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

08 Apr '24

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

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Call for Participation in two @Home Education events!
by Amy Eguchi 08 Apr '24

08 Apr '24

Call for Participation in two @Home Education events! We’re excited to announce two Calls for Participation: 1. RoboCup 2024 - @Home Education Competition 15-17 July 2024: Set-up days 18-21 July 2024: Competitions 22 July 2024: Symposium Please submit your TDP using this form <https://forms.gle/hcKsh8j5dqmb8SFq8> by 04/31 or sooner (especially if your team needs a visa to enter the Netherlands). You can find the TDP requirements here <https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YOqbkhVaPBZHJ1ZJAHkLdy3WOTOxfrP4/edit?u…>. We will continue to accept the application until the slots are filled. But we strongly encourage you to submit your application ASAP. Also, please visit @Home Education website <https://www.robocupathomeedu.org/> for more information. 2. RoboCup@Home Education Natural Human Robot Interaction challenge @ ICRA 2024 May 13 -14, 2024: Workshop (5/13 could be online) May 14, 2024 (teams that do not need workshop, can come to set-up on those two days or just on May 14): Team set-up May 15-16, 2024: Competition If you’re interested in the event, please visit the event website <https://sites.google.com/ucsd.edu/icra2024-robocupathome-edu/home> and fill out the Application form <https://forms.gle/EiP7hvk7yzJCFoLSA>. The form is open until the slots are filled; however, we strongly encourage you to fill out the form ASAP. Any questions? Please contact Dr. Amy Eguchi @ a2eguchi(a)ucsd.edu. @Home Education Committee ****************************************************************** 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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[meetings] [news] One Month till Hard Submission Deadline: 3rd Benchmark for Autonomous Robot Navigation (BARN) Challenge -- ICRA 2024 Competition
by Xuesu Xiao 04 Apr '24

04 Apr '24

Soft submission deadline has passed, but hard submission deadline is a month away! 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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[CfP-extended deadline] Workshop on Cooking Robotics at ICRA2024, 17 May (Deadline 7 April)
by Tatsuya MATSUSHIMA 28 Mar '24

