One robot on Mars is robotics, ten robots are automation – Robohub

In this illustration, NASAs Ingenuity Mars Helicopter stands on the Red Planets surface as NASAs Perseverance rover (partially visible on the left) rolls away. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The difference between robotics and automation is almost nonexistent and yet has a huge difference in everything from trade shows, marketing, publications to academic conferences and journals. This week, the difference was expressed as an opportunity in the Dear Colleague Letter below from Professor Ken Goldberg, CITRIS CPAR and UC Berkeley, who suggested that students whose papers were rejected from ICRA, revise them for CASE, the Conference on Automation Science and Engineering. This opportunity was expressed beautifully in the title quote from Professor Raja Chatila, ex President of IEEE Robotics and Automation Society and current President of IEEE Global Society on Ethics of Autonomous and Intelligent Systems. One robot on Mars is robotics, ten robots on Mars is automation.

Dear Colleagues,

Over 2000 papers were declined by ICRA today, including many that can beeffectively revised for another conference such as IEEE CASE (deadline 15March).

IEEE CASE, the annual Conference on Automation Science and Engineering, isa major IEEE conference that is one of three fully-supported IEEEconferences in our field (with ICRA and IROS).

In 2021 CASE will be held 23-27 August. It will be hybrid, with a livecomponent in Lyon France and an online component:https://case2021.sciencesconf.org/

IEEE CASE was founded in 2006 so is smaller but growing quickly. Theacceptance rate for the last CASE was about 56%, higher than ICRA 2021(48%), IROS, or RSS. I consider this a feature not a bug: it is anexcellent venue for exploratory and novel projects.

IEEE CASE continues the classic conference model of featuring a 10-15 minoral presentation of each paper in contrast to poster sessions. This isparticularly exciting for students, who get the valuable experience oflecturing and fielding questions in front of an audience of peers.

IEEE CASE also has a tradition of spotlighting papers nominated for awardssuch as Best Paper, Best Student Paper, etc. Each nominated paper ispresented in special single session track on Day 1, where everyone at theconference attends and there is a lively Q&A led by judges.

IEEE CASE emphasizes Automation. Automation is very closely related toRobotics. There is substantial overlap, but Automation emphasizesefficiency, robustness, durability, safety, cost effectiveness. Automationalso includes topics such as optimization and applications such astransportation and mfg. I like how RAS President Raj Chatila summed up therelationship 10 years ago: One robot on Mars is robotics, ten robots onMars is automation.

In China there are over 100 university departmentsfocused on Automation. The impact factor for the IEEE Transactions onAutomation Science and Engineering (T-ASE) this year is on par with T-ROand higher than IJRR. Automation is important to put robotics intopractice.

Ken Goldberg

Professor, Industrial Engineering and Operations Research

William S. Floyd Jr. Distinguished Chair in Engineering, UC Berkeley

Director, CITRIS People and Robots Lab

Core Team Member & Robotics Industry Futurist

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One robot on Mars is robotics, ten robots are automation - Robohub