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In this issue
Take a look
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IROS 2011 Website
RAS Society Website
IEEE Spectrum Robotics Channel
Automaton Blog
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See RAS Robotics Positions site
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Hello Everyone,
It was a wonderful experience to meet many of you at IROS. Probably, this
was the best conference
out of the many I have aready attended,
and definitely the people made it so special.
You can find the
IROS 2011 SAC report by Anya below, and we are also looking forward to seeing yours!
Remember, you can still participate in the Photo Contest and Student Reporters Program
until the end
of October! See the details in next sections.
Hope we conviced those who were not RAS members before IROS to join us.
See your membership options
below! You will also find
information about the last RAS SAC call for volunteers and
IEEE benefits. Please make use of navigation bar on the left to scroll through
sections you are most interested in.
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!
(Apologies for multiple copies of this newsletter.)
Keep in touch!
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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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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Not a RAS member yet? Join us
today!
IEEE is the world's largest professional association. It provides access to the
industry's most current and essential technical information, networking opportunities, career
development tools,
and many other exclusive benefits to its
members. Learn more about membership benefits
here.
In addition, IEEE has 38 societies that represent
a wide range of technical interests by providing publications,
conferences, and community networking.
The Robotics and Automation
Society (RAS) is focused
on both applied and theoretical
sides of robotics and automation. Here, Robotics is defined to include intelligent machines
and systems used in a variety of areas. For example, space exploration, human
services, or manufacturing. Automation, on
the other hand,
includes the use of automated methods in various applications such as in a factory, office, or home
setting, and laboratory automation or transportation systems to improve
performance. The RAS society aids in
promoting close
cooperation and exchange of technical information among its members and affiliates. For this
reason, the society holds regular meetings for the presentation of papers and
their discussion as well as
sponsoring appropriate
periodicals and special technical publications. The
Robotics and Automation Magazine and the Transactions on Robotics are the highest ranked journals in the
field. Finally, we do not need to introduce the flagship conferences of
the RAS:
ICRA
and IROS,
both provided at a significant discount to IEEE
RAS members.
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.
Go to top
Interesting News about Robotics
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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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