The IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (RAS) membership will elect six new members of the Administrative Committee (AdCom) in 2023, each to serve a three-year term beginning 1 January 2024. The AdCom is the governing body of the Society.

Responsibilities of AdCom Members

AdCom members must attend two formal meetings each year, one in conjunction with ICRA and the other usually in October/November in conjunction with another major conference. Each AdCom member is expected to serve on at least two boards and/or committees of the Society.

Eligibility

Any higher-grade member of the Society is eligible to serve and all higher-grade members plus graduate students may nominate candidates and vote.

To Nominate a Candidate

To nominate a candidate, whether someone else or yourself, contact the Society at ras@ieee.org by 1 May 2023.

Petition Candidates

Candidates may also petition to be on the ballot. All persons who, by the deadline, submit petitions with valid signatures and IEEE member numbers of at least 2% of the previous year-end voting membership will be placed on the ballot. Only original signatures on paper or electronic signatures submitted through the RAS petition website will be accepted. Faxed or emailed signatures are NOT acceptable. Contact the Society at ras@ieee.org to obtain a paper petition form or to set up an electronic petition.

Note: Completed petitions must be received by 1 May 2023 to be placed on the ballot.

Selection of Final Ballot

The Nominations Committee will consider all nominations and petitions and select the candidates to be placed on the ballot.

We are pleased to announce that Volume 20, Issue 1 of IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering (T-ASE) is now available on IEEE Xplore. Click here for the table of contents and check out the issue now on Xplore!

The RAS Member Activities Board (MAB) awards a limited number of Chapter Initiative Grants to local RAS Chapters for professional development, educational outreach, and other programs. Grant proposals will be reviewed by the MAB at its meeting in late May 2023 and funds up to USD $2,000 will be awarded on a competitive basis. The deadline for proposals is 15 April 2023. Click here for submission details.

The 32nd IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (IEEE RO-MAN 2023) will be held in Busan, Republic of Korea, from 28 to 31 August 2023. This conference is an annual event where state-of-the-art results, the latest developments, and future perspectives that relate to robot and human interactive communication are presented and discussed.

The theme of the IEEE RO-MAN 2023 is Design a New Bridge for H-R-I, where “H” stands for Human Health, Happiness and Hope, “R” for Robotic Recovery and Reconnection, and “I” for Intelligent Interface and Interaction. RO-MAN 2023 will be a hybrid conference. We look forward to your active interest and participation, whether in-person or online. For more information, check out the handout and conference website.

Key Dates and Deadlines

  • Special Session proposal submission deadline: 13 January 2023
    • Notification of acceptance: 27 January 2023
  • Initial paper submission deadline: 17 March 2023
    • Notification of acceptance: 26 May 2023
    • Camera-ready deadline: 30 June 2023
  • Workshop/tutorial proposal submission deadline: 3 February 2023
    • Notification of acceptance: 3 March 2023
    • Website link for workshop/tutorial due: 28 April 2023

Submissions are now open for the 3rd edition of the Lifelong Learning and Personalization in Long-Term Human-Robot Interaction (LEAP-HRI) workshop, which will be held as part of the 18th annual ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI 2023), in Stockholm, Sweden and virtually. The workshop will take place 14:00–18:00 CET on 13 March 2023.

This year’s LEAP-HRI workshop aims to gather and present interdisciplinary insights from a variety of fields, such as education, rehabilitation, elderly care, service and companion robots, for lifelong robot learning and adaptation to users, context, environment, and activities in long-term interactions. The workshop aims to promote a common ground among the relevant scientific communities through invited talks and in-depth discussions via paper presentations, break-out groups, and a scientific debate. In line with the HRI 2023 conference theme, HRI for All, our workshop theme is Adaptivity for All, and is meant to encourage HRI theories, methods, designs, and studies for lifelong learning, personalization, and adaptation that aim to promote inclusion and diversity in HRI.

Check out the website for more information. Manuscripts can be submitted here. Please reach out to hatice.gunes@cl.cam.ac.uk with questions related to submissions.

