Though robots themselves have been consistently getting cheaper, more available, and easier to use in recent years, robotics research and development (as presented at RSS and similar conferences) has conversely become less accessible with higher costs and infrastructure dependencies. We believe that robots of the future should be built by, reflect, work with and support all humans, not just a select few. In particular, we’d like to welcome new contributors to the field, especially low resourced individuals, non-traditional roboticists or non-engineers, and other diverse people. Creating such a community starts with improving access to ongoing robotics research and discourse today by identifying barriers, thinking about and championing approaches that challenge our existing notions of what counts as acceptable or relevant robotics research, and ensuring that adjacent fields from education to manufacturing to health are interested in a robotics future for all. This workshop focuses on developing key action items—individually and for the community as a whole—to address these goals.
We welcome both in-person and online participation in our hybrid workshop; we will strive to make both experiences as comparable and valuable as possible.
We encourage applications to contribute to this workshop in any of the following three ways.
If you have an accessible project to get users started on a path towards robotics contributions, apply as a demonstrator. You will be expected to:
If you have work towards expanding participation in robotics, such as outcomes of having run outreach workshops before, ongoing work on a kit / activity that may not be quite ready yet, or any other interesting and relevant contributions to our discussion, apply as a poster presenter. You will be expected to:
If you have experience engaging with new / non-traditional roboticists—or if you are one yourself—and want to try out a submitted project, apply as a play tester. You will be expected to:
We allow two deadlines to support both those who need decisions sooner and those that would like additional time to prepare their submission materials. If you opt for the regular deadlines, we ask that you still submit a notice of intent by the early deadline.
Apply to the workshop with a proposal of no more than 2 pages (including images and references) containing the following information:
Submit this proposal as an email attachment in PDF format to <r4a-org@lists.ucla.edu> with the subject “Lowering Barriers workshop application”.
* For the notice of intent, include just the first three items in a plain email to <r4a-org@lists.ucla.edu> with the subject “Lowering Barriers workshop LOI”.