Always Stronger, Always Higher
SOCIETY NEWS
Always Stronger, Always Higher
S
higeo Hirose, IEEE Fellow, has
been named the recipient of
the 2014 IEEE Robotics and
Automation Award for his contributions to the design and construction of multiple nonconventional
robotic systems, such as snakelike,
quadruped walking, wall climbing,
and swarm robots.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MRA.2014.2299503
Date of publication: 10 March 2014
Hirose succeeded in demto 2011, and distinguished
onstrating the smooth unduprofessor from 2011 to 2013.
lating motion of a 2-m-long
Hirose published the book
snakelike robot ACM-III in
Biologically Inspired Robots
1972 for the first time. He
(Oxford University Press) in
received his Ph.D. degree for
1993. In that publication, he
the biomechanical study of
coined the unique research
snakes and snakelike robots Shigeo Hirose.
field of biologically inspired
in 1976. At the Tokyo Instirobotics.
tute of Technology, he held the following
Hirose has always been interested
academic positions: assistant professor in the creative design of robotic mechafrom 1976 to 1979, associate professor nisms and their control systems. He
from 1979 to 1992, professor from 1992 developed more than 150 robots,
RAS Leadership
2014–2015 IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Executive Committee.
Raja Chatila,
president,
ISIR—Institut des
Systèmes Intelligents
et de Robotique,
Université Pierre et
Marie CurieParis,
France
Ronald Lumia,
treasurer,
University of New
Mexico,
Albuquerque, New
Mexico, United States
Antonio Bicchi,
vice president of
Publication Activities,
University of Pisa
Interdepartmental
Research Center,
“E. Piaggio”
Pisa, Italy
Satoshi Tadokoro,
president–elect and
vice president of
Technical Activities,
Tohoku University
Graduate School of
Information Sciences,
Sendai, Miyagi, Japan
Anthony Maciejewski,
vice president of
Financial Activities,
Colorado State University
Electrical and
Computer Engineering,
Fort Collins, Colorado,
United States
Oussama Khatib,
vice president,
of Conference
Activities,
Stanford University
Stanford, California,
United States
Paul Oh,
secretary,
Drexel University,
Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania,
United States
Jing Xiao,
vice president of
Member Activities,
University of
North Carolina,
Charlotte, United
States
Raj Madhavan,
vice president of
Industrial Activities,
Institute for Systems
Research
UMD-CP and
Intelligent Systems
Division, NIST,
Clarksburg, Maryland,
United States
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MRA.2014.2301252
Date of publication: 10 March 2014
80
•
IEEE ROBOTICS & AUTOMATION MAGAZINE
•
MARCH 2014
AdCom Election Results
The newly elected members of the RAS Administrative Committee (AdCom) began their role on 1 January 2014. They will join
those serving current positions on the AdCom for their first meeting during the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and
Automation in Hong Kong, China.
Toshio Fukuda,
Meijo University,
Japan
Dong-Soo Kwon,
Korea Advanced
Institute of Science
and Technology,
Daejeon, South Korea
Hong Qiao, Institute
of Automation,
Chinese Academy
of Science Beijing,
China Institute of
Automation, Chinese
Academy of Science
Beijing, China
Seth Hutchinson,
University of Illinois,
Urbana-Champaign
Urbana, Illinois,
United States
Bradley Nelson,
ETH Zurich, Institute
of Robotics and
Intelligent Systems,
Zurich, Switzerland
Hong Zhang,
University of Alberta,
Edmonton, Alberta,
Canada
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MRA.2014.2301251
Date of publication: 10 March 2014
including snakelike mobile robots,
articulated robot arms, quadruped
walking robots, and wheeled and
crawler mobile robots. The main objectives of his research were to realize
robots for search and rescue operations, humanitarian demining, medical
and welfare purposes, and rovers for
planetary exploration.
