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Call for Participation: RoboCup 2022 Middle Size League
by 刘斐 11 Jan '22

11 Jan '22

Call for Participation   RoboCup 2022 Middle Size League July 11 to 17, 2022 (Bangkok, Thailand) https://2022.robocup.org We would like to invite all MSL teams to participate in the 2022 RoboCup MSL World Championships. If you are interested to participate please take the time to pre-register your team for the RoboCup 2022  MSL competitions.  1) Pre-registration  For the pre-registration please send an e-mail to rc-msl-oc(a)lists.robocup.org and liufei(a)caa.org.cn containing the following data: · team name · URL of the team’s home page · name of the team leader · e-mail address of team or team leader · affiliation · country · link to the qualification materials  Please send more information about teams to introduce them better on MSL website(https://msl.robocup.org/teams). Sending following information would be optional: · logo · profile (Describe team with at most 150 words). · most research topics (up to 6 topics)  2) Qualification materials  Please note that, according to the rules, the evaluation of some parts of the qualification materials will contribute to the scientific challenge final result.  By the time of pre-registration, please have ready the following qualification materials:  a) A Team Description Paper describing the most innovative contributions or scientific results (the TDP is limited to 8 pages and must be formatted according to the LNCS format: http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-6-793341-0) b) A list of 5 scientiﬁc papers published during the last 5 years of the team which are related to RoboCup. Abstracts of these papers and a complete reference to each paper must also be submitted. When more papers are submitted, only the first 5 will be considered; c) A list of results and awards obtained by the team in the last 3 years; d) A video showing the capabilities of the team’s robots (the maximum duration of the video is 60 seconds; if the submitted video is longer than 60 seconds, only the first 60 seconds will be considered for evaluation); e) A list of contributions of the team to the RoboCup MSL community. f) Declaration if the team will be part of a mixed team. g) Declaration if the team requires 802.11b access-point. h) A mechanical and electrical description together with a software flow chart (please include size and weight of the robots); i) List of MAC Addresses used by the team, with explicit indication of those that will be used for wireless communication and their type: robots or development computers. All other MAC addresses will be blocked.  The details regarding the qualification materials are contained in the rules and regulations document available at https://msl.robocup.org. Please read it thoroughly.  The qualification materials should be placed in a dedicated page of the team's web page. Please include the link to the qualification materials in the pre-registration information. 3) Important dates  · Deadline for pre-registration and submission of the qualification materials: March 21, 2022 · Announcement of qualified teams: March 28, 2022  4) Rules  The rules and regulations for the RoboCup 2022 Middle Size League had been published at: https://msl.robocup.org/rules   The updated rules and regulations had been released by December 31, 2021  5) Publication  Please note that after the announcement of the qualified teams the qualification materials of the qualified teams will be made publicly available. Therefore, teams applying for participation, grant the right of publication of their qualification materials to the MSL league(MAC addresses are an exception and should remain private).  6) Plagiarism  Plagiarism, loosely the unattributed use of other peoples' words, code and ideas (see “http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/plagiarism_FAQ.html” for a more detailed description) is not tolerated in the RoboCup community.  The teams and team members that plagiarize other peoples' work and present it as their own will be disqualified. For a first offense, the team and team members will be banned from RoboCup competition for two years (usually the current and next year). Harsher penalties will be applied to repeat offenders or extremely serious cases of plagiarism. A team may be disqualified at any time for plagiarism, even after the competition has started. RoboCup will not reimburse teams for any expenses related to their disqualification.  7) Waiver of the team fee for NEW Teams  For the 2022 International RoboCup competition, NEW major teams can apply for team fee waiver. A NEW team is defined as a team all of whose team members have never participated in an annual international RoboCup competition. The waiver concerns only the team fee and does not imply any waiver of fees for team members.  The 2022 MSL Organizing and Technical Committees

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CFP: DEI HRI Workshop on Inclusive HRI @ HRI 2022
by Frank Broz 10 Jan '22

