Taking Mobile Manipulators into the Real World

Description

This workshop seeks to progress research in the topic of real-world manipulation and mobile manipulation, that is manipulators operating in environments which may be outdoors, naturally occurring, and unstructured. These real-world environments have unique characteristics making them non-trivial and difficult for robot operation compared to typical laboratory environments. Challenges include travelling over uneven and unpredictable terrain, working with deformable and non-rigid structures such as trees and other natural phenomena, and operating with high uncertainty due to environmental conditions.

This workshop aims to bring together researchers from diverse sub-communities within robotics including manipulation, mobile manipulation, field robotics, legged robotics, robot learning, SLAM, and robotic vision to discuss the following topics:

• Is a benchmark or dataset required for progress in this area?
• If so, should this be a real-world test environment, a high fidelity simulation, or low fidelity simulations with high domain randomisation etc.?
• What gaps are holding outdoor and real-world mobile manipulation progress back from the rest of the manipulation field?
• Is progress in this area going to be best achieved with data driven, analytic solutions, or a combined approach?
• Why are manipulators slow and unsatisfying at completing tasks?
• Mobile manipulators typically move in an unintuitive and unnatural manner, is this an issue for real-world environments?
• What kind of sensing and contact models would be useful for environmental representation and mobile manipulation?
• How do you handle uncertainty in real-world environments?
• Are there specific challenges for long-term autonomy in the context of field robotics?
• What is the role of human input in field mobile manipulation?

Speakers

Danica Kragic
Royal Institute of Technology

Jeannette Bohg
Stanford University

Luis Sentis
University of Texas

Firas Abi-Farraj
ETH Zurich

Georgia Chalvatzaki
TU Darmstadt

Scott Kuindersma
Boston Dynamics

Fabio Ramos
NVIDIA, University of Sydney

Participation

The workshop will be hybrid, with a in-person participation preferred, but a virtual option for remote attendees will be available. Questions will be collected from both in person and online attendees. Speakers will be given the option to present in person or remotely. A Zoom link for remote attendees will be added at a later date.