IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - September 2012 - 108

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the RAS and IEEE Control Systems
Society for outstanding contributions to the local growth of robotics
and automation in Hong Kong,
student programs and activities,
and international relationship development with other regions,
especially in mainland China. WeiHsin Liao is the chair of the IEEE
Hong Kong Section Joint Chapter.

vol. 27, no. 5, pp. 918-930, Oct. 2011)
received the IEEE Transactions on
Robotics King-Sun Fu Memorial Best
Paper Award.
RAS Award Recipients
The recipients of the RAS Awards are
as follows:
l Jean-Claude
Latombe, Stanford
University, received the Pioneer in
Robotics and Automation Award
for pioneering contributions to
robot motion planning and the
application of robotics methods
to computational biology and
medicine and fundamental contributions to the foundations of control of robots and teleoperators,
and for contributions to robotics
education.
l George Bekey, University of Southern
California, USA, was the recipient of
RAS George Saridis Leadership
Award in Robotics and Automation
for his leadership in the robotics and
automation community, realized
through innovative research, education, and service contributions.
l John Hollerbach, University of Utah,
USA, received the RAS Distinguished
Service Award for his dedication,
professionalism, and commitment to
transparency in different tasks for the
Society, especially for conference and
technical activities.
l Vijay Kumar, University of Pennsylvania, USA, was the recipient of
RAS Distinguished Service Award
for his leadership in improving
RAS conferences and his continuing service in promoting major
robotics research initiatives.
l Pieter Abbeel, University of California Berkeley, USA, received the Early
Academic Career Award for contributions to apprenticeship learning
and deformable object manipulation
and their application to autonomous
helicopter flight and surgical and
personal robotics.
l Katherine Kuchenbecker, Stanford
University, USA, received the Early
Academic Career Award for contributions to haptic interfaces and
touch perception for robotic and
telerobotic systems.
108

IEEE ROBOTICS & AUTOMATION MAGAZINE

Pieter Abbell and Katherine
Kuchenbecker each receive the Early
Academic Career Award.
l

Rainer Bischoff, Kuka Laboratories,
was the recipient of Early Government/Industry Career Award for
leadership and outstanding contributions to the cooperation of
academia and industry and for
managing and promoting significant technology transfer in the area
of industrial and service robotics.
The most active Technical Committee of RAS was awarded to the
Technical Committee on Safety, Security, and Rescue Robotics Cochairs
Hideyuki Tsukagoshi, Andreas Birk,
and Julie Adams for outstanding
quantity, diversity, and quality of
activities, such as helping to the disaster response and recovery in great
Eastern Japan earthquake, organizing
a rescue robotics camp and exercise,
arranging many workshops and journal special issues, and participating
actively in conferences, reviewing,
and organizing special sessions.
The winner of the RAS Chapter of
the Year is IEEE Joint Chapter of

Rainer Bischoff is the recipient of Early
Government/Industry Career Award with
RAS President David Orin.

SEPTEMBER 2012

ICRA 2012 Award Winners
The award winners for the ICRA 2012
are as follows:
l Best Conference Paper: M. Hagiwara, T. Kawahara, T. Iijima, Y.
Yamanishi, and F. Arai for the
paper titled "High Speed Microrobot Actuation in a Microfluidic
Chip by Levitated Structure with
Riblet Surface"
l Best Manipulation Paper (endowed
by Ben Wegbreit): Z. McCarthy and
T. Bretl for the paper titled
"Mechanics and Manipulation of
Planar Elastic Kinematic Chains"
l Best Vision Paper (endowed by Ben
Wegbreit): Michael J. Milford and
Gordon F. Wyeth for the paper titled
"SeqSLAM: Visual Route-Based
Navigation for Sunny Summer Days
and Storm Winter Nights"
l Best Automation Paper (sponsored
by United Technologies Research
Center): A. Stolt, M. Linderoth, A.
Robertsson, and R. Johansson for
the paper titled "Force Controlled
Robotic Assembly Without a Force
Sensor"
l Best Medical Robotics Paper (sponsored by Intuitive Surgical): A.
Gosline, N.V. Vasilyev, A. Veeramani, M. Wu, G. Schmitz, R. Chen,
V. Arabagi, P.J. del Nido, and P.E.
Dupont for the paper titled "Metal
MEMS Tools for Beating-Heart
Tissue Removal"
l Best Service Robotics Paper (sponsored by KUKA): H. Tsukagoshi, Y.
Mori, and A. Kitagawa for the
paper titled "Fast Accessible Rescue
Device by Using a Flexible Sliding
Actuator"
l Best Video Award: A.S. Boxerbaum, A.D. Horchler, K.M. Shaw,
H.J. Chiel, and R.D. Quinn for the

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