Workshop at RSS 2013 (Berlin, Germany - June 27, 2013)

This workshop aims to contribute to define viable procedures for the replication of robotics research results and the best practice to conduct experiments. As part of the experimental protocols we include the procedures, data, code and hardware description. In the past years

a number of ideas on the topic have been proposed. The meeting will consist of a guided discussion on the alternatives and will try to reach a consensus on how to conduct significant experiments and make them replicable. We will invite some of the former participants that proposed the most promising ideas and results in order to contribute with methodological proposals and practical examples. We will look for novel concepts by means of a peer-reviewed open call. The workshop will provide a few examples of replicable experiments which will be made publicly available.

In recent years the interest in experimental methodologies increased dramatically within the robotics community, both from researchers, aiming at more grounded and fast research advancement, and from public funding agencies, according to the idea that good experimental activities could reduce the gap between research and industrial applications.

We believe that at this point we have mainly to agree on a number of conventions, on data set, on code identification or sharing procedure, on hardware identification or open sourcing, experimental ‘protocols’ etc.,   to facilitate result exchange and comparison.

The best contributions will be invited to submit to a refereed edited book with extended materials to allow replication and a special issue on a journal.

Schedule:

June, 27th

13:45 Introduction

14:00 Examples

14:00 FARSA: An Open Software Tool for Embodied Cognitive Science
G. Massera, T. Ferrauto, S. Nolfi
Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies, CNR
O. Gigliotta
University of Naples Federico II, Naples, Italy 

14: 30 Replicable Measures of learning and mutual adaptation in assistive robotics scalable autonomy systems

F. Bonsignorio
University Carlos III of Madrid and Heron Robots
M. Stoelen, V. Tejada, A. Jardon, C. Balaguer
University Carlos III of Madrid

15:00 Designing and evaluating comparable human injury analysis experiments: towards an international effort for robot safety standardization
S. Haddadin
DLR

15:30 Coffee Break

16:00 Replicable Hands

L. Odhner, R. Ma,  A. Dollar
University of Yale

16:30 Experimental Design in Robotics
A. Dragan
Carnegie-Mellon University

17:00 Guided discussion (to continue after the workshop, too): which data? which platform(s)? open source or mixed?

Contact person for all questions that may arise:

Fabio Bonsignorio

Universidad Carlos III de Madrid
Avda. Universidad, 30
28911 Leganés, Spain
Tel: +34 916246014
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Organizers:

Fabio Bonsignorio
Board Member European Robotics
Network EURON - Founding Director euRobotics aisbl

Co-Chair IEEE-TC PEBRAS
Co-Chair Euron SIG on Good Experimental Methodologies and Benchmarking
Professor, Banco de Santander Chair
of Excellence in Robotics
Universidad Carlos III de Madrid
Avda. Universidad, 30
28911 Leganés, Spain
Tel: +34 916246014
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CEO
Heron Robots srl
V.R.Ceccardi 1/18, 16121 Genova,
Italy,
Tel: +39-339-8406011,
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Angel P. del Pobil, Ph.D,
Board Member European Robotics
Network EURON
Co-Chair IEEE-TC PEBRAS
Co-Chair Euron SIG on Good Experimental Methodologies and Benchmarking
Professor, Department of Engineering and Computer Science, Universitat Jaume I
Director, UJI Robotic Intelligence
Laboratory
12071 Castellon, Spain,
Tel:+34-964-728293,
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John Hallam,
Board Member European Robotics Network EURON - Founding Director euRobotics aisbl
Co-Chair Euron SIG on Good Experimental Methodologies and Benchmarking
Mærsk-McKinney Møller Institute,
University of Southern
Denmark,
Odense, Denmark,
Tel: +45-65503546,
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