10 Jan '22

Call for Papers DEI HRI 2022 Workshop (https://sites.google.com/view/dei-hri-2022/) We are inviting submissions for the workshop Inclusive HRI: Equity and Diversity in Design, Application, Methods, and Community (DEI HRI 2022), to be held virtually within the ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI 2022) on March 11th, 2022. Important Dates * Deadline for Paper Submission: February 4th, 2022 * Paper Acceptance Notification: February 18th, 2022 * Camera Ready Paper: March 4th, 2022 * Workshop date: March 11th, 2022 Statement of Objectives Although being a pressing issue, an understanding of how robotic systems can replicate and amplify inequalities and injustice among underrepresented communities is still to be achieved within the HRl community. This workshop contributes to filling this gap by exploring the research questions: What do Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) mean in the context of HRI? How can we promote DEI in HRI? Our goal is to raise awareness on the importance of including DEI aspects in HRI to avoid exacerbating existing or creating new biases. This workshop will center around the themes of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Human-Robot Interaction. An additional goal of this workshop is to build community and solidarity among researchers in HRI who work on and are affected by these various and related issues. More information on the workshop can be found on the dedicated website<https://sites.google.com/view/dei-hri-2022/>. Submission Guidelines We invite authors to submit extended abstracts (up to 2 pages, excluding references) and short papers (up to 4 pages, excluding references) on a range of topics relevant to these questions and to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) in HRI in general. Submissions may present current or in-progress research, position papers, critical essays, and summaries of already published research from all areas of HRI. Since we hope to learn from other fields of knowledge and form new connections with related research communities, we also welcome submissions from researchers outside of the HRI community. Authors should submit their papers on EasyChair<https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=deihri2022>. Papers should be formatted according to the IEEE two-column format<https://www.ieee.org/conferences/publishing/templates.html>. Submissions will be evaluated according to their fit to the workshop theme, and their adherence to the scientific standards of the discipline of origin. The workshop proceedings will be made publicly available on our website. List of Topics Topics of interest include, but are not limited to: * Accessibility * Bias in AI/ML algorithms * Disability and Ableism * Gender issues * LGBTQIA+ issues * Inclusive education * Intersectional feminism * Issues of representation * Neurodiversity * Racism * The global south The topics above can address one or more of the following domains: * HRI design * HRI applications * HRI research methods * HRI community Organizers More information on the workshop can be found on the workshop website<https://sites.google.com/view/dei-hri-2022/>. For any further questions, please feel free to reach out at our email addresses! * Dr. Maartje de Graaf - Utrecht University - m.m.a.degraaf(a)uu.nl<mailto:m.m.a.degraaf@uu.nl> * Dr. Giulia Perugia - Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) - g.perugia(a)tue.nl<mailto:g.perugia@tue.nl> * Dr. Eduard Fosch-Villaronga (corresponding) - Leiden University - e.fosch.villaronga(a)law.leidenuniv.nl<mailto:e.fosch.villaronga@law.leidenuniv.nl> * Dr. Angelica Lim - Simon Fraser University - angelica(a)sfu.ca<mailto:angelica@sfu.ca> * Dr. Frank Broz - Delft University - f.broz(a)tudelft.nl<mailto:f.broz@tudelft.nl> * Dr. Elaine Short, Tufts University, elaine.short(a)tufts.edu<mailto:elaine.short@tufts.edu> * Prof. dr. Mark Neerincx, Delft University and TNO, m.a.neerincx(a)tudelft.nl<mailto:m.a.neerincx@tudelft.nl> Since we acknowledge that we are a fairly homogeneous group of organizers, we would like to diversify our group composition. If you want to join the DEI HRI 2022 community and be part of the programme committee of the DEI HRI 2022 workshop, please let us know by filling out this form<https://forms.gle/fXxPiUJYBcJzSS2V9>.

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[journals] Neural Computing and Applications (NCAA) Special Issue CFP (Deadline: March 31, 2022)
by Pub Conference 09 Jan '22

09 Jan '22

Neural Computing and Applications <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/journal/521/__;!!LIr3w…> Topical Collection on Interpretation of Deep Learning: Prediction, Representation, Modeling and Utilization https://www.springer.com/journal/521/updates/19187658 <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/journal/521/updates/19…> 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 <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/journal/521/submission…>). 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 <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.editorialmanager.com/ncaa/default.a…> . Authors should select “TC: Interpretation of Deep Learning” during the submission step ‘Additional Information’.

