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Final Call for Participation: RoboCup@Home Education Workshop & Challenge 2022 (Online & On-site)
by Jeffrey Tan 23 May '22

23 May '22

Dear RoboCup Community, After two years of online events, finally we are organizing an on-site RoboCup@Home Education Challenge event at the RoboCup 2022 Bangkok in July 2022. The event will run in both online and on-site tracks, comprising a series of robot building short courses for beginners via online classroom with live streaming of remote participation online challenge, and on-site hands-on workshop with face-to-face participation on-site competition in Bangkok. We hope everyone around the world can join us together in RoboCup development and challenges regardless of travel restrictions. With that, we are proud to announce the RoboCup@Home Education Workshop & Challenge 2022! The event details are as follows in the Final Call for Participation announcement. == Final Call for Participation: RoboCup@Home Education Workshop & Challenge 2022 == [ Venue ] Online OR On-site (Thailand) [ Date ] RoboCup 2022 Bangkok July 11 ~ 17, 2022 [ Web ] https://www.robocupathomeedu.org/challenges/robocup-2022-bangkok << Supported by >> - RoboCup Federation - RoboCup 2022 LOC << Sponsors and Technical Partners >> - SoftBank Robotics - Jupiter Robot << Schedule and Rules >> - Technical Materials Submission: May 27, 2022 - RoboCup 2022 Bangkok: July 11 ~ 17, 2022 For the competition rules, please visit https://www.robocupathomeedu.org/rules << Categories >> Open Platform (OP) - Custom Build Robots Standard Platform (SP) - SoftBank Pepper Robot << How to Participate >> [√] Step 0 - Intend To Participate (Entry Application) [√] Step 1 - Kick-Off Webinar [√] Step 2 - Online Classroom Step 3 - Technical Review & Challenge Step 4 (Online) - Online Challenge (Finals) Step 4 (On-site) - On-site Workshop & Challenge For more details, please visit https://www.robocupathomeedu.org/challenges/robocup-2022-bangkok You can contact us via oc(a)robocupathomeedu.org Best regards, RoboCup@Home Education Workshop & Challenge 2022 Organizing Committee

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[meetings][cfp](SCRITA Workshop @ RO-MAN 2022) Trust, Acceptance and Social Cues in Human-Robot Interaction - SCRITA Workshop
by alexarossi＠gmail.com 16 May '22

16 May '22

Dear colleagues, It is with great pleasure that we would like to invite you at the fifth edition of SCRITA Workshop <scrita.herts.ac.uk> at IEEE RO-MAN 2022. This workshop will be a full day event on 29 August 2022, in conjunction with the IEEE RO-MAN 2022 <http://www.smile.unina.it/ro-man2022/> conference, held in sunny and beautiful Naples, Italy. The workshop is open to a broad audience from academia and industry researching social robotics, machine learning, robot behavioural control, and user recommendation. We will foster the exchange of insights on past and ongoing research, and contribute to the discussion of innovative ideas for tackling unresolved issues by providing new and inspirational directions of research with brilliant invited speakers and a panel of experts in the field. Please find attached below the call for papers. For any questions and information, do not hesitate to contact us (emails below). Kind regards, Alessandra -- Dr. Alessandra Rossi Assistant Professor PRISCA research lab Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology University of Naples Federico II, Naples, Italy ================================================================ *** WorkhopTrust, Acceptance and Social Cues in Human-Robot Interaction *** 31st IEEE International Conference on Robot & Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN 2022) August 29th - September 2nd, 2022 Naples, Italy http://ro-man2022.org <http://ro-man2022.org/> *Important Dates* *Submission deadline*: 15 July 2022 *Acceptance*: 31 July 2022 People's ability of accepting and trusting robots is fundamental for a fruitful and successful coexistence between humans and people. While advanced progresses are reached in studying and evaluating the factors affecting acceptance and trust of people in robots in controlled or short-term (repeated interactions) setting, developing service and personal robots, that are accepted and trusted by people where the supervision of operators is not possible, still presents an open challenge for scientists in robotics, AI and HRI fields. In such unstructured static and dynamic human-centred environments scenarios, robots should be able to learn and adapt their behaviours to the situational context, but also to people’s prior experiences and learned associations, their expectations, and their and the robot’s ability to predict and understand each other's behaviours. This workshop focuses on addressing the challenges and development of the dynamics between people and robots in order to foster short interactions and long-lasting relationships in different fields, from educational, service, collaborative, companion, care-home and medical robotics. Although the previous editions valued the participation of leading researchers in the field and several exceptional invited speakers who tackled down some fundamental points in this research domains, we wish to continue to further explore the role of trust in robotics to present groundbreaking research to effectively design and develop socially acceptable and trustable robots to be deployed "in the wild". Topics of interest include but are not limited to: * Impact of Social Cues on Trust in HRI * Measuring Trust in HRI * Trust Violation and Recovery Mechanism in HRI * Effects of Humans’ Acceptance on Trust of Robots * Humans Sense of Control and Trust in Robots * Trust and Assistive Robotics * Overtrust in Robots * Antecedent of Trust and Robot Trust * Enhancing Humans Trust in Robots * Enhancing Trust in a Robot Companion * Privacy Implications on Trust in HRI * Mental Models and Trust in HRI * Trust and Safety in HRI * Ethics Implications on Trust in HRI * Trustworthy AI * XAI in HRI * Legal Frameworks for Trustworthy Robotics Templates and Submission Procedure We encourage participants to submit two-page abstracts or full papers (up to 6 pages) on original and unpublished research. We will also welcome submissions of two-page position papers on topics covering the scope of the workshop. All accepted papers will have an oral presentations. We further welcome authors of the accepted papers to present a video or demonstrate their works and achievements. Video demonstrations should be accompagnied by an up to 2 pages abstract describing the work and achievements. Authors should submit their papers formatted according to the IEEE two-column format <http://ras.papercept.net/conferences/support/support.php>, which is also used for contributions to the main conference. Use the following templates to create the paper and generate or export a PDF file: LaTeX <http://ras.papercept.net/conferences/support/tex.php> or MS-Word <http://ras.papercept.net/conferences/support/word.php>. PDF submission will be possible via EasyChair <https://easychair.org/my/conference?conf=scrita2022>. Each paper will receive at least two reviews. All papers are reviewed using a single-blind review process: authors declare their names and affiliations in the manuscript for the reviewers to see, but reviewers do not know each other's identities, nor do the authors receive information about who has reviewed their manuscript. Authors who want to include a video in their submission can indicate their plans via EasyChair and will be sent a link to a confidentially upload the video file. At least one of the authors of the accepted papers needs to register for the workshop. Invited Speakers The following keynote speakers have already agreed to participate in this workshop: * Alan Wagner, Penn State University, USA * Moojan Ghafurian, University of Waterloo, Canada * Takayuki Kanda, Kyoto University, Japan Panel Session The following experts have already agreed to participate in this workshop: * Alessandro Di Nuovo, Sheffield Hallam University, UK * Kerstin Sophie Haring, University of Denver, USA

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2022 European RoboCupJunior @home education
by April Foster 11 May '22

11 May '22

European RoboCupJunior 2022 - @home education Registration is Open RoboCup@Home Education is a special education program to support new teams in the context of a simplified RoboCup@Home competition. It is oriented to help form new teams and prepare them for the main competitions. Please visit the official website for more information on: https://2022.robocupjunior.eu/leagues/others/home-education/ You can contact us via email: home_edu(a)2022.robocupjunior.eu 1 - 4 June 2022 Guimarães, Portugal Details about registration (fee, accommodation, rules) are available on the website. https://2022.robocupjunior.eu/register-team/ VENUE Pavilhão Multiusos - Guimarães Alameda Cidade de Lisboa 481, Guimarães (Portugal) GPS: 41.4354604427687, -8.306253820680457 AIM RoboCup@Home Education is an educational initiative that promotes educational efforts to promote access to modern technologies such as computer vision, speech understanding, or machine learning and to boost RoboCup@Home participation and service robot development. The aim is to narrow the technological gap between RoboCupJunior and RoboCup Major leagues. RoboCup@Home Education activities started in 2015 with various workshops and competitions around the globe. The workshop audiences range from inexperienced high school students to freshmen in engineering programs at the university level. In order to provide a soft start, the competitions are blended with preparation workshops. Teams will be assisted remotely in preparation for the challenge with tutorials (possibly webinars) and assignments. CATEGORIES There are two types of robot platforms in the Education Challenge: Open Platform (OP) and Standard Platform (SP). Teams in Open Platform use custom build robots for the challenge events. The challenge’s development focus is on both hardware and software designs. Teams in Standard Platform use a standardized robot platform - Pepper robot from SoftBank Robotics in the challenge events. The development focus is mainly on software design. For more details and competition rules, please visit http://www.robocupathomeedu.org

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2022 European RoboCup Middle Size League Championship
by April Foster 11 May '22

11 May '22

European RoboCup Middle Size League Championship 2022 Registration is Open https://2022.robocupjunior.eu 1 - 4 June 2022 Guimarães, Portugal (Multiusos de Guimarães - GPS: 41.43547511153526, -8.3062854116528) Registration closes on *** 23 May 2022 ***. Details about registration (fee, accommodation, rules) are available on the website. https://2022.robocupjunior.eu/register-team/ Visit us at: https://2022.robocupjunior.eu/leagues/european-msl-championship/ League Chair - Vitor Pinto (vitorpinto(a)fe.up.pt) ------------ Important dates ----------------------------------- 23.05.2022 Registration deadline - names, team, registration fee 01.06.2022 Set-up day 02.06.2022 Competition day (open to the public) 03.06.2022 Competition day (open to the public) 04.06.2022 Competition day, finals (open to the public) Please contact info(a)2022.robocupjunior.eu for any questions. See you all in Portugal at the European RoboCup Middle Size League Championship 2022. Organized by: Botnroll, University of Minho, Guimarães City Council, Laboratory of Automation and Robotics

