The 2009 Robotics: Science and Systems conference has announced their call for papers (and workshops).  RSS is one of the premier robotics conferences, and it is being held from June 28th through July 1st at the University of Washington in Seattle.  The paper submission deadline is January 15h, and the deadline for workshop topic submissions is December 15th.

Researchers at Georgia Tech (labmates of this author) have developed a robot that can robustly open closed doors. The target application for the robot, named El-E ("Ellie"), is assistive tasks related to healthcare in the homes of the disabled. This application demonstrates a set of behaviors that enable a mobile manipulator to reliably open a variety of doors and traverse doorways using force-sensing fingers and a laser range finder.