Connectionists: RSS2008 WS on locomotion control, June 28: Call for participation and poster-abstracts

[Auke Ijspeert]

Dear connectionists,

Researchers in locomotion control and learning might be interested in 
the following workshop that will take place in Zurich, Switzerland, on 
June 28 as part of the RSS2008 conference.

Best regards,

Auke Ijspeert

Control of locomotion: from animals to robots

Workshop at the "Robotics: Science and Systems" Conference */RSS2008/* 
<http://www.roboticsconference.org/>,
Zurich, Switzerland, Saturday, June 28, 2008.

*Organizers*:
*Auke Ijspeert <http://birg.epfl.ch/page27899.html> *(EPFL, Lausanne, 
Switzerland), *Paolo Dario 
<http://www-arts.sssup.it/people/prof/pdario/pdario.htm>* (SSSA, Italy), 
and *Sten Grillner <http://www.neuro.ki.se/grillner/pages/sten1.html>* 
(Karolinska Institute, Sweden)

Workshop website: http://birg2.epfl.ch/rss2008/

*Description*:

The goal of the workshop is to discuss how inspiration from the animal 
kingdom can help improving locomotion skills in robots, and how robots 
can be used as scientific tools in animal motor control. All aspects of 
locomotion will be considered including materials, actuators, sensors, 
control, and learning. In particular, the workshop aims at exploring how 
these different aspects can collectively be designed to improve the 
locomotor skills of future robots. We will discuss possible roads to 
tackle the challenges related to having robots get out of the labs and 
move in unstructured and partially unknown terrains.

While robotics has clearly something to gain from biological 
inspiration, we will also discuss how robotics can give something back 
to biology, namely how robots can be used as scientific tools in animal 
motor control. For instance, how robots can be used to test hypotheses 
about neural circuits and/or biomechanical principles in invertebrate 
and vertebrate animals.

*Topics*: Neuro-mechanical coupling, central pattern generators, 
compliant robots, passive and dynamic walkers, gait transitions, motor 
learning, swimming robots, crawling robots, walking robots, jumping 
robots, /etc/.

*Format: *The workshop will have an interesting mix of biologists and 
roboticists as invited speakers (see list below) together with a poster 
session, whose participants will be selected after an open call for 
poster (see below). The workshop will be organized such as to provide 
ample time for discussions. We aim at a 75-25% ratio between 
presentations and discussions. We therefore suggest having each talk 
followed by a discussion, i.e. an alternation between talks and 
discussions. To guide the discussions, we will distribute beforehand a 
set of strategic questions (emails to speakers and participants + on 
this web page), and invite speakers and participants to exchange their 
thoughts about them. For more information, see the workshop website: 
http://birg2.epfl.ch/rss2008/

*Invited speakers:*

***Paolo Arena*, University of Catania, Italy*
Holk** Cruse*, University of Bielefeld, Germany*
Paolo Dario*, Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, Italy.*
Robert Full*, UC Berkeley, USA. *
Sten** Grillner*, The Nobel Institute for Neurophysiology, Karolinska 
Institute, Sweden. *
Auke Ijspeert*, EPFL, Switzerland. *
Hiroshi Kimura*, Kyoto Institute of Technology, Japan. *
Roger Quinn*, Case Western Reserve University, USA. *
Stefan Schaal*, University of Southern California, USA. *
Andre Seyfarth*, University of Jena, Germany.

*Call for posters*

Researchers in animal and robot locomotion are invited to submit a 
*2-page abstract* for presenting a poster at the workshop. Accepted 
poster presenters will also have the opportunity to make a *2-min poster 
teaser* (i.e. a very short oral presentation) to advertise their poster.

Please send your abstract to auke.ijspeert at epfl.ch before *June 14*. 
Feel free to send it before, since we will review abstracts as they come 
in and we might have to restrict the number of accepted posters due to 
space restrictions.

*Registration

*Participants will need to register to the RSS2008 conference, see 
http://www.roboticsconference.org/ and 
http://www.roboticsconference.org/registration.shtml
Note that the early registration for RSS2008 with a 100 Swiss Francs 
discount ends on May 25 (i.e. very soon!).


 

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