Sponsored by the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society
In connection to IEEE ICRA 2007

Date and time: Thursday, April 12, 12:20-13:50
Location: Aula Minor of the Angelicum
Organizers: Allison Okamura, Danica Kragic, Aude Billard, Nancy Amato, Mihoko Otake, Robin Murphy
Registration: The event is open to all conference participants. To allow us to estimate attendance, please email Allison Okamura (aokamura at jhu dot edu) with the subject line "BoF Women Lunch" if you would like to attend this event.
Contact and more information: Danica Kragic (dani at kth dot se)

Motivation:
The field of robotics and automation has grown significantly during the past few decades. Today, we are seeing some of the most ground-breaking work being performed by researchers with very different backgrounds: medical doctors collaborating with software and tool designers, physiologists and neuroscientists collaborating with computer vision researchers, behavior and social study researchers collaborating with developers of humanoid robots. It appears that this synergistic trend has brought more women into the field of robotics and automation, which has historically been dominated by men. However, there are still relatively few women at robotics and automation conferences. Our long-term goal is to develop activities that increase the number of women participating in the field of robotics and automation.

Topics to discuss:
Career difficulties/requirements/paths
What are the research interests of female researchers in robotics and automation?
What is the male/female senior researcher ratio in RAS and IEEE as a whole?
What is the male/female student ratio in RAS?
Strategies for encouraging young women (from grade school through graduate school) to join the robotics field.?

Related links:
IEEE Women in Enginering
IEEE Robotics and Automation Society
Women in Robotics and Automation towards Human Science, Technology and Society

Scope of this conference is as follows (from the top page).
Autonomy and adaptivity are key aspects of truly intelligent artificial systems. New directions of research have recently emerged from the synergetic interaction of many fields, such as cognitive science, operations research, mathematics, robotics, mechanics, electronics, informatics, and economics. One key insight is that to realize both intelligence and autonomy, it is crucial to build real world devices and abstract principles of design from them. The goal of IAS-9 is to lay out new scientific ideas and design principles for artificial systems able to survive in nature and in our society. We expect the conference to stimulate novel research challenges as well as crazy ideas that eventually will lead to more intelligent and autonomous future robots and systems. The conference will cover both the applied as well as the theoretical aspects of intelligent autonomous systems. It will comprise invited talks as well as oral presentations.

Gender and Interaction: Real and Virtual women in a male world
Date: May 23, 2006
AVI 2006
(23-26 May, 2006 - Venice, Italy)
Some of the larger questions we hope to address during the workshop are:

- What is the current status of the digital divide in computer adoption and usage between males and females?
- How do different interface metaphors (embodied conversational characters, windows, desktops) affect gender related differences?
- What is the effect of gender on the perception and usage of educational software?
- Does gender affect navigational knowledge and strategies (e.g. in VR or Web-browsing)?
- Does gender affect the acquisition of sensory-motor tasks in the use of multi-modal interfaces?
- Should machines (embodied characters and robots) have gender? How should 'artificial'gender be designed and how would it affect the interaction?
- Do sex-role stereotypes apply to embodied characters?
- Does gender affect the way human empathize with embodied characters and robots?

The 2007 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA'07) will be held in Roma, Italy, from 10 to 14 April 2007. This is the first time that ICRA takes place in a European capital. The conference site is the historic building of the Angelicum University, conveniently located in the downtown area. The conference theme is UBIQUITOUS ROBOTICS.

During the conference, the first special event "BoF Women Lunch" is held.