IEEE IROS 2017 Workshop

Towards an artist-in-the-lab Framework

Vancouver Convention Centre, BC, Canada – From 9:00am-5:30pm, September 24, 2017

THANK YOU: Thank you for being part of the workshop. You can download the Proceedings here. The audio recordings of the presentations are posted on YouTube.

– David, Damith and Bill

Objectives

Following previous workshop outputs: 1- What do Collaborations with the Arts Have to Say About Human-Robot Interaction? at HRI 2010, 2- Frontiers in Human-Centered Robotics as Seen by the Arts at ICRA 2011, 3- Workshop on Misbehaving Machines at ICSR 2014, 4- Workshop on Artistically Skilled Robots at IROS 2016, 5- What actors can teach robots at CHI 2017, the relevance of artistic works in Human-Robot Interaction and more generally in questioning the significance of robotic development has been demonstrated. A book was edited in order to share these conclusions with the robotic community. Nevertheless, collaborations and interfaces between the different cultures still occur mostly in an ad-hoc manner and lack systematic framework to fully develop their potential.

Sharing experience from various projects, the participants are expected to extract general guidelines for such collaborative projects. The papers submitted as well as the minutes of the workshop and the resulting tentative guidelines will be shared through the roboticart.org platform for future reference as with the previous workshops. Ideally an intention paper will be made out of the conclusions and shared experience of the participants.

The common point between artists and scientists is the fact that both are trying, each with their own means, to approach the frontier of the unknown: to reach a point beyond which nothing can yet be said, and from which territories that nobody has ever explored can be observed and described, inventing a new model of artistic expression or a new scientific model if needed. It is the mode of approach that distinguishes science from arts. Before stating anything new, a scientist must undertake an exhaustive recapitulation of everything that has been said in the specific research field. This long and often tedious process is the sine qua non condition for any worthwhile discovery; and the models that the scientist uses to do so are often very remote from the reality of everyday life. By contrast, the artist reaches the unknown by observing first that the deepest mysteries can be hidden very close to us, and even inside the most ordinary things. It is through these considerations that this workshop seeks to find elements of a common language which could allow to share methodologies and results in a way that is fruitful for everyone.

Call for Contributions

We invite submissions of an extended abstract (up to 2 pages) addressing the topics of interest for the workshop. Accepted abstracts will be made available on the workshop website ahead of time. Authors of selected abstracts will be asked to present their work in a 5-minute lightning talk during the workshop.

Selected contributors to the workshop will be invited to submit full papers to a special issue in (MDPI open access journal) Arts.

Download the CFP here. Please use the Submit button to open the submission portal in a new tab.

Topics

Creativity in robot design
User-centered approach to design of robots
User experience studies with robots
Human-Robot Interactions
Creative agents
Human/artist robot collaboration

Important Dates

Submission deadline: August 4, 2017
Notification of acceptance: August 31, 2017
Final paper submission: September 8, 2017

Submit

Invited Speakers

Nicolas Reeves – professional artist and full-time professor at the School of Design, UQAM, Montréal, Canada. Professor Reeves conducted many research-creation projects over the last decades that were successful both for the scientific community (specifically the roboticists) and the artistic realm. He also was the Scientific Director of the Hexagram Institute, a unique academic experience at merging cultures.

Philippe Soueres – is the Director of Research at LAAS-CNRS in Toulouse, France, Head of the Robotics Department of LAAS-CNRS, and leader of the Gepetto team specialized in the movement of anthropomorphic systems. He received the M.S degree in Mathematics, the PhD in Robotics and the Habilitation from Paul Sabatier University of Toulouse. After a postdoc at the University of California at Berkeley in the EECS Dept., he integrated CNRS as a permanent researcher in 1995. Since that date he has led research on different facets of robot control at LAAS-CNRS.

Ken Goldberg – Artist and professor of engineering at UC Berkeley. Goldberg explores the intersection of the digital and the natural worlds. His artworks include a living garden tended by a robot via the internet and the award-winning film “Why We Love Robots”. Goldberg’s has shown at the Whitney Biennial, Venice Biennale, Pompidou Center, Walker Art Center, Ars Electronica, ZKM, ICC Biennale, Kwangju Biennale, Artists Space, and the Kitchen. He is Founding Director of Berkeley’s Art, Technology, and Culture Colloquium and named IEEE Fellow in 2005. His work is in several permanent collections including the Whitney in NYC.

