(1) From UBC: Jim Little (little@cs.ubc.ca) Robot Partners - Collaborative Perceptual Robotic Systems The Laboratory for Computational Intelligence Computer Science University of British Columbia Eric, our stereo vision-based mobile robot navigates and autonomously explores its surroundings safely while building a map of its environment. Stereo vision processing and map updates are done at 5Hz and the robot moves at 200 cm/s. Using its map the robot can robustly explore unstructured and dynamic environments. The map is used for path planning. Eric will explore the demo area during the demo session. --------------------------------------------------------------- (2) From dreamteam@isi.edu (modi@isi.edu, salemi@isi.edu) 310-822-1511 The DreamTeam project at USC/ISI (http://www.isi.edu/isd/dreamteam) consists of a group of young (and one not so young) researchers who share a passion for autonomous systems that can bootstrap their knowledge of real environments by exploration, experimentation, learning, and discovery. Our goal is to create a team of mobile agents that can autonomously learn from its environment based on its own actions, percepts, and missions. As a testbed for this project, we compete in the RoboCup soccer tournament. The Robot World Cup Initiative (RoboCup) is an attempt to foster AI and intelligent robotics research by providing a standard problem, a game of soccer, in which a team of fast-moving robots perform in a dynamic environment. We have successfully demostrated our mobile agents during the RoboCup tournament at IJCAI'97 in Nagoya, Japan, in which we won the championship, and at ICMAS '98 in Paris, France. This summer we will once again compete at IJCAI'99 in Stockholm, Sweden. `'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`' __________________________________________________________________ (3) P a o l o P i r j a n i a n, Ph. D. Robotics Research Lab. Phone +1 (213) 740 4523 Uni. of Southern California Fax +1 (213) 740 7512 941 W. 37th Place, MC 0781 E-mail paolo@robotics.usc.edu Los Angeles, CA 90089-0781 URL www-robotics.usc.edu/~paolo The USC Robotics Lab will demonstrate a team of miniature Khepera robots exhibiting cooperative group behaviors such as flocking, following, etc. This demo will showcase how principles from biology and behavior-based robotics can be used to formulate intricate interactions in a robot group. __________________________________________________________________ `'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`' (4) Michael Beetz beetz@cs.uni-bonn.de Dirk Schulz schulz@cs.uni-bonn.de Maren Bennewitz bennewit@xmailer.informatik.uni-bonn.de Fon: +49 228 73 4514 The RHINO research group from the University of Bonn will demonstrate James, an autonomous robot party butler. James will try to find people at the AA-99 reception based on motion detection with a laser range finder, interact with them, and possibly guide them to the banquet or the bar. James is a smaller brother of the Minerva museum tour guide robot that has recently guided thousands of visitors of the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History through the ``Material World'' exhibition. Unlike his bigger sister James is a lowcost robot that fits into our hand baggage and is completely controlled by its onboard computer. To find its way around James will use its laser range finder and a ring of sonar sensors to determine its location using a map of the reception area. DISCLAIMER: whether we will be able to localize the robot within the reception area and navigate to distinctive places will heavily depend on the structure of the reception area and the crowdedness during the reception. As of now we have no information about what the situation there will be like. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- (5) CONRO: Self-Reconfigurable Robots Andres Castano (andres@isi.edu) 310-822-1511 The CONRO (CONfigurable RObot) robots are miniature robots that are able to change their shape to accomplish a task or adapt to the environment. The robots will be composed of self-contained modules; each module will have an on-board battery, processor, motors, sensors and communication capabilities. We will present two prototypes of the CONRO robot, a snake and a hexapod, developed to study the reconfiguration, communication, locomotion and man-machine interface aspects of the robots. Contact information: Andres Castano USC/ Information Sciences Institute 4676 Admiralty Way Marina del Rey, CA 90292 Phone: (310) 822-1511 x 266 andres@isi.edu