International Workshop of Intelligent Autonomous Learning Systems
International Workshop of Intelligent Autonomous Learning Systems 2024
Note, Please ensure to read the conference schedule and specific activity requirements before packing for the event.
Quick Facts 2024
| Organizers: | Julen Urain de Jesus, Theo Gruner, Rickmer Krohn, Ahmed Hendawy, Paul Jansonnie |
| Location: | Darmstädter Haus and Marburger Haus, Kleinwalsertal, Austria |
| Dates: | 21.07.- 28.07.2024 |
Schedule
Note, the schedule is subject to change, to optimize the weather during outdoor activites.
Daily Schedule
| 21/7 | Sunday: | Arrival |
|---|---|---|
| 22/7 | Monday: | Opening session, Focus Groups, Poster session |
| 23/7 | Tuesday: | Spotlight #1-#2, Contributed Talks |
| 24/7 | Wednesday: | Excursion (Climbing school) |
| 25/7 | Thursday: | Spotlight #3-#4, Contributed Talks |
| 26/7 | Friday: | Fast discussions & Quiz, Group-specific session |
| 27/7 | Saturday: | Excursion (Klettersteig, hiking) |
| 28/7 | Sunday: | Travel back |
Detailed Schedule
Note, there will be 30 minute coffee breaks each morning and afternoon, between sessions.
| Time | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Saturday |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 09:30 - 10 | Opening Session | Opening Session | Excursion | Opening Session | Free sleep | Excursion |
| 10 - 11 | Opening Session | Spotlight #1 | Excursion | Spotlight #3 | Recap | Excursion |
| 11 - 12 | Getting to know each other in focus groups | Spotlight #1 | Excursion | Spotlight #3 | Fast discussions & Quiz | Excursion |
| 12 - 14 | Lunch | Lunch | Excursion | Lunch | Lunch | Excursion |
| 14 - 15 | Focus groups (Challenges in 2024 and Future) | Spotlight #2 | Excursion | Spotlight #4 | Group Specific Session | Excursion |
| 15 - 16 | Focus groups (Challenges in 2024 and Future) | Coffee Break + Panel Discussion + Quiz | Excursion | Coffee Break + Panel Discussion + Quiz | Group Specific Session | Excursion |
| 16 - 17 | Poster Session | Contributed Talks #1 | Excursion | Contributed talks #2 | Group Specific Session | Excursion |
| 17 - 18 | Poster Session | Contributed Talks #1 | Excursion | Contributed talks #2 | Group Specific Session | |
| Evening Activities | Table tennis & Table football | Volleyball evening | Poker night | Gaming night (Chess tournament) | X | X |
Invited Speakers
Edward Johns is the Director of the Robot Learning Lab and a Senior Lecturer at Imperial College London, specializing in robotics, computer vision, and machine learning with a focus on visually-guided robot manipulation. He holds a BA and MEng in Electrical and Information Engineering from Cambridge University, and a PhD in visual place recognition from Imperial College. Following a post-doc at UCL, he returned to Imperial College as a founding member of the Dyson Robotics Lab, where he led robot manipulation research. Awarded a Royal Academy of Engineering Research Fellowship in 2017, he founded the Robot Learning Lab and Imperial's first course on Robot Learning. Dr. Johns has published over 50 peer-reviewed papers with over 2500 citations and received the President's Award for Outstanding Early Career Researcher in 2022. He also serves on advisory boards for robotics startups and was Head of Robot Learning at Dyson from 2021 to 2022.
Mayank Mittal is a PhD student at ETH Zurich and a Research Scientist at NVIDIA. He has worked with various robotic groups and platforms, including Vector Institute, NNAISENSE, and IIT Kanpur. His research focuses on robot learning, mobile manipulation, and task abstraction. Mittal's notable work includes founding the AUV-IITK team, and his papers have been accepted at conferences such as ICRA and IROS. His projects span areas like reinforcement learning, visual navigation, and autonomous UAV systems.
Spotlight Talks
The spotlight talks are tutorial sessions led by field experts, providing a clear and informative introduction to a specific research field. These talks aim to acquaint the audience with essential concepts, recent developments, and significant findings in that area of study.
| Time | Talk | Presenter | Title |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tuesday 09:30 - 12:00 | #1 | Edward Johns (Imperial) | Efficient learning of vision- and language-based robot manipulation policies |
| Tuesday 14:00 - 15:00 | #2 | Niklas Funk | Learning for efficient, accurate, and tactile robotic manipulation |
| Thursday 10:00 - 12:00 | #3 | Mayank Mittal | Isaac Sim and Sim to real |
| Thursday 14:00 - 15:00 | #4 | Carlo D'Eramo | On the Benefit of Curricula in Reinforcement Learning |
Contributed Talks
During this session, researchers from different labs present their research, providing insights, methodologies, and findings on specific topics or projects while also receiving feedback from the audience.
Note, there will be two talks in parallel.
| Day | Time | Presenter | Title |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tuesday | 16:00-16:30 | Ge Li | Using Movement Primitives in Robot Learning |
| Nwankwo Linus | Advancing Human-Autonomous Agents Interaction Through Pre-Trained Foundation Models | ||
| 16:30-17:00 | Snehal Jauhri | Learning Visual Mobile Manipulation: The Good, the Bad & the Ugly | |
| Aidan Scannell | iQRL - Implicitly Quantized Representations for Sample-efficient Reinforcement Learning | ||
| Thursday | 16:00-16:30 | Vedant Dave | Learning Robust Representations under noisy environment with multimodal data |
| Firas Al Hafez | An Introduction to Learning Fullbody-Humanoid Control from Motion Capture | ||
| 16:30-17:00 | Kalle Kujanpää | Hierarchical Planning with Vector Quantized Models | |
| Fotios Lygerakis | Self-Supervised Representation Learning, Visuotactile Fusion and Robot Learning | ||
| 17:00-17:30 | Xiaogang Jia | MaIL: Improving Imitation Learning with Mamba | |
| Frankie Yuezhe Zhang | Multi-Modal MPPI and Active Inference for Reactive Task and Motion Planning |
Equipment
It is highly recommended to bring with you:
- Your Laptop: Please bring your laptop as it will be needed during certain sessions
- Hiking Boots: Since we'll be going for a hike or klettersteig, a sturdy pair of hiking boots is essential. Consider choosing ones that have:
- Small Backpack (20 - 30l): A convenient backpack will come in handy for carrying your essentials.
- Refillable Water Bottle: Staying hydrated is vital, so don't forget to bring a refillable water bottle.
- Small Lunch Box: We'll provide a breakfast buffet, and you can pack your lunch in a small box to keep your energy up during the event.
- Shades and Hat: The sun can be intense, so pack sunglasses and a hat to shield yourself.
- Sunscreen: To protect your skin from the mountain sun, remember to pack sunscreen.
- Rain Jacket: While we hope for clear skies, it's best to be prepared. Bring a lightweight rain jacket just in case.
- Comfortable Clothes: Expect to get a bit wet and dirty during our mountain adventures, so comfortable and durable clothes are recommended.
- Swimming Suit: There's a possibility of visiting thermal springs or a sauna, so pack a swimming suit if you'd like to take a refreshing dip.
See IWIALS2023 and IWIALS2022 for previous IWIALS.