Semantic Perception, Mapping and Exploration (SPME)

• Program and Proceedings of the IROS 2010 Workshop on Semantic Mapping and Autonomous Knowledge Acquisition are available at: http://purl.org/holz/iros10wssm/program.php (opened in a new window/tab).

Organizers:

• Dirk Holz - Autonomous Intelligent Systems Group, University of Bonn
  Address: Roemerstrasse 164, Bonn, 53117, Germany
  Phone: +49-228-73-4434
  Email: holz@ais.uni-bonn.de
  
  
• Daniel Munoz - The Robotics Institute, Carnagie Mellon University
  Address: 5000 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA
  Phone: +1-412-268-9577
  Email: dmunoz@cs.cmu.edu
  
  
• Andreas Nüchter - School of Engineering and Science, Jacobs University Bremen gGmbH
  Address: Campus Ring 1, 28759 Bremen, Germany
  Phone: +49-421-200-3181
  Email: a.nuechter@jacobs-university.de
  
  
• Radu Bogdan Rusu - Willow Garage, Inc
  Address: 68 Willow Road, Menlo Park, CA 94025, USA
  Phone: +1-650-475-2700
  E-mail: rusu@willowgarage.com
  
  

Abstract

As robots and autonomous systems move away from laboratory setups towards complex real-world scenarios, both the perception capabilities of these systems and their abilities to acquire and model semantic information must become more powerful. For example, a general-purpose service robot collaborating with a human user needs to know human spatial concepts and have an understanding of 3-dimensional objects, their use and functional relationships between them. More generally, semantic perception and mapping must become a resource for the robot, which links sensory information to the robot's knowledge base and high-level deliberative components. A key issue is the robot's ability to autonomously acquire and model the perceived semantic information, as well as (exploration) strategies for deciding where and how to acquire such information.

In this full-day workshop we will try to analyze the requirements of such a system, and discuss alternatives for achieving this goal, by bringing together researchers from areas such as Computer Vision, Cognitive Robotics, 3D Mapping, Mobile Manipulation, Machine Learning, Knowledge Representation, and Exploration. This workshop is planned to be the first event in a series of annual meetings at ICRA to discuss currently running projects and recent results to advance the state-of-the-art in semantic perception, mapping, and exploration.

Motivation and objectives:

Semantic perception for intelligent systems such as robots has seen a lot of progress recently, with many new and interesting techniques being developed in parallel by different research groups. To cope with a wide variety of tasks, service robots need to plan in spaces exceeding their local perceptual space. For deployment in human living environments, these robots need to aggregate and model perceived semantic information. A further requirement, for autonomous operation in the long-term, is the ability to acquire and update the necessary information, which involves actively exploring the environment.

A number of previous workshops have brought together researchers working on use of semantic information in a variety of domains including mapping for mobile robots, mobile manipulation, and semantic robot vision. The main focus of this workshop is on the autonomous acquisition of semantic information in intelligent robots and systems, as well as the use of semantic knowledge to guide further acquisition of information from the environment. The workshop will provide a common forum where people can exchange ideas and experiences on all aspects of this problem, and identify the common questions and concerns.

List of topics:

Topics of interest include, but are not necessary limited to:

• Semantic robot vision and scene interpretation for mobile manipulation
• Segmentation and annotation of natural scenes (e.g. from images or point clouds)
• Exploration strategies for semantic mapping and knowledge acquisition
• Semantic approaches for long-term operation in dynamic environments
• Ontologies and efficient representations for managing semantic information in robotics
• Use of semantic information in mapping (e.g. registration of sensory information) or knowledge acquisition

Program Committee: (Those marked with an asterisk (*) have already agreed to contribute.)

• Francesco Amigoni (*), Politecnico di Milano, Italy
• Michael Beetz (*), Technische Universität München, Germany
• Sven Behnke (*), University of Bonn, Germany
• Bertrand Douillard (*), University of Sydney, Australia
• Tom Duckett (*), Universiy of Lincoln, UK
• Joachim Hertzberg, University of Osnabrück, Germany
• Patric Jensfelt (*), KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden
• Jim Little (*), University of British Columbia, Canada
• Eitan Marder-Eppstein (*), Willow Garage, USA
• Bhaskara Marthi (*), Willow Garage, USA
• Alessandro Saffiotti, Örebro University, Sweden
• David Silver (*), Carnagie Mellon University, USA
• Markus Vincze (*), TU Vienna, Austria

Intended audience:

Researchers and R&D engineers working in the fields of personal robotics, robot perception, mobile manipulation, 3D (semantic) mapping, and exploration. We also hope to attract a large audience of student researchers (graduate students) interested in the above mentioned topics. Based on related workshops, we expect a peak attendance of 50-60 people.

Tentative schedule and agenda:

• 09:00 - 09:10 Welcome/Opening remarks (organizers)
• 09:10 - 10:10 Paper session I (3 papers)
• 10:10 - 10:30 Discussions I
• 10:30 - 11:00 coffee break
• 11:00 - 12:00 Paper session II (3 papers)
• 12:00 - 12:20 Discussions II
• 12:20 - 14:00 lunch break
• 14:10 - 15:10 Poster & video session
• 15:10 - 16:10 Paper session III (3 papers)
• 16:10 - 16:30 Discussions III
• 16:30 - 17:00 coffee break
• 17:00 - 17:20 Panel discussion
• 17:20 - 17:30 Closing remarks (organizers)

The workshop will be organized as a full-day workshop, with three paper sessions, and one poster session. The papers will be sorted into sessions based on their common research theme. After each paper session, there will be a brief panel discussion which aims to involve significant audience participation. Our goal is to link the workshop to previous events held at prestigious conferences in the mobile robotics field, including:

Relation to previous workshops:

• ICRA'07 (Rome) - Semantic Information in Robotics workshop organized by Joachim Hertzberg and Alessandro Saffioti.
• RSS'07 (Atlanta) - Robot Manipulation: Sensing and Adapting to the Real World workshop organized by Charles Kemp, Aaron Edsinger, Robert Platt, and Neo Ee Sian
• IROS'07 (San Diego) - From sensors to human spatial concepts workshop organized by Zoran Zivkovic and Jana Kosecka.
• IROS'08 (Nice) - 3D Mapping workshop organized by Patrick Pfaff and Wolfram Burgard.
• The Semantic Robot Vision Challenge (http://www.semantic-robot-vision-challenge.org/)
• ICCV'09 (Kyoto) - 3D Representation for Recognition organized by Silvio Savarese, Tinne Tuytelaars, and Derek Hoiem.
• IROS'09 (St. Louis) - Semantic Perception for Mobile Manipulation workshop organized by Radu Bogdan Rusu, Gary Bradski, Kurt Konolige, and Michael Beetz.
• ICRA'10 (Anchorage) - Best Practice in 3D Perception and Modeling for Mobile Manipulation workshop organized by Radu Bogdan Rusu, Andreas Nüchter, Gary Bradski, and Alexey Zakharov.
• IROS'10 (Taipei) - Semantic Mapping and Autonomous Knowledge Acquisition workshop organized by Dirk Holz, Tom Duckett, and Radu Bogdan Rusu.