- RoboCup-worldwide - lists.robocup.org

[jobs] Postdoc opportunity - UT Austin
by Peter Stone 28 Apr '25

28 Apr '25

DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE, THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN, USA POSITION: Post-doctoral fellow on Robotics, Multiagent Systems, and Reinforcement Learning CONTACT: Prof. Peter Stone The University of Texas at Austin 2317 Speedway, Stop D9500 Austin, TX 78712 USA pstone(a)cs.utexas.edu www.cs.utexas.edu/~pstone Applications are invited for a postdoctoral fellow of one year, possibly renewable for additional years, in the Department of Computer Science in the Learning Agents Research Group headed by Prof. Peter Stone. Primary responsibilities include performing cutting-edge research in collaboration with faculty, Ph.D. students, and other researchers. The research will focus on developing and testing novel algorithms for in connection with a range of projects related to robotics and multiagent reinforcement learning. Motivating use cases include long-term autonomous service robots, robot soccer, and social navigation. QUALIFICATIONS: Applicants should have a Ph.D. in Computer Science or related field. Experience with machine learning and intelligent robotics is essential. Experience in deep reinforcement learning, multiagent systems, and/or ROS is desired. TO APPLY: Applicants should send by email to pstone(a)cs.utexas.edu - a curriculum vitae - names of two references with contact information - a two-page summary of past research and relevant qualifications - a personal Web page, if available, where further details can be found This position is to start as early as June of 2025 or at any agreed upon later date. Applications will be reviewed as they are received.

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short survey about hands-on robotics teaching
by Andreas Birk 26 Apr '25

26 Apr '25

Dear all, if you do hands-on teaching in robotics, e.g., labs, projects, theses, I would be very grateful if you participate in the following survey: https://forms.gle/4JoP7KJuww9pLbxaA It should just take 5 to 10 minutes to complete. The purpose of this survey is to understand the current state of equipment use, i.e., the combination of equipment like hardware or a simulation with access forms like in-presence versus remote access over the web. This includes the question whether there are lasting effects on hands-on robotics teaching after the COVID-19 pandemic. It is a follow-up of a study 5 years ago, which appeared in the IEEE Robotics and Automation Magazine: A. Birk and D. Simunovic, "Robotics Labs and Other Hands-On Teaching During COVID-19: Change Is Here to Stay?," IEEE Robotics and Automation Magazine (RAM), vol. 28, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1109/MRA.2021.3102979 (open access) Many thanks & kind regards, Andreas -- ========================================================================================== 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), Turgut Tülü (Chancellor/Kanzler) Managing Directors (Geschäftsführung): Prof. Dr. Thomas Auf der Heyde & Serguei Kouzmine Chairwoman of the Board of Governors (Aufsichtsratsvorsitzende): Oznur Bell ==========================================================================================

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Introducing MiROS - Visual Programming Tool for ROS
by MiRobot Team 22 Apr '25

22 Apr '25

Dear Roboticists, We know that getting started with ROS can be challenging - especially for newcomers. Installing and configuring ROS on Ubuntu is time-consuming, and for Windows or Mac users, running a VM is often a hassle. That’s why we created MiROS, a browser-based, visual programming tool designed to simplify ROS development for everyone. MiROS makes it easier than ever to program ROS robots with drag-and-drop workflows, intuitive setup, and instant deployment - all without needing a virtual machine. Key Features: • Visual editor for creating ROS packages, nodes, topics, and services • Native support for Linux, Mac & Windows - no VM required • Quick 10~15 minute installation and setup • Start projects using prebuilt robot templates • Run Gazebo, Rviz, and RQT directly in your browser • Deploy and run packages wirelessly on real robots • Built-in Monaco Code Editor (core editor for VS Code) • Auto code generation in C/C++ and Python • GitHub integration for streamlined collaboration MiROS is completely free and designed to make ROS programming more accessible and efficient - for students, educators, and professionals alike. Get started now at: https://www.mirobot.ai/miros MiROS supports any ROS 2 robot with SSH access, and includes templates for over 10 robot platforms - with more being added regularly. MiROS is also bundled with our educational robot kits, making it a powerful tool for both research and teaching. Learn more about our hardware here: https://www.mirobot.ai/storeitems/p/codebot We’re always improving MiROS and would love to hear your feedback or questions. Reach out anytime - we’d love to connect! Best regards, The MiROS Team The Future is Now! W - www.mirobot.ai T - +61 1300991274 A - Level 15, Grosvenor Place, 225 George St, Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia

