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Call for participation: RoboCup JapanOpen2024
by Wataru UEMURA 08 Mar '24

08 Mar '24

Dear RoboCuppers, We are pleased to announce that RoboCup JapanOpen 2024 will be held at SHIGA Daihatsu arena on April 26 - 29, 2024 as follows: RoboCup JapanOpen 2024 -- Call for Participations -- https://www.robocup.or.jp/JapanOpen2024/english.html We plan to have the following leagues: - RoboCup Soccer - small size (wheel and humanoid) - RoboCup Soccer - middle size - RoboCup Soccer - simulation (2D) - RoboCup Rescue - robot - RoboCup Rescue - simulation - RoboCup @Home - open platform - RoboCup @Home - domestic standard platform - RoboCup @Home - simulation open platform - RoboCup @Home - education - RoboCup Industrial - logistics = Event dates Team setup day: 26, April, 2024 Competition days: 27-29, April, 2024 Organizer: RoboCup Japan Regional Committee More details will be announced by each league organizer. = Important dates Team registration deadline: 22 March, 2024 Member registration deadline: 5, April, 2024 = Registration Fees * faculty or ordinary participants : 28,000 yen * students who are >=18 years old : 13,000 yen * students who are <18 years old : 10,000 yen = Contact Secretary office of The Robocup Japanese Regional Committee office[at]robocup.or.jp = League Organizers Soccer small size - wheel: Makito Ishikura Soccer small size - humanoid: Yasuhiro Masutani Soccer middle size: Hidekazu Suzuki Soccer simulation (2D): Tomoharu Nakashima Rescue robot: Noritaka Sato Rescue simulation: Nobuhiro Ito @home open platform and domestic standard platform: Hakaru Tamukoh @Home simulation open platform: Tatsunari Inamura Industrial logistics: Wataru Uemura --- Best regards, Wataru Uemura ==================== Wataru UEMURA, Dr. Eng. Associate Professor, Ryukoku University Executive Director, RoboCup Japanese Regional Committee http://friede.elec.ryukoku.ac.jp/~wataru ====================

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Call for Contributions: Workshop on Cooking Robotics at ICRA2024, 17 May (Deadline 31 March)
by Tatsuya MATSUSHIMA 06 Mar '24

06 Mar '24

*Call for Contributions & Participation at* *ICRA 2024 Workshop on Cooking Robotics: Perception and Motion Planning *(apologies for multiple copies) *TL;DR:* Webpage: https://sites.google.com/view/icra2024cookingrobotics/home • Submission Deadline: 31 March 2024 • Notification: 14 April 2024 • Workshop: 17 May 2024 at ICRA2024 in Yokohama, Japan ******************************************************* *Call for Contributions:* We are soliciting a *video* and a *short paper* (1-4 pages, excluding references) for the* ICRA 2024 workshop on Cooking Robotics: Perception and Motion Planning*! Accepted works will be presented at the workshop through posters and spotlight talks. Please see the workshop website and abstract for more information: https://sites.google.com/view/icra2024cookingrobotics/home *Submission:* https://openreview.net/group?id=IEEE.org/2024/ICRA/Workshop/CookingRobot *Timeline:* Submission deadline: *31 March 2024* Notification: 14 April 2024 Workshop: *17 May 2024 at ICRA2024* in Yokohama, Japan *Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:*• Perception: vision, tactile, taste, smell, appearance, monitoring • Motion planning and control: recipe generation, long-horizon planning, cluttered environment, deformable objects, tool manipulation • Hardware: soft robotics, grippers for food manipulation • Application: human-robot interaction, social, industrial and domestic needs, safety, reliability and hygiene, 3D food printing Late-breaking results, ongoing works, and demos relevant to the topic of the workshop from academia, industries, and professionals are all welcome. ******************************************************* *Conference Abstract:*The realisation of cooking robots presents numerous real-world challenges. This workshop explores the latest advancements in 'robots in cooking,' addressing hardware considerations, multimodal perception, motion planning and control, experimental methodologies, and benchmarking approaches. Amid labour shortages and increased hygiene concerns in the post-COVID world, automation in the food industry and personalised cooking assistants have become essential. This workshop will bridge the gap between academia, industry, and professionals by inviting leading researchers, collaborating with a competition, the Food Topping Challenge <https://icra2024.rt-net.jp/>, and showcasing robot demonstrations. *Invited Speakers: *Tamin Asfour (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology) Fumiya Iida (University of Cambridge) Josie Hughes (EPFL) Mako Miyatake (Freelancer chef of "designing the future of the food") Priya Sundaresan/Dorsa Sadigh (Stanford University) Akihiko Yamaguchi (Tohoku University/Finger Vision) Kevin Zhang/Oliver Kroemer (Carnegie Mellon University) *Organisers: *Namiko Saito (The University of Edinburgh, The Alan Turing Institute, and Waseda University) Kento Kawaharazuka (The University of Tokyo) Tatsuya Matsushima (The University of Tokyo) Marina Aoyama (The University of Edinburgh) Sethu Vijayakumar (The University of Edinburgh and The Alan Turing Institute) If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us. Email: icra2024-cooking-ws(a)googlegroups.com Website: https://sites.google.com/view/icra2024cookingrobotics X (Twitter): https://twitter.com/cookingrobotics LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/cooking-robotics-workshop/ -- Matsuo Iwasawa Lab, The University of Tokyo Project Researcher (Ph.D.) Tatsuya Matsushima

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Extended deadline: Call for Papers: JAAMAS Special Issue on Agreement Technologies: a tribute to Carles Sierra’s research
by Juan Antonio Rodriguez Aguilar 05 Mar '24

