Call for Abstracts: 2nd NSF Workshop on Formal Composition of Motion Primitives

We are pleased to announce the call for abstracts for the 2nd NSF Workshop on Formal Composition of Motion Primitives to be held on April 8th 2013, at Philadelphia, PA in conjunction with the Cyber-Physical Systems Week (CPSWeek) 2013.

Scope:

In robotics and control, achieving individual behaviors (or motion primitives) in systems has been very well studied in the controls community, with a wide range of methods from nonlinear control to verification to discrete abstractions. Yet combining these behaviors to achieve more complex actions, i.e., composing motion primitives, still remains largely a challenging and open problem, with very few coherent formal structures or methods available. The objective of this workshop is to explore methods for combining motion primitives in complex systems in a formal and provably correct fashion. The workshop will cover both theory, e.g., (composition of) motion primitives, funnels, description languages, bisimulations, verification, synthesis, hybrid zero dynamics, and applications such as robot motion planning, bipedal locomotion, or autonomous cars. Therefore, this workshop will focus on both foundational theory and milestone applications in order to present a coherent set of formal methods, challenges, and open problems.

Format:

The workshop will include both long talks by invited speakers and short talks for contributed abstracts. There will be ample time for discussion in the schedule. Invited speakers will be prominent researchers that have expertise on different aspects of formally composing motion primitives. Short talks (20 minutes) will provide a forum for researchers to present recent advances and ongoing work. Short talk abstracts will be reviewed by the organizers.

Important Dates:

Submission deadline: 4 February 2013

Author notification: 20 February 2013

Workshop date: 8 April 2013

Submission:

Submissions are accepted in the form of 1 to 2 page(s) extended abstract on formal composition of primitives. Both theoretical contributions and interesting applications (e.g., in robot motion planning, bipedal locomotion, autonomous cars) are welcome. Abstracts can be submitted through http://www.formalcomp.com/submissions.html.

Please follow the workshop website (http://www.formalcomp.com/) for updates.

We look forward to receiving your abstract and welcoming you to the 2nd NSF Workshop on Formal Composition of Motion Primitives in April 2013.

Best wishes,

Workshop Organizers

Aaron D. Ames, Texas A&M University

Jessy Grizzle, University of Michigan

Necmiye Ozay, California Institute of Technology