Learning for Collaborative Robotics: Enabling Flexible, Redeployable and Agile Industrial Applications

Workshop at IROS 2017, Vancouver, Canada, September 24th 2017, Room 217-219

Collaborative robots (Cobots) are intended to safely operate alongside humans. They need the software capabilities to be quickly deployable in a new environment and set to work on a potentially difficult task with minimum effort and without the need for expert programming. The human-robot collaboration (HRC) field has provided tools like learning by demonstration and task learning to address some of these problems. Techniques like deep learning and reinforcement learning are rapidly advancing towards a robot autonomously acquiring complex skills.

Industry 4.0 has also introduced new challenges, requiring production units to be no longer isolated with highly specialized tasks, but gathered in a fully integrated and optimized production flow. As a result, the production volume can be easily aligned to the market fluctuation and the product diversity can increase to better meet the customer needs. In this new scenario, Cobots are intelligent machines that can be integrated into the labor force to increase the overall productivity. The main challenge here is to achieve human manipulation and grasping capabilities to fulfill similar tasks.

This workshop will bring together participants from academia and industry alike to share advancements and new technologies in the field of collaborative robotics. The attendees of this workshop will be introduced to collaborative robotics and learning techniques from academic experts in the field. Experts from the industry will explain the current needs in industrial manufacturing and robotics, which will inspire researchers with challenges drawn from real use case scenarios. Experts from the academia will bring the latest advancements in the field, providing potential new solutions to real problems. The organizers and the invited speakers of this workshop have a multidisciplinary background that will stimulate interesting discussions, promote the cross-fertilization of ideas and encourage future collaborations.

Topics of interest

  • Skill-Learning from Human Demonstrations
  • Human-In-The-Loop Control of Robotic Systems
  • Multi-Modal HRC Interfaces
  • Modeling and Analysis of Human Physical Behavior
  • Learning Human Sensorimotor Control
  • Stability of HRC Control Schemes
  • Expected Impact of HRC in Cross-Domain Applications
  • Mutual Learning and Adaptation in Human-Robot Systems
  • Case Studies and Experiments
  • Objective Measures: How to Quantify Efficiency, Safety and Intuitiveness in HRC?

Important Dates

Abstract submission deadline: August 1
Acceptance notification deadline: August 19
Camera ready version submission: September 15
 
We are calling for submissions of 2-3 page extended abstracts related to the topics of interest.
Abstracts should be submitted as a PDF file using the IEEE format also used for the IROS conference itself (http://ras.papercept.net/conferences/support/support.php).
Please submit the abstracts at the following website: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=wlcr17
 

Speakers and Talks

  • Guilherme Maeda (TU Darmstadt):  Interaction Primitives for Collaborative Robotics
  • Abderrahmane Kheddar (CNRS):  Humanoid Cobotics: Application Case in Large-Scale Airliner Manufacturing
  • This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. (KUKA Roboter GmbH):  Lessons Learned and Challenges for the Future of Flexible Manufacturing
  • Keith Blanchet (Kinova Robotics): Machines Learning to Serve Individuality : The Pathway to Mainstream Social Acceptance and Accessibility
  • Dana Kulić (University of Waterloo): Collaborative Plan Configuration for Industrial Mobile Robots
  • Tadej Petric (Jozef Stefan Institute, Slovenia): What Should Robots Learn from Us?
  • Sylvain Calinon (Idiap Research Institute, Switzerland): Challenges in Extending Learning from Demonstration to Collaborative Robotics
  • Arash Ajoudani (Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Italy): Anticipatory Robot Control for Ergonomic Human-Robot Collaboration

Program

Tentative schedule for the workshop:

09.00 - 09.10 
Introduction by Luca Colasanto
09.10 - 09.30  Research Talk by Tadej Petric 
09.30 - 10.15  Research Talk by Guilherme Maeda
10.15 - 11.00  Industry Talk by Rainer Bischoff
11.00 - 11.15  Break
11.15 - 11.45  Spotlight presentations from contributing speakers
11.45 - 12.15  Interactive presentations from contributing speakers
12.15 - 13.15  Lunch
13.15 - 14.00  Industry Talk by Keith Blanchet
14.00 - 14.45  Research Talk by Abderrahmane Kheddar
14.45 - 15.30  Research Talk by Dana Kulić
15.30 - 15.45  Break
15.45 - 16.05 
Research Talk by Arash Ajoudani
16.05 - 16.25 
Research Talk by Sylvain Calinon
16.25 - 17.00 
Round table discussion on specific areas of interest. The topics will be determined based on input before the workshop from potential attendees and feedback collected from all participants during the workshop.
17.00 - 17.15 
Summary discussion of round table discussions by the workshop organizers and invited speakers

Contributed Extended Abstracts

Organizers

  • Luca Colasanto, (Robert Bosch LLC, Palo Alto USA), This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
  • Juergen Hess, (Robert Bosch LLC, Palo Alto USA), This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
  • Lorenzo Riano (Robert Bosch LLC, Palo Alto USA), This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
  • Arash Ajoudani (Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Italy), This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
  • Tadej Petric (Jozef Stefan Institute, Slovenia), This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
  • Clemens Eppner (Technische Universität Berlin, Germany), This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
  • Benjamin Rosman (Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, and University of Witwatersrand, South Africa), This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
  • Sylvain Calinon (Idiap Research Institute, Switzerland), This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.