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3-year-Research-Position: Human Robot Interaction in robotics systems for table-grape harvesting and pruning
by Luca Iocchi 02 May '22

02 May '22

3-year research position, DIAG, Sapienza University, Rome Human Robot Interaction in robotics systems for table-grape harvesting and pruning The position is funded by the CANOPIES project (https://canopies.inf.uniroma3.it), with the scientific objectiveofdevelopingnovel human-robot interaction (HRI) methodologies for implementing an effective collaborative paradigm between human workers and multi-robot teams for the precision farming of permanents crops in the context of the table-grape vineyards.Specifically, this position aims at the development ofa multi-modal interactionframeworkand of a novel approach to keep a shared mental statesupporting the interaction.We address human-robot interaction by considering both implicit and explicit communicationand the evaluationof the effectiveness of different communication modes in the agricultural contextrelies on a novel virtual environment developed within CANOPIES. The research group working on the CANOPIES project at Sapienza has a strong focus and expertise in HRI and there will be opportunities for the development of fundamental research on AI approaches to HRI. The call is in Italian (deadline May 5th) https://web.uniroma1.it/trasparenza/bando/188890_1/2022 for information contact: nardi(a)diag.uniroma1.it

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Fwd: CFP - LARS-SBR 2022
by Marco Simões 30 Apr '22

30 Apr '22

* Apologies for cross-postings * ======================================================== CFP: Call for Papers - LARS/SBR 2022 São Bernardo do Campo, Brazil - October 2022 http://fei.edu.br/robotica http://www.robotica.org.br/ <https://ddec1-0-en-ctp.trendmicro.com:443/wis/clicktime/v1/query?url=http%3…> ======================================================== IEEE LARS 2022 - 19th Latin American Robotics Symposium SBR 2022 - 14th Brazilian Robotics Symposium The IEEE LARS and SBR (Latin American Robotics Symposium / Brazilian Robotics Symposium) aim at promoting a comprehensive scientific meeting in the area of Intelligent Robotics, bringing together researchers, undergraduate and graduate students of Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Mechatronics Engineering, Computer Engineering, and related fields. The event will include technical sessions of an oral presentation of full papers and technical lectures of recognized importance in the area. LARS/SBR will take place in São Bernardo do Campo, São Paulo, Brazil from October 18th to 21st, 2022. * TOPICS OF INTEREST * 1. Vision in robotics and automation; 2. Symbol mediated robot behavior control; 3. Sensory mediated robot behavior control; 4. Active sensory processing and control; 5. Industrial applications of autonomous systems; 6. Sensor modeling and data interpretation e.g. models and software for sensor data integration, 3D scene analysis, environment description and modeling, pattern recognition; 7. Robust techniques in AI and sensing e.g. uncertainty modeling, graceful degradation of systems; 8. Robot programming e.g. on-line and off-line programming, discrete event dynamical systems, fuzzy logic; 9. Multi-Robot and Multi-Agents, Cooperation and Collaboration; 10. CAD-based robotics e.g. CAD-based vision, reverse engineering; 11. Robot simulation and visualization tools; 12. Tele-operated and autonomous systems; 13. Microelectromechanical robots; 14. Robot modeling; 15. Robot control architectures; 16. Sensor-Motor control of Robots; 17. Robot planning, reasoning, communication, adaptation, and learning; 18. Mechanical design; 19. Robotic Manipulators; 20. Robot soccer; 21. Evolutionary robotics; 22. Bio-Inspired robotics; 23. Robots for robotic surgery and rehabilitation; 24. Micro/nano-robotics, new Devices, and materials for robots; 25. Human-Robot Interaction and Interfaces; 26. Education issues in Robotics; 27. Computing architectures; 28. Sensor Networks, architectures of embedded Hardware and software; 29. Self-Localization, Mapping and Navigation; 30. Multi-robot systems; 31. Aerial vehicles; 32. Autonomous vehicles; 33. Mobile robot platforms; 34. Service robots and entertainment robots; 35. Underwater robots; 36. Humanoids. * ORGANIZATION * Chair: Prof. Dr. Reinaldo Augusto da Costa Bianchi - FEI * TECHNICAL PROGRAM * Chair: Prof. Dr. Bruno Marques Ferreira da Silva - UFRN Co-chair: Prof. Dr. Thiago Pedro Donadon Homem - IFSP * PROCEEDINGS * Accepted papers will be available at IEEE Xplore. A selected number of outstanding papers will be invited to submit extended versions to a Special Issue of JINT (Journal of Intelligent & Robotics Systems). * IMPORTANT DATES * Paper registration/submission site open: April 30th, 2022 Paper Submission DEADLINE: July 25th, 2022 Notification of Acceptance: September 12th, 2022 Camera Ready Submission: October 3rd, 2022 -- Prof. Luiz Marcos Garcia Goncalves Natalnet Associate Labs Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte Campus Universitario, 59.078-900, Natal, RN, Brasil -- Você recebeu essa mensagem porque está inscrito no grupo "#somosrobotica" dos Grupos do Google. Para cancelar inscrição nesse grupo e parar de receber e-mails dele, envie um e-mail para somosrobotica+unsubscribe(a)googlegroups.com. Para ver essa discussão na Web, acesse https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/somosrobotica/CAHOVifmwNrsA82W05KBXayWTju… <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/somosrobotica/CAHOVifmwNrsA82W05KBXayWTju…> . -- Marco Antonio Costa Simões Nucleo de Arquitetura de Computadores e Sistemas Operacionais - ACSO - http://www.acso.uneb.br Bahia Robotics Team - http://www.acso.uneb.br/bahiart Departamento de Ciências Exatas e da Terra - Campus I Universidade do Estado da Bahia - UNEB Mestre em Ciência da Computação - UFPE

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RC Humanoid League Virtual Season: sim2real event
by Alessandra Rossi 24 Apr '22

24 Apr '22

Dear everyone, We are very pleased to share with you the program of the 3-day event focused on sim2real transfer organised to conclude an exceptional RC Humanoid League Virtual Season. The event will be on 28-30 April online using the Zoom platform -> Link We are very pleased of having a great invited speaker from the 3D sim league Marco Simões, and a discussion about common and differences with 3D sim will follow. We will also have a mix of medalists and team presentations, workshops, discussions and a sneak peek to the RC-HL VS behind scenes. The full program is available on our website -> Link Please do not hesitate to contact us for any questions. We are looking forward to engage you in sim2real discussions! Kind regards, Alessandra on behalf of RC-HL Virtual Season organisers Dr. Alessandra Rossi Assistant Professor PRISCA research lab Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology University of Naples Federico II, Naples, Italy

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[Meetings] AAMAS-22 Call for Participation
by Sara Bernardini 22 Apr '22

22 Apr '22

Dear Colleagues, AAMAS’22 is in about two weeks! Please don’t forget to register yourself and join the conference. The registration page is here: https://aamas2022-conference.auckland.ac.nz/attending/registration/ Conference: May 9-13, 2022 Because of the sanitary situation and of the procedure to enter New Zealand for foreigners, AAMAS’22 will be a fully online conference. AAMAS (International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems) is the largest and most influential conference in the area of agents and multiagent systems. The aim of the conference is to bring together researchers and practitioners in all areas of agent technology and to provide a single, high-profile, internationally renowned forum for research in the theory and practice of autonomous agents and multiagent systems. AAMAS is the flagship conference of the non-profit International Foundation for Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (IFAAMAS). The AAMAS conference series was initiated in 2002 in Bologna, Italy, as a joint event comprising the 6th International Conference on Autonomous Agents (AA), the 5th International Conference on Multiagent Systems (ICMAS), and the 9th International Workshop on Agent Theories, Architectures, and Languages (ATAL). The main conference is May 11-13. its program is detailed: https://aamas2022-conference.auckland.ac.nz/program/program-overview/ Workshops, Tutorials and Doctoral Consortium are scheduled on May 9-10. AAMAS’22 features three invited talks by • Shafi Goldwasser (Director of Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing and is a professor at UC Berkeley (EECS), MIT (EECS) and Weizmann Institute (CS, Applied Math)) • Mark Sagar (Co-Founder and CEO of Soul Machines and director of the Laboratory for Animate Technologies at the Auckland Bioengineering Institute) • Johanna Seibt (Professor, Research Unit for Robophilosophy and Integrative Social Robotics, Aarhus University, Denmark) Two other invited talks are also scheduled: • Maria Gini (College of Science & Engineering Distinguished Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Minnesota) will give an invited talk on the occasion of receiving the ACM/SIGAI Autonomous Agents Research Award for her work on AI in the field of robotics and multi-agent systems. • Bryan Wilder (Schmidt Science Fellow at Carnegie Mellon University and Harvard School of Public Health) will give an invited talk on the occasion of receiving the Victor Lesser Distinguished Dissertation Award. Best regards, Sara ---- Sara Bernardini Professor of Artificial Intelligence Director of the MSc in Artificial Intelligence Department of Computer Science Royal Holloway University of London Office: Bedford 2-24 Tel.: +44 1784 276792 Web: www.sara-bernardini.com

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Third and final Call for Papers: 19th EUROPEAN CONFERENCE ON MULTI-AGENT SYSTEMS (EUMAS-2022)
by Jörg-Matthias Rothe 20 Apr '22