Key Dates and Deadlines

  • Early Bird submission deadline: 22 January 2023
  • Early Bird notification of acceptance: 31 January 2023
  • General submission deadline: 19 February 2023
  • General notification of acceptance: 28 February 2023
  • Camera-ready deadline: 9 March 2023

We invite you to submit short abstracts and papers to the HRI 2023 Workshop on Robots for Learning, to be held in Stockholm, Sweden on 13 March 2023. This year’s theme is A Look from Stakeholders’ Perspective.

Talking about “HRI for all” raises the importance of reflecting on how to promote inclusion for every type of user and carefully consider the different layers of people potentially impacted by such systems. The 7th edition of R4L focuses on the issues that HRI experiments in educational environments may cause to stakeholders and how to better bring stakeholders' points of view into the loop. The goal of the workshop is to discuss and propose guidelines for good practices regarding how to promote the inclusion of stakeholders, especially teachers, in educational HRI activities.

R4L 2023 invites contributions on topics including but not limited to the following:

  • Educational robots for adults, children and people with special needs
  • Implementing robots into school curricula
  • Measuring educational and qualitative outcomes like learning gain, relationships, etc.
  • Reflections on best practices for working with stakeholders
  • Stakeholders’ perspectives
  • Robots for learning that focus on a variety of stakeholders
  • Robots for inclusion
  • Ethnography for robots in education

Key Dates and Deadlines

  • For notification by January 20, 2023, please submit your abstract or paper by 16 January 2023
  • Final deadline for submissions: 23 February 2023
  • Notification of acceptance: 29 February 2023
  • Camera-ready deadline: 3 March 2023
  • Workshop registration deadline: 8 March 2023
  • Workshop date: 13 March 2023

Other Information

Congratulations and welcome to the following newly organized RAS Chapters:

Region 8

United Arab Emirates

  • American University of Sharjah, Robotics and Automation Society Student Branch Chapter

Region 9

Ecuador

  • Universidad Tecnica de Cotopaxi, Robotics and Automation Society Student Branch Chapter

Chile

  • Universidad Andres Bello, Robotics and Automation, Computational Intelligence and Computer Societies Student Branch Chapter

Mexico

  • Universidad Autonoma de Nuevo Leon, Robotics and Automation Society Student Branch Chapter

Region 10

India

  • Chalapathi Institute of Engineering and Technology, Robotics and Automation Society Student Branch Chapter
  • Indian Institute of Technology-Indore, Robotics and Automation Society Student Branch Chapter
  • KG Reddy College of Engineering and Technology, Robotics and Automation Society Student Branch Chapter
  • Mukesh Patel School of Technology Management & Engineering, Robotics and Automation Society Student Branch Chapter
  • Santhiram Engineering College, Robotics and Automation Society Student Branch Chapter
  • Sreenidhi Institute of Science & Technology, Robotics and Automation Society Student Branch Chapter

Thanks to all for participating in the 2023 AdCom Election. The votes have now been counted, and the following candidates have been elected to three-year terms (1 January 2023–31 Dec 2025):

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Alin Albu-Schaeffer (GEO Area 2 Representative)

Sabine Hauert small

Sabine Hauert (At-Large Representative)

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Yasuhisa Hirata (At-Large Representative)

Copy of lk 20

Lydia E. Kavraki (GEO Area 1 Representative)

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Eiichi Yoshida (GEO Area 3 Representative)

Copy of RAS photo Hong Zhang

Hong Zhang (GEO Area 3 Representative)

RAS extends our hearty congratulations to the incoming AdCom class and our sincerest thanks to all candidates for their willingness to serve.

This Special Session will be held at the 19th IEEE International Conference on Advanced Robotics and Its Social Impacts (ARSO 2023), to be held in Berlin, Germany from 5–7 June 2023.

One of the growing trends in social robotics is their use as socially assistive agents, i.e., agents that assist via social interaction. Application areas of such agents include the after-care management of patients coming out of neurological disorders such as depression, or the assistance to the elderly who might be dealing with loneliness, cognitive decline, or physical disability. When considering human health professionals, regardless of the assistive goal pursued, real-time awareness of the patient’s physical and psychological status seems to always play a key role in the caregiver’s decision-making process.