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[news]AAMAS2022 : Final Call for Applications - Doctoral Consortium - Deadline : January 7 2022 (Tomorrow)
by Brian Ravenet 06 Jan '22

06 Jan '22

************Final Call for AAMAS-22 Doctoral Consortium Applications (Deadline Extended to Jan 7 UTC-12)******** Submission Deadline: January 5 January 7 (23:59 UTC-12) Author Notification: February 5 (23:59 UTC-12) Camera Ready Deadline: February 28 (23:59 UTC-12) Doctoral Consortium: May 9 - 10 UPDATE: AAMAS 2022 and the doctoral consortium to be held as fully virtual events. DOCTORAL CONSORTIUM PROGRAM: The doctoral consortium (DC) of AAMAS 2022 is intended to provide Ph.D. students the opportunity (1) to receive feedback on their research (from established researchers in their fields), (2) to interact closely with established researchers/mentors, and (3) to build their professional network. Each accepted student to the program will be matched with an established researcher/mentor in the field who will assist the student with research and career management advice. An informal lunch will be organized between the students and their mentors allowing for in-depth discussion and exchange. Each student will be given ample time to orally present their work and therefore be able to fully benefit from direct feedback from the assigned senior researcher mentor and their peers. Furthermore, the students will also present a poster of their PhD work during the poster session of the main conference. Apart from extra feedback, this will also help provide students with new contacts and professional networking opportunities. In addition, the students will work in groups in a Social Good Idea Challenge. The DC is intended for PhD students who have a specific research proposal and some preliminary results, but who have sufficient time prior to completing their dissertation to benefit from the consortium experience. Preference will be given to students satisfying these criteria, but well-motivated applications from students who are at earlier or later stages of their doctoral studies will also be considered. Program Format: It is our hope to hold the DC program in person and host our attendees at the conference venue. However, we are aware of the ongoing global public health situation and will be considering any safety protocols in place at the time when implementing the DC program. As such, we are also planning the possibility of running the DC program as a partly or fully virtual event. SUBMISSION PROCEDURE: The submission package should include the following items in one single pdf file: * A cover sheet containing: the student's name, email address, homepage, university affiliation, gender, citizenship, PhD start date, expected graduation date, name and email of PhD supervisor, at least three mentor suggestions (should be chosen from the list of PCs, SPCs, or ACs in (this year and past) AAMAS and related conferences, for example, the list of PCs, SPCs, and ACs for AAMAS can be found on current and previous AAMAS conference webpages. * A 1-page letter of support from the supervisor. * A 2-page (short) CV that includes the list of publications of the student. * A 2-page extended abstract of the student's thesis or thesis topic (in AAMAS submission format) * A 1-page personal statement citing around five favorite papers in the field and briefly describing how they influenced the students' work. Applications should be submitted via easychair [Link [1] or https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=aamas2022dc [1]]. The selection process will consider the quality of the submitted proposal and the stage of the student's PhD project. Doctoral students who submit to the DC are encouraged to submit papers to the associated workshops. Important: All students, including DC applicants, should apply for student scholarships separately on the scholarship website. While acceptance to the DC may play a role in scholarship decisions, those decisions are made by the scholarship chairs and are subject to available funding support. AAMAS will be hosting a list of diversity and inclusion activities. We strongly encourage everyone to participate in these activities as well as other conference activities (which will be decided at a later date). For any questions, please contact the doctoral consortium co-chairs. ORGANIZERS: Hau Chan (University of Nebraska-Lincoln, United States) Stacy Marsella (Northeastern University, United States) Links: ------ [1] https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=aamas2022dc

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[RoboCup 2022] RoboCup@Work Call for Participation
by Asad Norouzi 03 Jan '22

03 Jan '22

*Apologies for duplicate messages*Call for Applications for Participation RoboCup 2022 - RoboCup at Work https://2022.robocup.org Venue: Bangkok, Thailand Monday July 11th through Sunday July 17th 2022 RoboCup at Work: Competing for the Factory of the Future RoboCup at Work is a league and competition in RoboCup that targets the use of robots in work-related, industrial scenarios. It aims to foster research and development that enables the use of innovative mobile robots equipped with advanced manipulators for current and future industrial applications, where robots cooperate with human workers for complex tasks ranging from manufacturing, automation, and parts handling up to general logistics. The RoboCup at Work league is characterized by an industrial appealing environment composed of industrial objects such as screws and nuts, shelves, containers, platforms of various sizes, and networked automation devices such as conveyor belts, drilling machines, and others. 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 servoing. The full rules of RoboCup at Work as well as further technical details are (will be) posted on the RoboCup at 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 material, including a Team Description Paper and possibly additional material like videos or drawings 2. Final registration (qualified teams only) Qualification The qualification process serves a dual purpose: It should allow the Technical Committee to assess the safety of the robots a team intends to bring to the competition, and it should allow to rank 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 material provided by the teams. The evaluation criteria will include: - Team description paper - Relevant scientific contribution/publications - The professional quality of 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 -- Provision and sharing of knowledge - 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 web site - Contact information - The body of the TDP should contain information on the following: -- 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 in detail the technical and scientific approach, while the team website should be designed for a broader audience. Both the website and the TDP have to be written 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 January 23rd, 2022 through the following online form: https://forms.gle/huZvNVCbZ6zraAB97 Qualified teams will be tentatively announced by February 1st, 2022. Best Regards, On behalf of The RoboCup@Work Committee

