2018 ICRA Workshop on Autonomous Robot Design

Workshop papers now available on ArXiV!

Thanks to all attendees, invited speakers and presenters for your important contributions to the workshop. Workshop papers can be found here:

Automatic Design of Task-specific Robotic Arms

Ruta Desai, Margarita Safonova, Katharina Muelling, Stelian Coros

https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.07419

Robot Design: Formalisms, Representations, and the Role of the Designer

Alexandra Q. Nilles, Dylan A. Shell, Jason M. O'Kane

http://arxiv.org/abs/1806.05157

Exploring Mechanically Self-Reconfiguring Robots for Autonomous Design

Tønnes F. Nygaard, Charles P. Martin, Jim Torresen, Kyrre Glette

https://arxiv.org/abs/1805.02965

Aims and Scope

This workshop focuses on technologies that allow robots to be designed by software. This workshop aims to generate discussion into the design of bespoke specialized robotic systems that are poised to provide superior performance compared to currently-available options. In such an approach, robots may optimize their hardware (morphologies, sensor/actuator configurations, and the materials they are made from), and software (controllers); in each case the onus is on techniques that automatically create robots, or robot components, with no (or minimal) human intervention. Such an approach is becoming increasingly feasible, due to the rapidly-advancing push in manufacturing technologies, including 3D printing & high-throughput materials characterization.

We seek participation from diverse fields, including robotics, mechatronics, materials characterization, structural design, and controller optimization, to overview the current state of the art, and to propose new directions.

Call for papers is now active!

Submit directly to david.howard@csiro.au by 13th April 2018 (timezone = AoE).

Invited Speakers

Gusz Eiben: The triangle of life and the evolution of things.

Josh Auerbach: How much complexity is enough for robot body design?

Dave Winkler: Discovering, characterizing, and synthesizing materials for robots.

Jean-Baptiste Mouret: Illuminating the design space of shapes and behaviors with quality diversity algorithms.

Kyrre Glette: Automatic design of bodies and behaviors for real-world robots

Stephane Doncieux: Towards creative robots

Jared Donovan: Design Robotics - using robots to design robots.

Location and Venue

This workshop will be held on the 21st May as part of ICRA, which runs from 21-25 May 2018, at the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre, Brisbane, Australia.

Supported by

CSIRO Robotics Group https://research.csiro.au/robotics/

Autonomous Design https://research.csiro.au/aim/home/aims-research-test-beds/autonomous-design/

Champlain College https://www.champlain.edu/

Queensland University of Technology https://www.qut.edu.au/

We are proud to be supported by the IEEE RAS Technical Committee on Mechanisms and Design http://www.ieee-ras.org/mechanisms-and-design.