05 Mar '24

============================================================================================== Apologies for multiple postings ============================================================================================== Submissions are invited to the following special issue of the Journal of Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems *EXTENDED* deadline: June 15, 2024 Call: https://www.springer.com/journal/10458/updates/26344140 ============================================================================================== Call for Papers: Special Issue on Agreement Technologies: a tribute to Carles Sierra’s research Agreement Technologies refer to computer systems in which autonomous software agents negotiate with one another, typically on behalf of humans, in order to come to mutually acceptable agreements. An agent may choose whether to fulfill an agreement or not, and it should fulfil it when there is an obligation to do so derived from the standing agreements. Autonomy, interaction, mobility, and openness are key concepts studied within the Agreement Technologies approach. Semantic alignment, negotiation, argumentation, virtual organizations, trust and reputation, and several other technologies are part of the toolbox to define, specify, and verify such systems. Agreement Technologies amalgamates a wide range of topics that have been at the core of Multiagent Systems research for decades. A Springer book was published on Agreement Technologies in 2013, and a conference series was created in 2012 dedicated to the topic. The AT conference editions were held in Dubrovnik in 2012, Beijing in 2013, Athens in 2015, Valencia in 2016, Paris in 2017, Bergen in 2018, and Thessaloniki in 2020. The purpose of this special issue is to revise the current advancements in Agreement Technologies and, at the same time, pay homage to one of the main contributors to research on Agreement Technologies: Professor Carles Sierra, who was amongst the first to shape the field in terms of five key areas (semantics, norms, organisations, argumentation and negotiation, and trust and reputation). He received the 2019 ACM/SIGAI Autonomous Agents Research Award for his seminal contributions to agreement technologies and, more specifically, for his research on negotiation and argumentation, computational trust and reputation, and artificial social systems. With the occasion of Carles Sierra’s 60th birthday, this special issue will serve to revise the current advancements in the field. The special issue targets high-quality original papers covering all aspects of agreement technologies, including, but not limited to, the list of topics below. Manuscripts that extend a previous conference or workshop publication are welcome, provided that there is a significant amount of new material in the submission (i.e., the manuscript should contain at least 50% new material). Guest editors Michael Luck, University of Sussex Pablo Noriega, IIIA-CSIC Nardine Osman, IIIA-CSIC Juan A. Rodríguez-Aguilar, IIIA-CSIC Michael Wooldridge, University of Oxford Topics The following is a non-exhaustive list of topics that we would like to cover in the special issue: * Agreement technologies, architectures, environments, and methodologies * Negotiation * Argumentation * Trust and reputation * Normative systems * Artificial social systems * Electronic institutions * Semantic alignment * Value alignment: reasoning and learning * Collective value alignment * Large language models for agreements * Coalition and team formation * Social Intelligence * Applications of agreement technologies * Social welfare, fairness, and ethics in agreements * Decision and game theoretic foundations for agreements * Collective decision-making * Judgement aggregation Timeline Submission deadline: June 15, 2024 Manuscript submissions will be considered for publication in the AT special issue continuously until the submission deadline. Submissions accepted for publication before the completion of the special issue will be available on the journal website shortly after acceptance. Submission procedure To submit, you should visit the online system at<https://www.editorialmanager.com/agnt/>https://editorial.springernature.com <https://editorial.springernature.com/>and create a new account if you do not already have one. When creating your submission on the system, select the submission type "Manuscript," and then in the "Additional Information" section, answer "Yes" when asked if your manuscript belongs to a special issue, then select "S.I.: Agreement Technologies: a tribute to Carles Sierra’s research." If you do not mark your manuscript correctly as belonging to the special issue, it may not reach the correct editors. Authors are encouraged to submit high-quality, original work that has neither appeared in nor is under consideration by other journals. All papers will be reviewed following standard reviewing procedures for the Journal. Papers must be prepared in accordance with the Journal guidelines: www.springer.com/10458 <http://www.springer.com/10458>

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2nd Call for Papers: 12th ICAPS Workshop on Planning and Robotics
by Iman Awaad 27 Feb '24

27 Feb '24

** CALL FOR PAPERS ** Twelfth ICAPS Workshop on Planning and Robotics (PlanRob‚ 2024) https://icaps24.icaps-conference.org/program/workshops/planrob/ Banff, Canada, June 2-3, 2024 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- * Topics and Objectives AI Planning & Scheduling (P&S) methods are key to enabling intelligent robots to perform autonomous, flexible, and interactive behaviours. Researchers in the P&S community have continued to develop approaches and produce planners, representations, as well as heuristics that robotics researchers can make use of. However, there remain numerous challenges complicating the uptake, use and successful integration of P&S technology in robotics, many of which have been addressed by robotics researchers with novel solutions. Strong collaboration and synergy between researchers in both communities is vital to the continued growth of the fields in a way that provide mutual benefits to the two communities. To foster this, the PlanRob workshop aims to provide a stable, long-term forum (having been held annually at ICAPS since 2013) where researchers from both the P&S and Robotics communities can openly discuss relevant issues, research and development progress, future directions and open challenges related to P&S when applied to Robotics. In addition to the usual paper submissions, the workshop’s format naturally lends itself to preliminary results, position papers as well as to work focused on challenges in using and integrating planners in robotics systems. * Topics of Interest Topics of interest include (but are not limited to): - human-aware planning and execution in human-robot interaction, - real-world planning applications for autonomous and intelligent robots, - planning domain representations for robotics applications, - optimising behaviour in large scale automated or semi-automated systems, - integrated planning and execution in robot architectures, - learning methods for robot planning and scheduling, - P&S methods for optimisation and adaptation in robotics, - mission, path, and motion planning for robots, - formal methods for robot planning and control, - challenges and solutions in using P&S technology in robotics, - open problems for P&S in robotics, - coordination of multi-robot teams, - benchmark planning domains for robots, - adversarial action planning in competitive robot domains, - mixed-initiative planning and sliding autonomy for robotic systems. < Papers from last year’s workshop can be found here: https://icaps23.icaps-conference.org/program/workshops/planrob/ <https://icaps23.icaps-conference.org/program/workshops/planrob/> > * Important Dates Paper submission: ***Monday, 25 March 2024*** Notification of acceptance: Friday, 26 April 2024 Camera-ready version due: Friday 24 May 2024 Workshop Date: June 2-3, 2024 The reference time-zone for all deadlines is UTC-12: Your submissions will be on time so long as there is still some place in the world where the deadline has not yet passed. * Submission Details There are two types of submissions: - short position papers (four pages) - regular papers (up to 10 pages) Papers may have an additional page containing references. Regular papers may be scheduled with more time in the final program. A poster session may be considered to provide a further presentation opportunity. The guidelines for formatting are the same as is used for ICAPS 2024 papers (typeset in the AAAI style as described at: http://www.aaai.org/Publications/Author/author.php), but with the AAAI copyright removed. The papers must be submitted in PDF format via the EasyChair system (https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=icapswsplanrob24). Please note that papers under review (e.g. which have been submitted to IJCAI-2024) are also welcome, however, in order to avoid potential conflicts, these manuscripts should be prepared as anonymous submissions for a double blind reviewing process. Accepted papers will be published on the workshop’s website. The organisers are investigating the availability of journal editors in order to invite a selection of accepted papers from the workshop to a special issue or post-proceedings volume. * Organizers Iman Awaad, Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University of Applied Sciences, Germany iman.awaad(a)h-brs.de Alberto Finzi, Università di Napoli "Federico II", Italy alberto.finzi(a)unina.it AndreA Orlandini  Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies (ISTC-CNR), Italy andrea.orlandini(a)istc.cnr.it (Sent on behalf of the organising committee of PlanRob 2024)

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[jobs] two PhD positions in marine robotics
by Andreas Birk 27 Feb '24

