Latest News

Cogniron Winter School on Human Robot Interaction
Lausanne, 21-25 January 2008
The Cogniron Winter School on Human Robot Interaction,
held in Lausanne at EPFL from January 21st to 25th, 2008
has been a successful training and dissemination event.
32 students attended the school a and have enjoyed an inspiring, instructive, and cheerful time.
The lecture materials are available on the school web site as well as some photos to get an impression of the atmosphere.
The COGNIRON winter school on HRI has covered the following topics:

* Interaction design of social robots
* Concepts for interaction management
* Learning and imitation
* Cognitive maps
* System integration facing real world challenges
* Evaluation of interactive robots
See: https://spektr.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de/cogniron-ws/node/2

Previous News

Master thesis positions available at Fraunhofer IPA !
Stuttgart ,December 21 2006
Two Master thesis positins are available at Fraunhofer IPA in Stuttgart : one is on '3D object recognition' and the other on 'gesture recognition'. Interested candidates should contact directly Jens Kubacki at IPA.

Third Project Review has taken place in Brussels on Feb. 15-16, 2007
The project third project review took place on February 15-16 in Brussels. This year's reviewers were: Anthony Cohn (University of Leeds), James L. Crowley (INRIA Rhône-Alpes /Laboratoire GRAVIR), Ian Horswill (Northwestern University).

www.cogniron.org registered for the IST Website Award !
Toulouse, October 12, 2006
The COGNIRON website, www.cogniron.org, is registered to the website competition organized by the European Commission, within the frame of the IST 2006 conference. The competition is sponsored by Nokia, and the winner will be granted 10 000€.
If you like our pages and want to support our project, you can rate our pages for the competition by clicking here, until October 31st.

Visit of a Euronews team at LAAS: report on women in the world of scientific research.
Toulouse, September 13, 2006
A team of the European News Channel Euronews came to LAAS to interview women (PhD students and project manager) working on COGNIRON, within the frame of a European-wide report on the role of women within scientific research. The report is available here.

Prizes for the RO-MAN 2006 poster competition awarded by COGNIRON to students from Korea and Sweden !
Hatfiled, September 11, 2006
The poster competition sponsored by COGNIRON received a good echo among students. During RO-MAN 2006, 7 posters were displayed. The first prize of 800€ was awarded to Sonya S. Kwak (KAIST, Korea) while the second one, amounting 500€ was awarded to Maryamossadat Nematollahi Mahani (KTH, Sweden). In addition each student presented the poster to 2 members of the IEEE RO-MAN 2006 organization committee.

Press Release: Robot Rackham travelled from Toulouse to the UK to attend the conference RO-MAN 06 !
Toulouse / Hatfield, August 21, 2006
The robot Rackham, one of the COGNIRON platforms used at LAAS demonstated its cognitive capacities in Hatfield, UK, within the frame of the RO-MAN 06 conference, hosted by the University of Hertfordshire. Download the press release here: here.

Summer issue of Project Newsletter now available
Toulouse, August 20, 2006
The summer issue of the COGNIRON Newsletter is now available here .

Some project videos are now available online
Toulouse, July 6, 2006
The COGNIRON partners have decided to make some project videos available online, to show what we are working on. These videos are now available here.

Visit of the Danish Television (TV2) at LAAS
Toulouse, July 3, 2006
A team from the Danish television TV2 visited the robotics group at LAAS, and will shoot videos from demonstrations of the COGNIRON platforms.

ETH Zurich joins the COGNIRON Consortium on 01.07.2006
Zurich, July 1st, 2006
Following the move of some COGNIRON researchers to ETH Zurich, ETHZ entered the project as a new partner from July 1st 2006.

COGNIRON in IST Results News
Toulouse, June 29, 2006
An article about the project was published by IST results: see here.

COGNIRON sponsoring a robot companion design contest for students
Hatfield, June 21, 2006
COGNIRON is sponsoring a robot companion design contest for students within the frame of the 15th IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN 2006 is hosted and organized by the University of Hertfordshire). For more details see the conference webpage.

