Crossing the Reality Gap: Control, Human Interaction and Cloud Technology for Multi- and Many- Robot Systems

Advances in embedded processor and sensor technology in the last thirty years have accelerated interest in many robot systems and distributed sensor networks for applications such as exploration and mapping of unknown environments, large scale environmental monitoring and surveillance, and search and rescue. The advances that have made individual robots more practical have enabled the research and development of teams of robots, where capabilities are expressed by the team rather than by a super-capable individual. On these lines, it is becoming increasingly important to develop methodologies for controlling multiple robotic systems to perform high level tasks, often involving the interaction with human users and operators. Therefore, the focus of this Workshop will be on the CONTROL of many robot systems, investigating theoretical, methodological and technological aspects. The objective is to identify currently available methodologies that can be exploited to deploy many-robot systems into real world environments. At the same time, one of the goals of the Workshop is to create a platform to connect experts from different fields, with the purpose of reducing the gap between theory and application. The role of INTERACTION will be investigated, as a means to fulfill complex and high-level tasks. The objective is to describe the main methodologies and technologies that allow a human user to interact with many robot systems. The paradigm of CLOUD ROBOTICS can be exploited as a methodology for increasing the capabilities of many-robot systems, as computation and storage can be moved to the cloud, exploiting the increasing pervasiveness of internet connectivity. This workshop is the third event of the Crossing the reality gap series: the first workshop was held at ICRA 2012, and the second workshop was held at ICRA 2013.