20 Apr '22

*********************************************** 19th EUROPEAN CONFERENCE ON MULTI-AGENT SYSTEMS (EUMAS-2022) September 14 - 16, 2022, Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf https://ccc.cs.hhu.de/eumas2022/ *********************************************** ------------------------------------ IMPORTANT DATES ------------------------------------ - Deadline for paper submission: May 20, 2022 - Notification of authors: July 25, 2022 - Camera-ready papers due: August 12, 2022 - Conference: September 14 - 16, 2022 All deadlines are at 23:59 UTC-12, i.e., while it is still the respective date anywhere on earth. Submission instructions: https://ccc.cs.hhu.de/eumas2022/ ------------------------------------ AIMS AND SCOPE ------------------------------------ In the past two decades, we have seen an enormous increase of interest in agent-based computing and multi-agent systems (MAS). This field is set to become one of the key intelligent systems technologies in the 21st century. The EUMAS conference series aims to provide the main forum for academics and practitioners in Europe to discuss current MAS research and applications. EUMAS-2022, the 19th installment of the conference series, follows the tradition of previous editions (Oxford 2003, Barcelona 2004, Brussels 2005, Lisbon 2006, Hammamet 2007, Bath 2008, Agia Napa 2009, Paris 2010, Maastricht 2011, Dublin 2012, Toulouse 2013, Prague 2014, Athens 2015, Valencia 2016, Evry 2017, Bergen 2018, Thessaloniki 2019, Virtual 2020), and encourages and supports activity in the research and development of multi-agent systems, in academic and industrial efforts. The conference aspires to be the primary European forum for researchers interested in the theory and practice of autonomous agents and multi-agent systems. EUMAS enables researchers to meet, present challenges, preliminary and mature research results in an open and informal environment. To attract students as well as experienced researchers, preliminary as well as mature work, EUMAS 2021 offers three submission types and formal proceedings. Also, we will be working hard to arrange for the post-publication of selected papers in the form of a special issue of a high-quality journal in the area. EUMAS-2022 is a designated event of the European Association of Multi-Agent Systems (EURAMAS): http://www.euramas.org <http://www.euramas.org/> Topics of interest include but are not limited to: - Action and Planning - Adaptation and Learning - Agent Architectures - Agent Programming Languages - Agent Development Methodologies and Tools - Agent-Based Simulations and Modeling - Agent Organizations and Institutions - Agent-Oriented Software Engineering - Agents and Complex Systems - Applications of Multi-Agent Systems - Argumentation - Automated Negotiation - Biologically Inspired Approaches - Cognitive Models - Collective and Swarm Intelligence - Collective Intentionality - Communication, Cooperation, and Coordination - Deep Reinforcement Learning in Multi-Agent Domains - Economic Models - Electronic Commerce - Ethical Behaviour of Multi-Agent Systems - Formal Modeling - Game-Theoretic Methods - Logics for Multi-Agent Systems - Logics for Strategic Reasoning - Machine Learning for Multi-Agent Systems - Multi-Agent Learning - Multi-Robot Systems - Negotiation - Self-Organization - Semantic Web Agents - Socio-Technical Systems - Theories of Agency - Trust and Reputation - Verification - Virtual Agents - Voting and Judgment Aggregation Models for Multi-Agent Systems - Computational Social Choice - Social Networks - Human-Agent Interaction ------------------------------------ SUBMISSIONS ------------------------------------ EUMAS-2022 welcomes original, unpublished papers. Papers submitted shall describe original work that has not been published or accepted for publication, nor is currently under review by another conference or journal (it might be on arXiv or a similar preprint server, though). NEW! In addition to original research papers, also survey papers are allowed for submission. These should be clearly marked as a "survey paper" in the submission because, when accepted, they will appear in the proceedings in a special survey track. NEW! Papers rejected from AAMAS, AAAI, or IJCAI will be fast-tracked given that their original reviews and an authors' cover letter (indicating all changes made) will be submitted. Extended abstracts from AAMAS also qualify for this fast track. Each submission will be peer-reviewed in a double-blind fashion. All submissions should be formatted according to Springer's LNCS format and contain at least 12 and at most 16 pages, plus any number of additional pages for bibliography and, if needed, a clearly marked appendix. For templates and instructions for authors, see http://www.springer.de/comp/lncs/authors.html. Authors must submit their abstracts and papers through the EUMAS-2022 Easychair submission site https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=eumas2022. EUMAS-2022 accepted papers will be published by Springer in an LNCS/LNAI volume. As such, they will be made available to several indexing services (including Scopus, Google Scholar, DBLP, CPCI, EI Engineering Index, and more). Authors should consult Springer's author guidelines and use their proceedings templates, either for LaTeX (preferred) or for Word (if need be), for the preparation of their papers. Springer encourages authors to include their ORCIDs in their papers. We urge the authors to follow these guidelines from the submission stage already. Additional guidelines will be communicated after the conference to the authors of accepted papers for the preparation of the final versions to be included in the post-proceedings. ------------------------------------ Opportunity for a JAAMAS publication ------------------------------------ This year, the Journal of Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems (JAAMAS) will provide the opportunity for revised and extended versions of the EUMAS-2022 best paper award winner (see below) and the EUMAS-2022 best paper award runner-up to be fast-tracked for the journal. ----------------------------------------------------------- Opportunity to publish revised and extended papers in SN CS ----------------------------------------------------------- A selection of EUMAS-2022 papers will be invited to submit revised and extended versions for publication in a special issue of the Springer Nature Computer Science journal. ------------------------------------ Best Paper Award ------------------------------------ A Best Paper Award will be presented at the conference. ------------------------------------ Keynote Speakers ------------------------------------ Prof. Marija Slavkovik (University of Bergen) Prof. Carles Sierra (Artificial Intelligence Research Institute of the Spanish National Research Council, Barcelona) ------------------------------------ DOCTORAL CONSORTIUM ------------------------------------ There will be a doctoral consortium day prior to the conference where PhD students can present the topics related to MAS they are currently working on. Keynote Speaker for the PhD Day (September 14, 2022): Piotr Faliszewski (AGH University of Science and Technology Kraków) Organizers of the PhD Day: Linus Boes (HHU Düsseldorf) Christian Laußmann (HHU Düsseldorf) ------------------------------------ CONFERENCE CHAIRS ------------------------------------ Dorothea Baumeister (HHU Düsseldorf) Jörg Rothe (HHU Düsseldorf) ------------------------------------ PROGRAM COMMITTEE ------------------------------------ https://ccc.cs.hhu.de/eumas2022/ ------------------------------------ CONTACT DETAILS ------------------------------------ EUMAS-2022 Organizing Committee: eumas2022(a)cs.hhu.de

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RoboCup 2022 Symposium: Deadline Extended to 28 April 2022
by Amy Eguchi 15 Apr '22

15 Apr '22

Dear RoboCuppers; The deadline has been extended to 28 April 2022! Please have your submission to be received by 28 April 2022! We are excited to announce two keynote speakers confirmed! Here are their names linked to their website: Dr. Mary-Anne Williams <https://www.xplainableai.org/> Dr. Angelica Lim <https://www.sfu.ca/computing/people/faculty/angelicalim.html> We are in the process of inviting more keynotes! Looking forward to meeting you at the symposium! Symposium Chairs ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Call for papers RoboCup International Symposium 2022 https://2022.robocup.org/symposium-call-for-papers/ 17 July 2022 Bangkok, Thailand (hybrid setting) The 25th RoboCup International Symposium will be held on 17 July 2022, in conjunction with RoboCup 2022 (11 July to 17 July 2022) in a hybrid setting. 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 is planned to be held in person in Bangkok, Thailand, with remote participation options for both presenters and attendees. 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: 17 April 2022 28 April 2022 Notification to authors: 5 June 2022 Submission of camera-ready copies: 26 June 2022 RoboCup Symposium 2022: 17 July 2022 (RoboCup on 11-17 July 2022) 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 the EasyChair electronic submission system ( https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=robocupsymposium2022). Submissions are limited to 12 pages including references. Springer’s proceedings LaTeX templates are also available in Overleaf: https://de.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 2021, 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 Maike Paetzel-Prüsmann, University of Potsdam, Germany Nuno Lau, University of Aveiro, Portugal Thanapat Wanichanon, Mahidol University, Thailand Amy Eguchi, University of California San Diego CONTACT robocupsymposium2022(a)easychair.org

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[news][meeting] Call for Papers BAILAR 2022 at IEEE ROMAN Conference 2022
by Mariacarla Staffa 15 Apr '22

