Welcome to the 2009 Mobile Manipulation Challenge, held in conjuction with the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence.
Mission Statement
Mobile manipulation is an increasingly important area for robotics, enabling robots to affect physical environments toward human objectives. As we move beyond mobile computing to mobile manipulation, the development of robots to perform physical tasks will require both utilizing existing capabilities as well as addressing new research problems. In the pursuit of basic science, it is also crucial that methods and results can be comparatively analyzed amongst the robotics community though sharing and experimental reproducibility.
The 2009 Mobile Manipulation Challenge aims to address these problems by fostering demonstrations of complete manipulation platforms. This challenges will evolve into a standardized challenge for 2010 with guidelines describing experiments of publication-quality design, enabling cross-platform comparisons, and facilitating a forum for discussion for researchers in this field.
As the first edition of this multi-year effort, the emphasis of the 2009 Challenge will be on demonstration, rather than comparative experimentation. This year, we aim to bring together several research/commercial groups to demonstrate complete platforms performing relevant mobile manipulation tasks.
Our long-term aim is to define a set of increasingly challenging experiments future Mobile Manipulation Challenges, over a 4-6 year period. We seek to realize common framework for experimental comparison by all participants for shared use in publishing results and understanding relative strengths and shortcomings.
Call for Participation
IJCAI 2009 Mobile Manipulation Challenge
July 13-16, 2009 Pasadena, CA, USA
http://mobile-manipulation-challenge.net/
Call for Contributions
The IJCAI 2009 Mobile Manipulation Challenge, held in conjunction with the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, welcomes contributions that demonstrate physically embodied robots performing a mobile manipulation task. This year, we aim to bring together several research/commercial groups to demonstrate complete platforms performing relevant mobile manipulation tasks. Our long-term aim is to define increasingly challenging experiments future mobile manipulation events and greater scientific understanding of the area.
AREAS OF INTEREST include (but are not limited to):
- point-and-click fetching: where human users can select various objects (possibly using a laser pointer) for a mobile robot to fetch;
- assembling structures: robot manipulators that can build larger structures by connecting smaller primitive parts;
- searching for hidden objects: search tasks that involve manipulation of occluding objects to find hidden goal object.
CONTRIBUTIONS can include live hardware demonstrations and/or short video clips, showcasing manipulation abilities as described above. Those interested in contributing should submit a 1-2 page proposal, by March 1 2009, containing the following information:
- the names and affiliation of the exhibitors;
- a summary of the objectives and methods of the underlying research;
- description of the manipulation demonstration;
- citations to any relevant or supporting papers;
- if you are proposing a live hardware demonstration, a list and short description of the hardware you will be using at the Challenge.
SUBMISSION can be done via email at the address:
Notifications of acceptance will be sent out by March 20, 2009.
TRAVEL SUPPORT may be possible for selected participants and their hardware, depending on available funds and level of demand.
MISSION: the IJCAI 2009 Challenge will serve as the foundation for more
focused and commonly pursued challenges for AAAI 2010 and beyond. Please
visit the Challenge website for more details:
http://mobile-manipulation-challenge.net/
The IJCAI 2009 Robotics site can be consulted for more information about the overall robotics
events:
http://robotics.cs.brown.edu/ijcai09/
Schedule
Workshop: Monday, July 13th
08:30 Welcome Remarks: Ayanna Howard (GeorgiaTech, USA)08:35 Invited talk: Giorgio Metta (University of Genova, Italy)
09:00 Mobile Manipulation Challenge: Radu Bogdan Rusu (TUM, Germany) and Matei Ciocarlie (Columbia University, USA)
09:00 Morgan Quigley (Stanford University, USA)
09:06 Bill Smart (Washington University at St. Louis, USA)
09:12 Rod Grupen (University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA)
09:18 Alexander Stoytchev (Iowa State University, USA)
09:24 -- Break --
09:40 Learning by Demonstration Challenge
10:10 Student Challenge: Debra Burhans (Canisius College, USA) and Zachary Dodds (Harvey Mudd College, USA)
10:42 -- Break --
10:56 At-Large Exhibitors: Monica Anderson (University of Alabama, USA)
11:15 Invited talk: Bob Kohout (DARPA, USA)
12:00 -- Lunch – (on your own)
13:00 Invited talk: Stewart Tansley (Microsoft Research, USA), "Social HRI challenge"
13:30 Multi-robot Challenge
14:06 -- Break --
14:18 Invited talk: Aaron Edsinger (Meka Robotics, USA)
14:34 Student Challenge: Debra Burhans (Canisius College, USA) and Zachary Dodds (Harvey Mudd College, USA)
14:58 -- Break --
15:15 Invited talk: Brian Gerkey (Willow Garage, USA)
16:40 Citizen Science and Robotics (Panel)
16:20 Break out sessions
16:50 Citizen Science Wrap up
16:55 Closing remarks: Chad Jenkins (Brown University, USA)
17:00 End of Workshop
Exhibition: Tuesday, July 14th
8:30 Setup exhibitions10:30-16:00 Exhibition
Exhibition: Wednesday, July 15th
10:30-16:00 ExhibitionExhibition: Thursday, July 16th
10:00-12:00 Exhibition12:00-17:00 Exhibition break down
Contact the organizers
Please contact the organizers for any details:
Chad Jenkins (Brown University) -
Radu Bogdan Rusu (Technische Universität München) -
Matei Ciocarlie (Columbia University) -
Monica Delaine Anderson (University of Alabama) -