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If You Are Not Afraid . . . Tamas Haidegger
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s I picture it, the world seemed to be a lot bigger, cultures and continents farther apart, space more untouchable, and careers more straightforward 200 years ago. An engineering job you had dreamt about as a kid still existed by the time you acquired your degree or finished your apprenticeship and started your professional advancement. Nowadays, it may be that the world is just changing too fast, fueled by technological innovation. Engineering has brought amazing new things to our lives, but it also makes us to face great challenges. New fields of sciences and industrial sectors emerge and old ones disappear year after year, while jobs and research opportunities might hop a continent in the blink of an eye. Suddenly, you become just one cell of the crowd of engineers on the planet; you are measured against the best worldwide; and you need to be better, smarter, and stronger. We need to face these challenges and turn them into opportunities by focusing and adapting. We need to acquire new skills apart from our narrow field of expertise, which is a tough job. Engineers are expected to be managers, IP experts, pedagogues, professional fund raisers, and even more. Should we be dispirited or intimidated? Not at all! As my former professor said: “The source of happiness for an engineer is acquiring new knowledge.” Learning, selftraining, and personal development are the key to becoming a successful engineer these days, and the IEEE is there to providing a solid and inspiring frame to do that. You are invited to stand up on the shoulders of giants, look around, and see the perspective. We all need to grab the chance and start forging opportunities for the future. If you are not afraid of challenges . . . My name is Tamas Haidegger, a senior graduate student at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics in Hungary, with an electrical and biomedical background. I have been an enthusiastic member of the IEEE and other professional associations for many years. Beginning in January 2010, I am serving the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (RAS) community as the Student Activities Committee (SAC) chair. In the next two years, the two SAC cochairs, Michel Franken and Alejandro Perez, and I will do our best to continue the great initiatives of former chairs, Carol Reiley and Surya Singh, to launch new, exciting programs. I have a clear vision to make the IEEE RAS stronger, more active, and more practical. When I applied for the position, I described three major focus points I want to work toward: 1) recruiting more students 2) keeping Student Members active
3) providing values and training that last through their early career. We have many ideas and expectations on how to achieve these goals; however, we need everyone to join to make a significant improvement. The great thing about professional organizations is that the more you invest, the higher the return is. Earlier this year, we started to organize project teams to realize our plans. Some volunteered already to invest more to run these programs, but we still need a lot of arms and brains to build a bigger, better student community, thriving in an organic harmony with current RAS initiatives and activities. Below, you will find a short description of the most important areas identified so far: u Recruiting: This is the priority for the whole term. We need swarms of talented students to make a change. We are planning to organize electronic-based membership awareness campaigns both for the general IEEE Members and outsider students. In addition, we are ready to prepare and use a RAS SAC logo, flyer, and tags and enhance the group Web site with great pictures and video clips from past events. Shashank Gaur already volunteered to lead these efforts.
. . . Code Head . . . þþ[>þþ[>þþ[>þþ[>þþþþþþþ.þþþþ.- --.þ.- - -.þþþþþþþþ.þþþþþ.- -.þþ. Have you ever spent days figuring out just one small piece of tricky code? Do you have a favorite implementation polished over many years? Have you ever seen a code running with so many glitches and twist that you would have bet it is impossible? Share it! Send in the best/worst/most amazing/exciting piece of code you have to codehead@ ieee.org. If yours is the best of the term, you will get a cool RAS T-shirt. Look for the Code Head section in the next issue. Code should be created by the submitter, or they should bear the rights for publishing. Codes in any programming languages are welcome, preferably not exceeding 30 lines. Enough comments should be provided to readers to be able to understand the magnificence/crux of the code.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MRA.2010.936958
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Learning, self-training, and personal development are the key to becoming a successful engineer these days. u
u
Local Chapter Activities and Initiatives: All support should be given to active and newly forming student Chapters. We want to boost the numbers and the level of general activity. We are looking for a talented student to be the contact person for RAS student Chapters, to make it easy to connect individuals with local groups or national Chapters with each other. He or she should be willing to create a knowledge base for general ideas how to create a Chapter, how to find members, get funding, and manage resources. Professional Events: The primary goal here is to make RAS a knowledge hub for information-thirsty students. We plan to organize tutorials and lectures (teamed up
Find Your Mentor! The successful FIBRS—Student/Chair Mentorship Program continues.
Summary At this year’s IROS, students can get involved in a fun way again. Get the behind-the-scenes exclusive 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 have 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 questions brought up in the 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 e-mail the name of the session, the date, and your relevant contact information to
[email protected]. Keep in mind that people are occasionally very busy, so you may also wish to provide an alternative mentor name. The great thing about professional organizations that the more you invest, the higher the return is. Engineers are expected to be managers, IP experts, pedagogues, professional fund raisers, and even more.
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with current efforts), arrange a well-categorized database on all robotics topics, include external links, wiki pages, and course materials. Project leader Angelos Wafik will also find ways to motivate members to create their own materials. Students will be encouraged to join a RAS Technical Committee (http://tab.ieee-ras.org/) relevant to their field of interest to get actively involved in professional activities. The successful Fostering Interaction Between Robotists and Students (FIBRS)— Student/Chair Mentorship Program continues this year again (see “Find Your Mentor!” for details). u Publications: We are willing to create a monthly newsletter, including RAS news, conference deadlines and reports, call for grants and scholarships, exciting robotics news, and articles interesting even for the wider community. Marcelo Moreyra will coordinate activities. The “Student’s Corner” column in IEEE Robotics and Automation Magazine will provide exciting interviews, tutorials, and prospective writings. A new initiative— Code Head—was launched to feed you curiosity for extremities in coding. u Online Presence: The SAC made a great effort in recent years to extend its online presence through the RAS Web site, RAS wiki, Facebook, and LinkedIn. We are looking for a suitable person to manage our online avatars, to help make our site a virtual robotics oracle, to generate useful pages, and to accumulate know-how. u Industrial Relations: Last but not least, we hope to have a powerful leader to be in charge of the industrial relations of the SAC. We believe in the potential interest of companies toward a crowd of smart students who are technologically educated, socially sensitive, and IEEE enthusiastic. We wish to find sponsors for RAS student activities, to team up with corporations willing to invest in the next generation of engineers. Beyond these projects, we are working on a handful of other issues, and, still, we believe we will always be open for new ideas. Volunteers for any particular task are welcomed, or just share your thoughts with us directly or via any online forums. There will be a special student get-together event organized at the next IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation in May, where we are both doing some team building and also putting our heads together to become something more than a pack of smart individuals: a living community. The essence of the IEEE is the people involved. Either as a fanatic servo tuner or a control theory guru, you will find members you can share your enthusiasm with, to exchange ideas, and learn about cool stuff. Use this potential! Open your eyes and begin profiting from the community! Start it today: get involved, get active, get connected! Feel free to contact me any time. Hope to hear from you soon.
JUNE 2010