Hirose has received more than 50 academic awards, including the Joseph
Engelberger Robotics Award from the
Robotic Industries Association (2009),
the Medal with Purple Ribbon from the
Japanese Government (2006), the Award
of Merits from IFToMM (2004), and the
first Pioneer in Robotics and Automation
Award (1999) from the IEEE Robotics
and Automation Society (RAS).
Hirose is currently the CTO of HiBot
Corporation (founded by his former
students at the Hirose Robotic Laboratory), a professor emeritus of the Tokyo
Institute of Technology, and a visiting
professor at Ritsumeikan University.
Hirose will receive this most prestigious IEEE-level award at ICRA 2014
in Hong Kong.
RAS Members Elevated
to Fellow Grade
RAS congratulates its members who
were elevated to Fellow grade in 2014.
The IEEE grade of Fellow is conferred
by the Board of Directors upon a person with an extraordinary record of
accomplishments in any of the IEEE
fields of interest.
The following are the 2014 RAS Fellows evaluated by RAS:
● Martin Buss for contributions to haptic telepresence systems and autonomous robots
● James Colgate for contributions to the
field of haptics
● Liyi Dai for leadership and contributions to discrete event systems and
singular systems
● Daniel Lee for contributions to
machine learning algorithms for perception and motor control
● Stefan Schaal for contributions to
robot learning and modular motion
planning
● Metin Sitti for contributions to microand nanoscale robotic systems
● Hong Zhang for contributions to collective robotics and intelligent sensing in oil sand mining.
2014 RAS Fellows Evaluated
by Other IEEE Societies
● Rene Vidal: Evaluated by the IEEE
Computer Society for contributions
to subspace clustering and motion
segmentation in computer vision
●
●
●
●
Robert Kozma: Evaluated by the
IEEE Computational Intelligence
Society for contributions to patternbased computation based on largescale networks and random graphs
Kazuo Tanaka: Evaluated by the
IEEE Computational Intelligence
Society for contributions to fuzzy
control system design and analysis
Ali Jadbabaie: Evaluated by the IEEE
Control Systems Society for contributions to the theory of multiagent
coordination and control
Hermano Krebs: Evaluated by the
IEEE Engineering in Medicine and
Biology Society for contributions to
rehabilitation robotics and the understanding of neurorehabilitation.
RAS Around the World
RAS Technical Education
Program (Summer School)
From 19–27 October 2013, the Federal
University of Santa Catarina (UFSC) in
Florianopolis, Brazil, hosted the Fourth
International Summer School on ScrewTheory-Based Methods in Robotics
(Figure 1). Summer Screws, which is the
informal name for the summer school
(although Spring Screws may have been
more appropriate for this southern
hemisphere edition), has been organized
MARCH 2014
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IEEE ROBOTICS & AUTOMATION MAGAZINE
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81
Figure 1. The organizers, lecturers, and participants of the Fourth International Summer
School on Screw-Theory-Based Methods in Robotics (Summer Screws) in front of the
UFSC Department of Mechanical Engineering building.
by the PMAR Laboratory of Design and
Measurement for Automation and
Robotics at the University of Genoa,
Italy, regularly since 2009: twice in
Genoa, Italy, and once in Shanghai,
China. With crucial financial support
from RAS through the Technical Education Program (TEP), and with the hard
work of the local organizers from the
Figure 2. From left, Dimiter Zlatanov,
Brazilian student Henrique Prado, and
lecturers Harvey Lipkin and Jon Selig
discussing the material at the end of a
long school day.
Robotics Laboratory LAR at UFSC, in
2013, this TEP was able to be held in
South America.
The 34 participants, who were
mostly from Brazil and its neighboring
countries, joined the five instructors to
learn about screw theory, its mathematical basics, and its robotics applications.
As in previous years, the school began
with a short lecture on the history of
the subject by Harvey Lipkin. After
being introduced to the vector-space
properties of twists and wrenches
(Dimiter Zlatanov) on the first full day,
the attendees explored screw-theoryinspired methods for parallel-mechanism synthesis (Xianwen Kong),
velocity analysis (Dimiter Zlatanov),
elasticity modeling (Harvey Lipkin),
and dynamics algorithms (Roy Featherstone). Jon Selig concluded by relating all of this to Lie groups and Lie
algebras. It has become a Summer
Screws tradition to include local invited
Figure 3. On the free day at the lookout above the Lagoa da Conceição lagoon.
