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Dear friends,
It's a pleasure to salute you again through this new issue of our monthly newsletter. As you surely know,
one of the world biggest robotics conference, IROS 2011, took place a few weeks ago in San Francisco, USA.
Lots of robots from academia and industry got the focus of attention those days!!
As tradition, the SAC committee organized some activities for student attendees. Thank you very much for
joining us!!! You can find the IROS 2011 SAC report by Anya Dervakoba and Tamas Haidegger below.
Remember you can still participate in the Photo Contest and Student Reporters Program! See the details
in next sections.
You will also find information about the last RAS SAC call for volunteers and IEEE benefits,
and our periodic sections toobots, interesting news and coming events. Please make
use of navigation bar on the left to scroll through sections you are most interested in.
It is worth mentioning that we are very grateful to all those who participated in the survey that we sent
you. All the results have been processed and you can find some of them below. This will really
help us improve the newsletter and include new and useful content for you all!
Finally, don't forget that you are always invited to be part of all activities promoted by the SAC
committee. Please visit our site
to keep updated of SAC projects and get involved!
Keep in touch!
Marcelo
Cochair 2011/Newsletter Editor
Last call for 2012 RAS SAC Chairs
The IEEE Robotics and Automation Society is seeking applications for the new board of the Society's Student
Activities Committee (SAC) - one chair and two co-chairs. The chair will serve for two calendar years (2012-13),
and the co-chairs for one year term in 2012.
The board members of the SAC are appointed from a slate of candidates, approved by the Membership
Activities Board. Candidates may be undergraduate or graduate students, but must be student members of the IEEE Robotics and
Automation Society in good standing.
The ideal candidate has strong social and professional skills, willing to take part in the ongoing activities and having
proposals for new initiatives. There is no geographical preference!
If you wish to be considered for nomination, please visit our wiki
for further information. All applications are due October 31, 2011.
Looking forward to seeing your application!
IEEE RAS MAB
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IROS 2011 SAC Report
By Anya Derbakova and
Tamas Haidegger
This year's IROS was held in the exciting city of San Francisco, USA, 25-30th September. The conference
turned out to be a great success with the number of attendees far exceeding the expected (1800+). The
number of conference submissions this year was also unusually high, resulting in a much lower acceptance
rate and an exceptional quality of work presented. The conference organizers did an amazing job at
structuring the technical sessions and plenary talks, which were given by notable individuals such as
Marc Raibert (founder of Boston Dynamics) and Sebastian Thrun (Stanford/Google self-driving car pioneer),
among others. The attendees were also engaged with numerous demonstrations from companies ranging from
Willow Garage and KUKA Robotics to Intuitive Surgical. While there, those interested could learn how
to implement simulations of the PR2 robot operation, sword fight with a KUKA arm, or perform a simulated
surgical procedure. All this is just a small subset at the numerous activities that took place at IROS.
The Robotics and Automation Society's Student Activities Committee (RAS SAC) also did its part to
insure that students in particular remained engaged at the conference and had plenty of opportunities
to interact and meet their colleagues. We attempted to organize events that would be fun and exciting
for everyone attending.
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SAC started the week off by organizing an informal student lunch event. We attempted to select a location
that would be representative of the quality of local cuisine, but also quite close to the conference
venue as the time between technical sessions was quite limited. Around 20 of us settled in a nearby
Thai restaurant called "The Old Siam". At first, we were not so certain of its quality due to the
semi-inviting external appearance, but it proved to be absolutely delicious to everyone's taste.
Highly recommended!
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Other lunch events organized by SAC were the GOLD Lunch and the Lunch with Leaders. These were designed
to be more formal networking events for upcoming and recent graduates/post-docs (GOLD) as well as
current graduate students (LwL). Lunches took place in the nearby Serrano Hotel, and were attended
by invited guests such as Prof. Nikolaus Papanikolopoulos (RAS vice-president for conference activities),
Prof. Gerd Hirzinger (DLR director), Prof. Martin Buehler (iRobot director) and Dr. Steve Cousins
(Willow Garage CEO), among others. Despite all our efforts, there was some confusion about the time,
location and attendance of the two lunches. We extend sincere apologies to students affected by
this and vouch to do better at next year's ICRA!
To conclude the formal events of the student program, the SAC encouraged students to attend the
SAC Board Meeting, to contribute their ideas on how to improve student activities and increase
student involvement at future conferences. This meeting was unfortunately being held at 6:30am,
but due to our ardent advertising, this was the best attended SAC Board Meeting ever! It was
also quite productive, as a handful of ideas were brought forth to be presented at the Member
Activities Board Meeting later in the week.
Students also had the opportunity to network and to get to know each other in more informal
settings. We organized several evening events following the regular conference program. On one
occasion, we attempted to visit San Francisco's Pier 39 or "Fisherman's Warf". Unfortunately,
it turned out that on the specific day we came it was mostly closed. Though we decided to continue
the evening at one of the local pubs and the entertainment continued! Finally, for those students
remaining on Friday, we organized a student biking trip to the Golden Gate Bridge. This event
turned out to be very successful! A handful of people came out, which was a perfect sided group
for this event, and the weather was simply amazing. Thanks to those who decided to join us!
This concludes the brief overview of student events at IROS 2011. We had a great time getting
to know all of you and hope to meet you once again at next year's ICRA!