15 Apr '22

*BAILAR 2022: The 6th Workshop on Behavior Adaptation, Interaction and Learning for Assistive Robotics* Royal Continental Hotel and Meeting Centre, Naples, Italy Naples, Italy, August 29, 2022 *Conference website* https://sites.google.com/view/bailar-2022/home *Submission link* https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=bailar2022 *Submission deadline* June 1, 2022 *Topics: **socially assistive robotics <https://easychair.org/cfp/topic.cgi?a=28249434;tid=687286> mutual affective understanding <https://easychair.org/cfp/topic.cgi?a=28249434;tid=27170020> theory of mind in hri <https://easychair.org/cfp/topic.cgi?a=28249434;tid=27243540> internal state monitoring and adaptation <https://easychair.org/cfp/topic.cgi?tid=27243533;a=28249434>* *Statement of objectives* Mutual affective understanding is integral for achieving the so-called Theory of Mind (ToM) allowing successful, acceptable, and intelligent social human-robot interaction (HRI). Corresponding concepts rely on new paradigms of robotic control systems that consider not only the possibility for a robot to interpret humans’ observable behaviors and internal/emotional states with the aim of anticipating and adapting to their subsequent reactions, but also to facilitate humans in the interpretation and anticipation of the robot’s state, intentions, and future actions through legible behavior designed around the emotional dimension of the communication. In addition to being able to detect and interpret humans' basic affective responses to adapt their behavior accordingly, robots should also be endowed with the ability to show affective and social responses in a legible way for humans to allow acceptability and efficient human-machine communication. This is especially desirable in the field of Socially Assistive Robotics (SAR), where interaction often takes place with disabled or vulnerable people. Especially in this period of worldwide pandemic, an increasing number of hospitals have relied on the assistance of social robots to interact with patients as helping interfaces for remote communication with their families. Moreover, robots can help decrease the workload and physical contact of healthcare specialists, which would be beneficial to overcome the situations where elderly or vulnerable people are at risk of getting infected. The need to ensure the positive feelings and acceptance of people, while providing them with the necessary assistance, has outlined the utility of intelligent and empathic socially assistive robots. In these contexts, it is of paramount importance to consider the effect of verbal and non-verbal emotional social cues of the robot on the affective state of the user with whom it is interacting. On the one hand, a robot can be employed to provide assistance to individuals with disability (e.g., cognitive or physical rehabilitation exercises) with the aim of increasing their health and improving their quality of life. On the other hand, its presence and actions could also potentially trigger negative emotions such as stress or discomfort if not tailored to the individual’s needs and expectations. This may cause serious difficulties by negatively impacting the users' health and, in turn, achieving a counter-productive result. In this context, robots could use the affect-sensing capability to learn and adapt their behavior to be more comfortable for individuals and to achieve a higher degree of learnability and acceptability through inclusive interaction. This edition of BAILAR Workshop aims at putting the mutual understanding of affective/emotional states of robots and humans at the crossroads with learning and user adaptation within HRI. Methodologies and technologies adopted for detecting and adapting to users’ mental states, emotions and dispositions during HRI will be presented and discussed. Experimental protocols and results could also outline possible effects of gender, age, personality, and pathology on robot perception from an emotional and affective point of view, as well as ethical considerations regarding learning and using personal data within assistive applications. *Intended audience: *This workshop is intended as a forum for a broad audience, composed of roboticists, psychologists, computer scientists, social and ethics scientists, aiming at discussing the role of adaptation, learning, emotional communication, and mutual affective understanding in HRI for assistive real-world applications, and their potential impact on users’ acceptance, especially in terms of usability, efficiency, empathy, and their emotional responses. *List of topics: *Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following: - Online adaptive behavior - Acceptability and personalization in HRI - User and behavior modeling for adaptation - Emotion and intention recognition - Multimodal interfaces for emotion recognition - Affective and emotional robots - Empathy in robotics - Mutual affective communication - Affective computing in SAR - Internal state monitoring - Detection of verbal and non-verbal behavioral cues - Lifelong (or continual) learning methods in HRI - Short-term personalization in HRI - Incremental and online learning in HRI - Robot behavior explainability - Theory of mind in Robotics - Understandable Communication - Ethical Aspects of Affective HRI communication and personalization in SAR - Evaluation metrics for adaptive robot behavior - Cultural and Social Awareness in HRI - Intention Recognition and Commitment - Mixed-Initiative Interaction - Cognitive Robotics *Important Dates* - *Deadline for Paper Submission:* June 1st, 2022 - *Paper Acceptance Notification:* June 25th, 2022 - *Camera Ready Paper:* July 20th, 2022 - *Main Conference Date:* August 28th– September 2nd, 2022 - *Workshop Date:* September 2nd, 2022 (To be decided by the ROMAN2022’s PC) *Invited speakers * - *Prof. Tom Zimkie*, Linköping University, Sweden (CONFIRMED) - *Prof. Antonio Sgorbissa*, University of Genova, Italy (CONFIRMED) - *Prof. Hatice Gunes*, University of Cambridge, UK (CONFIRMED) - *Prof. Joost Broekens*, University of Leiden, The Netherlands (CONFIRMED) *Organizing Committee* *Mariacarla Staffa* (Primary Contact Person) *- *Department of Science and Technologies - University of Naples Parthenope (*mariacarla.staffa(a)uniparthenopoe.it <mariacarla.staffa(a)uniparthenopoe.it>*) *Antonio Andriella* *- *Institut de Robotica i Informatica Industrial (CSIC-UPC), Spain (*aandriella(a)iri.upc.edu <aandriella(a)iri.upc.edu>*) *Bahar Irfan - *Evinoks Service Equipment Industry and Commerce Inc., Turkey (*bahar.irfan(a)evinoks.com <bahar.irfan(a)evinoks.com>)* *Alessandro Umbrico - *National Research Council of Italy, Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies (CNR-ISTC), Italy* (**alessandro.umbrico(a)istc.cnr.it <alessandro.umbrico(a)istc.cnr.it>)* -- *Mariacarla Staffa, PhDAssistant ProfessorDepartment of Science and Technologies* *University of Naples "Parthenope"* *address: Centro Direzionale, Isola C, 4° Piano, Lato Nord, Stanza 428, 80143, Napoli* *tel: 081-5476580institutional e-mail: mariacarla.staffa(a)uniparthenope.it <mariacarla.staffa(a)uniparthenope.it>*

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Call for Paper - Computational Intelligence and Neuroscience Special Issue
by Pub Conference 14 Apr '22

14 Apr '22

Interpretation of Machine Learning: Prediction, Representation, Modeling, and Visualization 2022 https://www.hindawi.com/journals/cin/si/470979/ Call for papers This Issue is now open for submissions. Papers are published upon acceptance, regardless of the Special Issue publication date. ------------------------------ <https://www.hindawi.com/journals/cin/si/470979/> Description <https://www.hindawi.com/journals/cin/si/470979/> The exponentially growing availability of data such as images, videos and speech from myriad sources, including social media and the Internet of Things, is driving the demand for high-performance data analysis algorithms. Deep learning is currently an extremely active research area in machine learning and pattern recognition. It provides computational models of multiple nonlinear processing neural network layers to learn and represent data with increasing levels of abstraction. Deep neural networks are able to implicitly capture intricate structures of large-scale data and deploy them in cloud computing and high-performance computing platforms. The deep learning approach has demonstrated remarkable performances across a range of applications, including computer vision, image classification, face/speech recognition and medical communications. However, deep neural networks yield ‘black-box’ input-output mappings that can be challenging to explain to users. Especially in the medical, military and legal fields, black-box machine learning techniques are unacceptable, since decisions may have a profound impact on peoples’ lives due to the lack of interpretability. In addition, many other open problems and challenges still exist, such as computational and time costs, repeatability of the results, convergence, and the ability to learn from a very small amount of data and to evolve dynamically. The aim of this Special Issue is to bring together original research articles and review articles that will present the latest theoretical and technical advancements of machine and deep learning models. Submissions about algorithms with improved computational efficiency and scalability are also welcome. We hope that this Special Issue will: 1) improve the understanding and explainability of deep neural networks; 2) enhance the mathematical foundation of deep neural networks; and 3) increase the computational efficiency and stability of the machine and deep learning training process with new algorithms that will scale. Potential topics include but are not limited to the following: - Supervised, unsupervised, and reinforcement learning - Classification, clustering, and optimization for big data analytics - Extracting understanding from large-scale and heterogeneous data - Dimensionality reduction and analysis of large-scale and complex data - Deep learning for time series forecasting - Quantifying or visualizing the interpretability of deep neural networks - Stability improvement of deep neural network optimization - Novel machine and deep learning approaches in the applications of image/signal processing, business intelligence, games, healthcare, bioinformatics, and security Publishing date 01 Dec 2022 Status Open Submission deadline 22 Jul 2022

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[RC-Humanoid League Virtual Season] Semi- and final games
by Alessandra Rossi 13 Apr '22

13 Apr '22

Dear RoboCuppers, We are almost at the end of an exciting season full of great and breath taking games! On April 17th, in conjuction with the GORE event, there will be a double date for the semi- and final games of the Humanoid League Virtual Season starting with the semifinals at 10am (CEST time), and continuing at 11:45 (CEST time) with the finals! Sooo, grab a coffee, a beer or an Ester chocolate egg and join us! Games will be commenting live from the GORE venue, but we will be streaming the games on Twitch Field A -> https://www.twitch.tv/robocuphumanoidfielda For checking the time zone differences, you can use websites such as worldtimebuddy Do not forget that the RC-HL Virtual Season will be back on April 28-30 with a series of workshops, discussion groups and talks. We welcome proposals from other leagues too! https://humanoid.robocup.org/hl-vs2022/rc-hl-virtual-season-workshops/call-… See you this Sunday! Best regards, Alessandra on behalf of the RC-HL Organisation Committee Dr. Alessandra Rossi Assistant Professor PRISCA research lab Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology University of Naples Federico II, Naples, Italy

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[RC-HL] EXTENDED DEADLINE : Call for Workshop proposals
by Alessandra Rossi 08 Apr '22

08 Apr '22

Dear Robocuppers, We decided to extend the submission deadline for the workshop proposals for the RoboCup Humanoid League Virtual Season. RC-HL virtual season organisers will hold a three days event on April 28-30, 2022 focused on exploring the sim2real transfer topic. It will be a great opportunity for both exploring future collaborations between different leagues, and sharing knowledge and experiences on techniques and approaches in simulated environments. Each workshop will be of half hour, and we welcome proposals for discussion groups, tutorials or interactive activities. More info on how to submit your proposal are here -> https://humanoid.robocup.org/hl-vs2022/rc-hl-virtual-season-workshops/call-… Moreover, we want to invite you at the Semi-Final and Final that will be streamed on April 17th from the joint event German Open Replacement Event (GORE) organised by SPL and Humanoid League which takes place in Hamburg (Germany) from 12.04. to 17.04.22. Looking forward to receive your valuable inputs and contributions. Feel free to contact me for further information. Best regards, Alessandra On behalf of the RC-HL virtual organisation committee Dr. Alessandra Rossi Assistant Professor PRISCA research lab Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology University of Naples Federico II, Naples, Italy

