- RoboCup-worldwide - lists.robocup.org

Inscription Robocup & GermanOpen 2024
by ISTY ROBOCUP 26 Jan '24

26 Jan '24

Hello, We would like to compete in both the *German Open* and the *Robocup 2024* in the *rescue league*. We submitted our TPF earlier this month and started working on the TDP in order to have a first version available as soon as possible (you can find our first draft attached to this mail). Is there anything else that we need to do or that we missed in the inscription process ? After the submission of the TPF what are the next steps that we need to follow in order to participate in both the Robocup and the German Open ? Thank you for your help Team name : RMS Country : France. Number of team members : 8. Contact information of the team leader : istyrobocup(a)gmail.com. Regards, The RMS group.

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RoboCup International Symposium -- New Submission Date
by Josiah Hanna 22 Jan '24

22 Jan '24

Call for papers – NEW SUBMISSION DATE. RoboCup International Symposium 2024 https://2024.robocup.org/?page_id=2734 Monday 22 July 2024 Eindhoven, Netherlands. The 27th RoboCup International Symposium will be held on 22 July 2024, in conjunction with RoboCup 2024 (15 July to 21 July 2024), in Eindhoven, The Netherlands. 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 Evoluon Conference Center in Eindhoven. 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: 8 April 2024 (changed from January 30 to better align with previous years) Notification to authors: 22 May 2024 RoboCup Symposium 2024: 22 July 2024 (RoboCup on 15-21 July 2024) 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 (https://equinocs.springernature.com/service/RoboCup2024). Submissions are limited to 12 pages including references. The LNAI author guidelines site contains a Springer's proceedings LaTeX template (v2.23), an older version of this template (v2.21) is also available in Overleaf: (https://www.overleaf.com/latex/templates/springer-conference-proceedings-te…) 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 2024, we expand the scope of this track to include 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 Hiroyuki Okada (Tamagawa University, Japan) Elena Torta (Eindhoven University of Technology, NL) Josiah Hanna (University of Wisconsin, USA ) Edna Barros (Federal University of Pernambuco, Brazil) LOCAL ORGANIZERS Elena Torta (Eindhoven University of Technology, NL) Ömür Arslan (Eindhoven University of Technology, NL) Femke van Beek (Eindhoven University of Technology, NL) Arnoud Visser (University of Amsterdam, NL) CONTACT You can contact via the PC chairs via the contact button in EquinOCS

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[meetings] ROS2 Industrial Training 2024
by Yuhong Lin 18 Jan '24

18 Jan '24

Get ROS2 Industrial Ready: Hands-On Training (02/19-02/21, 2024) Dear Roboticists, Looking to quickly master ROS2 for your robot project? Don't miss this intensive online training where you'll grasp key concepts and practice with real robots remotely. You will learn how to: - Use ROS2 in real robots - Make robots navigate with Nav2 - Manipulate objects using ROS2 with a robotic arm *Training Details:* - *Dates*: February 19 - 21, 2024 - *Location*: Live Online Classes + Remote Real Robot Practice - *Time*: 9:00 – 18:00 Central European Time (CET) - *Limited Seats:* Only 15 participants - *Website*: https://www.theconstructsim.com/ros2-industrial-workshop/ <https://www.theconstructsim.com/ros2-industrial-workshop/?utm_source=robocu…> - *Early registration deadline:* February 1st, 2024 *About the Training:* Join industry mentors for a 3-Day Live Training: Master ROS2 for industrial. Learn crucial skills in ROS2 basics, navigation, and manipulation. *What You Will Learn:* - Basic ROS2 Concepts - RSO2 Topic Subscribers & Publishers - RViz2 debugging tool - ROS2 DDS - ROS2 Services - ROS2 Actions - ROS1_Bridge - Parameters in ROS - ROS2 Mapping - ROS2 Localization - ROS2 Path Planning - ROS2 Obstacle Avoidance - Nav2 Galactic Functionality - Nav2 Behavior Trees - Navigation Plugins and Custom Plugin Creation - Simple Commander API - Waypoint Follower - Controller Server in Deep - Configure a Moveit2 package for a robotic arm - Programatically perform motion planning - Use perception to detect an object’s location - Grasp objects *Practical Sessions @ Warehouse Robot Lab* Remote hands-on practice throughout the training at the Warehouse Robot Lab with real industrial robots. Learn more at https://www.theconstructsim.com/ros2-industrial-workshop/ <https://www.theconstructsim.com/ros2-industrial-workshop/?utm_source=robocu…> . This training is organized by TheConstruct.ai <https://www.theconstructsim.coma/>. For any questions please email us at info(a)theconstructsim.com. Best regards, The Construct AI team

