The boundaries between Computer Science and Robotics are continuing to be softened. On one hand computers are continuing to be humanized and a large number of cyber-physical systems are being developed to act upon the physical world. On the other hand the robotic community is looking into the robots of the 21st century that are versatile computing machines with high social impact potential, such as enhance transportation safety, reduce agricultural pesticide use, and improve public safety and crime-fighting efficacy, among other things. The barriers that restrain their diffusion significantly correlate to the complexity of developing their software control systems, which must be reliable, maintainable, intelligent, and safe.

Robotic Computing (RC) addresses the synergetic interaction of computing technologies and robotic technologies. The synergy between Robotics and Computer Science is both realistic and strategic. Their mutual benefit is to make it possible to build and evolve new robotic systems, to reduce their development cost, and to enhance their quality.

Topics related to Computer Science

Formal methods for analysis and design
Software architectures
Middleware infrastructures
Model-driven engineering
Component-based engineering
Software product line engineering
Data, ontology, and knowledge engineering
Autonomic computing
Natural language understanding
Service oriented computing
Cloud computing
Semantic computing
Multimedia computing
Internet of Things
Virtual reality
Computer security

Topics related to Robotics

RAMS abilities of robotic systems
Hardware modeling and abstraction
Resource awareness
Sensor fusion, integration
Place recognition, localization
Object recognition, tracking
Scene interpretation
Robot cognition
Manipulation, grasping
Robot kinematics, dynamics
Motion planning, control
Navigation
Task planning, monitoring
Human-robot Interaction
Robot simulation
Multi-robot systems

The Conference is also inviting innovative contributions that discuss the future of the field including, but not limited to:

What are the challenges to robotic computing?
What are the main unresolved theoretical and/or methodological controversies?
What are the stakeholders’ (e.g., industries, public bodies, educators) research and development problems?
What can be learned from other disciplines and what can they learn from robotic computing?
What is the real world experience of Robotic Computing over the past 10 years, and how might it continue to evolve as we look toward the next decade?