For the past four years, experts from all over the world have flocked together to exchange and share ideas on a broad range of concepts within the field of robotics. This year, the UW had the honor of hosting the Robotics: Science and Systems (RSS) conference where researchers presented their work on a number of topics including autonomous robots and sea exploration.

“The RSS conference is held annually at a different site each year,” Gaurav Sukhatme, a computer science professor at the University of Southern California who is researching robotic sensor networks for exploring aquatic environments, wrote in an e-mail. “The UW is a major center of robotics research, so it was chosen this year.”

Previous conferences have convened in various locations around the world. Last year, the conference was held at ETHZ, a technical institute in Zurich, Switzerland. The UW was picked for this year’s conference.

“The UW has a very strong presence in robotics and has a unique robotics faculty,” said Sebastian Thrun, founder of RSS and robotics expert at Stanford University. “It’s been very eager to host the conference here, [and] it was a perfect fit for us.”

Thrun said that in a field as complex as robotics, these annual gatherings are necessary to explore complicated issues, such as the problems of getting a robot to follow a diver underwater.

“We used a technique that allows the robot to detect biological motion in the water to recognize specific creatures, such as a diver, and follow them,” said Gregory Dudek, a professor at McGill University in Quebec, Canada. “We use a custom, gesture-based language akin to sign language, but better suited to underwater robotics.”

“In science, you’re trying to solve difficult problems,” he said. “So getting together periodically in this exchange and learning about the problem you’re trying to solve is beneficial to everybody. It’s a big gathering of people who are at the forefront of robotics.”

Graduate students and faculty in all areas of robotics submitted work to present at the conference. The submissions went through selective committees who only chose certain findings.

“The selection process for being chosen is extremely rigorous where only 25 percent of applicants are accepted to present their research,” said Yoky Matsuoka, program chair on the RSS Organizing Committee and associate professor in the UW's Department of Computer Science and Engineering.

Although there is no common theme in the work presented — experts in robotics come from multiple fields — popular topics at this year’s conference were robot autonomy and robotic underwater exploration.

“[A] key challenge that a number of people are working on, including my group, is how to effectively set up systems of multiple robots that interact with humans,” said Kristi Morgansen, UW assistant professor in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics. “Questions that are under investigation are how much autonomy should be given to the robots, how much autonomy should stay with the humans, and how should the two best interact.”

Out of all the findings presented at the conference, Thrun said he’s most excited about MIT studies on controlling air vehicles.

“If this work pans out, you’ll be able to land regular aircraft vertically,” he said. “Think of what the implications of that is. It’ll be possible to take a very small aircraft and possibly land it in your backyard.”

Overall, the conference was a great success, said Dieter Fox, local arrangement co-chair on the Organizing Committee and assistant professor at the UW's Department of Computer Science and Engineering.

Next year, the conference will be held in Spain.

Reach reporter Doris Wu at news@dailyuw.com.