The Technical Committee in Model-Based Optimization for Robotics is pleased to announce the call for nominations for the:

The IEEE-RAS Technical Committee on Model-Based Optimization for Robotics 2020 Best Paper Award 

In line with the successful edition from the past year, we anticipate the winners to be announced in conjunction with TC events at ICRA 2021. Eligible papers for this year's award will have appeared at a conference or in a journal in 2020 (online or in print), and must not have been nominated for the previous edition of this award. We encourage TC members and community members to nominate their favorite papers of the past year (including their own!).

Nominations should be sent to the TC Co-Chairs at tc.opt.rob@gmail.com by 15th April 2021 and accompanied by a short motivation (150 words max) for the nomination. TC CoChairs will collect nominations, and a separate awards committee will evaluate finalists. Finalists and winners will be selected based on factors of novelty, quality, and impact. Self nominations are encouraged but should be limited to one per individual.

Timeline:

Call for nominations: 15th March, 2021

Nominations Due: 15th April, 2021 [self-nominations encouraged]

Results Announcement: 1st June, 2021

Thanks to many for participating in this year's inaugural TC Best Paper Award process. The co-chairs of the Technical Committee on Model-Based Optimization for Robotics are pleased to announce our winner and finalists.

2019 TC on Model-Based Optimization for Robotics Best Paper Award

Feedback MPC for Torque-Controlled Legged Robots

Ruben Grandia, Farbod Farshidian, René Ranftl, Marco Hutter

IROS, http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/

2019 TC on Model-Based Optimization for Robotics Best Paper Award Finalists

Contact-Implicit Trajectory Optimization using Orthogonal Collocation

Amir Patel, Stacey Leigh Shield, Saif Kazi, Aaron M. Johnson, Lorenz T. Biegler

RA-L, http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/LRA.

STANCE: Locomotion Adaptation Over Soft Terrain

Shamel Fahmi, Michele Focchi, Andreea Radulescu, Geoff Fink, Victor Barasuol, Claudio Semini

T-RO, http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/TRO.

Many congratulations to all of the winners and finalists! Again, a special thanks to our jury (Katja Mombaur, Russ Tedrake, Eiichi Yoshida, Pierre-Brice Wieber, Nicolas Mansard, and Ludovic Righetti) for their assistance in this process. We look forward to recognizing the great work of our TC with another round of awards next year. The co-chairs of the TC on Model-Based Optimization for Robotics Debora Clever, Adrien Escande, Yue Hu, Patrick Wensing.

TC Poster Session and Networking Event Associated with ICRA 2020

Happy summer! We hope you all are staying safe and well, and perhaps starting to get back into the labs with your robots. The co-chairs of the Technical Committee on Model-Based Optimization for Robotics are happy to announce the networking event surrounding ICRA 2020.

In the absence of in-person interactions at ICRA 2020, our TC will hold a virtual poster session and networking event on Thursday, 16 July 2020, 9:30-11:00 AM EST (13:30-15:00 GMT).

We will kick off the event with a short welcome on zoom and then hold two 40-minute poster sessions. We will use the platform spatial.chat to replicate informal interactions and conversations (inspired by its success at Dynamic Walking 2020 -- thanks to Michael Posa and Aaron Johnson!).

If you plan to participate in the TC event with a poster, please register here.

Posters covering ICRA papers, recent journals, and/or other work in progress are encouraged.

Deadlines:

Poster Registration and Submission: July 13th- register here

Event Registration: Not required, access links and info provided here.

You can test drive spatial.chat using one of our poster rooms here (https://spatial.chat/s/tc-)

TC-Related ICRA 2020 Paper Repository Combing through over 1500 ICRA papers has been daunting for many. To help us all out, please register your TC-related ICRA paper here. You can view the aggregated list here.

Call for 2019 IEEE-RAS Best Paper Award in Model-Based Optimization for Robotics

We are pleased to announce the call for nominations for the 2019 TC Best Paper Award in Model-Based Optimization for Robotics. We anticipate winners of this newly established award being announced yearly in conjunction with TC events at ICRA. Eligible papers for this year's award will have appeared at a conference or in a journal in 2019. We encourage TC members and community members to nominate their favorite papers of the past year (including their own!).

Nominations should be sent to the TC Co-Chairs at tc.op.rob@gmail.com by 15 May 2020 and accompanied by a short motivation (150 words max) for the nomination. TC CoChairs will collect nominations, and a separate awards committee will evaluate finalists. Finalists and winners will be selected based on factors of novelty, quality, and impact. Selfnominations are encouraged but should be limited to one per individual.

Timeline:

• Call for nominations: 18 February 2020
• Nominations Due: 15 May 2020 [self-nominations encouraged]
• Finalists Announced: 1 June 2020
• Winners Announced: 30 June 2020