This session aims to bring together sociological and technical perspectives and concerns to advance research in socio-empathic assistive agents and foster this community’s interdisciplinarity.

Topics of interest include (but are not limited to):

  • Perception and modeling human behaviors to inform interventions
  • Methods and strategies for empathic decision making 
  • User-driven behavior design 
  • Participatory design approach for socio-empathic agents
  • Reflection on values and norms in socio-technical contexts

Key Dates and Deadlines: 

Initial Paper Submission Deadline: 31 January 2023

Notification of Paper Acceptance Notification: 1 April 2023

Final Paper Submission Deadline: 30 April 2023

Organizers:

Jauwairia Nasir, jauwairia.nasir@epfl.ch, EPFL/University of Augsburg

Barbara Bruno, barbara.bruno@epfl.ch, EPFL

Linda Nierling, linda.nierling@kit.edu, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT)

If you have any questions, please contact jauwairia.nasir@epfl.ch.

Competitions provide a unique venue for state-of-the-art technical demonstrations from research labs, academia, and industry. Conference attendees and media representatives will have the opportunity to experience live demonstrations of robotic technology via these competitions. We invite proposals for competitions that span the range of robotics disciplines. This is open to both well-established competitions and new competitions. 

Proposal Content 

Competition organizers should submit their proposal as a PDF by email to iros2023competitions@ieee.org with the following information:

  • Title of the competition
  • Organizers of the competition, including previous experience organizing similar activities
  • A brief description of the competition, including the task to be evaluated and its connection to research topics covered at IROS
  • Draft rules and means of assessment
  • Draft time schedule for competition day(s)
  • Award planning, including financials
  • A list of potential participants
  • Facilities request, including space (area and minimum height), power, telecommunications, human resources, and other infrastructure

Please indicate if you are proposing a new competition; certain content can be reduced/amended accordingly.

Key Dates and Deadlines

Proposal Deadline: January 15, 2023

Notification: February 1, 2023

Contact Information

If you have any questions, please get in touch with the Competitions Chair, Josie Hughes, at iros2023competitions@ieee.org.

We are pleased to announce that a new issue of IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (Volume 8, Issue 2, February 2023) is now available on IEEE Xplore. Check it out!

The 18th Annual ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human Robot Interaction (HRI 2023) will be fully hybrid; it will take place 13–16 March 2023 in Stockholm, Sweden and online via Zoom and Hopin.

We will provide ample opportunities to participate both in person and online. Especially given the high number of online and hybrid events in the last two years, we wish to create the best online experience for remote attendees and reduce the cognitive loads that digital events create.

If you plan to attend HRI 2023 online or in person, please fill out this brief (<1 minute) survey. And if you have any questions or further suggestions, please get in touch with the online chairs of HRI 2023 at online2023@humanrobotinteraction.org.

We invite you to contribute to an invited session on Cooperative Robots at IROS 2023

Robotic and AI technology continues to make stunning progress over all components of function, expanding applications to industrial and commercial usage. At the same time, scalability increase enables robotic systems to handle more complex and challenging tasks. Task-oriented systems leveraging the diversity across a multi-robot fleet (e.g., air-ground vehicle teaming, diverse sensor suites, etc.) provide benefits in engineering design, cost, and capabilities. With this increased system complexity, proper strategies for incorporating redundancy, heterogeneity, and interface considerations become necessary for investigation.

Topics of interest include but are not limited to the following:

Control

  • Decentralized Control
  • Team Formations
  • Dynamic Stochastic Control
  • Data-Driven Control

Planning

  • Task Allocation
  • Event-based Planning
  • Planning

Applications

  • Exploration & Mapping
  • Rescuing Robotics
  • UAV Fleet and Swarm
  • Manned/Unmanned Teaming

Related issues

  • Robustness & Resilience
  • Communications/Synchronization
  • Sensor Fusion


Key Dates and Deadlines

  • If you intend to submit a proposal, please provide a preliminary title and abstract by 7 January 2023
  • Proposal submissions are due 15 Jan 2023

Email Tianqi Li (tianqili@tamu.edu) with submissions or questions

Peter Luh

Peter Luh, a giant in the field of automation research and an important volunteer in IEEE, passed away on 28 November 2022. 

