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Please join us for the first event in a series of informal conversations and networking with the Chairs of RAS Technical Committees (TCs). Four TCs will be showcased in this inaugural event to be held on Friday, 19 June at 9:00am EDT.
The Event will begin with an Overview of the TC, their current activities, and how YOU might get involved. This will be followed by an opportunity to connect in live conversation with TC Chairs via video conferencing.
Part 1: Technical Committee Overview
9:00-9:30am EDT (GMT -4)
Welcome and introduction from Megan Emmons, Chair of the RAS Young Professionals Committee, and Tony Maciejewski, RAS Vice President of RAS Technical Activities.
Followed by an overview from each of the following RAS Technical Committees:
• TC on Aerial Robotics and Unmanned Aerial Systems
• TC on Algorithms for Planning and Control of Robot Motion
• TC on Automation In Logistics
• TC on Performance Evaluation & Benchmarking of Robotic and Automation Systems
Please join Part 1 of this Event here:
https://ieee.webex.com/ieee/onstage/g.php?MTID=e869c371556cfd663a84f1356b3724e44
Part 2: Meet the TC Chairs
Informal Networking and Conversation
9:30-10:00am EDT (GMT -4)
You can “visit” with any or ALL of the following TC Chairs, by joining the video conferences using the links provided. Stay for as long as you like...and hop out to join another “room" at any time. Our TC Chairs are eager to meet YOU!
TC on Aerial Robotics and Unmanned Aerial Systems:
• Giuseppe Loianno
Join here: https://ieee.webex.com/ieee/j.php?MTID=mcfd598db300e7c61f73b8cc12d77285c
TC on Algorithms for Planning and Control of Robot Motion:
• Tsz-Chiu Au
• Aleksandra Faust
• Vadim Indelman
• Marco Morales
Join here: https://ieee.webex.com/ieee/j.php?MTID=mfce884edd6388449369b788651d54efa
TC on Automation In Logistics:
• Maria Pia Fanti
• Walter Ukovich
Join here: https://ieee.webex.com/ieee/j.php?MTID=m16464265b1a62316d8986d7c9ac877d9
TC on Performance Evaluation & Benchmarking of Robotic and Automation Systems:
• Fabio Bonsignorio
Join here: https://ieee.webex.com/ieee/j.php?MTID=ma481f58ad59b449c4614ab9c1a821728
IEEE RAS Member and Volunteer, Edson Prestes, Federal University of RioGrande do Sul, Brazil, has been involved in the effort to launch the United Nations Roadmap on Digital Cooperation. Join in on the virtual presentation of The United Nations Secretary-General’s Roadmap for Digital Cooperation which starts streaming today (11 June 2020, 13:30 – 15:30 EDT)
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres will launch his Roadmap for Digital Cooperation at the President of the General Assembly’s High-Level Thematic Debate. Joined by Heads of States and political leaders, technology industry CEOs, Eminent Persons and Civil Society leaders, the Secretary General will then kick-off a series of high-level virtual events elaborating on the Roadmap and its implementation.
The event will be broadcasted at: webtv.un.org
Don't wait! The Award Nomination Deadline is Saturday,1 August 2020
Who are Leaders in the robotics and automation field? Who should be honored with a prestigious IEEE RAS Award? Consider nominating them! But hurry, the deadline for IEEE Robotics & Automation Society Award nominations is midnight (US EST) 1 August 2020.
Details for each award, including eligibility, nomination requirements and lists of previous recipients, may be found here:
www.ieee-ras.org/awards-recognition/society-awards
The IEEE Robotics & Automation Society recognizes and congratulates individuals for their outstanding accomplishments and service to RAS and the robotics and automation community.
Watch this recorded virtual ceremony hosted by RAS President- Seth Hutchinson, IEEE President - Toshio Fukuda, IEEE RAS Past Awards Chair- Raja Chatila, IEEE RAS Awards Chair - Satoshi Tadokoro as they introduce the winners of the 2020 Robotics and Automation Society Awards! Please join us in congratulating these outstanding recipients!
Learn More Nominate a Colleague today for 2021- Nominations are due 1 August 2020! Click to learn more about details for each award, including eligibility, nomination requirements and lists of previous recipients.
See how you can explore the world of robotics with the Interactive Robots Watch this on-demand #TryEngineering Live: Hands-on Design Challenge to learn more with Robots.ieee.org!
Available on Demand! Click here ro register!
