Motivation and objectives

The growing number of robot systems and applications raises the problem of engineering the software development process. The Robotics community is getting aware of the importance that software development principles have in building advanced robotics systems. Large companies and institutions like Microsoft, Kuka, NASA/JPL, and OMG are investing huge amount of human and financial resources in research and development of Robotic Software environments. Several initiatives are taking place in the field of standard architectures, reusable components, middlewares, and development tools. We are at the beginning of a new age, where the robotic software community shares common goals but lacks a common language to express requirements, problems, and solutions, and a clear vision on what to do next .

The goal of this workshop is to analyze current practice in robot software development and to explore future research directions that promote the development of flexible robotic software systems. The key to achieving software flexibility is the possibility to predict the class of changes that are likely to occur over the lifespan of a robotic software system and to design software systems that are robust to those classes of changes. Thus, the workshop aims at promoting a discussion on the evolution of software requirements for robotic applications, on the reasons why current practice does not address the problem of designing reusable robot software in a satisfactory way, and on valuable and effective approaches to design flexible robotic systems.

The expected result is a practical program of research and public relations focused on the way that software development techniques are actually practiced in Robotics and a roadmap that indicates the strategic directions to pursue the synergy between Robotics and Software Engineering in order to promote the development of flexible robotic systems.
List of Topics
The workshop focuses on a few mainstream topics closely related to robotic software development, such as:

* Analysis of issues and challenges in robotic software development
* Analysis of the evolution of robotic software requirements
* Software architectures that lead to reusable robotic software design
* Models of reusable robot software components and systems
* Description of state-of-the art research projects, innovative ideas, field-based studies

Please refer to your robotic system implementation and possibly generalize your experience to the development of similar systems.
Submission
Papers are limited to 6 pages. Please, use the ICRA2009 author kit to format the papers. Papers should be submitted in pdf by email to Davide Brugali (brugali@unibg.it). Authors acknowledge that no paper of substantially similar content has been or will be submitted to another conference or workshop during the review period. Papers will be reviewed for quality and relevance and the decision of acceptance will be mailed to the corresponding author. Accepted papers will be included in the workshop notes, distributed at the workshop, and published on the workshop's web site. At least one author of each accepted paper must register in the workshop.
Important Dates

Submission Due: February 2nd, 2009
Notifications: February 15, 2009
Final Copies Due: March 1st, 2009
Workshop: May 12, 2009