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RoboCup International Symposium 2022 - Final Call for Satellite Events
by Maike Paetzel-Prüsmann 01 Apr '22

01 Apr '22

* Final Call for Satellite Events * RoboCup International Symposium 2022 https://2022.robocup.org/symposium-call-for-satellite-events/ Submission of proposals: 3 April 2022 Notification to authors: 25 April 2022 Satellite Events: 17 or 18 July 2022 (RoboCup 2022: 11-17 July 2022) =========================================================== We invite you to organize a satellite event for the 25th RoboCup International Symposium, which will be held on 17 July 2022, in conjunction with RoboCup 2022 (11 July to 17 July 2022) in a hybrid setting. The RoboCup symposium is an annual event in which innovative, original research with relevance to areas of robotics and artificial intelligence is presented. The Symposium Program Co-Chairs would like to facilitate the organization of satellite workshops, focus groups, roundtable discussions, and other events that are related to RoboCup itself or the general aim of the RoboCup Symposium. This includes league-specific discussions about rules and/or roadmaps, shared infrastructure projects between leagues, as well as scientific workshops focusing on a particular research topic, among others. League committee members, as well as teams or individuals from RoboCup leagues participating in the Symposium, are invited to submit their proposals. The organizers of a satellite event are free to propose events between 2 and 8 hours in length to be held during or a day after the RoboCup Symposium (17 or 18 July) in a fully virtual, hybrid, or fully local format. IMPORTANT DATES =============== Submission of satellite events: 3 April 2022 Notification to authors: 25 April 2022 Satellite Events: 17 or 18 July 2022 (RoboCup 2022: 11-17 July 2022) SUBMISSION AND PROCEEDINGS ========================== Proposals will be evaluated by the Symposium Program Co-Chairs based on their thematic relevance to the RoboCup Symposium as well as their proposed schedule and required resources. Satellite events will not be included in the RoboCup Symposium proceedings. Proposals should be formatted following the LNAI author guidelines [0] and must be electronically submitted through the EasyChair electronic submission system [1]. Please follow the LaTeX template created by us by either downloading the template file [2] or by creating a private copy of this Overleaf template [3]. Submissions are limited to a 4-page extended abstract, excluding references. Each submission must include the following sections: * Name of the satellite event * A description of the format (e.g., discussion group, workshop, tutorial, invited talks, ...) and intended length of the event * Prefered date and time of the event (17 or 18; morning or afternoon, or the whole day [no lunch will be provided unless it’s on the 17th]) * A description of the content and aim of the satellite event * Names and contacts of all members of the organizing committee/group with one clearly marked person as the corresponding member of the organizing committee * The intended audience and the number of participants expected * Any resources required to organize the workshop After the acceptance of their proposal, organizers are expected to create a short description of their event as well as a website providing further information which will both be linked from the RoboCup symposium page on the RoboCup 2022 website. Organizers of accepted proposals for satellite events will receive a location for their event as well as other required resources (e.g., a projector), if possible. Apart from this, the organizers are responsible for organizing their event independent of the RoboCup Symposium. PROGRAM CO-CHAIRS ================== Maike Paetzel-Prüsmann, University of Potsdam, Germany Nuno Lau, University of Aveiro, Portugal Thanapat Wanichanon, Mahidol University, Thailand Amy Eguchi, University of California San Diego, USA CONTACT ======= robocupsymposium2022(a)easychair.org [0] https://www.springer.com/gp/computer-science/lncs/conference-proceedings-gu… [1] https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=robocupsymposium2022 [2] https://2022.robocup.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Symposium-Satellite-Eve… [3] https://de.overleaf.com/read/gqspxdtvpwsn

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Deadline Extension to April 6, 2022 / Call for participation: RoboCup Rescue German Open 2022 – DRZ Edition (May 8-12, 2022)
by April Foster 31 Mar '22

31 Mar '22

Call for Participation RoboCup Rescue German Open 2022 – DRZ Edition **Registration deadline extended to April 6th, 2022.** *The remaining slots will be filled on a first-come, first-serve basis.* Dear RoboCup Rescue Robot League Teams, We are happy to announce the upcoming RoboCup German Open 2022 Rescue Robot League Competition – DRZ Edition. The rescue robotics competition is based on Rules of the RoboCup Rescue Robot League and is complemented by tasks derived from firefighter missions. Artificial limited network capabilities will be part of the competition this year. Dortmund is about 2.5 h by train from Frankfurt International Airport and 1.5 h by train from Duesseldorf International Airport. Dates: - Registration: Until *April 6th*, 2022 - Acceptance notification: April 8th, 2022 - Setup days: Sunday, May 8th and Monday, May 9th, 2022 - Competitions: Tuesday, May 10th and Wednesday, May 11th, 2022 - Finals: Thursday, May 12th, 2022 The competition will be hosted by the non-profit German Rescue Robotics Center (DRZ), https://www.rescuerobotics.eu, in its large and well equipped testing facility. The event will be organized by DRZ together with RoboCup Rescue representatives of the German RoboCup regional committee. A registration fee will be required for participation. More information including the rules are available at https://rettungsrobotik.de/robocup-german-open-2022-rescue-robot-league-27-… The event will only be open to participants, organizers and press. Daily media coverage as well as live streaming of the finals is being considered for the public. We are excited about this opportunity for the RoboCup Rescue Robot League and would be happy to meet as many of you as possible on this occasion in Dortmund! The maximum number of teams and participants is limited. We already have a couple of interested teams, but we can accommodate a few more teams at the competition. Teams will be registered on a first-come, first-serve basis. If you want to participate, we kindly ask you to register by April 6st, 2022 by sending an email to: info[a]rettungsrobotik.de (and CC johannes.pellenz[a]gmail.com and stefan.may[a]th-nuernberg.de) Please send the team name, your country, your affiliation, the number of team members (including the team leader), full contact information (name, email, phone number and address) of the team leader. If there are any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact us. Kind regards, Johannes Pellenz and Stefan May RoboCup German Open Rescue League

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[Kick-off Webinar] 3rd European RoboCupJunior 2022 | RoboCup@Home Education Challenge 2022
by Gil Lopes 29 Mar '22

29 Mar '22

Topic: [Kick-off Webinar] 3rd European RoboCupJunior 2022 | RoboCup@Home Education Challenge 2022 Time: Mar 29, 2022 10:30 AM Lisbon Join Zoom Meeting https://zoom.us/j/92354746485?pwd=QTB3V1VWSXZ6K3FPa3Z4cWxVbm5WQT09 Meeting ID: 923 5474 6485 Passcode: 93NnFp Best regards RoboCup@Home Education Challenge 2022 @ 3rd European RoboCupJunior 2022 Organizing Committee

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CFP - Computational Intelligence and Neuroscience Special Issue
by Pub Conference 25 Mar '22

25 Mar '22

Computational Intelligence and Neuroscience <https://www.hindawi.com/journals/cin/> Special Issue -Interpretation of Machine Learning: Prediction, Representation, Modeling, and Visualization 2022 https://www.hindawi.com/journals/cin/si/470979/ Potential topics include but are not limited to the following: - Supervised, unsupervised, and reinforcement learning - Classification, clustering, and optimization for big data analytics - Extracting understanding from large-scale and heterogeneous data - Dimensionality reduction and analysis of large-scale and complex data - Deep learning for time series forecasting - Quantifying or visualizing the interpretability of deep neural networks - Stability improvement of deep neural network optimization - Novel machine and deep learning approaches in the applications of image/signal processing, business intelligence, games, healthcare, bioinformatics, and security Publishing date 01 Dec 2022 Status Open Submission deadline 22 Jul 2022

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[RC-Humanoid League Virtual Season] Workshops and next games
by Alessandra Rossi 24 Mar '22

24 Mar '22

Dear Robocuppers, The first round of games for RC-HL virtual season just ended. We streamed the last game of the Round Robin phase last Sunday (20 March). We will now enter in the Quarterfinals, which they will be streamed on April 3rd starting at 10am (CEST time). The Semi-Final and Final will be streamed on April 17th from the joint event German Open Replacement Event (GORE) organised by SPL and Humanoid League which takes place in Hamburg (Germany) from 12.04. to 17.04.22. At the end of the games, RC-HL virtual season organisers will hold a three days event on April 28-30, 2022 focused on exploring the sim2real transfer topic. It will be a great opportunity for both exploring future collaborations between different leagues, and sharing knowledge and experiences of applying realistic computational resources and scenario to the virtual competition, and the other way around. We welcome proposals for half hour workshops. More info on how to submit your proposal are here -> https://humanoid.robocup.org/hl-vs2022/rc-hl-virtual-season-workshops/call-… Looking forward to receive your valuable inputs and contributions. Best regards, Alessandra On behalf of the RC-HL virtual organisation committee More info on our website: https://humanoid.robocup.org/hl-vs2022 We will be streaming all of our games on Twitch Field A For checking the time zone differences, you can use websites such as worldtimebuddy Dr. Alessandra Rossi Assistant Professor PRISCA research lab Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology University of Naples Federico II, Naples, Italy

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LPNMR 2022 - 2nd Call for Papers
by cfp 23 Mar '22

