IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - September 2013 - 95

The second program is a
fast track, and the mentors are
mentoring program. This proalways kept up to date with
gram has two aspects: 1) for
the advances or stagnation of
undergraduate students and
the youngest Women in Engi2) for early career researchers
neering's (WIE's) conditions.
(at the post-doctoral and
Promoting WIE is an
assistant professor level). A
important duty for me that I
pool of volunteer graduate
enjoy fulfilling. I have had the
students has been assembled
chance to choose freely and
to offer mentoring for underentirely my career path and
2. The lecture before the experimental program
graduates. Students can Figure
am fully supported in each
explaining the aim of the experiments.
choose a mentor depending
decision by my family, my
on their future career path,
superiors, and my peers. I
major, or affinity. The menhope that each young girl can
tors offer counseling, discusbe offered the same opportusions, tips, and experiences.
nity and, for that, I want to
For the researchers, a pool of
reassure them and their parfaculty members has been
ents that there is nothing that
assembled to answer mentees'
a woman cannot do. In parneeds. Ideally, mentor and
ticular, robotics is such a
mentee pick each other.
broad and emerging field that
There is only one rule: the
there is room for every talmentee and mentor should
ented and motivated young
contact each other at least Figure 3. The demo of the NAO robot before programming it to
woman. More than covering
once a month to discuss the analyze its center of pressure (CoP) trajectory with a Nintendo Wii.
the fields of mechanical engipoints the mentee wants clarneering, electrical engineerified or problems for which she wants career choices and students' supervision. ing, and computer science, robotics also
some advice. I have mentored a few I hope to be good at listening and give makes it possible to work closely in colyoung researchers in our department for some good pieces of advice. Of course, laboration with so many other fields,
three years now, and I found it very each person's experience is personal and including medicine, psychology, design,
enjoyable. It does not take up much of unique, but it is important to share with and arts, that there is definitely a career
my time; we sometimes meet but often each other what we have learned from path that fits each individual.
exchange e-mails. We talk a lot about our mistakes. The mentees can be on the

tc spotlight (continued from p. 25)
George M. Whitesides (Harvard University), Peter Fratzl (Max Planck Institute),
Brad Nelson (ETH Zürich), Fritz Vollrath (University of Oxford), and Norman Packard (European Centre for Living Technology).
To promote this research field, the
cochair of the TC participates on the
Editorial Board of Soft Robotics, a peerreviewed journal dedicated to the science and engineering of soft materials
in mobile machines, with the first issue
available in spring 2014. The cochair
also coordinates Robosoft, coordination
actions on activities related to soft
robotics research on a European scale.
Robosoft is sponsored by E.U. Framework Programme 7 and will be started
in October 2013.

Future Challenges
In the next ten years, many scientific
and technological challenges will be
addressed by the TC . The first challenge is to meet the requirement of
developing functional and intelligent
materials with controllable mechanical
properties and adaptive functions for
sensing and actuating, which are capable of being fabricated and assembled,
mass producible, and safe. The second
is obtaining a thorough understanding
of the way soft bodies are used in animals on the basis of the guidance from
biology and other related disciplines.
Third, the establishment of a simulation and modeling technique of soft
bodies behavior, particularly for boosting collaboration among researchers

from various disciplines. Finally, the
integration aspects that will make the
research ready for practical applications, such as biomedical or rescue scenarios, must be explored.
To address the challenges effectively, the TC has formed several communication channels. The main one is
a public homepage (softrobotics.org)
and its associated mailing list, with
265 registered e-mail addresses as of
June 2013. Since May 2013, the TC
produced a bimonthly newsletter to
organize and promote the latest
achievement of its members. We
always encourage new members to
join us. Anyone can subscribe to the
mailing list by visiting https://sympa.
ethz.ch/sympa/info/softrobotics.

september 2013

Ieee rObOtICs & AUtOmAtION mAGAZINe

http://www.softrobotics.org https://sympa http://www.ethz.ch/sympa/info/softrobotics

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - September 2013