28 Mar '24

Dear Colleagues, We would like to inform you that a *video* and a *short paper* (1-4pages, excluding references) submission deadline for the *ICRA 2024 workshop on Cooking Robotics: Perception and motion planning* has been *extended to April 7!* Accepted works will be presented at the workshop through posters and spotlight talks. Please see the workshop website and abstract for more information: https://sites. <https://sites.google.com/view/icra2024cookingrobotics/home>google.com/view/ <https://sites.google.com/view/icra2024cookingrobotics/home> icra2024cookingrobotics/home <https://sites.google.com/view/icra2024cookingrobotics/home> *Submission link:* https://openreview.net/group? <https://openreview.net/group?id=IEEE.org/2024/ICRA/Workshop/CookingRobot> id=IEEE.org/2024/ICRA/ <https://openreview.net/group?id=IEEE.org/2024/ICRA/Workshop/CookingRobot> Workshop/CookingRobot <https://openreview.net/group?id=IEEE.org/2024/ICRA/Workshop/CookingRobot> *Timeline:* Submission deadline: *7 April 2024* Notification: 14 April 2024 Workshop: *17 May 2024 at ICRA2024* in Yokohama, Japan *Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:* - Perception: vision, tactile, taste, smell, appearance, monitoring - Motion planning and control: recipe generation, long-horizon planning, cluttered environment, deformable objects, tool manipulation - Hardware: soft robotics, grippers for food manipulation - Application: human-robot interaction, social, industrial and domestic needs, safety, reliability and hygiene, 3D food printing Late-breaking results, ongoing works, and demos relevant to the topic of the workshop from academia, industries, and professionals are all welcome. *Conference Abstract:* The realisation of cooking robots presents numerous real-world challenges. This workshop explores the latest advancements in 'robots in cooking,' addressing hardware considerations, multimodal perception, motion planning and control, experimental methodologies, and benchmarking approaches. Amid labour shortages and increased hygiene concerns in the post-COVID world, automation in the food industry and personalised cooking assistants have become essential. This workshop will bridge the gap between academia, industry, and professionals by inviting leading researchers, collaborating with a competition, the Food Topping Challenge, <https://icra2024.rt-net.jp/> and showcasing robot demonstrations. *Invited Speakers:* Tamin Asfour (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology) Fumiya Iida (University of Cambridge) Josie Hughes (EPFL) Mako Miyatake (Freelancer chef of "designing the future of the food") Priya Sundaresan/Dorsa Sadigh (Stanford University) Akihiko Yamaguchi (Tohoku University/Finger Vision) Kevin Zhang/Oliver Kroemer (Carnegie Mellon University) *Organisers:* Namiko Saito (The University of Edinburgh, The Alan Turing Institute, and Waseda University) Kento Kawaharazuka (The University of Tokyo) Tatsuya Matsushima (The University of Tokyo) Naoaki Kanazawa (The University of Tokyo) Marina Y. Aoyama (The University of Edinburgh) Sethu Vijayakumar (The University of Edinburgh and The Alan Turing Institute) If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us. Email: icra2024-cooking-ws(a)googlegroups.com Website: https://sites.google. <https://sites.google.com/view/icra2024cookingrobotics>com/view/ <https://sites.google.com/view/icra2024cookingrobotics> icra2024cookingrobotics <https://sites.google.com/view/icra2024cookingrobotics> X (Twitter): https://twitter. <https://twitter.com/cookingrobotics> com/cookingrobotics <https://twitter.com/cookingrobotics> Linkedin: https://www. <https://www.linkedin.com/company/cooking-robotics-workshop/> linkedin.com/company/cooking- <https://www.linkedin.com/company/cooking-robotics-workshop/> robotics-workshop/ <https://www.linkedin.com/company/cooking-robotics-workshop/> -- Matsuo Iwasawa Lab, The University of Tokyo Project Researcher (Ph.D.) Tatsuya Matsushima

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IROBOT@EPIA2024 - Thematic Track on Intelligent Robotics
by Nuno Lau 26 Mar '24