COGNIRON Workshop at IROS2006, Beijing, China
Amsterdam, May 15, 2006
COGNIRON is organizing and sponsoring a workshop on 'From sensors to human spatial concepts: geometric approaches and appearance based approaches'. For more information see the workshop page.

Project Newsletter available
Toulouse, April 24, 2006
The latest issue of the COGNIRON Newsletter (May 2006) is available for download here.

Next General Assembly to take place in Hatfield, UK: June 26-27
Toulouse, April 24, 2006
The next COGNIRON plenary meeting will be hosted by the University of Hertfordshire (UH), in Hatfield, England. The UH team will organise a project lab tour, to show the on-going work.

COGNIRON Workshop @ ICRA2006
Toulouse, April 24, 2006
Like the two previous years, COGNIRON will be present at ICRA2006, in Orlando in May, via a workshop on Cognitive Robots and Systems, organised by LAAS, the University of Amsterdam, KTH and EPFL. For more information see the Workshop webpage.

The Danish Council of Ethics visits COGNIRON
Toulouse, April 21, 2006
Two representatives from the Danish Council of Ethics spent a day at LAAS on April 21, and were shown the COGNIRON platforms Rackham and Jido. Raja Chatila gave an interview presenting the project and wider ethics-related issues in robotics. This visit followed exchanges with two other Beyond Robotics Projects (I-SWARM and NEUROBOTICS). A website presenting the outcomes of the discussions with the 3 projects will be open by the Danish Council of Ethics in the fall of 2006.

COGNIRON on Discovery Channel
Hatfield, April 21, 2006
COGNIRON was contacted in February by journalists from Discovery Channel. The Canadia television channel has now released a video, featuring the University of Hertfordhire team and the robots used in the projet.
See http://www.exn.ca/dailyplanet/view.asp?date=4/11/2006 (under "Robots, if you please").


CNN meets COGNIRON robots at LAAS !
Toulouse, April 3, 2006
A CNN journalist came to LAAS on April 3 to interview Prof Ron Arkin (Professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, on sabbatical in Toulouse for a year) for the preparation of "Future Summint", a new TV-show on the future of science and technology (see: http://edition.cnn.com/CNNI/Programs/futuresummit/). During the interview Ron Arkin presented COGNIRON, and LAAS platforms used on the project were also put on tape.

Demonstrations at CeBit by the Fraunhofer-IPA team
Toulouse, April 3, 2006
During CeBIT 2006, world's largest ICT Congress, which took place in Hannover in March, the Fraunhofer IPA team presented a mirror robot that copies human motion. The robot was controled using a detection algorithm developed within the project Research Activities.

Review material sent to the EC and reviewers !!
Toulouse, January 30, 2006
All review related material has now been sent to the attention of the COGNIRON reviewers and the European Commission.
If you are a reviewer, click here to access to the review material (restricted access for the EC and reviewers only).

COGNIRON 2nd project review coming !
Toulouse, January 27, 2006
The 2nd project review for COGNIRON will be held at the Commission in Brussels on February 14, 2006.
This year the project reviewers are : Ruth Aylett (Heriot-Watt University , UK), Anthony Cohn (Leeds University, UK),
James L. Crowley (GRAVIR-IMAG , France) and Ian Horswill (Northwestern University, USA).

Project Workshop on architecture hosted by LAAS
Toulouse, January 11, 2006
LAAS hosted a project workshop on architecture issues on 11-12 January 2006.
This meeting was attended by IPA, UH, UniBi and UniKarl.

COGNIRON paper receives the ISR 2005 Best Paper Award !
Toulouse December 5 2005
COGNIRON is proud to announce that a project paper ('Grasp Planning for Non-Convex Objects' by Efrain Lopez-Damian, Daniel Sidobre and Rachid Alami - LAAS-CNRS) has won the ISR2005 Best Paper Award.

COGNIRON plenary meeting
Karlsruhe November 23 2005
A COGNIRON plenary meeting took place on Nov. 21-22 in Karlsruhe. The aim of the meeting was to assess the project's progress at T0+23 and to start preparing the next phases of the project. The location of the meeting also gave the opportunity for the project members to enjoy a LabTour of UniKarl.