Peter worked as a Professor of Electrical and Systems Engineering at the University of Connecticut for over 40 years. Ken Goldberg, a RAS Member and the William S. Floyd Jr. Distinguished Chair in Engineering at UC Berkeley, writes the following: “Peter Luh was dedicated to raising the profile of Automation in many ways. He co-founded the IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering (T-ASE) and served as its first Editor-in-Chief, where he provided the guidance, integrity, and high standards needed to successfully launch it.”

A funeral was held on 5 December; a recording is available and can be watched here. What follows below is quoted from Peter’s obituary:

In lieu of flowers, donations may be made in memory of Prof. Peter Luh to the “Prof. Peter Luh Fellowship for Graduate Student Support” at the University of Connecticut Foundation, Inc. Checks made payable to the UConn Foundation, Inc., should include the memo “Peter B. Luh Memorial” and can be mailed to:

The UConn Foundation, Inc.
Attn: Data Services
2390 Alumni Dr., Unit 3206
Storrs, CT 06269-3206

Fond memories and expressions of sympathy may be shared at www.DemaineFuneralHomes.com for the Luh family.

 

A longer in memoriam article for Peter will appear in the next issue of the IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine.

The RAS community extends its deepest sympathy to Peter’s wife Chwenhwa and his family as we remember Peter and his many contributions to the automation community, RAS, and humanity.

Congratulations to the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society members recently elevated to Senior Member status by the IEEE Admission and Advancement Senior Member Review Panel.

To be eligible for application or nomination, candidates must

  • be engineers, scientists, educators, technical executives, or originators in IEEE-designated fields
  • have experience reflecting professional maturity
  • have been in professional practice for at least 10 years (with some credit for certain degrees)

In addition, candidates for Senior Member status must supply three references from current IEEE members holding the grade of Fellow, Senior Member, or Honorary Member. For more information, click here or email senior-member@ieee.org. The names and affiliations of the new Senior Members are as follows, listed alphabetically by region:

 