23 Mar '22

[Apologies in case of multiple posting] 1 month to abstract submission! Call for Papers --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 16th International Conference on Logic Programming and Non-monotonic Reasoning LPNMR 2022 https://lpnmr2022.dibris.unige.it Genova, Italy September 5-9, 2022 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- AIMS AND SCOPE LPNMR 2022 is the sixteenth in the series of international meetings on logic programming and non-monotonic reasoning. LPNMR is a forum for exchanging ideas on declarative logic programming, non-monotonic reasoning, and knowledge representation. The aim of the conference is to facilitate interactions between researchers and practitioners interested in the design and implementation of logic-based programming languages and database systems, and those working in knowledge representation and non-monotonic reasoning. LPNMR strives to encompass theoretical and experimental studies that have led or will lead to advances in declarative programming and knowledge representation, as well as their use in practical applications. A Doctoral Consortium will also be a part of the program. LPNMR 2022 aims to bring together researchers from LPNMR core areas and application areas of the aforementioned kind in order to share research experiences, promote collaboration and identify directions for joint future research. TOPICS Authors are invited to submit papers presenting original and unpublished research on all aspects of non-monotonic approaches in logic programming and knowledge representation. We invite submissions of both long and short papers on topics detailed below. Conference topics include, but are not limited to: 1. Foundations of LPNMR Systems: * Semantics of new and existing languages; * Action languages, causality; * Formalization of Commonsense Reasoning and understanding its laws and nature; * Relationships among formalisms; * Complexity and expressive power; * Inference algorithms and heuristics for LPNMR systems; * Extensions of traditional LPNMR languages such as new logical connectives or new inference capabilities; * Updates, revision, and other operations on LPNMR systems; * Uncertainty in LPNMR systems. 2. Implementation of LPNMR systems: * System descriptions, comparisons, evaluations; * Algorithms and novel techniques for efficient evaluation; * LPNMR benchmarks. 3. Applications of LPNMR: * Use of LPNMR in Commonsense Reasoning and other areas of KR; * LPNMR languages and algorithms in planning, diagnosis, argumentation, reasoning with preferences, decision making and policies; * Applications of LPNMR languages in data integration and exchange systems, software engineering and model checking; * Applications of LPNMR to bioinformatics, linguistics, psychology, and other sciences; * Integration of LPNMR systems with other computational paradigms; * Embedded LPNMR: Systems using LPNMR subsystems. SUBMISSION AND PUBLICATION LPNMR 2022 welcomes submissions of long papers (13 pages) or short papers (6 pages) in the following categories: * Technical papers * System descriptions * Application descriptions The indicated number of pages includes title page, figures, tables, references and appendix. All submissions will be peer-reviewed and accepted papers will appear in the conference proceedings published in the Springer's Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence (LNAI) series. At least one author of each accepted paper is expected to register for the conference to present the work. Submissions must be written in English, present original research, and be formatted according to Springer's guidelines and technical instructions available at: https://www.springer.com/gp/authors-editors/conference-proceedings/conferen… Paper submission is enabled via the LPNMR 2022 Easychair site: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=lpnmr2022 The two best papers of general AI interest will be invited for rapid publication in the Artificial Intelligence Journal. Also, the 2-5 best papers with a logic programming focus will be invited for rapid publication in the journal of Theory and Practice of Logic Programming. MULTIPLE SUBMISSION POLICY LPNMR 2022 will not accept any paper which, at the time of submission, is under review or has already been published or accepted for publication in a journal or another conference. Authors are also required not to submit their papers elsewhere during LPNMR's review period. However, these restrictions do not apply to previous workshops with a limited audience and without archival proceedings. COLOCATED WORKSHOPS * DATALOG 2.0 Workshop * 1st International Workshop on HYbrid Models for Coupling Deductive and Inductive ReAsoning (HYDRA 2022) * 29th RCRA workshop on Experimental evaluation of algorithms for solving problems with combinatorial explosion (RCRA 2022) ASSOCIATED EVENTS LPNMR DOCTORAL CONSORTIUM - A mentoring event where PhD students have a chance to present their current research, get feedback from peers and senior researchers, and establish contacts for their future career. FURTHER INFORMATION WWW:https://lpnmr2022.dibris.unige.it Email:lpnmr2022@easychair.org (program) lpnmr2022(a)dibris.unige.it (general matters) Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/lpnmr2022 Twitter:https://twitter.com/lpnmr2022 Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/lpnmr2022 IMPORTANT DATES * Paper registration: April 23, 2022 * Paper submission: April 30, 2022 * Notification: June 10, 2022 * Final versions due: June 30, 2022 VENUE The main conference will take place in Genova Nervi, Italy, in the Collegio Emiliani (http://www.collegioemiliani.it/, information available only in Italian on this link), which is a college directly situated on the sea. Nervi is a former fishing village, now a suburb of Genoa. Nervi is 7 km east of central Genova. Genova is the capital of Liguria, stretching along the bay of the same name from Nervi to the east as far as Voltri to the west. The pride of Nervi is the sea promenade, a 2 km walkway along the cliffs. The stunning views make it one of Italy's most beautiful promenades. Nervi is also well known for its Parchi, a park of about 22 acres (9 hectares) created from the gardens of the Villa Grimaldi, Villa Groppallo, and Villa Serra. It has typical Mediterranean plant species and many exotic species. Genova's old town district (reachable by local train, by bus, as well as by boat) is one of the largest in Europe, and hosts some remarkable artistic and architectural treasures, including the Palazzi dei Rolli, fifty or so homes of the aristocracy entered on the UNESCO World Heritage List. In addition to offering a wealth of cultural attractions, Genova is a fascinating destination for tourists, with its scenic vantage points, sea promenades, aristocratic villas and of course the Riviera to the east and west, both easy to reach: Portovenere and Le Cinque Terre (also UNESCO World Heritage Sites), Portofino and Camogli to the east and Alassio, Sanremo, Bordighera to the west. Associated events (workshops) are planned to be held at the University, which is in the city center of Genova, but we are still considering if they can be done in the main conference venue. Of course, we will continuously monitor the pandemic situation in order to evaluate whether the conference can be indeed held as an in-person event, or we will need to switch to a hybrid event, if not completely on-line. GENERAL CHAIR Georg Gottlob, Oxford University, UK PROGRAM CHAIRS Daniela Inclezan, Miami University, USA Marco Maratea, University of Genova, Italy PUBLICITY CHAIR Jessica Zangari, University of Calabria, Italy WORKSHOPS CHAIR Viviana Mascardi, University of Genova, Italy DOCTORAL CONSORTIUM CHAIR Martin Gebser, University of Klagenfurt, Austria LOCAL ORGANIZATION Matteo Cardellini, University of Genova, Italy Angelo Ferrando, University of Genova, Italy (Chair) Marco Mochi, University of Genova, Italy PROGRAM COMMITTEE Mario Alviano, Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Calabria Chitta Baral, Arizona State University Marcello Balduccini, Saint Joseph's University Francesco Calimeri, Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Calabria Marina De Vos, University of Bath Carmine Dodaro, Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Calabria Agostino Dovier, University of Udine Daniele Theseider Dupré, Universita' del Piemonte Orientale Thomas Eiter, Vienna University of Technology Esra Erdem, Sabanci University Wolfgang Faber, Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt Johannes K. Fichte, TU Wien Paul Fodor, Stony Brook University Gerhard Friedrich, Alpen-Adria-Universitaet Sarah Alice Gaggl, TU Dresden Martin Gebser, University of Klagenfurt Michael Gelfond, Texas Tech University Gopal Gupta, The University of Texas at Dallas Katsumi Inoue, NII Tomi Janhunen, Tampere University Gabriele Kern-Isberner, Technische Universitaet Dortmund Matthias Knorr, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa Emily Leblanc, Drexel University Joao Leite, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa Vladimir Lifschitz, The University of Texas at Austin Enrico Pontelli, New Mexico State University Francesco Ricca, Department of Mathematics and Computer Science University of Calabria Alessandra Russo, Imperial College London Orkunt Sabuncu, TED University, Ankara Chiaki Sakama, Wakayama University Torsten Schaub, University of Potsdam Guillermo R. Simari, Universidad del Sur in Bahia Blanca Theresa Swift, NOVALINKS, Universidade Nova de Lisboa Matthias Thimm, FernUniversität in Hagen Hans Tompits, Vienna University of Technology Mirek Truszczynski, Computer Science Department, University of Kentucky Johannes P. Wallner, TU Graz Kewen Wang, Griffith University Stefan Woltran, Vienna University of Technology Jia-Huai You, University of Alberta

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MathWorks: New MATLAB Version update for RoboCup teams
by April Foster 22 Mar '22

22 Mar '22

Please see the below message from MathWorks, a global sponsor of RoboCup: Dear RoboCup teams, Here are some quick MATLAB updates for R2022a: 1. R2022a Version of MATLAB <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvTjkwroCfo> is available and can be downloaded here <https://www.mathworks.com/downloads/web_downloads/> 2. Complimentary licenses for ALL RoboCup teams <https://www.mathworks.com/academia/student-competitions/robocup.html> are available for the 2022 season 3. The new *RoboCup Autonomous Robot Manipulation Challenge* <https://arm.robocup.org/> uses MATLAB/Simulink and is *accepting registrations until May 2022.* You can explore the release notes <https://www.mathworks.com/help/relnotes/> for all new features in R2022a. We put together some feature highlights below for Robotics and Autonomous Systems related products we thought the RoboCup community might find interesting: - Robotics System Toolbox <https://www.mathworks.com/help/robotics/release-notes.html> - Scenario and sensor simulation tools - Inverse Kinematics Designer application - Support for Gazebo 11 Co-Simulation - ROS Toolbox <https://www.mathworks.com/help/ros/release-notes.html> - ROS/ROS2 Node generation from MATLAB - Generation of CUDA optimized ROS2 nodes from Simulink - Support for ROS Noetic, ROS2 Foxy - Navigation Toolbox <https://www.mathworks.com/help/nav/release-notes.html> - Model SLAM and structure from motion with factor graphs - Additional lidarSLAM Properties - Sensor Fusion and Tracking Toolbox <https://www.mathworks.com/help/fusion/release-notes.html> - EKF-based flexible fusion framework for INS data - Correct, handle, retrodict and simulate out-of-sequence measurements - Computer Vision Toolbox <https://www.mathworks.com/help/vision/release-notes.html> - Instance segmentation using Mask R-CNN networks - Support for YOLOv4 - Examples for Visual SLAM - Lidar Toolbox <https://www.mathworks.com/help/lidar/release-notes.html> - Lidar Odometry and Mapping (LOAM) - Lidar Labeler Enhancements - Deep Learning Examples using Lidar

