IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - March 2012 - 106

REGIONAL

Italian Robotics Community
By Gianluca Antonelli

he Italian ReFramework
Propublic is a coungramme (FP7). From
try located in
the Web site reporting
south-central
details of the ICT
Europe and is popuresearch in FP7 of the
lated by approxiEuropean Commismately 60 million
sion [6], the interested
citizens. It has been
reader can find a signiranked as the 23rd
ficant number of funded
most-developed counprojects with Italian
try [3] of the world,
partners (i.e., the Italand its quality of life
ian share on the Chalindex has been ranked
lenge on Cognitive
among the top ten of
Systems, Interaction,
Figure 1. The seventh annual IEEE-CASE held in Trieste, Italy, on 24-27
the world [1].
and Robotics project is
August 2011. From left: Alessandro Giua (program chair), Maria Pia Fanti
According to the (general chair and chair of the Italian Systems, Man, and Cybernetics
about 11%). As a sin"World Robotics 2011 Chapter), and Walter Ukovich (local chair).
gle case study, I would
Industrial Robots,"
like to mention a
published by the International Feder- past editor of the RAS Conference project to which I currently contribation of Robotics (IFR), Italy has been Editorial Board, the vice president for ute; the European Clearing House
one of the main producers of robots sys- publications, and a senior editor as well for Open Robotics Development
tems at the international level for as several associate editors of IEEE T- (ECHORD) [5] aims to reduce the
several years. The internal demand is RO belong to I-RAS.
gap between academy and industry by
also quite strong, representing apSince Rome was the venue for the handling approximately 50 focused
proximately 40% of the overall Euro- 2007 IEEE International Confer- experiments. ECHORD received the
pean market.
ence on Robotics and Automation largest funding within the previously
The Italian robotics community (ICRA), Italy has hosted ten RAS- stated challenge.
has always been very active. In the sponsored conferences [the IEEE ConThe positive landscape briefly illuspast few years, ference on Automation Science and trated the changes when considering
* two IEEE Robotics Engineering (IEEE-CASE) 2011, ICABB the indicators of private investments
and Automation 2010, RO-MAN 2010, IAV 2010, in robotics and automation. Several
Italy has been one of
Society (RAS) pre- WHCM 2010, MEMS 2009, SSRR metrics, in fact, put our country in
the main producers of
sidents and the 2007, AUTO-ID 2007, ICRA 2007, one of the last places among industripast editor-in-chief and IERA 2007]. Beyond IEEE, it is alized countries. In addition, acrobots systems at the
of IEEE Transac- worth noting that in 2011 the Inter- cording to Eurostat [4], we are at the
international level for
tions on Robotics national Federation of Automatic 11th place as innovative enterprises
(T-RO) belonged Control (IFAC) World Congress and in one of the last places in the
several years.
* to the Italian Chap- was also held in Milan, Italy. Figure 1 world as private fundings in R&D
ter of RAS (I-RAS). is a testimony of the last IEEE- over the gross product [2].
Currently, three members from the CASE, which was held in Trieste in
This is a snapshot of the environAdministrative Committee (AdCom), August 2011.
ment in which I-RAS works. The
Also worth noting are the institu- Chapter was established in 1999 and
tions that are always at the forefront currently has more than 200 memDigital Object Identifier 10.1109/MRA.2011.2181787
Date of publication: 26 March 2012
of European fundings of the Seventh bers, mainly from the academic
106

IEEE ROBOTICS & AUTOMATION MAGAZINE

MARCH 2012

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