(1) Fostering Interaction Between Robotists and Students (FIBRS) - Student/Chair Mentorship Program Funds Requested: 200 dollars for coffee/snack gift cards for students and mentors
Summary: Students can get involved in a fun, new way throughout the course of the conference. Get the behind the scenes exclusion of a conference! Students will get to directly see how sessions are synthesized, organized, and structured. This program will also give you a chance to interact with key researchers in your field.
Shadowing a Session Chair: Students will be paired with a Session Chair, where you will learn how to run a session. After arriving early to the session you've signed up for and introducing yourself to the Session Chair, you will have the opportunity to observe how the Chair is coordinating the session up close. Afterwards, depending on the session chair's schedule, you should have the opportunity to ask questions relating to the session such as ie. questions brought up in session, setup. Students who are interested should first find out who they would like to work with, by reading the session guide and selecting a chair that they would like to be their mentor. Please email the name of the session, the date, and your relevant contact information to creiley@jhu.edu. Keep in mind that occasionally people are busy, so you may also wish to provide an alternative mentor name. If more than one student chooses the same chair, it is up to that particular chair to decide how many students he/she can handle. Since students should give me a list of two of their choices. I'll send an email to the chair and if the first is unavailable or doesn't want more than one student, then I will contact the second chair. Otherwise, I'll email the student back and see if there's anyone else they would like to shadow.
(2) Fostering Interaction Between Robotists and Students (FIBRS) – The Future of Robotics Student Innovation Session
Funds Requested: $2000 (or company sponsor?)
Summary: A brainstorming session broken in groups as listed in technical committees consisting of students doing relevant research. This innovation session will be help for several hours on Monday, May 11th before the conference to identify current problems facing robotics, what are the hot new fields, future challenges from the students point of view. This is geared to be a students-only session to make students more comfortable about sharing their thoughts and since they are to hold the key to the future of the robotics field. Groups include: 1. Aerial Robotics and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
2. Agricultural Robotics
3. Algorithms for Planning and Control of Robot Motion
4. Autonomous Ground Vehicles and Intelligent Transportation Systems
5. Bio Robotics
6. Computer & Robot Vision
7. Haptics
8. Human-Robot Interaction & Coordination
9. Humanoid Robotics
10. Marine Robotics
11. Micro/Nano Robotics and Automation
12. Networked Robots
13. Rehabilitation & Assistive Robotics
14. Roboethics
15. Robot Learning
16. Safety Security and Rescue Robotics
17. Semiconductor Manufacturing Automation
18. Service Robotics
19. Software Engineering for Robotics and Automation
20. Space Robotics
21. Surgical Robotics
22. Telerobotics
Each group would then present their thoughts. Student would benefit by getting ideas for their projects, connect with other students, and bounce ideas off of each other. Pre-registration necessary. The event will be free for all students and costs would subsidize snacks or a meal.
Notes, presentations, and thoughts will be posted and shared afterwards on a wiki. We would like to write a feature article in IEEE RAS magazine highlighting the key ideas.
(3) Student Social Night – Karaoke
Funds Requested: Raising student registration by $10 each or $8K from Membership Activity Board, company sponsors, or Executive Committee.
Summary – A student social that allow students to experience Japanese culture and one of their favorite pastimes – Karaoke! This will be a chance to network and meet students. We plan to rent out one large karaoke bar which includes all you can drink and sing. Approximately 20 students will be in each room. We will Anticipated costs are 3,000 JPY with all-you-can-drink alcohol and some snacks for two hours in the evening. We are currently looking for a special fixed rate. The event is tentatively planned for May 14th, 2009 with the location TBA. Shogo Okamoto, a student on the local activities board, is contacting places and will inform us once the location has been secured. ICRA IDs will need to be shown upon entry. If we estimate 800 students attending the conference, then we will get $8,000 from student registration. If karaoke costs 30 dollars a person, we can fund roughly 250 students for the event. I have attached Dr. Tadokoro’s reply below in which he supports the proposal but has concerns about raising registration fees. ————-Satoshi Tadokoro’s reply————— Dear Carol It is not a good idea to increase the registration fee. It may has already announced and in this case it could not be changed. [This is] not a big budget. Please try the following. 1) Ask Membership Activity Board with giving good reasons why the karaoke is important for student community, and what can we expect by this. Important point would be - increase of student members - distribute “Join IEEE” - entrance fee student members: free of charge or 10 USD non-members: 30 USD - making good international friends to collaborate with well mixed group of international students for each karaoke room - … Alicia must explain it at AdCom for the budget approval. She needs impactful reasons.
2) Ask some companies who are interested in recruiting good students to become a sponsor by the name of Student Activity Board of RAS. The points should be - every students recognize the company name - distribute brochure with a name of the company - many students visit the exhibition booth of that company
3) Ask Executive Committee of ICRA 2009 with giving good reasons. These must be an interesting job. If you can explain well, you will get enough budget. You should make action as soon as possible, because the budget should be approved at the AdCom at IROS 2008.
(4) Supplemental travel funding for IEEE RAS Student Committee
Funds Requested: Increasing cost of international travel for student chair from 1200 dollars to 2000. Then also setting aside 900 for domestic and 1200 international to be split between the other two RAS student officers to assist them with travel costs.
Summary: For international conferences, we propose raising the amount of funding delegated for travel to international conferences. Students were selected by the RAS executive committee to serve on the student activities committee. However, unlike other officers of the RAS committee, students do not have our own funding to use for travel to conferences; therefore, we have to either ask our research advisors to cover extraneous costs or apply for external funding. It seems unfair to have our advisors cover costs if they were not otherwise planning on sending us to the conference. Extraneous fees are noticeably higher, especially with recent charges in airfare fuel surcharges. This problem can be mitigated by raising the cost of international travel. The $900 amount for domestic travel is sufficient. As an example, I have shown a breakdown of my estimated costs to IROS 2008 in Nice, France. The total expenses are around 2100, and I have to find 900 extra dollars to cover costs. Looking ahead to ICRA 2009, the flight alone to Kobe, Japan is 1900!
This seems like a valid concern that is supported by the previous RAS chair Surya Singh who spent half the time flying from Australia and I anticipate this will be a concern for future RAS student chairs. I would also like to propose having a travel fund for the other two RAS student officers to allow them to attend the conference and assist the student chair and run student activities. The 900 domestic and 1200 international cost would be split between the other two officers. It is not intended to fully cover travel costs.
Description Detail Cost in dollars
Flight IAD‐>NCE $1,060
Transportation to and from airports $40
Shared Hotel Room (70E/night) $111 (70E) a night for 6 nights =$698 (after tax for 2 people) $350
Food $65 (~40E/day) for 7 days $455
Conference Fee 150E for students $240 $2,145