IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - March 2014 - 4

FROM THE EDITOR'S DESK

Robotics or Automation?
By Eugenio Guglielmelli

ast November, I attended the very
successful IEEE\RSJ International
Conference on Intelligent Robots
and Systems (IROS) in Tokyo,
one of the flagship conferences of our
society. My first IROS conference was in
Munich in 1994. At that time, I presented a paper on medical robotics,
which later became my first IEEE Robotics and Automation Magazine
(RAM) paper.
I was happy to report
Twenty years
to the Board that
later, IROS and
RAM are again
2013 was a record
linked together
year for regular paper
to an important
turning point in
submissions to RAM.
my career: during IROS 2013, I
had the privilege to run my first RAM
Editorial Board meeting as the Editorin-Chief (EiC).
I was happy to report to the Board
that 2013 was a record year for regular
paper submissions to RAM. Papers
from 28 different countries were submitted, with Asia featuring as the leading geographical area that contributes to
our regular submissions. This result was
particularly important in a year that featured lower submissions than usual to
special issues. In this respect, the Board
made some important decisions to
implement some of the actions directly
derived from the feedback of RAM
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MRA.2014.2306658
Date of publication: 10 March 2014

IEEE ROBOTICS & AUTOMATION MAGAZINE

readers, as summarized in my
last editorials. New guidelines for submission of special issue proposals were
approved so as to have a more
structured process and timeline
for such a significant input flow for our
publication pipeline. A member of the
editorial board will be appointed to
supervise each special issue to assist
guest editor(s) in disseminating and
implementing the special issue process
in the most effective way.
Six very appealing new special issues
were approved to appear in the next two
years. You can track detailed contents
and timeline for each of them on our
official website. I am sure you will find a
good match with your research interests
in more than one of the call for papers
that are going to be launched soon. The
first of them, the RAM Special Issue on
Emerging Advances and Applications in
Automation, is announced in this issue
of RAM. I was particularly glad that the
Board approved the idea to give maximum priority to this topic, since the
fundamental role that RAM can play in
attracting interest in the automation
domain was clearly outlined by the
recent RAS member survey.
I also took the opportunity given by
the launch of this special issue on Automation to use the Turning Point column
in this issue for an interview with Ken
Goldberg, EiC of IEEE Transactions on
Automation Science and Engineering
(T-ASE). He answers some basic questions on an updated definition of auto-

MARCH 2014

mation, and consequently on
the actual scope of T-ASE. In
addition, you will find in the
next RAM issue a similar
interview with Frank Park, the
new EiC of the IEEE Transactions
on Robotics (T-RO), who will help to
depict the most recent picture of the
robotics domain, and consequently of
the T-RO scope. I am sure that their
answers will be very informative to our
readers for taking the most appropriate
choice when submitting a paper to the
magazine rather than to one of our two
flagship journals.
On December 2013, two members
of the Editorial Board, Raffaella Carloni
and Youfu Li, completed their extended
term. I wish to express them my sincere
gratitude for their tremendous and
highly competent effort as Associate
Editors over the last four years.
The special issue topic of the March
issue is focused on autonomous vehicles. I am sure you will be interested in
many exciting results reported from
such a hot area, which is attracting
major research and industrial investments worldwide. Potential impact on
reducing accidents, optimize traffic
management, and reduce energy consumption is enormous. It seems that I
will soon be able to write one of my
future editorials while my car is driving
me home on its own, and I wonder
whether this will be considered a milestone for Robotics or for Automation.
Enjoy the issue!

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - March 2014