Events

Italy-Japan Workshop 2011 “New Critical Challenges in Robotics” Humanity is facing new critical challenges: the ageing of the population, increasing urbanization and an expanding need to maintain ......

Italy-Japan Workshop 2011 “New Critical Challenges in Robotics” Humanity is facing new critical challenges: the ageing of the population, increasing urbanization and an expanding need to maintain the environment. In order to maintain the population quality of life, we require a new class of soft and sentient machines that will fulfil a variety of assistive roles, according on what aimed by the FET Flagship initiative (FET-Fi) “Robot Companions for Citizens”.

The Global Robot Academia of Waseda University and the Italian Embassy in Tokyo, with the support of the Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, Pisa (Italy) and EUIJ Waseda, are organizing the: Italy-Japan ......

The Global Robot Academia of Waseda University and the Italian Embassy in Tokyo, with the support of the Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, Pisa (Italy) and EUIJ Waseda, are organizing the: Italy-Japan Workshop 2010 “Robotics and Education in Italy and Japan” The workshop will be held on December 4, 2010, at Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan. See this page for the detailed information. During the last years there has been a lot discussion on how the society and its people are changing, and on how the education system should change to take these changes into account, in particular for the education in science and engineering. Among the different possible solutions, robotics seems to be a key aspect for education of the new generations, as it is able to encourage both teachers and students to develop their creativity and spirit in exchange of experiences and techniques. Robotics in fact is a popular and effective way for teacher to cover important areas of the curriculum of the students at all levels, from elementary school to higher education. Education with Robotics is a field of a unique dimension, which holds the potential to leverage much broader skills and competences next to the obvious science, technology and math skill-sets. Robotics in fact not only acts as a huge motivational force, inspiring students to construct meaningful things which behave as they want them to, but it also forces them to face and deal with real-life challenges building on multi-skills and competences – real problems solved in a real work life context, in a fun and engaging way. The Italy-Japan Joint Workshop “Robotics and Education in Italy and Japan” will host 4 Italian distinguished speakers together with 6 Japanese distinguished speakers, coming both from University and Industry. These speakers will share with us their experiences and their visions on robotics and on its role for the education of the new generations of students. In addition to the presentation, a selected number of Japanese and Italian companies will be invited to show and demonstrate their products.

The purpose of the Summer School program is to provide students with opportunities to discuss, exchange ideas and work in multicultural and interdisciplinary groups in the field of robotics. As well ......

The purpose of the Summer School program is to provide students with opportunities to discuss, exchange ideas and work in multicultural and interdisciplinary groups in the field of robotics. As well as hosting a series of conferences and master classes by renowned researchers in robotic field. WSK-Tng Summer School 2010 was host in the facilities of KIST in Seoul. This year the theme for the Summer School was "The Emotional Human Robot Interaction". Under this title, students participated in a group project, with each group composed by students from different universities, with the objective of developing a robotic system to explore the possibilities of robot and human emotional interaction, as well as to foster creativity and mutual collaboration and understanding between group members of different cultures. Students also participated in a Laboratory Tour around KIST research facilities to know by first hand the state-of-the-art of the research done by KIST in the field of robotics. Academic formation was finally complemented by a series of conferences by renowned researches and professors in the area of: medical robotics, emotional robot interaction, human voice and gesture recognition, ethical consideration that robots arise and finally, a master class by Professor Paolo Dario regarding their experience in the development of a robot to collect garbage under demand in a real town environment. This year's Summer School also included cultural activities as a visit to the open air folk museum "Korean Village".

WS on Service Robotics Nov.8 (Sun), 2009 Build.No.63, Room 04-05, Nishi-Waseda Campus, Waseda University, Tokyo WS on Medical Robotics Nov.9 (Mon), 2009 Okuma-Shokodo (大隈小講堂), Waseda ......

WS on Service Robotics Nov.8 (Sun), 2009 Build.No.63, Room 04-05, Nishi-Waseda Campus, Waseda University, Tokyo WS on Medical Robotics Nov.9 (Mon), 2009 Okuma-Shokodo (大隈小講堂), Waseda Campus, Waseda University, Tokyo

With the advent of the aging society, there will be an increased demand for the practical application of RT (Robot Technology) in lifestyle-related areas such as healthcare and quality-of-life ......

With the advent of the aging society, there will be an increased demand for the practical application of RT (Robot Technology) in lifestyle-related areas such as healthcare and quality-of-life assurance. It is expected that this demand will lead to the creation of new key industries. The Japanese market only for robots is estimated to be about 6.2 trillion yen in 2025. This estimate, which is about 12 times the current market, strongly indicates the potential for RT to develop into an industry second only to automobiles, electronics, and information technology. To meet these expectations, and to develop a truly intelligent social infrastructure for RT, it is urgent that we foster young researchers to work on RT with an international perspective. Last Summer School focused on the creation of strong, international and interdisciplinary groups, and promoted the communication between their members. The WSK-TNg Robotics School 2009 concentrates on the development of a systematic theory of RT that fashions a new relation between people/society and machine systems and on evolving robotics from an aggregate of several fields into a unified discipline of science, technology, and engineering, while at the same time working to understand related socio-economic issues. Twelve invited speakers from five universities and one company will introduce the topic From Communication to Collaboration to a selected group of students. A variety of subjects within this field will be addressed, such as the basis of RT (mechanical engineering, control engineering, materials engineering, electrical and electronic engineering, information engineering, and ergonomics) and many other disciplines, including medicine, physiology, psychology, and neuroscience, as well as sociology, law, and ethics.

