Minutes of EURON Board Meeting
June 9, 2004
CEC, Brussels, Belgium

Participants

Henrik Christensen (coord.) KTH, SE Jeanna Ayoubi (adm), KTH, SE
Guido Bugmann, UPLYM, UK Herman Bruyninckx, KULeuven, BE
Alicia Casals, UPC, ES Raja Chatila, CNRS-LAAS, FR
Jorge Dias, ISR, PT Rüdiger Dillman, UKA, DE
Frans Groen, UVA, NL John Hallam, SDU, DK
Martin Hägele, FhG IPA, DE Kostas Kyriakopoulos, NTUA, GR
Jadran Lenarcic, JSI, SL Amiram Moshaiov, TAU, IL
Angel del Pobil, UJI, ES Girijesh Prasad, UULSTER, IE/UK
Erwin Prassler, GPS, DE Libor Preucil, CTU, CZ
Juha Röning, UOULU, SF Miguel Salichs, UC3M, ES
Bruno Siciliano, UNINA, IT Roland Siegwart, EPFL, CH
Cezary Zielinski, PW, PL Jüri Vain, TTU, EE
Markus Vincze, ACIN, AT Pekka Karp (project officer), CEC

Meeting Agenda

  1. Welcome/Introduction
  2. News from Brussels
  3. The EURON-1 review
  4. First call for proposals
  5. Summer Schools (2004)
  6. Key-area activities
  7. EURON-WWW Facility
  8. Strategic Advisory Committee
  9. Future Meetings
  10. Any other business

1  Introduction

Everybody was welcomed to the meeting, and a brief tour of the table was performed with a presentation of the participants.

2  News from Brussels (P. Karp)

Pekka Karp, the officer in charge of "Beyond Robotics" provided a brief summary of the result of the 1st call under FP6 and outlined the structure of the 3rd Call.

3  The EURON 1 Final Review (H.I. Christensen)

A copy of the Final EURON-1Review Report (version 4) was distributed by Pekka Karp to the meeting participants.
Comments and lessons for the future were presented by Henrik Christensen

4  First Call for Proposals (H.I. Christensen)

The draft version of the Evaluation Guidelines and Fist Call document were previously sent electronically to all EURON contractors. Both documents need some modification. Comments and suggestions are welcomed. The new version of both documents will be sent to Pekka Karp as soon as possible.
Timetable:
1 of July 2004 Announcement of the call
15 of October 04 Deadline for proposals
1 month The evaluation process
End of November 04 Final decision by the Board
1 of January 04 Start date of the projects
Proposal structure and submission
The draft version of the call specified that the proposal should not exceed 20 pages (incl. the description of the consortium). Based on discussion it was decided to reduce proposals to 6 pages to make the review process more manageable
A special format was suggested. Cezary Zielinski promised to provide a proposal for the structure of an application.
Proposal have to be submitted to the Coordinator in hard copy and in electronic form on a CDROM. E-mail and fax versions will not be considered.
Evaluation
A "Consensus group" has to be set up (4-5 persons). The following people volunteered to participate: Roland Siegwart, Juri Vain, Cezary Zielinski, Miguel Salichs. It is suggested that two persons from the old group go to the next one, so that the gained experience can be utilized. The "group" will have a two days meeting during the 3rd week of November. The group will provide a recommendation to the board.
Modal contract
The coordinator will prepare a modal contract for the projects. There is a need for legal assistance to review such a contract. John Hallam and Kostas Kyriakopoulos volunteered to provide such help from their universities.

5  EURON Summer Schools, WP7 (R. Siegwart)

A detailed description of the activity was presented (Objectives, rules, formal approval, budget etc.). The result of summer schools (SS) should be made available as part of the educational activities and through the EURON web facility.
Budget:
Timetable /deadline for proposals:
Proposals / evaluation:
The proposal form was presented. It should include timetable, contact person, objectives, program, list of lectures, budget. The proposals are submitet to and evaluated by the Educational Board (Siegwart, Casals, Hallam, Ribeiro, Sanz, Wagner and Christensen)
An agreement/ contract has to be signed with the coordinator (KTH)
Short description of quality measures of SS was presented
Selection criteria was described (quality of the program & lectures; accessibility to all EURON students; fit to budget; gender issues; new member countries)
Four proposals submitted for the summer of 2004 were shortly presented. All four proposals were accepted.

6  Key Area Activities - Year 1

Research planning (WP1 - Roadmap on Rob & EURON benchmarks) was presented by R Dillmann and A del Pobil . Six persons are involved in this KA and new members are welcome to participate and contribute.
Education (WP 5-8) was presented by A Casals (WEB book, database of teaching material, robotic curricula, PhD award, SS). The steering committee meets twice a year. WEB book is well visited and it is possible to contribute to the site. There is a need of a joint educational web site and permanent maintenance of it. H Bruyninckx suggested to hire a PhD student for such a purpose URL of the web site and call for contributions has to be sent to the members
Industrial Links (WP 12-16) activities were presented by M Hägele and E Prassler. Six persons are involved in the KA.
Expected activities include:
Dissemination activities were presented by B. Siciliano and F. Groen. major activities include the STAR Series, the IEEE RAM column and general information to the press. It was pointed out that general media service for the entire programme also must be performed. There is a budget to involve science journalists, but the service is to all of "beyond robotics".

7  EURON WEB site (F Groen)

The EURON 1 final review report is rather critical to the present web site in terms of broken links, lack of updates, and structure. There is a need for a reconsideration of the entire site. A call for tender will be issued by F. Groen (UvA). It is important to consider how the community can be involved in the maintenance as the budget does not allow hiring of a full time web editor.

8  Strategic Advisory Committee (H.I. Christensen)

The responsibilities of the strategic advisory committee is outlined in the workplan for the EURON. The committee is composed of IP and NOE coordiantors, and 2-3 international scientists. The international scientists have to be elected. After discussions the board recommended that Lynne Parker (UTK) and Mitsuo Kawato (ATR) be invoted to join the committee. The committee is supposed to be service not only to EURON but to the entire "Beyond Robotics" initiative. The coordinator will contact Parker and Kawato and try to organise a first meeting August/September.

9  Future Meetings

9.1  Next Annual Meeting

Date: February - March 2005
venue:Poland (Warsaw or Poznan)
venue must be easily accessible

9.2  Next Board Meeting

Date: 29-30 November 2004
Place: Stockholm, KTH

10  Any Other Issues

10.1  Admission of new members

A list of new members (17 Univ. & Org.) was sent to the Board by e-mail before the meeting. All new members were approved by the Board
The approval of new members will be made by e-mail in the future. A list will be sent to the Board approximately once a month. Any institute/organisation can become a member of EURON only if they have a minimum of R&D related to the "Beyond Robotics" programme and have been approved by the national representatives.
An issue of membership of different labs/institutes of such big organisations as CNRS, INRIA in France and FhG in Germany was raised. It was agreed that the national representatives would solve the question of how to organise such members in the best way. The coordinator has to be informed as soon as possible to regulate the administrative/legal issues.

10.2  IEE - EURON collaboration?

The issue was presented by G Bugmann.
It was recommended to setup a joint memorandum of understanding to regular any collaboration. The coordinator will send a draft MoU to Bugmann.

End of meeting



File translated from TEX by TTH, version 3.22.
On 4 Jul 2004, 17:45.