27 Feb '24

Two PhD positions in marine robotics are available at Constructor University under the supervision of Prof. Andreas Birk and Prof. Francesco Maurelli. The compensation of the positions is with competitive stipends, which allow some freedom in the research direction of the candidate. Topics of interest are in the areas of perception and mapping with marine robots as well as autonomy and fault tolerance of marine robots. Applicants should have a background in robotics or related areas. They should be experienced with the Robot Operating System (ROS), ideally ROS2. If not, they at least need a strong C++ / Pyton programming expertise on Linux. Previous work in the area of marine robotics is a strong plus. Furthermore, knowledge in any of the following areas is an asset: computer vision, ideally underwater vision; signal processing, ideally with sonar; SLAM, ideally by using factor graphs; autonomy, ideally including aspects of fault tolerance. Please submit your application via Google Forms using the following link: https://forms.gle/qFT2oTu41MVoTKyi8 For any questions, please feel free to contact Prof. Andreas Birk <abirk(a)constructor.university> and Prof. Francesco Maurelli <fmaurelli(a)constructor.university> -- ================================================================================ Prof. Dr. Andreas Birk ================================================================================ Constructor University Robotics Group Campus Ring 1, 28759 Bremen, Germany https://robotics.constructor.university/ ================================================================================ Commercial registry: Amtsgericht Bremen, HRB 18117 Chairs of the Executive Board (Vorsitzende der Geschäftsführung): Dr. Stanislav Protasov (President/Präsident), Oznur Bell (Chancellor/Kanzlerin) Managing Directors (Geschäftsführung): Prof. Dr. Thomas Auf der Heyde, Maja Laetitia Feldt Chairman of the Board of Governors (Aufsichtsratsvorsitzender): Dr. Serg Bell ================================================================================

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Final Call for Papers: Call for Papers: The 6th Games, Agents, and Incentives Workshop (GAIW)@AAMAS 2024
by Nicholas Mattei 25 Feb '24

25 Feb '24

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

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Call for Participation - RoboCup 2024 Soccer Simulation 2D - Extended Pre-Registration Deadline
by MROA 18 Feb '24

18 Feb '24

Dear RoboCuppers, *Quick update:* We're extending the pre-registration deadline for the RoboCup 2024 Soccer Simulation 2D League to accommodate all interested teams. *New Deadline: February 29th*, 2024, 23:59 UTC. Now, you have more time to get your team pre-registered and submit your qualification materials. If you are already pre-registered, you don't need to pre-register again. *Qualification Notification: *Expect to hear from us regarding your team's qualification status by *March 16th, 2024*. Use the *online pre-registration form* by this link: https://forms.gle/hGe1gtnqpXrBtD8G8 For all the details, check out the *Call for Participation* document: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1O02gc-9HZ3x95NnirHg45S3Z0uiZVIKwIKfXi1G… . If you have any questions, Reach out to us anytime - [emails are in CFP] or join the SS2D official discord at https://discord.gg/yFxkCcatGe. Thanks for your patience and enthusiasm! Best, Omid Amini, Nader Zare, RoboCup2024 Soccer Simulation 2D League Organizing Committee

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[jobs] Postdoc Position at the Interactive Robotics Laboratory, Arizona State University (ASU)
by Fabian Weigend 17 Feb '24

17 Feb '24

The Interactive Robotics Laboratory [1] at Arizona State University (ASU) is currently seeking a highly qualified postdoc to join our team with a focus on vision-based indoor navigation. The successful applicant will work on machine learning approaches for context-aware robot navigation in dynamic home environments shared with humans. Location:ASU-Tempe Campus, Arizona, United States (Open to Worldwide Applicants) Minimum Qualification Requirements:* A PhD degree in Computer Science or any other robotics-associated discipline* Available to start in mid/late March* Able to work on-site in Tempe, Arizona Additional Requirements (some of the following):* Experience with machine learning in robotics* Human-robot interaction* Imitation learning in robotics* Experience in depth estimation from monocular RGB cameras* 3D simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM)* Path planning in dynamic environments* Real-time semantic segmentation and object detection* Optimizing machine learning models for fast inference on embedded systemsApplications:Deadline is the 1st of March. Kindly send your CV to fweigend(a)asu.edu. We will review applications that satisfy the essential requirements and proceed to schedule an online interview for further consideration. Please detail your achievements/experience in the aforementioned research domains, along with a description of your research interests. About Us:The Interactive Robotics Laboratory is directed by Prof. Heni Ben Amor. We explore the intersection of robotics, artificial intelligence, and human-robot interaction. Our primary focus is on developing machine learning methods that empower robots to exhibit intelligent and autonomous behaviors. The lab has established strong collaborations with leading robotics and machine learning research groups globally, and our methods have been applied to robots in the US, Europe, and Japan. We look forward to hearing from you![1]https://interactive-robotics.engineering.asu.edu/ <https://interactive-robotics.engineering.asu.edu/>

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Call for Participation: WRS Future Convenience Store Challenge in CyberSpace
by Tetsunari Inamura 16 Feb '24