26 Mar '24

(apologies for cross-posting) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ IROBOT'2024 CALL FOR PAPERS 13th International Thematic Track on Intelligent Robotics To be held at EPIA 2024, September 3-6, 2024 Viana do Castelo, Portugal https://epia2024.pt/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The EPIA Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a well-established European conference in the field of AI. The 23rd edition, EPIA 2024, will take place in Viana do Castelo, Portugal, between 3rd to 6th of September, 2024. As in previous editions, this international conference is hosted with the patronage of the Portuguese Association for Artificial Intelligence (APPIA). The purpose of this conference is to promote research in all areas of AI, covering both theoretical/foundational issues and applications, and the scientific exchange among researchers, engineers, and practitioners in related disciplines. EPIA 2024 will feature a set of thematic tracks, covering a wide spectrum of AI topics. Accepted papers will be published in a Springer's Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence volume. ## Important Dates 30 Apr 2024: Paper Submission Deadline 15 Jun 2024: Author Notification 15 Jul 2024: Camera-Ready Deadline 3-6 Sep 2024: EPIA'2024 Conference ## IROBOT Description IROBOT'2024 poses itself as a follow-up on the previous nine International Thematic Tracks/Workshops on Intelligent Robotics held at EPIA since 2005. Its main purpose is to bring together researchers, engineers and other professionals interested in the application of AI techniques in real/simulated robotics to discuss current work and future directions. Robotics, from the point of view of AI, has been an important application field, from which AI has also gained. Namely, the dynamic and unforeseen nature of the environment, especially for mobile robots, has fostered research in these aspects of AI. Together with the developments in Robotics Research, the use of Robotics in industry and services has changed a lot in recent years. New paradigms and approaches for industrial robots and service robots have emerged, for example, on mobile robots learning, localization, mapping and navigation in unstructured environments. IROBOT 2024 will discuss will discuss these new developments on industrial and service robotics with focus on robotic assistive platforms/solutions and robotics application related to nature (ocean, florest, agriculture, etc.). ## Topics of Interest The Thematic Track will be structured around the following themes: - Adaptive and flexible industrial robotics - Agriculture robots - AI Planning for robotics - Autonomous vehicles - Cognitive robotics - Computer vision and object recognition - Coordination in robotics - Evolutionary robotics and reactive intelligence - Human-robots interface and interaction - Humanoid robotics - Intelligent buildings and warehouses - Intelligent transportation systems - Mobile robots localization and navigation - Modelling and simulating complex robots - Multi-Robot systems - Field Robots - Real-time reactivity - Robot behaviour engineering - Robot learning and adaptation - Robotic surveillance - Sensor fusion This topics' list is not exhaustive. Papers may address one or more of the topics, and authors should not feel limited by them. Unlisted but related topics are also acceptable, provided they fit in the thematic track main subject. ## Paper Submission Authors are invited to submit original research contributions or experience reports in English. Scientific or technical articles describing state-of-the-art techniques, algorithms, systems, environments, problems or applications relevant to the area of Intelligent Robotics may be submitted. Papers discussing application transfer from simulated to real robots and papers showing socially useful robotic applications generated by participations in robotic competitions are also welcome. Although the main focus is on robot learning, there will be space for reporting research in AI applied to other types of robots. Submissions must follow the guidelines specified in the EPIA'2024 site. The Springer LNCS format must be used (instructions in https://www.springer.com/gp/computer-science/lncs/conference-proceedings-gu…). Springer encourages authors to include their ORCIDs in their papers. The length of submitted full papers must not exceed 12 pages. Authors must remove their names from the submitted papers, and should take reasonable care not to indirectly disclose their identity. Paper submissions will be made in PDF format, through the submission page: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=epia2024 Three program committee members will be assigned to review each paper. Acceptance will be based on the paper's significance, technical quality, clarity, relevance and originality. Accepted papers, must be presented at the conference by one of the authors. Accepted papers will be scheduled for presentation, which requires that at least one of the authors should register at the Conference. All accepted papers will be published in the Conference Proceedings. ## IROBOT'2024 Organizing Committee Nuno Lau, Universidade de Aveiro / IEETA, Portugal Luís Paulo Reis, Universidade do Porto / LIACC, Portugal João Alberto Fabro, Universidade Tecnológica Federal do Paraná (UTFPR), Brazil

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9 International Conference on Interactive Collaborative Robotics (ICR 2024), October 14-18, 2024, Mexico City, Mexico
by Jesus Savage 25 Mar '24

