the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (RAS) for giving me ... I will dedicate myself to the Society and will do my best to meet your expectation together with ...
P R E S I D E N T ’ S
M E S S A G E
OFFICERS President: Kazuhiro Kosuge, Tohoku University (Japan) President-Elect: David E. Orin, The Ohio State University, USA Past President: Bruno Siciliano, Universita` di Napoli Federico II (Italy) Founding President: George Saridis, 1931-2006 Vice President, Peter Luh, Publications Activities: University of Connecticut (USA) Vice President, Nikolaos Papanikolopoulos, Conference Activities: University of Minnesota (USA) Vice President, William R. Hamel, Financial Activities: University of Tennessee, Knoxville (USA) Vice President, Alex Zelinsky, Industrial Activities: CSIRO (Australia) Vice President, Stefano Stramigioli, Member Activities: University of Twente (The Netherlands) Vice President, John M. Hollerbach, Technical Activities: University of Utah (USA) Treasurer: Xiaoping Yun, Naval Postgraduate School (USA) Secretary: Kevin Lynch, Northwestern University (USA) IEEE Division X Richard A. Volz, Director: Texas A&M University (USA) Editor-in-Chief, IEEE Trans. on Automation Science & Engineering Nukala Viswanadham, Indian School of Business (India) Editor-in-Chief, IEEE Transactions on Robotics Seth Hutchinson, University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign (USA) Editor-in-Chief, IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine Peter I. Corke, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane (Australia) IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation General Chair, ICRA 2010 Wesley E. Snyder, North Carolina State University (USA) Program Chair, ICRA 2010 Vijay Kumar, University of Pennsylvania (USA) General Chair, ICRA 2011 Zexiang Li, Hong Kong University of Science & Technology (China) Program Chair, ICRA 2011 Yuan Fang Zheng, The Ohio State University (USA) ADMINISTRATIVE COMMITTEE Terms ending in 2010 Peter Corke Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane (Australia) Alessandro De Luca Universita` di Roma ‘‘La Sapienza’’ (Italy) Lynne Parker University of Tennessee-Knoxville (USA) Martin Buss Technical University of Munich (Germany) Shigeki Sugano Waseda University (Japan) Satoshi Tadokoro Tohoku University (Japan) Terms ending in 2011 Nancy Amato Texas A&M University (USA) Fumihito Arai Tohoku University (Japan) Antonio Bicchi University of Pisa (Italy) Aude Billard EPFL (Switzerland) Hideki Hashimoto University of Tokyo (Japan) C.S. George Lee Purdue University (USA) Terms ending in 2012 Vijay Kumar University of Pennsylvania (USA) Roland Siegwart ETH Autonomous Systems Lab (Switzerland) Jing Xiao University of North Carolina—Charlotte (USA) Danica Kragic KTH, School of Computer Science and Communication (Sweden) Jean-Paul Laumond LAAS-CNRS, Gepetto Lab (France) Hugh Durrant-Whyte The University of Sydney (Australia)
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IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine
New Leadership
I
t is a great honor and pleasure for me to serve as president of our Society for 2010 and 2011. I would like to thank all the Members of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (RAS) for giving me the opportunity. It was almost 25 years ago when I first attended the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) in St. Louis in 1985, a few years after I started my research in robotics. I have been observing our Society from both inside and outside and have been feeling very lucky that I have grown up with our Society from almost the beginning of our prestigious ICRA. Owing to excellent past leadership by my 16 predecessors, our Society is currently in a very good shape despite the recent economical crisis: top-ranked publications and joint publications with other Societies, top-level conferences, other meetings, and a sound financial status. This has been possible through a strong team of dedicated volunteers, strong leadership by executive committee members, and strong activities of all of the members of our Society. The surroundings of our Society, however, are rapidly changing. New robotics communities have been created outside of RAS. Several regions have also created their own robotics communities. Activities of these communities are becoming stronger and stronger. Robotics and automation science has been more pervasive in other areas for which new communities have also been formed with little attention to the core of the robotics and automation research. Some of the new communities have more direct access to industrial needs. Robotics and automation science also is rapidly advancing, and the geographic distribution of researchers and engineers is rapidly changing. Our Society needs to address such changes: enhanced relations with other communities interested in robotics and automation; attracting people from emerging fields, outreach to young researchers, engineers, and students; dissemination of robotics and automation science and technology to the public; and, of course, much better service to all of the members of our Society. I am sure that our Society has a potential to do so. I will dedicate myself to the Society and will do my best to meet your expectation together with my good friends, Nikolaos Papanikolopoulos, vice president for Conference Activities, William R. Hamel, vice president, Financial Activities, Alex Zelinsky, vice president for Industrial Activities, Stefano Stramigioli, vice president for Member Activities, Peter Luh, vice president for Publication Activities, John M. Hollerbach, vice president for Technical Activities, Xiaoping Yun, treasurer, and Kevin Lynch, secretary. Finally, I would like to express my sincere thanks to our outgoing president, Bruno Siciliano, for his strong leadership and tremendous amount of work dedicated to our Society during his presidency. I trust he will continue to give us his valuable advice to our team. Kazuhiro Kosuge Tohoku University Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MRA.2010.935805
MARCH 2010