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CFP: RoboCup 2022 Soccer Simulation 2D League
by Nader Zare 29 Dec '21

29 Dec '21

Call for Participation RoboCup 2022 Soccer Simulation 2D League July 11 – July 17, 2022 Bangkok, Thailand https://2022.robocup.org/ We would like to invite you to participate in the RoboCup 2022 Soccer Simulation League 2D competition, which will take place July 11 - 17 2022, in Bangkok, Thailand. If you are interested in participating, please pre-register your team, and then submit qualification materials. Please see below in detail. Important Dates -Pre-registration Deadline: Feb 1, 2022 – 23:59 UTC ----Submit information via the online form: https://forms.gle/tKyVA2YXQGLZgt1T7 -Qualification Materials Submission Deadline: Feb 15, 2022 – 23:59 UTC ----Submit TDP, Log files via the online form: https://forms.gle/s3JmVW8JwuVV4pDx9 ----Submit a part of the documentation of the soccer server by Pull Request on GitHub. -Qualification Notification: March 1, 2022 To view the full Call for Participation document, please visit: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1y3QxyKUvmJw4V74TQga5wpFP2j41_VG-z16zb-j… Best Regards RoboCup2022 Soccer Simulation 2D League Organizing Committee Nader Zare, Morteza Noohpisheh

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[reminder] Survey about domestic robot competitions, in particular RoboCup@Home
by Alex Mitrevski 26 Dec '21

26 Dec '21

Dear RoboCup community, This is just a reminder that our survey about domestic robot competitions will remain open for only a few more days. If you would like to contribute towards shaping the RoboCup@Home competition, please take a few minutes to share your ideas (link to the survey below). Thanks in advance, and a big thanks to everyone who has already answered the survey! Best regards, Alex Mitrevski on behalf of the RoboCup@Home Technical Committee ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Dear RoboCup community, As part of the preparations for the rule book for next year's RoboCup@Home <https://athome.robocup.org> competition, which will take place in Bangkok, Thailand in 2022, we would like toimprove the competition tasks so that they serve the robotics research community better. We all know the transformative effect that various competitions in the computer vision community have had on our field; we hope that RoboCup@Home can have the same effect for domestic service and social robots. To make this possible, we need a collective effort from the community. We would, in particular, like to identify (i) research areas that are considered important by those of you working in the umbrella domain of "domestic service and social robots" as well as (ii) aspects that you, the community, consider important for a competition of this type to be valuable for your research activities. For this, we would be very much obliged if you could take a few minutes of your time to answer a short /anonymous/ survey about domestic robot competitions until 23:59 CET on December 30th, 2021. The link to the survey is https://forms.gle/DuNzPVKd5c41DRxq7 <https://forms.gle/DuNzPVKd5c41DRxq7> Please note that this survey is open to everyone, regardless of whether you are currently participating in RoboCup@Home or similar competitions; we would be particularly happy if the competition can attract researchers and groups which are currently not participating. Thanks in advance for your time and insights. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Alex Mitrevski Research Associate Room: C201 Email: aleksandar.mitrevski(a)h-brs.de Phone: +49-2241-865-206 Web: https://www.h-brs.de/en/inf/aleksandar-mitrevski Autonomous Systems Group Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg Computer Science Department Grantham-Allee 20 53757 Sankt Augustin, Germany ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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Call for Papers: 19th EUROPEAN CONFERENCE ON MULTI-AGENT SYSTEMS (EUMAS-2022)
by Jörg-Matthias Rothe 22 Dec '21