In recent years there is a growing expectation that robotic technology will be more and more important in our life, getting out of the factories (industrial robots) and helping people in a variety of ......

In recent years there is a growing expectation that robotic technology will be more and more important in our life, getting out of the factories (industrial robots) and helping people in a variety of different everyday scenarios (personal robots). The performance of the state of the art robots, however, are far from successfully achieving such ambitious goals, and a lot of work still needs to be done by us researchers. This workshop on Sensory Fusion should help us to better understand the main challenges these robots face, and to better understand how to cope with them. Five excellent speakers from Europe, America, and Asia, will present their points of view on the current status and future challenges of robotics, and how the sensory fusion, i.e. the integration of different modalities such sensors, mechanical design, low- and high- level control, interface design, perception, and so on, could help us to build better robots. Program 13:00 Introduction 13:05 Session I 13:05 Shuji HASHIMOTO, Waseda University, Japan 13:25 Mark CUTKOSKY, Stanford University, USA 14:05 Jun Ho OH, KAIST, Korea 14:45 Coffee break 15:00 Session II 15:00 Ronald C ARKIN, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA 15:40 Giulio SANDINI, Italian Institute of Technology, Italy 16:20 Round Table 17:00 Closing remarks

Most industrialized countries are aging fast due to an increase of life expectancy and a reduction of child birth rate. There is considerable expectation for a growing need for home, medical, and ......

Most industrialized countries are aging fast due to an increase of life expectancy and a reduction of child birth rate. There is considerable expectation for a growing need for home, medical, and nursing care services to assist this aging society, both from the physical and psychological points of view. For this purpose, robots, and in particular robots with the appearance based on the human body, are expected to perform human tasks such as providing personal assistance and social care for the elderly, and cognitive therapy, as well as entertainment and education. In particular, emotion is considered to be one of the most important factors that could crucially influence the success or failure of the presence of personal robots in our human community. In recent years, several robots have been developed to investigate the socio-emotional aspects of human-robot interactions. Among them, we can find animaloid robots, humanoid robots, androids, and even other kinds of robots to explore socio-emotive face-to-face interactions with people to explore face-to-face interactions. The concept behind all these interactive robots is “partnership” Partner robots will act as human peers in everyday life and will provide mental and communicational supports to humans, as well as physical support as mentioned previously. In particular, emotion is considered to be one of the most important factors that could crucially influence the success or failure of communication of robots in our human community. The development of emotional behavior and emotional models for humanoid robots, however, is still an open issue. This full day workshop will address the current challenges and the future perspectives of emotional humanoid robotics, from perception to expression, including modeling and understanding. It will also address the creation of mental and interaction models, and evaluation metrics for the interaction. This workshop will offer a unique opportunity of interaction among leading international researchers from a wide range of disciplines, and will provide to those interested in the field of emotional robotics the possibility to spend a full-immersion day with experts and colleagues, to learn and to discuss personally and interactively.

Waseda University, in collaboration with KIST - Korean Institute of Science and Technology and SSSA - Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna - is organizing a joint Summer School on "Fundamentals of Advanced Robotics".

With the advent of the aging society, there will be an increased demand for the practical application of RT (Robot Technology) in lifestyle-related areas such as healthcare and quality of life. In fact, it is expected that this demand will lead to the creation of new key industries FOr example, the Japanese market only for robots is estimated to be about 6.2 trillion yen in 2025.  This estimate, which is about 12 times the current market, strongly indicates the potential for RT to develop into an industry second only to automobiles, electronics, and information technology.

To meet these expectations, and to develop a truly intelligent social infrastructure for RT, it is urgent that we foster young researchers to work on RT with an international perspective. Waseda-SSSA-KIST Summer School 2008 focuses on the creation of a systematic theory of RT that fashions a new relation between people/society and machine systems and on evolving robotics from an aggregate of several fields into a unified discipline of science, technology, and engineering, while at the same time working to understand related socio-economic issues. 

Twenty invited speakers from seven universities and one company will introduce the "Fundamentals of Advanced Robotics"to a selected group of students. This summer school will cover both the basis of RT (such as mechanical engineering, control engineering, materials engineering, electrical and electronic engineering, information engineering, and ergonomics) and many other disciplines, including medicine, physiology, psychology, and neuroscience, as well as sociology, law, and ethics.