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RoboCup International Symposium 2025 call for papers - final deadline extension (corrected)
by Rudi Villing 18 Apr '25

18 Apr '25

In response to requests we have extended the submission deadline to 21 April 2025. This is the final deadline. Call for papers RoboCup International Symposium 2025 https://2025.robocup.org/symposium/ Monday 21 July 2025 Salvador, Bahia, Brazil. The 28th RoboCup International Symposium will be held on 21 July 2025, in conjunction with RoboCup 2025 (15 July to 20 July 2024), in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil. We call for submissions of papers reporting innovative, original research with relevance to areas of robotics and artificial intelligence as listed below. Within the described scope of topics, we also encourage submissions of high-quality overview articles, papers describing real-world research, and papers reporting theoretical results. Researchers are invited to submit their work independently of whether they participate in the RoboCup competitions or have a RoboCup team. The symposium will be held in person at the Salvador Convention Center (CCS), Av. Octávio Mangabeira, 5.490 Boca do Rio - Salvador - Bahia - Brazil. In addition to the regular track with regular research papers, there is the development track encouraging reports on innovative hardware developments, software frameworks, and open-source releases of software components. A review of papers describing these contributions will be based on technical aspects and benefits to the practice of communities working in the above fields in general and RoboCup in particular. IMPORTANT DATES Submission of full papers: 21 April 2025 (final extended deadline) Notification to authors: 30 May 2025 Submission of camera-ready copies: 13 June 2025 RoboCup Symposium 2025: 21 July 2025 (RoboCup on 15-20 July 2025) SUBMISSION AND PROCEEDINGS All papers will be peer-reviewed and evaluated by members of the senior program committee. The proceedings of the RoboCup International Symposium will be published and archived within the Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence (LNCS/LNAI) series by Springer-Verlag after the conference. Papers should be formatted following the LNAI author guidelines (https://www.springer.com/gp/computer-science/lncs/conference-proceedings-gu…) and must be electronically submitted through Springer’s Meteor electronic-submission system. To submit a paper, please visit https://meteor.springer.com/robocup2025, and follow the instructions to register (if you have not previously registered with Meteor), or login. Submissions are limited to 12 pages including references. The LNAI author guidelines site contains a Springer’s proceedings LaTeX template (v2.24), and a link to the template in Overleaf: (https://www.overleaf.com/latex/templates/springer-lecture-notes-in-computer…) TOPICS Topics of interest include, but are not limited to: * Robot Hardware and Software - mobile robotics - humanoid robotics - sensors and actuators - embedded and mobile devices - robot construction and new materials - robot system integration - robot software architectures - robot programming environments and languages - real-time and concurrent programming - robot simulators - sim2real learning * Perception and Action - 3D perception - distributed sensor integration - sensor noise filtering - real-time image processing and pattern recognition - motion and sensor models - sensory-motor control - robot kinematics and dynamics - high-dimensional motion control * Robot Cognition and Learning - world modelling and knowledge representation - learning from demonstration and imitation - localisation, navigation, and mapping - planning and reasoning - decision making under uncertainty - neural systems and deep learning - complex motor skill acquisition - reinforcement learning and optimisation - motion and sensor model learning * Human-Robot Interaction - robot social intelligence - fluency of interaction - speech synthesis and natural language generation - natural language recognition - explainable robot behaviours - emotion recognition and reaction - understanding human intent and behaviour - safety, security and dependability - enabling humans to predict robot behaviour * Multi-Robot Systems - team coordination methods - communication protocols - learning and adaptive systems - teamwork and heterogeneous agents - dynamic resource allocation - adjustable autonomy * Education and Edutainment - robotics and artificial intelligence education - educational robotics - robot kits and programming tools - robotic entertainment * Applications and Benchmarking - search and rescue robots - robot surveillance - service and social robots - robots at home, at work and in public spaces - robots in the real world - performance metrics - human-robot interaction DEVELOPMENT TRACK To encourage open-source release of hardware and software systems, the RoboCup International Symposium has included a development track in recent years. In 2025, the scope of this track includes datasets and benchmarks. We encourage the submission of papers describing open-source hardware and software, tools and frameworks that facilitate development of robotics hardware and software, datasets that enable new robotic capabilities, as well as benchmarks that establish reproducible test beds and performance metrics to advance research. If applicable, contributions to the special track should include evidence of the released system or dataset, and highlight past, ongoing, and/or potential future impacts on the RoboCup community. A review of these contributions will be based on technical merit and benefits to the RoboCup community, and the research topics listed above. PROGRAM CO-CHAIRS Ana Patrícia Fontes Magalhães Mascarenhas (UNEB, Brazil) Alexander Ferrein (FH Aachen University of Applied Sciences, Germany) Rudi Villing (Maynooth University, Ireland) LOCAL ORGANIZERS Marco Antônio Costa Simões (UNEB, Brazil) Reinaldo Bianchi (Centro Universitário FEI, Brazil) CONTACT You can contact via the PC chairs via the Meteor website VISA INFORMATION If you are a citizen of a country that needs a Visa for traveling to the Brazil, please start the VISA process as soon as possible. If you are not sure if you are eligible for a VISA-exemption, please consult the official website of the Brazilian government for information, at https://www.gov.br/mre/pt-br/assuntos/portal-consular/vistos/informacoes-so… (Information is in English below each paragraph in Portuguese).