82
•
IEEE ROBOTICS & AUTOMATION MAGAZINE
•
MARCH 2014
lecturers. Daniel Martins and Henrique
Simas talked about related research at
LAR (Figure 2).
This made for six grueling days of
lectures, examples, exercises, discussions, and, to top it all, an exam at the
end. However, there is always a relief,
this time Santa Catarina’s gorgeous
beaches, beautiful lagoon (Figure 3),
and many good restaurants serving
delicious Brazilian food. Nevertheless,
it never ceases to amaze how many
enthusiastic victims the practical effectiveness and mathematical beauty of
screw theory can attract. More than
ever before, this year’s attendees
seemed stimulated, engaged, and eager
to learn. However, the best Summer
Screws is always the one to come, so if
you missed the one in 2013, you are
welcome to join us in September for
the 2014 edition hosted at the University of Bologna, Italy, by Marco Carricato, Vincenzo Parenti-Castelli, and
their team of volunteers.
Distinguished Lecturers
The RAS Tunisia Chapter was pleased
to host Prof. Klaus Schilling from the
University of Wuerzburg, Germany, as
an RAS Distinguished Lecturer from 29
May to 1 June 2013 in El Mouradi Palace Hotel, Sousse, Tunisia.
The first lecture presented by Schilling was “Telematics in Networked
Robotic Vehicle Systems for an Efficient Flow of Traffic and of Materials”
on 30 May 2013. That afternoon, the
RAS Tunisia Chapter coorganized
with the IEEE Industry Applications
Society (IAS) Tunisia Chapter an
impressive industry visit to the international company LEONI Wiring Systems located in Sousse (Figure 4).
LEONI is a global supplier of wires,
optical fibers, cables, and cable systems as well as related development
services for applications in the automotive business and other industries.
The second lecture was “Pico-Satellites for Education and Research in
Networked Space Systems.” More than
70 students and faculty across various
disciplines attended the lecture, which
stimulated intensive technical discussions afterward. At the end of the talk,
warranty (with respect to stability and
obstacle avoidance).
The seminar was organized by the
RAS Jordan Chapter in collaboration
with the IEEE Student Branch and the
Department of Mechatronics Engineering at Hashemite University. More than
70 students, faculty members, professionals, and researchers attended the
seminar and participated in this event.
The attendees were from Hashemite
University and other Jordanian Universities. Some others were from the King
Abdullah II for Design and Development Bureau (KADDB) (Figure 6).
Figure 4. The participants of the industry visit to LEONI.
a special award and certificate of
appreciation was offered to Schilling to
thank him for his efforts (Figure 5).
During the talks, an IEEE booth was
organized to share the benefits of RAS
membership and encourage participants to join the Society.
A full-day seminar “Unmanned
Ground Vehicles,” was held on 2
December 2013 at Hashemite University, Jordan, and given by Dr. Roland
Lenain, a research fellow from the
National Research Institute of Science
and Technology for Environment and
Agriculture (IRSTEA), France.
This event provided an overview of
the mobile robot automation problem
in different configurations and with
different levels of interaction with terrain. In the first session, the basics of
perception and control for a classicalcar-like mobile robot were proposed,
showing the current work on those
topics and different kinds of
Chapters in Action
Figure 5. Mohammad Salah presents the
certificate of appreciation to Prof. Klaus
Schilling.
applications. The second session was
devoted to the coordination between
several robots, raising the problem of
formation control, communication,
and safety. In the third session, some
challenging problems were pointed out
in the field of motion in harsh conditions. Some advances about high
dynamics were also highlighted, showing the interest of considering not only
motion accuracy but also the integrity
Minesweepers
The detection and removal of antipersonnel landmines and unexploded ordnances (UXOs) is currently a serious
problem of political, economical, environmental, and humanitarian dimension. In response, the RAS Egypt
Chapter organized “Minesweepers:
Toward a Landmine-Free World” in
November 2013 as the first international outdoor robotics competition
focused on humanitarian demining.