The Biggest Robotics Research Conference Is Now More Accessible Than Ever- ICRA 2020
If it wasn’t for COVID-19, we’d probably be in Paris right now, enjoying the beautiful weather, stuffing ourselves with pastries, and getting ready for another amazing edition of the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), the world’s largest robotics research gathering. We’re not doing any of that, of course. Personally, I’ve barely left my house since March, and the in-person ICRA conference in Paris was quite sensibly cancelled a while ago. The good news, however, is that ICRA is now a virtual conference instead, and the reason that it’s good news (and not just some sad pandemic-y compromise) is that the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (RAS) and the ICRA conference committees have put in an astonishing amount of work in a very short period of time to bring the entire conference online in a way that actually seems like it might work out pretty well for everyone. Click to read the full article
For more information on ICRA 2020 virtual conference (31 May - 31 August)- www.icra2020.org
We are planning several virtual gatherings for RAS society members and students. Tune back here for more information.
These include:
4 Student Activities hosted by the Student Activities Committee (SAC), RAS Town Hall, a Women in Engineering (WIE) Summer Mentoring Event, as well as a Young Professionals Networking Event!
We are excited to offer 4 different virtual activities for all student attendees of ICRA 2020. If you're interested in testing your knowledge of robots, video or graphic design skills, or want to meet with world leaders in robotics, then sign up for one of the events below! Space is limited!
Calling all past, present and future RAS Members: We want to connect with YOU via the first ever virtual RAS Town Hall. This live event will feature a Panel of the Past, Present and Future RAS Presidents, as they talk about the history of the Society, where we are right now, and opportunities and ideas for the future of the organization and the robotics community.
When: LIVE on Tuesday, 9 June at 4:00pm CEST (10:00am EDT)
Where: Join the live online event here: https://ieee.webex.com/ieee/onstage/g.php?MTID=ea3fe27d004722d8f24fd720813472600
This session will also be recorded, and available until 31 August.
PANELISTS
WHERE DID WE COME FROM?
Wolfram Burgard, President 2018-2019
University of Freiburg, Germany
Toyota Research Institute (TRI)
WHERE ARE WE NOW?
Seth Hutchinson, President 2020-2021
Georgia Tech, United States
WHERE ARE WE GOING?
Frank Park, President 2022-2023
Seoul National University, Republic of Korea
In addition to our Panelist presentations an open discussion will be held, and YOUR questions will be answered and discussed. Please submit Questions to spark discussion or get answers! Your question can be general society or program related, or a question directly for one of our Presenters. We invite questions to be submitted in advance using this online form:
https://app.smartsheet.com/b/form/0290b860312a4af3b254fcc794824995
Attendees will also have the opportunity to submit questions during the live event via the chat feature.
We look forward to a lively discussion!
Zoom, Google Meet, Skype, and Microsoft Teams
Check out our IEEE RAS branded virtual background images for video conferencing tools such as Zoom, Google Meet, Skype, and Microsoft Teams!
Note: For Google Meet, camera add-on or extension is required.
View instructions on how to upload background images for a Zoom meeting.
View instructions on how to upload background images for a Skype meeting.
View tips to use IEEE virtual backgrounds with Microsoft Teams.
On behalf of the IEEE Robotics & Automation Society, the ICRA organizing committee is delighted to invite you to attend the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA 2020), to be held fully virtually, from 31 May to 31 August. Live content will be available from 31 May to 15 June, so be sure to tune in! On demand recorded content will be available until 31 August.
The coronavirus pandemic has quickly become the most dramatic and disruptive event experienced by this generation.
The disease has spread very quickly around the world and the growing number of new infections and patients in need of intensive medical care has pushed clinical services care beyond their limits, revealing a shortage of trained personnel and lifesaving equipment, such as ventilators. In addition, frontline health professionals operate in highly infectious areas, exposing themselves to the risk of becoming infected. The most common political response to mitigate the spread of the disease has been to promote social distancing, and locking down entire countries. Although being effective, these measures impose heavy social and economic consequences.
Kaspar Althoefer, RAS Administrative Committee member, and his Team at the Queen Mary University of London step up to create and provide PPE to the frontline. The are using 3D printing technologies help establish mass-production of face shields.
A full article is available on IEEE Spectrum.
New Consortium Mobilizes Roboticists to Help With COVID-19 and Future Crises.
Robotics for Infections Diseases consortium explores the role of robots in the coronavirus pandemic. A group of roboticists, led by Robin Murphy, IEEE Fellow, RAS Member and long time Volunteer, recently formed this consortium. The Steering Committee is made up of many RAS Members and Leaders in the robotics field.
For more information see: RoboticsForInfectiousDiseases.org
An Interview Series with public health, public safety, and emergency management experts is available through a series of recordings and future live events. Please check back soon!
