Aims and Scope

The attention of the robotics community has been drawn more and more on humanoid robots in the last years. This interest is not only motivated by the trend of designing robots with human appearance, but also for the implications of their use in human environments. 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.

First of all, we focus on the grand challenge that the development of human-like robots represents for mechatronics engineers. The mechanical design of a humanoid robot must be anthropomorphic not only in their appearance but also in their capabilities. And this often implies that the different parts must be light-weighted and highly versatile, that is, with a high number of degrees of freedom. In addition, the development of humanoid robots results in the research fields that otherwise would have a smaller area of application. An example of these, is the development of anthropomorphic arm and hands, the development of stereo heads, and the research on biped robots.

Probably the most exciting interest of humanoid robots is their intense interaction with humans and their appropriateness for tasks in human-centered environments, due both to their friendly appearance an their anthropomorphic design. 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 of humanoid design and programming. 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 building and programming of real humanoid robots, and by their outstanding teaching experience.

Summarizing, the topics to be addressed in the program during the summer school are grouped in the following items:

• Humanoid robot building:
• Anthropomorphic arm/hands
• Biped locomotion
• Robot heads
• Advanced skills
• Dexterous manipulation
• Advanced stereo vision
• Skill learning
• Human-robot cooperation
• Learning by demonstration
• Language acquisition
• Gestural communication

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.