Technical Program

The main conference sessions will take place Monday – Wednesday, followed by two days of workshops. Each accepted RSS paper will be presented in an oral session (5 or 20 minutes) and in an interactive session at the end of each day. The number following the paper title in the program below can be used to locate the interactive presentation. The conference banquet will be on Tuesday, June 25th.

Quick links to daily schedules:
Monday, June 24th
Tuesday, June 25th
Wednesday, June 26th

Please note that the talks of Julia Parrish and Rodney Brooks have been switched. Julia Parrish's talk is now scheduled for Wednesday 09:00 am and Rodney Brook's talk will take place on Tuesday 09:00 am.


Best Paper Award Nominees


The following papers have been nominated for best paper awards at RSS 2013. The presentations are marked with a * in the schedule below. The day and number following the paper title can be used to locate the interactive presentation.

Multi-Hypothesis Social Grouping and Tracking for Mobile Robots (Monday: 1)
Matthias Luber (University of Freiburg), Kai Arras (University of Freiburg)

Anticipating Human Activities using Object Affordances for Reactive Robotic Response (Monday: 6)
Hema Koppula (Cornell University), Ashutosh Saxena (Cornell University)

Dynamics, Control and Planning for Cooperative Manipulation of Payloads Suspended by Cables from Multiple Quadrotor Robots (Monday: 11)
Koushil Sreenath (University of Pennsylvania), Vijay Kumar (University of Pennsylvania)

Generating Legible Motion (Tuesday: 4)
Anca Dragan (Carnegie Mellon University), Siddhartha Srinivasa (Carnegie Mellon University)

Modeling and Evaluating Narrative Gestures for Humanlike Robots (Tuesday: 6)
Chien-Ming Huang (University of Wisconsin), Bilge Mutlu (Univ. Wisconsin)


Monday, June 24th, 2013


08:45—09:00 Welcome
09:00—09:55 Invited Talk: Alyosha Efros  Her Majesty the Data
09:55—10:30 5 Minute Talks

*Multi-Hypothesis Social Grouping and Tracking for Mobile Robots (1)
Matthias Luber (University of Freiburg), Kai Arras (University of Freiburg)

Audio-based Relative Positioning System for Multiple Micro Air Vehicle Systems (2)
Meysam Basiri (EPFl-IST), Felix Schill (EPFL), Dario Floreano (EPFL), Pedro Lima (IST)

High Altitude Stereo Visual Odometry (3)
Michael Warren (Qld University of Technology), Ben Upcroft (Queensland University of Technology)

Learning Semantic Maps from Natural Language Descriptions (4)
Matt Walter (MIT), Sachithra Hemachandra (MIT), Bianca Homberg (MIT), Stefanie Tellex (MIT), Seth Teller (MIT)

Toward Interactive Grounded Language Acqusition (5)
Thomas Kollar (CMU), Jayant Krishnamurthy (), Grant Strimel (CMU), Manuela Veloso (Carnegie Mellon University)


10:30—11:00 Coffee Break, Lichthof

11:00—11:25 Long Talk

*Anticipating Human Activities using Object Affordances for Reactive Robotic Response (6)
Hema Koppula (Cornell University), Ashutosh Saxena (Cornell University)

11:25—12:00 5 Minute Talks

Online Coverage by a Tethered Autonomous Mobile Robot in Planar Unknown Environments (7)
Iddo Shnaps (Technion I.T.T), Elon Rimon (Technion I.I.T)

Quantitative Evaluation of Standing Stabilization Using Stiff and Compliant Actuators (8)
Jorhabib Eljaik (Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia), Zhibin Li (Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia), Marco Randazzo (Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia), Alberto Parmiggiani (Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia), Giorgio Metta (Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia), Nikos Tsagarakis (Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia), Francesco Nori (Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia)

Metastability for High-Dimensional Walking Systems on Stochastically Rough Terrain (9)
Mehdi Benallegue (Collège de France), Jean-Paul Laumond (LAAS)

An Exact Decentralized Cooperative Navigation Algorithm for Acoustically Networked Underwater Vehicles with Robustness to Faulty Communication: Theory and Experiment (10)
Jeffrey Walls (University of Michigan), Ryan Eustice (University of Michigan)

*Dynamics, Control and Planning for Cooperative Manipulation of Payloads Suspended by Cables from Multiple Quadrotor Robots (11)
Koushil Sreenath (University of Pennsylvania), Vijay Kumar (University of Pennsylvania)


