Networked Robots: Committee Information

IEEE Robotics and Automation's Technical Committee
on:

Networked Robots

Scope

A "networked robot" is a robotic device connected to a communications network such as the Internet or LAN. The network could be wired or wireless, and based on any of of a variety of protocols such as TCP, UDP, or 802.11. Many new applications are now being developed ranging from automation to exploration. There are two subclasses of Networked Robots:

1) Tele-operated, where human supervisors send commands and receive feedback via the network. Such systems support research, education, and public awareness by making valuable resources accessible to broad audiences.

2) Autonomous, where robots and sensors exchange data via the network. In such systems, the sensor network extends the effective sensing range of the robots, allowing them to communicate with each other over long distances to coordinate their activity. The robots in turn can deploy, repair, and maintain the sensor network to increase its longevity, and utility. A broad challenge is to develop a science base that couples communication to control to enable such new capabilities.

Networked robots pose a number of technical challenges related to network noise, reliability, congestion, fixed and variable time delay, stability, passivity, range and power limitations, deployment, coverage, safety, localization, sensor and actuation fusion, and user interface design. New capabilities arise frequently with the introduction of new hardware, software, and protocol standards.

The IEEE RAS Technical Committee on Internet and Online Robots was founded in May 2001. It originally focused on Internet-based tele-operated robots, but expanded to reflect a broader set of problems and applications. The name Networked Robots was approved and adopted in May 2004.

Activities

Network Science and Systems Issues in Multi-Robot Autonomy (ICRA 2010 Workshop) Workshop May 7, 2010 - Anchorage, AK (joint with ICRA 2010)
Workshop at IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation 2010

List of topics:

Research at the intersection of networking and multi-robot systems including, but not limited to:

* Control algorithms for preserving and augmenting connectivity
* Design of delay tolerant robot networks with intermittent connectivity
* Leveraging existing networking algorithms to enable new multi-robot capabilities
* Distributed observers and state estimation over changing networks
* Models of wireless communication and exploiting mobility to build them
* Compatibility of multi-robot controllers with existing ad hoc routing protocols
* Hardware implementations of controllers over ad hoc networks

Organizers:

* Prof. Volkan Isler (University of Minnesota)
* Prof. James McLurkin (Rice University)
* Dr. Sameera Poduri (University of Southern California)
* Prof. Daniela Rus (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
* Dr. Mac Schwager (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
* Prof. Andreas Terzis (Johns Hopkins University)
Search and Pursuit/Evasion in the Physical World: Efficiency, Scalability, and Guarantees (ICRA 2010 Workshop) Workshop May 3, 2010 - Anchorage, AK
Contact Information: Volkan Isler, Geoffrey Hollinger
This workshop will bring together researchers in all areas of pursuit/evasion and search. This includes (but is not limited to) geometric approaches, probabilistic optimization, graph theoretic search, decision theoretic planning, and adversarial search. The primary focus will be on multi-robot search, which includes unmanned ground (UGVs), aerial (UAVs), surface (USVs), and underwater (UUVs) vehicles, as well as heterogeneous search teams in both outdoor and indoor environments. Various sensors, including cameras and laser scanners, will be examined, and search for both adversarial and non-adversarial targets will be considered. The theme of this workshop is to unify various formulations of the search problem and move towards a common theoretical and applied framework for search with autonomous robots. This workshop also will be of interest to those working in the general areas of multi-agent systems, distributed computation, and approximation algorithms.