16 Feb '24

######################################################## Call for Participation WRS Future Convenience Store Challenge in CyberSpace (ICRA 2024 Competition) May 13th - 15th, 2024 Yokohama, Japan ######################################################## The Future Convenience Store Challenge in CyberSpace, which is a new type of robot competition in cyberspace will be held at ICRA 2024, Yokohama Japan. Every regional and international Major team is cordially invited to take part in the event. Visit https://sites.google.com/view/fcsc-cyberspace/home for more detailed information. Details on the registration (rules, software systems) are available on the website. Organizers Tetsunari Inamura (Tamagawa University, Japan) Kazuyoshi Wada (Tokyo Metropolitan University, Japan) Yukiyasu Domae (National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, Japan) -------------- Future Convenience Store Challenge in Cyberspace ---------------- The aim of this competition is to enhance the quality of customer service provided by intelligent robots in environments such as retail stores and shopping malls, and to realize new forms of services. Specifically, the competition will assess the ability of robots to engage in natural and friendly communication in the context of customer service, as well as their capability for cooperative work with human staff. While conventional competitions have primarily evaluated physical functionalities such as object recognition, human behavior recognition, navigation, and object manipulation using real robots, there have been limitations in smoothly conducting competitions when focusing on intellectual interactions, such as intention recognition, natural language understanding, conversation control, and resolving ambiguity. Therefore, this competition aims to improve the quality of dialogue systems for service robots collaborating with humans in retail stores and to achieve new interactive service systems by focusing on tasks that emphasize dialogue intelligence rather than physical functionality. Furthermore, this competition features a unique structure where robots in cyber space engage in dialogue with humans in real-world environments. We also welcome proposals that contribute to the realization of new services through the integration of metaverses, digital twins, cyber-physical systems, and robotics. As such, the competition is designed based on the simulator "SIGVerse," which enables robots to engage in embodied and social interaction in virtual reality (VR) environments. Participants will benefit from focusing solely on software development without the need to develop physical robots. -------------------------------- Important dates ------------------------------------ 2024-02-15 Team registration starts 2024-02-29 1st Call: Participation declaration 2024-03-14 First on-line meeting (tentative schedule) 2024-03-31 2nd Call: Participation declaration deadline (detailed team information should be fixed) 2024-04-17 Second on-line meeting (tentative schedule) 2024-05-13 Set-up day 2024-05-14 Competition Day 1 2024-05-15 Competition Day 2 , Award Ceremony ------------------------------ Competition Tasks -------------------------------------- This competition focuses on realizing robots that provide customer service in a conversational format at convenience stores. The emphasis is on the interaction capabilities with customers. Task 1: Interactive Customer Service In this task, functionalities such as image recognition, human state recognition, and location identification, which involves recognizing the customer's location in the store, their gestures, and the placement of items, are not evaluated. Instead, the focus is on engaging in accurate dialogue with customers in response to ambiguous requests and delivering the desired products to them. Customers convey their desired purchases to the service robot and request them to be placed in the shopping basket, using both natural language expressions and image presentation. The participants should build software to realize such an intelligent dialogue system for customer service robots. The participants can use OpenAI API or related LLM tools; however, we cannot guarantee the Internet connection quality at the competition site. If you use such an external cloud calculator, you must manage the risk yourself. Please note that installing your own wireless router will not be allowed. Task 2: Future Convenience Store Visionary Design In this competition, instead of completing tasks according to predefined rules, participants will propose possibilities for customer service and intelligent human-robot collaboration systems in future convenience stores in a presentation format based on their own creative ideas. The novelty, feasibility, and technical challenges of their ideas will be evaluated. The evaluation will focus on intelligent systems, service systems, and other systems mainly involving human interaction, which are expected to be useful in future convenience stores. Tasks involving no interaction with humans, such as autonomously cleaning toilets, are not included. Teams are encouraged to demonstrate the latest research and development on new approaches and applications related to customer service and employee support systems in a cyber environment. Specific examples of systems/proposals subject to evaluation include but are not limited to: - Planning systems that dynamically change and optimize the roles of service robots and employees. - Interactive service robot systems that recognize customer intentions and provide accurate services. - Training systems that determine appropriate training menus based on the skill levels of new employees. - Algorithms that observe customer purchasing behavior/movement paths and determine the optimal display layout. - Planning systems that dynamically change tasks to be executed based on the congestion status inside the store. Participants can use various types of systems and devices, including actual robot systems, but the primary focus of the final demonstration is on utilizing virtual spaces or Cyber-Physical Systems for the realization of intelligent service robots. Examples include digital twin systems supporting customer service action planning by intelligent robots and information presentation systems using wearable devices for efficient employee tasks. ------------------------------ Awards --------------------------------------------- Based on the ranking, the top three teams will be awarded certificates and prize money as follows: 1st place: 100,000 JPY + certificate 2nd place: 50,000 JPY + certificate 3rd place: 30,000 JPY + certificate ------------------------------ How to apply -------------------------------------------- Please access the following form to input detailed information about your team and team leader. The first deadline is the end of February; however, a tentative declaration of participation is welcome. We would appreciate you deciding the details of the team members by the end of March. Required information - Team name - Name/Affiliation/Grade/Email address of the team leader - Optional information - Estimated number of team members - Past experience and achievements in AI/Robot competitions - Web page of the team Please input the above information at the Google form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1zkfZG-fcxOt_emXUkZRTylih8J45a70TcPnM2a7Amp… 1st participation declaration: 28th Feb. (Tentative application is welcome) 2nd participation declaration: 31st Mar. (Confirmation of detailed team information) ----------------------- Contact. --------------------------------------- Please contact fcsc-info-ml(a)ml.tmu.ac.jp for any questions. See you all at ICRA 2024 in Yokohama! Best regards, ------------------------------------------------ Tetsunari Inamura Professor, Brain Science Institute, Tamagawa University, JAPAN TEL : +81-42-739-8679 URL : http://researchmap.jp/inamura/?lang=english Email : inamura(a)lab.tamagawa.ac.jp

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Call for Papers: 12th ICAPS Workshop on Planning and Robotics
by Iman Awaad 11 Feb '24

11 Feb '24

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

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RoboCup@Work 2024: Call for Participation
by Asad Norouzi 07 Feb '24

07 Feb '24

Call for Applications for Participation RoboCup 2024 – RoboCup at Work https://2024.robocup.org Venue: Eindhoven, The Netherlands Monday, July 15th through Monday, July 22nd, 2024 RoboCup at Work: Competing for the Factory of the Future RoboCup at Work is a league of the RoboCup competition that replicates the use of robots in autonomous, industrial scenarios. It aims to promote research and development that enables the use of innovative mobile robots with advanced manipulators for cutting-edge industrial applications. Such applications include complex tasks ranging from manufacturing, automation, and parts handling to general logistics, as well as interaction with human workers. The RoboCup at Work league is characterized by an industrial environment. This consists of manipulation objects including nuts and bolts, arena elements such as shelves, bins, and platforms of different sizes, and networked automation devices like conveyor belts and drilling machines. The actual competition tasks to be performed in the environment are defined in a set of so-called tests. Each test addresses various mobile manipulation capabilities such as grasping, transportation, precision placement, and visual serving. The complete rules of RoboCup@Work as well as further technical details are (will be) posted on the RoboCup@Work website (https://atwork.robocup.org). Participation in the Competition All teams that intend to participate in the competition have to perform the following steps: 1. Submission of qualification materials including a Team Description Paper and a video of their robot performance. Details are below. 2. Final registration (qualified teams only) Qualification The qualification process serves a dual purpose: It should allow the Technical Committee (aka TC) to assess the safety of the robots a team intends to bring to the competition, and it should allow ranking teams according to a set of evaluation criteria in order to select the most promising teams for a competition, if not all interested teams can be permitted. The TC will select the qualified teams according to the qualification materials provided by the teams. The evaluation criteria will include: - Team description paper - Relevant scientific contributions/publications - The professional quality of the robot and software - Novelty of approach - Relevance to industry - Performance in previous competitions - Contribution to RoboCup at Work league, e.g. by Organization of events and/or provision and sharing of knowledge - The quality of the robot's performance of a task (selected by the team) shown in a video - Team website Team Description Paper The Team Description Paper (TDP) is a central element of the qualification process and has to be provided by each team as part of the qualification process. The TDP should at least contain the following information in the author/title section of the paper: - Name of the team (title) - Team members (authors), including the team leader - Link to the team website - Contact information The body of the TDP should contain information on the following: - the focus of research/research interest - a description of the hardware, including an image of the robot(s) - a description of the software, esp. the functional and software architectures - innovative technology (if any) - reusability of the system or parts thereof - applicability and relevance to industrial tasks - usage of components (software or hardware) developed by other RoboCup at Work teams The team description paper should cover the technical and scientific approach in detail, while the team website should be designed for a broader audience. Both the website and the TDP have to be in English. All TDPs must be written using the following template: https://www.overleaf.com/latex/templates/springer-lecture-notes-in-computer… Submission and Evaluation All applications with the qualification material must be submitted by March 3rd, 2024 through the following online form: https://forms.gle/iaJnpiWKjCXpCnC49 Qualified teams will be tentatively announced by March 18th, 2024. Important Links of RoboCup@Work League Official Website: https://atwork.robocup.org Discord: https://discord.gg/WaBHRdZq LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/14158849/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/i/communities/1606361981937754115 Mailing List: https://lists.robocup.org/mm/lists/rc-work.lists.robocup.org/ Regards, RoboCup@Work EC/TC/OC

