Aims and Scope
The attention of the robotics community has been drawn more and more on the development of different types of assistive robotics in the last years. This interest is not only motivated by the trend of designing robots with more complex capabilities, but mainly for the social implications of the applications of these robots. They must be able to perform a wide range of different tasks in partially or completely unknown environments. And, what is most interesting, they must able to cooperate and probably communicate with humans in a variety of modes. The development of such amount of different capabilities represents and ambitious and attractive research field for many scientists.
Researchers often find it difficult to study the fundamental concepts related the design of assistive robots, due to de variety of disciplines involved. For this reason, this symposium aims at being an interdisciplinary forum that can help to study and analyse the possibilities this field opens to research.
Probably the most exciting interest of assistive robots is their intense interaction with humans and their appropriateness for tasks in human-centered environments. But the exploitation of these capabilities requires the development of novel control strategies, and, more interestingly, more advanced human-robot cooperation and communication skills. Examples of the last are learning by imitation, language acquisition, and gesture recognition, among others.
The purpose of this school is to give the students a general background on these main topics. To achieve this goal, world-wide known lecturers would introduce the students in the basic concepts related to the design and development of assistive robots. The lecturers have been selected not only because of their knowledge in particular topics related with humanoid robots, but also for their valuable experience in the development of these robots, and their outstanding teaching experience.
Summarizing, the topics to be addressed in the program during the summer school are grouped in the following items:
- Mechanical design and architecture of assistive robots:
- Locomotion
- Antropomorphic heads and hands
- Robot heads
- Advanced capabilities
- Dexterous manipulation
- Vision
- Learning
- Human-robot cooperation
- Learning by demonstration
- Communication through gestures
- Projects and applications in real environments
- Assistance to elderly, handicapped and ill people
- Assistance at home and in hospitals, museus, shops, etc.
- Relationship domotics-assistive robotics
The participants will get in touch with other young researchers in the field and will have the opportunity to improve their knowledge through the interaction with experts. Another important objective is to provide European graduate students in robotics with a unique training opportunity in this emergent and fast-evolving domain. Students will closely interact for one week with some of the top-level researchers in the world in this domain. They will also have the opportunity to discuss their research work with them, as well as with other European students.
