RSS 2016 Workshop on "A Community-Driven Modular Research Platform for Sociable Human-Robot Interaction"

URL: http://www.quori.org/community-input-meetings/#rss-16-1

Hardware Survey: http://bit.ly/1rvShLG 

LOCATION: University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA.

DATE: Sunday, June 19, 2016

TIME: 14:00-17:30

DESCRIPTION:

The goal of this workshop is to advance the process of community-informed design and development of Quori, a low-cost robot hardware and software platform to enable computing research in human-robot interaction. Quori is being developed by the workshop organizers through NSF Computing Research Infrastructure support.

The workshop will present hardware designs for Quori, along with exploratory exercises to inform the development of proposed software systems to better meet the needs of the research community. This workshop will consist of hands-on activities and discussion of the Quori platform.

SCHEDULE:

WORKSHOP ORGANIZERS:

• Mark Yim (University of Pennsylvania)
• Maja Mataric' (University of Southern California)
• Ross Mead (Semio)

CONTACT (please e-mail to all three of us together about any workshop questions/input/feedback):

• Mark Yim (yim(at)seas.upenn.edu)
• Maja Mataric' (mataric(at)usc.edu)
• Ross Mead (ross(at)semio.xyz)

AAAI 2016 Spring Symposium on "Enabling Computing Research in Socially Intelligent Human-Robot Interaction: A Community-Driven Modular Research Platform"

URL: http://www.quori.org/community-input-meetings

EVENT: AAAI 2016 Spring Symposia

LOCATION: Palo Alto, California, USA

IMPORTANT DATES:

• Submission deadline: Friday, January 8, 2016
• Notification: Friday, January 15, 2016
• Camera-ready deadline: Tuesday, January 22, 2016
• Symposium: Monday, March 21, 2016 to Wednesday, March 23, 2016

SCHEDULE:

The schedule can also be downloaded here.

The AAAI Digital Proceedings can be found here.

DESCRIPTION:

The goal of this symposium is to kick-off the process of community-informed design and development of Quori, a low-cost robot hardware and software platform to enable computing research in HRI. Quori is being developed by the symposium organizers through NSF support. The hardware design will involve advances in user-centric, affordable design, safety, modularity, generality, and system integration. The software design will involve novel general algorithms and open source robust code bases that enable the hardware platform to operate “out of the box” with a set of socially intelligent behavior primitives enabling computing researchers to focus on their areas of interest without having to develop low-level robot control algorithms and code.

The symposium will present initial hardware design ideas and plans for Quori, along with exploratory exercises to inform the development of proposed software systems to better meet the needs of the research community. Our “design by quorum” approach is combined with modular hardware and extensible software that centers on creating a standard platform vetted by the community and builds on recent technologies to minimize cost without sacrificing performance. These topics will be discussed through a mix of presentations, posters, invited talks, plenary sessions, and breakouts, to maximize participant interaction. Therefore, advances made through the discussion at the symposium will serve to push the field forward, thereby impacting the computing community at large, including AI and robotics.

TOPICS:

The symposium invites submissions describing opinions and original work, either completed or still in progress, related to one or more of the following:

• Recognition and generation of fundamental robot social behaviors, such as spacing (i.e., where to be), eye gaze (i.e., where to look), natural language (i.e., what to say), body language (i.e., how to act), and timing (i.e., when to act), among others
• Human-machine dialog/interaction management, decision-making, and learning
• Computational models of social dynamics and interaction patterns in human-robot interactions
• Mapping, localization, path-planning, and navigation in human environments
• Context/situational awareness and scene understanding in human-robot social interactions
• Online adaptation to human social behavior and interaction contexts
• Long-term learning of human behaviors, preferences, and needs
• Software architectures, tools, and systems for facilitating human-robot interactions
• Sensor, mechanical, and computational hardware for enabling human-robot interactions
• Ethics in the design of social robot hardware and software

SUBMISSIONS:

Prospective authors are invited to fill the survey and submit to EasyChair any of the following: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=quoriaaaiss16

• Full paper (6-8 pages, PDF file)
• Position paper (2-4 pages, PDF file)
• Demo video (1-3 minutes, common file formats, e.g., AVI, MP4, etc.) including an extended abstract (1-2 pages, PDF file)

Submitted papers and abstracts should conform to the AAAI publication format; for templates and examples, follow this link: http://www.aaai.org/Publications/Author/author.php

SURVEYS:

To inform the discussion topics of the symposium, as well as receive shaping input from the community, participation in the Symposium will include completing a survey (anonymous or not, as preferred). The survey can be found until Friday, January 8, 2016 at: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/quori-aaai-ss-16-survey

In general, the organizing committee will be engaging the computing community at large periodically through surveys to elicit input and feedback on the proposed software and hardware systems being developed for the robot platform.

WORKSHOP ORGANIZERS:

• Maja Mataric' (University of Southern California)
• Mark Yim (University of Pennsylvania)
• Ross Mead (University of Southern California)

CONTACT (please email to all three of us together about any workshop questions/input/feedback):

• Maja Mataric' (mataric(at)usc.edu)
• Mark Yim (yim(at)seas.upenn.edu)
• Ross Mead (rossmead(at)usc.edu)