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Published: 28 January 2020

The IEEE P7008 Standards Working Group, sponsored by the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society, is seeking volunteers to bring additional perspectives and expertise into the creation of the IEEE P7008TM Standard for Ethically Driven Nudging for Robotic, Intelligent and Autonomous Systems. This standard will provide guidance for developers and ethicists involved in the design of autonomous, intelligent systems that seek to “nudge” humans; that is, influence choices made by humans through subtle means. These systems may adaptively select the individuals they nudge, customize the means they use to influence behavior, and/or learn from the effectiveness of the nudges they implement. IEEE P7008TM will provide designers of nudging systems with methods, tools and guidelines for aligning their systems with ethical design principles, and embody an ethical framework grounded in respecting human autonomy, in particular, the human dignity of informed, non-coerced choice. The completed standard will establish a delineation of current and potential nudging techniques and technologies, and frame a design methodology to ensure transparent, ethical decision-making, the assessment of ethical risks and harms due to nudging, and evaluation of nudging effects after deployment.

Working group members have professional experience and personal interests across a broad spectrum of disciplines relevant to this topic, including development/deployment of autonomous and intelligent systems, ethics, cognitive science, psychology, empathic technologies, regulations related to technology, and standards development. We seek additional wide-minded talents to foster this practice of developing systems that incorporate ethics into their design.

If you have any questions about IEEE P7008TM (https://standards.ieee.org/project/7008.html) or would like to become a working group member, please send email to the chair, Sean Dougherty (seand@ieee.org). If you have questions about the IEEE Standards Association or the IEEE Global Initiative on Ethics of Autonomous and Intelligent Systems (https://ethicsinaction.ieee.org/), please send email to Christy Bahn (c.bahn@ieee.org).

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Published: 28 January 2020

The IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS2019) was held 4-8 November 2019 in Macau, China. Congratulations to the following Award Recipients - which were announced on 7 November during the Awards Luncheon.

IROS Harashima Award for Innovative Technologies

This award is to honor Professor Fumio Harashima, the Founding Honorary Chair of the IROS conferences, by recognizing outstanding contributions of an individual of the IROS community who has pioneered activities in robotics and intelligent systems.

Nancy M. Amato - University of Illinois, USA
"For fundamental contributions to innovative robot motion planning and advanced computing methods"

IROS Distinguished Service Award

This award recognizes an individual who has performed outstanding service and leadership for the benefit and advancement of the IROS Conference. Up to two awards will be given annually at the IROS Conference.

Ren C. Luo - National Taiwan University, Taiwan
"For thirty years of outstanding contributions to the development of IROS"

Christian Laugier - INRIA, France
“For Outstanding Service and Leadership to IROS Conferences”

IROS Toshio Fukuda Young Professional Award

This award recognizes individuals (from academic institutions, government, industry, or research labs) who, in their early career, have made identifiable contributions that have had a major impact on intelligent robots and systems. Up to two awards will be given annually at the IROS Conference.

Takeshi Ando - Panasonic Corporation, Japan
"For contributions to the deployment of service robots and assistive robots"

Mac Schwager - Stanford University, USA
"For contributions to the advancement of multi-robot systems"

IROS Best Paper Award

This award recognizes the most outstanding paper at the annual IROS Conference.

"Planning Reactive Manipulation in Dynamic Environments"
Philipp S. Schmitt, Florian Wirnshofer, Kai M. Wurm, Georg v. Wichert, Wolfram Burgard

IROS ABB Best Student Paper Award

This award recognizes the most outstanding paper authored primarily by a student at the annual IROS Conference.

"Efficient and Guaranteed Planar Pose Graph Optimization Using the Complex Number Representation"
Taosha Fan, Hanlin Wang, Michael Rubenstein, Todd Murphey

IROS JTCF Novel Technology Paper Award for Amusement Culture

This award recognizes technical papers which have made practical technology contributions to Toys, Toy Models and Amusement Culture. 

"Responsive Joint Attention in Human-Robot Interaction"
André Pereira, Catharine Oertel, Leonor Fermoselle, Joe Mendelson, Joakim Gustafson

IROS RoboCup Best Paper Award

This award recognizes technical papers which have made identifiable contributions to RoboCup.

"Motion Decoupling and Composition via Reduced Order Model Optimization for Dynamic Humanoid Walking with CLF-QP based Active Force Control"
Xiaobin Xiong, Aaron D. Ames

IROS KROS Best Paper Award on Cognitive Robotics

This award is to promote interdisciplinary researches on cognition for technical systems and advancements of cognitive robotics in industry, home applications, and daily life.

