Prof. Cheng is one of the co-organizers of the ViTac workshop in the ICRA conferences. The past years have witnessed the fast development of simulation models of optical tactile sensors, Sim2Real and Sim2Real2Sim learning for visuo-tactile perception. It will be timely to bring together the experts and young researchers in the field to discuss how to blend virtual and real visuo-tactile perception. This full-day workshop will cover the recent advancements in the area of visuo-tactile sensing and perception, with the aim to bridge the gap between the simulations and real world for optical tactile sensing and robot perception with vision and tactile sensing. It will further enhance active collaboration and address challenges for this important topic and applications.

Topics of Interest:

●    Development of tactile sensors for robot tasks

●    Simulation of tactile sensors

●    Sim2Real and Sim2Real2Sim learning for visual-tactile sensing and perception

1. The control and design of robotic visuo-tactile systems for human-robot interaction
2. Interactive visuo-tactile perception in robot grasping and manipulation 
3. Cognitive control of movement and sensory-motor representations with vision and touch

●    Bio-inspired approaches and cognitive architectures for the visuo-tactile perception

●    Computational methods for processing vision and touch data in robot learning

Invited speakers:

1. Ted Adelson (MIT, USA) 
2. Roberto Calandra (Meta, USA) 
   • "What's next for Vision-based Tactile Sensors?"
3. Dieter Fox (Nvidia / University of Washington, USA) 
   • “Sim2Real for Contact Rich Tasks”
4. Katherine Kuchenbecker (Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, Germany) 
   • “Haptic Intelligence for HRI”
5. Michael Yu Wang (Monash University, Australia) 
   • “Touch and Sense for Learning Dexterous Manipulation”
6. Ravinder Dahiya (Northeastern University, Boston, USA)
   • “Electronic skin with printed broadband photodetectors”
7. Lucia Beccai (Italiano di Tecnologia, Italy)
   • “Soft sensing approaches towards embodied perception in bioinspired soft gripping”
8. Rich Walker (Shadow, UK)
   • “Tactile sensing technology needs for dexterous telerobotics”

Key dates

Posters and live demonstrations will be selected from a call for extended abstracts, reviewed by the organisers. The best posters will be invited to talk at the workshop. All submissions will be reviewed using a single-blind review process. Accepted contributions will be presented during the workshop as posters. Submissions must be sent in pdf, following the IEEE conference style (two-columns), to: shan.luo@kcl.ac.uk, indicating [ICRA 2023 Workshop] in the email subject. 

1. Submission Deadline: 30^th March, 2023
2. Notification of acceptance: 10th April, 2023
3. Camera-ready deadline: 20th April, 2023
4. Workshop day: 2nd June 2023

We look forward to seeing you in the workshop in London!