BRAM VANDERBORGHT, Belgium 

Bram Vanderborght (S’05-M’07-SM’17) Prof. dr. ir. Bram Vanderborght (1980) obtained his PhD from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel in 2007. He performed a research stay AIST, Tsukuba (Japan). He worked 2.5 years as post-doc researcher at the Italian Institute of Technology in Genova (Italy). Since October 2009 he is appointed as professor at the VUB and co-leading a team of 45 researchers. He had an ERC Starting Grant on SPEA actuation concept and is coordinator of EU FET project SHERO on self healing soft robots. He is active in several EU and national projects, he is core lab manager of Flanders Make and member of www.brubotics.eu, the Brussels Human Robotics Research Center. His research interests include cognitive and physical human robot interaction with core technology of using variable impedance actuators in applications for health and manufacturing like humanoids, exoskeletons, prostheses, social robots and cobots. Scopus H-index Scopus= 35 with 260 documents. He is IEEE Senior Member and current EiC of the IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine.

IEEE ACTIVITIES COMMITTEES/BOARDS:

Current Editor in Chief IEEE-Robotics & Automation Magazine Associate editor journals

IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine (IEEE-RAM) (finished) IEEE Transactions on IEEE/AMSE Mechatronics (finished) IEEE Robotics and Automation Letter (IEEE-RA-L) (ongoing)

CONFERENCES:

Associate editor

• IEEE-RAS 19th International Conference on Humanoid Robots (Humanoids 2019)
• IEEE-RAS-EMBS International Conference on Rehabilitation Robotics (ICORR 2019)
• IEEE-RAS 18th International Conference on Humanoid Robots (Humanoids 2018)
• IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots (Humanoids 2017)
• IEEE International Conference on Rehabilitation Robotics (ICORR 2017)
• HRI Pioneers 2017
• 2016 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2016)
• HRI 2016 Pioneers Workshop 2016
• 14th IEEE/RAS-EMBS International Conference on Rehabilitation Robotics (Biorob 2016)
• 2015 IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots (Humanoids 2015)
• 2015 IEEE International Conference on Mechatronics and Automation (IEEE ICMA 2015)
• 24th IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN 2015)
• IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA 2015)
• 2013 IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots (Humanoids 2014)
• The International Conference on Social Robotics (ICSR 2014)
• IEEE RAS & EMBS International Conference on Biomedical Robotics and Biomechatronics (BioRob 2014)
• IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN 2014)
• IEEE International Conference on Mechatronics and Automation (IEEE ICMA 2014)
• IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2014), Chicago, September 14-18, 2014.
• IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA 2014)
• 2013 IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots (Humanoids 2013)
• IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2013)
• IEEE International Conference on Mechatronics and Automation (IEEE ICMA 2013)
• 2012 IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots (Humanoids 2012), Nov. 29th – Dec. 1st, 2012, Osaka, Japan.
• IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2012)
• IEEE International Conference on Mechatronics and Automation (IEEE ICMA 2012)
• Executive Program Committee of the Fourth IEEE RAS/EMBS International Conference on Biomedical Robotics and Biomechatronics (BioRob 2012)
• IEEE International Conference on Mechatronics and Automation (ICMA 2011)
• IEEE International Conference on Mechatronics and Automation (IEEE ICMA 2011)
• IEEE Conference on Automation Science and Engineering (IEEE CASE 2008.)

Video Chair – ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human Robot Interaction-HRI’18.

Organizing committee – AIM 2021- 2021 IEEE/ASME International Conference on Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics

Conference Publication Co-Chair – 26th IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication, RO-MAN 2017

Workshops organization during IEEE conferences

• IROS 19 workshop: Articulated Actuation Towards Human Capabilities for Robots
• ICRA 18 Workshop: Self-healing, Growing and Evolving Soft Robots, 21/5/2018 Brisbane
• IROS 2017 Workshop on the Energetic Economy of Robotics and Biological Systems
• ICRA 2015 workshop – soft robotics
• 2015 IEEE Human-Robot Interaction Pioneers Workshop
• IROS 2014 workshop – From Active Impedance to Intrinsically Compliant and Variable Impedance Actuators: Pros, Cons and Trade-offs, September 2014, Chicago, USA
• ICRA 2012 workshop – IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, Saint Paul, Minnesota, USA, May 14-18, 2012, Workshop Variable Impedance Actuators Moving the Robots of Tomorrow
• IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA2010) (Workshop New variable impedance actuators for the next generation of robots.)