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Call for Participation - IranOpen 2024 - Remote and Free
by Ashkan Keshavarzi 17 Jan '24

17 Jan '24

Call for Participation Soccer Simulation 2d league IranOpen2024 The 18th RoboCup IranOpen (IranOpen 2024) Competition will be held in Tehran, Iran on *April*. (http://iranopenrobocup.ir/) As a member of the technical committee, I would be honored to invite you to participate in Soccer Simulation 2D League (Remote and Free). Registration Conditions: 1. This competition will be held remotely. 2. Participation cost in this Competition is free for Non-domestic teams. 3. There is no qualification round for Non-domestic teams, so you can participate without sending a TDP. 4. Non-domestic teams should also send their information in the form of an email with the subject of IranOpen2024 to keshavarzi.ashkan(a)gmail.com before the deadline (*08 February*). 5. A participation certificate will be given to each team member. 6. It is possible for only one non-domestic team to be among the first three. (Imagine that 3 teams (A, B, C) participated as non-domestic teams, and the order is A, B, D, E, F, so the first team will be A, the second team will be D, and the third team will be E.) This information included : 1. Team Name: 2. Team Leader: 3. E-Mail: 4. Country: 5. Affiliation: 6. Team members: *Teams can upload a new binary before each round! Thank you for your consideration, and do not hesitate to contact us at this address if you have any further questions. We look forward to hearing back from you. Best regards, Ashkan Keshavarzi, Nader Zare

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Call for Papers: The 6th Games, Agents, and Incentives Workshop (GAIW)@AAMAS 2024
by Nicholas Mattei 17 Jan '24

17 Jan '24

TL;DR: Webpage: https://preflib.github.io/gaiw2024 - Submission Deadline: February 26, 2024 (AoE). - Acceptance Notification: March 28, 2024. - Camera Ready: April 15, 2024 (AoE). - Workshop: May 6 or 7, 2024 (TBA). Call for Papers: We invite submissions to the 6th iteration of the Games, Agents and Incentives Workshop, co-located with AAMAS 2024 in Auckland, New Zealand. Games, Agents and Incentives is a confederated workshop which focuses on agents and incentives in AI. In particular, it promotes approaches that deal with game theory (cooperative and non-cooperative), social choice, and agent-mediated e-commerce aspects of AI systems. The confederated workshop merges multiple workshops that have been associated with AAMAS in the past, which considered different aspects of the general interplay between AI and economics: • CoopMAS: Cooperative Games in Multi-agent Systems • AMEC: Agent-Mediated Electronic Commerce • EXPLORE: Exploring Beyond the Worst Case in Computational Social Choice Over the past two decades, the focus of agent incentives in decentralised and centralised AI systems has increased dramatically. These issues come up when designing preference aggregation mechanisms and markets; computing equilibria and bidding strategies; facilitating cooperation among agents; and fairly dividing resources. ********************************************************** PAPER SUBMISSION ********************************************************** Authors should submit full papers electronically in PDF format at https://cmt3.research.microsoft.com/GAIW2024 Formatting Guidelines: Please format papers according to the AAMAS 2024 format (author kit <https://www.aamas2024-conference.auckland.ac.nz/calls/submission-instructio…>). Optionally, one may submit in LNCS format as well (LaTeX template). Paper Length: Papers can be at most 8 pages long in AAMAS format, or 12 pages long in LNCS format. Additional pages may be used for references. Supplemental material can be appended at the end of the paper. However, reviewers are instructed to make their evaluations based on the main submission, and are not obligated to consult the supplemental material. Multiple Submissions: To widen participation and encourage discussion, there will be no formal publication of workshop proceedings. We will, however, post the accepted papers online to the benefit of the participants to the workshop. Therefore, submission of preliminary work and papers to be submitted or in preparation for submission to other major venues in the field are encouraged. Past Submissions: In order to strike a balance between new work and work that may have been presented, but not widely seen, we ask that if authors want to submit published work they do so non-anonymously and clearly indicate when and where the work was published. We will only accept work which has been published in the last calendar year (e.g., IJCAI 2023, NeurIPS 2023, AAAI 2023, AAAI 2024 and any conference held strictly after February 2023). We invite papers on topics of game theory, mechanism design, fair allocation, computational social choice, and their applications to multi-agent systems: - Algorithmic mechanism design - Auctions - Behavioral Game Theory - Bounded rationality - Cooperative Games - Computational advertising - Computational aspects of equilibria - Computational social choice - Coalitions, coordination, collective action, and cooperation - Economic aspects of security and privacy - Economic aspects of distributed and network computing - Equilibrium computation - Empirical approaches to e-market - Fairness (in ML & elsewhere) - Fair Division - Incentives in machine learning - Information and attention economics - Learning in games (e.g., solution concepts and equilibria) - Matching and Matching Markets - Negotiation - Price differentiation and price dynamics - Social networks - Trading agent design and analysis - Uncertainty in AI and economics Best Presentation Award: The organizing committee of GAIW will be giving two awards (first-place and runner up) for best paper presentations. The award criteria include the clarity of presentation, the level of engagement, the content, and discussion handline. Inquiries: If you have any questions, direct them to alan.tsang(a)carleton.ca. ********************************************************** IMPORTANT DATES ********************************************************** - Submission Deadline: February 26, 2024 (AoE). - Acceptance Notification: March 28, 2024. - Camera Ready: April 15, 2024 (AoE). - Workshop: May 6 or 7, 2024 (TBA). ********************************************************** ORGANIZATION ********************************************************** Program Chairs Ben Abramowitz, Tulane University Haris Aziz, UNSW Sydney and Data61 John P. Dickerson, University of Maryland Hadi Hosseini, Penn State University Nicholas Mattei, Tulane University Svetlana Obraztsova, Carleton University Zinovi Rabinovich, Carleton University Alan Tsang, Carleton University Tomasz Wąs, Penn State University -- *Nicholas Mattei* Assistant Professor, Tulane University nsmattei(a)tulane.edu | www.nickmattei.net Stanley Thomas Hall | 305B +1 504 865 5782 Department of Computer Science Tulane University 6823 St Charles Ave New Orleans, LA 70118

