Learning in Autonomous Robots

Guest editors: Henry Hexmoor and Maja Mataric

Joint special issue of

Autonomous Robots Journal, Vol. 5, No. 3-4, Jul/Aug 1998

and

Machine Learning Journal, Vol. 31, No. 1-3

The issue is in-press.


Autonomous Robots is an international journal published by Kluwer Academic Publishers;
Editor-in-Chief: George Bekey, USC Robotics Research Laboratory.

Machine Learning is an international journal published by Kluwer Academic Publishers;
Editor-in-Chief: Thomas Dietterich, Oregon State University.


Call For Papers

Current applications of machine learning in robotics explore learning behaviors such as obstacle avoidance, navigation, gaze control, pick and place operations, manipulating everyday objects, walking, foraging, herding, and delivering objects. It is hoped that these are first steps toward robots that will learn to perform complex operations ranging from folding clothes, cleaning up toxic waste and oil spills, picking up after the children, de-mining, look after a summer house, imitating a human teacher, or overseeing a factory or a space mission.

As builders of autonomous embedded agents, researchers in robot learning deal with learning schemes in the context of physical embodiment. Strides are being made to design programs that change their initial encoding of know-how to include new concepts as well as improvements in the associations of sensing to acting. Driven by concerns about the quality and quantity of training data and real-time issues such as sparse and low-quality feedback from the environment, robot learning is undergoing a search for quantification and evaluation mechanisms, as well as for methods for scaling up the complexity of learning tasks.

This special issue of Autonomous Robots will focus on novel robot learning applications and quantification of learning in autonomous robots. We are soliciting papers describing finished work preferably involving real manipulator or mobile robots. We invite submissions from all areas in AI and Machine Learning, Mobile Robotics, Machine Vision, Dexterous Manipulation, and Artificial Life that address robot learning.

We expected submitted papers to be delivered by September 1, 1997. Manuscripts were expected to be typed or laser-printed in English (with American spelling preferred) and double-spaced. Both paper and electronic submission are possible, as described below. All correspondences should be directed to:

Dr. Henry Hexmoor

Department of Computer Science
University of North Dakota
Corner of University and Tulane
Grand Forks, ND 58201-5548

PHONE: (701) 777-2891 (office)
(701) 787-5682 (home)
FAX: (701) 777-3330

For electronic submissions, use Postscript format, ftp the file to ftp.cs.und.edu, and send an email notification to hexmoor@cs.und.edu


Detailed ftp instructions:

compress your-paper (both Unix compress and gzip commands are ok)
ftp ftp.cs.und.edu (but check in case it has changed)
give anonymous as your login name
give your e-mail address as password
set transmission to binary (just type the command BINARY)
cd to incoming
put your-paper
send me an email notification (hexmoor@cs.und.edu) to let me know you transferred the paper

Editoral Board:


Relevant Dates:

September 1, 1997 submission deadline
November 30, 1997 review deadline
December 30, 1997 acceptance/rejection notifications to the authors
February 1, 1998 AR and MLJ camera-ready deadline for revised manuscripts. This is a unified deadline for both journals (in press status)