Region 1

Souma Chowdhury

Buffalo Section

Jignesh Panchal

Princeton/Central Jersey Section

Karthik Dantu

Buffalo Section

Region 2

Amy LaViers

Philadelphia Section

Region 3

Hao Su

Eastern North Carolina Section

Region 4

Bhushan Dharmadhikari

Southern Minnesota Section

Michael Newcomb

Nebraska Section

Eric Waydick

Milwaukee Section

Vijay Venkataraman

Twin Cities Section

Region 5

Phillip Gold

Denver Section

Xiaoli Zhang

Denver Section

Region 6

Bruce Boyes

Utah Section

Youssef Rokes

Metropolitan Los Angeles Section

Yuan Zhuang

Santa Clara Valley Section

Region 7

Ahmad Al-Dabbagh

Toronto Section

Ehsan Hashemi

Northern Canada Section

Region 8

Aamir Ahmad

Germany Section

Mahdi Bamdad

Iran Section

Andreas Bihlmaier

Germany Section

Vahid Samadi Bokharaie

Germany Section

Cosimo Della Santina

Benelux Section

Mauro Franceschelli

Italy Section

Yassen Gorbounov

Bulgaria Section

Zhanat Kappassov

Kazakhstan Subsection

Miklos Kozlovszky

Hungary Section

Mikko Lauri

Germany Section

Shayok Mukhopadhyay

United Arab Emirates Section

Gionata Salvietti

Italy Section

Tadele Tuli

Germany Section

Gurvinder Virk

United Kingdom and Ireland Section

Region 9

Rene Avila

Colombia Section

Julio Cuenca

Ecuador Section

Tiago DoNascimento

Northeast Brazil Section

Ma. Guadalupe Ortiz-Lopez

Guanajuato Section

Luis Serpa

Ecuador Section

Juan Tisza

Peru Section

Region 10

Aylchino Louise Philip A. Alcantara

Republic of Philippines Section

Maleeha Azeez

Kerala Section

Bingtuan Gao

Nanjing Section

Chengzhi Hu

Guangzhou Section

Sumit Jha

Delhi Section

Mohanraj Kalidass

Madras Section

Yasir Khan

Lahore Section

Hanna Kurniawati

Australian Capital Terr Section

Akio Kurobe

Kansai Section

Xiang Li

Beijing Section

Arvind Reddy Maram

Hyderabad Section

Jianjun Meng

Beijing Section

Hiroyuki Murata

Nagoya Section

Mani Narayanasamy

Madras Section

Shantipal Ohol

Pune Section

Thierry Peynot

Queensland Section

Arunkumar R

Madras Section

Sreekanth R

Madras Section

Sreeja S

Kerala Section

Gayatri Sakya

Uttar Pradesh Section

Murali Sivanesan

Madras Section

Jin-Ho Suh

Seoul Section

Weiqun Wang

Beijing Section

With the submission deadline of IROS 2023 and other exciting RAS conferences on the horizon, please consider participating as a Senior Reviewer in the Young Reviewers Program(YRP) of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (RAS).

The YRP is intended to introduce young RAS members to best practices in peer review for scientific papers. Effective peer review is crucial for the scientific community, yet systematic training in peer review is often not provided. As a Senior Reviewer, you can give reviewing assignments to Junior Reviewers, and you oversee the review process in a mentor-mentee relationship. Agreeing to serve will not increase the number of papers that you review. Only papers that you have already agreed to review would be eligible for the YRP. In this way, there should be no net increase in your reviewing workload. The time you would normally spend writing a careful review would be invested instead in cultivating skills in a Junior Reviewer.

As a Senior Reviewer, you can email a Junior Reviewer listed on the YRP website. Assign to the Junior Reviewer one paper that you have been asked to review and then work with the Junior Reviewer to write and improve the review, which you will submit via PaperPlaza.

You may also ask competent members of your research group to join the YRP as Junior Reviewers and elect to work with them. Typically, a Junior Reviewer would be a doctoral graduate student or a post-doc, whereas a Senior Advisor would be the one who can be an academic advisor or a research supervisor of those Junior Reviewers. Reviewer applications will be evaluated by the YRP Chairs listed below.

Additionally, the YRP recently started to promote reviewing best practices throughout the entire RAS community with dedicated events and online material. The first YRP event was held online right after ICRA 2023 paper submission deadline; you can find the information and recordings here. And stay tuned for upcoming events!

Details of Eligibility and Procedure

Please sign up via the YRP website here.

YRP Chairs

Marta Lorenzini (IEEE-RAS YRP Executive Manager – marta.lorenzini@iit.it)

Paolo Robuffo Giordano (IEEE-RAS YRP Executive Manager - paolo.robuffo_giordano@irisa.fr)

YRP Advisory Board

Marco Morales (IEEE-RAS YRP Website Manager)

Arash Ajoudani (IEEE-RAS Chair of Young Professionals)

Nancy Amato (IEEE-RAS MAB member)

The 2023 IEEE/SICE International Symposium on System Integration (SII) will take place in Atlanta on 17­–20 January 2023.

Early Bird registration is now open, and the deadline is 15 December.

kumar vijay

Vijay Kumar, a RAS Member and the Nemirovsky Family Dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Pennsylvania, was named a National Academy of Inventors (NAI) Fellow for 2022. RAS congratulates Professor Kumar on receiving this most prestigious honor.

You can read more about the NAI Fellows Program and Professor Kumar’s achievements here.

We are pleased to announce that a new issue of IEEE Transactions on Robotics (Volume 38, Issue 6, December 2022) is now available on IEEE Xplore. Click here for the table of contents, and check out the issue now on Xplore!

We are pleased to announce that the December 2022 issue of IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine on biomimetic perception, cognition, and control (Volume 29, Issue 4) is now available on IEEE Xplore. Click here for the table of contents, and check out the issue now on Xplore!

Front Cover 12 2022

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