The International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) has been the flagship conference for the international robotics community for 35 years.

As the IEEE's leading conference, it brings together the world's best researchers and key companies to share ideas and advances in robotics and automation.

This year’s event was held in Montreal, Canada, with a focus on industrial applications.

After the success of ICRA 2018, which was held in Australia for the first time, Australian robotics and science experts again played a key role.

A team from CSIRO’s Data61, working at the frontier of robotic science and technology, had six papers accepted at the last week’s conference.

Represented by CSIRO Data61 Group Leader Fred Pauling and Data61 Research Director Dr Sue Keay, Australia again demonstrated how it is punching above its weight globally in the highly competitive field of robotics.

They were among the 4,200 plus attendees at the conference who discussed the latest robotics trends, innovations, and research. 

This year’s event included more than 1,300 papers and presentations by robotics researchers from around the world.

Data61 papers included:

• Local descriptor for Robust Place Recognition using LIDAR intensity
• Quantifying the reality gap in robotic manipulation tasks
• Walking posture adaptation for legged robot navigation in confined spaces
• OVPC Mesh: 3D free-space representation for local ground vehicle navigation
• Optimisation-based terrain analysis and path planning in unstructured environments
• Dynamic manipulation of gear ratio and ride height for a novel compliant wheel using pneumatic actuators

In an analysis of the papers provided by the GVU Center at Georgia Tech, the 4,370 authors of the 1,389 papers submitted for the conference covered 162 different topics around robotics and automation, with a large majority covering deep learning in robotics and automation.

“For the last few years, deep learning and fully automated extraction of data from big piles of data has been a big trend,” said Gregory Dudek, the general chair of the ICRA committee.

“Now what we’re seeing in robotics is the incorporation of classical knowledge with machine learning.”

Dudek said he’s seeing research take classic controllers and deep learning to build a hybrid system that uses both of these technologies. “That’s a very hot new thing, which has a lot of promise,” he said. “It’s basically using insights you get from pure learning for building the guarantees that you get from classical methods.”

The increased attendance, interest from large industrial robot makers, and even startup companies at the show all indicate a continued growth and optimism around robotics, Dudek said. Companies that developed prototypes a few years ago are now showing more mature systems that can do new tasks.

“The stuff from the past few years is super impressive, and every year it gets more impressive,” said Dudek.

This year’s program included keynote presentations by renowned researchers, workshops and tutorials, forums on selected topics, award ceremonies, and technical robotics tours.

At the accompanying exhibition, industry representatives again had the opportunity to gain an insight into their technologies and exchange ideas with researchers.

Many of the world’s leading robotics companies were on display in Montreal.

This included KUKA which presented an application for human-robot collaboration.

KUKA demonstrated how it’s sensitive lightweight robot KUKA LBR iiwa can grip and mount objects.

The application demonstrates the potential of intelligent and adaptive robots for industrial applications. The robot assembles rings that have previously been placed anywhere on a table. The operator guides the robot manually to the approximate position of the components before independently implementing the movements learned.

After the LBR iiwa has finely positioned the components, it assembles them precisely.

Dudek said holding ICRA 2019 in Montreal recognises robotics as a priority in Canada and the growth of Montreal as a hub for new technologies.

ICRA 2020 will be held in Paris, from May 31 to June 4, 2020.

For more details click here