IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - December 2014 - 6

President's Message

The Robotics and Automation
Melting Pot
By Raja Chatila

he IEEE Robotics & Automation
Society (RAS) members organize
about 40 conferences sponsored
or cosponsored by our Society in
different venues worldwide. This year, the
IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) was in Hong
Kong, the IEEE International Conference
on Automation Science
and EngineerA challenging issue
ing in Taipei,
the IEEE/RSJ
related to conferences
International
is the growing number
Conference on
Intelligent Roof workshops and
bots and Systutorials organized
tems (IROS) in
Chicago, and
along with major RAS
IEEE-RAS
conferences.
International
Conference on
Humanoid Robots (Humanoids) in Madrid. They are
the showplace of robotics and automation
and attract thousands of participants yearly from academia and industry. Continuous discussions and exchanges make
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MRA.2014.2368396
Date of publication: 19 December 2014

IEEE ROBOTICS & AUTOMATION MAGAZINE

them the birthplace of new ideas and of
numerous projects. Transdisciplinary or
topical, they are the melting pot of robotics and automation.
Each conference is a new great experience and the occasion of experimenting novel formats and organization
schemes. With conference attendance
growing along with membership, the
number of tracks in our large conferences is increasing. IROS 2014 in Chicago chaired by Kevin Lynch (general
chair) and Lynne Parker (program
chair) offered a risky challenge. Only
three tracks were organized, and each
paper was allocated a short 3-min oral
pitch presentation. The oral sessions
were followed by 80-min interactive sessions during which the authors could
present their work on a monitor and discuss in detail with the participants. This
completely changed the dynamics of the
conference. The survey taken after the
conference, where 46% of the 1,626 registered participants answered, about half
of them students, shows that this new
format was very appreciated (see http://
www.iros2014.org/general-information/
survey-results). This offers a solid base
for future conference organizers to
reflect on the format of our conferences.

December 2014

Another challenging issue related to
conferences is the growing number of
workshops and tutorials organized
along with major RAS conferences (e.g.,
41 at ICRA 2014, 27 at IROS 2014).
These widely attended events are sometimes small conferences by themselves,
with call for papers and a reviewing
process, and sometimes recurring over
several years. They are of great value to
membership. We probably need to
improve the way workshops and tutorials are selected and organized to add
more coherence while preserving openness and diversity.
The Conference Activities Board
(CAB) chaired by Oussama Khatib is
responsible for the management and
planning of all RAS conferences. It is
organized along four main subcommittees addressing four aspects: financial
(Paolo Fiorini), operational (Torsten
Kroger), technical (Vijay Kumar), and
cultural (Kazuhito Yokoi). Within CAB,
a reflection on all the issues pertaining
to conferences is going on to provide a
better environment to the community
and to keep our conferences at the highest possible quality to meet the expectations of our membership.

http://http:// http://www.iros2014.org/general-information/

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - December 2014