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[@HomeEDU2022] Call for Participation
by Gil Lopes 21 Mar '22

21 Mar '22

[image: LOGO BASE 01.png] =========================================== RoboCup@Home Education @ 3rd European RoboCupJunior 2022 =========================================== June 1 ~ 4, 2022 Guimarães, Portugal GPS: 41.4354604427687, -8.306253820680457 https://2022.robocupjunior.eu/ <http://2022.robocupjunior.eu/> *INTRODUCTION* RoboCup@Home Education is a special education program to support new teams in the context of a simplified RoboCup@Home competition. It is oriented to help form new teams and prepare them for the main competitions. *VENUE* Pavilhão Multiusos - Guimarães Alameda Cidade de Lisboa 481, Guimarães (Portugal) GPS: 41.4354604427687, -8.306253820680457 *AIM* RoboCup@Home Education is an educational initiative that promotes educational efforts to promote access to modern technologies such as computer vision, speech understanding, or machine learning and to boost RoboCup@Home participation and service robot development. The aim is to narrow the technological gap between RoboCupJunior and RoboCup Major leagues. RoboCup@Home Education activities started in 2015 with various workshops and competitions around the globe. The workshop audiences range from inexperienced high school students to freshmen in engineering programs at the university level. In order to provide a soft start, the competitions are blended with preparation workshops. Teams will be assisted remotely in preparation for the challenge with tutorials (possibly webinars) and assignments. *CATEGORIES* There are two types of robot platforms in the Education Challenge: *Open Platform (OP)* and *Standard Platform (SP)*. - Teams in *Open Platform* use custom build robots for the challenge events. The challenge’s development focus is on both hardware and software designs. - Teams in *Standard Platform* use a standardised robot platform - Pepper robot from SoftBank Robotics in the challenge events. The development focus is mainly on software design. *HARDWARE* The hardware for the challenge is standardised. Robot (TurtleBot2) 3D/Vision Sensor (Xtion/Astra) Laser Sensor (Hokuyo/RPlidar) Other ROS-based platforms are also accepted. Depending on the number of registered teams, the organisation *may have some platforms available* at the event. However, these can be purchased. The information is available at: 1. Turtlebot 2 - http://www.robocupathomeedu.org/robots/ 2. MARRtino - www.marrtino.org 3. Pepper - SoftBank Robotics - https://www.softbank.jp/en/robot/ *TEAMS* Teams consist of 2 to 4 students led by one mentor. We are expecting teams of undergraduate students from any European University. We advise the teams to assist the online classes - RoboCup@Home Education Workshop 2022, for that is necessary to apply in the following link, *until April 4*: https://forms.office.com/pages/responsepage.aspx?id=rrP5m6Oa3kCI8l7-m5kevKr… For more details and competition rules, please visit http://www.robocupathomeedu.org *HOW TO PARTICIPATE* 1. Interested teams are required to apply by sending an email with the following information to the Organizing Committee home_edu(a)2022.robocupjunior.eu - Team Name: - Country/Region: - Affiliation: - Team Leader Name: - Email: - Category: Furthermore, it is required to inform in this email address if the team has already a platform for the challenge or not. The email subject should be: [@HomeEDU2022] (Your Team Name) According to the number of teams interested in participating in the RoboCup@Home Education @ 3rd European RoboCupJunior 2022, the organising team may restrain the number of teams. *IMPORTANT DATES* Challenge Kick-off: March 29, 2022 - 10:30am (GMT+0) Intention to participate: March 23 – April 10, 2022 Registration: April 18 – May 16, 2022 Please visit the official website for more information on: https://2022.robocupjunior.eu <http://2022.robocupjunior.eu> You can contact us via email: home_edu(a)2022.robocupjunior.eu Best Regards, RoboCup@Home Education Challenge 2022 @ 3rd European RoboCupJunior 2022 Organizing Committee

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RoboCup International Symposium 2022 - 2nd Call for Satellite Events
by Maike Paetzel-Prüsmann 21 Mar '22

21 Mar '22

* 2nd Call for Satellite Events * RoboCup International Symposium 2022 https://2022.robocup.org/symposium-call-for-satellite-events/ Submission of proposals: 3 April 2022 Notification to authors: 25 April 2022 Satellite Events: 17 or 18 July 2022 (RoboCup 2022: 11-17 July 2022) =========================================================== We invite you to organize a satellite event for the 25th RoboCup International Symposium, which will be held on 17 July 2022, in conjunction with RoboCup 2022 (11 July to 17 July 2022) in a hybrid setting. The RoboCup symposium is an annual event in which innovative, original research with relevance to areas of robotics and artificial intelligence is presented. The Symposium Program Co-Chairs would like to facilitate the organization of satellite workshops, focus groups, roundtable discussions, and other events that are related to RoboCup itself or the general aim of the RoboCup Symposium. This includes league-specific discussions about rules and/or roadmaps, shared infrastructure projects between leagues, as well as scientific workshops focusing on a particular research topic, among others. League committee members, as well as teams or individuals from RoboCup leagues participating in the Symposium, are invited to submit their proposals. The organizers of a satellite event are free to propose events between 2 and 8 hours in length to be held during or a day after the RoboCup Symposium (17 or 18 July) in a fully virtual, hybrid, or fully local format. IMPORTANT DATES =============== Submission of satellite events: 3 April 2022 Notification to authors: 25 April 2022 Satellite Events: 17 or 18 July 2022 (RoboCup 2022: 11-17 July 2022) SUBMISSION AND PROCEEDINGS ========================== Proposals will be evaluated by the Symposium Program Co-Chairs based on their thematic relevance to the RoboCup Symposium as well as their proposed schedule and required resources. Satellite events will not be included in the RoboCup Symposium proceedings. Proposals should be formatted following the LNAI author guidelines [0] and must be electronically submitted through the EasyChair electronic submission system [1]. Please follow the LaTeX template created by us by either downloading the template file [2] or by creating a private copy of this Overleaf template [3]. Submissions are limited to a 4-page extended abstract, excluding references. Each submission must include the following sections: * Name of the satellite event * A description of the format (e.g., discussion group, workshop, tutorial, invited talks, ...) and intended length of the event * Prefered date and time of the event (17 or 18; morning or afternoon, or the whole day [no lunch will be provided unless it’s on the 17th]) * A description of the content and aim of the satellite event * Names and contacts of all members of the organizing committee/group with one clearly marked person as the corresponding member of the organizing committee * The intended audience and the number of participants expected * Any resources required to organize the workshop After the acceptance of their proposal, organizers are expected to create a short description of their event as well as a website providing further information which will both be linked from the RoboCup symposium page on the RoboCup 2022 website. Organizers of accepted proposals for satellite events will receive a location for their event as well as other required resources (e.g., a projector), if possible. Apart from this, the organizers are responsible for organizing their event independent of the RoboCup Symposium. PROGRAM CO-CHAIRS ================== Maike Paetzel-Prüsmann, University of Potsdam, Germany Nuno Lau, University of Aveiro, Portugal Thanapat Wanichanon, Mahidol University, Thailand Amy Eguchi, University of California San Diego, USA CONTACT ======= robocupsymposium2022(a)easychair.org [0] https://www.springer.com/gp/computer-science/lncs/conference-proceedings-gu… [1] https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=robocupsymposium2022 [2] https://2022.robocup.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Symposium-Satellite-Eve… [3] https://de.overleaf.com/read/gqspxdtvpwsn

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European RoboCupJunior 2022 and European Middle Size League Championship 2022
by A. Fernando Ribeiro 16 Mar '22

16 Mar '22

*European RoboCupJunior 2022* and *European Middle Size League Championship 2022* Call for Participation https://2022.robocupjunior.eu 1 - 4 June 2022 Guimarães, Portugal (Multiusos de Guimarães) (GPS: 41.43547511153526, -8.3062854116528) ------ Leagues under competition (international teams) --------- Competitions are offered in the following leagues: - RoboCupJunior Soccer (Lightweight, Open, Entry) - RoboCupJunior OnStage (Advanced, Preliminary) - RoboCupJunior Rescue (Line, Line Entry, Maze, Maze Entry) - Co-Space Rescue Simulator - RoboParty Fun Challenge - SSL Junior - RoboCup@Home Educational - Middle Size League The registration opens *** 18 April 2022 ***. The registration closes *** 16 May 2022 ***. Visit https://2022.robocupjunior.eu/ to register your team. Details on the registration (fee, accommodation, rules) are available on the website. The Leagues Chairs: - SoccerJunior: Alexandrino Silva (soccer(a)2022.robocupjunior.eu) - RescueJunior: Luis Bernardino (rescue(a)2022.robocupjunior.eu) - OnStage: Rui Baptista (onstage(a)2022.robocupjunior.eu) - RoboParty Fun Challenge: Tiago Ribeiro (roboparty_fc(a)2022.robocupjunior.eu ) - SSL Junior: Laurent Verdier (laurent.verdier(a)elektronslibres.fr) - RoboCup@Home Educational: Inês Garcia (home_edu(a)2022.robocupjunior.eu) - Middle Size League: Vitor Pinto (vitorpinto(a)fe.up.pt) ------------ Important dates ----------------------------------- 18.04.2022 Registration opens 16.05.2022 Registration deadline - names, team, registration fee 01.06.2022 Set-up day Junior League teams 02.06.2022 Competition day (open to the public) 03.06.2022 Competition day (open to the public) 04.06.2022 Competition day, finals (open to the public) Please contact info(a)2022.robocupjunior.eu for any questions. See you all in Portugal at the *European RoboCupJunior 2022* and *European Middle Size League Championship 2022*. Best regards, Prof. A.Fernando Ribeiro (Chair and RoboCup Trustee) Organized by: Botnroll, Guimarães City Council, University of Minho

