IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - December 2018 - 4

from the editor's Desk

Coordinating Conference
and Journal Papers
By Bram Vanderborght

I

n the June 2018 "President's Message,"
Wolfram Burgard described, as the
title indicates, "New Challenges for
the IEEE Robotics and Automation
Society." Our IEEE Robotics and
Automation Society (RAS) president
stated that, in the past several years, the
RAS has made
substantial pro-
gress in increas-
Our IEEE Robotics
ing the quality
and Automation
of our flagship
conferences and
Society president
journals but
stated that, in the
that cooperation
among confer-
past several years,
ences and jour-
the RAS has made
nals will further
improve the ef-
substantial progress
ficiency of all pro-
in increasing the
cesses involved.
Dr. Burgard
quality of our
suggested that,
flagship conferences
inspired by the
excellent results
and journals.
of our new IEEE
Robotics and
Automation Letters, we should aim for
a tight collaboration between RAS
conferences and journals. As such, we
want to progressively discourage the
traditional evolutionary model (a short
paper for conference presentation and

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MRA.2018.2870986
Date of publication: 12 December 2018

4

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IEEE ROBOTICS & AUTOMATION MAGAZINE

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a longer one with additional
experimental results for the
journal version) because it
requires considerable writ-
ing, reviewing, and editing,
while reducing our impact
factors. Frank Park has already
successfully piloted this as editor-in-
chief for IEEE Transactions on Robotics (T-RO) at the IEEE International
Conference on Robotics and Automa-
tion (ICRA) 2017 and 2018, and we
will also extend this to IEEE Robotics
and Automation Magazine for ICRA
2019 in Montréal, Canada. There are,
however, some rules similar to those
for T-RO.
For ICRA 2019, eligible papers must
have been published, or accepted for
publication, in IEEE Robotics and Automation Magazine during the period
1 June-31 December 2018. Most of the
paper's key ideas may have never ap-
peared at a conference with published
proceedings (e.g., the paper is not the
evolved version of a previous confer-
ence paper). At least one author of the
paper commits to register for the con-
ference and present the paper, satisfy-
ing all the registration and presentation
requirements. Authors must agree that
the paper is subject to the same re-
quirements as regular papers (full reg-
istration of one author, two papers
maximum per registration). The ICRA
program committee makes rejection/
acceptance decisions and assigns

December 2018

papers to sessions, as with
regular conference papers.
As such, we want to offer
our members improved
services and add to our
efforts to make our confer-
ences and journals the most influ-
ential of their kind in our field.
In This Issue
As eyes in the sky, drones are booming,
with many applications in infrastruc-
ture; however, these are limited to
monitoring and surveillance of, for
example, a bridge. In addition, under-
water robots are being widely employed
as a tool for mapping the seafloor using
several sensors. Still, a large number of
applications exist that go beyond sur-
veying capabilities, and the possibility
of manipulating objects with these two
challenging technologies could open
up an entirely new set of applications.
Both underwater and aerial robots are
floating-base robotic systems, and this
fact makes their control different from
classic ground mobile manipulators.
This special issue provides up-to-date
results and novel advanced solutions
for floating manipulation, from the
point of view of both aerial and under-
water fields. I want to thank Matteo
Fumagalli (University of Aalborg) and
Enrico Simetti (University of Genova)
for guest editing this special issue. Enjoy!
IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - December 2018

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - December 2018