Geoffrey Hollinger (Carnegie Mellon University)
Volkan Isler (University of Minnesota)
Timothy H. Chung (Naval Postgraduate School)
LinkedIn Group Web site portal October 31, 2009 - Online
Contact Information: Volkan Isler
Created group on the professional networking site LinkedIn for improved networking/communication among our members
NetRob 2009 - IFAC Workshop on Networked Robotics Workshop October 6, 2009 - Golden, Colorado USA
Contact Information: Klaus Schilling (k_schi at t-online dot de)
Control of mobile robots or other entities, including multi-agent systems, via
communication networks (wired or wireless, Internet or LAN) offers challenging
research questions. Combinations of tele-operation and tele-presence methods with
autonomous decision-making and control actions are needed in order to establish
robust solutions in networked robotics applications, including such arenas as sensor
networks with mobile components, search and rescue robots for emergency response,
planetary exploration, and many others. NetRob2009 presents a three-day,
single-trackworkshop aimed at promoting development of a theoretical basis for
combining control and telecommunication techniques, as well as demonstrating the
current state-of-the-art in applications. Workshop areas of focus include, but are
not limited to:
Networked robots Networked UAVs
Control through networks Control of networks
Mobile sensor-actuator networks Mobile sensor networks Tele-robotics,
tele-presence Telematics methods
Tele-operations, tele-maintenance Remote control
Remote sensor data acquisition Robot path planning
Autonomous control Robotics
Mobile ad hoc networks Communication algorithms
Applications of telematics
Networked Robots Blog has been launched Web site portal August 25, 2009 - http://networked-robots.cs.umn.edu/
Contact Information: Volkan Isler
A blog (which will act as a forum to exchange related news, recent breakthroughs and so on) has been launched.
International Workshop on Robotic Wireless Sensor Networks Workshop June 10, 2009 - Marina Del Rey, California
Contact Information: Volkan Isler (isler at cs dot umn dot edu)
In the last decade, Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have been
successfully deployed to perform numerous automation tasks such as
environmental monitoring, surveillance and inventory tracking. By
introducing actuation capabilities (in particular controlled-mobility),
robots have the potential to improve the capabilities of existing WSNs
significantly. Recent advances in robotics as well as the availability
of inexpensive robotic platforms have made it feasible to develop hybrid
networks in which multiple mobile robots interact with each other and
other static sensors to perform complex tasks. On the other hand, design
and implementation of such hybrid systems bring forth new algorithmic
and systems challenges related to coordination, planning, and resource
management.

The goal of this workshop is to explore the algorithmic and systems
aspects at the intersection of robotics and sensor networks. We seek
work in a variety of areas including:

* Development of hardware and software platforms
* Experiences from deployments
* Resource allocation algorithms
* Novel research challenges and applications
* Localization and route planning
* Sensor tasking, control and planning

Program Co-Chairs: Andreas Terzis and Volkan Isler
Special Issue on Networked Robots: Serving the Society Publication - Journal Special Issue April 2, 2009 - N/A
Contact Information: Song Dezhen (dzsong at cse dot tamu dot edu)
Journal of Intelligent Service Robotics Announcing: Special Issue on Networked Robots: Serving the Society

Networked robots pose a number of technical challenges related to network noise, reliability, congestion, fixed and variable time delay, stability, passivity, range and power limitations, deployment, coverage, safety, localization, sensor and actuation fusion, privacy, security, and user interface design. New capabilities arise frequently with the introduction of new hardware, software, and protocol standards. In this special issue, the research topics are focused on addressing algorithmic and system challenges when the networked robots are used in service applications.

Special Issue Editors:
Nak Young Chong, School of Information Science, JAIST, Japan
Norihiro Hagita, ATR Intelligent Robotics and Communicatuon Laboratories, Japan
Volkan Isler, Computer Science Dept., Univ. of Minnesota, USA
Klaus Schilling, Computer Science Dept., the University of Würzburg, Germany,
Dezhen Song, Computer Science and Engineering Dept., Texas A&M University, USA
Networked Robots Research Portal Announcement September 10, 2008 - Online
Contact Information: Song Dezhen (dzsong at cs dot tamu dot edu)
Dear Networked Robots TC members,

Upon the discussion among TC co-chairs and ex- co-chairs, we all feel the need
to build a research portal web page that provides an entry point for
researchers who are interested in networked robots to search for research labs
and projects that are active in the domain of our technical committee.

It is also recommended that such a page should be self-oragnized and easy-to-be
maintained by either our tc members or a moderator. We found that google group
webpage is a great place to oganize it.