Call for papers for RO-MAN 2006
Hatfield, November 2 2005
The IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN 2006) will take place from 6-8 September 2006, at the University of Hertfordshire, in Hatfield, United Kingdom. Next year's theme will be 'Getting to Know Socially Intelligent Robots'. For more information see : http://ro-man2006.feis.herts.ac.uk .

Press Article on robot companions in French newspaper 'Le Point'
Toulouse, August 25 2005
The French newspaper 'Le Point' has published an article on robot companions, which is available here (in French).

COGNIRON at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam!
Amsterdam, August 22 2005
The University of Amsterdam will present some of its Cogniron work on a robot evening at the Museum of Modern Art ('Stedelijk Museum') in Amsterdam on the 25th of August. More information about the exhibition is available here (in Dutch).

New COGNIRON pages online !
Toulouse, July 11 2005
The new COGNIRON webpages are finally online. They now give a clearer overview of what the project is about. This new version will soon be enriched with further elements ...

Cognironians attended the COSY Summer School
Stockholm, July 4, 2005
Students from three COGNIRON partners (KTH, LAAS, UniBi) are attending the CoSy Lite summer school. This event is part of the Cognitive Systems for Cognitive Assistants -- CoSy project which is funded by the Cognition Unit (E5) within European Commission. The CoSy Lite school will take place 4-8 July 2005 at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) . The school will consist of lecturers every morning and group exercises every afternoon.

COGNIRON presentation in Stanford, USA
Toulouse, July 1st 2005
Raja Chatila presented COGNIRON at Stanford University.

COGNIRON plenary meeting
Amsterdam June 6-7 2005
A COGNIRON plenary meeting took place on June 6-7 in Amsterdam at the University of Amsterdam. The aim of the meeting was to start the implementation of the second worlplan, after its approval by the General Assembly and its sending to the European Commission (revised version dated June 2005).

AISB2005 conference hosted by the University of Hertfordshire
Hatfield, March 18, 2005
The AISB 2005 conference was hosted by a COGNIRON partner, in Hatfied in the UK, from April 12-15. The chosen convention theme is on Social Intelligence and Interaction in animals, robots and agents.
More information is available from the conference page.

COGNIRON workshop at ICRA2005
Lausanne/Karlsruhe, February 25, 2005
Two COGNIRON partners (EPFL and UniKarl) organised a workshop on The Social Mechanisms of Robot Programming by Demonstration during the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA2005) conference.Deadline for submission of short papers, i.e. long abstracts is the 6th of March 2005. More information available from the workshop page.

COGNIRON 1st Project Review
Toulouse, February 4, 2005
The first project Review for COGNIRON took place in Warsaw at the Warsaw University of Technology on February 17-18, in parallel with the project reviews of the 2 other Beyond Robotics Integrated Projects : NEUROBOTICS and I-SWARM

COGNIRON Workshop during EURON Annual Meeting 2005
Toulouse, February 4, 2005
COGNIRON organised a Workshop on Cognitive Robots and Systems on February 17, during the 2005 EURON Annual Meeting. This event gathering the whole European Robotics Community will take place in Warsaw, at the Warsaw University of Technology, on February 16-17.
The Workshop speakers will be Raja Chatila (LAAS-CNRS), Ian Horswill (Computer Science Department, Northwestern University, USA), Aaron Sloman (School of Computer Science, The University of Birmingham), James L. Crowley,(GRAVIR-IMAG, INRIA Rhones Alpes), David Hogg (University of Leeds), Geert-Jan M. Kruijff (Language Technology Lab, DFKI), and Gerhard Sagerer (University of Bielefeld). The workshop program can be found here.

European Event
Bielefeld, November 15, 2004
The University of Bielefeld was selected to show the capacities and skills of its robot BIRON (the Bielefeld Robot Companion) at the IST-2004 Event, which takes place on 15-17 November in the Hague, Netherlands.
IST-2004 is organized by the European Commission, and is the most important European Information Society Technologies (IST) event. The event will include a conference, an exhibition of research results and networking facilities for the participants.

