IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), September 25-30, 2011 San Francisco, California
		Workshop on Redundancy in Robot Manipulators and Multi-Robot Systems
		Monday, September 26, 2011
	Audience            List of Speakers/Schedule            Location             Organizers                    Contact

		Motivation and Objectives
		Over the course of the 50-year history of robotics, we have witnessed the evolution of robotic systems with an increasing trend in the number of degrees of freedom. This trend is visible both in the design of a single robot manipulator and in the shift of focus from single- to multi-robot systems. Following the principles of evolution in nature, one may infer that adding degrees of freedom to robot systems design is beneficial. However, since nature did not select snake-like bodies for all creatures, it is reasonable to consider the presence of a certain selection pressure on the number of degrees of freedom. Thus, understanding costs and benefits of multiple degrees of freedom, especially those that create redundancy, is a fundamental problem in the field of robotics and is the main focus of the proposed workshop. Multiple degrees of freedom and redundancy are characteristics of both modern robot manipulators and multi-robot systems. While the reason for introducing redundancy may be application specific, the presence of redundancy in these systems forms the basis for common research questions. The range of these questions spans everything from redundancy management and its influence on system performance, to necessary computational power requirements and communication infrastructure of robotic systems. The objective of the workshop is to present the most recent work on the design of redundant robot systems, their control, performance, human-robot interaction and reliability analysis. The collection of presented work will be valuable for establishing a new research direction focused on methods that will help improve the design and analysis of redundant mechanisms. We expect that the workshop will facilitate a multidisciplinary dialogue between various subdisciplines in robotics and the field of complex system and complexity in general.
		Audience
		The workshop is primarily aimed at researchers in the areas of redundant manipulators and multi-robot systems dealing with problems with many degrees of freedom. The workshop subject is also suitable for researchers in the areas of medical robotics, wearable robotics, and distributed systems.
		Preliminary schedule
		8:00-8:10     Intro to Workshop     Dejan Milutinovic 8:10-8:30     Using Prognosis-Based Control for Fault Prevention in Multirobot Teams       Lynne E. Parker, University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UTK), Dept. of Electrical Engineering and     Computer Science     8:30-8:50     Actuating the Redundancy      Ravi Balasubramanian, Oregon State University; Mechanical, Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering     Aaron M. Dollar,  Yale University; Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science 8:50-9:10     M*: A Complete Multirobot Path Planning Algorithm with Performance Bounds      Howie Choset, Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), School of Computer Science 9:10-9:30     Robustness in the Presence of Task Differentiation in Robot Ensembles      M. Ani Hsieh, Drexel University, Mechanical Engineering & Mechanics 9:30-9:50     Prioritized Detection Using a Heterogeneous Robotic Network      Rafael Fierro, University of New Mexico (UNM), Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering 9:50-10:05     Human Arm Redundancy and its Application in Wearable Robots     Jacob Rosen, UC Santa Cruz (UCSC), Computer Engineering Department      10:05-10:25      Discussion 10:25-10:45      Coffee break  10:45-11:05      Coordinated Construction with Teams of Robots      Daniela Rus, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Electrical Eng. and       Computer Science Department  11:05-11:25      Deployment Algorithms for Dynamically Constrained Mobile Robots       Sonia Martinez, UC San Diego (UCSD), Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department 11:25-11:45      Using Torque Redundancy for an Optimal Distribution of Contact forces:      An Application to Legged Locomotion      Ludovic Righetti and Stefan Schaal, University of Southern California (USC),      Viterbi School of Engineering  11:45-12:05      CoCoRo: The Self-Aware Swarm of Underwater Robots      Thomas Schmickl, Karl Franzens University, Graz, Department of Zoology   12:05-12:25      Any-Time Low-Cost Localization For Large Scale Multi-Robot Systems      Amanda Prorok and Alcherio Martinoli, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne      (EPFL) School of Architecture, Civil and Environmental Eng  12:25-12:40      Information Theory Approach to Redundant Robotic Systems      Dejan Milutinovic, UC Santa Cruz (UCSC), Applied Mathematics and Statistics Department        12:40-13:00       Discussion
		Location
		8:00am-1:00pm, Ballroom level, Room 9 Hilton Hotel, Union Square, San Francisco
		Organizers
		Dejan Milutinovic, Assistant Professor                     Applied Mathematics and Statistics Department Baskin School of Engineering, UC Santa Cruz Jacob Rosen, Associate Professor                                          Computer Engineering Department  Baskin School of Engineering, UC Santa Cruz
		Contact
		Dejan Milutinovic, Assistant Professor                     Applied Mathematics and Statistics Department Baskin School of Engineering, UC Santa Cruz e-mail: dejan at soe dot ucsc dot edu