The Nineteenth Edition of the Robotics Program at AAAI is happening right now in Atlanta GA, July 12-15th, at the Westin Peachtree Plaza. This year’s event is co-chaired by Monica Anderson and Andrea Thomaz, and is sponsored by the NSF, Microsoft Research, and iRobot.
The AAAI Robotics Program has a long tradition of demonstrating innovative research at the intersection of robotics and artificial intelligence. This year, the AAAI-20 Robotics Program will feature a workshop on “Enabling Intelligence through Middleware” (July 12th) and a robotics exhibition (July 13-15th) with the following demonstrations of intelligent robotics on display Tues-Thursday, in the Vinings rooms on the 6th floor (near registration).
- Robotic Chess: Small Scale Manipulation Challenge: The AAAI-2020 Small-Scale Manipulation Challenge is designed to highlight advances in embodied intelligence using smaller than human size robots. Robotic chess requires the integration of sensing, planning and actuation and provides an opportunity for performance on a common, well-defined task. The chess challenge will run on Tuesday July 13th, with matches at 10am, 1pm, and 4pm. Additionally the chess robots will be on display throughout the exhibit.
- Learning by Demonstration Challenge: This will be the second annual exhibit and challenge on robot Learning by Demonstration (LbD). The purpose of this event is to bring together research and commercial groups to demonstrate complete platforms performing LbD tasks. Our long-term aim is to define increasingly challenging experiments for future LbD events and greater scientific understanding of the area. This year 5 teams will bring robots that will learn a sorting task from a human teacher. The LbD challenge will run on Wednesday July 14th at 4pm. And the LbD robots will be on display throughout the exhibit.
- Robotics Education Track: This venue offers an accessible and flexible opportunity for undergraduate, early graduate, or pre-college student teams to design, implement, and demonstrate an autonomous robotic system. The tasks involved span physically-embodied AI: exploration, interaction, and learning within an unknown environment. In the long run, we hope to motivate hands-on AI robotics investigation both for its own sake and in service to other academic disciplines and educational goals. This year we have 8 university teams contributing to this part of the exhibit.