ICRA 2024 Workshop on Co-design in Robotics: Theory, Practice, and Challenges

2024 International Conference on Robotics and Automation

Full-Day Workshop (Proposed)

Yokohama, Japan

Overview

Robots are complex systems that must combine and integrate multiple coupled subsystems. The field of co-design seeks to understand how to jointly optimize robot subcomponents in order to produce a desired behavior. For example, one might consider how to jointly design the coupled kinematics and control architecture of the robot, taking into account their mutual dependencies, or how to design the robot mechanics and manufacturing methods. Co-design can also mean a process that engages end-users, stakeholders, and experts in the creation and development of robotic systems.

Robot co-design can offer various advantages – such as enhancing performance, efficiency, adaptability, usability, and user satisfaction – and there has been a large recent growth in both co-design methodologies and application areas. This workshop aims to gather researchers working in the various axes of co-design to discuss current trends, open problems, and challenges that the field is poised to tackle over the next 5-10 years.

Topics of interest include:

• Methodology

  • Theoretical foundations of co-design

  • Multi-objective co-design

  • Analytical approaches for co-design

  • AI/ML based co-design

  • Experimental verification of co-design approaches

  • Software frameworks for co-design

  • Interactive co-design

• Co-Design Scope

  • Manufacturing-aware co-design

  • Human-centered co-design 

  • Sensor / actuator co-design

  • Control / mechanism co-design

• Applications:

  • Legged locomotion

  • Soft robots

  • Canonical underactuated systems

  • Dexterous grippers

  • Flying robots

  • Underwater robots

Call for Participation

We invite participants to submit 1-2 page abstracts on visionary ideas or recent results in robot co-design. Accepted abstracts will be featured in spotlight presentations (5 min. vignettes) or posters. More submission details will be posted in January.

Workshop Organizers

This workshop is jointly organized by the TC on Mechanisms and Design and the TC on Model-Based Optimization for Robotics. 

TC on Mechanisms and Design

• Cynthia Sung, University of Pennsylvania

• Darwin Lau, Chinese University of Hong Kong

• Hannah Stuart, University of California, Berkeley

• Pauline Pounds, University of Queensland

TC on Model-Based Optimization for Robotics

• Shivesh Kumar, Chalmers University of Technology/DFKI

• Patrick Wensing, University of Notre Dame