Year: 2014

Workshop on Human-Robot Spatial Interaction at HRI 2015

Marc Hanheide Events

hrsi-logo-rotMembers of L-CAS are organising the workshop on Human-Robot Spatial Interaction at next year’s HRI conference. This is a prime venue for researchers to share new insights and progress on the following topics:

  • Human-Aware Navigation (with a focus on elderly and/or mobility impaired persons, and children with motoric or cognitive problems)
  • Human-Robot Joint Motion
  • Human-Human Spatial Interaction (HHSI)
  • The communicative character of spatial movement, social signals in HRSI and HHSI
  • Interactive Learning/Adaptation of HRSI – “Human-in-the-loop”
  • Visual cues to facilitate legibility of movement in HRSI and HHSI
  • Feedback Measures and Devices for HRSI and HHSI
  • Ethical issues arising from mobile robots in elder care and education

Submit your research papers by 18/01/2015 – 23:59PST.

 

Further details can be found in the workshop’s website.

New job opportunities: 2 Postdocs in Assistive & Service Robotics

Nicola Bellotto ENRICHME, FLOBOT, Jobs

The University of Lincoln is seeking to appoint 2 new Postdoctoral Research Fellows in Assistive Robotics (Robot Perception for Long-Term Human Activity Monitoring) and Service Robotics (Robot Perception for Human Tracking and Motion Analysis) to join the Centre for Autonomous Systems Research (L-CAS). Details are available on the University’s job opportunities website.

Wearable Intelligent Technology

Oscar Martinez Mozos Uncategorized

Our “Interactive Hat” reacts to the presence of the people. The hat integrates technology based on artificial intelligence with a fashionable design. The hat is able to detect people using its integrated webcam, and then greets with a flashing and colourful light pattern.

This a UROS (http://studentasproducer.lincoln.ac.uk/ in collaboration with  designer Marina Walger (http://www.marinawalger.com/)

Check the video here:

http://youtu.be/oOat6jH8tfw

CFP – Special Issue: “Representations and Reasoning for Robotics”

Nicola Bellotto Announcement, publication, Uncategorized

Call for Papers

Special Issue of Robotics on “Representations and Reasoning for Robotics”

http://www.mdpi.com/journal/robotics/special_issues/reasoning-robotics

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 28 February 2015
As the field of robotics matures, the development of ever more intelligent robots becomes possible. However, robots deployed in homes, offices and other complex domains are faced with the formidable challenge of representing, revising and reasoning with incomplete domain knowledge about their capabilities, their environments, and how the former interacts with the latter.

Many algorithms have been developed for qualitatively and quantitatively representing and reasoning with knowledge and uncertainty. Unfortunately, research contributions in this area are fragmented, making it difficult for researchers with different expertise to share advances in their respective fields. The objective of this special issue is therefore to promote a deeper understanding of recent breakthroughs and challenges in knowledge representation and reasoning for robots. We are interested in efforts that integrate, or motivate an integration of algorithms for knowledge representation and/or commonsense reasoning, on one or more robots, in different application domains.

Topics of interest include (but are not limited to):

– Knowledge acquisition and representation
– Symbolic and probabilistic representations
– Reasoning with incomplete knowledge
– Interactive and cooperative decision-making
– Learning and symbol grounding
– Qualitative representations and reasoning

We particularly encourage the submission of papers that ground these topics in research areas such as robot perception, human–robot (and multirobot) collaboration, and robot planning.
Guest Editors

Dr. Nicola Bellotto
(University of Lincoln, UK)

Dr. Nick Hawes
(University of Birmingham, UK)

Dr. Mohan Sridharan
(The University of Auckland, New Zealand)

Prof. Daniele Nardi
(“Sapienza” Universita’ di Roma, Italy)
Submission

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are refereed through a peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Robotics is an international peer-reviewed Open Access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Robot Linda to meet the public at London’s Natural History Museum

Marc Hanheide STRANDS

Members of the public will have the opportunity to meet Linda the robot at a week-long celebration of university research at the Natural History Museum in London.

Linda is a specialist mobile robot currently being programmed to act intelligently in real-world environments, with the ultimate aim of being able to support security guards or staff in care homes.

She is one of six robots involved in the £7.2 million collaborative STRANDS project aimed at creating mobile robots that are able to operate independently, based on an understanding of 3D space and how this space changes over time.

Linda, who is based at the University of Lincoln, UK, and named after the city’s Roman roots as Lindum Colonia, will be mingling with visitors to the Museum from 9th to 13th June in the ‘Robots on Patrol’ exhibit.

The event is part of Universities Week 2014 which aims to increase public awareness of the wide and varied role of the UK’s universities.

It will be an opportunity for the research team to showcase the robot, which has already learned to map a building and run for 30 days autonomously.

Funded by the European Union’s Seventh Framework programme (FP7), the research project involves six academic partners, a security company and an Austrian care home provider, where the technology will be tested.

The robots will eventually be deployed to run for an extended time so they have the chance to develop an understanding of how the world should appear and be able to identify deviations from their normal environment.

Dr Marc Hanheide, from the University of Lincoln’s School of Computer Science, will be on hand throughout the week to explain Linda’s capabilities.

He said: “The aim is to show members of the public how this sort of technology could help us in our everyday lives, assisting humans in basic activities allowing them to concentrate on more important aspects of their work.

“It’s not just about providing a care home or security robot. We are trying to enable robots to learn from their long-term experience and their perception of how the environment unfolds in time. It will have many possible applications and taking Linda to the Natural History Museum is a fantastic opportunity for people to see how robots like this will, one day, be able to aid and assist humans in a variety of roles.”

The exhibit is just one of a number being hosted by the Natural History Museum as part of Universities Week 2014.

Watch the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67ul8Ix8ehs