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Reminder: RoboCup SPL Call for Applications for Participation 2024
by Stefan Seering 06 Feb '24

06 Feb '24

Call for Applications for Participation Monday 15th July through Monday 22th July 2024 Eindhoven, The Netherlands 2024.robocup.org <https://2024.robocup.org> More details can be found on the league homepage <https://spl.robocup.org/call-for-participation-2024/>. All applications with the (pre-)qualification material must be submitted by *15th of February 2024*, by email to rc-spl-tc(a)lists.robocup.org. / RoboCup 2024 Standard Platform League Technical and Organizing Committees/

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ADT 2024 - PRELIMINARY CALL FOR PAPERS
by Nicholas Mattei 01 Feb '24

01 Feb '24

*ADT** 2024 - PRELIMINARY CALL FOR PAPERS* The 8th International Conference on Algorithmic Decision Theory - ADT 2024 <https://preflib.github.io/adt2024/index> will be held October 14-16, 2024, at the Center for Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science (DIMACS) at Rutgers University. ADT 2024 focuses on algorithmic decision theory broadly defined, seeking to bring together researchers and practitioners coming from diverse areas of Computer Science, Economics, and Operations Research in order to improve the theory and practice of modern decision support. The conference topics include research in: Algorithms, Argumentation Theory, Artificial Intelligence, Computational Social Choice, Database Systems, Decision Analysis, Discrete Mathematics, Game Theory, Machine Learning and Adversarial Machine Learning, Matching, Multi-agent Systems, Multiple Criteria Decision Aiding, Networks, Optimization, Preference Modeling, Risk Analysis and Adversarial Risk Analysis, and Utility Theory. ADT 2024 provides a multi-disciplinary forum for sharing knowledge in this area with a special focus on algorithmic issues in decision theory, continuing the tradition of the first seven editions of the International Conference on Algorithmic Decision Theory (ADT 2009 Venice, ADT 2011 Rutgers, ADT 2013 Brussels, ADT 2015 Lexington KY, ADT 2017 Luxembourg, ADT 2019 Durham NC, ADT 2021 Toulouse) which brought together researchers and practitioners from around the globe. *Important Dates* *Title and Abstract Submission*: May 10, 2024 *Full Paper Submission*: May 17, 2024 *Notification*: July 19, 2024 *Final Version of Accepted Papers*: August 9, 2024 *Conference Dates*: October 14-16, 2024 *Submissions* Submissions are invited on significant, original and previously unpublished research on all aspects of Algorithmic Decision Theory. Papers must be at most 15 pages long in the LNCS format (including references). The formal proceedings of ADT 2024 will be published by Springer Verlag in the Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence (LNAI) <http://www.springer.com/lncs>. ADT 2024 will not accept any paper that, at the time of submission, has already been published in a journal or another venue with formally published proceedings. However, in order to accommodate the publication norms of the many fields that work on decision theory, papers can be submitted but not already published elsewhere provided the authors note they are submitting for the non-proceedings track at the top of their submission. All papers will be peer-reviewed by a double-blind procedure. Therefore, papers must be submitted anonymously as pdf documents via the Microsoft CMT <https://cmt3.research.microsoft.com/ADT2024> system. It is important and required that authors do not reveal their identities in submitted papers. Since the review process is double blind, authors must take measures to ensure that their identity is not easily revealed from the submission itself. Authors should include the submission number (as assigned by the conference system) in the author field of the submission, and refer to their prior work in a neutral manner (i.e., instead of saying “We showed” say “XYZ et al. showed”). It is acceptable to submit work that has been presented in public or has appeared on arXiv, provided the submission itself is anonymized. *Submission Format:* Authors should consult Springer’s authors’ guidelines and use their proceedings templates <https://www.springer.com/gp/computer-science/lncs/conference-proceedings-gu…>, either for LaTeX or for Word, for the preparation of their papers. Note that at least one author of each accepted paper is required to attend the conference to present the work. Authors will be required to agree to this requirement at the time of submission. In addition, the corresponding author of each accepted paper that will appear in the proceedings, acting on behalf of all of the authors of that paper, will need to complete and sign a Consent-to-Publish form, through which the copyright for their paper is transferred to Springer. To accommodate the publishing traditions of different fields, ADT 2024 will accept two types of submissions: *Submissions with full text in the proceedings:* Papers of this type will be accepted for either oral or poster presentation, or both. Each accepted paper of this type will be allocated at most 15 pages in the proceedings and there will be no distinction between papers accepted for oral or poster presentation in the conference proceedings. *Submissions with one-page abstract in the proceeding:* Papers of this type will be accepted for either oral or poster presentation, or both. Each accepted paper of this type will appear as a one-page abstract in the proceedings, along with a URL pointing to the full paper. This option is available to accommodate subsequent publication in journals that would not consider results that have been published in preliminary form in conference proceedings. Such papers must be formatted just like papers submitted for full-text publication, at the submission time, but authors are required to write “submission without proceedings” into the author field of their paper (instead of author names), if they choose this category. Otherwise, it will be assumed, by default, that their paper is submitted in the first category (submissions with full-text in the proceedings). Rupert Freeman and Nicholas Mattei ADT 2024 Program Co-Chairs David Pennock and Lirong Xia ADT 2024 General Chairs -- *Nicholas Mattei* Assistant Professor, Tulane University nsmattei(a)tulane.edu | www.nickmattei.net Stanley Thomas Hall | 305B +1 504 865 5782 Department of Computer Science Tulane University 6823 St Charles Ave New Orleans, LA 70118

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Reminder: RoboCup SPL Call for Applications for Participation 2024
by Stefan Seering 01 Feb '24

01 Feb '24

Call for Applications for Participation Monday 15th July through Monday 22th July 2024 Eindhoven, The Netherlands 2024.robocup.org <https://2024.robocup.org> More details can be found on the league homepage <https://spl.robocup.org/call-for-participation-2024/>. All applications with the (pre-)qualification material must be submitted by *15th of February 2024*, by email to rc-spl-tc(a)lists.robocup.org. / RoboCup 2024 Standard Platform League Technical and Organizing Committees/

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[meetings] Get ROS2 Industrial Ready Training 2024
by Yuhong Lin 29 Jan '24

