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The 25th Conference on Learning Theory (COLT 2012) was held in Edinburgh, Scotland, on June 25–June 27, 2012. COLT is supported by the Association for Computational Learning (ACL).

Plenary talks presented at IEEE ICRA 2012.

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Consider a robot that is to act as a household assistant in an unknown kitchen environment. This robot has to acquire and use knowledge about where the task-relevant objects, such as the dish- washer and the oven are and how the robot can act on them. A recent advent of smart devices (e.g. smart phones) and high-quality-low-cost sensors (e.g. Kinect) provides us with the aordable resources for the robot which link sensory information to the robot's knowledge base and high-level deliberative components. Resources like this allow the general-purpose service robots to e.g. query information from world wide web, seek help from remote experts through shared autonomy interfaces and to act independently and safely in human living envi- ronments.

In this hands-on workshop we will identify key problems and so- lutions by narrowing down the denition of semantics, we will dis- cuss what is the representative end world model as a result of se- mantic mapping, single out the optimal sensors, consider static vs. dynamic aspects of environment modeling and nally address the life- long learning in order to leverage not only the sensor data but also from human living patterns and behaviors. The workshop will feature excellent talks from researchers from academia as well as industry, live demonstrations, poster session and a working session with an aim to standardize some fundamental concepts in semantic mapping. We plan to build upon the series of related events at previous IROS, ICRA and RSS conferences.

In order to boost the practical use of robot technology not only in industrial settings, more sophisticated robotic solutions have to be elaborated, particularly in terms of autonomy, exibility, interactiv- ity and cooperating with human, ease of use, and safety. In order to be able to develop applications on the short-term and to maintain ecient improvement of European robotics in the long term, a bet- ter cooperation and technological know-how transfer between robot manufacturers and research institutions is essential.

ECHORD (European Clearing House for Open Robotics Devel- opment, FP7-ICT-231143, http://www.echord.info) is an innovative framework aiming at intensifying this collaboration by carrying more than 50 small sub-projects (socalled experiments with specic research foci and scenarios) with consortia composed of academia and indus- try. The whole project is coordinated by the Technische Universitt Mnchen (Germany), University of Naples (Italy), and University of Coimbra (Portugal). This workshop is composed of two parts:

1. A presentation session where an overview of the ECHORD exper- iments will be given by the coordinating partners of ECHORD, then (intermediate) results of the experiments targeted to an in- ternational audience will be presented, followed by discussions.
2. An open discussion session about innovative solutions in and outside ECHORD, future impacts, new applications, limitations and possible improvements, as well as safety concepts.

Computer and Robot Assisted Surgery (CRAS) is an area receiving broad attention worldwide, because of its strong potential to achieve new levels of healthcare. Many researchers and potential users are attracted to the eld. However, the market is oering very few prod- ucts, which cannot be enhanced with add-on components produced by other manufacturers. This inability is not only due to commercial, but also to technical reasons, since an FDA-approved or CE marked surgical device cannot be altered by adding new components.

Motivated by these considerations, the European research project Eurosurge addresses the issues of modularity and integration of dier- ent functions into a surgical robot, with a special emphasis on the in- tegration of cognitive functions into robotassisted surgical procedures, and on the satisfaction of regulatory constraints.

This workshop aims at presenting to the robotic community the results of the rst six months of the project and to establish a fruitful discussion with experts in the areas of integration, standards, bench- marking, architectures and cognition. The workshop will be divided into three phases: the rst summarizing the current status of Euro- surge; the second with presentations from experts outside the project; and the third with a discussion to provide suggestions and opinions about introducing modularity into robotic surgery

Feature based SLAM is closely related to multi-sensor, multi-target .ltering. In essence, the objective is to jointly estimate a time-varying number of targets and their states from sensor measurements with data association and detection uncertainty, clutter and noise. Its sys- tematic treatment, using random set theory, led to the mathematical tools known as Finite Set Statistics (FISST), developed for data fusion and estimation of random sets.

Random vector based SLAM is known to be extremely fragile in the presence of feature detection and data association uncertainty. Therefore recent research which has applied the FISST framework to autonomous map representations will be the subject of this workshop.

Workshop topics will include global localisation, Rao-Blackwellised and multi-robot SLAM which jointly consider false alarms, missed detections and spatial sensor uncertainty. Experimental results in challenging outdoor and marine environments will be demonstrated.

The problem of long-term autonomy is attracting increased at- tention in the robotics research community. State-of-the-art robotic mapping and localization systems have demonstrated the ability to operate in increasingly large-scale environmentsthe DARPA Grand Challenge, Mars Exploration Rovers, Willow Garage PR2 demos, long- range visual-teach-and-repeat systems, and Atlantic-Ocean crossing AUVs are only some of the examples of the maturity of the eld. However, it remains to be seen how to extend the operation time of autonomous robotic systems from days to months or years. This goal poses new challenges related to robust long-term operation and life- long learning. What valuable lessons have we learnt from large-scale robotic experiments? What challenges need to be addressed to en- sure robust and continual operation? We invite authors to share their experience and insight at this full-day workshop.

In all eld of science experiments play an important role, in or- der to conrm/refute a theory and to discover new theories. It is a widespread opinion that experimental methodologies in robotics have not yet achieved a level of maturity comparable with that in tradi- tional science. On the other hand being able of objectively measure and comparing performances is a critical aspect of modern engineering. In this workshop, we will discuss fundamental issues about the role of experiments in robotics, such as how can results be replicable and refutable on the one hand, and quantitatively comparable according to community-endorsed metrics to enable a faster cumulative progress, or even appreciate disruptive changes, on the other end. We will par- ticularly focus on how might be possible, by providing the proper kind and amount of data to enable the replication of experiments as a pre- requisite to quantitative comparison of capabilities. A key point to allow replication and comparison of results is having adequate data support: all the data necessary to repeat a given experiment, how to achieve it with today's digital media will be addressed. We will con- centrate on three main subelds: visual servoing and grasping, slam and navigation. In these elds it is already possible to outline several compelling criteria. These issues, when viewed in the context of some general principles about experiments in science and engineering, will allow us to do some insightful considerations on the role of experi- ments in robotics and its scientic and epistemological foundations. This workshop is a joint initiative of the IEEE Technical Committee on Performance Evaluation and Benchmarking of Robotic and Automa- tion Systems (PEBRAS) and the EURON Special Interest Group on Good Experimental Methodology for Robotics (SIG GEM).

The proposal intends a full day workshop in order to discuss a new and innovative methodology intended for creating 3D cellular systems such as functional tissue in vitro environments, in which active functional cells selected from a living organism are used to create the 3D cellular system. The workshop consists of invited speakers from the world who are active in the cutting edge of the eld. The topics cover high speed measurements and controls of single and/or multiple cells based on micro & nano robotics, high speed assembly of 3D cellular system, and analysis and evaluation of active functional cellular systems