Bridge Session on AI and Robotics

https://www.istc.cnr.it/en/content/aaai-23-bridge-session-artificial-intelligence-and-robotics

                                                        Part of the

                Thirty-Seventh AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence
                           February 7 – 14 2023 Washington, DC, USA.

CONTEXT
Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Robotics are strongly connected areas since the early days of AI. On the one hand, AI principles and methods play a crucial role in several areas of Robotics research and are pervasively exploited at various levels of robot architectures. On the other hand, Robotics provides several relevant challenges for the AI community where different AI methods and tools requires to be deeply integrated to obtain an embodied agent capable of an autonomous, adaptive and interactive behavior. In this direction, the scientific relevance of this proposal is related to how diverse areas of AI and Robotics research can be integrated to enable robots to face complex challenges in real-world tasks.

Notwithstanding the shared challenges and the widespread of learning and statistical methods in robotics, the AI and Robotics communities still need to further interact to integrate methods that are still not fully exploited. In particular, the integration of symbolic and sub-symbolic models and methods with different levels of abstraction are needed to face many relevant issues (e.g., combined task and motion planning, neuro-symbolic learning, task teaching, collaborative task execution, etc.) that require a strict collaboration between the two communities. 

Some initiatives have already been started to create a stable, long-term forum where researchers from both AI and Robotics communities can openly discuss relevant issues such as research and development progress, future directions and open challenges related to AI methods in Robotics. A notable venue is the International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS) workshop series on Planning and Robotics (PlanRob [1]). Started during ICAPS 2013, in Rome (Italy), and followed by editions at every ICAPS from 2014 to 2021, the PlanRob Workshop series has gathered excellent feedback from the P&S community, as also confirmed by the organisation of a Special Track on Robotics starting with ICAPS 2014. On the Robotics side, a version of the PlanRob series was held at ICRA 2017 in Singapore (top conference for the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society). Some related events were also organized at the European Robotic Forum [2] (promoted by the European Commission)  to present results and challenges in EU-funded projects.

After such time, technological developments allow embedded devices to run complex algorithms and be more effective, a wide diffusion of data is enabling opportunities for ground-breaking impact from learning techniques when applied to robots and an increasing number of AI & Robotics results are being collected facilitating the deployment of intelligent robots in many applicative fields.

AIM OF THE BRIDGE SESSION
The goal of this Bridge Session is to keep fostering the interactions already ongoing within PlanRob and further stabilize such common ground where researchers can confront and broaden research frontiers, identify most crucial challenges and pave the way towards a shared research agenda. Gathering notable representatives from both communities in a unique venue contributes in achieving such objective and allow them to share their knowledge and expertise as well as take advantage of different perspectives.

EXPECTED CONTRIBUTIONS AND SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS
We look for position papers to discuss ideas and concepts, e.g., via critiques or new perspectives in AI and Robotics, historical perspectives and analysis. Some relevant areas are, e.g., long-term autonomy and robot learning, neural symbolic approach, task teaching, cognitive robotics, human-robot interaction, open world planning and acting, explainable AI in robotics, reliable and safe AI methods for robotics, technological and integration challenges. The list is no limited to the above areas and additional topics may be proposed by contributors.

We are also looking for tutorial, a survey presentation or an integrated application showcase proposals on (new) cross-disciplinary AI & Robotics topics, with a shared focus, and to engage and educate new researchers, as well as established researchers. The goal is also to set common grand challenges while discussing fundamental problems and educating each other about respective tools.

Both position papers and proposals for tutorial, survey presentation or application showcase can be (max) 4 pages in AAAI style (plus up to one page of references).

ENVISAGED STRUCTURE
This session will be a one-day long event and it will be structured as a sequence discussion sessions, tutorials and interactive discussions to confront ideas and synthesize common views. A poster session will be organized to allow the presentation of open contributions and further stimulate the general discussion. A final panel session will aim to select the most crucial elements and identify a possible common research agenda for future steps.

Link to submission: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=aaaiairob23

Link to style files: https://www.aaai.org/Publications/Templates/AnonymousSubmission23.zip

IMPORTANT DATES
Contribution submission due: November 25, 2022
AAAI early registration deadline: December 12, 2022
Bridge Sessions at AAAI-23: 7 February, 2023

Organizers

Arthur Bit-Monnot, LAAS-CNRS, France

Alberto Finzi, University of Naples Federico II, Italy

AndreA Orlandini, National Research Council of Italy