25 Mar '24

APOLOGIES FOR MULTIPLE COPIES OF THIS MESSAGE PLEASE CIRCULATE this CFP among your colleagues and students ICR 2024 The International Conference on Interactive Collaborative Robotics (ICR) October 14–18, 2024, Mexico City, Mexico URL: https://biorobotics.fi-p.unam.mx/icr-2024 Dear colleagues, On behalf of the Organizing Committee, we have the pleasure to invite you to submit contributions to the International Conference on Interactive Collaborative Robotics (ICR). The conference will be held in Mexico City, Mexico, October 19 to October 22, 2024, under direction of the School of Engineering of the National Autonomous University of Mexico and the St. Petersburg Federal Research Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Conference The International Conference on Interactive Collaborative Robotics (ICR) was established as a satellite event of the International Conference on Speech and Computer (SPECOM) in 2016. The conference gathers together experts from different communities to discuss challenges of human and robot collaboration in industrial, social, medical, education and other areas. Fundamentals and means for collaborative behavior of one or multiple robots with physical interaction with people in an operational environment equipped with embedded sensor networks and cloud services in conditions of uncertainty and environmental variability are the main issues of the conference. The topics of interest include, but are not limited to: • artificial intelligence technologies in control • assistive robotics • collaborative robotics • control of robotic systems • educational robotics • household robotics • medical robotics • safety of robotic systems • service robots Important Dates May 01, 2024 .......... Submission of full papers June 15, 2024 .......... Notification of acceptance July 01, 2024 ............ Camera-ready papers and early registration October 14–18, 2024 ...... Conference dates The official language of the conference is English. Very well renowned Professors will be invited to give keynote addresses. You can find more information in the ICR 2024 webpage at: http://biorobotics.fi-p.unam.mx/~icr We would like to meet you in Mexico City, Mexico! ____ Sincerely yours, General Chairs Leonid Fridman, National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) Jesus Savage, National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) Andrey Ronzhin, St. Petersburg Federal Research Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences (SPC RAS) Proceedings of the Conference The authors are asked to submit their papers using the on-line submission system: http://ia.spcras.ru/index.php/icr2024 The proceedings of the Interactive Collaborative Robotics conference are published Springer (LNCS/LNAI, Scopus, Q2): https://link.springer.com/conference/icr Contacts E-mail: conf(a)spcras.ru Web: https://biorobotics.fi-p.unam.mx/icr-2024

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PlanRob 2024 Deadline Extension to AoE April 3
by Iman Awaad 23 Mar '24

23 Mar '24

-- Apologies for cross-posting -- Twelfth ICAPS Workshop on Planning and Robotics (PlanRob‚ 2024) https://icaps24.icaps-conference.org/program/workshops/planrob/ ICAPS 2024 Workshop Banff, Canada, June 2-3, 2024 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Dear colleagues, We are pleased to inform you that, due to numerous requests, the deadline for submissions has been extended to ***Wednesday, 3 April 2024*** AoE. Further details below about the workshop are included below. * Topics and Objectives AI Planning & Scheduling (P&S) methods are key to enabling intelligent robots to perform autonomous, flexible, and interactive behaviours. Researchers in the P&S community have continued to develop approaches and produce planners, representations, as well as heuristics that robotics researchers can make use of. However, there remain numerous challenges complicating the uptake, use and successful integration of P&S technology in robotics, many of which have been addressed by robotics researchers with