Taking Mobile Manipulators into the Real World

Robotics: Science and Systems Workshop

Friday, July 14 2023

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?

Call for Papers

We invite paper submissions for the workshop around the topics listed above. Accepted papers will all be presented in the poster session and selected papers will be presented as spotlight talks. Submitted papers may be in the form of an extended abstract (approximately 2 pages) or preliminary results/ongoing projects/works under review (approximately 4 pages). We will also accept video only submissions of robot demos and works in progress. There is no limit on references or supplementary material. Submissions should follow the RSS 2023 paper format (see here). Note that anonymous submissions are not required.

Submission Deadline: 11:59pm (AoE), Extended to June 15th, 2023
Acceptance Notification: From June 15th to June 18th, 2023
Camera Ready Submission: June 23rd, 2023
Workshop Date: July 14th, 2023

Submission Link: cmt3.research.microsoft.com/RWM2023

Accepted submissions will be hosted and shared via the workshop website. Authors are also encouraged to upload their papers to arXiv.org.

Speakers


Danica Kragic

Danica Kragic
Royal Institute of Technology

Jeannette Bohg

Jeannette Bohg
Stanford University

Luis Sentis

Luis Sentis
University of Texas

Firas Abi-Farraj

Firas Abi-Farraj
ETH Zurich

Georgia Chalvatzaki

Georgia Chalvatzaki
TU Darmstadt

Scott Kuindersma

Scott Kuindersma
Boston Dynamics

Fabio Ramos

Fabio Ramos
NVIDIA, University of Sydney

Schedule


2:00 - 2:10 Introduction
2:10 - 2:25 1 | Invited Speaker
2:25 - 2:40 2 | Invited Speaker
2:40 - 2:55 3 | Invited Speaker
2:55 - 3:40 Poster Session and Break
3:40 - 4:30 Panel
4:30 - 4:50 Spotlight Talks (x3)
4:50 - 5:05 4 | Invited Speaker
5:05 - 5:20 5 | Invited Speaker
5:20 - 5:35 6 | Invited Speaker
5:35 - 5:50 7 | Invited Speaker

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.

Organisers


Jesse Haviland

Jesse Haviland
Queensland University of Technology, CSIRO Data61

Ben Burgess-Limerick

Ben Burgess-Limerick
Queensland University of Technology, CSIRO Data61

Peter Corke

Peter Corke
Queensland University of Technology

Tirthankar Bandyopadhyay

Tirthankar Bandyopadhyay
CSIRO Data61

Rika Antonova

Rika Antonova
Stanford University


Contact

For any questions, please contact us at j.haviland@qut.edu.au