The New EURON Proposals

Candidate Board Proposal

From Herman Bruyninckx and John Hallam.

This proposal describes a vision for a new, community-driven EURON network. The major points are: (i) a strong focus on academic interests; (ii) membership involves a balance between “profit” and “cost”; and (iii) a strong inter-network networking with industrial robotics network(s) and with networks from neighbouring research domains.

More details.

Individual Supplementary Board Candidates

• Jon Agirre Ibarbia, co-ordinator of R&D Projects for Fatronik, Spain.
  
  Fatronik is commited to actively lead in the development of a more effective EU robotics research activity. In particular, Fatronik is well placed to introduce some much needed reality into the EU robotics research community, both in the technical and the business arenas.
  
  Therefore, Fatronik is interested in taking part and contributing to the topic "Industrial cooperation".
  Full proposal.
  
• Juha Röning, head of the Department of Electrical and Information Engineering and director of the Intelligent Systems Group of the University of Oulu, Finland. Juha is currently on the EURON Board as the Finnish National Representative.
  
  I have been a part of EURON activity since the very beginning. The motto we had "we want to work together to push the robotics research forward in Europe" is still alive. I am willing to serve as a supplementary Board Candidate for the New EURON.
  
• Jean-Pierre Merlet of INRIA Sophia Antipolis - Méditerranée, France. Jean-Pierre is head of the COPRIN project and was previously head of the SAGA project.
  
  I would like to stand as a Supplementary Board Candidate for the new EURON. I feel that such a network must be representative of all activities involved in robotics research, more long term and research oriented. My expertise is related to parallel robots, robot kinematics and design, uncertainty management.
  
• Fabio Bonsignorio, CEO and founder of Heron Robots. He is also the leader of the EURON Good Experimental Methodology SIG.
  
  Heron Robots also contributes to the RoSta expert group on benchmarking. RoSta is an EU funded initiative to develop standards in service robotics.
  
  Fabio has worked in the R&D departments of several major Italian and American companies, mainly in the applications of intelligent systems. He holds a guest researcher position in robotics and is lecturing in robotics, industrial control systems and machine design at the Department of Mechanics of the University of Genova.
  
  I am happy to volunteer as a 'supplementary board candidate' with the aim helping network growth of the robotics community and its convergence with the cognition community. I am also interested in pushing technology transfer of the many robotics research results.
  
• Angel P. del Pobil, director of Robotic Intelligence Lab at Jaume-I University, Castelló, Spain. He is EURON's Research Coordination coordinator and therefore an observer of the EURON board.
  
  I believe that one of the most successful activities of EURON — if not THE most successful — has been the organization of Summer Schools.
  
  The UJI Robotic Intelligence Lab has organized summer schools from the very start, namely seven consecutive schools (2001-2007) about topics covering different aspects of robotics such as visual servoing, humanoid robots, or robotics and neuroscience, and with some 200 students and 50 speakers in total. I have attended and been involved in the organization of all of them, having personally chaired a number of the events.
  
  I volunteer as "Supplementary Board Candidate" with the specific purpose of contributing our experience to guarantee the continuity of a number of annual Summer (and Winter) Schools with the EURON quality label, for the benefit of the future European Robotics Community.
  
• John Hallam, of the Mærsk Institute, Odense, Denmark and coordinator of the ChiRoPing project. John is currently on the EURON Board as the Danish National Representative and is responsible for EURON's web infrastructure.
  
  I am happy to offer to serve as a Supplementary Board Candidate for the New EURON and particularly to help as far as possible with the web infrastructure for the new community.
  
• Anibal Ollero, leader of the Robotics, Vision and Control Group of the University of Seville, Spain. You can visit my Web page to see my activities including research and cooperation with industries.
  
  I could serve mainly in Research Support and Industry Cooperation. I am Associated Coordinator of the new recently approved (IST Embedded Systems) Network of Excellence on "Cooperating Objects" being responsible of the area of Robotics and Control which is one of the two key areas of the Network being the other Wireless Sensor Networks. I am also coordinating the AWARE IST project on the integration of robotic systems and wireless sensor networks and I have been the Scientific and Technical Coordinator of the COMETS IST project on the coordination of multiple UAVs, and participated in or led other European and National initiatives on UAVs and network robotics.
  
  Thus, I could contribute to reinforcing the relations at European level between the communities of Robotics, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and Wireless Sensor Networks.
  
• Paolo Fiorini, associate professor at the Altair lab of Verona University, Italy.
  
  I propose my candidacy as a Board Member of the new EURON network/society, with particular emphasis on robotics education.
  
  Given that the new EURON will be funded by the single members (or member laboratories) it will be necessary to provide services that can justify the participation to such a network. Education is one of the primary services that a professional network/society should provide.
  
  I propose my candidacy on the basis of the experience in robotics education acquired during the past 8 years as co-chairperson of IEEE-RAS Educational Committee, organizer of several summer schools, and the activities carried out locally in Verona. Especially in this last point, the results have been extremely good, with the organization of courses in robotics and in science education using robots, from elementary grade to adult education. In the last seven years, I have also been involved in the organization of a science festival in the city of Rovereto (Discovery on film 2007) to introduce and explain robotic sciences to the general public.
  
  If elected I would like to continue in this effort, expand it at the European level and provide a strong integration with other educational efforts and programs (funded locally, or by the EU), so that EURON members can have enough material and support to start and develop educational programs in their own areas. Furthermore, i would try to encourage even more doctoral summer schools, and provide enough organizational material and experience so that local organizers would not have to spend most of their time to deal with logistic issues and can concentrate on the scientific content of the school. Finally an important effort will be on scientific education of girls and minority students, to encourage more youngsters to attend sceintific courses and increase the student body of technical and scientific Faculties in Europe.