IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - June 2011 - 123

SOCIETY NEWS

Chapter Activities

Many IEEE Robotics and Automation
Society (RAS) Chapters have been
very active last year. The major events
reported to us are the following:
l Chile Chapter, Javier Ruiz-del-Solar,
chair: Members of the Chile Chapter
organized the 4th IEEE Latin American Summer School and Poster
Competition on Robotics, December 2010 (http://www.evic.cl/english/). Plans for the 2011 event are in
progress.
l Portland (Oregon) Chapter, Edward C.
Epp, chair: Oregon Robotics Tournament and Outreach Program
(ORTOP), a program within the
Oregon University System Chancellor's office, is an affiliate partner
of the FIRST competition. It supports robotics programs for 6-18year olds. Epp was the ORTOP
chair of the FIRST Tech Challenge
(FTC), which serves the high-school
students. In 2009, Epp, an Intel
engineer, gave more than 600 h to
the FTC, and other members of the
RAS Chapter as well gave time.
l United Kingdom/Republic of Ireland Chapter, John Gray and Darwin Caldwell, chairs: The Chapter
sponsored a symposium on reflexive control of humanoid robots at
Manchester university (50þ attendees). They are cosponsoring the
12th Conference Toward Autonomous Robotic Systems (TAROS)
event later this year. The main event
on automation will be the Symposium on Advanced Automation in
the food industry to be held at ABB
headquarters, Milton Keynes, in
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MRA.2011.941641

*
Chapter

Date Approved

Chair

Croatia Section

18 November 2010

Zdenko Kovaciac

Guadalajara Section (Mexico)

13 October 2010

Bernadino Castillo Toledo

Indonesia Section Joint CS/RA

19 February 2011

Muhammad Murti

New Hampshire Section

19 February 2011

Michael Sousa

Worcester County Section

13 January 2010

Taskin Padir

May. This will be supported by a
large industry-sponsored exhibition of state-of-the-art automation solutions in the sector.
l Galveston (Texas) Joint AES/C/
EMB/PE/RA/VT Chapter, S Taqvi:
The Chapter organized an all-day
dual Workshop on Automation
and Robotics (WAR) and INNOVATION on 12 November.
We look forward to the learning of
other Chapter activities.
IEEE Automaton Blog
One of the most popular and reliable
technoblogs on the Web is Spectrum's
AUTOMATON blog. Both Editor

Erico Guizzo and Senior Writer Evan
Ackerman are RAS members, and
contributors include Society Members
Jeanne Dietsch, Markus Waibel, and
Samuel Bouchard. Several posts relating to the possibilities and limitations
on using robots in disaster areas, such
as the earthquake and nuclear events
in Japan, provided a welcome-reality
check.
RAS YouTube Channel
The RAS YouTube Channel provides
links to cool, real robot videos sent to
us by our members (in contrast to the
faked ones that are plentiful on the
Web). For an example of one of our

*
Student Branch Chapter

Date Approved

Advisor

gico Pascual
Instituto Tecnolo
Bravo (Colombia)

21 October 2010

Victor Henandez

Univ Distrital Francisco Jose De
Caldas, RA24 (Colombia)

16 July 2010

Ronald Gutierrez

Univ Nacional San Antonio Abad
del Cusco (Peru)

1 October 2010

Walter Utrilla Mego

Universidad de San Martin
de Porres Peru

13 October 2010

Antonio Moran

Universidad Nacional
del Callao, Peru

19 April 2010

Jorge Valerio-Araoz

University Technologica de
Panama

30 December 2010

Karla C. Arosemena

Date of publication: 14 June 2011

1070-9932/11/$26.00ª2011 IEEE

JUNE 2011

IEEE ROBOTICS & AUTOMATION MAGAZINE

123

http://www.evic.cl/eng

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - June 2011