29 Jan '24

Final Call for Early Bird: Get ROS2 Industrial Ready Hands-On Training (02/19-02/21, 2024) Dear Roboticists, Don't miss out on the final chance to secure your spot at the upcoming 'Get ROS2 Industrial Ready' training scheduled to be held online from February 19 - 21, 2024. *Training Details:* - *Dates*: February 19 - 21, 2024 - *Location*: Live Online Classes + Remote Real Robot Practice - *Time*: 9:00 – 18:00 Central European Time (CET) - *Limited Seats:* Only 15 participants - *Website*: https://www.theconstructsim.com/ros2-industrial-workshop <https://www.theconstructsim.com/ros2-industrial-workshop/?utm_source=robocu…> *About the Training:* Join industry mentors for a 3-day Live Training and gain practical skills in: 1. How to use ROS2 in real robots 2. How to make robots navigate with ROS2 3. How to make a robotic arm manipulate objects using ROS2 *What You Will Learn:* - Basic ROS2 Concepts - ROS2 Topics - ROS2 Debugging Tools - ROS2 DDS - ROS2 Services - ROS2 Actions - ROS1_Bridge - Parameters in ROS - ROS2 Mapping - ROS2 Localization - ROS2 Path Planning - ROS2 Obstacle Avoidance - Nav2 Galactic Functionality - Nav2 Behavior Trees - Navigation Plugins and Custom Plugin Creation - Nav2 New Features (Simple Commander API; Waypoint Follower; Controller Server in Deep) - Configure a Moveit2 package for a robotic arm - Programmatically perform motion planning - Use perception to detect an object’s location - Grasp objects *This training is designed for:* - ROS or ROS2 beginners - Engineers aiming to quickly master ROS2 for real robot applications - Team leads seeking software solutions to develop scalable robotics products more efficiently. *Training Highlights:* - *ROS Expert Instruction*: Learn from industry leaders through live online sessions and hands-on projects. - *Comprehensive Curriculum*: From basic ROS2 concepts to enabling warehouse robots to fully operate with ROS2. - *Real Robot Experience:* Interact with real warehouse robots - RB-1 BASE and UR3e robotic arm. This training is organized by TheConstruct.ai <https://www.theconstructsim.coma/>. For any questions please email us at info(a)theconstructsim.com. Best regards, The Construct team

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RoboCup 2024 Rescue Agent Simulation Competition - Call for Participation
by Farshid Faraji 28 Jan '24

28 Jan '24

Call for Participation 2024 RoboCup Rescue Agent Simulation Competitions to be held in Eindhoven, Netherlands – July 15-21, 2024 https://rescuesim.robocup.org/2024-eindhoven-agent-cfp/ Co-located with the RoboCup 2024 https://2024.robocup.org IMPORTANT DATES Registration…………………………..: February 15, 2024 (23:55 UTC) Acceptance Notification…………………………..: February 20, 2024 TDP submission…………………….: April 15, 2024 (23:55 UTC) Reviewed TDP submission……: May 04, 2024, June 15, 2024 Camera-ready TDP submission.: June 04, 2024 July 1, 2024 Tournament dates………………….: July 15-21, 2024 AGENT SIMULATION COMPETITION This initiative focuses on promoting the use of Artificial Intelligence to support teamwork coordination and decision-making of ground rescue teams in a post-disaster urban setting. It maintains a computer simulation platform that can realistically represent natural disaster scenarios where Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) plans can be assessed. This platform is a comprehensive artificial simulation environment that can be used as a testbed to the effectiveness of coordination strategies of USAR teams, coalition formations of heterogeneous teams, rescue plans to explore large-scale environments with limited set of resources to search for survivors, disaster response public policies, among others. The RoboCup Rescue Agent Simulation Competition involves primarily evaluating the performance of teams of agents in regards to their distributed coordination and planning algorithms for rescuing civilians in a city after an earthquake. The goal is evaluating the effectiveness of Ambulance Team, Police Force, and Fire Brigade agents on rescuing civilians in earthquake scenarios. Here are some of the challenges that can be tackled in this competition: - Decision Making Algorithms - Task Allocation Methods - Multi-Agent Coordination and Team Formation Methods - Path Finding - Search Algorithms GETTING STARTED GUIDE Here are some pointers to get started with the agents development ADF Java: - Repository: roborescue/adf-sample-agent-java: RoboCup Rescue Agent Development Framework Sample Agent Java (github.com) - Documentation: Java ADF manual Python: - Repository: roborescue/rcrs-core-python (github.com) - Repository: roborescue/rcrs-sample-agent-python (github.com) Docker: - Repository: roborescue/rcrs-docker (github.com) - Using docker is optional for teams that wish to have an environment that is already setup for development INFRASTRUCTURE COMPETITION The Infrastructure competition involves the presentation of tools or simulators related to disaster management issues already developed by the participating team. The aim is to evaluate possible enhancements and expansions of the RoboCup Rescue Simulation League environment (both the agent simulator and frameworks and the virtual robot platform) based on the new ideas and concepts proposed in these tools and simulators. The evaluation will be done by a panel of experts and the winner chosen according to a set of factors related to the technical aspects of the tool or simulator and the presentation. The winner tool will be selected for further integration with the simulation platform. The participation in the Infrastructure competition requires the submission of a detailed Team Description Paper (TDP) describing the tool or simulator. In addition to the submission of the TDP, teams interested in participating in the Infrastructure competition must release their source code as an open-source project PRIOR to July 1, 2024. Participant teams should address topics including, but not limited to - Improvements to the Virtual Robot Simulator - Improvements to the Agent Development Framework - Increase the number of participants on the RoboCup Rescue league - Provide agent development kits that render easy the participation of newcomers - Integrate the Agent and Virtual Robot competitions - Improve the RoboCup Rescue sub-simulators REGISTRATION Teams must register via the submission system available at https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=rsl2024 no later than February 15, 2024 (23:55 UTC). This registration requires only teams to fill the “Title” field and the name, institution, and contact information of all team members. The “Title” field should be “Agent_[TeamName]” to participate in the Agent Competition and “Infrastructure_[TeamName]” for the infrastructure competition, where [TeamName] should be replaced by the name of the team. Teams are not requested to submit a TDP for registering to participate in the 2024 RoboCup Agent Competition. Registered teams will be accepted to participate in the competition based on a first-come first-serve basis constrained by the allowed number of teams per country. We encourage teams to develop their code using the new RCRS Core Python in order to take advantage of state-of-the-art Machine Learning tools and algorithms, such as SciKit, TensorFlow, PyTorch, among others. Qualified teams have to submit their TDP by April 15, 2024 (23:55 UTC), otherwise the team will be disqualified. TDP SUBMISSION Accepted teams must submit a Team Description Paper (TDP) (in English) describing the strategy and recent advancements implemented in the team. The TDP is limited to 16 pages and must be electronically submitted as PDF through the submission system available at https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=rsl2024 no later than April 15, 2024 (23:55 UTC). The TDP file name has to be “Agent_[TeamName]” for the Agent Competition, where [TeamName] is the name of the team submitting the TDP. This format should be also used in the “Title” field in the submission system https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=rsl2024. Teams should prepare their Agent Competition TDP based on the templates available at https://github.com/roborescue/rcrs-templates. All TDPs will be peer-reviewed by at least two PC members. The suggestions of the reviewers will be released on May 04, 2024 and they should be incorporated into the camera-ready version of the TDP. The camera-ready version should be uploaded to EasyChair no later than June 04, 2024. * Previous TDPs can be found in the Participating Teams links https://rescuesim.robocup.org/past-events/past-competitions/ * If you have any questions please reach out to rsl2024(a)easychair.org RULES Please read the Agent Simulation Competition Rules document available at 2024 RoboCup Rescue Simulation for further details. ABOUT ROBOCUP RESCUE AGENT SIMULATION LEAGUE Natural disasters are major adverse events that cause large-scale economic, human, and environmental losses. They are usually difficult to predict and even more challenging to prevent from happening. These characteristics demand disaster management strategies to be in place to mitigate damaging consequences after a natural disaster. The mission of the RoboCup Rescue Agent Simulation League is to promote research and development in the socially significant domain of natural disaster with focus on multiagent teamwork coordination and decision support systems. The effective implementation of this mission is translated into three main objectives. First, the league aims to provide a simulator able to realistically represent natural disaster scenarios where response rescue plans can be assessed. Second, it aims to define evaluation benchmarks for response plans elaborated by policy-makers. Finally, it aims to promote research and development by organizing competitions to stimulate the exchange of ideas and experience between researchers and practitioners. These aims are designed to help in the development of more sophisticated and formalized response plans to effectively respond to natural disasters and reduce the negative impacts on society. Best Regards, Farshid Faraji on behalf of RoboCup Rescue Simulation League