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[Meetings] [CFP] Roboletics 2.0: Workshop on Athletic Robots and Dynamic Motor Skills at ICRA 2025 – Deadline Extension and Travel Support Announcement
by Alap Kshirsagar 10 Apr '25

10 Apr '25

Dear all, The submission deadline for *Roboletics 2.0: Workshop on Athletic Robots and Dynamic Motor Skills* at ICRA 2025 has been extended to *April 20*. We’re also excited to announce a *special session on RoboCup* as part of the workshop, along with a *"Best RoboCup-Themed Paper Award"* sponsored by the *IEEE RAS Technical Committee on RoboCup*. In addition, the RoboCup TC will offer *travel support for participants from underrepresented regions*. This workshop brings together researchers, engineers, and industry leaders to explore cutting-edge innovations in athletic robotics. The event aims to accelerate the transition of agile robots from controlled labs to complex, real-world environments. Workshop Website: https://sites.google.com/view/roboletics2 Workshop Date: May 23, 2025 Location: Atlanta, USA Submission Deadline: April 20, 2025 We invite researchers to submit their contributions to the workshop in the form of short papers (2 pages) accompanied by video demonstrations or standalone papers (4 pages). Accepted papers will be presented as posters, presentations, and videos, and with the authors' permission, they will be published on the workshop website. All papers must be submitted in PDF and must follow the IEEE Conference format. All papers will be peer-reviewed (single-blind). Both unpublished original contributions and previously published work may be submitted. Topics of Interest include: - Systems design enabling athletic behaviors in robots - Real-time controllers and planners for athletic movements - Safety frameworks for athletic robots - Sensing and state estimation under time and compute constraints with incomplete and imperfect knowledge of the world - Communication systems for robotic team sports - Synthesizing strategies for sports-playing robots - Human-robot collaboration for athletic and agile robots We encourage submissions related to the leagues of RoboCup ( https://www.robocup.org/). We look forward to receiving your submissions and engaging in fruitful discussions at the workshop. Organizing Committee: Matthew Gombolay, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA Zulfiqar Zaidi, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA Alap Kshirsagar, TU Darmstadt, Germany Kin Man Lee, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA Kai Ploeger, TU Darmstadt, Germany Zixuan Wu, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA Qingyu Xiao, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA

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2nd CfP: KI 2025: German AI Conference, 16–19 September, Potsdam (Germany)
by Frieder Stolzenburg 04 Apr '25

04 Apr '25

================================= Call for Contributions KI 2025 <https://ki2025.gi.de> Potsdam, September 16-19, 2025 ================================= On September 16-19, 2025, the German AI conference KI2025 will take place. We cordially invite you to join! In 2025, KI and INFORMATIK will be co-located, so that we can exchange with computer science society. To make KI2025 a resounding success, we call for your papers and doctoral consortium contributions. The deadlines are: 18.04.25 Abstract Submission 25.04.25 Full Paper Submission 16.05.25 Doctoral Consortium Submission For more detailed info on each call, please refer to: Call for Papers (Long, Short, Extended Abstracts): <https://ki2025.gi.de/calls/call-for-papers> Call for Doctoral Consortium Contributions: <https://ki2025.gi.de/calls/call-for-doctoral-consortium-contributions> Submissions are possible via EasyChair: <https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=ki2025> We are very much looking forward to your contributions and the scientific exchange! Last, but not least, we would like to announce our excellent keynote speakers for KI2025: Louisa Specht-Riemenschneider, Federal Data Protection Officer, Germany Rineke Verbrugge, U Groningen, Netherlands Barbara Hammer, U Bielefeld, Germany Check out also for the KI workshop and tutorial program: <https://ki2025.gi.de/program/workshops-and-tutorials> Best regards Program Chairs Tanya Braun (Uni Münster) Benjamin Paaßen (Uni Bielefeld) Frieder Stolzenburg (HS Harz) Tutorial/Workshop Chairs Magda Gregorova (TH Würzburg-Schweinfurt) Philipp Väth (TH Würzburg-Schweinfurt) Tamara Bergerhoff (TH Würzburg-Schweinfurt) Doctoral Consortium Chair Gesina Schwalbe (Uni Lübeck)

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[Call for Participation] IEEE RAS ICRA 2025 LA@Chile Satellite
by Javier Ruiz-del-Solar 25 Mar '25

25 Mar '25

IEEE RAS ICRA 2025 LA@Chile Satellite Santiago (Chile) in person, 20-22 May 2025 http://icra25lasat.ieeechile.cl We are pleased to announce the IEEE RAS ICRA 2025 LA@Chile Satellite, a satellite event of the ICRA 2025 conference sponsored by IEEE RAS. The primary objective of this event is to provide remote participation opportunities in Chile for researchers and students from Latin America to ICRA 2025, along with access to on-site keynote and plenary talks, young researchers & Ph.D. sessions, an undergraduate & graduate poster competition, and hands-on courses. The IEEE RAS ICRA 2025 LA@Chile Satellite will not charge registration fees and will provide travel grants for Latin American students. Our long-term goals are as follows: - to build a sustainable community of students and researchers in Robotics and Automation in Latin America, - to make cutting-edge scientific topics accessible to Latin American researchers and students, and - to foster intercultural student collaboration within and outside Latin America. Summary of Main Activities Streaming of plenary and keynote sessions from ICRA 2025 On-site International Plenary Sessions and Local Keynotes Young Researchers and Ph.D. Sessions Student Poster Session (graduate and undergraduate) Hands-on course Program The program will be finalized after the ICRA 2025 program is confirmed and the applications for participation in the Young & Ph.D. Researchers Sessions are received. Registration This is a free event. Click here <https://forms.gle/Xzs5cfJ9Ru2zqcjq9> to register. Travel Grant Application If you want to apply for a travel grant, select the travel grant option when you register. The travel grants will be awarded based on the quality of the poster contribution as well as diversity criteria (gender, origin, etc.). Ph.D. & Young Researchers Sessions If you are a young researcher (with a Ph.D. from the last five years) or a Ph.D. student finishing your thesis, you are invited to present your research in our Young Researchers & Ph.D. Sessions. To apply to present in these sessions, please email our program chairs (jugodoy(a)udec.cl & rodrigo.verschae(a)uoh.cl) and send: a copy of your CV, a link to your Google Scholar profile, and the title of your presentation. Hands-on Course Information about the hands-on courses will be published on our website within the next few weeks. Confirmed Speakers We are currently confirming the speakers for the plenary and keynote sessions. For now, the confirmed speakers are: Jan Peters (TU Darmstadt), Martin Adams (Universidad de Chile), Stefan Escaida (Universidad de O’Higgins) Rodrigo Verschae (Universidad de O’Higgins). The latest list of confirmed speakers will be available on the website. Timeline 2025/03/19: ICRA RAS 2025 LA@Chile Satellite website goes live 2025/03/25: Registration opens 2025/03/25: Travel grants application opens 2025/03/25: Application for the Ph.D. & Young Researchers Sessions opens 2025/04/22: Travel grants application closes 2025/04/22: Application for the Ph.D. & Young Researchers Sessions closes 2025/04/25: Poster acceptance notification, Travel Grant notification 2025/05/13: Registration closes Venue: IEEE RAS ICRA 2025 LA@Chile Satellite will be hosted at the Faculty of Engineering & Sciences, Universidad de Chile (Beauchef 851, Santiago, Chile). We would like to highlight that there are limited spots for this event. They will be filled on a first-come, first-served basis as registrations are completed. Please visit our website, where you can find more information regarding travel, travel grants, and lodging: http://icra25lasat.ieeechile.cl/index.html If you have any questions about the school or the application process, please contact the organizing committee: icra25lasat(a)ieeechile.cl Best regards from the organizing committee,

