Latest News
Hello fellow robotics students! If you are planning to attend IROS 2017 in Vancouver at the end of September, be sure to take part in the fantastic RAS Student Activities Committee offerings throughout the conference!
Student Lounge
Come hang out with fellow students, take a break from the conference bustle, or prepare for your presentation all while enjoying a warm cup of coffee. The student lounge will be open Monday, 25 September and Wednesday, 27 September from 10:00-12:00 in Room 305.
Lunch with Leaders
Be sure to register for this unique lunch which takes place Tuesday, 26 September. You will have the chance to sit down with RAS leaders in a casual setting with open table discussions. This is your chance to ask real advice from top roboticists but space is limited so don’t wait! For more information see: http://www.ieee-ras.org/about-ras/ras-calendar/event/1303-ras-lunch-with-leaders-lwl-for-students-at-iros
Scavenger Hunt
If you are looking for a fun challenge or need a little help meeting fellow students and robotics leaders while navigating IROS, the SAC Scavenger Hunt is just for you! Sign-up now at (https://app.smartsheet.com/b/form/0cb766c0756a4684a0b03d719e45f32e) and you will be emailed a list of challenges at the start of the conference. Post your pictures on social media to collect points and snap your way to the top for fun prizes!
Even if you are not travelling to Vancouver, you can still enjoy some of the IROS fun with our monthly Facebook Photo Challenges! Our second month of challenges will kick off 13 September with “Which Robot Wednesday” followed by “Trivia Thursday” and “Funny Foto Friday” in the subsequent weeks. All three challenges will promote the IROS theme of, “Friendly People, Friendly Robots”. Be sure to follow us on Facebook - answer the challenge correctly and you’ll be entered to win cool prizes from RAS!
The results are in for the inaugural Student Activities Committee (SAC) Scavenger Hunt Challenge!
Students attending ICRA 2017 in Singapore had the opportunity to participate in a fun picture scavenger hunt. On the first day of the conference teams of 2-3 students were emailed a "secret" list of photo challenges. Throughout the five day event, teams took photos of each other demonstrating their achievments. Tasks ranged from shaking hands with RAS leadership, visiting local sights near the conference venue, to doing funny poses.
First Place: Mustafa Doga Dogan (Turkey) and Tobias Benz (Germany)
Second Place: Anqi Li (USA), Sasanka Nagavalli (USA), Wenhao Luo (USA)
Third Place: Alex Klootwijk (Netherlands) and Rens Doornbusch (Netherlands)
Congratulations to the winners and Thanks to All Participants for making this a fun event!
The 2017 IEEE RAS Humanitarian Technology Day (HTD) will be held on 14 October 2017 at Michigan State University (MSU Union Building) in East Lansing, Michigan, USA. The conference theme, “Engineering for Change”, emphasizes the need for social innovation to promote engineering creativity, sustainable solutions, and collaboration among strong leaders.
HTD 2017 will discuss several humanitarian challenges and potential solutions to them using diverse engineering backgrounds for better living. This conference, organized by students for students, will bring together specialists, entrepreneurs, and non-profit organization officials from different IEEE Regions to discuss the current and emerging humanitarian issues across the globe. This event not only promotes humanitarian awareness in our local community, but it also will train students on how to build strategies for identifying humanitarian problems, and designing and implementing solutions in their region. It has the support of IEEE Robotics and Automation Society and IEEE RAS-SIGHT group.
Registration Website: https://ieee-ras-htd.eventbrite.com
Find out more about this amazing conference by clicking on the links below
See the event description: http://sites.ieee.org/sb-msu-htc/htd-2017
Learn about the Speakers: http://sites.ieee.org/sb-msu-htc/speakers/
Check out the Talks: http://sites.ieee.org/sb-msu-htc/plenary-and-keynote-talks/
Get to know our Committee: http://sites.ieee.org/sb-msu-htc/committee/
Event Info
Date: 14 October 2017 (Saturday)
Time: 8AM - 7PM
Location: MSU Union, Ballroom (East Lansing, MI, USA)
Are you a student planning to attend the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA 2017) in Singapore? Join the IEEE RAS Student Activities Committee for a fun scavenger hunt! Teams of 2-3 students will be emailed a super top secret list of objectives on the morning of 29 May. Throughout the conference, teams will then take pictures demonstrating they achieved each objective - ranging from shaking hands with RAS leadership, visiting local sights near the conference venue, to doing funny poses. Awards will be presented to teams which found the most items and teams with the most creative photos!
Who: Students attending ICRA 2017
What: A fun picture scavenger hunt
When: 29 May-2 June 2017
Where: ICRA in Singapore
Why: Because everyone needs a little fun!
If you already know a few other students attending, you can form a Team and register as a group. If not, please register yourself, and we will team you up with other enthusiastic roboticists. See you in Singapore!