If you have any comments, concerns, or suggestions regarding any of the RAS SAC activities,
please don't hesitate to write to us as ras_sac@ieee.org.
The SAC expresses its gratitude to all people involved in the organization of IROS11.
Special thanks go to our beloved girls, Anya Derbakova, Laura Margheri and Ann Majewicz,
and the guys as well, Tom Wedlick, Jens Windau and many others.
As additional information you can take a look at IROS 2011 Expo Gallery
posted by Evan Ackerman in IEEE Spectrum Automaton blog. This is a little gallery of some of the robots from
the expo floor of the IROS conference.
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IROS 2011 Contests -- STILL OPEN
New deadline for submissions: October 31.
Student Photo Contest
All RAS students are invited to participate in the Student Photo Contest. The IROS 2011 Student
Photo Contest is a seasonal amateur photography competition, which is open to IROS 2011 undergraduate
and graduate student attendees. The judging of the submitted photographs will be made by the IEEE
RAS SAC, involving independent judges. Three winners will be announced. You can upload your pictures
HERE! All submitted entries will be retained for archival purposes.
Student Reporters
The chance is given to you to become famous with your writing skills: we are calling for entertaining,
yet professionally relevant reports on the different Sessions of IROS 2011. Please submit your report to
RAS_student_reporters@ieee.org.
You can register your report intention here.
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Learn more about IEEE and its benefits!
Free E-books for IEEE Members
Check out a sample of free e-books available to members from the IEEE eBook Classics collection. The books cover such
topics as linear time-invariant systems, magnetism, wave propagation, and how to make presentations.
Read more...
Student Transition & Elevation Partnership (STEP)
IEEE STEP was developed to provide a standardized yet localized program for facilitating the transition from student
member to young professional, by introducing the opportunities and benefits of IEEE membership during the onset
of a career.
Funding is available for STEP activities including the graduation reception for groups holding an event
with a minimum of 10 recent graduates.
Read more...
Learn more about IEEE membership benefits
here.
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Some newsletter survey results!
A few weeks ago we sent to all student members of society a survey to learn more about our readers. We
are very pleased that there was great participation and we want to thank you!!
We recieved answers from 89 students mainly from regions 8, 9 and 10.
Here are some graphs that illustrate some of the results, while you can check the complete report
here:
I want to thank Vivek Bhagat who has really helped us with the survey and the analysis of results.
We hope to improve soon this newsletter to increase your satisfaction!
Thank you very much!
Marcelo
Newsletter Editor
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Toolboots: Useful Resources
By Tania Thanda
The Electronics Teacher--All About Electronics And Robotics
Need for today's world is Robotics with Intelligence. The Electronics Teacher defines the core material for Robotic
Domain- Sensing, Planning, Modelling and Control. Various robotic technologies have been thoroughly elucidated here.
Sensors- its use, levels of processing, types, machine vision; Effectors-Legs, wheels, arms, wings, fins; Actuators- DC
motors, gearing, electronic control; Controller- open and closed loop systems, architecture; Arms- 7 degrees of freedom;
Artificial Intelligence and Mobility have been carefully annotated with minute details. Numerous other features like Types
of Robots (Mobile, Stationary, Autonomous, Virtual, BEAM, etc), History of Robots, their uses, advancements and other
exciting points have been cited.
The cool part is that the tutorial mentioned here suites all robotic junkies as it is described in four different phases - 1.Simple
(basics, tools required, components, design), 2. Beginners (hardware tutorials on robot brain, motor, sensor, bodywork and
programming tutorials on introduction, variables, loops, conditional statements), 3. Intermediate (DC, servo and stepper
motors, A-D and D-A converters, BasicX, Obstacle avoidance using Robocore, GP2D02, Lego), 4. Advanced- (Building motor
driver, feedback motor control, program technology, multitasking). Click and dwell in the world where knowledge resides...
Read more...
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Interesting News about Robotics
Free Stanford AI online course Draws 160K Students!!
A free online course at Stanford on artificial intelligence has attracted more than 160,000 students from
around the world. This course is Introduction to artificial intelligence and it is taught by
professors Sebastian Thrun and Peter Norvig.
You can read this article
for some more details. We have checked in their twitter
for the exact number of students enrolled: 160,000 students!!! WOW!
You can find and have free access to all lessons given so far in
https://www.ai-class.com/.
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Upcoming Conferences Deadlines
Here we leave you a remainder with some upcoming conferences and deadlines:
Coming conferences:
- 11th IEEE -RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robot (HUMANOIDS 2011)
From October 26th to October 29th in Bled, Slovenia
- 9th IEEE International Symposium on Safety, Security, and Rescue Robotics (SSRR 2011)
From November 1st to November 6th in Kyoto, Japan
- 5th International Conference on Automation, Robotics and Applications (ICARA 2011)
From December 6th to December 8th in Wellington, New Zealand
Next deadlines:
- ASME Manufacturing Science and Engineering Conference (MSEC 2012)
From June 4th to June 8th, in Notre Dame, IN
Submission deadline: 1st November 2011
- 5th IEEE RAS & EMBS International Conference on Biomedical Robotics and Biomechatronics (BioRob 2012)
From June 24th to June 28th in Roma, Italy
Submission deadline: 30th November 2011
Don't forget that you can check the RAS Calendar for more events information.
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