Workshop Description

Research in robotics has traditionally emphasized low-level sensing and control tasks including sensory processing, path planning, and manipulator design and control. In contrast, research in cognitive robotics is concerned with endowing robots and software agents with higher level cognitive functions that enable them to reason, act and perceive in changing, incompletely known, and unpredictable environments. Such robots must, for example, be able to reason about goals, actions, when to perceive and what to look for, the cognitive states of other agents, time, collaborative task execution, etc. In short, cognitive robotics is concerned with integrating reasoning, perception and action with a uniform theoretical and implementation framework.

The use of both software robots (softbots) and robotic artifacts in everyday life is on the upswing and we are seeing increasingly more examples of their use in society with commercial products around the corner and some already on the market. As interaction with humans increases, so does the demand for sophisticated robotic capabilities associated with deliberation and high-level cognitive functions. Combining results from the traditional robotics discipline with those from AI and cognitive science has and will continue to be central to research in cognitive robotics.

This workshop aims to bring together researchers involved in all aspects of the theory and implementation of cognitive robots, to discuss current work and future directions. While all aspects of cognitive robotics are of interest to the workshop, we especially welcome discussions and demonstrations of implemented systems.

Previous Cognitive Robotics Workshops

1st International Cognitive Robotics Workshop, 1998
2nd International Cognitive Robotics Workshop, 2000
3rd International Cognitive Robotics Workshop, 2002