ARE 2013 - 2nd International Workshop on Adaptive Robotic Ecologies

Robotic ecologies are networks of heterogeneous robotic devices (sensors, actuators and automated home appliances) pervasively embedded in everyday environments, where they cooperate in applications such as Ambient Assisted Living.
Building smart environments out of multiple robotic devices extends the type of application that can be considered, reduces their complexity, and enhances the individual values of the devices involved by enabling new services that cannot be performed by any device by itself.
While these potentials make robotic ecologies increasingly popular across the borders between the fields of robotics, sensor networks, and ambient intelligence, many fundamental research questions remain open.
One such question is how to provide sensing and actuating services that are both adaptable and robust. In order to decide the specific behaviours which, in combination, achieve necessary and meaningful tasks, robotic ecologies should not be restricted to only those situations that are envisioned by their designer. For instance, rather than requiring pre-defined models of both the activities of the user they try to assist and the services that should be carried out to assist them, robotic ecologies should be able to pro-actively and smoothly adapt to subtle changes in the environment and in the habits and preferences of their user(s).
In addition to adaptability, control mechanisms for robotic ecologies should be capable of synthesizing robust strategies, in the sense that these strategies should take into account both a sufficient amount of exogenous events and the specific capabilities of the devices used to enact the strategies.
Objectives
The goal of this workshop is to bring together state-of-the-art contributions describing solutions that tackle these challenges by enabling robotic ecologies to be self-learning, self-configuring, and self-adapting, in order to increase their adaptability, and reduce the amount of preparation and pre-programming required for their deployment in real world applications.
The topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
Algorithms and theories for cooperation and configuration in robotic ecologies;
Evaluation of adaptive robotic ecologies;
Learning techniques to adapt to changes in the environment and in user needs;
Self-configuration supporting open, heterogeneous and computationally constrained systems;
Adaptation for people-centric robotic ecologies, personalization and user interaction;
Concrete examples of adaptive robot ecologies to AmI applications
Software engineering and integration issues;
Current efforts in the standardization of interfaces (SW, HW) for the integration in AmI environments of commercial devices (sensors, actuators, robots).
Program and Schedule
The workshop will include presentation of research papers, and a panel discussion.
The panel discussion will try to identify and discuss the main research questions in the issue of developing adaptive robotic ecologies for AmI applications, and set the stage for the generation of a road-map on this issue.
Publications
Proceedings of the workshops will be published by Springer under the Communications in Computer and Information Science (CCIS) serie. All accepted contributions will also be published on the workshop webpage.
Call for contributions
Papers are solicited from different research areas, including ambient intelligence, robotics, wireless sensor networks, and agent systems.
Contributions will be reviewed for quality and relevance to the workshop’s theme and should present substantial novel research achievements. Theoretical and applied papers, as well as papers that capture best practices and lessons learned from field studies and EU projects are encouraged.
Papers presenting preliminary results may be accepted in the form of extended abstracts.
Papers should be up to 14 pages in the CCIS one-column page format, and should be submitted in pdf format through EasyChair.
Authors should apply Springer conference paper templates, which can be found in the author’s instruction page.
Submitting a contribution is not a prerequisite to participation in the workshop and the discussion sessions.
Important Dates
September 1st, 2013: Submission deadline
September 20th, 2013: Notification of acceptance
December 3rd, 2013: Workshop date
Workshop Organizers
This workshop is organized under the auspices of the RUBICON project, with is funded by the European Union Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013, ICT-2009.2.1) under grant agreement No.269914.
Mauro Dragone
Scientific Coordinator EU Project RUBICON
Clarity Centre for Sensor Web Technologies (CLARITY)
University College Dublin (UCD)
email: mauro.dragone/AT/ucd.ie
Alessandro Saffiotti
Professor
Head of the Cognitive Robotics Systems Laboratory
Center for Applied Autonomous Sensor Systems (AASS)
Örebro University, Sweden
email: asaffio/AT/aass.oru.se
Arantxa Renteria
Project Manager
Health and Quality of Life
Tecnalia, Bilbao, Spain
email: arantxa.renteria/AT/tecnalia.com
Stefano Chessa
Assistant Professor
Computer Science Department
University of Pisa
email: ste-AT-di.unipi.it