Autonomous robotics has been studied from different perspectives for many machine learning researchers. This session is concerned about the ability to learn of autonomous robot and how it can be tested. We are talking about new architectural robotics approaches managing complex patterns from sensors and generating actions in order to satisfy an ending high-level goal. Evolutionary robotics, neuro-evolved procedures, reinforcement learning, cooperative control architectures, multiagent physical systems and experimental results on real robots are expected to be analyzed and discussed....Research communities addressed by this focus are also those concerned with artificial consciousness.

Robotics and Intelligent Sensing

This special session will focus on all the aspects of the biologically inspired technologies for instrumentation and measurement applications. Original papers are solicited in, but are not limited to the following technical areas: models of the biological sensing and perception mechanisms, random-pulse/random-data instrumentation and artificial NN architectures, biologically inspired sensors (visual, haptic, audio, smell, etc.), distributed sensor agent networks, adaptability, configurability, emergence, self organization, self optimization etc.

In the past decade, significant advances have been made in the field of intelligent robotics including mobile robot systems and humanoid robot systems. A key feature of these robotic systems is the requirement to function in uncertain, dynamic environments, in close contact with humans. These challenges require new advanced sensor technologies that are able to integrate with the intelligent control systems that are under development. This special session on Sensor Technologies for Intelligent Robotics is intended to bring together leading researchers working in the field of sensor systems for robotics to present and discuss relevant issues including (but not restricted to) topics such as: Distributed sensors for Multi-robot systems, Performance measurement, Human-robot interface, Multi-sensor fusion in robotics, Service robotics, Robot Vision.

The recent wide spreading of a new generation of robots, pervading our lives and environments, as humanoids, pets, or assistants, introduced the need for formulating proper paradigms of interaction between human beings and robots. Human-robot interaction poses multi-faceted problems, requiring not only technical but also cultural, sociological, psychological, philosophical and even ethical considerations. How to model the interaction of a human being with a robot? How to achieve the acceptability of the robot expected to interact with humans? How to manage the physical, intellectual and emotional exchange between human beings and robots?

Methods for artificial evolution of components, such as programs and hardware, are rapidly developing branches of alternative design methodology for machine engineering. They include the development, evaluation and application of methods that mirror the process of the theory of natural selection and produce, as results, computational expressions, e.g. algorithms, or machines, e.g. mechanical or electronic devices. This special session will be devoted to reporting innovative and significant progress in automatic evolutionary design methodology of machines. The topics covered by the session: Evolvable Hardware; Genetic Programming;       Evolutionary Robotics and Evolutionary Machine design Experiences.

In the past decade robotics research has made many advances in control methodologies, sensory processing, and planning strategies. Robots are now increasingly expected to function in uncertain, dynamic real world environments, and to closely interact with untrained humans. Handling such environment poses many challenging problems. Control methodologies of multi-robot systems have also advanced considerably. Such systems can often deal with tasks that are difficult if not impossible for a single robot. This relatively new field offers many interesting research issues.

Robots, and especially humanoid robots, will be undoubtedly one of the most advanced creatures made by human beings. The importance of robotics in general and humanoid robotics in particular is two-fold. First, it offers a unique platform for multidisciplinary research ranging from mechanics, electronics, control, information technology, artificial intelligence, to cognitive science. Second, it stimulates the science of human technology which aims at achieving a better understanding of human body, human brain and most importantly human mind & intelligence. It is true to say that in today’s state of the art, humans have to learn machine languages in order to instruct, or program, machines (or robots) for intended tasks. Could we reverse the trend? In other words, we should let machines, or robots, to master and speak human languages in future. With this objective in mind, this special session invites researchers, who share this common vision, to come together to present and discuss the latest development in the field of: speech acquisition, speech recognition, natural language learning, natural language understanding, conversational dialogue understanding, knowledge representation, human-robot interaction in natural ways, and mental architecture for autonomous learning of languages and speeches, etc.

Autonomous vehicles have capabilities to autonomously make decisions on future actions given a situation picture, available resources and a high level task that has been appointed to the vehicle. To achieve such capability a number of components can be required: different types of sensors, sensor data processing algorithms, hardware architecture with sufficient safety level, sensor fusion and decision support algorithms, functions for situation awareness, navigation functions, target identification algorithms, dynamic mission planning algorithms with components of flight trajectory optimization and cooperation between several vehicles, sensor management, data link functionality, etc. Moreover, to fully utilize an autonomous air vehicle, it is required to manage the issues of certification for flight in controlled air space. We encourage contributions from both civilian applications and defense applications. We expect the contributions to be in the range from successful demonstrations of autonomous unmanned air vehicles to presentations of specific algorithms from the list of components above, required to achieve autonomous behavior.

