Programme

Monday 1st September 2008

Registration

Informatics Forum, Room G01/G02 (Atrium): 1200 onwards

Introduction and Welcome

1400-1410: Room G07/G07a

Gillian Hayes

Invited Talk

1410-1510: Room G07/G07a

Robots for Real World Environments
Roland Siegwart

Coffee break

1510-1540: Room G01/G02 (Atrium)

Session 1: Personal and Service Robotics

1540-1700: Room G07/G07a

Monte Carlo Localization for a Guide Mobile Robot in a Crowded Environment Based on Omnivision
Cristina Gamallo, Carlos V. Regueiro, Pablo Quintia and Manuel Mucientes

Gaussian Progress Regression for Facial Behaviour Mapping
Peter Jaeckel, Neill Campbell and Chris Melhuish

Robot Learning from Environment Interaction and Observation of Human Behaviour
Pablo Quintia, Roberto Iglesias, Carlos V. Regueiro, Eva Cernadas and Miguel Rodriguez

Towards Binocular Active Vision in a Robot Head
Haitham Fattah, Gerardo Aragon-Camarasa and J. Paul Siebert

Annual Meeting of Virtual Research Centre in Personal Robotics

Room 1.15

Tuesday 2nd September 2008

Invited Talk

0930-1030: Room G07/G07a

Modular Robots in Action
Kasper Stoy

Coffee break

1030-1100: Room G01/G02 (Atrium)

Session 2: Localization and System Analysis

1100-1200: Room G07/G07a

Robot Localization Using Seismic Signals
Theocharis Kyriacou, Peter Styles and Sam Toon

A Proposal of a Methodology for the Analysis of Robot-environment Interaction Through System Identification
Otar Akanyeti, Inaki Rano, Ulrich Nehmzow and Steve Billings

Improving 3D Scan Registration for SLAM with Clustering and Deterministic Annealing
Timo Roehling and Dirk Schulz

Lunch

1200-1330

Session 3: Learning I

1330-1410: Room G07/G07a

Application of Unsupervised Clustering to Complex Robot Training Tasks
Ulrich Nehmzow, Otar Akanyeti and Steve Billings

Comparative Experiments on the Emergence of Safe Behaviours
Yuri Gavshin and Maarja Kruusmaa

Poster Session I

1420-1500: Room G07/G07a

Fabric Manipulation: an Eye Tracking Experiment
Peter Gibbons, Phil Culverhouse and Guido Bugmann

Monocular Omnidirectional Vision Based Robot Localisation and Mapping
Chris Burbridge, Libor Spacek, Joan Condell and Ulrich Nehmzow

A Co-evolutionary Approach Toward Face Localization in Color Images
Farshid Hajati and Soheila Gheisari

Internal Agent States: Experiments Using the Swarm Leader Concept
Mohamed H. Mabrouk, Craig W. Murray, Kevin Johnstone and Colin R. McInnes

A Mathematical Model, Implementation and Study of a Swarm Conglomerate and Its Formation Control
Blesson Varghese and Gerard T. McKee

Error Surface Generation Techniques for Appearance-based Stabilisation of an Intelligent Kite Aerial Photography Platform (iKAPP)
Heidar Hosseini, Mark Neal and Frederic Labrosse

Induced Policy Segmentation in Multi-agent Reinforcement Learning with Communicative Actions
Matthew B. Whitaker and Gillian Hayes

Simplification of Artificial Neural Networks Using Neural Complexity Measures
Thomas D. Jorgensen, Barry Haynes and Charlotte Norlund

Coffee break

1500-1530: Room G01/G02 (Atrium)

Session 4: Learning II

1530-1610: Room G07/G07a

A Developmental Algorithm for Ocular-motor Coordination
Fei Chao, Mark H. Lee and Joseph J. Lee

Touch Perception with SOM, Growing Cell Structures and Growing Grids
Magnus Johnsson, David Gil Mendez and Christian Balkenius

Poster Session II

1620-1700: Room G07/G07a

A Software Architecture for Mobile Robot Navigation
Phillip McKerrow, Sherine Antoun and Patricia Worth

Modelling the Lizard Ear: Directness of Phonotaxis with Noise Distractor
Lei Zhang, John Hallam and Jakob Christensen-Dalsgaard

Relating Textural Concepts to Tactile Sensors
James Edwards, Jonathan Lawry, Jonathan Rossiter and Chris Melhuish

Microbial-powered Artificial Muscles for Autonomous robots
Ioannis Ieropoulos, Iain Anderson, Todd Gisby, Cheng Hung Wang and Jonathan Rossiter

Modelling Soil Traction for More Effective Control of Walking Planetary Rovers
Gregory P. Scott, Chakravarthini M. Saaj and Eddie Moxey

Towards Temporal Inference for Shape Recognition from Whiskers
Charles Fox, Mat Evans and Tony Prescott

Programmable Differential Brakes for Passive Haptics
Yaroslav Tenzer, Manish Patel, Brian L. Davies and Ferdinando Rodriguez y Baena

A Biologically Inspired Fingertip Design for Compliance and Strength
Craig Chorley, Chris Melhuish, Tony Pipe, Jonathan Rossiter and Graham Whiteley

Conference dinner

1900 for 1930 Informatics Forum: Room G01/G02/G03

Wednesday 3rd September 2008

Session 5: Mobile Robotics

0930-1050: Room 4.31/4.32

Distributed Control of Multi-robot Systems Using Bifurcating Potential Fields
Derek Bennet and Colin McInnes

Combining Coordinated Navigation and Reactive Collision Avoidance for GPS-based Convoying
Frank Hoeller, Timo Roehling and Achim Koenigs

Cooperative Target Tracking of Mobile Robots
Zongyao Wang and Dongbing Gu

Sliding Mode Control for Agents and Humans
Sandor M. Veres and Nicholas K. Lincoln

Coffee break

1050-1115: Mini-Forum 2 (level 4)

Session 6: Novel Actuators and Their Uses

1115-1200: Room 4.31/4.32

A New Thin Membrane Rotary Motor for Robotic Applications Based on the Dielectric Elastomer Actuator
Iain A. Anderson, Emilio P. Calius, Todd Gisby, Thomas McKay, Benjamin O'Brien and Scott Walbran

Associating SOM Representations of Haptic Submodalities
Magnus Johnsson and Christian Balkenius

Informatics Forum official opening activities

1200-1230: Atrium area