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[robotics-worldwide] [Meetings][News] RoboCup 2024 Virtual Robot Competition - Call for Participation
by Reyhaneh 28 Jan '24

28 Jan '24

*RoboCup Rescue Simulation Virtual Robot Competitions 2024* *Eindhoven, Netherlands**July 17-21, 2024* https://robocup-rsvrl.github.io/ <https://www.robocup.org/leagues/27>https://2024.robocup.org *IMPORTANT DATES* Team Qualification Materials Submission Deadline..: Feb 29, 2024 (23:55 GMT) Filling the intent letter form is mandatory. Qualified Teams Announcement…………....................…: Rolling basis till March 10, 2024 Camera-ready TDP submission………....................….….: June 9, 2024 If you are interested or considering participating please take the time to fill the RoboCup 2024 Virtual Robot Competition - intent letter form <https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSd4i_dKum7YKmuBESSf_ls5kna__w11BvJ…> as soon as possible, so that we can inform you about the latest developments and updates. *(1) RoboCup Rescue Simulation League and Virtual Robot Competition* ——————— The Virtual Robot Simulation competition aims to raise awareness about the complexities involved in search and rescue applications. It provides an objective platform for evaluating robotic implementations in environments that mimic real-world disaster scenarios. This competition also fosters collaboration among researchers, promoting the exchange of ideas and advancements in the field. In this competition, a generic urban disaster simulation environment is created on network computers. This virtual world is populated by robots who carry out search and rescue operations. These robots are designed to mimic the roles and responsibilities of the rescue team in the real-world to work together with the rescue team to reduce the disaster effects. Participating in the RoboCup Virtual Robot Competition offers a multitude of benefits. This competition is part of the RoboCup Rescue Simulation League, provides a unique platform for participants to apply and enhance their skills in AI and robotics within a simulated disaster environment. The Virtual Robot Competition is based on ROS/Gazebo, a sophisticated robot simulator. This platform allows participants to simulate multiple robots with capabilities that closely mirror those of real robots. It provides an opportunity to work with a variety of sensors and actuators, and to develop UAV and UGV robots using standard modules. The competition also addresses a wide range of research topics, including human-robot interfaces, autonomous navigation, sensor fusion, image processing, speech processing, 2D and 3D mapping, distributed planning, and distributed learning. By participating in the competition, individuals can gain hands-on experience in these areas, contributing to their professional development and potentially leading to advancements in the field of AI and robotics. *(2) Intention of participation* ——————- If you are interested or considering participating please take the time to fill the RoboCup 2024 Virtual Robot Competition - intent letter form <https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSd4i_dKum7YKmuBESSf_ls5kna__w11BvJ…> as soon as possible, so that we can inform you about the latest developments and updates. *(3) Qualification material* ————————- Besides sending the intention of participation, please prepare before Feb 29, 2024, a Team Description Paper describing the most innovative contributions or scientific results your team is intended to provide. The TDP is limited to 8 pages and must be formatted according to the LNCS format: http://www.springer.com/gp/computer-science/lncs/conference-proceedings-gui… <https://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.springer.com/gp/computer-science/ln…> And the tex template file of the TDP can be found on the overleaf: https://www.overleaf.com/read/nrcfnpygskyx <https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.overleaf.com/read/nrcfnpygskyx&sa=…> The Team Description Paper is an overview of the methodologies you use or intend to use to control your robots inside the Virtual Robot Competition. If applicable, include a reference to your latest publications. The qualification material should be placed on a dedicated web page on the team’s home page. Please include the link to the qualification material on the intention of participation information. *(5) Useful links* ———– - Virtual Robot Competition 2024 Rule (draft) <https://docs.google.com/document/d/1M-llzIVtY_dHf9G9V5I-YqmgA8gdEx8fi2H-9ce…> - Virtual Robot Competition Wiki <https://robocup-rsvrl.github.io/> - Virtual Robot Competition 2022 Server <https://github.com/RoboCup-RSVRL/RoboCup2022RVRL_Demo> - Official RoboCup Rescue Simulation website <https://rescuesim.robocup.org/> Kind regards, Reyhaneh Pahlevan on behalf of RoboCup Rescue Simulation Executive, Technical, and Organizing Committees

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[news] Call for Participation RoboCup German Open 2024
by Ferrein, Alexander Antoine 26 Jan '24