Agents and Multi Agent based Systems (MAS) are becoming widely used due to their ability to handle complex tasks and systems, in autonomous and intelligent ways. Agents are popular computational technologies contributing to diverse domains such as computer games, computer mediated collaboration, education and training, electronic commerce, information retrieval, pervasive and ubiquitous computing, robotics, service-oriented computing, social simulation, and user interfaces. Thanks to their growing communication abilities, agents can collaborate efficiently with each other, support human interaction, and even collaborate with humans. Nowadays many new areas of research and applications emerge using collaborative and communicative agents to perform a variety of complex tasks. There are theories of agent-based collaboration that model teamwork, coalitions, crowds, and embodied conversational agents

The goal of Rehabilitation Robotics is to investigate the application of  robotics in motor therapy procedures, for recovering motor control and motor capabilities in persons with impairments following such diseases  as stroke, as well as to develop robotic and mechatronic technical aids for independent living for disabled and elderly people. The recent advances of rehabilitation procedures, methodologies and tools tends to include more and more the cognitive aspects of motor control, also exploiting the new technologies for brain imaging, which allows to 'close the loop' from brain to action. This gives an increased role to robotics, which can be fruitfully employed in the rehabilitation of  neuro-motor functions and motor capabilities, by providing tools that are in their nature flexible and programmable and that allow to set and assess procedures quantitatively. The objective of the proposed Special Session on Rehabilitation Robotics is to provide an overview of current experiences and main achievement  by  qualified scientists in this field and also an opportunity to share experiences and to discuss common research problems and challenges

This session will explore research in reasoning and learning technology in support of sensemaking for process of creating situation awareness in situations of uncertainty. Sensemaking and situation awareness are viewed as working concepts that enable us to investigate and improve the collaborative interaction between human and information technology. Within this perspective, it is recognized that humans play a significant role in adapting and responding to unexpected or unknown situations, as well as recognized situations. Accordingly, as we move from concepts, metrics, and analysis to testable theories, we need to attribute the relative contributions of both humans and information technology in models of system performance.

The multi-disciplinary field of Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) (or Microsystems Technology as it is known in Europe) is growing at a fast pace. Current applications of MEMS are a variety of microsensors and microactuators, micro-fluidics, micro chemical and bio-chemical analytical devices, micro opto-mechanical devices, mass data-storage, micro reactors and engines and more. Many of these devices involve mechanical manipulation at micro and meso (up to 1 cm) scales. The significance of being able to design small systems easily and fabricate them economically  is becoming apparent as the range of applications of MEMS is growing. The topics of interest include (but not limited to): Micro mechanisms (passive or with on-chip actuation),  Novel microactuators, Mechanical design issues in MEMS, Geometric design of MEMS and meso scale, Micro or meso scale  systems made in silicon or other materials,  Micro assembly, Microrobotics, Smart strucures

Vision is increasingly becoming an integral part of autonomous robots and robotic systems. It is often the main input sensor used for obstacle detection, terrain mapping and navigation guidance. Robotic systems employing vision based inspection are now common on the shop floor. Much progress has also been made in on-board local vision processing techniques. We invite researchers to submit papers covering theory, design, development and applications of vision and intelligent systems for the special session on “Robots with a vision”. Papers are invited that are related but not limited to the following topics: Image and Vision Computing in robotic systems, Vision based inspection robots, Fast vision processing algorithms for real-time object tracking, Fault Tolerance in vision processing, Stereo Vision, Mapping object contour, Surveillance and monitoring systems, Neural Networks in Vision processing, Vision Based Intelligent Robots, Visualization Techniques

Artificial Intelligence is now very popular in the fields of Computer, control, etc. and those are applied to many areas of fields. However, it is true to say that those will not have the similar behavior of human in evaluation, action taking, deduction, thought in complexity, searching, and so on, which cause the AIs less intelligent. So through this session, by making clear mechanisms of those behaviors in Artificial Intelligences, it is aimed to get more generalized and human-like behavior in AI.

Medical Robotics is attracting substantial research interest and many robotics research groups developed solutions for the application of robotics in the different aspects of clinical activities. Medical Robotics includes a wide range of topics which can be grouped in three main areas: Surgery, Rehabilitation and Humanoids (humanoid robotics is included in Medical Robotics because it aims at investigating and imitating the anatomy and functions of human beings). The problems posed by medical applications are very different from the problems encountered in traditional robotics, and require a broader multidisciplinary approach, including considerations typical for clinicians, industrial designers, and psychologists.