Contact

ALIN ALBU-SCHAEFFER, Germany 

Alin Albu-Schaeffer (M’07-SM’13-F’16) M.S. ’93 in electrical engineering, Timisoara, Romania; Ph.D. ’02 in automatic control, Munich, Germany. Since 2012 he is heading the Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics at the German Aerospace Center (DLR), which he joined in 1995. He is full professor at TU Munich, Computer Science Department. Research interests include robot design, modeling and control, flexible and variable compliance joints, human-robot interaction, bio-inspired robots, neuroscience. He coauthored over 200 papers with an h-index of 62 (google scholar). He received the TRO Best Paper Award in 2012 and 2014 and several ICRA and IROS Best Paper Awards. He centrally contributed to the development of the DLR-light-weight robot and its tech-transfer to KUKA, initiating a paradigm shift towards collaborative industrial robotics. He contributed to the MIRO surgical robot and its licensing to Medtronic. Alin participated to more than ten EU-projects, in two as coordinator. In 2019 he received the ERC Advanced Grant M-Runners. 

 

IEEE Activities: COMMITTEE/BOARDS: 

• IEEE Fellow Evaluation Board 
• IEEE Fellow Nomination Board 
• EU-Robotics Board of Directors Member for two election terms, 2012-2016 
• Coordinator of the VDI/VDE group „Robot Control“; Organization of the annual German Robot Control Symposium 

 

SOCIETY:

Since 2016 IEEE Fellow (IEEE Member since 2009) 2008 – 2012 Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Robotics 2014 – Member of the German Society of Robotics, Germany, Board member 2009-2011 2012 – Founding Member of EU-Robotics 

 

CONFERENCES:

2018 Organizing Committee, IEEE Int. Conf. on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) 2016 Program Co-Chair, IEEE Int. Conf. on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2010, 2011 Area Chair, Robotics Science and Systems 2011 Regional Chair, Int. Conf. on Ubiquitous Robots and Ambient Intelligence, Korea 2005 Program Committee Member, IEEE Int. Conf. on Robotics and Automation 2008, 2009 Program Committee Member, Robotics Science and Systems 2011, ’15, ‘20 Program Committee Member, Humanoids 

 

Qualifications:

During my activity as a board of directors member of the EU-Robotics organization within two election terms I was involved in the conference board, in defining the strategic focus and orientation of the robotics association, initiating and implementing technical topic groups, and in interfacing with the EU administration and with politics. 

 

Major Accomplishments: 

• IEEE Conference Organization activities 
• Defining the Robotics Research Roadmap and the Research Agenda within the EU-Robotics Board of Directors 
• Initiating and organizing technical topic groups and founding the Mechatronics Topics Group 

 

Position Statement:

The major aspects I would like to engage in as an AdCom member for serving the IEEE RAS community are: 

• Identifying the major chances, trends, and needs in robotics and automation and shape the topics and the focus of our conferences and journals. 
• Managing the continuous growth of the RAS and the related challenges in terms of conference organization, communication, and society administration 
• Support and pursue the developments in the publication strategy of the last years towards faster and wider journal publication coverage. The foundation of RA-L and its interaction with the RAS conferences is a major achievement of the last years. Still, this young process needs further development, fine-tuning, and optimization. 
• Promote in a balanced way, both highly innovative research on academic level and the materialization of current research results into new products and markets through technology transfer. My personal and my institute’s activity focuses, in addition to academic research, to a large extent also on tech-transfer and generation of spin-offs. So I consider myself to be a good interface between academic research, applied research, and industry. 
• To contribute to a transparent decision process with effective society participation at large.

KUKA Roboter GmbH, Germany
Head of Corporate Research
Vice-President Industry, euRobotics

Dean of Engineering, Monash University, Australia
Associate Dean, Education and Professional Development
Fellow of ASME, Engineers Canada, Past NSERC Chair for Women in Science and Engineering, BC and Yukon (2010-2015)

Professor, UC Berkeley, USA
Chair, Industrial Engineering and Operations Research Department
Former Editor-in-Chief, IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering
Member, Technical Activities Board, IEEE Robotics and Automation Society
Co-Founder, IEEE Technical Committee on Networked Robotics

Professor, University of Hannover, Germany
DIN representative and committee member of the ISO Working Group (WG) 7, Personal care robot
Associate Editor IEEE Transactions on Robotics
Coordinator euRobotics aisbl Topic Group Human-Robot Interaction
Co-founder, FRANKA EMIKA

Professor, Lund University
Best Student Paper Award—Finalist (CASE 2015), Best Conference Paper Award—Finalist & Best Automation Paper Award—Finalist (ICRA 2015), Best Automation Paper Award (ICRA2012), etc.
IEEE Fellow

Affiliations

• Professor, Tohoku University, Japan
• Junior Past President of IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (2012-2013)
• President of IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (2010-2011)
• Vice President of IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (1998-2001)
• IEEE Fellow & SICE Fellow & JSME Fellow & RSJ Fellow

U.S. Department of Commerce, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), USA
Member of ISO TC299 WG3 (Robotics – Industrial Safety)

ABB Corporate Research, Germany
Corporate Research Fellow – Robotics and Automation
Member of ISO TC299 WG3 (Robotics – Industrial Safety)
Former member of Board of Directors of euRobotics

Universal Robots, Denmark/USA
Global Technical Compliance Officer
Convenor of ISO TC299 WG3 (Robotics – Industrial Safety)

Full Professor, Politecnico di Milano, Italy
Senior editor for IEEE RAL
Member of Board of Directors of euRobotics, the association of all stakeholders in robotics in Europe, private part in the PPP (Public Private Partnership) SPARC

Professor, Zhejiang University, China
Director of Robotics Laboratory, at Institute of Cyber Systems and Control, Zhejiang University
Co-Director of ZJU-UTS Robotics Joint Research Center on Robotics
Vice Direcor of Robotics Research Center, Zhejiang University

Director, Shenzhen Academy of Robotics, China