The full day workshop aims to introduce the current status on service robot standardization activity and to encourage discussion and mutual understanding on elements for realizing effective service robots in real world. Invited sessions with representative professionals who are actively working on standardization of service robots and related fields are organized, as well as general sessions consisting of submissions of related interests. Panel discussion on future direction of establishing effective standards for service robots will also be held.
Recently, numbers of activities have started to establish standards for service robots in various international organizations such as IEEE, ISO, ITU-T, OGC and OMG. Following the first standard for robotic components in 2008 (Robotic Technology Component 1.0, OMG), the world's first standard aimed specifically for service robots has just been published in February 2010 (Robotic Localization Service 1.0, OMG).
With the rapid progress in robotics and IT technology, the robot systems are fast becoming larger and more complicated, Moreover, as recent notions such as structured or smart environment suggests, researchers are now heading toward spatial expansion of the idea of robots; that is, robots are no longer limited within a single body but the total system integrated over environmental facilities, multiple cooperative robots and external information resources. At the same time, it is getting more and more difficult to build robots that can effectively operate in real environments. Thus, both for starting up a new industry for service robots and for the ease to focus on specific research fields such as HRI, interconnectability and resusability of various elements that make a complete robotic system are essential. For a long time, service robots had been thought to be in 'research' stage. But it is now the time to head toward industrialization and standardization.
The aim of this workshop is to introduce the ongoing activities for standardization and to seek future elements and directions for service robots. In addition to current works on robotics, trends in related areas that are considered to be essential for service robots to serve in our daily environments such as ubiquitous network, sensor network or geographical information systems will be introduced.
The workshop will be of particular interest to robotic engineers and researchers that work in the general areas of service robots. It will also be an opportunity to engineers and researchers working in the field of sensor network, ubiquitous network or geographic information system to learn the state of the art in service robotics and how these systems are to be used in various robotic services, and at the same time, to utilize robotic technology in their fields. Standardization is especially important for the emerge of the new service robot industry and therefore this workshop can attract the interest of the general service robot community.
Note: If you would like to join only the workshop (and not the main conference), please contact the organizer.