Register here: https://app.smartsheet.com/b/form?EQBCT=0cb766c0756a4684a0b03d719e45f32e
Have news to share? We're more than happy to share it with the student community. Let us know at ras_sac@ieee.org
You can also follow the latest news and announcements on the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society's Facebook group page.
Call for Student Video Contest Submissions
Do you have a cool robotic idea or application you want to show off? The IEEE RAS SAC wants you to make a creative video to show your robotics skills! Enter a video of your creation, showing robotics, and the winner’s video will be displayed at ICRA 2015 and posted on the IEEE RAS SAC website. Additionally, cash prizes will be given to the top three winners.
Details:
- Video entries may be of any medium, sketch, cartoon, real life, etc. Videos must be appropriate in nature for all ages, more specifically the video could be educational, highlight some concept or theoretical idea, or show off an application, or be creative in your own way. Videos will have a maximum length of 1 minute.
- Videos must be created by students or groups of students.
- IEEE RAS SAC chair and co-chairs will decide the winner - all decisions are final.
Contest winner will receive the following prizes:
- 1st Place - $300, video posted on IEEE RAS SAC Websites and presented at ICRA 2015
- 2nd Place - $150
- 3rd Place - $50
Entries should be placed on YouTube.com and a link sent to: ras_sac@ieee.org. The entry’s title should begin with “RAS SAC Video Contest Submission:” followed by your title. A 1-2 sentence description should be provided with the video on YouTube.
Entries are due May 1st, 2015 at 00:00 PST (midnight) and Contest winners will be announced before the start of ICRA ‘15
Current News
Announcing the Winner of our Logo Contest
The SAC is pleased to announce the winner of our logo contest, Santiago Morante! We narrowed the submissions down to five (which wasn't easy), and put the vote out publicly. We received about 100 votes in total, and it was quite a close race with so many great submissions. The winning design, as well as the second and third place winners, are shown below. Thank you all so much for taking the time to participate.
This was our first time running this sort of competition, so if you have any feedback for us on running the contest, voting, etc., please let us know.
On Thursday, 14 Dec 2023, the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Women in Engineering Committee (WiE), officially presented IDEA grants to Blessing Egbeama, Diana Frias Franco, Hannah Claus, Pravina Samaratunga, Neasha Mittal, Tianyi Chen, Orestis Skoutellas, Lydia Melles, Rydia Weiland, Victoria Yang, Emmanuel Akinrintoyo, and Yusra Rasool. RAS congratulates the many worthy awardees for this round.
The IDEA grant allows early career students, cross-entry scholars, as well as re-entry scholars to participate in one of the major IEEE Robotics and Automation Society conferences. Awardees for this round were celebrated at the WiE lunch event at Humanoids 2023 in Austin, Texas, USA.
There will be subsequent calls for future opportunities in early 2024. Stay tuned and connect with RAS and WiE to receive updates on these and other activities.
The IEEE RAS Women in Engineering Committee (WiE) has launched a travel support program to encourage inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility (IDEA) in our community. The IDEA grants aim to make the major IEEE RAS conferences more accessible for underrepresented groups.
The RAS WiE is now accepting IDEA grant applications for the 2023 IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots (Humanoids), which will take place in Austin (TX), USA, on 12-14 December 2023. The Call for Applications is now open. Please note that the submission deadline is 20 October 2023 (11:59 PT).
Join the IEEE-RAS Women in Engineering Committee (WiE) for a panel discussion and networking event at CASE 2023 in Auckland, NZ! The theme is Diversity in Automation Science and Engineering. The event will take place on Monday, 28 August 2023 from 12:15-13:30 in Gallery Room 4 at the Cordis Hotel in Auckland. Advance registration is required; more details, including a QR code for registration, can be found on the flyer.
Join the RAS Women in Engineering (WiE) Committee for an interactive panel discussion on 30 May 2023 at ICRA 2023 in London. The topic is: The Role of Culture in Building Diverse Robotics Teams. Check out the flyer below for more information. Please note that registration for this event is required; you can register here. If you have any questions, please reach out to ieee-ras-wie@ieee.org.
The IEEE RAS Women in Engineering Committee (WiE) has launched a new travel support program to encourage inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility (IDEA) in our community. The IDEA grants aim to make the major IEEE RAS conferences more accessible for underrepresented groups.
The RAS WiE is now accepting IDEA grant applications for the IEEE International Conference on Automation Science and Engineering (CASE) 2023, to be held in Auckland, New Zealand from 26–30 August 2023. Each awardee will receive a maximum of $3,300 to cover the travel costs of the trip. Please note that awards will be distributed as travel reimbursements. The award will focus on supporting:
- Secondary/undergraduate/graduate students interested in robotics or automation topics
- Underrepresented groups
- People with disabilities
- People who have stepped down from the field for some time and want to return (e.g., due to illness or parental leave)
The Call for Applications is now open with the following schedule.