The competition aims to raise public
awareness of the seriousness of landmines and UXOs and the role of science and technology in solving this
problem. The competition provides
motivation professors, engineers, for
and students working on innovative
robotic solutions for this serious problem (Figure 7).
Figure 6. The participants of the Distinguished Lecture visit in Jordan.
MARCH 2014
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83
Santa Clara, California, in October
2013. The Chapter gave RAS visibility
to the attendees, which included industry robotics contacts and executives
(Figure 9).
Figure 7. The participants of the Minesweepers competition hosted by the RAS Egypt Chapter.
The winning teams were EMAR
(individuals), Minebusters (German University in Cairo), The Rabbite (Misr University for Science and Technology),
Mine Dragon (Creatokids), and Kids
Finder Robot (IDEL School). The winners received monetary prizes of
US$1,000, US$750, US$400, US$300,
and US$200 from the German University
in Cairo and certificates of honor from
the RAS Egypt. For more information,
Figure 8. Gianluca Antonelli (right), chair
of the RAS Italian Chapter, presents
the Young Author Best Paper Award to
Francesco Basile, coauthor of the article,
during the Italian Chapter annual dinner in
Palermo, Italy, in September 2013.
please visit the RAS Egypt Web site:
http://www.ras-egypt.org/.
Italian Chapter Young Author
Best Paper Award
The RAS Italian Chapter each year
awards the Young Author Best Paper
Award for papers appearing in RASsponsored publications in the previous
two years coauthored by a young author
from the Chapter.
In 2013, the award was in its fifth edition. The committee, composed of
Gianluca Antonelli (chair), Benedetto
Allotta, Cecilia Laschi, Giuseppe Oriolo,
and Luigi Villani, awarded Francesco
Basile (Figure 8) for the article: F. Basile,
P. Chiacchio, and J. Coppola, “A Hybrid
Model of Complex Automated Warehouse Systems—Part I: Modeling and
Simulation,” IEEE Trans. Autom. Sci.
Eng., vol. 9, no. 4, pp. 640–653, 2012.
RoboBusiness
The Santa Clara Valley Chapter represented RAS at RoboBusiness held in
Figure 9. David Wyland, chair of the RAS Santa Clara Valley Chapter, hosting RAS’s
booth at the RoboBusiness conference.
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MARCH 2014
New Chapters
RAS welcomes the following new Student Branch Chapters:
● Buffalo University at SUNY/AB, Buffalo, New York
● Chengannur College of Engineering,
Alleppey, Kerala, India
● Cochin University of Science and
Technology, Kochi, Kerala, India
● Fundacao Universidade Federal do
ABC, Sao Paulo, Brazil
● Instituto de Ingenieros de Morelos,
Cuernavaca, Mor, Mexico
● Rowan University, Pitman, New
Jersey
● Superior Tecnico Student Branch
Chapter, Portugal
● THDC Institute of Hydropower
Engineering and Technology St,
Uttarakhand, India
● Universidad Catolica Santo Toribio
de Mogrovejo, Chiclayo, Peru
● Universidad Nacional Federico Villarreal, Lima, Peru.
For more information, please visit
the RAS Chapters Web site: www.ieeeras.org.
RAS Members in the News
RAS member and Past President Bruno
Siciliano is the project coordinator for
the European Commission’s European
Robotics Challenges project beginning
in January 2014. The project proposes
to launch three industry-relevant challenges aimed at sharpening the focus of
European manufacturing through a
number of application experiments,
while adopting an innovative approach
that ensures benchmarking and performance evaluation. The three challenges
concern the following scenarios: reconfigurable interactive manufacturing
cell, shop floor logistics and manipulation, and plant servicing and inspection. The calls for challengers and end
users will open on 1 April 2014. For
more information, please visit the
European Robotics Challenges Web
site: www.robotics-challenges.eu.