Pindar Van Arman – An artist that attempts to build creative painting robots. His current project, CloudPainter, is a network of interconnected robots that use feedback loops, deep learning, and a variety of computationally creative algorithms to paint abstract human portraits.

Florent Levillain – is a research associate at EnsadLab, the art and design research laboratory of the École nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs – PSL Research University, Paris. Dr. Levillain is an expert in cognitive psychology, specializing in the process of action understanding. In collaboration with the Reflective Interaction research group, he is investigating how an observer attributes psychological traits to animated objects and participate in the ongoing development of the MisB Kit, an open source robotic kit. At the crossroads of artistic, technological and societal concerns, the Reflective Interaction research group (Dir. Samuel Bianchini) explores interactive and performative situations involving video, sound, text, light, robotics, and materials. Its main focus is the creation of aesthetic and critical experiences that question the relationship of an audience to a material and social context.

Heather Knight – Adjunct professor at Oregon State University. An expert in HRI studies, professor Knight aims at developing a new research framework to invite artists for short-term residencies in her robotic lab.

Organisers

David St-Onge – holds a PhD in mechanical engineering, space robotics, from the University Laval, Canada. His masters degree from the Robotics Laboratory of University Laval was followed by a FRQNT-Team grant for which he then coordinated three universities’ collaborative efforts. In between these diplomas, he worked 7 years in the field of arts (theater, museums and circus). He was the production director of the Prisme 3 stage set workshop, then a development engineer for a media art Montreal-based production company and a freelance engineer for visual and performing artists. Out of interest he also completed a master in project management at ESG UQAM and a certificate in Russian studies at University Laval. He authored more than 20 peer-reviewed publication in the field of robotics. Since 2016, he is a post-doctoral researcher at MIST, a robotics laboratory at École Polytechnique de Montréal.

Email: [email protected]

Damith Herath – holds a PhD in Robotics from the University of Technology, Sydney for his research work at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Autonomous Systems (CAS) on robotic mapping and navigation. He has worked as a Research Fellow at CAS, as a visiting Fellow at Toyohashi University of Technology and as the lead Research Engineer on the ARC funded Thinking Head project at the MARCS institute at the University of Western Sydney. Damith has over a decade of experience leading multidisciplinary robotic research projects and is the co- and founding chair of the International Workshop on Robotics & Art held in 2011 and 2014 alongside two key robotics conferences.Damith is the CEO and co-founder of Robological, a multi-award winning Robotics Startup based in Sydney, named one of the 23 most innovative young technology companies in Australia in 2014. Damith is currently an Assistant Professor in Software Engineering attached to the Human-Centred Computing Laboratory at the Faculty of Education, Science, Technology and Mathematics. He is also an honorary visiting Fellow at the Sustainable Materials Research & Technology centre at the University of New South Wales.

Email: [email protected]

William D. Smart – holds an ScM and a PhD in Computer Science from Brown University, US and a MSc in Intelligent Robotics from the University of Edinburgh, UK. Dr. Smart does research in the areas of robotics and machine learning. In robotics, Smart is particularly interested in improving the interactions between people and robots; enabling robots to be self-sufficient for weeks and months at a time; and determining how they can be used as personal assistants for people with severe motor disabilities. In machine learning, Smart is interested in developing strategies for teaching robots to act effectively (or even optimally), based on long-term interactions with the world and given intermittent and at times incorrect feedback on their performance. He is currently full-time professor in the Robotics Program at the Oregon State University, US.

Email: [email protected]

Program

9:00	Introduction (David St-Onge)
9:30	Philippe Soueres (on behalf of J.P. Laumond)
10:00	Nicolas Reeves
10:30	Coffee Break
11:00	Florent Levillain (on behalf of S. Bianchini)
11:30	Ken Goldberg
12:00	Lightning talk 1
12:15	Lightning talk 2

12:30	Lunch Break
14:00	Heather Knight
14:30	Lightning talk 3
14:45	Charles Huteau
15:15	Lightning talk 4
15:30	Coffee break
16:00	Pindar Van Arman
16:30	Discussion