22 Dec '21

*********************************************** 19th EUROPEAN CONFERENCE ON MULTI-AGENT SYSTEMS (EUMAS-2022) September 14 - 16, 2022, Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf https://ccc.cs.hhu.de/eumas2022/ *********************************************** ------------------------------------ IMPORTANT DATES ------------------------------------ - Deadline for paper submission: May 6, 2022 - Notification of authors: July 15, 2022 - Camera-ready papers due: August 12, 2022 - Conference: September 14 - 16, 2022 All deadlines are at 23:59 UTC-12, i.e., while it is still the respective date anywhere on earth. Submission instructions: https://ccc.cs.hhu.de/eumas2022/ ------------------------------------ AIMS AND SCOPE ------------------------------------ In the past two decades, we have seen an enormous increase of interest in agent-based computing and multi-agent systems (MAS). This field is set to become one of the key intelligent systems technologies in the 21st century. The EUMAS conference series aims to provide the main forum for academics and practitioners in Europe to discuss current MAS research and applications. EUMAS-2022, the 19th installment of the conference series, follows the tradition of previous editions (Oxford 2003, Barcelona 2004, Brussels 2005, Lisbon 2006, Hammamet 2007, Bath 2008, Agia Napa 2009, Paris 2010, Maastricht 2011, Dublin 2012, Toulouse 2013, Prague 2014, Athens 2015, Valencia 2016, Evry 2017, Bergen 2018, Thessaloniki 2019, Virtual 2020), and encourages and supports activity in the research and development of multi-agent systems, in academic and industrial efforts. The conference aspires to be the primary European forum for researchers interested in the theory and practice of autonomous agents and multi-agent systems. EUMAS enables researchers to meet, present challenges, preliminary and mature research results in an open and informal environment. To attract students as well as experienced researchers, preliminary as well as mature work, EUMAS 2021 offers three submission types and formal proceedings. Also, we will be working hard to arrange for the post-publication of selected papers in the form of a special issue of a high-quality journal in the area. EUMAS-2022 is a designated event of the European Association of Multi-Agent Systems (EURAMAS): http://www.euramas.org <http://www.euramas.org/> Topics of interest include but are not limited to: - Action and Planning - Adaptation and Learning - Agent Architectures - Agent Programming Languages - Agent Development Methodologies and Tools - Agent-Based Simulations and Modeling - Agent Organizations and Institutions - Agent-Oriented Software Engineering - Agents and Complex Systems - Applications of Multi-Agent Systems - Argumentation - Automated Negotiation - Biologically Inspired Approaches - Cognitive Models - Collective and Swarm Intelligence - Collective Intentionality - Communication, Cooperation, and Coordination - Deep Reinforcement Learning in Multi-Agent Domains - Economic Models - Electronic Commerce - Ethical Behaviour of Multi-Agent Systems - Formal Modeling - Game-Theoretic Methods - Logics for Multi-Agent Systems - Logics for Strategic Reasoning - Machine Learning for Multi-Agent Systems - Multi-Agent Learning - Multi-Robot Systems - Negotiation - Self-Organization - Semantic Web Agents - Socio-Technical Systems - Theories of Agency - Trust and Reputation - Verification - Virtual Agents - Voting and Judgment Aggregation Models for Multi-Agent Systems - Computational Social Choice - Social Networks - Human-Agent Interaction ------------------------------------ SUBMISSIONS ------------------------------------ EUMAS-2022 welcomes original, unpublished papers. Papers submitted shall describe original work that has not been published or accepted for publication, nor is currently under review by another conference or journal (it might be on arXiv or a similar preprint server, though). NEW! Papers rejected from AAMAS, AAAI, or IJCAI will be fast-tracked given that their original reviews and an authors' cover letter (indicating all changes made) will be submitted. Extended abstracts from AAMAS also qualify for this fast track. Each submission will be peer-reviewed in a double-blind fashion. All submissions should be formatted according to Springer's LNCS format and contain at most 15 pages, plus any number of additional pages for bibliography and, if needed, a clearly marked appendix. For templates and instructions for authors, see http://www.springer.de/comp/lncs/authors.html. Authors must submit their abstracts and papers through the EUMAS-2022 Easychair submission site https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=eumas2022. EUMAS-2022 accepted papers will be published by Springer in an LNCS/LNAI volume. As such, they will be made available to several indexing services (including Scopus, Google Scholar, DBLP, CPCI, EI Engineering Index, and more). Authors should consult Springer's author guidelines and use their proceedings templates, either for LaTeX (preferred) or for Word (if need be), for the preparation of their papers. Springer encourages authors to include their ORCIDs in their papers. We urge the authors to follow these guidelines from the submission stage already. Additional guidelines will be communicated after the conference to the authors of accepted papers for the preparation of the final versions to be included in the post-proceedings. ------------------------------------ Opportunity for a JAAMAS publication ------------------------------------ This year, the Journal of Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems (JAAMAS) will provide the opportunity for revised and extended versions of the EUMAS-2022 best paper award winner (see below) and the EUMAS-2022 best paper award runner-up to be fast-tracked for the journal. ----------------------------------------------------------- Opportunity to publish revised and extended papers in SN CS ----------------------------------------------------------- A selection of EUMAS-2022 papers will be invited to submit revised and extended versions for publication in a special issue of the Springer Nature Computer Science journal. ------------------------------------ Best Paper Award ------------------------------------ A Best Paper Award will be presented at the conference. ------------------------------------ Keynote Speakers ------------------------------------ Prof. Marija Slavkovik (University of Bergen) [TBA] ------------------------------------ DOCTORAL CONSORTIUM ------------------------------------ There will be a doctoral consortium day prior to the conference where PhD students can present the topics related to MAS they are currently working on. Keynote Speaker for the PhD Day (September 14, 2022): Piotr Faliszewski (AGH University of Science and Technology Kraków) Organizers of the PhD Day: Linus Boes (HHU Düsseldorf) Christian Laußmann (HHU Düsseldorf) ------------------------------------ CONFERENCE CHAIRS ------------------------------------ Dorothea Baumeister (HHU Düsseldorf) Jörg Rothe (HHU Düsseldorf) ------------------------------------ PROGRAM COMMITTEE ------------------------------------ https://ccc.cs.hhu.de/eumas2022/ ------------------------------------ CONTACT DETAILS ------------------------------------ EUMAS-2022 Organizing Committee: eumas2022(a)cs.hhu.de