Always Stronger, Always Higher
S
higeo Hirose, IEEE Fellow, has
been named the recipient of
the 2014 IEEE Robotics and
Automation Award for his contributions to the design and construction of multiple nonconventional
robotic systems, such as snakelike,
quadruped walking, wall climbing,
and swarm robots.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MRA.2014.2299503
Date of publication: 10 March 2014
Hirose succeeded in demto 2011, and distinguished
onstrating the smooth unduprofessor from 2011 to 2013.
lating motion of a 2-m-long
Hirose published the book
snakelike robot ACM-III in
Biologically Inspired Robots
1972 for the first time. He
(Oxford University Press) in
received his Ph.D. degree for
1993. In that publication, he
the biomechanical study of
coined the unique research
snakes and snakelike robots Shigeo Hirose.
field of biologically inspired
in 1976. At the Tokyo Instirobotics.
tute of Technology, he held the following
Hirose has always been interested
academic positions: assistant professor in the creative design of robotic mechafrom 1976 to 1979, associate professor nisms and their control systems. He
from 1979 to 1992, professor from 1992 developed more than 150 robots,
RAS Leadership
2014–2015 IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Executive Committee.
Raja Chatila,
president,
ISIR—Institut des
Systèmes Intelligents
et de Robotique,
Université Pierre et
Marie CurieParis,
France
Ronald Lumia,
treasurer,
University of New
Mexico,
Albuquerque, New
Mexico, United States
Antonio Bicchi,
vice president of
Publication Activities,
University of Pisa
Interdepartmental
Research Center,
“E. Piaggio”
Pisa, Italy
Satoshi Tadokoro,
president–elect and
vice president of
Technical Activities,
Tohoku University
Graduate School of
Information Sciences,
Sendai, Miyagi, Japan
Anthony Maciejewski,
vice president of
Financial Activities,
Colorado State University
Electrical and
Computer Engineering,
Fort Collins, Colorado,
United States
Oussama Khatib,
vice president,
of Conference
Activities,
Stanford University
Stanford, California,
United States
Paul Oh,
secretary,
Drexel University,
Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania,
United States
Jing Xiao,
vice president of
Member Activities,
University of
North Carolina,
Charlotte, United
States
Raj Madhavan,
vice president of
Industrial Activities,
Institute for Systems
Research
UMD-CP and
Intelligent Systems
Division, NIST,
Clarksburg, Maryland,
United States
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MRA.2014.2301252
Date of publication: 10 March 2014
80
•
IEEE ROBOTICS & AUTOMATION MAGAZINE
•
MARCH 2014
AdCom Election Results
The newly elected members of the RAS Administrative Committee (AdCom) began their role on 1 January 2014. They will join
those serving current positions on the AdCom for their first meeting during the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and
Automation in Hong Kong, China.
Toshio Fukuda,
Meijo University,
Japan
Dong-Soo Kwon,
Korea Advanced
Institute of Science
and Technology,
Daejeon, South Korea
Hong Qiao, Institute
of Automation,
Chinese Academy
of Science Beijing,
China Institute of
Automation, Chinese
Academy of Science
Beijing, China
Seth Hutchinson,
University of Illinois,
Urbana-Champaign
Urbana, Illinois,
United States
Bradley Nelson,
ETH Zurich, Institute
of Robotics and
Intelligent Systems,
Zurich, Switzerland
Hong Zhang,
University of Alberta,
Edmonton, Alberta,
Canada
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MRA.2014.2301251
Date of publication: 10 March 2014
including snakelike mobile robots,
articulated robot arms, quadruped
walking robots, and wheeled and
crawler mobile robots. The main objectives of his research were to realize
robots for search and rescue operations, humanitarian demining, medical
and welfare purposes, and rovers for
planetary exploration.
Hirose has received more than 50 academic awards, including the Joseph
Engelberger Robotics Award from the
Robotic Industries Association (2009),
the Medal with Purple Ribbon from the
Japanese Government (2006), the Award
of Merits from IFToMM (2004), and the
first Pioneer in Robotics and Automation
Award (1999) from the IEEE Robotics
and Automation Society (RAS).
