IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - September 2010 - 5

Overall, RAS completed the last year with a sound financial position because of strong revenues through conferences, conference
and archival publications, and the rebound of the stock market.

Member Activities Board
The new Member Activities Board (MAB), which will serve
in 2010-2011, gathered for the first time in Anchorage. The
exact composition can be seen on our Web site. The board
seems full of energy, and all its committees are enthusiastic
about the future activities to be undertaken.
Kenji Suzuki, chair of the Chapter and International Activities
Committee, presented a plan to standardize and better check the
reporting of the activities on Chapters that the Society supports and
will lead an activity with the support of the Electronic Products
and Services Board (EPSB) for making it easier to generate the
report and publishing on the Web.
Andreas Birk, chair of Education Committee, will take the
lead, together with Tamas Haidegger, chair of the Student
Activities, in creating and coordinating the robotic competitions
and trying to work toward an ongoing ICRA robotics competition. Another important goal is to find way to regularly organize
summer schools, which are considered by the board a vital
activity and service of the Society.
Eugenio Guglielmelli, chair of the Membership Admissions
and Retention, showed that the Society is in really good shape and
the number of members is steadily increasing. He expressed the
desire to better organize the public relations activities of the Society,
taking also advantages of the upcoming digital version of RAM.
Dong Soo Kwon, chair of the Member Services Committee, will take the lead in the organization of the Women in
Engineering activities, proposed and coordinated by Mihoko
Otake, and the Graduates of the Last Decade (GOLD) Lunch,
which will be responsibility of MAB from next year.
Tamas Haidegger, the Student Activities chair, described
the multiple activities organized at ICRA and the many plans
to make our Society the perfect Society for students to grow
in their networks and career.
As an outcome of the meeting, we presented two motions
at the AdCom that allow the board to have a yearly recurring
budget to support the Women in Engineering activities and
some of the student activities.
Stefano Stramigioli
Vice President for Member Activities

Technical Activities
The GOLD luncheon at ICRA 2010 was attended by around 200
people. For the first time, reservations were required for the free
lunch boxes, since in the past the lunches quickly disappeared and
were not necessarily taken by GOLD. The focus was broadened
to include an introduction to all RAS services, not just technical
committees (TCs), with suggestions for possible roadmaps to service for young professionals. The luncheon began with an overall
introduction to RAS by President Kazuhiro Kosuge, followed by
10-min presentations concerning TCs (John Hollerbach),
SEPTEMBER 2010

Member Activities (Paolo Fiorini), Conference Activities
(Nikos Papanikolopoulos and Antonio Bicchi), and Publications Activities (Peter Luh and Seth Hutchinson). It was suggested and approved by AdCom that the GOLD luncheon be
transferred to Member Activities, given this broader focus.
A new TC on mobile manipulation was approved, with
Cochairs Oliver Brock, Dov Katz, and Siddhartha Srinivasa.
Each TC is subject to a triennial review process to make sure it
is sufficiently active, otherwise the TC is retired. A presentation
on the TC for space robotics was given by Rick Wagner and
was accepted by the Technical Activities Board. The annual
Most Active Technical Committee Award was given to Robot
Learning, which has only been in existence since 2008.
The Distinguished Lecturer (DL) program is also part of
Technical Activities. RAS will subsidize some of the travel costs
when a DL is invited to give a lecture, usually in an emerging
region. Each year, each DL updates a database indicating where
they have given presentations, and an award is given to each year's
most active DL. The 2009 award was given to Katsuhiro Ikeuchi.
John Hollerbach
Vice President for Technical Activities

Publication Activities
In a sweeping change made in the RAS AdCom meeting held in
Anchorage, Alaska, in May 2010, the Society decided to provide
electronic access to T-RO and T-ASE without charge to all
Members and Student Members starting 2011. This is to benefit
Members and Student Members, especially whose institutions do
not subscribe to these journals. For those who want to access conference proceedings, the RAS Society Member Digital Library
that we started in January 2010 will be a good option. It will allow
subscribing Members and Student Members to have online access
through IEEE Xplore (http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/) to papers from
the numerous RAS-sponsored or cosponsored conferences

RAM Goes Digital

AM is going through a major change for digital delivery. This is significantly beyond the current IEEE Xplore
delivery format of downloading one paper at a time, but
moving toward the next generation of delivery format of
Qmags, which can be read by Apple iPad or Amazon Kindle, among other platforms. An example of IEEE Spectrum
in the Qmags format can be found at http://online.qmags.
com/IEEESM0309T/Default.aspx. This change will also save
on the costs of magazine printing and mailing. To get ready
for this change, RAM Editor-in-Chief Peter Corke has been
working with IEEE staff to redesign the magazine.
The September and December 2010 issues of RAM will
be offered free to all Members and Student Members in
Qmags digital form. Please look forward to it and try it out.
Starting with the March 2011 issue, all members of RAS will
receive RAM in Qmags form, not paper, unless they choose
to pay the extra US$12.00 (US$6.00 for students) for a paper
subscription when they join or renew their memberships.

IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/ http://www.online.qmags

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - September 2010