IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - December 2018 - 97

(a)

(b)

Figure 3. (a) The University of Pennsylvania's aerial robot performing an agile maneuver through a small gap. (b) The University of
Seville's Robot Laboratory aerial robot demonstrating factory logistics in the EUROC-ARCOW European project.

The International Conference on
Unmanned Aircraft Systems (ICUAS)
annual events continue to grow and
impact the community. We organized
ICUAS 2015 (9-12 June 2015, Denver,
Colorado), ICUAS 2016 (7-10 June
2016, Arlington, Virginia), ICUAS 2017
(13-16 June 2017, Miami, Florida),
and ICUAS 2018 (12-15 June 2018,
Dallas, Texas).
We also consolidated the Workshop
on Research and Education on Unmanned Aerial Systems (RED-UAS),
organizing RED-UAS 2015 (23-25
November 2015, Cancun, Mexico) and
RED-UAS 2017 (3-5 October 2017,
Linköping, Sweden).
We generated a new event, the International Symposium on Aerial Robotics, which held annual conferences in
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on 19-20
June 2017 and 11-12 June 2018.
Moreover, we continued the organization of ICRA workshops: "Aerial
Robotics Manipulation and Load Transportation" (26 May 2015, Seattle, Washington); "Aerial Robotics Manipulation:
From Simulation to Real Life" (16 May
2016, Stockholm, Sweden); "Autonomous Structural Monitoring and Maintenance Using Aerial Robots" (29 May
2017, Singapore), a full-day workshop;
and "Aerial Robotic Inspection and
Maintenance: Research Challenges,
Field Experience, and Industry Needs"
(25 May 2018, Brisbane, Australia), also
a full-day workshop. Recently, we also
organized a full-day workshop "Aerial

Manipulation" at the 2018 IEEE/RSJ
International Conference on Intelligent
Robots and Systems.
Additionally, the RAS-TC sponsored
workshops in the European Robotic
Forums: "Aerial Robotics for Inspection
and Maintenance (21 March 2016, Ljubiana, Slovenia), "Aerial Robotics
Inspection from Prototypes to Industrial
Applications" (24 March 2017, Edinburgh, United Kingdom), and "Aerial
Robotics for Industrial Inspection,
Maintenance, and Transportation" (13
March 2018, Tempere, Finland).
The RAS-TC also sponsored
national events such as those organized
by the Spanish Society of Research and
Development in Robotics (the sister
Society of the RAS): "Workshop on
Aerial Robotics for Inspection and
Maintenance" (7 July 2016, Madrid,
Spain), "Workshop on Robotics and
Unmanned Systems for Security Applications" (2 December 2016. Madrid,
Spain), and "Robot 2017: Third Iberian
Robotics Conference" (22-24 November 2017, Sevilla, Spain).
Additionally, we have contributed to
new and relevant publications, including the following collective works:
● Encyclopedia of Robotics. M.H. Ang,
O. Khatib, and B. Siciliano, Eds. The
"Aerial robotics" section was coordinated by A. Ollero. The book is
scheduled for publication in 2019.
● Unmanned Aircraft Systems. R. Blockley, W. Shyy, E. Atkins, A. Ollero, and A.
Tsourdos, Eds. Wiley, 2016, 728 pages.

●

Available: https://www.wiley.com/
en-us/Unmanned+Aircraft+Systemsp-9781118866467
Handbook of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. K. Valavanis and G. Vachtsevanos, Eds. Springer. The handbook
currently has almost 3,000 pages;
a new edition is planned for 2019.
Available: http://www.springer
.com/us/book/9789048197064

Future Directions
We believe the following topics will
have a scientific and technological
impact on the future of the aerial robots:
● next-generation designs to increase
flight endurance and safety in interactions with people, as well as hybrid
aerial-ground locomotion robots
● aerial robotic manipulation by
including multi-UAV aerial manipulation
● very agile and fast aerial robots and
large teams of robots based on environment perception with limited
computation and power capabilities
These three topics are fully compatible
with the interest groups noted previously.
Acknowledgments
We thank the many individuals and
research groups that actively contribute
to all the activities of the RAS-TC. We
also thank Giuseppe Loianno for organizing the International Symposium on
Aerial Robotics and for his review of
this column.

december 2018

IEEE ROBOTICS & AUTOMATION MAGAZINE

https://www.wiley.com/en-us/unmanned+Aircraft+Systems-p-9781118866467 https://www.wiley.com/en-us/unmanned+Aircraft+Systems-p-9781118866467 https://www.wiley.com/en-us/unmanned+Aircraft+Systems-p-9781118866467 http://www.springer.com/us/book/9789248197064 http://www.springer.com/us/book/9789248197064

IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - December 2018

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