26 Jan '24

RoboCup German Open 2024 - Major Leagues Call for Participation https://robocup.de/german-open April 17th – 20th, 2024 Messe Kassel, Germany The RoboCup German Open 2024 will be the 21st open RoboCup competition held in Germany. The event will take place in Kassel at Messe Kassel. Every regional and international Major team is cordially invited to take part in the event. --------------------- RoboCup Major Leagues (international teams) ------------------------- Competitions are from April 17 - 20 in the following Major leagues: RoboCup Soccer Standard Platform League RoboCup Soccer Humanoid League RoboCup Soccer Small Size League RoboCup Rescue Robot League RoboCup Logistics League RoboCup @Home League RoboCup @Work League The registration opens *** February 12th, 2024 ***. The registration deadline is *** February 29th, 2024 ***. Visit https://register.robocup.de to register your RoboCup Major League team. Details on the registration (fee, accommodation, rules) are available on the website. Booking of blocked accommodation with special rates is possible after your registration. The Major Leagues Organizing Committee: Patrick Göttsch (Standard Platform League) Maike Paetzel-Prüsmann (Humanoid League) Nicolai Ommer (Small Size League) Johannes Pellenz, Stefan May (Rescue Robot League) Sven Wachsmuth (@Home League) Alexander Ferrein (Logistics League) Christoph Steup (RoboCup @Work League) -------------------------- RoboCup Junior (regional teams) ------------------------------- From April 18-21 the final event of the German RoboCupJunior Championship will be held at RoboCup German Open 2024 in Kassel. The best teams that have qualified in the eight previous local tournaments will take part. The best German Junior teams will qualify for RoboCup 2024 in Eindhoven and for the European RoboCupJunior Competition 2024 in Hannover. -------------------------------- Important dates —————------------------------------------ 2024-02-12 Major teams registration starts 2024-02-29 Major teams registration deadline 2024-03-11 Invoices are sent to team leaders 2024-03-17 Registration deadline for team member updates 2024-03-31 Registration fee due 2024-04-17 Set-up day Major League teams (venue opens 9:00) 2024-04-18 Competition day (open to the public) 2024-04-19 Competition day (open to the public) 2024-04-20 Competition day, Major finals (open to the public) 2024-04-21 Competition day, Junior finals (open to the public) ----------------------------------- Contact --------------------------------------------- Please contact germanopen(a)robocup.de for any questions. See you all at the 21st RoboCup German Open 2024! Best regards, German RoboCup Committee ---------------------------------- Acknowledgement ———————————————————— The RoboCup German Open 2024 is supported by the German Federal Ministry for Research and Education (BMBF) under grant number 16ME0933. -- Prof. Dr. Alexander Ferrein Mobile Autonomous Systems & Cognitive Robotics Institute Robotics and Foundations of Computer Science FH Aachen - University of Applied Sciences Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology Eupener Strasse 70 | 52066 Aachen | Germany T: +49 241 6009 51904 | F: +49 241 6009 52190 E: ferrein(a)fh-aachen.de | W: www.ferrein.fh-aachen.de Speaker Major Competitions of the RoboCup German Regional Committee W: www.robocup.de Former Vice-Chair of the African-German Network of Excellence in Science A Network of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation W: www.agnes-h.org -- Prof. Dr. Alexander Ferrein Mobile Autonomous Systems & Cognitive Robotics Institute Robotics and Foundations of Computer Science FH Aachen - University of Applied Sciences Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology Eupener Strasse 70 | 52066 Aachen | Germany T: +49 241 6009 51904 | F: +49 241 6009 52190 E: ferrein(a)fh-aachen.de | W: www.ferrein.fh-aachen.de Speaker Major Competitions of the RoboCup German Regional Committee W: www.robocup.de Former Vice-Chair of the African-German Network of Excellence in Science A Network of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation W: www.agnes-h.org

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

26 Jan '24

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

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

22 Jan '24

Call for papers – NEW SUBMISSION DATE. RoboCup International Symposium 2024 https://2024.robocup.org/?page_id=2734 Monday 22 July 2024 Eindhoven, Netherlands. The 27th RoboCup International Symposium will be held on 22 July 2024, in conjunction with RoboCup 2024 (15 July to 21 July 2024), in Eindhoven, The Netherlands. We call for submissions of papers reporting innovative, original research with relevance to areas of robotics and artificial intelligence as listed below. Within the described scope of topics, we also encourage submissions of high-quality overview articles, papers describing real-world research, and papers reporting theoretical results. Researchers are invited to submit their work independently of whether they participate in the RoboCup competitions or have a RoboCup team. The symposium will be held in person at the Evoluon Conference Center in Eindhoven. In addition to the regular track with regular research papers, there is the development track encouraging reports on innovative hardware developments, software frameworks, and open- source releases of software components. A review of papers describing these contributions will be based on technical aspects and benefits to the practice of communities working in the above fields in general and RoboCup in particular. IMPORTANT DATES Submission of full papers: 8 April 2024 (changed from January 30 to better align with previous years) Notification to authors: 22 May 2024 RoboCup Symposium 2024: 22 July 2024 (RoboCup on 15-21 July 2024) SUBMISSION AND PROCEEDINGS All papers will be peer-reviewed and evaluated by members of the senior program committee. The proceedings of the RoboCup International Symposium will be published and archived within the Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence (LNCS/LNAI) series by Springer-Verlag after the conference. Papers should be formatted following the LNAI author guidelines (https://www.springer.com/gp/computer-science/lncs/conference-proceedings-gu…) and must be electronically submitted through Springer's electronic-submission system EquinOCS (https://equinocs.springernature.com/service/RoboCup2024). Submissions are limited to 12 pages including references. The LNAI author guidelines site contains a Springer's proceedings LaTeX template (v2.23), an older version of this template (v2.21) is also available in Overleaf: (https://www.overleaf.com/latex/templates/springer-conference-proceedings-te…) TOPICS Topics of interest include, but are not limited to: * Robot Hardware and Software - mobile robotics - humanoid robotics - sensors and actuators - embedded and mobile devices - robot construction and new materials - robot system integration - robot software architectures - robot programming environments and languages - real-time and concurrent programming - robot simulators - sim2real learning * Perception and Action - 3D perception - distributed sensor integration - sensor noise filtering - real-time image processing and pattern recognition - motion and sensor models - sensory-motor control - robot kinematics and dynamics - high-dimensional motion control * Robot Cognition and Learning - world modelling and knowledge representation - learning from demonstration and imitation - localisation, navigation, and mapping - planning and reasoning - decision making under uncertainty - neural systems and deep learning - complex motor skill acquisition - reinforcement learning and optimisation - motion and sensor model learning * Human-Robot Interaction - robot social intelligence - fluency of interaction - speech synthesis and natural language generation - natural language recognition - explainable robot behaviours - emotion recognition and reaction - understanding human intent and behaviour - safety, security and dependability - enabling humans to predict robot behaviour * Multi-Robot Systems - team coordination methods - communication protocols - learning and adaptive systems - teamwork and heterogeneous agents - dynamic resource allocation - adjustable autonomy * Education and Edutainment - robotics and artificial intelligence education - educational robotics - robot kits and programming tools - robotic entertainment * Applications and Benchmarking - search and rescue robots - robot surveillance - service and social robots - robots at home, at work and in public spaces - robots in the real world - performance metrics - human-robot interaction DEVELOPMENT TRACK To encourage open-source release of hardware and software systems, the RoboCup International Symposium has included a development track in recent years. In 2024, we expand the scope of this track to include datasets and benchmarks. We encourage the submission of papers describing open-source hardware and software, tools and frameworks that facilitate development of robotics hardware and software, datasets that enable new robotic capabilities, as well as benchmarks that establish reproducible test beds and performance metrics to advance research. If applicable, contributions to the special track should include evidence of the released system or dataset, and highlight past, ongoing, and/or potential future impacts on the RoboCup community. A review of these contributions will be based on technical merit and benefits to the RoboCup community, and the research topics listed above. PROGRAM CO-CHAIRS Hiroyuki Okada (Tamagawa University, Japan) Elena Torta (Eindhoven University of Technology, NL) Josiah Hanna (University of Wisconsin, USA ) Edna Barros (Federal University of Pernambuco, Brazil) LOCAL ORGANIZERS Elena Torta (Eindhoven University of Technology, NL) Ömür Arslan (Eindhoven University of Technology, NL) Femke van Beek (Eindhoven University of Technology, NL) Arnoud Visser (University of Amsterdam, NL) CONTACT You can contact via the PC chairs via the contact button in EquinOCS

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

18 Jan '24

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

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

17 Jan '24

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

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

17 Jan '24

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

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

16 Jan '24

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

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

14 Jan '24

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

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