- Application submission deadline: 30 April 2023 (11:59 PT)
- Decisions: 21 May 2023
To apply for IDEA travel support, please follow the steps in the application form. The IDEA committee will select three applicants to attend CASE 2023.
The IEEE RAS Women in Engineering Committee (WiE) wants to support the community and people interested in robotics and automation research by introducing a new travel support that encourages Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility (IDEA).
The main goal of IDEA is to further support our community by providing the opportunity to attend one of RAS’s major flagship conferences (e.g., ICRA, CASE, or IROS). This new IDEA travel support will focus on supporting:
- Secondary/undergrad/graduate students interested in robotics or automation topics
- Underrepresented groups
- People with disabilities
- People who have stepped down from the field for some time and want to return (e.g., due to illness or parental leave)
Our first call for applications will open on 27 January with the following schedule:
- Deadline to submit applications: 15 Feb 2023
- Decisions: 17 March 2023
To apply for IDEA travel support, please follow the steps in the Application Form.
The IDEA committee will select three applicants to attend the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) in London from 29 May–2 June 2023.
Please read the full call for applications at this link:https://www.ieee-ras.org/women-in-engineering/wie-news.
IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Women in Engineering (RAS WIE) Chair Karinne Ramirez Amaro spoke at this year's Camp Vera. Camp Vera is a weekend packed with workshops and lectures from women in industry in Sweden -named after Sweden's first female engineer, Vera Sandberg. The project is focused on getting more people who identify as girls or non-binaries to be interested in technical subjects and increase awareness of the career opportunities that open up with an education in Automation and Mechatronics, Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, Information Technology and Medical Technology.
Additionally, Amaro was interviewed by El Financiero, discussing her important leadership positions within RAS. Amaro's thoughts on RAS WIE-“I have formed an excellent international work team. We also have more than 20 members of different nationalities, genders, ages and academic positions. The main objective of our committee is to create initiatives that help improve diversity in work teams. We are a new team and quite motivated by all the diversity challenges that we want to address in the coming years. On February 16, 2022 we had our first work meeting via Zoom. As a result we have planned different events, for example an event within the activities of ICRA in Philadelphia, USA in May. Another event at the CASE conference in Mexico in August 2022."
To read the full article CLICK HERE
Friday, 4 June, 9:00 -10:00 am EDT (UTC-4 hours)
The IEEE RAS Women in Engineering (WIE) Committee recently completed a several year study of gender representation in conference leading roles at RAS-supported conferences. Individuals who hold these roles select organizing committees, choose speakers, and make final decisions on paper acceptances. The authors will lead a discussion about the findings and the story behind the study. In addition to presenting detailed data and releasing anonymized datasets for further study, the authors will provide suggestions on changes to help ensure a more diverse and representative robotics community where anyone can thrive.
Presented by:
- Laura Graesser, Robotics at Google, USA
Additional Discussion Led by:
- Lydia Tapia, University of New Mexico, USA
- Aleksandra Faust, Google Brain Research, US`A
- Hadas Kress-Gazit, Cornell University, USA
This event is open to all, but registration is required: https://ieee.webex.com/ieee/onstage/g.php?MTID=ebe6c38638a71e7dbaef1a461874ca1de
Attendees are encouraged to submit questions in advance using the following form:
https://app.smartsheet.com/b/form/deb6cf4afc134675adae10d109fe5255
Did you miss the IEEE RAS Women in Robotics Panel Discussion from 11 November 2020? -Watch it now!
1 December 2020 at 1:00 pm EST (18:00 GMT) via Webex.
Educators everywhere are reexamining and reinventing their teaching approach to meet the challenges of delivering a high-quality education in this unprecedented year. Many are revisiting established best practices while others are looking to new ways of reaching students. In robotics education, we are facing many difficult questions: How can we best engage students in robotics material in the current teaching environment? How can we overcome perceived limitations when teaching robotics content online, especially when hardware is involved? Where should robotics education research focus to address these issues head on?
To facilitate a conversation around these important questions, the IEEE Women in Engineering - Robotics and Automation Society (WIE-RAS) hosted an online panel on best practices for teaching robotics. The diverse panel boasts experts in robotics education from a variety of disciplines, institutions, and areas of expertise:
Carlotta Berry - Electrical and Computer Engineering, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, passionate about robotics education, increasing underrepresented populations in STEM, and enhanced human-robot interfaces
Katie Driggs-Campbell - Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, explores safe and interactive autonomous systems through modeling human behavior, designing robust decision and control frameworks, and developing multi-agent validation schemes
Cecilia Laschi - Mechanical Engineering at the National University of Singapore, interests are in biorobotics, soft robotics, humanoid robotics and neurorobotics.
