The iCub Summer School, “Veni Vidi Vici,” serves to consolidate and disseminate skills in software engineering for humanoid robots. In 2011 it was held in Sestri Levante, Italy, July 18-28 (venue information, important dates). The school is organized by the IIT RBCS: the Robotics, Brain, and Cognitive Sciences department of the Italian Institute of Technology.
Here's a timelapse from last year, to get a sense for what you're in for. Thanks Alexis Maldonado! Alexis suggests you watch it with appropriate music...
The iCub Summer School (“Veni Vidi Vici”) serves to consolidate and disseminate skills in software engineering for humanoid robots. Our goal is to foster long-lived academic collaboration on robot software across the boundaries and lifetimes of individual projects.
The school is organized as a “code sprint” to pull together all the software needed to make a humanoid work - control and perception algorithms for its head, hand, arm, legs, and full body.
The school is a peer-to-peer event. There are no formal lectures, and no strict division of instructors and students. All participants are expected to be competent C/C++ programmers with an interest in working with others like them. The school schedule will be organized flexibly around informal tutorials from participants on modules they are working on or interested in. The bulk of our time will be spent working together to integrate modules and implement interesting behaviors for humanoid robots.
Participants are expected to arrive at the venue on Sunday, July 17 2011. We begin the school the morning of Monday, July 18 2011, and finish in the evening of Wednesday, July 27 2011 (with departure on Thursday, July 28 2011). The school day will generally be from 9am to 6:30pm, with several breaks.
This year, the school is sponsored by ITALK, EUCOG II and the IIT RBCS. ITALK is a project to develop artificial embodied agents able to acquire complex behavioural, cognitive, and linguistic skills through individual and social learning. The Italian Institute of Technology, Robotics, Brain, and Cognitive Sciences department covers humanoid robotics, human behavioral studies, and human-machine interaction. EUCogII is a European network for researchers in artificial cognitive systems and related areas who want to connect to other researchers and reflect on the challenges and aims of the discipline.
In previous years, the school was funded by RobotCub, a project to study cognition through robotics. Along the way, this project created a completely open design for a humanoid robot - open hardware, open software, open mind: the iCub.