SS1 Cognitive Systems of EU Cognition Programme [Download CFP]
Organizer: Patrick Courtney, Perkinelmer, UK

One major practical motivation for the development of cognitive systems is to overcome the problems faced by traditional computer systems in dealing robustly with the uncertainties and changing demands that characterise the real world. Potential applications cited span a very broad range and have included care-giver robots, and easier-to-use interfaces. One major approach that has emerged has been in the use of open source platforms in order to share experiences and run larger scale experiments.

This special session is dedicated to the development of the tools and methodologies that are in developed within the EU with an emphasis on the open source approaches with a view to performance analysis and comparison, and to stimulate discussion over cooperative research
especially use of open platforms.

 

SS2 Architectures for Unmanned Systems
Organizer: Roger Bostelman and Jim Albus, NIST, USA

This special session is dedicated to learning from experts who are working on control system architectures and their standards that will intelligently control multiple autonomous unmanned vehicles performing assigned missions in coordinated cooperation. These architectures must provide for greater interoperability among various platforms, additional autonomous controls, and improved communications. A critical step in the evolution of these technologies is the development of consensus on industry standards that address ongoing product safety, performance and capabilities. These architectures are applicable to groups of any type, or combination of types, of unmanned vehicle. Today, unmanned vehicle systems encompass Unmanned Aircraft Vehicles, (UAVs), Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGVs), Unmanned Maritime Vehicles (UMVs = Unmanned Undersea and Surface Vehicles). The Office of the Secretary of Defense has acknowledged the excellent potential, the commonalities and the need for an integrated approach to the development of all unmanned systems in their recently issued Unmanned Systems Roadmap 2007-2032. Interoperability objectives stated within the Roadmap are “to provide future, seamless interoperability by DoD UASs with UGVs and UMSs” towards “a unified standard where practical.” We will hear from UAV, UGV, UMV researchers on their efforts towards unmanned vehicle system control architectures and standardization efforts.

 

SS3 Performance Metrics for Perception in Intelligent Manufacturing [Download CFP]
Organizer: Tsai Hong and Roger Eastman, NIST, USA

We invite contributions for the PerMIS'08 Special Session on "Performance Metrics for Perception in Intelligent Manufacturing." Recent advances in 2D and 3D perception has the promise to enable new levels of autonomy and interactivity in faculty automation, but innovative research and development results must be fully tested and validated before transfer to the factory floor. We are interested both in performance metrics for existing sensors and algorithms, as well as analysis and understanding of sensor requirements for manufacturing applications.

 

SS4 Results from a Virtual Manufacturing Automation Competition [Download CFP]
Organizer: Stephen Balakirsky, Chris Scrapper and Raj Madhavan, NIST, USA

2008 saw the running of the first annual Virtual Manufacturing and Automation (VMAC) competition. This competition strives to bring together the three groups of industry, researchers, and developers to tackle some of today’s leading edge research issues including the ability to safely operate in dynamic, unstructured environments and amongst humans. This year’s competition focused on enabling automated guided vehicles (AGVs) to accurately follow unstructured paths and perform docking maneuvers in confined spaces.

This special session is dedicated to this competition. An overview of the competition will be provided, along with the scoring metrics that were utilized. Competing teams will report on the algorithms that they implemented, and successes and problems with using the provided infrastructure. In addition, information will be provided on the research challenges that are expected to be explored for the next competition that will take place in March 2008.

 

SS5 Quantitative Assessment of Robot-generated Maps [Download CFP]
Organizer: Chris Scrapper, Raj Madhavan and Stephen Balakirsky, NIST, USA

This special session is dedicated to the development of the tools and methodologies that will facilitate the quantitative assessment of navigation solutions against user-defined requirements, with special focus on the metric quality of robot-generated maps. Developing tools and objective evaluation methodologies will enable the inter-comparison of results and the rapid exchange of results; thereby expediting the transfer of technology and producing the means to evaluate utility and benefit of different navigation solutions in a variety of environmental scenarios.

The emphasis of this special session will be on how to assess the quality of robot-generated maps, rather than the evaluation of the algorithms. A standardized dataset with ground truth will be released for researchers interested in participating in the workshop. The participants will run their self-localization and mapping algorithms against the standardized dataset, producing a formatted map that will serve as the basis for developing tools that will measure the metric quality of maps and the accuracy of the pose estimate during the run. This will help us identify problematic scenarios for specific algorithms and understand how these errors impact the overall performance of the system.

 

SS6 Biologically Inspired Models of Intelligent Systems
Organizer: Gary Berg-Cross, EM&I, USA

Brain and more general biological models have long provided architectural ideas for "development" of Adaptive Intelligent Systems. However until recently the neural and cognitive science needed to design and study such biologically inspired cognitive architectures (BICA) has been too general to be meaningful applied to dynamic and uncertain real world situations. Emerging research thrusts such as Developmental Robotics, reported on at PerMIS 2007 represent promising efforts using general cognitive developmental principles. Thus, instead of modeling the surface behaviors of infants, research focuses on modeling more general causal mechanisms and variables that may underlie the development of adaptive behaviors. This special session is dedicated to continuing the exposition of a range of synthetic approaches aimed at addressing integrative theory towards some cognitive phenomenon of interest such as meta-cognition long ignored in traditional IS and robotics. Of particular interest is the challenge to design innovative hybrid cognitive architectures that integrate key features of human cognition such as the capability of autonomous cognitive growth, the basic kinds of human memory, organized within social, communicational and emotional capabilities.

Potential applications of such architectures would span a very broad range would included healthcare-provider robots and they raise issues of adequate metrics for IS performance.

 

SS7 Medical Robotics
Organizer: Ram Sriram, NIST, USA