Invited Speakers:
Stefano Carpin, University of California, Merced
Simulate or not?
Abstract: The role of simulation in robotics continues to be controversial, yet widespread. The simultaneous decrease in the cost of robot hardware coupled with the increased fidelity of simulation systems makes this controversy more actual than ever. In this talk I will offer my perspective on the use of simulation in robotics research, with references to cases drawn from my fifteen years of research in mobile robotics and grasping.
Bio: Stefano Carpin is Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at UC Merced. He received his “Laurea” (MSc) and Ph.D. degrees in electricalengineering and computer science from the University of Padova (Italy) in 1999and 2003, respectively. His research interests include mobile and cooperative robotics for service tasks, and robot algorithms. He published more than 100 papers in international journals, conferences, and workshops, and he is a Senior Member of the IEEE. From 2010 to 2014 he was an associate editor for the IEEE Transactions on Robotics (T-RO), and he currently serves as associate editor for the IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering (T-ASE), and associate editor for the IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L). Since he joined UC Merced his research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, DARPA, USDA, the Office of Naval Research, the Army Research Lab, the Department of Commerce (NIST), and the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS).
Nate Koenig, CTO, Open Source Robotics Foundation
Work smarter with simulation: The tool for a savvy roboticist.
Abstract: Simulation is used from academia through industry to design, develop, and debug robot models and controllers in various environments and conditions. The growth of cloud computing and advances in simulation technology has put realistic and accurate 3D dynamic simulation within reach of most people who own a computer. This talk describes various use cases of simulation within the context of robot programming. These use cases include software and hardware design, competitions, and sharing research results. The talk will end with speculation on how simulation will advance and grow in the future.
Bio: Nate Koenig is the Chief Technology Officer at Open Source Robotics Foundation (OSRF). Prior to joining OSRF, Nate was a research engineer at Willow Garage where he conducted human robot interaction (HRI) studies and continued development of Gazebo, and open source robot simulator.
Ming Lin, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Simulation-Enabled Design of Autonomous Robots in Smart Cities.
One of the research challenges in AI and robotics is to program robots to interact with humans in vibrant, dynamic scenes of real-world complexity, such as urban spaces. This problem offers a diverse set of opportunities for innovation, with the potential to provide enabling technologies of societal interests, including transportation mechanisms, economic sustainability, healthcare and medicine, education and entertainment. Some of the key research issues include efficient motion synthesis of plausible human behaviors for cooperation with robots, interactive simulation of large-scale crowds and realistic modeling of complex traffic flows interacting with autonomous vehicles. In this talk, I will survey some of recent efforts on use of simulation for robotic programming in complex dynamic environments. These methods can be applied to design and control of autonomous vehicles and coordination of multiple intelligent agents. I will conclude by discussing our experiences and some future research directions.
Bio: Ming C. Lin is currently John R. & Louise S. Parker Distinguished Professor of Computer Science at the University of North Carolina (UNC), Chapel Hill. She was also an honorary Chair Professor (Yangtze Scholar) at Tsinghua University in China from 2013-2015. She obtained her B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley. She received several honors and awards, including the NSF Young Faculty Career Award in 1995, Honda Research Initiation Award in 1997, UNC/IBM Junior Faculty Development Award in 1999, UNC Hettleman Award for Scholarly Achievements in 2003, Beverly W. Long Distinguished Professorship 2007-2010, Carolina Women’s Center Faculty Scholar in 2008, UNC WOWS Scholar 2009-2011, IEEE VGTC Virtual Reality Technical Achievement Award in 2010, and several best paper awards at international conferences. She is a Fellow of ACM and IEEE. Her research interests include robotics, physically-based modeling, virtual environments, sound rendering, haptics, and geometric computing. She has (co-)authored more than 300 refereed publications in these areas and co-edited/authored four books. She has served on hundreds of program committees of leading conferences and co-chaired dozens of international conferences and workshops. She is currently a member of IEEE Computer Society (CS) Board of GovernorNate Koenig, CTOs, a member of Computing Research Association-Women (CRA-W) Board of Directors, the Chair of 2015 IEEE CS Transactions Operations Committee and a member of 2015 Executive Committee of IEEE CS Publications Board. She is a former Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (2011-2014) and a member of several editorial boards. She also has served on several steering committees and advisory boards of international conferences, as well as government and industrial technical advisory committees.
Contributed Papers
R. Bortoletto, N. Castaman, E. Tosello, E. Menegatti, and E. Pagello (IT+Robotics Srl
and University of Padova, Italy), Towards MBZIRC 2017: a V-REP Mobile Manipulator plugin for ROS.
Wolfgang Hoenig, Arash Tavakoli, and Nora Ayanian (University of Southern California, US), Seamless robot simulation integration for education: a case study.
Ernesto Nunes and Maria Gini (University of Minnesota, US), Modeling and Simulation for Multi-Robot Allocation and Execution of Tasks with Temporal and Precedence Constraints.
Nicolo Boscolo, Anna Bonaldo, Stefano Tonello, Roberto Bortoletto, Emanuele Menegatti (IAS-Lab, University of Padova, Italy), Fibremap: applying simulation tools to Industry 4.0
Nicola Vitucci, Alessio Mauro Franchi, and Giuseppina Gini (Politecnico of Milano, Italy), Programming a humanoid robot in natural language: an experiment with description logics.
Schedule