The 14th International Workshop on the Algorithmic Foundations of Robotics (WAFR'20) Student Travel Awards

该奖项将支持学生参加为期三天的单轨第十四届国际研讨会机器人基础（WAFR），沿着与活动相关的指导活动。会议将于2020年6月15日至6月17日在芬兰欧卢的Sokos Hotel Eden举行，距离欧卢市中心和支持当地机构欧卢大学两英里。这笔资金将用于提供财政支持，以帮助大约15名美国学生参加WAFR 2020，帮助确保来自美国机构的学生在这个领先的研究场所的良好代表性。参加这次会议将提高研究生和高年级本科生的动力和兴奋，因为他们继续他们的研究之旅到机器人的基础方面。这笔助学金的目的是让美国学生，否则可能无法参加WAFR会议，介绍他们的工作，并与来自世界各地的同事建立联系。除了论文报告外，该活动还将由具有影响力和国际知名的机器人专家进行3-5次主题演讲。这些演讲将提供关于机器人规划、优化和控制、计算几何和算法的历史观点、当前最先进水平和未来趋势的简明第一手信息。WAFR拥有悠久的历史，过去一直是关注基础计算机科学主题和机器人技术问题的最佳场所之一，被称为过去提出多项基础性突破的地方。特别是，WAFR提交和演示所涵盖的主题以前已经解决了基本的算法问题，如复杂性，完整性，机器学习和概率推理。工作也已提出适用于制造，腿部运动，分布式机器人，人机交互，手术机器人和智能假肢，甚至超出传统机器人范围的领域，例如，计算生物学，计算机动画，传感器网络。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The award will support student attendance of the three-day single-track Fourteenth International Workshop on the Algorithmic Foundations of Robotics (WAFR), along with mentoring activities associated with the event. The conference will be held in Oulu, Finland, between June 15th and June 17th in 2020 at the Sokos Hotel Eden, two miles from the city center of Oulu and the supporting local institution the University of Oulu. The funds will be used to provide financial support to help approximately 15 U.S. students to attend the WAFR 2020, helping to ensure good representation of students from U.S. institutions at this leading research venue. Participation in the conference will boost motivation and excitement for graduate students and advanced undergraduate students as they continue their research journey into the foundational aspects of robotics.The purpose of this grant for student travel to enable U.S. students, who otherwise might be unable to attend the WAFR conference, to present their work and forge connections with colleagues from around the world. In addition to paper presentations, the event will feature 3–5 keynote presentations by influential and internationally renowned roboticists. These presentations will provide succinct, first-hand information on historical perspectives, current state-of-the-art, and future trends of robotic planning, optimization and control, computational geometry and algorithms. With a long-established history, in the past WAFR has been among the best venues to focus on fundamental computer science topics and technical questions which underpin robotics, being known as the place where several foundational breakthroughs were presented in the past. In particular, themes covered by WAFR submissions and presentations previously have addressed fundamental algorithmic issues, such as complexity, completeness, machine learning, and probabilistic reasoning. Work has also been presented with applicability to manufacturing, legged locomotion, distributed robotics, human-robot interaction, surgical robots, and intelligent prosthetics, and even domains beyond the traditional scope of robotics, e.g., computational biology, computer animation, sensor networks. These match NSF's robotics priorities very closely.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.