Posted on behalf of Sara Ljungblad [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
DESIGNING ROBOT APPLICATIONS FOR EVERYDAY USE
INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP
VIKTORIA INSTITUTE, GÖTEBORG, SWEDEN, JANUARY 13-14, 2004:
http://www.viktoria.se/fal/events/robotworkshop
How can robot research inspire applications for people's everyday lives
and habits? Perhaps our future butlers will not look like humanoids,
but rather be like tiny insects that cooperate in large numbers to
perform complex tasks? Today, entertainment robots are given
characteristics that make them suitable as pets or to provide comfort,
domestic robots are designed to help with housekeeping such as vacuum
cleaning or lawn mowing, and professional service robots to support
security and health care. Robots in more basic research are not
explicitly designed to serve humans in social settings. Still, many of
these robots have appealing human-robot and robot-robot interaction
properties (e.g. emergence of behaviours, self-assembly, and sensing
and communication abilities). These characteristics can inspire
entirely novel robot applications for domestic as well as other
everyday settings, such as a schools and workspaces.
The workshop aims to investigate and explore possible robot
applications in domestic and other everyday environments. The specific
robots explored in the workshop can be domestic and entertainment
robots (e.g. Sony's Aibo, Nec's PaPeRo), humanoids (e.g. Honda's Asimo,
Sony's Qrio) professional service robots, insect inspired robots and
robots on wheels (like the so-called SwarmBots created in a European
project). We hope that each participant has an interest in a specific
robot, and that the characteristics of that robot will inspire one or
several applications. The motivation is to invent robot applications
that make it interesting for people to interact with robots on an
everyday basis. We are interested in questions such as: What
characteristics of robots can create new possibilities for everyday
interactions with humans? What novel robot services can be achieved
with combining several robots in an everyday setting, or by combining
robots with other media?
We expect all participants to send a personal statement before the
workshop. During the workshop participants will hold a brief
presentation to introduce robots used in their own research. We also
encourage participants to bring physical demonstrators or posters. This
will be used as a basis when brainstorming about possible applications.
To participate, first please send an expression of interest before
November 20. We will then contact you with full details. Timeline:
Expression of interest to [log in to unmask] November 20
Personal statement and registration December 20
Workshop date: January 13-14, 2005
A minor fee will be charged to cover expenses such as lunch and
potential guest speakers.
Workshop website: http://www.viktoria.se/fal/events/robotworkshop
Organisers:
Future Applications Lab, Viktoria Institute, Göteborg,
www.viktoria.se/fal
This workshop is an initiative based on research conducted within the
ECAgents project, supported by IST-FET in the Complex Systems
initiative.
ECAgents project homepage: http://ecagents.istc.cnr.it/
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