Iolanda Leite - Division of Robotics, Perception and Learning, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, develops social robots that can capture, learn from, and respond appropriately to the subtle dynamics of real-world situations
Karinne Ramirez-Amaro - Electrical Engineering, Chalmers University of Technology, advances artificial intelligence and robotics research in semantic representations, decision making, and human activity recognition and understanding
Panelists have taught a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses ranging from introductory robotics and applied programming to project-based design courses to specialized courses on human-centered robotics, autonomous decision-making, human perception for information technology, and intelligent robotics to name a few.
Panelists share their experience in best practices for robotics education, provide strategies for applying these practices to new courses, discuss major challenges in online robotics education and how they have overcome them, and talk about where they see robotics education headed.
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Women in Robotics Panel
 Carlotta Berry
Rose-Hulman Institute
of Technology, USA |
Katie Driggs-Campbell
University of Illinois
Urbana-Champaign, USA |
Cecilia Laschi
National University of Singapore
Singapore |
|
Iolanda Leite
KTH Royal Institute
of Technology, SWEDEN |
Shawna Thomas
Moderator
Texas A&M University,USA
|
Karinne Ramirez-Amaro
Chalmers University of
Technology, SWEDEN |
Women in Engineering - Summer Mentoring Event
Please sign up for our Summer Mentoring Event. We will hold three events across three major regions/timezone groupings, depending on the interest of the registered participants. We will announce the date of the event(s) in June, to be held in July 2020. The event(s) will consist of small group mentoring, a chatroom with a prominent researcher who is able to give advice/answer questions about your topic of interest. We expect you will be able to "switch rooms" to visit with multiple researchers during the event.
- Date of the event: July 2020
- Organizer: Lydia Tapia
- Format of event: Live networking event
- Link to registration: https://forms.gle/PfUvXCTP3muVQsps6
WiE Luncheon at IROS 2019
Tuesday, 5 November from 12:00-13:30
Room L1-RAS on Level One, the Venetian Macao Resort Hotel, Macao, China
The networking luncheon provides the opportunity to foster discussion on the role of women in robotics and automation, inspire girls and promote collaborations and initiatives to advance women in leadership. As the goal for this event is to be more than a Lunch for women, but a Lunch with women. Therefore, men are more than welcome to participate and enjoy the discussion.
Program: Panel Discussion on Best Practices: Becoming a RAS Leader through Conference Organization
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There is NO CHARGE for this luncheon, however space is limited. Please register in advance using this link! https://app.smartsheet.com/b/form/17e1c2c3940947919382b0cb185ce6ae |
Register now for Cybosium, the first ever RAS Technical Education Program in India. Cybosium is a mutual initiative of the students of IEEE RAS SBC MACE and IEEE MACE SB. The seasonal school is organized in collaboration with companies and organizations in the industry. The school has three tracks:
- Aerial Robotics and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
- Autonomous Ground Vehicles and Intelligent Transportation Systems
- Energy, Environment, and Safety Issues in Robotics and Automation.
The school includes an appealing combination of events, such as interactive talk sessions, industrial visits, cultural events, expos, and much more.
Venue
Four Points by Sheraton, Infopark, Kochi, India
Dates:
- Online phase: 19 March 2023 - 21 April
- Offline phase: 29 April - 01 May, 2023
Check out the website for more details on Cybosium as well as registration instructions. Please reach out to Deva Darsan at devwayne@ieee.org with any questions.
The RAS Member Activities Board (MAB) awards a limited number of Chapter Initiative Grants to local RAS Chapters for professional development, educational outreach, and other programs. Grant proposals will be reviewed by the MAB at its meeting in late May 2023 and funds up to USD $2,000 will be awarded on a competitive basis. The deadline for proposals is 15 April 2023. Click here for submission details.
4 Nov 4th 2020 16h UTC-3 (Brazil Time)
Agriculture is undoubtedly a key topic for humankind's future. We are living in a world where the population is increasing fast and we need to deal with climate change and environmental issues. In this complex scenario, robotics can play a decisive role in increasing farm production and reducing costs. The challenges faced in this field are not easy. The development of autonomous robots for agriculture has proved to be complex and time-consuming. Aerial and terrestrial robots have to deal with temperature, brightness, and humidity changes. The presence of unknown obstacles is also hard and increases the robot’s perception and processing system requirements and costs. For this webinar, IEEE RAS South Brazil Chapter invited 4 researchers to share with us his experiences and views of
the robotics future in agriculture. We hope that their opinions and views can inspire other researchers to join us in this challenge!
Panelists:
Marcelo Becker - USP - Brazil (moderator)
José Paulo Molin - USP - Brazil - Precision Agriculture
Girish Chowdhary - UIUC - USA - Robotics
Olivier Ly - Bordeaux University - Robotics
Hugo Gimbert - Bordeaux University - Robotics
