ICRA 2006Status Report

Norman Caplan, General ChairC. S. George Lee, General Co-ChairNikos Papanikolopoulos, Program

Chair

October 2005San Francisco, CA

ICRA 2006 Organizing Committee

General Chair: Norman Caplan, Washington Univ.

Program Chair: Nikos Papanikolopoulos, Univ. of

MinnesotaGeneral Co-Chair:

C. S. George Lee, National Science Foundation, USA

Program Co-Chairs: Junku Yuh, National Science

Foundation, U.S.A. Kevin Lynch, Northwestern Univ. Bradley Nelson, ETL, Switzerland Kostas Kyriakopoulos, NTUA, Greece Katsushi Ikeuchi, Univ. of Tokyo Minoru Asada, Osaka Univ. Paolo Fiorini, Verona Univ. (Posters)

Finance Chair: T.C. (Steve) Hsia, Univ. of CA, Davis

Awards Chair: Yuan F. Zheng, Ohio State Univ.

Tutorials & Workshops Chair: William Hamel, Univ. of Tenn.

Special Sessions Chair: Wes Snyder, North Carolina State Univ.

Publications Chair: C.L. Philip Chen, Univ. of Texas, San

AntonioLocal Arrangements Co-Chair:

Kimon Valavanis, Univ. of South Florida Yi Guo, Univ. of Central Florida

Video Proceedings Chair: Paul Oh, Drexel Univ. Allison Okamura, Johns Hopkins Univ.

Exhibits Chair: Ron Lumia, Univ. of New Mexico

Publicity Chair: Yoky Matsuoka, Carnegie Mellon Univ.

Webmaster: Denis Gracanin, Virginia Tech

Hilton in the Walt Disney World Resort

1751 Hotel Plaza Boulevard Lake Buena Vista, FL814 rooms total15 session rooms + 3 society meeting rooms + Exhibits + Plenary session room$147 singles/doubles + taxesCommitted 1525 room nights

Conference Date and Program

Technical Sessions: Tuesday-Thursday, May 16-18, 2006

Tutorials and Workshops: Monday (5/15) and Friday (5/19)

AdCom Meeting: Friday, May 19, 2006

Day SUN MON TUE WED THU FRI SAT

Date 5/14 5/15 5/16 5/17 5/18 5/19 5/20

Sgl/Dbl 100 250 400 400 250 100 25

Conference Facilities (I)

Conference Facilities (II)

Technical ProgramConference Theme: Humanitarian Robotics2 Plenary Sessions in the afternoon and one Awards Session (Separate from the Banquet)High-quality paper sessions with a double-blind review process (The goal is for 12 parallel tracks with five papers each)Tutorials/Workshops with renewed emphasis. Workshops will be on Monday and tutorials on FridayPanel DiscussionsPoster Sessions during the first two daysJournal/Magazine special issues are plannedSpecial/Invited Sessions Exhibits (+ competitions)

Technical Program

Best Review AwardsPosters will be reviewed, similarly to papersPosters will be in the proceedings but not in IEEE Xplore. Posters are viewed as another way to convey original ideas in their early development phase.Videos will be accompanied by poster presentations.TCs will have a more active role in the program formation.

Actual Numbers

1756 paper submissions (a record!!!).

123 poster submissions.

65 video submissions.

20 (6 from Europe, 6 from USA, 8 from Asia) tutorial/workshop submissions + IARP + Space Robotics(?).

2 special sessions proposals.

Countries (50+)USA, 482Japan, 277China, 119France, 102Canada, 99Germany, 83South Korea, 76Spain, 65Australia, 60Italy, 53….Brunei Darussalam, 1

Popular and Unpopular Keywords

Mobile Robots (222)Motion and Path Planning (181)Robot Vision and Recognition(113)Multi-Robot Systems(106) Computer Vision (87)Humanoids (83)….Automation: Demining and Excavation (1)

Program Committee

Goal is to have at least two quality and in-depth reviews per paper.222 confirmed PC members with their keywords inserted.4 additional confirmed PC members with specific requirements (topic-wise, etc.). 25 Poster PC members.25 confirmed Grand Reviewers.Each member will review 15 papers max.Forty additional reviewers are on reserve.

Program Committee

78 PC members are from Europe. One resigned after we gave the deadline extension.

48 PC members are from Asia. A record number of no responses came from Asia (17 total).

96 PC members are from the Americas.

Observations

The server handled the load with no problem. The complaints received were few. In the last hour, the server accepted more than 100 papers.More than 500 papers had problems with fonts, containing identity revealing information, duplication, wrong files, or plain cases of plagiarism, etc.In five days, we fixed almost all of them through the exchange of more than 1000 emails.Hurricane Rita created additional issues.All the PC chairs, myself, and 10 of my students worked day and night on this front.

Observations

Despite the attempts of some individuals to question ICRA’s quality, ICRA remains our premier conference. The numbers and the quality speak to this fact.Cheating/plagiarism is rampant. For example, Professor X from Mexico submitted 8 papers whose differences are in the titles and the abstract (paper IDs: 265 1130 1132 1137 1158 1176 1551 1746).The load to the reviewers is high.Double-blind review can help in the quality and is feasible even at a conference of this size.

Observations

Till September 16 (midnight), we had 863 papers and 36 posters.More than 1200 papers were submitted or revised between September 16 and September 21.The deadline extension affected positively the quality based on some initial indications.

Conference Publications

DVD proceedings with embedded video clips (Philip Chen)

Video proceedings (Paul Oh)

Conference digest (Nikos, Lee)

Exhibits layout and handout (Lumia)

Live demo + K-12 Visit (Local Arrangements Chair)

Finance and Budget

Finance Chair: Steve Hsia

Conference Bank Account

Account with Bank of America, Davis, CA

Account name is IEEE ICRA 2006

Reimbursement Process

Fill out an IEEE expense report (excel file)

To Do List

Online Paper Submission (Start2 with double-blind review) (by July 2005) DONE!!!Form Program Committee (by June 2005) DONE!!!Paper Submission, Deadline: Sept. 21, 2005 DONE!!Paper Review Process (5 weeks) IN PROGRESS!!!Executive PC meeting (Third weekend of Dec. 2005) in Orlando, FLNotification of Paper Acceptance: Jan. 2006Final Paper Due: Feb. 2006IEEE CMS will handle registrations