novel solutions. Strong collaboration and synergy between researchers in both communities is vital to the continued growth of the fields in a way that provide mutual benefits to the two communities. To foster this, the PlanRob workshop aims to provide a stable, long-term forum (having been held annually at ICAPS since 2013) where researchers from both the P&S and Robotics communities can openly discuss relevant issues, research and development progress, future directions and open challenges related to P&S when applied to Robotics. In addition to the usual paper submissions, the workshop’s format naturally lends itself to preliminary results, position papers as well as to work focused on challenges in using and integrating planners in robotics systems. * Topics of Interest Topics of interest include (but are not limited to): - human-aware planning and execution in human-robot interaction, - real-world planning applications for autonomous and intelligent robots, - planning domain representations for robotics applications, - optimising behaviour in large scale automated or semi-automated systems, - integrated planning and execution in robot architectures, - learning methods for robot planning and scheduling, - P&S methods for optimisation and adaptation in robotics, - mission, path, and motion planning for robots, - formal methods for robot planning and control, - challenges and solutions in using P&S technology in robotics, - open problems for P&S in robotics, - coordination of multi-robot teams, - benchmark planning domains for robots, - adversarial action planning in competitive robot domains, - mixed-initiative planning and sliding autonomy for robotic systems. * Important Dates Paper submission: ***Wednesday, 3 April 2024*** (was 25 March 2024) Workshop Date: June 2-3, 2024 The reference time-zone for all deadlines is UTC-12: Your submissions will be on time so long as there is still some place in the world where the deadline has not yet passed. * Submission Details There are two types of submissions: - short position papers (four pages) - regular papers (up to 10 pages) Papers may have an additional page containing references. Regular papers may be scheduled with more time in the final program. A poster session may be considered to provide a further presentation opportunity. The guidelines for formatting are the same as is used for ICAPS 2024 papers (typeset in the AAAI style as described at: http://www.aaai.org/Publications/Author/author.php), but with the AAAI copyright removed. The papers must be submitted in PDF format via the EasyChair system (https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=icapswsplanrob24). Please note that papers under review (e.g. which have been submitted to IJCAI-2024) are also welcome, however, in order to avoid potential conflicts, these manuscripts should be prepared as anonymous submissions for a double blind reviewing process. Accepted papers will be published on the workshop’s website. The organisers are investigating the availability of journal editors in order to invite a selection of accepted papers from the workshop to a special issue or post-proceedings volume. * Organizers Iman Awaad, Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University of Applied Sciences, Germany iman.awaad(a)h-brs.de Alberto Finzi, Università di Napoli "Federico II", Italy alberto.finzi(a)unina.it AndreA Orlandini  Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies (ISTC-CNR), Italy andrea.orlandini(a)istc.cnr.it (Sent on behalf of the organising committee of PlanRob 2024) -- Researcher, Autonomous Systems Group Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Autonomous Systems www.h-brs.de/en/a2s Bonn-Aachen International Center for Information Technology (b-it) Friedrich Hirzebruch-Allee 5, 53115 Bonn, Germany www.b-it-center.de Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University of Applied Sciences | Department of Computer Science Grantham Allee 20, 53757 Sankt Augustin, Germany Phone +49 (0) 2241 865-295 www.h-brs.de/en/inf/iman-awaad