Randomly sampled a few labs, my student (Ji Zhang) has put together a beta
version of the research portal page at the following url,
http://groups.google.com/group/networked-robots/web?hl=en
Clicking on the url, you can see a small list of labs. Clicking on the name of
each lab, you can see the active projects.

This incompletet small list serves as a template for those who are interested
to get their labs/projects highlighted in the research portal. If you are
interested in listing your lab or projects here or make modifications, you can
do it in two ways,

1) By youself: since you are already a member of our google group, all you need
to is to edit the page youself. Before you do that, please send Ji or me an
email, we will enable your account to edit the page. Please make sure you do
not remove other researcher's page. Please follow the instruction on the
webpage.

2) Send it to jizhang@cs.tamu.edu. Ji will be more than happy to post them for
you. This is the easiest way.

If you have any suggestions that help us to improve this page, please feel free
to send to me or Ji.

Best regards,

Dez Song
http://faculty.cs.tamu.edu/dzsong
Workshop on Wireless Multihop Communications in Networked Robotics (WMCNR 2008), Workshop April 4, 2008 - Berlin, Germany
Contact Information: Kim Seong-Lyun (slkim at yonsei dot ac dot kr)
Workshop on Wireless Multihop Communications in Networked Robotics (WMCNR 2008),
April 4th, Berlin, Germany
http://www.wmcnr.org
Contact Information: Seong-Lyun Kim (slkim at yonsei dot ac dot kr)

The wireless multihop communication has been one of key research issues in recent years both in academia
and wireless industry. It encompasses ad hoc radio networks, sensor networks, wireless mesh networks and
mobile multihop relay related to the industrial and standardization activities such as IEEE 802.11s, 802.15.4, 802.16j, etc.
Further the multihop communications can be combined with cooperative communications and network coding,
which attracted more researchers in this field.

The idea behind such multihop communications is to utilize the availability of other nodes or to borrow their
transmission capability. This in many cases exceeds the delay caused by the multihop relay, the gain
from which is capacity enhancement as well as coverage extension of plain radio networks.

Now we turn our attention to the robotics area. In these days, many researchers are noticing group behaviors found in
small insects or animals such as ants, birds, and fish, trying to realize such behaviors into the control and
coordination of a team of robots with their local interaction. The multiple (usually small) robots communicate each
other, sharing the same mission, naturally through wireless communications. In this respect, wireless multihop
communication is an excellent candidate for inter-robot information exchange.

