RAS 2007 New Initiatives Grants

Posted on September 17, 2007

Tags: RAS news

In April 2007 the Society was informed by IEEE that $100,000 of unspent funds could be allocated for unbudgeted new initiatives, providing the funds were spent by December 31, 2007. Despite the short notice, we were able to publish a call for proposals to which received 39 responses. The Vice Presidents, chairs of the relevant committees and the AdCom carefully reviewed the proposals and chose ten which seemed to provide the greatest benefit to society members and could be completed within the constraints of the IEEE financial board. A Call for Proposals for 2008 Society Initiative Grants (subject to availability of funds) will soon be issued. Proposals for the 2008 Initiative Grants will be due December 31, 2007. The ten programs funded under the 2007 initiative grants are as follows:

A Website for Literature Review Dissemination ($2.9K)

This website will allow researchers (faculty members, students, industry members, others) to upload research reviews they have conducted. These will be uploaded in the form of a table or document that summarizes the literature review. These reviews will be accessible for others to download. Users of the website will be able to see any of the uploaded reviews once they are registered and logged in. The registration and use of the system will be free of charge.
Submitted by: Imad H. Elhajj, American University of Beirut.

Ph.D. Fellowship for Women in Robotics and Automation ($12,500)

This grant will provide a one-semester doctoral fellowship for a female PhD student majoring in robotics or automation. (The original proposal was for a one year proposal, which would not fit the constraints of the funds available this year).

A call for submission was issued via email to all RAS members. 40 application were received by the September 10 deadline.The recipient will be announced shortly.

Submitted by: George Bekey (University of Southern California) and Allison Okamura (Johns Hopkins University)

 

Teaching Robotics Everywhere: A Repository of Robotics Teaching Materials ($24,900)

This grant will support development of an open repository of robotics course materials similar to MITs Open Course Ware (OCW) initiative (ocw.mit.edu), integrated into the new RAS Web Portal', thus providing much needed educational content to RAS web presence. This repository will contain a suite of robotics materials for teaching all aspects of robotics, ranging from undergraduate introductory course to project courses and graduate courses. Example materials for each course will include syllabi, lecture notes, laboratory specifications, exercises, assessment materials, and reading materials. The web site will be searchable, browsable, and open for downloads. The Web site will be open but moderated for contributions so that anyone can contribute materials.

Submitted by: Daniela Rus and Aaron Dollar, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Paolo Fiorini, University of Verona

ICRA 2008 Robotics Challenge ($8,000) This grant will provide seed funds for the ICRA2008 Robot Challenge to ensure that the initial event is well publicized and well attended and will be positioned to become the premiere yearly showcase of research robotics in the world. It will provide a venue for competition and collaboration, for setting the collective goals of the field, and for influencing funding agencies.

Submitted by: William Smart, Washington University in St. Louis

Latin American Robotics Council ($13,000)

The goal of the current proposal is to create an IEEE RAS Latin American Robotics Council that will unify, coordinate and strengthen robotics activities in the region, while encouraging further RAS membership, individual and chapter, both at the professional and student levels. The activities to be funded by this proposal include regional meetings, symposia, summer schools, robotics competitions and professional and student activities that will bring together chapter chairs, professionals and students across the region to encourage further membership and chapter creation. Information about the activities in the website http://ewh.ieee.org/reg/9/robotica/

Submitted by: Javier Ruiz del Solar, Chair RAS Chile Chapter, and Alfredo Weitzenfeld, Chair RAS Mexico Chapter

2007 Open Source High-Fidelity Simulation Framework and Competition ($10,000)

The U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), in cooperation with the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society, is starting a new University outreach effort that is aimed at introducing robotics and automation to students and faculty. We believe that researchers with interests in the areas of multi-agent cooperation, mapping, communications networks, sensor processing and general robotics will be interested. Accepted participants from regional universities (Greater Washington area) will attend a 2-day workshop at NIST and leave with all of the hardware and software necessary to simulate autonomous vehicles operating in a factory environment and to participate in a factory automation regional competition.

Submitted by: Stephen Balakirsky, Raj Madhavan and Chris Scrapper, U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology, and RAS Washington DC Local Chapter

. IEEE ASIA-Pacific Robotics and Automation Development Council ($6,000)

Funds from this grant will be used to enhance the knowledge and skills in Robotics and Automation (RA) for underdeveloped regions in Asia-Pacific countries and cities by developing the curriculum, by introducing training programmes and by organizing technical seminars and workshops on Robotics and Automation.

Submitted by: Professor S. G. Ponnambalam and S. M. N. Arosha Senanayake, Monash University Sunway Campus, Malaysia and Malaysia RAS Local Chapter.

Establishing IEEE/RAS Points of Presence and Initiatives in Second Life (SL)

Linden Lab's Second Life (SL), www.secondlife.com, is a social network that, differently from others, efficiently implements the idea of a full 3D environment where users are identified with avatars able to move in this environment.

The project consists of setting up a permanent location in this virtual environment, in the form of a building, with poster-like material and videos presenting the aim and services of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society. This information will be periodically updated to advertise ongoing events and initiatives of the RAS community. This project will evaluate the possibility of broadcasting in the SL world live events, such as plenary talks, workshops or lectures.

A further objective of this project is that of reproducing in SL simplified behaviors of real world robots and auto-responding desk assistants. This will be very important to populate the SL building of the IEEE RAS.

Submitted by: Domenico Prattichizzo, University of Siena

Student Exchange Program for Cross-Disciplinary Fertilization ($5000)

This grant will allow non-engineering graduate students in haptics to visit engineering laboratories and vice versa in order to create a forum for cross-disciplinary fertilization within the Haptics community as a whole.

Submitted by: Hong Z. Tan, (Purdue Univ.), Roberta L. Klatzky, (Carnegie Mellon Univ.), and Susan J. Lederman, (Queen’s Univ., Canada), and RAS Haptics Technical Committee.

Non-Engineering Haptics Community IEEE-RAS Membership Drive ($1000)

These funds will cover on an introductory basis a portion of the IEEE Membership fee for members of the RAS Technical Committee on Haptics who are not already IEEE members and are not currently in an engineering department or holding an engineering position. The initiative is intended to encourage haptics researchers in non-engineering fields, such as psychology and neuroscience, to join IEEE.

Submitted by: Allison Okamura, Johns Hopkins Univ. and RAS Haptics Technical Committee.