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[meetings] [news] 3rd Benchmark for Autonomous Robot Navigation (BARN) Challenge -- ICRA 2024 Competition
by Xuesu Xiao 18 Mar '24

18 Mar '24

IROS 2024 deadline is behind us. Now it’s time to start preparing for The 3rd BARN Challenge at ICRA 2024! See you in Japan in May! 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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Final Call for Papers - 12th ICAPS Workshop on Planning and Robotics (PlanRob 2024)
by Iman Awaad 16 Mar '24

16 Mar '24

-- Apologies for cross-posting -- **Final Call for papers** Twelfth ICAPS Workshop on Planning and Robotics (PlanRob‚ 2024) https://icaps24.icaps-conference.org/program/workshops/planrob/ Banff, Canada, June 2-3, 2024 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- * Topics and Objectives AI Planning & Scheduling (P&S) methods are key to enabling intelligent robots to perform autonomous, flexible, and interactive behaviours. Researchers in the P&S community have continued to develop approaches and produce planners, representations, as well as heuristics that robotics researchers can make use of. However, there remain numerous challenges complicating the uptake, use and successful integration of P&S technology in robotics, many of which have been addressed by robotics researchers with novel solutions. Strong collaboration and synergy between researchers in both communities is vital to the continued growth of the fields in a way that provide mutual benefits to the two communities. To foster this, the PlanRob workshop aims to provide a stable, long-term forum (having been held annually at ICAPS since 2013) where researchers from both the P&S and Robotics communities can openly discuss relevant issues, research and development progress, future directions and open challenges related to P&S when applied to Robotics. In addition to the usual paper submissions, the workshop’s format naturally lends itself to preliminary results, position papers as well as to work focused on challenges in using and integrating planners in robotics systems. * Topics of Interest Topics of interest include (but are not limited to): - human-aware planning and execution in human-robot interaction, - real-world planning applications for autonomous and intelligent robots, - planning domain representations for robotics applications, - optimising behaviour in large scale automated or semi-automated systems, - integrated planning and execution in robot architectures, - learning methods for robot planning and scheduling, - P&S methods for optimisation and adaptation in robotics, - mission, path, and motion planning for robots, - formal methods for robot planning and control, - challenges and solutions in using P&S technology in robotics, - open problems for P&S in robotics, - coordination of multi-robot teams, - benchmark planning domains for robots, - adversarial action planning in competitive robot domains, - mixed-initiative planning and sliding autonomy for robotic systems. * Important Dates Paper submission: ***Monday, 25 March 2024*** Notification of acceptance: Friday, 26 April 2024 Camera-ready version due: Friday 24 May 2024 Workshop Date: June 2-3, 2024 The reference time-zone for all deadlines is UTC-12: Your submissions will be on time so long as there is still some place in the world where the deadline has not yet passed. * Submission Details There are two types of submissions: - short position papers (four pages) - regular papers (up to 10 pages) Papers may have an additional page containing references. Regular papers may be scheduled with more time in the final program. A poster session may be considered to provide a further presentation opportunity. The guidelines for formatting are the same as is used for ICAPS 2024 papers (typeset in the AAAI style as described at: http://www.aaai.org/Publications/Author/author.php), but with the AAAI copyright removed. The papers must be submitted in PDF format via the EasyChair system (https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=icapswsplanrob24). Please note that papers under review (e.g. which have been submitted to IJCAI-2024) are also welcome, however, in order to avoid potential conflicts, these manuscripts should be prepared as anonymous submissions for a double blind reviewing process. Accepted papers will be published on the workshop’s website. The organisers are investigating the availability of journal editors in order to invite a selection of accepted papers from the workshop to a special issue or post-proceedings volume. * Organizers Iman Awaad, Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University of Applied Sciences, Germany iman.awaad(a)h-brs.de Alberto Finzi, Università di Napoli "Federico II", Italy alberto.finzi(a)unina.it AndreA Orlandini  Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies (ISTC-CNR), Italy andrea.orlandini(a)istc.cnr.it (Sent on behalf of the organising committee of PlanRob 2024) -- Researcher, Autonomous Systems Group Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Autonomous Systems www.h-brs.de/en/inf/institut-fur-kunstliche-intelligenz-autonome-systeme-a2s Bonn-Aachen International Center for Information Technology (b-it) Friedrich Hirzebruch-Allee 5, 53115 Bonn, Germany www.b-it-center.de Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University of Applied Sciences | Department of Computer Science Grantham Allee 20, 53757 Sankt Augustin, Germany Phone +49 (0) 2241 865-295 www.h-brs.de/en/inf/iman-awaad

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Invitation to Prof. Minoru Asada's Keynote Talk at NTU on 16 March 2024
by Changjiu ZHOU (SP) 15 Mar '24

15 Mar '24

Message Classification: Official (Closed) Official (Open) Dear RoboCuppers, The NTU Session of the RoboCup Singapore Open 2024 will take place at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore, 16th March 2024. We are honoured to host Prof. Minoru Asada from Osaka University, a Founding Trustee and Former President of the RoboCup Federation, as our keynote speaker. Keynote Speaker: Prof. Minoru Asada Founding Trustee and Former President of the RoboCup Federation Title of Talk: Embodiment, Interaction, and Large Language Models: Revisiting Foundations of Cognitive Development Date: 16th March 2024 Time: 16:00 - 17:00 (SGT, UTC/GMT+8) Venue: LT1A, NTU For those who cannot attend in person, we are providing a Zoom link for virtual attendance: Zoom Link: https://ntu-sg.zoom.us/j/89854686409?pwd=VzFPNEt1NVlpeEh3Z254NWc1R3Brdz09 Meeting ID: 898 5468 6409 Passcode: 123456 For more details, please visit the NTU seminar webpage: https://www.ntu.edu.sg/mae/news-events/events/detail/2024/03/16/default-cal… We warmly invite you to join us for Prof. Asada's insightful keynote talk, either in person at NTU or virtually via Zoom. We look forward to your participation. Best Regards, RoboCup Singapore Open 2024 Organizing Committee 2024.robocupsg.org

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