Course at a Glance

The course will be held in the period 6-15 of February, 2018 at the Metropole Hotel, Santa Margherita Ligure, Italy

Autonomous robots are becoming progressively more sophisticated, thanks to the availability of affordable technologies and robust algorithms for perception, control and learning. These technologies are building blocks for the development of systems with cognitive capabilities, able to operate effectively outside controlled environments.

The aim of this school is to give students an overview of the state-of-the-art on the broad field of robotics and teach them the required, practical, skills that allow them to program robots taking advantage of available tools and libraries for perception, control and machine learning. We propose to use humanoid robots are testbeds, because they offer unique opportunities to study many of the problems that are relevant to the field of autonomous systems.

This school will cover the following topics:

Software architectures for robot programming (i.e. ROS, YARP)
Methods, tools and best practices for software integration and concurrent development
Robot kinematics, control in task and joint space
Direct and inverse dynamics for whole-body control
Robot vision
Neuromorphic sensors and event-driven vision
Machine Learning and Deep-learning

This school is an evolution of the Veni Vidi Vici (VVV) iCub summer school, which started in 2006. With respect to the original format, the program has been revised to dedicate more hours to frontal teaching and enriched by invited talks. In addition, students will be given sufficient time to build practical programming skills thanks to extensive hands-on sessions on software simulators and real humanoid robotic platforms. Two iCub humanoid robots will be available to the students, equipped with a cluster of computers and GPUs in a dedicated LAN.

Participants are expected to have a background in robotics and computer programming in C/C++. They should also bring their own laptop to attend hands-on sessions.

The website of previous schools including program and material can be found here: VVV17.

Fundings

The school is funded by the Technical Education Program of the of IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (RAS).

We also acknowledge support of the following IEEE-RAS technical committees:

Basic Info

Venue

The school will take place at the hotel Metropole in the beautiful town of Santa Margherita Ligure, located about 35 Km southeast Genova, Italy.

Schedule

The school begins in the morning of the 6/2 and finishes in the evening of the 15/2. Sunday 11th will be free (participants are encouraged to visit Santa Margherita or the riviera nearby).

Accommodation and Food

Accomodation, lunch and dinner will be served at the Hotel Metropole and are included in the school fee (with the only exception of the lunch on Sunday which will NOT be included).

Subscription and Fees

The school is open to PhD students and Post-Docs. Applicants will be selected competitively based on the application material (research statement, CV and support letter).

The fee includes the school, food (full board, with the exception of Sunday 11/2 in which only dinner will be provided) and accomodation at the Hotel Metropole for 11 nights (from Monday to Thrusday night):

1250 euro, discounted registration for IEEE-RAS members (shared room)

1750 euro, discounted registration for IEEE-RAS members (single room, depending on availability)

1500 euro, full registration (shared room)

1950 euro, full registration (single room, depending on availability)

Accomodation in shared room will be in triple or double rooms, depending on availability.

For any inquiries, please write to lorenzo.natale _AT_ iit.it

Registration deadline: 1/12

Registrations will be considered valid only if we receive the payment by the deadline of registration.

Attendants from IIT do not need to register online, but should contact their department secretariat.

School resources website

School's wiki, instructions for participants, robot booking etc.:
https://vvv-school.github.io/vvv18

Program

The following is a high-level schedule of the school. More details, including links to slides, code tutorials and assignment are available in the School Material page, within the wiki.

Mon 5/2	TIME	SUBJECT	TEACHER	FILES
	18:00 - 19:30	Check your installation (follow instructions at https://vvv-school.github.io/vvv18). Optional for those who are already at the hotel and would like to check their laptop and software installation.	ALL
Tue 6/2	TIME	SUBJECT	TEACHER	FILES
	9:00 - 9:15	Welcome and introduction	Lorenzo Natale
	9:15 - 13:00	Introducing the tools for sharing code at the school. Git and Github. Git basics hands-on session.	Ugo Pattacini
	13:00 - 14:00	Lunch
	14:00 - 18:00	Software middleware for robotics: the YARP middleware	Lorenzo Natale
	18:00 - 19:00	Students presentations
	20:00 -	Dinner
Wed 7/2	TIME	SUBJECT	TEACHER	FILES
	9:00 - 13:00	Hands on: the YARP middleware	Lorenzo Natale
	13:00 - 14:00	Lunch
	14:00 - 18:00	The ROS middleware	Bence Magyar
	18:00 - 19:00	Evening Talk: Sustainable Human-Centered Robots [abstract and bio]	Luis Sentis
	20:00 -	Dinner
Thur 8/2	TIME	SUBJECT	TEACHER	FILES
	9:00 - 13:00	Robot kinematics	Ugo Pattacini
	13:00 - 14:00	Lunch
	14:00 - 18:30	Hands on: robot kinematics, control in Cartesian space	Ugo Pattacini
	20:00 -	Dinner
Fri 9/2	TIME	SUBJECT	TEACHER	FILES
	9:00 - 13:00	Computer Vision	Alexander Bernardino
	13:00 - 14:00	Lunch
	14:00 - 18:00	Hands on: robot vision with OpenCV	Vadim Tikhanoff
	18:00 - 19:00	Evening Talk: Humanoids capable of merging: a fundamental cognitive mechanism for meaning creation in the motoric, perceptual and language space [abstract and bio]	Katerina Pastra
	20:00 -	Dinner
Sat 10/2	TIME	SUBJECT	TEACHER	FILES
	9:00 - 13:00	Robot Dynamics & whole-body control	Daniele Pucci
	13:00 - 14:00	Lunch
	14:00 - 18:00	Hands on: whole-body control of a humanoid robot	Daniele Pucci
	18:00 - 19:00	Evening Talk: Data Driven Robotics and Reinforcement Learning at DeepMind [abstract and bio]	Francesco Nori
	20:00 -	Dinner
Sun 11/2	TIME	SUBJECT	TEACHER	FILES
	9:00 - 19:00	Day off. Notice that Lunch today is NOT included in the fee. Dinner will be served at the hotel as usual.
Mon 12/2	TIME	SUBJECT	TEACHER	FILES
	9:00 - 13:00	Neuromorphic sensors and Event-driven vision	Chiara Bartolozzi
	13:00 - 14:00	Lunch
	14:00 - 18:00	Hands on: Event Driven Vision	Arren Glover
	18:00 - 19:00	Evening Talk: 3D object modelling, recognition and tracking with an application to action learning [abstract and bio]	Michael Zillich
	20:00 -	Dinner
Tue 13/2	TIME	SUBJECT	TEACHER	FILES
	9:00 - 13:00	Machine Learning & Deep Learning	Fabio Anselmi
	13:00 - 14:00	Lunch
	14:00 - 18:30	Hands on: Deep Learning	Giulia Pasquale
	20:00 -	Dinner
Wed 14/2	TIME	SUBJECT	TEACHER	FILES
	9:00 - 12:00	Putting it all together: bulding complex behaviors.	Group Work
	12:00 - 13:00	Evening Talk: Bridging the Chasm - how to do your innovation more efficiently than I did [abstract and bio]	Rich Walker
	13:00 - 14:00	Lunch
	14:00 - 18:30	Hands on: An integrated demo	Group Work
	20:00 -	Dinner
Thur 15/2	TIME	SUBJECT	TEACHER	FILES
	9:00 - 13:00	Putting it all together: bulding complex behaviors.	Group Work
	13:00 - 14:00	Lunch
	14:00 - 17:30	Hands on: An integrated demo	Group Work
	20:00 -	Social dinner: Goodbye and farewell	ALL