The main idea of this workshop is to bridge the above two areas (wireless multihop communications and networked
robotics) by opening a place for researchers to meet and exchange their ideas.
ECCS 2007 Workshop on Collective and Collaborative Robotics (CCR 2007). Conference October 1, 2007 - Dresden, Germany
Contact Information: Enric Cervera (ecervera at icc dot uji dot es)
The domain of collective and collaborative robotics is acquiring prominent importance in many key application areas. Teams of robots cooperating among them and/or with humans can perform a variety of tasks in a faster, more reliable, and more flexible way than a single robot.
The First International Workshop on Networking Technology for Robotics and Applications (NeTRA 2007) Workshop August 17, 2007 - Honolulu, Hawaii, USA
Contact Information: Daniela Constantinescu (danielac at me dot uvic dot ca)
What provisions are required at the control, sensing, planning and action
levels to ensure reliable task execution by robots connected via unreliable
networks? This is the key question explored in the First International
Workshop on Networking Technology for Robotics and Applications (NeTRA 2007)
organized in conjunction with ICCCN 2007.
http://www.me.uvic.ca/~danielac/NeTRA.html
RSS Workshop on Robotic Sensor Networks: Principles and Practice Workshop June 30, 2007 - Atlanta, GA
Contact Information: Gaurav Sukhatme (gaurav at usc dot edu)
Sensor network research has risen to prominence in recent years. The breadth of research in the area is large. RSS 2007 will feature a one day focused workshop on *robotic* sensor networks, namely sensor networks which incorporate robotic mobility or articulation. Such systems include, e.g., a networked multi-robot group, a network of immobile computing and sensing nodes and mobile robot(s), a network of immobile nodes each with computing and actuated sensing (allowing e.g., each node to change the direction in which a sensor is pointed). The design of such systems raises algorithmic and theoretical challenges as well as challenges associated with the practicalities of of conducting real deployments. This workshop will bring together people interested in the algorithmic aspects, mathematical and statistical foundations, and experimentalists who have fielded robotic sensor networks in the context of specific applications. This synergy between theory and practice is in line with the 'realistic visions' RSS 2007 workshop theme.
CFP: Special Issues of International Journal of Humanoid Robotics on CFP May 1, 2007 - N/A
including topics about network robots and ubiquitous robotics,
organized by Norihiro Hagita (ATR) and Hiroshi Ishiguro (Osaka University).
Workshop on Network Robot Systems: Ubiquitous, Cooperative, Interactive Robots for Human Robot Symbiosis. Workshop April 14, 2007 - Rome, Italy
Organized by Norihiro Hagita (ATR), Alberto Sanfeliu (Technical
University of Catalonia, Spain), Alessandro Saffiotti (Orebro University),
and Hiroshi Ishiguro (Osaka University).
IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, Rome,
Italy, April 2007.
A European group announces its Ubiquitous Networking Robotics in Urban Announcement December 1, 2006 - Spain
A European group announces its Ubiquitous Networking Robotics in Urban
Settings (URUS) led by Alberto Sanfeliu (Technical University of Catalonia,
Spain), its mission is to develop an adaptable cognitive network robot
architecture which integrates the basic functionalities required for the
network robot system to do urban tasks,
such as guidance and transportation of persons and goods, and surveillance.
Started from December 2006, three-year research project.
3rd International Conference on Ubiquitous Robots and Ambient Intelligence Conference October 15, 2006 - KIST, Seoul, Korea
Contact Information: Nak Young Chong (nakyoung at jaist dot ac dot jp)
Workshop on Network Robot Systems: Toward intelligent robotic systems integrated with environments Workshop October 10, 2006 - Beijing, China
Workshop on Network Robot Systems(http://www.irc.atr.jp/iros06_nrs_workshop/):
Toward Intelligent Robotic Systems Integrated with Environments.
Organized by Norihiro Hagita (ATR), Alberto Sanfeliu (Technical University of
Catalonia, Spain), Tomomasa Sato(The University of Tokyo), and Hiroshi Ishiguro
(Osaka University).
IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, Beijin,
Chaina, October 2006.
2nd Korea-Japan Joint Symposium on Network Robot Systems Conference June 1, 2006 - Jeju, Korea
Exact date might not be correct
1st Japan-Korea Joint Symposium on Network Robot Systems (JK-NRS2005) Workshop November 25, 2005 - Kyoto, Japan
Organized by Norihiro Hagita (ATR) and Young-Jo Cho (ETRI). See the website for details
International Conference on Ubiquitous Robots and Ambient Intelligence Event - conference November 2, 2005 - Daejeon, Korea
Contact Information: Nak Young Chong (nakyoung at jaist dot ac dot jp)
