Autonomous mobile manipulation is a challenging technology milestone underlying several important emerging markets, including health care, service and repair of orbiting spacecraft and satellites, planetary exploration, military applications, logistics, and supply chain support. Little progress has been made toward practical manipulation systems capable of functioning independently without fine-grained intervention from human users. However, exciting new dexterous machines and actuator designs are available and key technologies for creating manual skills using haptic feedback and machine learning now exist.
The proposed workshop is to identify the key scientific challenges on the path towards achieving autonomous mobile manipulation. Autonomy refers to the capability of a robotic system to work towards the accomplishment of an objective for extended periods of time without human intervention. Mobility enables a robotic system to operate in large and unstructured environments and can be achieved in a number of ways, depending on the area of application (land, air, underwater, space). Finally, manipulation describes the property of performing physical work in the environment, other than self-motion. Manipulation tasks can range from excavation to dexterous assembly.
This workshop will bring researchers together to discuss the prospects and challenges for creating integrated autonomous mobile manipulation systems with which to address commercial applications. The goal is to devise a general technology roadmap towards this objective. The results and findings will be disseminated in a report to researchers and funding agencies.