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RoboCup 2024 Soccer Simulation 2D League - Call for Participation (Second Call)
by MROA 16 Jan '24

16 Jan '24

Call for Participation RoboCup 2024 Soccer Simulation 2D League July 15 – July 21, 2024 Eindhoven, Netherlands https://2024.robocup.org/ <https://2023.robocup.org/> ===================================== Greetings RoboCuppers, We invite you to participate in the RoboCup 2024 Soccer Simulation League 2D competition, which will take place *July 15 – July 21, 2024*, in *Eindhoven, Netherlands*. The RoboCup Soccer Simulation 2D League is one of the oldest RoboCup Soccer competitions. It is based on the RoboCup Soccer Simulator that enables two teams of 11 simulated autonomous robots plus an autonomous coach agent to play a soccer game with very realistic rules and gameplay. The RoboCup Soccer Simulator is an outstanding research and educational tool for multiagent systems, artificial intelligence, and machine learning due to its stability. ===================================== To view the full Call for Participation document, please visit: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1O02gc-9HZ3x95NnirHg45S3Z0uiZVIKwIKfXi1G… ===================================== If you are interested in participating, please pre-register your team and submit the required qualification materials. Pre-registration and Qualification Deadline: *February 17th – 23:59 UTC* - Submit information via *the online form* - It is recommended that you pre-register as soon as possible to ensure that you receive the latest update. - Submit* Information, TDP and Log Files *via the online form - https://forms.gle/hGe1gtnqpXrBtD8G8 Qualification Notification: *Feb 29th – 23:59 UTC* ===================================== If you have any questions or concerns, please email us at the address provided in the documentation. Best Regards, Omid Amini, Nader Zare RoboCup2024 Soccer Simulation 2D League Organizing Committee

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[meetings][CFP][Special Session] RO-MAN 2024 - Call for Proposals of Special Session and Papers of Special at the 33rd IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication
by Alessandra Rossi 14 Jan '24