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Call for proposals: RCF Project Support 2022
by Gerald Steinbauer-Wagner 20 Dec '21

20 Dec '21

Call for proposals: RCF Project Support 2022 The RoboCup Federation (RCF) is pleased to announce this call for proposals to support activities for promoting the development of RoboCup Leagues. RCF Project Support aims at funding activities for the development of the RoboCup Leagues or the promotion of RoboCup in general. The main goal of these projects is to research and develop activities that support significant advancements of the RoboCup leagues and/or the RoboCup community which are difficult to achieve otherwise. This includes support for short-term visits for a collaboration between teams (e.g. joint team development, integration of research agendas) and/or RoboCup camps on special or novel topics. This year the RCF particularly encourages proposals in the following areas: * Human-Robot-Interaction (HRI), any type interaction of a human with a robot within one of the RoboCup leagues * Low-Cost Standard Robots, any ideas to lower the entry bar to a RoboCup league or to allow to scale the number of robots in a team * Unified Game Controllers, development of game controllers that can be shared between RoboCup leagues easily and with minor re-configuration * Data Sets from Competitions, any concept for automated collecting and annotating data (i.e. ground truth) from competitions in order to support statistical analysis or machine learning Support Support will be provided in the form of reimbursement upon receipts of direct expenses (e.g., hardware devices or costs for organization of events) or of a grant for the applicants. In case of hardware acquisition, it must be specified how the league (e.g. other teams) will benefit from this hardware. A detailed list of expenses must be described in the proposal. Funds from RCF are limited, partial funding may be also considered. Submission A single PDF file should be submitted through the easychair system https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=rcfsupport2022 under the Category: Projects for League Developments The proposal (MAX 4 pages) must include: 1. description of the project, 2. motivations and goals, 3. benefits for RoboCup and RoboCup leagues (not for a single or a few teams), 4. implementation plan and budget. Evaluation Application materials will be evaluated by a committee of RoboCup Trustees or RoboCup Exec members. The evaluation of the proposals will be based on (i) the quality of the proposed research; (ii) the research contributions of the applicants, particularly in relation to RoboCup; and (iii) the impact of the proposed plan on the advancement and visibility of RoboCup (e.g. high ranked publications). A limited number of awards is expected to be assigned. Deadlines Submission Deadline: January 30th, 2022 Notification: February 8th, 2022 Completion of the project: Preliminary work expected to be presented during the RoboCup Symposium 2022, the project needs to be finished by end of 2022 and a final report submitted by January 2023. Exceptions to this rule must be submitted for approval to the evaluation committee.