Hirose is currently the CTO of HiBot
Corporation (founded by his former
students at the Hirose Robotic Laboratory), a professor emeritus of the Tokyo
Institute of Technology, and a visiting
professor at Ritsumeikan University.
Hirose will receive this most prestigious IEEE-level award at ICRA 2014
in Hong Kong.
RAS Members Elevated
to Fellow Grade
RAS congratulates its members who
were elevated to Fellow grade in 2014.
The IEEE grade of Fellow is conferred
by the Board of Directors upon a person with an extraordinary record of
accomplishments in any of the IEEE
fields of interest.
The following are the 2014 RAS Fellows evaluated by RAS:
● Martin Buss for contributions to haptic telepresence systems and autonomous robots
● James Colgate for contributions to the
field of haptics
● Liyi Dai for leadership and contributions to discrete event systems and
singular systems
● Daniel Lee for contributions to
machine learning algorithms for perception and motor control
● Stefan Schaal for contributions to
robot learning and modular motion
planning
● Metin Sitti for contributions to microand nanoscale robotic systems
● Hong Zhang for contributions to collective robotics and intelligent sensing in oil sand mining.
2014 RAS Fellows Evaluated
by Other IEEE Societies
● Rene Vidal: Evaluated by the IEEE
Computer Society for contributions
to subspace clustering and motion
segmentation in computer vision
●
●
●
●
Robert Kozma: Evaluated by the
IEEE Computational Intelligence
Society for contributions to patternbased computation based on largescale networks and random graphs
Kazuo Tanaka: Evaluated by the
IEEE Computational Intelligence
Society for contributions to fuzzy
control system design and analysis
Ali Jadbabaie: Evaluated by the IEEE
Control Systems Society for contributions to the theory of multiagent
coordination and control
Hermano Krebs: Evaluated by the
IEEE Engineering in Medicine and
Biology Society for contributions to
rehabilitation robotics and the understanding of neurorehabilitation.
RAS Around the World
RAS Technical Education
Program (Summer School)
From 19–27 October 2013, the Federal
University of Santa Catarina (UFSC) in
Florianopolis, Brazil, hosted the Fourth
International Summer School on ScrewTheory-Based Methods in Robotics
(Figure 1). Summer Screws, which is the
informal name for the summer school
(although Spring Screws may have been
more appropriate for this southern
hemisphere edition), has been organized
MARCH 2014
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IEEE ROBOTICS & AUTOMATION MAGAZINE
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81
Figure 1. The organizers, lecturers, and participants of the Fourth International Summer
School on Screw-Theory-Based Methods in Robotics (Summer Screws) in front of the
UFSC Department of Mechanical Engineering building.
by the PMAR Laboratory of Design and
Measurement for Automation and
Robotics at the University of Genoa,
Italy, regularly since 2009: twice in
Genoa, Italy, and once in Shanghai,
China. With crucial financial support
from RAS through the Technical Education Program (TEP), and with the hard
work of the local organizers from the
Figure 2. From left, Dimiter Zlatanov,
Brazilian student Henrique Prado, and
lecturers Harvey Lipkin and Jon Selig
discussing the material at the end of a
long school day.
Robotics Laboratory LAR at UFSC, in
2013, this TEP was able to be held in
South America.
The 34 participants, who were
mostly from Brazil and its neighboring
countries, joined the five instructors to
learn about screw theory, its mathematical basics, and its robotics applications.
As in previous years, the school began
with a short lecture on the history of
the subject by Harvey Lipkin. After
being introduced to the vector-space
properties of twists and wrenches
(Dimiter Zlatanov) on the first full day,
the attendees explored screw-theoryinspired methods for parallel-mechanism synthesis (Xianwen Kong),
velocity analysis (Dimiter Zlatanov),
elasticity modeling (Harvey Lipkin),
and dynamics algorithms (Roy Featherstone). Jon Selig concluded by relating all of this to Lie groups and Lie
algebras. It has become a Summer
Screws tradition to include local invited
Figure 3. On the free day at the lookout above the Lagoa da Conceição lagoon.