12:00—13:30 Lunch Break

13:30—14:25 Invited Talk: Raffaello D'Andrea  Actuated Wingsuits for Unconstrained Human Flight
14:25—15:00 5 Minute Talks

Deep Learning for Detecting Robotic Grasps (12)
Ian Lenz (Cornell University), Honglak Lee (University of Michigan Ann Arbor), Ashutosh Saxena (Cornell University)

Receding Horizon Control in Dynamic Environments from Temporal Logic Specifications (13)
Alphan Ulusoy (Boston University), Michael Marrazzo (Boston University), Calin Belta (Boston University)

On Provably Safe Obstacle Avoidance for Autonomous Robotic Ground Vehicles (14)
Stefan Mitsch (Carnegie Mellon University), Khalil Ghorbal (Carnegie Mellon University, School of Computer Science), Andre Platzer (Carnegie Mellon University, School of Computer Science)

Pregrasp Manipulation as Trajectory Optimization (15)
Jennifer King (Carnegie Mellon University), Matthew Klingensmith (Carnegie Mellon University), Christopher Dellin (Carnegie Mellon University), Mehmet Dogar (Carnegie Mellon University), Prasanna Velagapudi (Carnegie Mellon University), Nancy Pollard (Carnegie Mellon University), Siddhartha Srinivasa (Carnegie Mellon University)

The Influence of Motion Path and Assembly Sequence on Stability of Assemblies (16)
Sourav Rakshit (UNCC), Srinivas Akella ()


15:00—15:30 Coffee Break, Lichthof

15:30—16:00 Spotlight Talk: Siddhartha SrinivasaThe Mathematics of Human Robot Interaction
16:00—16:30 5 Minute Talks

Minimum Constraint Displacement Motion Planning (17)
Kris Hauser (Indiana University)

Integrated Perception and Planning in the Continuous Space: A POMDP Approach (18)
Haoyu Bai (NUS), Hsu David (National University of Singapore), Wee Sun Lee ()

Active Bayesian Perception for Simultaneous Object Localization and Identification (19)
Nathan Lepora (University of Sheffield), Uriel Martinez-Hernandez (), Tony Prescott ()

Decentralized Active Demand Sensing and Data Fusion for Mobility-on-Demand Systems (20)
Jie Chen (NUS), Kian Hsiang Low (National Univ. of Singapore)

16:30—17:00 Spotlight Talk: Hadas Kress-Gazit  High-Level Verifiable Robotics

17:00—22:00 Opening Reception and Interactive Presentations, Lichthof
Interactive food will be served at 19:00, beverages will be served the whole time.
To find the interactive presentation for a paper listed above, please refer to the number following the title.

Tuesday, June 25th, 2013


09:00—09:55 Invited Talk: Rodney Brooks  Robotics Research Just Got A Whole Lot More Exciting
09:55—10:30 5 Minute Talks

Exploiting Urban Scenes for Vision-aided Inertial Navigation (1)
Dimitrios Kottas (University of Minnesota), Stergios Roumeliotis (Univ. of Minnesota)

Fast Interpolation and Time-Optimization on Implicit Contact Submanifolds (2)
Kris Hauser (Indiana University)

Sorry Dave, I'm Afraid I Can't Do That: Explaining Unachievable Robot Tasks Using Natural Language (3)
Vasumathi Raman (Cornell University), Constantine Lignos (University of Pennsylvania), Cameron Finucane (), Kenton C. T. Lee (), Mitch Marcus (), Hadas Kress-Gazit (Cornell University)

*Generating Legible Motion (4)
Anca Dragan (Carnegie Mellon University), Siddhartha Srinivasa (Carnegie Mellon University)

Bayesian Fusion for Multi-Modal Aerial Images (5)
Alistair Reid (NICTA), Fabio Ramos (University of Sydney)


10:30—11:00 Coffee Break, Lichthof

11:00—11:25 Long Talk

*Modeling and Evaluating Narrative Gestures for Humanlike Robots (6)
Chien-Ming Huang (University of Wisconsin), Bilge Mutlu (Univ. Wisconsin)

11:25—12:00 5 Minute Talks

Unsupervised intrinsic calibration of depth sensors via SLAM (7)
Alex Teichman (Stanford), Stephen Miller (), Sebastian Thrun ()