14 Jan '24

Call for Proposals of Special Session and Papers of Special Sessions Dear colleagues, We are very pleased to invite you to submit your proposals for Special Sessions at the 33rd IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication, which will take place at the Pasadena Convention Center in Pasadena, California, USA, from August 26th to 30th, 2024. The theme of the IEEE RO-MAN 2024 is “Embracing Human-Centered HRI”. The annual conference serves as a platform for researchers to showcase cutting-edge innovations and present state-of-the-art findings across a diverse spectrum of topics related to Robot and Human Interactive Communication. Please visit the office website www.ro-man2024.org for more information. The format of RO-MAN 2024 will be either "hybrid" or in-person only. The committee will make a decision in early 2024. ***Important Dates*** Proposal Submission Deadline: January 19, 2024 Notification of Proposal Acceptance: February 2, 2024 Special Session Paper Submission Deadline: March 10, 2024 Notification of Paper Acceptance: May 10, 2024 Camera-ready Paper Deadline: June 7, 2024 The goal of the special sessions is to provide a forum for focused oral presentations highlighting emerging topics or innovative applications of established approaches. A typical special session consists of four to six papers, which, for example, addresses a particular theme or consists of collaborative work done in an international project or network. It is expected for each special session to be run for 80 minutes ~ 2 hours approximately. TEMPLATES AND SUBMISSION PROCEDURE Prospective special session organisers are invited to submit a proposal via the main conference's submission system <https://ras.papercept.net/conferences/scripts/start.pl>. The organisers of the accepted special sessions will be responsible for the high-quality peer-review of the submitted papers according to IEEE standards (i.e. at least 2 anonymous peer-reviews). The organisers will be Associate Editors (AE) for the proposed session, and they will be responsible for assigning reviewers and evaluating the submitted paper for their special session. All submitted special session papers will be subject to the same peer-review process as for regular papers and will be included in the main conference proceedings (IEEE Xplore Digital Library). Proposals should include the following information: - Title: Please propose a title that shows the relevance of the session for the RO-MAN community and the innovativeness of the proposed topic. - Aims and scope of the Special Session: Please explain why the chosen topic is novel, relevant and can potentially contribute to the RO-MAN community, and how it’s well suited within the conference theme or other new emerging themes with a potential impact. - Organisers and biographies: Please provide a short bio-sketch for each session organiser including name, title, affiliation, country, email, phone, their experience related to the topic of the Special Session. - Tentative speakers: Please provide a list of prospective contributing authors and tentative titles. Special Sessions are normally expected to have 4 to 6 papers. Invited speakers or session-related demonstrations (such as renowned speakers or industrial talks) could be a part of the Special Session. Proposals should not exceed a maximum of 5 pages. Templates are availables for LaTeX <https://ras.papercept.net/conferences/support/tex.php> and MS Word <https://ras.papercept.net/conferences/support/word.php>. The primary criteria in the evaluation of special session proposals will be the timeliness of the topics, the quality, track record, and diversity of the proposers and speakers, the coherence of the proposal, the novelty or creativity, and the expected value added to the overall conference. Aspects of diversity that will be considered include the age, gender, national origin, background, and workplace of the proposers and speakers. We will give priority to proposals that fully follow these requirements. Moreover, we encourage the submission of special sessions organized by communities that are under-represented within the RO-MAN activities. For any questions and further information about the Special Session proposal, please email submission(a)ro-man2024.org IEEE RO-MAN 2024 Organizing Committee ***Special Session Chairs*** Alessandra Rossi and Lantao Liu

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Call for Participation: RoboCup2024 Middle Size League
by liufei＠caa.org.cn 04 Jan '24

04 Jan '24

The content of this message was lost. It was probably cross-posted to multiple lists and previously handled on another list.

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Travel Support Deadline Extended: The 2024 IEEE-RAS Response Robotics Seasonal School and Workshop
by Raymond Sheh 04 Jan '24

