Recent advances in robotics research revealed significant improvements in grasping and manipulation.  Although these solutions are not yet fully robust, they are getting mature enough for solving many real-world problems. However, most of the state-of-the-art (SOTA) approaches assume the robot base is fixed and objects are located in the robot workspace. As such, these grasping approaches still need to be remarkably improved before robots can function similar to humans, i.e. to enable robots to move their base to a position suits efficient grasping and manipulation. For instance, a mobile manipulator needs to locate (fix) its base in a proper position allowing its manipulator to (1) pick fruits or (2) pick up some objects in a remote workspace, e.g., in an extreme environment. Cognitive science revealed that primates anticipate how the positioning of their body will affect their perception of the scene and future grasping actions. We identify 4 subtasks of grasping: (g0) suitably positioning of the manipulator base; (g1) reach-to-grasp; (g2) grasp synthesis/form stable contacts; and (g3) manipulative movements. SOTA approaches predominately studied g0, g1, g2 and g3 in isolation. This workshop aims to cover this gap by bringing experts in g0-g3 and discussing a joint analysis and solution to these grasping subtasks.

This workshop brings together researchers working in the area of robotic grasping/manipulation, planning, robot learning, and cognitive robotics; and it discusses the possible solution to the corresponding problems.

• mobile manipulation,
• Agri-food manipulation,
• Manipulation in hazardous/extreme environments,
• Service robot manipulation,
• Aerial manipulation,
• Deep learning for task-informed grasping
• Affordance informed grasping
• Grasping and manipulative movements in cluttered environments
• Task driven robotic perception
• Active perception
• joint planning of grasping pose and manipulative movements
• Benchmarking and dataset for grasping and manipulation
• Challenges of soft manipulation

Paper submission:

Deadline: 5 May 2020 (no extension)

Notification of acceptance: 16 May 2020

Camera ready: 24 May 2020

All papers must be original and not simultaneously submitted to another journal or conference. The following paper categories are welcome:

• Extended abstract (maximum 2 pages) will be accepted for poster presentation at this workshop.
• Full papers Contributed papers (maximum 6 pages) will be accepted based on their quality, originality, and relevance to the workshop. Submitted papers should not be under consideration for publication anywhere else. Submissions should follow the IEEE/RAS format.

Please submit your paper by emailing it to  workshop.tig@gmail.com

Programme

Accepted papers:

Speakers:

Organisers

Dr Sariah Mghames
Tomaso Pardi
Dr Manolis Chiou
S. Hamidreza Kasaei, Ph.D. FSE Fellow Faculty of Science and Engineering The University of Groningen, The Netherlands
Amir Masoud Ghalamzan Esfahani, Ph.D.  Senior Lecturer College of Science The University of Lincoln, The United Kingdom