OTHER:

IEEE RAS support for 2nd HRI summer school on social robots, Aland, 24-28 August 2015

QUALIFICATIONS:

I work in strong multidisciplinary teams, at the university we started Brubotics, a collaboration of 9 research groups not only from technical sciences, but also medical, social and human sciences.

I am core lab manager of Flanders Make, a research center for the Flemish manufacturing industry, and involved in several EU and national projects, so I gained lot of experience with industry. We also founded a spinoff company called Axiles Bionics.

I am in the research council of the university already many years. Since last year I am also in the “office of research council”, which is the preparation meeting for the research council in which all decisions are prepared. So I have a global view on research management.

I was member of the Young Academy of the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts (max term of 5 years ended), during which we worked on topics as multidisciplinary, science outreach,…

I am in the Board of Directors of the science museum Technopolis. I am president of the Board of Directors of the science magazine EOS. I co-founded RoboCup Junior. So I have management capabilities and good view how to reach out to the general public.

I co-organized the event and was the leader of the book Homo Roboticus (www.homo-roboticus.be). It is a project to discuss how we keep the humanistic values (solidarity, freedom and equality) stand ground in a robotized world in which we present 30 though provoking questions and end with an inclusive robotagenda. So apart from the technical innovations, I am strongly involved with the ethical and social topics of robots.

I am regularly asked as an expert for the national and European governments.

I am regularly asked as an expert for the media, was already over 600 times on TV, Radio and written press.

MAJOR ACCOMPLISHMENTS:

I was corresponding guest editor of a very successful special issue on compliant actuators for the IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine. Afterwards I did an extended term as associate editor.

I am currently EiC of the magazine. During my term I work together with the small board to keep the magazine in good competition while maintaining its unique character. We reduced the time from submission to decision, increased impact factor, try new visionary special issues, introduced R-articles to support reproducible research (eg mentioned in Nature Machine Intelligence editorial), celebrated 25 years of the magazine and I try to discuss timely matters in the editorials, from which one article also made it to IEEE Spectrum. We collaborate with IEEE Spectrum to disseminate papers of the magazine in IEEE Spectrum and made the link between the magazine and the two flagship conferences (ICRA and IROS).

POSITION STATEMENT:

History teaches us that technology has a great impact how we live and work. Robotics and automation has the power to transform societies and to strengthen our economies. Our research field is gaining momentum; how we keep our society adapted to the new needs of our members when creating this future? This requires action on different levels.

I see IEEE-RAS as a society for members by members, so the main aim of RAS is to provide high quality services, while keeping the costs under control so everyone can participate, contribute and collaborate. The number of members is increasing a lot, conferences break record after record. New concepts (with maybe new technologies) need to be developed so this increasing size can be handled, so members can still disseminate and network. The connection of the periodicals with the conferences is an excellent path to increase the impact of the work of the members and use time (to write, but also review/editing time) more efficient.

New questions are raising: how to include Plan S (initiative for Open Access) for our periodicals, without huge costs for our members to have the papers published. How to make the community aware of the opportunities for reproducibility research. How to involve newcomers in the field and provide adapted training. How we can improve the relation with governments since public funding is still crucial to perform the basic research and integrate them into applications.

More and more industries are working in robotics, the number of companies having a booth in the exhibition is increasing. Often for recruitment purposes which shows that our members have also a bright career prospect outside academia, however how we can improve the relation and involvement between research and industry. How we can facilitate from our society entrepreneurship, the creation of standards and benchmarking tests.

With great power comes great responsibility. Our work will benefit life, work and society, but also comes with social and ethical issues on safety, privacy and responsibility. People in certain parts of the world are afraid of this technology, that it will destroy work and conquer the world. How we can keep the human central in such a robotized world, how we create awareness about the benefits, while at the same time include their concerns in the development of the robots.

The Robotics and Automation Society as worldwide player has to play a facilitating role for the individual careers of its members, but also the interest of robotics and automation for the society and economy in general.