Call for contributions

We invite you to submit an extended abstract of your contribution for both talks and posters. Extended abstracts may be around 1000 words and may include figures and references. Extended abstracts should be submitted in pdf format by email to Davide Brugali by March 15h, 2013. Contributions will be reviewed for quality and relevance to the workshop’s theme. Theoretical and applied papers, as well as papers that capture best practices and lessons learned from field studies are encouraged. Submission of preliminary results would also be considered.
Authors of accepted abstracts will present their work at the workshop and will be invited to submit the full paper to a special issue of the Journal of Software Engineering for Robotics (JOSER)
Submitting a contribution is not a prerequisite to participation in the workshop and the discussion sessions.

Important Dates
March 15, 2013: Submission deadline for Extended Abstracts
March 30, 2013: Notification of acceptance
May 6, 2013 : Workshop date



Workshop Theme : Robot Software Architectures

The architecture of a robot software system can be conveniently described from three points of view, namely the robot functionalities, the software implementation, the computational resources.
A robot functional architecture describes how the functionalities of a robot control system are partitioned into a collection of functional units that collaborate to fulfil the purpose of the system. This includes descriptions of the system's control and data flows, data sources (e.g. the sensors), data stores (e.g. the world model), data processing (i.e. the control algorithms), and data sinks (e.g. the actuators).
A robot component architecture describes, how a robot functional control architecture is implemented in software and how this software is structured. This includes specifying how the robot functionalities are structured into components, the dependencies between each other and external libraries, and utilities to account for specific aspects like communication middleware, quality of service, and others.
A robot runtime architecture describes how software components are mapped onto processes and threads, and how they are built and deployed onto the computational resources available on a particular robot.

Designing the software architecture of a robot control system is the process of maximizing internal cohesion of components in such a way that their responsibilities are fulfilled effectively and minimizing coupling between components in order to enhance system modularity. Better modularity is a prerequisite for better reusability.
The race towards performance pushes robotic engineers to neglect software quality attributes of a robot control system, such as maintainability, interoperability, scalability, and reusability. Software that is nicely encapsulated often simply runs slower than software that breaks encapsulation. Experience in software architecture design is about knowing when to break encapsulation to make the code run faster, and when not to do that.

This workshop focuses on several topics closely related to robot software architectures, which include:

Analysis of issues and challenges in robotic software development

Architectural models that lead to reusable robotic software design

Application of metrics to measure nun-functional properties (e.g., robustness, availability, etc.)

Identification and description of structural and behavioral patterns and design principles in robot software architectures

Description of lessons learned in the development and deployment of large-scale, real-world integrated robot software architectures

Description and analysis of design principles promoting quality of service (e.g., performance) attributes

Tools and approaches for automatic validation and verification of robot software architectures

Description of state-of-the-art research projects, innovative ideas, and field-based studies