The aim of this conference is to bring together researchers, engineers, and practitioners to present their ideas and recent works related to the various aspects of ubiquitous robots and ambient intelligence.
IROS 2005 Tutorial on Network-based Robot Simulation and Remote Control Using Open Technologies Java and Java3D Tutorial August 3, 2005 - Edmonton, CA
Contact Information: Igor Belousov
IROS 2005 Workshop on CORBA Networking Event - workshop August 2, 2005 - Edmondton, Canada
Contact Information: Ken Goldberg (goldberg at ieor dot berkeley dot edu)
this workshop highlights uses of the CORBA system for Networked Robots
IROS 2005 Plenary Talk: Networked Robotic Observatories for the Biosciences Talk May 1, 2005 - Berkeley, CA
Our Technical Committee shared the award for Most Active Technical Committee Award April 20, 2005 - Barcelona
announced at the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation in Barcelona
Networked Robot Project Announcement April 3, 2005 - Japan
Contact Information: Norihiro Hagita
Japan's ATR Intelligent Robotics and Communication Laboratory announces its Networked Robot Project Led by Norihiro Hagita (ATR), its mission is to develop network-based intelligent robots for applications such as service, medical, and safety
Workshop on Network Robot Systems: Toward Intelligent Robotic Systems Integrated with Environments Workshop April 1, 2005 - Barcelona, Spain
Contact Information: Norihiro Hagita, Alberto Sanfeliu, Hiroshi Ishiguro
The Research Atelier on Network Robot Systems (NRS) Lauched Event - Research effort April 1, 2005 - Barcelona (Spain)
Networked Robot Forum Announcement January 1, 2005 - -
Contact Information: Hideyuki Tokuda
Networked Robot Forum , chaired by Hideyuki Tokuda (Keio University), it promotes R&D and standardization on network robots through activities to support awareness campaigns and verification experiments in collaboration among wide-ranging parties. Includes over 100 industry and academic members.
Networked Robotics: Issues, Architectures and Applications Talk October 1, 2004 - Sendai, Japan
Contact Information: Gerard T. McKee, Paul S. Schenker
Workshop on Wireless and Networked Robots Workshop April 1, 2004 - New Orleans
Contact Information: Wolfram Burgard, Ken Goldberg, Yasuharu Kunii
Ubiquitous Robotic Companion (URC) Project Announcement April 1, 2004 - Korea
Special Issue on Online Robots and E-Automation: International Journal of Automation and Computing Publication - Journal April 1, 2004 -
Contact Information: Huosheng Hu (hhu at essex dot ac dot uk)
IEEE ICIT'03 (International Conference on Industrial Technology 2003). Special Session on Internet Teleoperation Talk December 10, 2003 - Maribor, Slovenia
EURON 2003: International Summer School on Internet and Online Robots for Telemanipulation Program September 15, 2003 - Jaume I University, Spain
2003 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation: Workshop on New Research Directions in Internet Tele-Robotics Workshop September 14, 2003 - Taipei, Taiwan
Contact Information: Imad Elhajj, Liu Yu hui
Special Issue of Autonomous Robotics Journal on Online and Internet Robots. 2003, v15 Publication - Journal September 1, 2003 -
Special Issue of IEEE Proceedings on: Networked and Intelligent Robots Through the Internet Publication - IEEE Proceedings March 1, 2003 -
Contact Information: Ren Luo, Toshio Fukuda
2002 IEEE Workshop on Educational Applications of Online Robots. IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation Workshop May 12, 2002 - Washington, DC
Contact Information: Gerard McKee
Your wish is my command Publication - Article December 22, 2001 -
Beyond Webcams: An Introduction to Online Robots Publication - Anthology December 1, 2001 - MIT Press
Anthology of articles on Online Robots from MIT Press, 2002.
The Robot in the Garden: Telerobotics and Telepistemology in the Age of the Internet Publication - Book June 1, 2000 -
Contact Information: Ken Goldberg

Background

URL:http://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~isler/tc/
Founding Date: May 1, 2001
Member Count: 201
Fall 2010 Committee Chairs:
- Hagita, Norihiro (hagita at atr dot jp)
  - ATR
  - corresponding chair - send email to join committee
- Schilling, Klaus (schi at informatik dot uni-wuerzburg dot de)
  - University Wuerzburg
- Isler, Volkan (isler at cs dot umn dot edu)
  - University of Minnesota
  - corresponding chair - send email to join committee
Committee Chairs Emeritus:
- Goldberg, Ken (goldberg at ieor dot berkeley dot edu)
  - University of California, Berkeley
- Chong, Nak Young (nakyoung at jaist dot ac dot jp)
  - JAIST
- Burgard, Wolfram (burgard at informatik dot uni-freiburg dot de)
  - University of Freiburg, Department of Computer Science
- Sukhatme, Gaurav (gaurav at usc dot edu)
  - University of Southern California
- Song, Dezhen (dzsong at cs dot tamu dot edu)
  - Texas A&M University
Recent Innovations Summary:click here to download