Locomotion and Manipulation<br />Why the Great Divide?
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Workshop Overview

This two-day workshop is to encourage collaboration between the research communities of manipulation and locomotion, both in academia and industry. Both fields have recently received renewed interest, in part because of organized challenges, as well as the entry of large industrial players.  We want to build on that interest and get both communities to identify directions for unified research in locomotion and manipulation.

The workshop is motivated by the fact that, although the underlying physical principles driving locomotion and manipulation are similar, the techniques developed by both communities are not.  This workshop will analyze the reasons for these differences and explore ideas to bring them closer, with the goal of cross-pollinating advances in both fields.  In addition, the workshop will consider the impact of industrial efforts to address these problems.  The end result is to enable the robotics community to see locomotion and manipulation as part of the same problem, and facilitate the discovery of new and old ideas to address current challenges.

Workshop Description

    Locomotion and Manipulation are related to each other.  Both are heavily based on controlling physical interaction with an environment; both are ruled by the same laws of motion and contact; and both are subject to the same constraints and limitations imposed by our models of those laws.  Despite these similarities, there exists a current dichotomy in techniques for approaching planning, control, perception, and design for locomotion and manipulation.
    Part of the specialization can be attributed to the assumptions they respectively make, either (a) about the nature of the interactions with the environment, for example ranging from the spaced and periodic in time to the continuous, and from the localized in space to the distributed; or (b) the nature of the uncertainty, either in the state of the robot or the environment.  Many of the grand challenges that both fields face require, pushing the boundaries of those assumptions.  In this workshop we would like to explore in depth the reasons for these differences and come up with ideas to bring them closer together.
    The workshop will consist of invited talks, breakout sessions, and discussion panels to initiate a conversation between the two communities, identify tools and algorithms from locomotion with potential application in manipulation and vice versa, and create a summary document with relevant research topics at the intersection of locomotion and manipulation.

Intended Audience

The intended audience range from established researchers in the areas of locomotion or manipulation with expertise in control / planning / design.

Important Dates

  • Workshop:  April 2nd-3rd 2015.

Location

  • Westin, Arlington, VA (close to NSF).

Organizers

  • Koushil Sreenath, Carnegie Mellon University
  • Alberto Rodriguez, MIT

The organizers thank Jeff Trinkle from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for his support of this workshop.
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