A full article is available on IEEE Spectrum.
RAS Member, IEEE Fellow and long time Volunteer, Satyandra K. Gupta is leading a research team at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles that is building a robotic arm that uses a UV light to sanitize contaminated areas during the COVID-19 pandemic.
A special thanks to these amazing researchers for assisting during this diffucult time.
Link to article: https://spectrum.
RAS Member, IEEE Fellow and long time Volunteer, Antonio Bicchi and his Team from IIT of Genoa (Italian Institute of Technology) and by I-RIM, the Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Machines, have developed and launched remote-controlled robots for local hospitals, allowing patients with Covid-19 to video call their loved ones at home, without endangering healthcare professionals.
A special thanks to these amazing researchers for assisting our most vulnerable.
The complete story is HERE.
The project description is HERE.
Scientists and researchers all over the globe are working hard to address various issues related to the COVID 19 crisis such as modelling and analysis of the mechanisms underlying the spread of the virus, along with modelling how various interventions can help control the propagation of the disease, finding useful treatment protocols, potential drugs, and vaccines.
The role of technology, in particular, that of Computational Intelligence to deal with the crisis, should not be underestimated. In order to take part in this fight against COVID 19, the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society (IEEE CIS) has set up a program, the COVID 19 Initiative. Under this initiative, the Editors-in-Chief will expedite, to the extent possible, the processing of all articles submitted to any of the CIS publications, with primary focus (as judged by the Editors-in-Chief) on COVID 19. Please check the S1M submission site of your desired publication for instructions as to how to submit a COVID-19 focused manuscript.
If accepted, all such articles will be published, free-of-charge to authors and readers, as free access for one year from the date of the publication to enable the research findings to be disseminated widely and freely to other researchers and the community at large. Any such article will go through the standard review process followed for the publication and the article must be within the scope of the publication.
We request that individuals follow the advice provided by the World Health Organization as well as local administration to stay safe and healthy. Let’s do our part to understand and control this virus that is sweeping across the planet.
IEEE RAS Member and Volunteer Edson Prestes, Federal University of RioGrande do Sul, Brazil, has been invited by Audrey Azoulay, Unesco’s Director General, to join an international Ad Hoc Expert Group in charging of preparing a preliminary text for an international law on Ethics of Artificial Intelligence. This law will be the first global standard-setting instrument on ethics of artificial intelligence. This group is comprised of 24 of the world’s leading experts on the social, economic and cultural challenges of artificial intelligence. UNESCO decided to create this normative instrument during UNESCO’s General Conference in November 2019 and its goal is to have this law adopted by its Member States at the end of 2021. UNESCO has a long tradition on creating this kind of normative instruments. An example is Universal Declaration on the Human Genome and Human Rights, adopted in 1997.
More information and a full list of members is available here: https://en.unesco.org/news/unesco-appoints-international-expert-group-draft-global-recommendation-ethics-ai
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we have extended the submission deadline to: 15 June 2020
There is a substantive body of work on methods providing robustness to robotic systems, but research on resilience is scattered, and the distinction between resilience and robustness is still poorly understood. As a result, this special issue has two main goals: (1) to provide a deeper understanding of resilience for networked systems and (2) to assemble works that demonstrate the importance of resilient methods. In an effort to disseminate the current advances in designing and operating resilient robotic networks, and to stimulate a discussion on the future research directions in this field, the IEEE Transactions on Robotics (T-RO) invites papers for a Special Issue in this area. Researchers are invited to submit papers on the foundational, algorithmic, and experimental aspects of design, modeling, control and validation of resilience in robotic networks.
The IEEE Standards Association under the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society has started a Study Group to investigate the feasibility of creating standards and performance metrics to measure robot agility, with the goal of enabling robots to be more productive, more autonomous, and to require less human interaction.
Agility in this context is broadly defined as addressing failure identification and recovery, automated planning to minimize up-front programming time, and enabling plug and play robots to allow for easier swapping of different robots without massive reprogramming downtime.
We expect this effort to address robot agility in a wide range of applications, such as manufacturing, healthcare, defense, and service robots.
How to get involved
If you are interested in being involved with this IEEE SA Study Group (and the future working group) and having the opportunity to shape the future of these efforts, please contact Anthony Downs at anthony.downs@nist.gov
Easy Links
RAS is a volunteer driven society with over 13,000 members worldwide.
Students are future of robotics and automation.
IEEE International Conference on Automation Science and Engineering
IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems
IEEE International conference on Robotics and Automation
