IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - December 2017 - 112

EDUCATION

The 2017 IEEE RAS Technical Education
Program Activities: A Snapshot
By Paul Oh, Hannes Hoeppner, and M. Ani Hsieh

his has been another exciting
year, and we are using this
opportunity to highlight two
newly awarded Technical Education Programs (TEPs). This year
three TEPs were awarded: the Summer
School on Soft Manipulation; the Eighth
International Summer School on ScrewTheory-Based Methods in Robotics,
Summer Screws 2017; and the Winter
School on Consumer Robotics. Following is a summary of the activities at
this year's Summer School on Soft
Manipulation and Winter School on
Consumer Robotics.
For those of you who are considering
proposing an IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (RAS) TEP, we strongly
encourage you to apply. Guidelines for
preparing a proposal can be found at
http://www.ieee-ras.org/educationalresources-outreach/summer-schools. As
the deadline for next year's proposals
approaches, we will continue have more
information, so stay tuned!
Summer School on Soft
Manipulation
In July 2017, the IEEE RAS Summer
School on Soft Manipulation, supported
by the KUKA AG, Augsburg, Germany,
was held in the Abbey Frauenwörth on
the island of Frauenchiemsee, Germany,
under the auspices of the European
Union project Soft Manipulation [Figure 1(a)]. The newly formed TEP aims
to provide an interdisciplinary education on the benefits and challenges of
soft manipulation and to foster collaboration among the upcoming generation
of researchers. In addition to talks from
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MRA.2017.2761158
Date of publication: 13 December 2017

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IEEE ROBOTICS & AUTOMATION MAGAZINE

leading academics from related fields
of research, e.g., neuroscience, hand
biomechanics, and robotics, the TEP
included a poster session with 18 submissions, three promising in-depth student presentations, and a demo session
showing both advanced soft-hand prototypes and industrial applications
[Figure 1(b) and (c)]. One of the demos
showed the KUKA lightweight robot
iiwa, equipped with a vision system
and a soft hand, that can perceive and
grasp groceries.
The Summer School included three
workshops, where the 52 students enhanced and deepened their skills by
participating in lectures by experts on
hand design, simulation, and manipulation planning. The students were asked
to build and program soft robotic hands
to exploit predetermined environmental
constraints when grasping a defined set
of objects. This Summer School showed
that there is a considerable need for soft
manipulation education in the robotics
community. The success of this program has encouraged us to provide similar future events and to distribute the
concepts of soft manipulation within
robotic labs and industry.
For more information on the
school, visit http://rmc.dlr.de/somasummerschool.
Winter School on Consumer
Robotics
More than 30 IEEE students and professors gathered at the University of
Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) Drones and
Autonomous Systems Lab 4-7 January
2017 for the IEEE RAS Winter School
conference on consumer robotics and
product opportunities in the hospitality
industry. Winter School attendees heard

DECEMBER 2017

lectures from leaders in the technology
and hospitality industries, took field
trips to the 2017 Consumer Electronics
Show (CES), participated in workshops
on new consumer technologies, and
competed in a hackathon.
The Winter School kicked off with a
series of lectures from experts in the
robotics and hospitality industries.
Prof. Zexiang Li (Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and DJI,
Shenzhen, China), Prof. Ayanna Howard (Georgia Institute of Technology
and Zyrobotics, Atlanta), Dr. Tony
Lewis (University of Arizona, Tucson,
and Qualcomm, San Diego, California), and Dr. Ross Mead (University of
Southern California, Los Angeles, and
Semio, San Mateo, California) shared
their experiences with navigating academia and industry to convert their
research into products and companies.
They related some of the unexpected
challenges they faced in transitioning
their ideas from research to business,
and they offered their visions for the
future of the technology industry.
Salient advice to aspiring inventors and
entrepreneurs included exhortations to
supplement an engineering education
with business classes and to prioritize
customer feedback during the business
cycle.
Participants also heard from
respected names in the hospitality
industry, including Seth Schorr, chair
of the Las Vegas Grand; Dr. Richard
Rippee, director of the UNLV Hospitality Innovation Lab Nevada; Arte
Nathan, president and chief operating
officer at Strategic Development
Worldwide, Taos, New Mexico; and
Kevin Wright, regional technical
director at Caesars Entertainment

http://www.ieee-ras.org/educational http://rmc.dlr.de/soma

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