IEEE WNC Section is sponsoring a Robot Face-Off pre-competition between UNC-A and WCU this year 30 days before the actual competition at IEEE Region 3's SouthEastCon 2022 in Mobile AL. This will afford the Student Sections the chance to finalize their designs and compete against a real opponent before setting off to Mobile to gain fame and glory for WNC and their schools in the official competition. Please join us in-person or on-line as we will livestream this event from whatever venue. Cheer for your preferred team and wish all the students luck as we send them off to Mardi Gras birthplace in Mobile in 30 days! Co-sponsored by: IEEE WCU Student Chapter - https://paws.wcu.edu/radams/IEEE/IEEE.html and IEEE UNC Asheville Student Chapter - https://www.facebook.com/IeeeUncAshevilleStudentBranch/ Virtual: https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/294054

Autonomous robots will soon play a significant role in various domains, such as search-and-rescue, agriculture farms, homes, offices, transportation, and medical surgery, where fast, safe, and optimal response to different situations will be critical. However, to do so, these robots need fast algorithms to plan their task and motion sequences in real-time with limited perception and battery life. This talk will discuss the novel, learning-based methods for scalable robot task and motion planning that emerged from the cross-fertilization of classical planning and machine learning techniques. These methods can achieve unprecedented speed, robustness, and generalization for solving complex problems in cluttered and partially observable environments. Speaker(s): Ahmed H. Qureshi, Room: 4142, Bldg: Engineering Building III, 1840 Entrepreneur Drive, Raleigh, North Carolina, United States, 27606, Virtual: https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/306026