[robocup-worldwide] The Response Robotics Summer School 2013 - Registrations Open!

[Raymond Sheh]

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The Response Robotics Summer School 2013
9-13 September 2013
Perth, Western Australia
http://www.responserobotics.org/
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CALL FOR PARTICIPATION - REGISTRATIONS OPEN!

The Response Robotics Summer School (RRSS) is a hands-on summer school 
on the challenges and Best-in-Class solutions for Response Robotics, 
with a focus on the challenges posed by Explosive Ordinance Disposal 
(EOD) and remote handling for response applications.

This event is a collaboration between the Curtin University of 
Technology Department of Computing, the Western Australia Police Bomb 
Response Unit, the DHS-NIST-ASTM International Standard Test Methods for 
Response Robots development effort, the RoboCup Federation through the 
RoboCupRescue Robot League, and Robolit LLC. It is run in conjunction 
with the Bomb Response Technology Seminar (BRTS), an event for EOD 
responders and equipment manufacturers from around Australia, the 
region, and the world.

The event is primarily aimed at PhD and masters students, final year 
undergraduate project students and early career researchers. We welcome 
participants from both within and outside the RoboCupRescue Robot League 
community, as well as participants from Australia and abroad. We 
particularly welcome participants who are interested in and/or intending 
to participate in the RoboCupRescue Robot League competitions.

We also welcome representatives of industry and government, including 
manufacturers, research companies and other organisations that wish to 
participate within the framework of the academic and responder programs 
and/or who wish to share and demonstrate their capabilities during the 
exercises and take advantage of the DHS-NIST-ASTM International Standard 
Test Methods for Response Robots. Likewise, we welcome interested 
members of the community who are working on solving these challenges 
outside of academic and industrial research settings.

This intensive five-day summer school is the latest in a long line of 
summer schools and teaching camps that started with the original Rescue 
Robotics Camp in Rome in 2004 and most continued most recently with the 
IEEE-RAS Safety, Security and Rescue Robotics Summer School 2012 in 
Alanya, Turkey. It is an outreach activity of the DHS-NIST-ASTM 
International Standard Test Methods for Response Robots program and has 
been established by members of the SSRR research community, including 
members of the Organising Committee of the International RoboCupRescue 
Robot League, to better address the rapidly growing need for effective 
robotic solutions in emergency response scenarios.

We encourage participants to bring their prototypical implementations of 
solutions to challenges within this domain. There will be opportunities 
to demonstrate these solutions both to other participants as well as to 
responders, and to evaluate and compare these solutions to those 
currently in deployment within the framework of the DHS-NIST-ASTM 
International Standard Test Methods for Response Robots.

Please visit the website at http://www.responserobotics.org/ or send 
email to info at responserobotics.org if you have any further questions or 
if you would like to be added to the low volume Response Robotics Summer 
School announcements mailing list.


DATES and REGISTRATION:

The summer school runs from Monday the 9th to Friday the 13th of 
September, 2013.

Registrations are now open! Attendees should visit the website, 
http://www.responserobotics.org/ , for registration details. 
Registration prices increase in August and close at the end of August. 
Admission to the summer school is competitive and decided by the 
Organising Committee. Please see the website for registration 
instructions and further details.

Due to the nature of the facilities at which this event will be held, 
all participants must be registered in advance. There will be no on-site 
registrations available.

This event is capacity limited so we encourage participants to register 
early!


REGISTRATION FEE WAIVERS:

Attendees are encouraged to bring highly relevant, working 
implementations of their research to demonstrate to the attendees of the 
RRSS and BRTS, within the DHS-NIST-ASTM International Standard Test 
Methods for Response Robots. Demonstrations sought include, but are not 
limited to, novel sensing, artificial intelligence, mobility, 
manipulation, mechanisms and user interfaces, that address gaps in 
current response robot capabilities. A small number of registration fee 
waivers will be granted to students and researchers from academic 
institutions who bring such demonstrations, eligibility for which will 
be decided by the Organising Committee. Please contact us at 
info at responserobotics.org to discuss eligibility and arrangements for 
the demonstration. Applications for these waivers will close on the 9th 
of August.

Attendees from non-academic sectors are also encouraged to bring 
demonstrations of highly relevant technologies. Please contact us to 
make arrangements.


STRUCTURE:

The event will open on Monday and Tuesday with academic presentations 
focusing on the research challenges and current developments in response 
robotics. Participants will gain a comprehensive overview of the 
state-of-the-art in crucial areas of research and deployed capabilities, 
as well as the experiences and needs of the end users.

Participants of the RRSS will join attendees of the BRTS on Wednesday 
for joint seminars on topics of common interest, followed by 
preparations for the practical sessions.

The event will continue on Thursday and Friday with joint practical 
exercises. Participants of the RRSS will work alongside attendees of the 
BRTS, deploying both commercial and prototypical robotic solutions 
within the DHS-NIST-ASTM International Standard Test Method for Response 
Robots apparatuses and operational scenarios at the Western Australia 
Police Bomb Response Unit's training and test facilities. Through these 
joint exercises, participants will be able to gain a deeper 
understanding of the challenges of the field, identify gaps for further 
research, test and refine their prototypical implementations, and share 
their developments with the wider research and responder community.

Please visit http://www.responserobotics.org/ for the latest information 
on topics and speakers.


VENUE AND TRAVEL:

The lecture component of this event will be held at the Western 
Australia Police Bomb Response Unit facility in Maylands and the 
practical exercises will be conducted at the Police Training Facility in 
Gosnells, both close to Perth in Western Australia. Perth International 
Airport may be easily reached with regular direct services from many 
hubs within Oceania, Asia and the Middle East, and via scheduled 
connecting flights from elsewhere.

Further information about ground transportation and hotel arrangements 
will be made available shortly so please consult the website closer to 
the registration date and/or subscribe to the mailing list for updated 
information.


OTHER EVENTS:

The RRSS is one of a set of inter-related summer schools, teaching 
camps, conferences, competitions and evaluation exercises, held around 
the world throughout the year, that aim to focus research efforts into 
Safety, Security and Rescue Robotics. Participants with a particular 
interest in 3D mapping, path planning and software architectures, as 
applied to this domain, are invited to also consider the Rescue Robotics 
Camp 2013, co-located with the IEEE International Symposium on Safety, 
Security, and Rescue Robotics (SSRR 2013), to be held in Linkoping, 
Sweden, from the 21st to the 23rd of October.

Please see the website for a list of other events.


ORGANISERS:

General Chair:
- Raymond Sheh, US National Institute of Standards and Technology 
(NIST), Robolit LLC, Department of Computing at Curtin University of 
Technology (from September 2013)

Co-Chairs:
- Bill Collidge, Western Australia Police Bomb Response Unit
- Haldun Komsuoglu, Robolit LLC
- Mihai Lazarescu, Department of Computing at Curtin University of 
Technology

Advisory Committee:
- Adam Jacoff, NIST


We look forward to seeing you in Perth!

-- 
Dr. Raymond Sheh

raymond.sheh at robolit.com

Associate
Intelligent Systems Division, Engineering Laboratory
National Institute of Standards and Technology
100 Bureau Drive, Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8230, USA

Research Scientist
Robolit LLC
1829 Pine Street, Suite 404, Philadelphia, PA 19103, USA