6-D manipulation with aerial towed-cable systems (8)
Montserrat Manubens (Institut de Robòtica Industria), Didier Devaurs (LAAS-CNRS), Lluis Ros (IRI), Juan Cortés (LAAS)

Automatic Online Calibration of Cameras and Lasers (9)
Jesse Levinson (Stanford University), Sebastian Thrun ()

Goal Assignment and Trajectory Planning for Large Teams of Aerial Robots (10)
Matthew Turpin (University of Pennsylvania), Kartik Mohta (University of Pennsylvania), Nathan Michael (CMU), Vijay Kumar (University of Pennsylvania)

Finding Locally Optimal, Collision-Free Trajectories with Sequential Convex Optimization (11)
John Schulman (UC Berkeley), Alex Lee (UC Berkeley), Ibrahim Awwal (UC Berkeley), Henry Bradlow (UC Berkeley), Pieter Abbeel (UC Berkeley)


12:00—13:30 Lunch Break
12:00—13:30

Robotics in H2020 – latest development: the Robotics PPP* and beyond. (*Public Private Partnership)
Speakers: Tamim Asfour - KIT, Rainer Bischoff - KUKA, Cécile Huet - EC, Giorgio Metta - IIT
Room: H1036 (access directly from the Lichthof)

Presentations:
ROBOTICS in H2020 - Latest developments: Robotics PPP* and beyond (Cécile Huet)
The Strategic Research Agenda (Giorgio Metta, Tamim Asfour)
The Public-Private Partnership (PPP) in Robotics (Rainer Bischoff)


13:30—14:20 Long Talks

Vision-Based State Estimation and Trajectory Control Towards Aggressive Flight with a Quadrotor (12)
Shaojie Shen (University of Pennsylvania), Yash Mulgaonkar (University of Pennsylvania), Nathan Michael (CMU), Vijay Kumar (University of Pennsylvania)

Optimal Market-based Multi-Robot Task Allocation via Strategic Pricing (13)
Lantao Liu (Texas A&M University), Dylan Shell (Texas A&M University)

14:20—15:00 5 Minute Talks

Infinite Latent Conditional Random Fields for Modeling Environments through Humans (14)
Yun Jiang (Cornell University), Ashutosh Saxena (Cornell University)

Real-Time Camera Tracking and 3D Reconstruction Using Signed Distance Functions (15)
Erik Bylow (Lund University), Jürgen Sturm (Technische Universität München), Christian Kerl (Technische Universität München), Fredrik Kahl (Lund University), Daniel Cremers (Technische Universität München)

Grasp Moduli Spaces (16)
Florian T. Pokorny (KTH), Kaiyu Hang (KTH), Danica Kragic (KTH)

Keyframe-Based Visual-Inertial SLAM using Nonlinear Optimization (17)
Stefan Leutenegger (ETH Zurich), Paul Furgale (ETH), Vincent Rabaud (Willow Garage), Margarita Chli (ETH), Kurt Konolige (Industrial Perception), Roland Siegwart (ETH Zurich)

Maximum Mean Discrepancy Imitation Learning (18)
Beomjoon Kim (McGill), Joelle Pineau ()

Perceiving, Learning, and Exploiting Object Affordances for Autonomous Pile Manipulation (19)
Dov Katz (CMU), Arun Venkatraman (CMU), Moslem Kazemi (CMU), Drew Bagnell (), Anthony Stentz (CMU)


15:00—15:30 Coffee Break, Lichthof

15:30—18:00 Interactive Presentations, Lichthof
Light snacks and beverages will be served.
To find the interactive presentation for a paper listed above, please refer to the number following the title.
20:00—? Confernce Banquet, Kater Holzig, Michaelkirchstr. 23
(See directions in registration package)

Wednesday, June 26th, 2013


09:00—09:55 Invited Talk: Julia Parrish  Life Lessons: Are Animal Aggregations Appropriate Models for Robotics?
09:55—10:30 5 Minute Talks

Correct Software Synthesis for Stable Speed-Controlled Robotic Walking (1)
Neil Dantam (Georgia Tech), Ayonga Hereid (Texas A&M University), Aaron Ames (Texas A&M University), Mike Stilman (Georgia Tech)

Toward a Platform of Human-Like Fingertip Model in Haptic Environment for Studying Sliding Tactile Mechanism (2)
Anh-Van Ho (Ritsumeikan University), Shinichi Hirai (Ritsumeikan University)

