YASUHISA HIRATA, Japan 

Yasihisa Hirata (AM’00-M’03) is a Professor in the Department of Robotics at Tohoku University, Japan. He received the B.E., M.E., and Ph.D. degrees in mechanical engineering from Tohoku University in 1998, 2000, and 2004, respectively. He formerly worked as a research associate and an associate professor at Tohoku University. He was also a visiting researcher of The Universite de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en–Yvelines, France in 2006 and 2012. He served as a member of Board of Directors in the Robotics Society of Japan and as Senior Editor of Advanced Robotics. For more than 15 years, he has been doing research on control of multiple mobile robots in coordination, human-robot cooperation systems, assistive robots, haptics, industrial robots, etc. He has over 200 technical publications in the area of robotics. He received the Best Paper Awards in Advanced Robotics, JSME Journal, RSJ Journal, Fanuc FA Foundation, ROBIO 2004, ICMA 2009, etc.

IEEE ACTIVITIES COMMITTEES/BOARDS:

IEEE-RAS Associate Vice President for Technical Activities Board, 2016-present IEEE RAS Co-Chairs of Technical Committee on Rehabilitation and Assistive Robotics, 2016-present Associate Editor, IEEE RAS RA-Letters Editorial Board, 2015-2018

CONFERENCES: 

· Secretary, IROS 2004, ICRA 2009
· Registration Chair, IROS 2013
· Senior Editor, IROS 2018-2020
· Program Chair, SII 2016
· Technical Program Co-chairs, SII 2017
· Program Co-chairs, CBS 2018
· Advisory Committee Member, SII 2019
· Steering Committee Member, IEEE/SICE International Symposium on System Integration (SII)
· Award Co-Chairs, ROBIO 2015
· Special & Organized Session Chairs, ROBIO 2007-2018
· Workshop & Tutorial Co-Chairs, RO-MAN 2015
· Invited Session Chairs, ICMA 2015
· Publication Co-Chair, ICMA 2006
· Publicity Co-Chairs, ICMA 2008, ROBIO 2011, 2014, 2016, CBS 2017, ISR 2018
· PC Member/ Associate Editor, IROS 2007-2013, ICRA 2007-2008, 2014-2015, ROBIO 2013-2018, RO-MAN 2007-2013, AIM 2007-2008, 2014, ICMA 2005-2019, ICIA 2006-2018, ICAL 2008-2009, 2012, ICAR 2014, 2015, SII 2014-2016

QUALIFICATIONS

I have served as an Associate Vice President of the RAS Technical Activities Board and as Co-Chair of the Technical Committee on Rehabilitation and Assistive Robotics since 2016. Through these activities, I have experienced reviewing activities of diverse Technical Committees (TC), proposals for new TCs and proposals for the Creation of Educational Material in Robotics and Automation (CEMRA). I have also been part of the organizing committee of many flagship IEEE international conferences, such as ICRA and IROS. I am confident that the knowledge and experience acquired through these activities will allow me to contribute as a member of the IEEE RAS Administrative Committee.

MAJOR ACCOMPLISHMENTS 

· As an IEEE-RAS Associate Vice President for Technical Activities Board, I was in charge of reviewing Technical Committee activities, new TC proposals and CEMRA proposals (Creation of Educational Material in Robotics and Automation).
· As an IEEE RAS Co-Chair of the Technical Committee on Rehabilitation and Assistive Robotics, I supported the organization of many workshops and tutorials. We are currently planning to hold the winter school in cooperation with other TCs.
· As an Associate Editor, I have been involved with the IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L) since the first issue, and was able to contribute to the launch of RA-L.
· As the Program Chair of IEEE/SICE International Symposium on System Integration (SII 2016), I worked with the organizing committee to elaborate an attractive program, including three plenary lectures by distinguished professors, and contributed to the successful execution of the symposium. After SII 2016, I became a member of the steering committee of SII.
· As the Secretary of IROS 2004 and ICRA 2009, I successfully helped organizing these conferences in cooperation with the respective organizing committee members.

POSITION STATEMENT

If elected, I would like to focus my effort on the field of the following two issues to contribute the Robotics and Automation Society based on my experience as an associate vice president for technical activities and organizing committee member of multiple conferences.

In first place, while robotics are one way to solve many challenges faced by modern society, the integration of researches from different backgrounds is important to include not only engineering but also social studies in order to produce new systems. For achieving such interdisciplinary research, I would like to provide opportunities and encourage the closer collaborations among the existing 44 Technical Committees (TCs) of RAS. Since most TCs are very active, the organization of joint workshops, symposiums, and summer/winter schools would be attractive for researchers with different background. I would also like to foster the creation of new TCs in trending fields to expand the RAS activities. Furthermore, I would like to discuss ways to encourage young researchers and students to join

multiple TCs in order to acquire knowledge of different research fields while connecting with other researchers, in order to nurture their leadership skills and produce valuable members for RAS and other societies.

In second place, since the scale of RAS flagship conferences such as ICRA and IROS is rapidly growing, the organizing committee of each conference is trying to determine the most adequate format such as poster presentations, multi-track oral presentations or a combination of both. Since it is expected that the number of presentations and participants will double, e.g. 2,000 presentations and 7,000 participants, I consider that discussing this situation is essential for increasing the benefits for participants without reducing the quality of the conferences while decreasing the administrative efforts for conference organizers.