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Call for proposals: RCF and MathWorks Support for Research Projects 2022
by Gerald Steinbauer-Wagner 20 Dec '21

20 Dec '21

Call for proposals: RCF and MathWorks Support for Research Projects 2022 The RoboCup Federation (RCF) and MathWorks, a Global Sponsor of RoboCup, are pleased to announce this call for proposals to support research projects in RoboCup. RCF-MathWorks Support for Research Projects 2022 aims at funding robotics research projects that use MATLAB and Simulink software. The goal is to enable collaboration between RoboCup researchers and MathWorks engineers to foster progress of RoboCup and its leagues. The RoboCup Federation and MathWorks hosted a webinar to discuss the details of the call, describe expected results and MathWorks tools, showcase previously sponsored projects, and answer questions. Link to the webinar: https://youtu.be/znZSFBWAWhg For more info or clarification on the details of this call, please contact info(a)robocup.org Proposal Requirements Proposals in this category must meet *ALL* of the following requirements: 1. Work must be associated with one or more of the research topics listed below. 2. Work must primarily utilize MathWorks software such as MATLAB, Simulink, Stateflow, and other add-on products. Preference may be given if using one or more of the development methods listed below. 3. Project team will be assigned MathWorks contacts, and must arrange and participate in at least 3 progress check-in meetings with them during the course of the project. The team is encouraged to reach out to their MathWorks contacts whenever they have questions. 4. Final deliverables shall be posted publicly after review by MathWorks contacts. Research Topics 1. Navigation and Planning a. Motion Planning for Manipulators and Mobile Robots b. Motion planning for humanoid robots c. Collision avoidance 2. Perception and Sensor Fusion a. Object detection and tracking b. Lidar and vision-based SLAM c. Point cloud processing d. Fusing IMU with other sensors for localization and state estimation 3. Control systems a. Control of humanoid robots b. Hybrid systems and behavior c. Multi-agent systems d. Robot Manipulation and Grasping 4. Human-Robot Interaction a. Natural language processing b. Signal and audio processing NOTE: teams are encouraged to apply machine learning techniques (deep learning, reinforcement learning, etc.) toward these research topics Development Methods 1. Development Tools a. User interfaces and Web applications b. Hardware initialization and calibration tools 2. Modeling and simulation a. Model-based design of software components b. Physical system simulation and design c. Behavior modeling: finite-state machines, behavior trees, etc. d. Multi-agent simulation 3. Embedded systems a. Implementation to reduce memory, power consumption, etc. b. Targeting microcontrollers, FPGAs, and GPUs c. Real-time and hardware-in-the-loop simulation 4. Interfaces to standard platforms a. Robots, e.g., Toyota, SoftBank, FESTO b. Software frameworks, e.g., ROS Support Support will be given as a gift between 5,000 and 10,000 USD depending on quantity and quality of accepted proposals in this category. Teams will be notified of the exact amount awarded upon their proposal being accepted. Funding will be provided directly by RCF after the RoboCup Symposium 2022 if the research and deliverables are completed in a satisfactory manner. Submission A single PDF file should be submitted through the easychair system https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=rcfsupport2022 under the Category: RCF and MathWorks Support for Research Projects 2022 The proposal (MAX 6 pages) must include: 1. description of the project, 2. motivations and goals, 3. intended use of MATLAB and/or Simulink software, 4. benefits for RoboCup and for the RoboCup League (not for a single or a few teams), 5. implementation plan and budget. Evaluation Application materials will be evaluated by a committee of RoboCup Trustees and MathWorks engineers. The evaluation of the proposals will be based on (i) the quality of the proposed research; (ii) the research contributions of the applicants, particularly in relation to RoboCup; (iii) the usage of MATLAB and/or Simulink software; and (iv) the impact of the proposed plan on the advancement and visibility of RoboCup. A limited number of awards is expected to be assigned. Deadlines Submission Deadline: January 30th, 2022 Notification: February 8th, 2022 Completion of the action: Preliminary work expected to be presented during the RoboCup 2022 Research Symposium, and official content publication by October 2022 Exceptions to this rule must be submitted for approval to the evaluation committee. ** For more information about the call for projects, please contact: info [at] robocup.org **

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