important and required that authors do not reveal their identities in submitted papers. Since the review process is double blind, authors must take measures to ensure that their identity is not easily revealed from the submission itself. Authors should include the submission number (as assigned by the conference system) in the author field of the submission, and refer to their prior work in a neutral manner (i.e., instead of saying “We showed” say “XYZ et al. showed”). It is acceptable to submit work that has been presented in public or has appeared on arXiv, provided the submission itself is anonymized. *Submission Format:* Authors should consult Springer’s authors’ guidelines and use their proceedings templates <https://www.springer.com/gp/computer-science/lncs/conference-proceedings-gu…>, either for LaTeX or for Word, for the preparation of their papers. Note that at least one author of each accepted paper is required to attend the conference to present the work. Authors will be required to agree to this requirement at the time of submission. In addition, the corresponding author of each accepted paper that will appear in the proceedings, acting on behalf of all of the authors of that paper, will need to complete and sign a Consent-to-Publish form, through which the copyright for their paper is transferred to Springer. To accommodate the publishing traditions of different fields, ADT 2024 will accept two types of submissions: *Submissions with full text in the proceedings:* Papers of this type will be accepted for either oral or poster presentation, or both. Each accepted paper of this type will be allocated at most 15 pages in the proceedings and there will be no distinction between papers accepted for oral or poster presentation in the conference proceedings. *Submissions with one-page abstract in the proceeding:* Papers of this type will be accepted for either oral or poster presentation, or both. Each accepted paper of this type will appear as a one-page abstract in the proceedings, along with a URL pointing to the full paper. This option is available to accommodate subsequent publication in journals that would not consider results that have been published in preliminary form in conference proceedings. Such papers must be formatted just like papers submitted for full-text publication, at the submission time, but authors are required to write “submission without proceedings” into the author field of their paper (instead of author names), if they choose this category. Otherwise, it will be assumed, by default, that their paper is submitted in the first category (submissions with full-text in the proceedings). Rupert Freeman and Nicholas Mattei ADT 2024 Program Co-Chairs David Pennock and Lirong Xia ADT 2024 General Chairs -- *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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[meetings] [competition] ICSR-2024 Competition
by Alessandra Rossi 28 Apr '24

28 Apr '24

Dear Attendees, We hope this message finds you well. We have an important update regarding the upcoming ICSR-2024 Competition <https://www.icsr2024-competition.org>. Due to an unforeseen scheduling conflict, we've made the decision to merge the ICSR-2024 Competition with The Innovation Village <https://innovation-village-2024.sharevent.it/it-IT> event happening in early May in Italy (May 8-9). This decision was made by the organizing committee in order to maximize the impact of the event and create a more comprehensive experience for all participants. As a result, only a part of the Competitions will be held in May, while the entire competition will be hosted within the framework of the main ICSR Conference in 2025. We understand that this change may affect those who were looking forward to visiting Naples. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. However, we want to assure you that this merger presents a unique opportunity for collaboration and innovation. Additionally, we remind the community that Naples will be the host city for ICSR 2025, providing attendees with the opportunity to experience its rich culture and vibrant atmosphere. We appreciate your understanding and flexibility in this matter. If you have any questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to reach out to us. Thank you for your continued support, and we look forward to welcoming you to ICSR 2025 in Naples. Kind regards Mariacarla Staffa

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[meetings][CFP][RO-MAN 2024] Second call of position papers for SCRITA Workshop
by Alessandra Rossi 28 Apr '24

