Call for Papers: IEEE RA-L + ICRA Special Issue on "Aerial Manipulation"

We are pleased to announce an IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (IEEE RA-L) Special Issue on "Aerial Manipulation".
Authors submitting their work to this Special Issue will have the opportunity to present their work at the forthcoming ICRA 2018 conference in Brisbane, Australia (see the details below).

Please, visit the official webpage of the Special Issue at http://www.ieee-ras.org/publications/ra-l/special-issues/aerial-manipulation

Motivations and Objectives

The introduction of aerial manipulation can be helpful especially in those industrial and service applications that are considered very dangerous for a human operator. For instance, think to a task of bridge inspection, high-voltage electric lines inspection and fixing-up, rotor blade repairing and so on. These tasks are both unsafe and expensive, since the performance of professional climbers and specialists is requested. An unmanned aerial manipulator might indeed assist the human operator in these jobs or, at least, in the most hazardous and critical situations. Grasping an object during the flight with a UAV (equipped with only a gripper) poses several problems due to the under-actuation of the aerial vehicle, its unstable dynamics, and the coupling effects given by the presence of the object. The bigger the carried payload, the bigger should be the capacity of the single employed UAV. However, the sole gripper is not enough to obtain a complete evolution from passive into active tasks of the unmanned aerial vehicles: mechanical structures mounted on the UAVs are then essential to perform more complex actions. Therefore, an aerial manipulator might be an efficient solution providing an aerial vehicle with the capability of performing dexterous manipulation tasks. Nevertheless, like the presence of a carried object creates coupling effects in the dynamic model of the system, a mounted robot arm provides even more issues since its dynamics depends on the actual configuration state of the whole system.

The Special Issue will thus cover several aspects spanning from the mechatronic design of novel aerial manipulator, to the use of sensors necessary to accomplish the sought tasks, and the use of motion planning and control techniques. This may also be a great opportunity to stir the current idea of aerial robotics that is too much conceived as simple inspection and sensing applications. Aerial manipulation is a great research challenge and this might be a chance to collect the most recent results of the field to enhance the autonomy requested to fulfill the addressed tasks.

List of Topics

The list of topics include, but it is not limited to:
- Control of aerial manipulators
- Control of UAV in contact with the environment
- Motion planning of aerial manipulators
- Perception in aerial manipulation
- Mechatronic design of aerial manipulators

Important Dates

- Special Issue Submission opens: 1 September 2017
- Special Issue Submission closes: 10 September 2017
- First Decision Communicated to Authors: 5 December 2017
- Final Decision Communicated to Authors: 8 February 2018
- Accepted RA-L Papers appear on IEEE Xplore: 27 February 2018

Guest Editors

Vincenzo Lippiello (Università di Napoli Federico II)
Fabio Ruggiero (Università di Napoli Federico II)
Anibal Ollero (Universidad de Sevilla)

Organization of the Submitted Papers

Papers are six-page long in two column IEEE format, including figures and reference. Up to two extra-pages (at fee) are allowed. Links to multimedia material are welcome. RA-L is an electronic-only journal. The final version provided by the authors will be rapidly posted on IEEE Xplore: submitted manuscripts will be either published within 27 February 2018 or rejected.

Submission of the Papers

In order to submit the paper:
- Go the RA-L PaperCept site http://ras.papercept.net/journals/ral
- Log-in and select to submit a new paper to IEEE RA-L.
- From the drop-down menu, select "Submission for RA-L and ICRA Special Issue on Aerial Manipulation"
- Follow the instructions to submit your material.
More information can be found at the following link: http://www.ieee-ras.org/publications/ra-l/submission-procedures

Information about IEEE RA-L + ICRA 2018

All the information about the IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters can be found at the following link:
http://www.ieee-ras.org/publications/ra-l
To recap, the scope of this journal is to publish peer-reviewed articles that provide a timely and concise account of innovative research ideas and application results, reporting significant theoretical findings and application case studies in areas of robotics and automation.
All the papers submitted to such RA-L Special Issue will undergo a regular RA-L review. Results of the first review round by the Letters Editorial Board will also be used by the ICRA 2018 Editorial Board, which will decide the program of the Conference. Notice that the final decision on publication on RA-L and presentation at the Conference are completely independent. More details about RA-L submission with conference option can be found at the following link: http://www.ieee-ras.org/publications/ra-l/ra-letters-information-for-authors
The International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) is the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society's flagship conference and is a premier international forum for robotics researchers to present their work.