1st Workshop on Proximity Perception in Robotics at IROS 2018

This workshop aims to offer a point of convergence for the different streams pertaining to Proximity Perception, which are currently active in the robotics community. We expect that Proximity Perception technologies will play an essential role for service and industrial robotics as well as for human-robot collaboration and compliant robotics applications in the near future. A similar trend could already be observed for Tactile Perception. On the one hand, designs of robotic graspers that include Proximity Sensors allow for novel control strategies for exploration, grasping and manipulation. On the other hand, the sensors will allow safety features to fulfill leading technical specifications such as ISO/TS 15066 for the operation of collaborative robots and improve the autonomy and perception of robotic systems in all fields.

Even though many researchers have addressed various aspects of Proximity Perception, no vivid community has established until now and visibility of the field has not yet reached an appropriate level. One of the main goals of this workshop therefore is to introduce the researchers and the results of their work to the broad robotics community and to researcher/engineers from the robotics industry. We want to show what benefits Proximity Perception can offer to robotics, especially to those unfamiliar with it. Another important aspect is the networking within the community as well as bridging the gap to the industry. Oftentimes the backgrounds of the researchers will be quite diverse, because of many different sensing principles suitable for implementing Proximity Perception (optical, acoustic, capacitive, radar, inductive, etc.). For these reasons we want to bring together researcher from both academia and industry. Furthermore, we aim to offer hands-on experience including live demos with sensors and systems currently used by different research groups. This will be interesting for participants that are new to the field but also for participants who already use Proximity Perception as capabilities and limitations of the various concepts will be discussed. Finally, as Proximity Perception is closely related to Tactile Perception we will also feature contents from this domain, with a focus on how Proximity Perception can profit from established approaches in Tactile Perception.

Please visit the website www.proxelsandtaxels.org for more detailed information about the workshop (program, talks and demos).