82
•
IEEE ROBOTICS & AUTOMATION MAGAZINE
•
MARCH 2014
lecturers. Daniel Martins and Henrique
Simas talked about related research at
LAR (Figure 2).
This made for six grueling days of
lectures, examples, exercises, discussions, and, to top it all, an exam at the
end. However, there is always a relief,
this time Santa Catarina’s gorgeous
beaches, beautiful lagoon (Figure 3),
and many good restaurants serving
delicious Brazilian food. Nevertheless,
it never ceases to amaze how many
enthusiastic victims the practical effectiveness and mathematical beauty of
screw theory can attract. More than
ever before, this year’s attendees
seemed stimulated, engaged, and eager
to learn. However, the best Summer
Screws is always the one to come, so if
you missed the one in 2013, you are
welcome to join us in September for
the 2014 edition hosted at the University of Bologna, Italy, by Marco Carricato, Vincenzo Parenti-Castelli, and
their team of volunteers.
Distinguished Lecturers
The RAS Tunisia Chapter was pleased
to host Prof. Klaus Schilling from the
University of Wuerzburg, Germany, as
an RAS Distinguished Lecturer from 29
May to 1 June 2013 in El Mouradi Palace Hotel, Sousse, Tunisia.
The first lecture presented by Schilling was “Telematics in Networked
Robotic Vehicle Systems for an Efficient Flow of Traffic and of Materials”
on 30 May 2013. That afternoon, the
RAS Tunisia Chapter coorganized
with the IEEE Industry Applications
Society (IAS) Tunisia Chapter an
impressive industry visit to the international company LEONI Wiring Systems located in Sousse (Figure 4).
LEONI is a global supplier of wires,
optical fibers, cables, and cable systems as well as related development
services for applications in the automotive business and other industries.
The second lecture was “Pico-Satellites for Education and Research in
Networked Space Systems.” More than
70 students and faculty across various
disciplines attended the lecture, which
stimulated intensive technical discussions afterward. At the end of the talk,
warranty (with respect to stability and
obstacle avoidance).
The seminar was organized by the
RAS Jordan Chapter in collaboration
with the IEEE Student Branch and the
Department of Mechatronics Engineering at Hashemite University. More than
70 students, faculty members, professionals, and researchers attended the
seminar and participated in this event.
The attendees were from Hashemite
University and other Jordanian Universities. Some others were from the King
Abdullah II for Design and Development Bureau (KADDB) (Figure 6).
Figure 4. The participants of the industry visit to LEONI.
a special award and certificate of
appreciation was offered to Schilling to
thank him for his efforts (Figure 5).
During the talks, an IEEE booth was
organized to share the benefits of RAS
membership and encourage participants to join the Society.
A full-day seminar “Unmanned
Ground Vehicles,” was held on 2
December 2013 at Hashemite University, Jordan, and given by Dr. Roland
Lenain, a research fellow from the
National Research Institute of Science
and Technology for Environment and
Agriculture (IRSTEA), France.
This event provided an overview of
the mobile robot automation problem
in different configurations and with
different levels of interaction with terrain. In the first session, the basics of
perception and control for a classicalcar-like mobile robot were proposed,
showing the current work on those
topics and different kinds of
Chapters in Action
Figure 5. Mohammad Salah presents the
certificate of appreciation to Prof. Klaus
Schilling.
applications. The second session was
devoted to the coordination between
several robots, raising the problem of
formation control, communication,
and safety. In the third session, some
challenging problems were pointed out
in the field of motion in harsh conditions. Some advances about high
dynamics were also highlighted, showing the interest of considering not only
motion accuracy but also the integrity
Minesweepers
The detection and removal of antipersonnel landmines and unexploded ordnances (UXOs) is currently a serious
problem of political, economical, environmental, and humanitarian dimension. In response, the RAS Egypt
Chapter organized “Minesweepers:
Toward a Landmine-Free World” in
November 2013 as the first international outdoor robotics competition
focused on humanitarian demining.
