2016 PRASA-RobMech

Welcome to the 2016 PRASA-RobMech International Conference incorporating The 27th Annual Symposium of the Pattern Recognition Association of South Africa and The 9th Robotics and Mechatronics Conference of South Africa.  It will take place from 30 November to 2 December 2016 at Stellenbosch University, South Africa.  The two-day main conference will be preceded by a day of workshops and tutorials. This is a great opportunity to meet other like-minded scientists in the interdisciplinary fields of pattern recognition, robotics and mechatronics.

Keynote speakers

  • Prof. Sethu Vijayakumar, who is the Professor of Robotics in the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh and the Director of the Edinburgh Centre for Robotics.
  • Dr. Andrew Saxe is a Swartz Postdoctoral Fellow in Theoretical Neuroscience at the Center for Brain Science, Harvard University. He completed his PhD in Electrical Engineering at Stanford advised by Jay McClelland, Surya Ganguli, Andrew Ng, and Christoph Schreiner. His dissertation on deep linear neural networks was awarded the Robert J. Glushko Dissertation Prize from the Cognitive Science Society. His research focuses on the theory of deep learning and its applications to phenomena in neuroscience and psychology.

News

  • 9 December 2016: The slides for Dr. Saxe’s keynote are now also available.
  • 8 December 2016: The slides of Prof. Sethu Vijayakumar’s keynote are now also available.
  • 6 December 2016: A video of Prof. Sethu Vijayakumar’s demo recorded by an audience member has been uploaded.  We are also in the process of obtaining the slides of the keynote speakers for uploading on the website.
  • 30 November 2016: Please use the van Riebeeck Street entrance to the Botanical Gardens for the welcome reception this evening, not the Neethling Street entrance. Update: please enter at the “ou konservatorium”. There is a staff member there to let you in.
  • 28 November 2016: Some corrections have been made to the technical programme (to ensure that it matches the programme overview).
  • 26 November 2016: Some additional details on venues and facilities have been provided.
  • 25 November 2016: Welcome to our newest sponsor, Horne Technologies.
  • 25 November 2016: A more detailed programme overview is now available.  One important change to note is that the registration and welcome reception on the evening of 30 November will take place at the Katjiepiering restaurant in the Stellenbosch University Botanical Gardens, and no longer at the Engineering Building.
  • 24 November 2016: Some information on presentations and posters for authors has been added to the paper submissions page.
  • 23 November 2016: Details on the keynote presentations (titles and abstracts) have been added to the conference programme page.
  • 23 November 2016: The provisional technical program has been updated – a paper was missing from the original program.
  • 16 November 2016: The provisional technical program is now available for download.
  • 3 November 2016: An invitation to participate in/contribute to the HLT in South Africa: State of the Community workshop has been uploaded on the workshops page.
  • 19 October 2016: Information on a free workshop on certain aspects of Bayesian networks offered as part of FAIR 2016 on the same day as the PRASA-Robmech workshops has been added to the Workshops page.
  • 19 October 2016: Welcome on board to our new sponsor, the Language Resource Management Agency (RMA).
  • 13 October 2016: Registrations are now open at http://conferences.sun.ac.za/index.php/prasa/annual/index .
  • 13 October 2016: Information on 4 workshops/tutorials has been added to the Workshops page.
  • 6 October 2016: Notification of paper acceptance has been extended to 10 October 2016 – thank you for your patience.
  • 29 September 2016: Andrew Saxe will be a keynote speaker.
  • 8 September 2016: Paper submissions have been reopened for one additional day, and submissions will close tonight.
  • 25 August 2016: A second call for papers has been released, including news of one keynote speaker, and an extended submission deadline for papers.
  • 24 August 2016: Professor Sethu Vijayakumar, who is the Professor of Robotics in the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh and the Director of the Edinburgh Centre for Robotics, will be a keynote speaker.
  • 24 August 2016: Information on registration fees has been added to the website, as well as a template for workshop and tutorial proposals.
  • 2 August 2016: A call for sponsors has been added to the website.  If your organization is in a position to support the conference, please take a look at the brochure and contact us.
  • 29 July 2016: Please note that the opening date for registration will be delayed, and the site will be updated with the new date in due course – please e-mail prasarobmech2016@gmail.com if you’d like to be emailed with the modified date when the website is updated.
  • 28 July 2016: Added link to paper submission system on paper submissions page.  Note that link will only go live on 1 August.
  • 15 June 2016: PRASA-RobMech is accredited by both the IEEE and SAIEE.
  • 14 June 2016: Information on the call for papers and the call for workshops and tutorials is now available.