Workshop on Artistically Skilled Robots

2016 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems

Date and location

October 10th, 2016, 8:30-18:00, MoFT8 Workshop, room #105
The event is attached to the IEEE/RSJ IROS conference which runs Oct. 11-13 in Daejeon, Korea.

Program and list of contributions

The program and list of contributions are available here.

Objectives

The goal of the workshop is to discuss the state of the art and the future of artistic applications in robotics. This is a maturing, but still novel area of R&D in robotics, which involves modeling and understanding a complex and multifaceted human behaviour that includes: (i) perceptual abilities, (ii) generative abilities, (iii) creativity, (iv) reflective abilities, (v) pedagogical abilities, and (vi) social skills. The workshop will concentrate on developments in robotic systems that can have the capacity to understand artistic styles through practice, to simulate the human art creation process, to produce artworks with a given style, and further explore and develop novel styles, alone or in collaboration with other robots or humans. The proposed theme also involves to jointly deepen our understanding of human creativity, while advancing robotic systems capable of producing and evaluating distinctive artistic styles, and having the capacity to interact with the world through embodied creative actions.

In Personal Robotics R&D, one of the key challenges is to develop robotic platforms that can provide multiple adaptable skills and that can exist and interact with humans in a useful, educational and playful manner. This requires going beyond performative-only applications of robots, and developing robotic systems that are able to naturally interact with humans and that are responsive to human activities and sensibilities. The robotic embodiment of the creative processes involved in art production, observation and appreciation, is a crucial step in this direction.

The workshop will for example discuss (but is not limited to) visual art practice, including sketching, drawing, painting, calligraphy, sculpting and novel forms of digital fabrication (e.g. ceramics, additive manufacturing). Arts provide a testbed for the embodiment of complex skills in robots, such as natural skilled motions, gestures and complex interactions with the environment and humans. In order to tackle the broadness of this topic, we propose a highly interdisciplinary set of speakers with expertise at the crossroad of Robot Control, Movement Science, A.I./Machine Learning, Cognitive Science, Computer Graphics, the Visual Arts, Psychology and Neuroscience. We expect contributions submitted to the workshop to be similarly multidisciplinary, and thus broaden the general interest of this workshop and spark inspiration and topics for discussion between the participants. Finally, we also plan to have a follow-up publication in the form of a book or a special issue.

Call for contributions

Participants are invited to submit a contribution as:
- Full paper (maximum 6 pages in length)
- Extended abstract (maximum 2 pages in length)

Selected contributions will be presented during the workshop as spotlight talks and in a poster and demo session. You may add a demo video to your submission.
Submissions must be in PDF following the IEEE conference style in two-columns.
Send your PDF manuscript indicating [IROS 2016] in the subject, and indicate the URL of your demo video (if available), to the email: iros[at]creativemachine.org.uk

The workshop contributions will appear as online proceedings. Contributors to the workshop will be invited to submit extended versions of the manuscripts to a special issue (publisher to be announced, deadline will be in January 2017).

Important dates

August 25, 2016 - Contributions submission deadline (extended from Aug. 15)
August 31, 2016 - Notification of acceptance
October 10, 2016 - Workshop

Topics of interest

  • Robotic creativity
  • Embodied A.I.
  • Creative agents
  • Human/artist robot collaboration
  • Natural movement generation in robots
  • Transfer of artistic skills to robots
  • Public perception of robotic generated art
  • Understanding/study of human artistic skills via robots
  • Robot manipulation of artistic tools/media

List of Invited Speakers

Organizers

Frederic Fol Leymarie,
Goldsmiths, University of London, United Kingdom
ffl@gold.ac.uk

Sylvain Calinon,
Idiap Research Institute, Martigny, Switzerland
sylvain.calinon@idiap.ch

Daniel Berio,
Goldsmiths, University of London, United Kingdom
d.berio@gold.ac.uk