"Planning Beyond The Sensing Horizon Using a Learned Context"
Michael Everett, Justin Miller, Jonathan P. How

IROS Best Paper Award on Safety, Security, and Rescue Robotics

This award is to promote advanced research on safety, security and rescue robotics. The name of the award is connected with Mr. Motohiro Kisoi who was killed in Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake on 17 January 1995. He was a master student of Kobe University, Japan at that time. He had a dream to create a robot that can help people. To memorialize him and Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake, the award has established.

"Optimization Based Motion Planning for Multi-Limbed Vertical Climbing Robots"
Xuan Lin, Jingwen Zhang, Junjie Shen, Gabriel Fernandez, Dennis W Hong

IROS ICROS Best Application Paper Award

This award is to promote researches on excellent robot application.

"Visual Servoing of Miniature Magnetic Film Swimming Robots for 3D Arbitrary Path Following"
Chenyang Huang, Tiantian Xu, Jia Liu, Laliphat Manamanchaiyaporn, Xinyu Wu

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Published: 28 January 2020

Call for Papers has been extended to 1-March-2020.

The past few years have seen a significant increase of research activities focusing on the use of active or inherent material compliance in robotic systems, generally known as soft robotics. The underlying reason is the importance of soft and deformable structures to develop robotic systems that are safer, cheaper and more adaptable than the level that can be achieved by the conventional rigid-material robots. Soft robotic systems are characterized by several unique aspects like their elastic and deformable bodies, large number of degrees of freedom, possible use of unconventional material and the involvement of intrinsic passive mechanical dynamics. In order to properly handle the characteristics, it is crucial to understand the modern view of intelligence, commonly referred to as embodied intelligence or morphological computation, which emphasizes the importance of the task distribution among the brain or controller of a robot, the morphology such as shape, size and materials composing the robot; as well as the environment. In this modern view of intelligence, optimizing the design of the soft robots are therefore of a great importance. While the design optimization can be either or both led by machines and/or humans, or taking inspiration from biological systems, it will eventually decide the behavior and characteristics of the robot.

The special issue of “Design Optimization of Soft Robots” in IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine aims to summarize the state of the art and disseminate the current advances on the design optimization of soft robots. The desired outcome of this special issue is a general consensus of the shared scientific goals, the relevant perspective and challenges in the research field, as well as high impact applications.

Topics of Interest

We invite both original research or review/position papers of topics related to design optimization of soft robots, both those focusing on the use of active compliance or inherent material compliance. The topics include but not limited to the followings:

• Additive manufacturing for model-free design automation
• Bio-inspired approaches for design optimization of soft robots
• Brain-soft body co-optimization
• Design of artificial skin and stretchable sensors
• Design optimization for soft and safe physical human-robot interactions
• Design optimization in continuum robots
• Design optimization in soft arms, manipulation and grasping 
• Design optimization in self-healing soft robots
• Design optimization through modeling and simulation of soft bodies
• Morphological computation and embodied intelligence
• Optimizing soft actuator design
• Soft modular robots
• Soft robot design optimization for energy efficiency
• Wearable robots design optimization

For more information:  https://www.ieee-ras.org/publications/ram/special-issues/special-issue-on-design-optimization-of-soft-robots

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Published: 17 January 2020

HRI 2020 Half-Day Workshop, “Mental Models of Robots in Human-Robot Interaction” held in Cambridge, UK on 23 March 2020 is now offering two extended deadlines- One for applicants who want notification before the conference’s early registration deadline, and another for those who don’t.

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Published: 16 January 2020

DEADLINE EXTENSION ends 22-January-2020

The IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (RAS) is seeking applications for the Member Activities Board’s Student Activities Committee (SAC). There are openings for one chair and one or more co‐chairs. These positions offer great opportunities to learn more about the Society, have an international impact, and expand one’s professional network. The chair will serve for two calendar years (2020 – 2021), and the co‐chairs for a one‐year term in 2020 and renewable for a second year.

The IEEE‐RAS Student Activities Committee promotes student participation in the Society activities in co‐operation with all Society Boards, Committees and Working Groups, under the supervision of the Member Activities Board. The mission of the committee includes working on issues of interest to student members and interacting with student members and student chapter branches. Current areas of focus include:

• Lunch with Leaders held at flagship conferences (ICRA, CASE, IROS)
• Fun, informal social events at RAS sponsored conferences
• Educational webinars
• Membership development
• SAC Website and social media content
• Coordination with student branch chapter chairs
• SAC column in IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine (quarterly publication)

If you wish to be considered, please complete an Application Form by 10 January 2020 22 January 2020 and indicate whether you are applying for the Chair or Co-Chair position (please specify one or more co-chair positions):  and include the following information:

1. A letter indicating applicant’s interest in serving on the SAC and relevant experience (2 pages maximum)
2. A CV or résumé (2 pages maximum)
3. A letter of support from a faculty member at your college or university (preferably a current member of IEEE and RAS).

For more information, click here.