Travel Support for 2009 IJCAI Robotics Workshop and Exhibition

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In 2005, the NSF hosted ?Robots: An Exhibition of U.S. Automatons from the Leading Edge of Research?, which was the result of a 2-year comprehensive study assessing robotics programs in the U.S., Asia, and Europe. The subsequent report concluded that America is in danger of losing its leading position in robotics. Arguably, the U.S. remains the world leader in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning research. Such research is critical to advancing the cognition that robots need to interact with people and manipulate objects in unstructured environments. This need for machine cognition thus provides American roboticists with opportunities to fill critical gaps and both vertically advance and lead the field. The annual IJCAI event (International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence) is a venue that can bring American and International roboticists and AI experts together. For over a decade-and-a-half, the IJCAI has held the Robotics Workshop and Exhibition as part of the overall conference. Such a venue provides a unique opportunity for the community to formulate roadmaps that leverage and apply America?s strengths in artificial intelligence to robotics. Towards this, the 2009 IJCAI Robotics Exhibition and Workshop (Pasadena CA July 13-17, 2009) will emphasize the use of robotics outside of academia by creating a joint forum with the commercial and amateur sectors.Intellectual Merit: The workshop ?Beyond Academia: Exploring the Lessons and Best Practices in Commercial and Amateur Robotics? focuses on sharing the needs and expectations of robotics from all communities. Speakers from Willow Garage, iRobot and the amateur robotics publication Make Magazine will offer unique perspectives and approaches to common challenges from the perspective of repeatability, measurement and situated deployment. The cross-pollination of these ideas and experiences is crucial to the successful integration of AI into robotics. The ultimate goal of the workshop is to generate a white paper describing joint research opportunities. This has intellectual merit because both the AI and robotics communities are at a crossroads regarding how to best move robotics forward toward algorithms and experimental approaches that produce repeatable results in unstructured environments. The exhibition consists of four themes that relate to subsequent robotics challenges: 1) multirobot teaming, 2) learning by demonstration, 3) manipulation, and 4) undergraduate robotics challenges. Each of these areas has been identified as focus areas for the integration of AI and robotics by previous NSF supported workshops.Broader Impact: Complementing the workshop discussions and panel will be a significant number of hands-on exhibits. Here, research teams will showcase working demonstrations that support the challenge themes of learning, teaming and manipulation. Exhibits will be on display for 2 full days during the general IJCAI Conference, providing an excellent opportunity to engage a broad technical audience. The exhibits will also be open to the general public to raise awareness of the state-of-the-art. Students from local schools and summer camps will be invited to visit. In previous years, the exhibition attracted local school groups that attended via a day field trip. Access to the exhibits provides an opportunity for students and leaders to learn how robotics and AI play important roles in society.