10th IFAC Symposium on Robot Control

SYROCO 2012Dubrovnik, Croatia, September 5–7, 2012

The 10th IFAC Symposium on Robot Control (SY-ROCO 2012) was held in Dubrovnik, Croatia, from 5 to 7September 2012. It was organized by the Croatian Societyfor Communications, Computing, Electronics, Measure-ment and Control – KoREMA (http://www.korema.hr/)and the Centre of Research Excellence for Advanced Co-operative Systems – ACROSS (http://across.fer.unizg.hr).SYROCO 2012 was sponsored by the IFAC TechnicalCommittee on Robotics (TC 4.3) and co-sponsored by theIFAC Technical Committee on Mechatronic Systems (TC4.2), and the IFAC Technical Committee on Control De-sign (TC 2.1) as well as the Ministry of Science, Educationand Sports of the Republic of Croatia and the University ofZagreb, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing.

SYROCO is held every three years since 1985 allowingresearchers to become acquainted with the latest accom-plishments and innovations in advanced control of roboticsystems. Robot control technology is widely used forspace, surgery, rehabilitation, micro machine, entertain-ment, underwater, civil engineering, professional and do-mestic services, security etc. As the robot control tech-nology will continue to play an increasing role in the ar-eas of robot-robot and human-robot cooperation in variousdynamic scenarios, "Robot Control in Dynamic Cooper-ative Scenarios" was chosen as the primary topic for theSYROCO 2012.

In our view, 145 accepted and presented papers, au-thored by 376 authors from 34 countries (selected from asubmission pool of 186 papers authored by 443 authorsfrom 39 countries), are a testimony to an increasing ap-peal of the symposium. Each paper was evaluated by twoindependent expert reviewers and by a member of the In-ternational Program Committee (IPC) or National Organ-ising Committee (NOC). SYROCO 2012 was supported bya large IPC with 64 members from 22 countries. The SY-ROCO 2012 technical program was divided into twentythree regular oral sessions and five invited sessions, whichwere arranged in four parallel tracks for the three days ofthe Symposium. Contributions on basic research as wellas on relevant applications were included in the technicalprogram. These contributions covered wide range of top-ics related to robot control technology, and provided anaccurate picture of the state of the field at the present time.The ten most common keywords were: Mobile robots andvehicles, Robot control (adaptive, robust, learning), Sen-sory based robot control, Modeling and identification, Hu-manoid robot, Multi cooperative robot control, Force and

Figure 1. From left to right: P. Korondi (BME, Budapest), O.Khatib (Stanford Univ.), H. Hashimoto (Chuo Univ.), I. Petrovic(Univ. Zagreb), W. Burgard (Univ. Freiburg)

compliance control, Telemanipulation, Professional anddomestic services and Networked robots.

The technical program of the Symposium also includedfour invited plenary lectures given by distinguished pro-fessors. The first one, entitled “Probabilistic Techniquesfor Mobile Robot Navigation” presented by Professor Wol-fram Burgard (University of Freiburg, Germany) outlinedmajor challenges of probabilistic approaches as the mostpowerful approaches to highly relevant problems in mobilerobotics including robot state estimation and localization.The second lecture “New Directions of iSpaces in Cog-nitive Info-Communication and Personal Mobility basedon Robotics” presented by Professor Hideki Hashimoto(Chuo University, Japan) described the concept of Intel-ligent Spaces which have functions of understanding en-vironments by networking sensors and serving people byusing Mechatoronics/Robotics devices. The third lecture“Human-Centered Robotics” given by Professor OussamaKhatib (Stanford University, USA) focussed on the ongo-ing effort to develop human-centred robotic systems thatcombine the essential characteristics of safety, interactiv-ity, and performance with emphasis on (i) human-friendlydesign concepts and novel sensing modalities; (ii) compli-ant whole-body control strategies; and (iii) human-inspiredbehaviours through synthesis of human motion and skills.The forth lecture “Active Vision for Object Manipulation”presented by Professor Danica Kragic (Royal Institute ofTechnology - KTH, Sweden) addressed some of the mostimportant challenges and outlined some of the results ofher long-term work in the area of vision based sensing andcontrol. Moreover, a special plenary session from industry

Online ISSN 1848-3380, Print ISSN 0005-1144ATKAFF 54(1), 139–140(2013)

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Savjetovanja i skupovi

was scheduled on September 6, 2012, where three com-panies (Dok-Ing, Ltd. and HSTec, Inc. from Croatia andPPM AS from Norway) presented their research and devel-opment activities related to robotics.

To conclude, it can be said that the 10th IFAC Sympo-sium on Robot Control (SYROCO 2012) had a very highlevel of attendance (170 participants from 31 countries),with a very active participation in technical activities andthe general feeling we got from attendees’ comments hasbeen very positive. The participants appreciated the techni-cal program as well as the social one and were very happywith the quality of the presentations and the friendly atmo-sphere. Of course, the success of the SYROCO 2012 is theresult of the effort of many people. On behalf of the NOCand IPC, we would like to thank all the authors, IPC mem-

bers, NOC members, reviewers, and participants for theircontributions, and also the session chairs and co-chairs forconducting the technical sessions and providing valuablefeedback on their development. We are also grateful to thevolunteers who contributed to the organization.

Further details about the Symposium including the finalprogram (with paper abstracts) and a picture gallery of theevent can be found at the web page www.syroco2012.org.

Ivan Petrovic, NOC ChairPéter Korondi, IPC Chair

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