5th International Workshop on Domain-Specific Languages and models for ROBotic systems (DSLRob-14)

The Fifth International Workshop on Domain-Specific Languages and Models for Robotic Systems (DSLRob-14) happens October 20th 2014 in Bergamo (Italy), during SIMPAR 2014 conference.

After the overwhelming push towards the design of robotics software platforms (e.g. ROS, Orocos, SmartSoft, OpenRTM, etc.) we now need to make robotics programming and configuration as accessible as possible to application domain experts. Domain-Specific Languages (DSLs) and Model-driven Engineering (MDE) are emerging areas of interest in the robotics research community, which have been instrumental for resolving complex issues in a wide range of domains (e.g. distributed and modular robotics, control, and vision) and have the potential for significantly facilitating how robots are programmed.

A domain-specific language (DSL) is a programming language dedicated to a particular problem domain that offers specific notations and abstractions, which, at the same time, decrease the coding complexity and increase programmer productivity within that domain. Models offer a high-level way for domain users to specify the functionality of their system at the right level of abstraction. DSLs and models have historically been used for programming complex systems. They have however recently garnered interest as a separate field of study; this workshop investigates DSLs and models for robotics.

Robotic systems blend hardware and software in a holistic way that intrinsically raises many crosscutting concerns (concurrency, uncertainty, time constraints, etc.), for which reason, traditional general-purpose languages often lead to a poor fit between the language features and the implementation requirements. DSLs and models offer a powerful, systematic way to overcome this problem providing two main strengths:

DSLs and models are key elements in many robotic systems presented at leading conferences such as IROS, ICRA and SIMPAR, but the domain-centric structure of the typical robotics conference and the limited amount of time assigned to paper presentations do not provide enough room for discussion. This workshop aims to establish a regular event, where robotic researchers meet to present and discuss how DSLs and models can improve the design, development and configuration of robotics software.

List of Topics

The workshop will focus on the use of Domain-Specific Languages and Models for Robotic Systems. The challenge of building complex systems that compose several lower-level models or domain-specific languages is considered of special interest this year. Moreover, topics that are of interest for the workshop include:

Intended Audience

The intended audience is those robotics researchers throughout the entire robotics community who use DSLs and models as a key component of their robotics software infrastructure. In addition, robotics researchers with an interest in modern approaches to solving complex software-related issues will find the workshop inspirational.

Submissions guidelines

All submitted papers will be reviewed on the basis of technical quality, relevance, significance, and clarity. At least two reviews for each paper will be conducted. All workshop papers should be submitted electronically in PDF format through the EasyChair website and should use the IEEE US letter format.

We are looking for submission of full research papers and experiences reports (up to 8 pages) and work in progress submissions (up to 4 pages). Please create your account on Easy Chair website as soon as possible if you intend to submit a paper: http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=dslrob2014

Important Dates

The tentative schedule is as follows:

As is the case for previous DSLRob workshops, formal post-workshop proceedings will be permanently stored on the publicly available site arxiv.org.

Program

Preliminary proceedings are now available here. Final proceedings will be available after the workshop on arXiv.

The workshop takes place in the room "Sala Stampa". The conference reception will open at 8:00 in the morning.

Workshop Venue

DSLRob 2014 is part of SIMPAR 2014: The 2014 International Conference on Simulation, Modeling, and Programming for Autonomous Robots, which will take place from October 20 to 23, 2014 at the "Giovanni XXIII" Conference Center in Bergamo, Italy.

DSLRob 2014 will take place October 20th, before the main conference. For information on travel, registration etc. see the SIMPAR site.

Organization committee

Program committee

Contact

Please contact Serge Stinckwich () for further enquiries about this workshop.