04 Jan '24

Hi All! We have extended the deadline for student travel support applications for the Response Robotics Seasonal School and Workshop, to be held in Burnet, Texas, March 4-7, and co-located with the Texas Public Safety Robotics Summit. The new deadline for travel support applications is January 12th although we encourage students to apply early. We particularly encourage current and prospective RoboCupRescue Robot League team members, and RoboCupRescue Rapidly Manufactured Robot Challenge mentors, to join us as we will be having a league roadmap discussion during the event. The summary of the event is pasted below, see the website at https://responserobotics.org for the full details and instructions on how to register and apply for travel support. Please do forward this on to any interested students and researchers! You can contact us, either via the mailing list or Discord server on the website, or via email to info(a)responserobotics.org if you have any questions. (If you previously tried to email us and it bounced, please try again, we recently fixed a server issue.) Cheers! - Raymond Sheh -- Dr. Raymond Sheh Uncrewed Aircraft Systems Research Lead and Guest Researcher UAS Portfolio, Public Safety Communications Research Division Communications Technology Laboratory National Institute of Standards and Technology U.S. Department of Commerce 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8230, Gaithersburg MD 20899-8230, USA Adjunct Associate Research Scientist Whiting School of Engineering Johns Hopkins University Columbia MD, USA Trustee, RoboCup Federation ======== Call for Participation ======== The 2024 IEEE-RAS Response Robotics Seasonal School and Workshop March 4-7, 2024 Reveille Proving Grounds, Burnet, TX, USA and Online Co-located with the 2024 Texas Public Safety Robotics Summit https://responserobotics.org | info(a)responserobotics.org === Introduction: === The 2024 IEEE-RAS Response Robotics Seasonal School and Workshop (RRSS+W) is a 4-day-long immersive academic research event for undergraduate and graduate research students, mentors of high school research robotics teams, and early career researchers, on the challenges and best-in-class solutions for applied response robotics. It is financially sponsored by the IEEE-RAS and student travel support scholarships are available for IEEE-RAS students. It is co-located with the 2024 Texas Public Safety Robotics Summit (TXPS, https://www.txpsrobots.com/ ), a high profile industry event for responders, manufacturers, and government agencies. Attendees of the RRSS+W will have a unique opportunity to engage with and learn from the end users about how their technologies might be used, manufacturers on the challenges of transitioning technologies from the lab into the real world, and various regulatory bodies on the risk management and legal landscape within which these technologies must operate. === Format: === In-person and online participants in the RRSS+W will have the opportunity to participate in lectures and panel discussions on topics ranging from theoretical techniques to real world applications, with a focus on presentations from outside of academia. In addition, in-person participants will have the opportunity to participate in: - Hands-on practical sessions that give attendees an in-depth opportunity learn about a specific topic. - Demonstration and test sessions that allow attendees to deploy their own robots within the test methods and scenarios, and observe other robots being tested. - A workshop poster session that allows attendees to present their work to other attendees as well as the attendees of the TXPS, including those who may have an interest in adopting these technologies. - Social events that promote networking between RRSS+W attendees as well as the rest of the response robotics ecosystem. === Topics: === This year will highlight three topics that have been identified as being of particular up-and-coming interest in the response robotics space. We are particularly soliciting the involvement of students who are interested in these topics. - Novel communication technologies for challenging response environments. - Integration of Uncrewed Aircraft Systems (aka UAS, RPAS, or aerial drones) into response robotics applications. - Cybersecurity and Artificial Intelligence (AI) Risk Management Challenges for the Response Robotics ecosystem. We are also encouraging students who are interested in broader response robotics topics to attend, including, but not limited to: - 3D mapping and indoor/outdoor navigation in unstructured environments. - Mobility in challenging terrain and among 3D obstacles. - Dexterous manipulation and inspection. - Transition of technologies into real world unstructured environments. - Novel sensors for response robotics. The RRSS+W will also host a roadmap discussion for the RoboCupRescue Robot League, with a focus on engaging with the end user community. We invite past, present, and prospective competitors to join us! === Venue: === The venue hosts both real world scenarios, complete with the uncertainty, weather, and communications challenges that it brings, as well as standard test methods that provide repeatable, reproducible, evaluations of robot capabilities that attendees can replicate in their own labs. Attendees will have a unique opportunity to observe robots of their interest performing in both the scenarios and the test methods, as well as bring their own robots to test and refine over the course of the event. Please check the website and join the mailing list for updates regarding accommodation and transportation arrangements. === Registration and Timelines: === The registration fee for in-person attendance is $300 and includes registration for the broader TXPS. As space is limited, registration is capped and competitive, based on a cover letter - see the website for details. Registration will be decided on a rolling basis and closes February 1st, 2024, or when the event reaches capacity so we advise prospective attendees to register early. IEEE-RAS students may use the same letter to apply for a limited number of competitive travel support scholarships that include the fee and a partial travel reimbursement - see the website for details. Travel support applications will be decided on a rolling basis and closes January 12th, 2024, or when all funds have been allocated, so please apply early. Please see https://responserobotics.org for instructions on how to register and apply for travel support. Remote attendance of the lectures will be free of charge, dependent on connectivity. Join the mailing list or keep an eye on the website for details. === Contact: === See https://responserobotics.org for further details, and to join our mailing list and Discord server. Email info(a)responserobotics.org for any questions.

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[meetings] [news] Online Submission Open: 3rd Benchmark for Autonomous Robot Navigation (BARN) Challenge -- ICRA 2024 Competition
by Xuesu Xiao 22 Dec '23

22 Dec '23

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 https://cs.gmu.edu/~xiao/

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