28 Apr '24

Dear colleagues, it is with great pleasure that we invite you to submit your works at the seventh edition of a successful series of workshops SCRITA. We are also extremely happy to inform you that Prof. Selma Šabanović, Indiana University, will be our invited speaker! This workshop focuses on the continuous investigation of unresolved and new open challenges of the factors affecting people's acceptance and trust in robots in short- and long-term settings. We will invite authors to submit position papers only, discussing their prior experience and new developments in the scope of the workshop to feed into the group and the following panel discussions. We further encourage authors of the accepted papers to present a video or demonstrate their works and achievements. All accepted papers will have short oral presentations. Please find below the full CFP, but do not hesitate to contact us for further information. best regards Alessandra -- 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(a)unina.it e-mail address: a.rossi(a)herts.ac.uk X: @alhandra81 SCRITA 2024 Trust, Acceptance and Social Cues in Human-Robot Interaction Pasadena Convention Center in Pasadena, California, USA 26-30 August 2024 Workshop website http://scrita.herts.ac.uk Submission link https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=scrita2024 Submission deadline May 31st, 2024 This workshop will be a half day event organised in conjunction with the IEEE RO-MAN 2024 <http://ro-man2024.org/> conference, held in Pasadena, California, USA. This workshop focuses on the continuous investigation of unresolved and new open challenges of the factors affecting people's acceptance and trust in robots in short- and long-term settings. In particular, we want to look into the dynamics between people and robots to foster short interactions and long-lasting relationships taking inspiration from different domains, such as educational, service, collaborative, companion, care-home and medical robotics. For that, this workshop aims to facilitate a discussion about people’s trust towards robots “in the field”, inviting workshop participants to contribute their past experiences, lessons learnt and future issues. During last year's workshop edition (i.e., SCRITA@RO-MAN 2023), together with leading researchers and exceptional speakers from various fields, we started working towards developing such novel methods. We outlined current methods and their strengths, discussing how these measures do not always reflect appropriately, or how some questions might be ambiguous and leave room for interpretation by individual participants. We identified five main factors affecting trust to be investigated to generate a new metric that allows researchers to assess and reduce common side effects influencing how people put their trust in robots. Submission & List of Topics The workshop will be open to a broad audience from academia and industry researching social robotics, machine learning, robot behavioural control, and user profiling. In particular, we aim to integrate expertise from roboticists with psychologists' and sociologists’ insights and experiences to foster a multidisciplinary and human-focused discussion that can capture the multi-faceted nature of trust and acceptance. We will foster the exchange of views on past and ongoing research and contribute to the discussion of innovative ideas for tackling unresolved issues by providing new and inspirational directions for research. We will invite authors to submit position papers only, discussing their prior experience and new developments in the scope of the workshop to feed into the group and the following panel discussions. We further encourage authors of the accepted papers to present a video or demonstrate their works and achievements. All accepted submissions will have an oral presentation. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to: - Impact of Social Cues on Trust in HRI; - Measuring Trust in HRI; - 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; - Privacy Implications on Trust in HRI; - Mental Models and Trust in HRI; - Trust and Safety in HRI; - Ethics Implications on Trust in HRI; - Trustworthy AI; - XAI in HRI; - Legal Frameworks for Trustworthy Robotics Invited Speaker Prof. Selma Šabanović, Indiana University *(confirmed)* Submission Guidelines Authors should submit their papers formatted according to the IEEE two-column format <http://ras.papercept.net/conferences/support/support.php>, which is also used for contributions to the main conference. Use the following templates to create the paper and generate or export a PDF file: LaTeX <http://ras.papercept.net/conferences/support/tex.php> or MS-Word <http://ras.papercept.net/conferences/support/word.php>. Authors needs to submit their PDF via EasyChair <https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=scrita2024>. Each paper will receive at least two reviews. All papers are reviewed using a single-blind review process: authors declare their names and affiliations in the manuscript for the reviewers to see, but reviewers do not know each other's identities, nor do the authors receive information about who has reviewed their manuscript. Committees - Dr Alessandra Rossi, Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology, University of Naples Federico II (Italy) - Dr Patrick Holthaus, School of Physics, Engineering and Computer Science, University of Hertfordshire (UK) - Sílvia Moros, School of Physics, Engineering and Computer Science, University of Hertfordshire (UK) - Dr Gabriella Lakatos, School of Physics, Engineering and Computer Science, University of Hertfordshire (UK) - Ali Fallahi, School of Physics, Engineering and Computer Science, University of Hertfordshire (UK) Contact All questions about submissions should be emailed to scrita(a)herts.ac.uk - a.rossi(a)herts.ac.uk - p.holthaus(a)herts.ac.uk

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IEEE RAS Summer School on Educational Robotics
by Gerald Steinbauer-Wagner 25 Apr '24

25 Apr '24

We are happy to invite participants to EduRob24, the upcoming Summer School on Educational Robotics at Graz University of Technology, Graz, Austria, taking place from 8.-12. July 2024. To spark the interest of young people in Robotics and AI is of paramount importance. Unfortunately, resources are scarce at schools which are the natural multiplier in this endeavor. Thus, the summer school aims to develop an easy-to-access robot simulation environment and ready-to-use teaching material for educational robotics in schools. Teachers, lecturers, and university students will work on this goal during a week that will offer keynotes, hands-on sessions, discussions, and a strategy workshop. Dive into topics such as technology, sustainability, accessibility, didactic concepts, and Open Roberta and take part in material development and in shaping an easy-to-access future of educational robotics. Through lectures, hands-on sessions, and discussions, participants will gain knowledge in robotics technology, content creation, and teaching skills. This summer school is also a starting point of several activities toward the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2026 in Vienna, Austria which will have a strong connection to Educational Robotics. Key highlights of the program include: * Development of a browser-based simulation framework in cooperation with Open Roberta Lab (https://lab.open-roberta.org/) * Technical education through lectures by experts in Educational Robotics and teaching concepts * Development of teaching material based on the developed easy access simulation framework We in particular address university students, teachers, mentors, lecturers, and all excited to bring the next generation of pupils closer to science and technology, especially Robotics and AI. Due to the generous support of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society there are no participation cost for the summer school and there are limited grants for accommodation and travel. Participation to the summer school will be granted based on the participant's motivation and previous experience in the field. For more information please visit this website: https://edurob24.ist.tugraz.at/ We are looking forward to hearing from you soon! Best regards, The EduRob24 Committee

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[meetings] [news] Hard Submission Deadline May 1: 3rd Benchmark for Autonomous Robot Navigation (BARN) Challenge -- ICRA 2024 Competition
by Xuesu Xiao 24 Apr '24

24 Apr '24

Hard submission deadline is approaching! Submit by May 1 to be invited to participate in The 3rd BARN Challenge at ICRA 2024 in Japan! Submission Form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfZLMVluXE-HWnV9lNP00LuBi3e9HFOeLi… Competition Website: https://cs.gmu.edu/~xiao/Research/BARN_Challenge/BARN_Challenge24.html Participation Instructions: https://github.com/Daffan/nav-competition-icra2022 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 our (3rd) ICRA 2024 BARN Challenge (https://cs.gmu.edu/~xiao/Research/BARN_Challenge/BARN_Challenge24.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 ICRA2024. 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 ICRA2024 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/1FAIpQLSfZLMVluXE-HWnV9lNP00LuBi3e9HFOeLi… Co-Organizers: Xuesu Xiao (George Mason University) Zifan Xu (UT Austin) Garrett Warnell (US Army Research Lab / UT Austin) 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<mailto:xiao@gmu.edu> https://cs.gmu.edu/~xiao/

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