COGNIRON hits BBC News !
Hatfield/London, 29October,  2004
The COGNIRON team from the University of Hertfordshire was demonstrating its COGNIRON Platforms -PeopleBots robots- at the Science Museum in London on the 28-30th of October. BBC News UK has now issued an article about this exhibition on its website : read article.

Prof. Hirochika Inoue visited COGNIRON
Toulouse, August 30, 2004
Prof. Hirochika Inoue, former professor at the University of Tokyo, now inspector general for the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS), and member of the COGNIRON Advisory Board, met some of the project partners in Toulouse on the 25-27 of August, within the frame of his attendance to the COGNIRON-related Topical Day organized within the frame of the 2004 edition of the World Computer Congress.

'Cognitive Systems' projects launch in Slovenia - 28-30 October
Stockholm, October 25, 2004
The kick-off event of the Cognitive Systems projects took place in Bled, Slovenia on 28-30 October. One of these new FP6 projects, COSY - short for 'Cognitive Systems for Cognitive Assistants' -, is co-ordinated by Henrik Christensen, from the Royal Institute of Technology, Centre for Autonomous Systems at (KTH ).

'Beyond Robotics' & COGNIRON in Tokyo
Toulouse, September 8, 2004
Dr. Raja Chatila, COGNIRON project co-ordinator, attended the 6th International Symposium 'Living with Robots' , on 4-5 October 2004 in Tokyo, Japan. He gave a talk on 'The Cognitive Robot Companion and the European 'Beyond Robotics Initiative', presenting COGNIRON and the other projects of this new European and FET initiative.

Summer School
Toulouse, August 2nd, 2004
The second Summer School on Simultaneous Localisation and Mapping, organised by LAAS will take place in Toulouse from the 3rd to the 7th of August. More information about this event is available under the COGNIRON Training pages or the Summer School pages under http://www.laas.fr/SLAM.

Conference
Toulouse, July 30, 2004
A topical Day entitled 'Social Robots : Challenges for Intelligent Machines' will take place in Toulouse on August 26 within the frame of the 18th IFIP World Computing Congress (WCC 2004), organised by LAAS. More information about the conference is available under http://www.wcc2004.org/congress/topical_days/top14.htm.

Summer School
Toulouse, July 15, 2004
The RAS/IFRR Summer School on 'Human-Robot Interaction' , partly sponsored by the EURON project will take place in Volterra, Italy from the 19th to the 23rd of July. For more information visit the COGNIRON Training pages or directly the Summer School pages..

FET Press Release
Toulouse, 15, June 2004
The Commission, via the IST-FET Unit, has published a COGNIRON press release among the CORDIS Wire news. Full text available on the CORDIS Wire Service.

Conference
Stuttgart, Feb. 26, 2004
COGNIRON is co-organizing a workshop on "Human-Robot Interaction and Communication in Human Environments" (T-WF-4) at ICRA 2004 in New Orleans. Project members are going to present their work and discuss with international experts aspects of Human Computer Interaction and Human Robot Interaction in COGNIRON.

Conference
Toulouse, Feb. 23, 2004
Raja Chatila, project coordinator of COGNIRON, is going to give an invited lecture ("Toward Cognitive Robot Companions") and present COGNIRON at IAV 2004 in Portugal.

Press Release
Toulouse, Jan. 20, 2004
The European Commission launches the Integrated Project "COGNIRON - The Cognitive Robot Companion".
On January 20, 2004 the kick-off meeting of the COGNIRON project took place in Toulouse. The project was officially launched by the European Commission on January 1, 2004 under contract no. FP6-IST-002020 within the Sixth Framework Programme, Priority IST-2002-2.3.4.2. COGNIRON is one out of three so-called "Integrated Projects" within the IST-FET (Future and Emerging Technologies) Proactive initiative "Beyond Robotics".
Download Press Release (PDF).