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Scope of the Conference
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TAROS is the longest running UK-hosted international conference on Robotics and Autonomous Systems (RAS), which is aimed at the presentation and discussion of the latest results and methods in autonomous robotics research and applications.

TAROS offers a friendly environment for robotics researchers and industry to take stock and plan future progress. It welcomes senior researchers and research students alike, and specifically provides opportunities for research students and young research scientists to present their work to the scientific community.

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Important Dates
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Submission deadline: February 14, 2018
Notification of acceptance: April 2, 2018
Final paper version submission: May 4, 2018
Conference: July 25-27, 2018

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Relevant Research Areas
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Contributions are sought in all areas relevant to the overall goal of the conference, including—but not limited to—the following topics:

Autonomous robots (in industry and research)

Assistive, service and personal robotics

Aerial robots (unmanned- and micro- air vehicles) space and planetary robotics

Medical robotics, robots for surgery and intelligent prosthetics

Humanoid and walking robots

Swarm, collective and field robotics

Modular reconfigurable robots

Human-Robot interaction

Multimodal interfaces

Navigation, localization, map building and path planning, Analysis of robot-environment interaction

Robot autonomy including energy self-sufficiency, control architectures, vision, sensing and perception

Applications development, hardware issues, devices and techniques

Advanced sensors and actuators

Advanced materials and techniques

Autonomous vehicles

Biomimetic, bio-inspired and bio-hybrid robotic systems

Evolutionary, cognitive and developmental robotics

Robot communication and language

Ethical and societal issues in robotics

Robots in education, the arts and entertainment

Safety, verification and validation for robotic applications

Learning and adaptation

Long-term interaction and operation

Modelling and analysis

These topics cover a wide range of research communities including multimodal interaction, dialogue systems, human-robot interaction, robotics, automated planning, computer vision, and signal processing. Due to the interdisciplinary nature of the conference, relevant contributions from other fields will also be welcome.

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Publication Details
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TAROS 2018 invites both full papers and extended abstracts. The proceedings will be published in the Springer Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence series. All contributions will be refereed. Full papers are invited from researchers at any stage in their career but should present significant findings and advances in robotics research; more preliminary work would be better suited to extended abstract submission. Full papers (up to 10 pages in LNCS format) will be accepted for either oral presentation (single track) or poster presentation. Extended abstracts will be accepted for poster presentation only.

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TAROS 2018 Organising Committee
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General Chair
Professor Manuel Giuliani - University of the West of England, Bristol, United Kingdom

Program Chair
Dr Tareq Assaf - University of the West of England, Bristol, United Kingdom
Dr Maria Elena Giannaccini - University of Bristol, Bristol, United Kingdom

Publicity Chair
Dr Aghil Jafari - University of the West of England, Bristol, United Kingdom
Dr Appolinaire Etoundi - University of the West of England, Bristol, United Kingdom

Web Chair
Dr Alex Smith - University of the West of England, Bristol, United Kingdom
Alexander Fanourakis - University of the West of England, Bristol, United Kingdom

Local Arrangements Chair
Marta Palau - University of the West of England, Bristol, United Kingdom
Alison Wilmot - University of the West of England, Bristol, United Kingdom

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Further Information
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Up-to-date information will be published at the following address:
www.brl.ac.uk/taros2018.aspx