Incremental Block Cholesky Factorization for Nonlinear Least Squares in Robotics (3)
Lukas Polok (BUT FIT), Viorela Ila (BUT FIT), Marek Solony (BUT FIT), Pavel Smrz (BUT FIT), Pavel Zemcik (BUT FIT)

Convex Optimization of Nonlinear Feedback Controllers via Occupation Measures (4)
Anirudha Majumdar (MIT), Ram Vasudevan (MIT), Mark Tobenkin (MIT), Russ Tedrake (MIT)

Realtime Registration-Based Tracking via Approximate Nearest Neighbour Search (5)
Travis Dick (University of Alberta), Camilo Perez (University of Alberta), Martin Jagersand (University of Alberta), Azad Shademan (University of Alberta)


10:30—11:00 Coffee Break, Lichthof

11:00—11:25 Long Talk

A control framework for tactile servoing (6)
Qiang Li (Bielefeld University), Carsten Schürmann (Neuroinformatics Group, Technical Faculty, Bielefeld University), Robert Haschke (Neuroinformatics Group, Technical Faculty, Bielefeld University), Helge Ritter (Neuroinformatics Group, Technical Faculty, Bielefeld University)

11:25—12:00 5 Minute Talks

A Topological Approach to Using Cables to Separate and Manipulate Sets of Objects (7)
Soonkyum Kim (University of Pennsylvania), Subhrajit Bhattacharya (University of Pennslvania), Hordur Heidarsson (University of Southern California), Gaurav Sukhatme (University of Southern California), Vijay Kumar (University of Pennsylvania)

Learning to Plan for Constrained Manipulation from Demonstrations (8)
Phillips Mike (CMU), Victor Hwang (Carnegie Mellon University), Sachin Chitta (Willow Garage), Maxim Likhachev (Carnegie Mellon University)

Incremental Semantically Grounded Learning from Demonstration (9)
Scott Niekum (University of Massachusetts), Sachin Chitta (Willow Garage), Andrew Barto (University of Massachusetts Amherst), Bhaskara Marthi (willow garage), Sarah Osentoski (Robert Bosch Corporation)

Fast Scheduling of Multi-Robot Teams with Temporospatial Constraints (10)
Matthew Gombolay (MIT), Ronald Wilcox (MIT), Julie Shah (MIT)

Adaptive Estimation of Measurement Bias in Three-Dimensional Field Sensors with Angular Rate Sensors: Theory and Comparative Experimental Evaluation (11)
Giancarlo Troni (Johns Hopkins University), Louis Whitcomb (Johns Hopkins University)


12:00—13:30 Lunch Break

13:30—14:25 Invited Talk: Neil Burgess  Neural mechanisms of spatial navigation
14:25—15:00 5 Minute Talks

Stochastic Motion Planning for Robotic Information Gathering (12)
Geoffrey Hollinger (University of Southern California), Gaurav Sukhatme (University of Southern California)

Kinodynamic Planning in the Configuration Space via Velocity Interval Propagation (13)
Quang-Cuong Pham (University of Tokyo), Yoshihiko Nakamura (University of Tokyo)

Approximate Representations for Multi-Robot Control Policies that Maximize Mutual Information (14)
Benjamin Charrow (University of Pennsylvania), Vijay Kumar (University of Pennsylvania), Nathan Michael (CMU)

Real-Time EMG driven Lower Limb Actuated Orthosis for Assistance As Needed Movement Strategy (15)
Walid Hassani (LISSI-UPEC), Samer Mohammed (LISSI-UPEC), Yacine Amirat (LISSI UPEC)

A model of distributional handing interaction for a mobile robot (16)
Chao Shi (Osaka University, ATR), Masahiro Shiomi (ATR), Christian Smith (Royal Institute of Technology), Takayuki Kanda (ATR), Hiroshi Ishiguro (Osaka University, ATR)


15:00—15:30 Coffee Break, Lichthof

15:30—16:15 Open Forum
16:15—21:00 Interactive Presentations and Closing Reception with food and drinks, Lichthof
Interactive food will be served at 18:30, beverages served the whole time.
To find the interactive presentation for a paper listed above, please refer to the number following the title.
18:00—18:30 Best paper award ceremony and closing remarks, Lichthof
21:00 Main conference ends - workshops follow Thursday and Friday