Robotics and Automation Magazine

EURON Annual Meeting 2007

The Annual Meeting of the European Robotics Research Network (EURON II http://www.euron.org) this year took place on March 28th and 29th at the Center for Mediterranean Architecture (KAM) in the scenic town of Chania, located in Crete, Greece. The KAM Conference Center, located at the Venetian Harbor of Chania, served as a unique venue for this year’s meeting that earmarked the new phase of EURON under the new leadership by Herman Bruyninckx who succeeded Henrik Christensen (see March 2007 issue). The event was attended by 100+ researchers representing a large number of EURON members.  

A number of issues of interest to the European robotics research community were addressed. Those included: the “State of EURON” report and the associated Brainstorming about a “New EURON”, research roadmapping, experimental practices & benchmarking, gender issues in European Robotics, education and training, good experimental methodology and the Robo-Ethics Roadmap.  

Two plenary lectures were included in the program of this year:

• “C-ELROB: the Civilian European Land-Robot Trial” by Frank E. Schneider, FGAN, Germany, and
• “European Robotics Research & Development - The KUKA Perspective” by Rainer Bischoff, KUKA Robotics Corp. (the presentation was given by Tobias Ortmaier, KUKA Robotics Corp.)

Workshops included subjects such as the “Advanced Robotics Project I & II” and the Special Interest Group presentations: “RISE”, “Tele-Robotics” and “Manipulation and grasping, lightweight manipulators”.  

This year, the 12 high quality submissions for "The 4^th EURON/EUnited Robotics Tech-Transfer Award", a joint activity of EURON and EUnited Robotics (manufacturers and system integrators of robotics in Europe), led to 2 FIRST prizes:

• Ulrich Hagn (DLR), Tobias Ortmaier (KUKA Roboter, DLR), Richard Wohlgemuth (Brainlab), “KineMedic: Development of a generic, kinematic redundant, light-weight, and torque-controlled robot for medical interventions”,
• Hong Liu, Peter Meusel, Gerd Hirzinger (all of DLR), “From the DLR/HIT Hand to the SAH Hand”,

and 2 THIRD prizes:

• Heinz Woern (University of Karlsruhe), Karsten Weiss (Weiss Robotics), Matthias Haag, Andreas Hoch, Florian Simons (all of the company Schunk), “First industrially suitable robot hand with a tactile sensor system integrated”
• Jocelyne Troccaz, Sandrine Voros (all of TIMC-IMAG Laboratory) “The Light Endoscope Holder Robot (LER)”

For the Georges Giralt Ph.D. Award in Robotics in Europe, 12 submissions lead to a short list of 3:

• Giovanni Tonietti, “Variable impedance actuation: A co-design solution to the safety/performance trade-off in physical human robot interaction”, University of Pisa, Italy (Advisor: Antonio Bicchi)
• Björn Verrelst, “A dynamic walking biped actuated by pleated pneumatic artificial muscles”, Vrije University, Belgium (Advisor: Dirl Lefever)
• Pierre Lamon, “3D position tracking for all-terrain robots” , EPFL, Switzerland (Advisor: Roland Siegwart)

The final winner was Pierre Lamon.

The contribution of the local organizers, Nikos Tsourveloudis and Nikos Vlassis – both of the Technical University of Crete – must be acknowledged. Next year, the EURON annual meeting will take place in parallel to EUROS at Prague, Czech Republic, between March 26-29, 2008.

The authors of this column wish to thank Alicia Casals, Martin Hägele and Herman Bruyninckx for providing material for this report. Parties interested in promoting certain activities via this column can contact either Kostas Kyriakopoulos, kkyria AT central.ntua.gr) or Bruno Siciliano, siciliano AT unina.it).

Contributed by Kostas Kyriakopoulos and Bruno Siciliano.