The competition aims to raise public
awareness of the seriousness of landmines and UXOs and the role of science and technology in solving this
problem. The competition provides
motivation professors, engineers, for
and students working on innovative
robotic solutions for this serious problem (Figure 7).
Figure 6. The participants of the Distinguished Lecture visit in Jordan.
MARCH 2014
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Santa Clara, California, in October
2013. The Chapter gave RAS visibility
to the attendees, which included industry robotics contacts and executives
(Figure 9).
Figure 7. The participants of the Minesweepers competition hosted by the RAS Egypt Chapter.
The winning teams were EMAR
(individuals), Minebusters (German University in Cairo), The Rabbite (Misr University for Science and Technology),
Mine Dragon (Creatokids), and Kids
Finder Robot (IDEL School). The winners received monetary prizes of
US$1,000, US$750, US$400, US$300,
and US$200 from the German University
in Cairo and certificates of honor from
the RAS Egypt. For more information,
Figure 8. Gianluca Antonelli (right), chair
of the RAS Italian Chapter, presents
the Young Author Best Paper Award to
Francesco Basile, coauthor of the article,
during the Italian Chapter annual dinner in
Palermo, Italy, in September 2013.
please visit the RAS Egypt Web site:
http://www.ras-egypt.org/.
Italian Chapter Young Author
Best Paper Award
The RAS Italian Chapter each year
awards the Young Author Best Paper
Award for papers appearing in RASsponsored publications in the previous
two years coauthored by a young author
from the Chapter.
In 2013, the award was in its fifth edition. The committee, composed of
Gianluca Antonelli (chair), Benedetto
Allotta, Cecilia Laschi, Giuseppe Oriolo,
and Luigi Villani, awarded Francesco
Basile (Figure 8) for the article: F. Basile,
P. Chiacchio, and J. Coppola, “A Hybrid
Model of Complex Automated Warehouse Systems—Part I: Modeling and
Simulation,” IEEE Trans. Autom. Sci.
Eng., vol. 9, no. 4, pp. 640–653, 2012.
RoboBusiness
The Santa Clara Valley Chapter represented RAS at RoboBusiness held in
Figure 9. David Wyland, chair of the RAS Santa Clara Valley Chapter, hosting RAS’s
booth at the RoboBusiness conference.
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MARCH 2014
New Chapters
RAS welcomes the following new Student Branch Chapters:
● Buffalo University at SUNY/AB, Buffalo, New York
● Chengannur College of Engineering,
Alleppey, Kerala, India
● Cochin University of Science and
Technology, Kochi, Kerala, India
● Fundacao Universidade Federal do
ABC, Sao Paulo, Brazil
● Instituto de Ingenieros de Morelos,
Cuernavaca, Mor, Mexico
● Rowan University, Pitman, New
Jersey
● Superior Tecnico Student Branch
Chapter, Portugal
● THDC Institute of Hydropower
Engineering and Technology St,
Uttarakhand, India
● Universidad Catolica Santo Toribio
de Mogrovejo, Chiclayo, Peru
● Universidad Nacional Federico Villarreal, Lima, Peru.
For more information, please visit
the RAS Chapters Web site: www.ieeeras.org.
RAS Members in the News
RAS member and Past President Bruno
Siciliano is the project coordinator for
the European Commission’s European
Robotics Challenges project beginning
in January 2014. The project proposes
to launch three industry-relevant challenges aimed at sharpening the focus of
European manufacturing through a
number of application experiments,
while adopting an innovative approach
that ensures benchmarking and performance evaluation. The three challenges
concern the following scenarios: reconfigurable interactive manufacturing
cell, shop floor logistics and manipulation, and plant servicing and inspection. The calls for challengers and end
users will open on 1 April 2014. For
more information, please visit the
European Robotics Challenges Web
site: www.robotics-challenges.eu.