Call for Papers

The organizers invite you to submit a demo, poster, or paper for review to the RSS 2006 Workshop: Manipulation for Human Environments. The workshop will take place on Saturday, August 19th at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.

Important Dates:

• submission deadline - *Extended to June 30th*
• notification of acceptance - July 10th
• workshop - August 19th

Description

This full day workshop will explore modern approaches to robot manipulation in human environments. There is a resurgence of interest in robot manipulation as researchers seek to push robot manipulation out of controlled factory settings and into the dynamic and unstructured world we inhabit. Robots that successfully manipulate in these environments will require new methods for perception and control. This workshop will investigate promising approaches that address the challenges of general manipulation within these domains.

The key issues that must be addressed include: robustness to uncertainty, generalization over tasks, skill acquisition, safety, and human-robot interaction.

This workshop will serve as a successor to last year's Workshop on Humanoid Manipulation held at Robotics: Science and Systems 2005 (RSS 2005). Although humanoids are well-matched to human environments, other form-factors may be advantageous. The unifying theme of this year's workshop will be robust operation within human environments.

Appropriate topics for the workshop include:

• Mobile manipulation
• Perception and manipulation of everyday objects
• Robot control for everyday manipulation tasks
• Non-model based approaches to grasping
• Novel solutions in sensing and actuation
• Mechanisms for human-like dexterity
• Development of compliant and force controlled manipulators
• Advances in high density tactile sensing
• Whole body grasping
• Human-robot interaction for cooperative manipulation
• Behavior-based approaches
• Task knowledge acquisition
• Learning and development for robot manipulation
• Computational and neural models of human manipulation
• Intelligent prosthetics and exoskeletons for manipulation (eg. neural control)
• Applications such as elder-care, agriculture, and domestic help
• Humanoid manipulation
• Formal evaluations of performance
• Reviews of the state-of-the-art

Submission

All accepted work will be published in a citable digital archive of the proceedings. New results are welcome. We also encourage researchers with relevant work to retarget previously published results to the workshop topic. The authors of accepted papers will be asked to present their work as a talk or poster.

All submissions should be in PDF format using the RSS template. Papers should be between 4 and 6 pages in length. Proposals for demos and posters should be 1 page in length. Demo proposals should describe the work to be demonstrated and include a relevant image. Poster proposals should include a description of the material to be presented.

Submissions should be emailed to heman-submissions@csail.mit.edu by June 30th. Notification of acceptance will be given by July 10th.