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RoboCup International Symposium 2025 first call for papers
by Rudi Villing 18 Mar '25

18 Mar '25

Call for papers RoboCup International Symposium 2025 https://2025.robocup.org/symposium/ Monday 21 July 2025 Salvador, Bahia, Brazil. The 28th RoboCup International Symposium will be held on 21 July 2025, in conjunction with RoboCup 2025 (15 July to 20 July 2024), in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil. We call for submissions of papers reporting innovative, original research with relevance to areas of robotics and artificial intelligence as listed below. Within the described scope of topics, we also encourage submissions of high-quality overview articles, papers describing real-world research, and papers reporting theoretical results. Researchers are invited to submit their work independently of whether they participate in the RoboCup competitions or have a RoboCup team. The symposium will be held in person at the Salvador Convention Center (CCS), Av. Octávio Mangabeira, 5.490 Boca do Rio - Salvador - Bahia - Brazil. In addition to the regular track with regular research papers, there is the development track encouraging reports on innovative hardware developments, software frameworks, and open-source releases of software components. A review of papers describing these contributions will be based on technical aspects and benefits to the practice of communities working in the above fields in general and RoboCup in particular. IMPORTANT DATES Submission of full papers: 7 April 2025 Notification to authors: 16 May 2025 Submission of camera-ready copies: 30 May 2025 RoboCup Symposium 2025: 21 July 2025 (RoboCup on 15-20 July 2025) SUBMISSION AND PROCEEDINGS All papers will be peer-reviewed and evaluated by members of the senior program committee. The proceedings of the RoboCup International Symposium will be published and archived within the Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence (LNCS/LNAI) series by Springer-Verlag after the conference. Papers should be formatted following the LNAI author guidelines (https://www.springer.com/gp/computer-science/lncs/conference-proceedings-gu…) and must be electronically submitted through Springer’s electronic-submission system EquinOCS. (The link to submit papers will be provided in the second call for papers email). Submissions are limited to 12 pages including references. The LNAI author guidelines site contains a Springer’s proceedings LaTeX template (v2.24), and a link to the template in Overleaf: (https://www.overleaf.com/latex/templates/springer-lecture-notes-in-computer…) TOPICS Topics of interest include, but are not limited to: * Robot Hardware and Software - mobile robotics - humanoid robotics - sensors and actuators - embedded and mobile devices - robot construction and new materials - robot system integration - robot software architectures - robot programming environments and languages - real-time and concurrent programming - robot simulators - sim2real learning * Perception and Action - 3D perception - distributed sensor integration - sensor noise filtering - real-time image processing and pattern recognition - motion and sensor models - sensory-motor control - robot kinematics and dynamics - high-dimensional motion control * Robot Cognition and Learning - world modelling and knowledge representation - learning from demonstration and imitation - localisation, navigation, and mapping - planning and reasoning - decision making under uncertainty - neural systems and deep learning - complex motor skill acquisition - reinforcement learning and optimisation - motion and sensor model learning * Human-Robot Interaction - robot social intelligence - fluency of interaction - speech synthesis and natural language generation - natural language recognition - explainable robot behaviours - emotion recognition and reaction - understanding human intent and behaviour - safety, security and dependability - enabling humans to predict robot behaviour * Multi-Robot Systems - team coordination methods - communication protocols - learning and adaptive systems - teamwork and heterogeneous agents - dynamic resource allocation - adjustable autonomy * Education and Edutainment - robotics and artificial intelligence education - educational robotics - robot kits and programming tools - robotic entertainment * Applications and Benchmarking - search and rescue robots - robot surveillance - service and social robots - robots at home, at work and in public spaces - robots in the real world - performance metrics - human-robot interaction DEVELOPMENT TRACK To encourage open-source release of hardware and software systems, the RoboCup International Symposium has included a development track in recent years. In 2025, the scope of this track includes datasets and benchmarks. We encourage the submission of papers describing open-source hardware and software, tools and frameworks that facilitate development of robotics hardware and software, datasets that enable new robotic capabilities, as well as benchmarks that establish reproducible test beds and performance metrics to advance research. If applicable, contributions to the special track should include evidence of the released system or dataset, and highlight past, ongoing, and/or potential future impacts on the RoboCup community. A review of these contributions will be based on technical merit and benefits to the RoboCup community, and the research topics listed above. PROGRAM CO-CHAIRS Ana Patrícia Fontes Magalhães Mascarenhas (UNEB, Brazil) Alexander Ferrein (FH Aachen University of Applied Sciences, Germany) Rudi Villing (Maynooth University, Ireland) LOCAL ORGANIZERS Marco Antônio Costa Simões (UNEB, Brazil) Reinaldo Bianchi (Centro Universitário FEI, Brazil) CONTACT You can contact via the PC chairs via the contact button in EquinOCS VISA INFORMATION If you are a citizen of a country that needs a Visa for traveling to the Brazil, please start the VISA process as soon as possible. If you are not sure if you are eligible for a VISA-exemption, please consult the official website of the Brazilian government for information, at https://www.gov.br/mre/pt-br/assuntos/portal-consular/vistos/informacoes-so… (Information is in English below each paragraph in Portuguese).

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MATLAB Update for RoboCup
by Jose Avendano Arbelaez 18 Mar '25

18 Mar '25

Dear RoboCup Teams and Mentors, Here is a quick update from MathWorks for all RoboCup competition participants: 1. MATLAB/Simulink Licenses for all RoboCup Teams can be requested here<https://www.mathworks.com/academia/student-competitions/robocup.html>. 2. The RoboCup ARM Challenge<https://arm.robocup.org/> in partnership with MathWorks is accepting registrations until April 11th. 3. MathWorks Call for Research Proposals<https://www.mathworks.com/academia/research/call-for-research-proposals.html> is open until May 30th. 4. Here are links to new features in MATLAB and Simulink for Robotics and Autonomous Systems for R2024b (R2025a is coming soon): * Robotics Systems Toolbox<https://www.mathworks.com/help/robotics/release-notes.html> * Navigation Toolbox<https://www.mathworks.com/help/nav/release-notes.html> * UAV Toolbox<https://www.mathworks.com/help/uav/release-notes.html> * ROS Toolbox<https://www.mathworks.com/help/ros/release-notes.html> 5. Contact me, Jose Avendano josea(a)mathworks.com<mailto:josea@mathworks.com> if your team has questions or would like help with MATLAB and Simulink for robotics. Best of luck for the rest of the season! Looking forward to all your amazing projects. Sincerely, Jose Avendano Robotics and Autonomous Systems The MathWorks

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[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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