SOCORO 2010 has ended. We have uploaded the lecture slides and some photos - please send more photos if you have. The feeback has been excellent -please see participant's comments. Thank you all of you who have attended! See this awesome video or the youtube version

This is the fifth summer school offered through co-sponsorship by the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (RAS) and the International Foundation of Robotics Research (IFRR) . The aim of the event is to provide high quality of education in a chosen theme. This occurs through interaction with internationally distinguished researchers in an informal classroom setting as well as through joint student exercises, and hands-on experiments. The goal is not only to acquire scientific knowledge but also to interact closely with prominent instructors, and to meet leading researchers in the field.

The theme for this year's summer school is "Social and Cognitive Robotics" and will be held in Iasi, Romania, between July 12-17, 2010.  The recent trend toward developing a new generation of robots capable of operating in human-centered environments, interacting with people, and participating in and assisting our daily lives has introduced the need for robotic systems capable of learning to use their embodiment to communicate and to react to their users in a social and engaging way. Thus, social robots that interact with humans have become an important focus of robotics research. In the past few years a great deal of research has been directed toward creating socially intelligent robots capable of exhibiting natural-appearing social and cognitive qualities.

Themes for previous years' summer schools were "Human Robot Interaction" (Volterra, Italy, 2004), "Robot Design" (Tokyo, Japan, 2005), "Haptic Interaction" (Paris, France, 2006), "Learning" (Lazise, Garda Lake, Italy, 2007) and "Medical Robotics and Computer-Integrated Interventional Systems" (Baltimore, 2009) IEEE/RAS SOCORO 2010 is organized part of AT-EQUAL 2010 which in 2009 organized ISRIS (International School in Robotics and Intelligent Systems).

It is expected that the school will host 40 Ph.D students / Post-doctoral students from across the world. While the School is operated on the basis of tuition, a significant number of fellowships are made available by the sponsors. The School organization primarily benefits from the generous contribution of the lecturers' volunteering time.

School Directors:

• Prof. Adriana Tapus, ENSTA-ParisTech, Paris, France
• Prof. Ioan Doroftei, Gheorghe Asachi Technical University of Iasi ,Iasi, Romania

Steering Committee:

• Prof. Paolo Fiorini, University of Verona, Italy (IEEE/RAS Liaison)
• Dr. Adrian Stoica, NASA-JPL, USA (AT-EQUAL Liaison)

Local Organizing Committee:

• Dr. Mircea Slanina, AT-EQUAL and REGENERO
  
• Prof. Doru Panescu, Technical University of Iasi
• Prof. Florin Pantelimonescu, Technical University of Iasi
• Prof. Marian Poboroniuc, Technical University of Iasi
  
  

School location: Starting Tuesday 9:00 am Facultatea de Electrotehnica / Electrical Engineering Faculty Address: B-dul prof Dimitrie Mangeron nr. 51-53 (previously known: Splai Bahlui stanga, nr.51-53) See the map on Google maps Accomodation: - Proffesors and students: Hotel Ramada, Strada Grigore Ureche 27 www.ramadaiasi.ro See the map on Google maps - Studentii romani: Hotel Studis, str. Otilia Cazimir, nr. 10 See the map on Google maps Registration: Monday 6-8 pm on Hotel Ramada, 1st floor Adrian Stoica, phone: 0040 743 808000