New Standards Working Group on Semantic Maps - and More to Come! [Standards]

T he IEEE Robotics and Au to ­ mation Society’s standards working groups continue to grow. Our current working groups are pursuing standards and guidelines in the following areas: ● autonomous robots ● ethically driv­ en nudging for robotic, intelligent, and autonomous systems ● an ontological standard for ethically driv­ en robotics and automa­ tion systems ● recommended practice for the hu­ man–robot interaction design of human subject studies ● robot agility ● robot task representation ● standard terminology for human– robot interactions ● 3D map data representation ● the verification of autonomous systems. Our newest standards working group, “Standard for Semantic Maps for Autonomous Robots,” is developing a standard that defines a reference model; fundamental data models; and an application framework of semantic maps for autonomous robots, which is described in more detail here. Autonomous intelligent robots use high­level descriptions of space and context to interact with human beings. Semantic maps enable e f f e c t i v e human–robot interaction by provid­ ing an abstraction of space and association of contextual knowl­ edge. The ongoing rapid develop­ ment of intelligent technology with robotic technology demands both sophisticated and standardized seman­ tic maps to provide interoperability between the diverse conjunctive tech­ nologies that are required for intelli­ gent robots. The purpose of this standard is to establish a common ground for the application of semantic maps for autonomous robots to provide intelli­ gent services to human users. The development of this standard is initi­ ated from a reference model that is based on the requirements identified from use cases. Fundamental data models for the re presentation and exchange of semantic map informa­ tion are developed in turn. Finally, the specification of an application framework to support the develop­ ment of applications utilizing the semantic maps for autonomous robots follows. There are additional working groups in the pipeline focusing on modularity for robotically assisted surgical systems and on extending the current autonomous robot standard (P1872.2). Stay tuned for more infor­ mation on these upcoming work­ ing groups. If you would like to get involved in this working group, please contact Jaeho Lee at jaeho@uos@ac.uk. If you would like to learn about or get involved in the other working groups, please visit https://www.ieee­ras.org/industry ­government/standards. There is also an active effort to include undergraduate college students in these groups to pique their interest in robot standards. More information about this effort can be found at https:// www.ieee­ras.org/students/student ­news­and­announcements/1572­call ­students­participating­in­ieee­robotic ­standardization­efforts­spirse. Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MRA.2022.3189198 Date of current version: 7 September 2022 Autonomous