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Late call for applications to participate on-site and remotely in RoboCup 2022 Standard Platform League
by Stefan Seering 16 Mar '22

16 Mar '22

Dear SPL Teams, This email is a*late call for applications to participate *in RoboCup 2022 Standard Platform League in some capacity, either on-site as normal or remotely in a limited capacity. While we encourage all teams that are able to travel, even with a small number of member, to join us in Bangkok, the TC is aware that some teams have limitations on their ability to travel to Bangkok for the 2022 competition. Therefore, we would also like to encourage as many teams as possible to participate in RoboCup, whether on-site or in a remote setting. This is to maintain connections with the teams in our community and encourage teams to continue in their RoboCup research and software development. Teams competing on-site will be able to participate in the soccer competition and challenges. Teams that compete remotely, would be able to participate only in the following technical challenges: * Visual Referee Challenge * Dynamic Ball handling Challenge * Open Research Challenge Remote teams will be unable to participate in the soccer competition, or the 7 vs 7 Technical Challenge. This is because of limited on-site technical and volunteer support, along with an insufficient pool of robots. If you have questions about this late call for applications to participate on-site or remotely, please email the RoboCup TC (rc-spl-tc(a)lists.robocup.org). Additionally, if you are unsure about the teams status and unable to apply by the deadline, but may wish to make a late application, please express your interest in a late application by the deadline. Details of the call follow below: Late call for applications to participate in RoboCup 2022 Standard Platform League spl.robocup.org <https://spl.robocup.org/> Monday 11th July through Sunday 17th July 2022 Bangkok, Thailand 2022.robocup.org <https://2022.robocup.org/> RoboCup <https://spl.robocup.org/> is an international initiative that fosters research and education in Robotics and Artificial Intelligence through a variety of competitions (RoboCupSoccer, RoboCupRescue, RoboCup@Home, RoboCupJunior) involving mostly multi-robot systems. RoboCup currently includes a number of different robot soccer leagues that focus on different research challenges. *The Standard Platform League (SPL)* is characterized by all the teams using an identical robot platform. Participating researchers focus on algorithmic development for fully autonomous robots, i.e., robots that operate with no external control. In this late call we encourage applications to participate in the RoboCup 2022 SPL either on-site in Bangkok or remotely. On-site participation The SPL at RoboCup 2022 will use V6, V5 or older versions of the NAO humanoid robot manufactured by SoftBank Robotics <https://www.softbankrobotics.com/emea/en/nao>. The SPL robot soccer team competition games at RoboCup 2022 will be played indoor and outdoor between teams of five robots on a 6m x 9m playing surface. Teams should be able to play on a randomly assigned indoor or outdoor field within one hour. The RoboCup 2022 SPL will host: * A 5 vs. 5 team competition as the main competition of the event. * A 7 vs. 7 competition. * A visual referee technical challenge. * A dynamic ball handling technical challenge. * A video analysis and statistics open research challenge. The 5 vs. 5 team competition will consist of a similar number of games for most teams compared to recent years. The structure from 2019 will be used to allow all teams to play games against teams with similar skill levels. See Appendix A.4 of the preliminary rulebook <https://spl.robocup.org/downloads/> for more details. The teams participating in the team competition should also compete in some of the additional technical challenges. The 7 vs. 7 side competition extends the ideas from the mixed team competition, and 1 vs. 1 remote challenge from RoboCup 2021 to a standardized 7 vs. 7 NAO V6 on-site competition. Its goal is to encourage more collaborative game play and offer a chance for teams to work together more closely. Participating in 7 vs. 7 is recognized as participation in a technical challenge. Additional technical challenges offered at the competition are the visual referee challenge and the dynamic ball handling challenge. The open research challenge aims to provide the SPL with long term performance statistics based on video analysis. Please note that the open research challenge comes with additional deadlines as mentioned in the rulebook. All challenges will be detailed further with the release of the SPL rules document. To assist in adoption of V6 Robots source code examples and documentation regarding V6 robots were published on the SPL website <https://spl.robocup.org/v6-support/>. One can also find example code working with V6 Robots in the code released by participating teams. These examples allow teams to adapt their competition code from recent years more easily to encourage use of V6 Robots. If you need access to the RoboCup NAOqi Image and the specific documentation, please write an email (mentioning your team affiliation) to rc-spl-tc(a)lists.robocup.org <mailto:rc-spl-tc@lists.robocup.org>. Remote participation in challenges For those teams that are not able to travel and compete on-site, we offer the possibility of remote participation in the following challenges: * Visual Referee Technical Challenge * Dynamic Ball handling Technical Challenge * A video analysis and statistics open research challenge Remote teams will be unable to participate in the soccer competition, or the 7 vs 7 Technical Challenge. Teams that wish to compete remotely may do so via a live stream of their technical challenge performance at their assigned time, similar to participation in RoboCup 2021. (For the dynamic ball handling challenge the TC is currently considering a limited on-site robot pool to allow teams to participate if they do not have 6 functional robots with which to conduct the challenge demonstration. However, a final decision on this has not yet been made.) Qualification All interested teams (whether participating on-site or remotely) must submit an original qualification document. For the qualification document to be considered, it must (1) be no longer than *6 pages* and (2) include all the following information in *sections with the specified headings*: 1. *Team Information:* the team name, the team leader(s), and the university/company affiliation(s) of the team 2. *Code Usage:* Acknowledge the team’s use of any other team’s code (1) previously from 2017 to present and (2) anticipated at RoboCup 2022. If code is used from other teams, is this code integrated into a code base that is mainly designed by the applying team? If the applying team does not use any other team’s code, state so. For further details, please have a look into the rule book, section A.1 <https://spl.robocup.org/downloads/>. 3. *Own Contribution:* Describe in detail the ‘research publishable’ significant advancements the applying team has made and is going to use at RoboCup 2022, in accordance with the rule book, section A.1 <https://spl.robocup.org/downloads/>. 4. *Past History:* provide game results in RoboCup Open competitions as well as main RoboCup competitions from 2018 onward. Include opponents and game scores from each competition in a table. State if the team plans to participate in any RoboCup Open competitions or friendlies prior to RoboCup 2022. 5. *Impact:* What is the impact of the team’s participation and research in RoboCup on (1) the SPL, (2) the team’s university/community? 6. *Video presentation:* Include a link to a video (maximum 5 minutes long, uploaded on the team’s web site or on some video server) that demonstrates the status of the team. The organizing committees use the video to determine the readiness of the team to compete effectively, and hence should focus on the team’s ability to play soccer. Teams who did not participate in the team competition at RoboCup 2019 or any challenge at RoboCup 2021 *must* include footage of at least one robot attempting to kick off and score (this footage must be captured as a single wide shot with no cuts). If robots from multiple teams are active in the footage (e.g., game footage), please include a textual overlay or additional document denoting which robots belong to the applying team for every scene. Videos of simulation contributions will also be accepted, but only when a real robot is unavailable. Preference will be given to teams that use real robots to show soccer skills in their video. 7. *Other:* Present any other information that you believe supports your application. If your application mentions more than one e-mail address, please specify which one should be used to contact your team regarding your application. Submission and Evaluation All applications with the (pre-)qualification material must be submitted by*13**th of April 2022*, by email to rc-spl-tc(a)lists.robocup.org <mailto:rc-spl-tc@lists.robocup.org>. Applications must not be sent to personal SPL TC/OC email addresses and must not contain video attachments. Note that applying serves as a statement of commitment to participate in the RoboCup 2022 SPL. The organizing committees are aware of the ongoing COVID situation and assume that all applications are subject to withdrawal due to COVID. Applications are not required to mention uncertainties related to COVID to avoid negative effects on future applications. We would rather encourage teams to plan optimistically and sign up with the possibility of withdrawing if situation requires it. For situations other than COVID: If you have doubts regarding the ability of your team to participate (due to funding, visas, etc.), please apply by the deadline but note this in your application. Declining to participate in any competition after the official early registration period has opened may negatively affect future applications (the later you decline, the worse it will affect future applications). Teams are encouraged to consider joint participation. Joint proposals will be judged on combined merit. Applications will be evaluated to consider a variety of components including: 1. Potential to play competitive games or participate in challenges at RoboCup 2022 (demonstrated ability to play soccer, previous results, etc.) 2. Contributions (and potential contributions) to league (code releases/papers, active in organization, developing own code, etc.) 3. Diversity (region, team make-up, unique characteristics, etc.) Late qualification decisions will be announced shortly after the late application deadline above. Robot Acquisition Teams who submit an intent to participate and become qualified will be eligible for potential future special robot pricing. Special robot pricing for team competing in RoboCup Events are still being discussed. Updates about special prices will be announced if offers and conditions are finalized. /RoboCup 2022 Standard Platform League Technical and Organizing Committees/ / /

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