With this workshop we offer participants a platform to discuss different perspectives on and insights to the issue of developing interactive service robots. We assume here robotic systems that are specifically designed to assist in a particular type of environment or to fulfill a specific, challenging type of task. We pick the example of "robotic shop assistants" as one interesting type of specific application, but we welcome also contributions based on similar cases of service robot applications. We assume both the design, development and evaluation of respective systems to be relevant topics to discuss in the course of the workshop.

This workshop aims at bringing knowledge in haptic joint actions when performed in partnership between humans and robotics or virtual avatar. We will invite speakers working on various topics that consider haptic interaction under the views of neuro-psychophysics and cognition of haptic joint actions between humans, models and modeling of haptic joint actions, virtual reality, robotics, human-in-the-loop control, safety by design and by control, potential applications, etc. It is valuable for researchers of human-robot interactive collaboration to have solid understanding of the background theories, while presenting a wide range of applications to theory researchers would motivate new algorithmic developments.

The XVR Workshop is an event dedicated to the technical aspects of Virtual Reality programming and related issues. XVR (Extreme VR) is a development framework for complex VR application. It was used at PERCRO (Scuola Superiore S.Anna) in the past 10 years for a variety of projects dealing with real-time graphics and interaction, and it is continuously updated to accommodate always-evolving programming needs. The XVR workshop has a strong technological content, and it is for anyone involved or interested in VR application development. The 4th version of this Workshop is available here

Nao is a humanoid robot developed and manufactured by Aldebaran Robotics, a French company based in Paris, France. Nao is a 58cm tall friendly robot that includes a computer and networking capability at its core. NAO addresses the needs of universities including RoboCup players and research labs around the world. It’s an evolving platform, which is unique in its ability to handle multiple applications. Nao stands tall in all points amongst its robotic brethren. Platform agnostic, it can be programmed and controlled using Linux, Windows or Mac OS. The hardware has been built from the ground up with the latest technologies providing great fluidity in its movements and offering a wide range of sensors. Nao contains an open framework which allows distributed software modules to interact together seamlessly. Depending on the user’s expertise, Nao can be controlled via Choregraphe®, our user friendly behaviour editor, by programming C++ modules, or by interacting with a rich API from scripting languages. In addition to the high level API, advanced users can take advantage of low level access to sensors and actuators and can, if they wish, replace our code with custom adaptations. In order to allow users to validate motion sequences, simulators are available for Microsoft Robotics Studio and Webots. The tutorial will show how the robot can interacts and the capacities of high level programming through Choregraphe software.