9601919 Kak This award supports the participation of 20 senior U.S. graduate students in a U.S.-Japan Graduate Student Forum entitled "Robotics of Today and Tomorrow for Advanced Automation and Other Societal Applications" to be held at Senri Life Science Center, Osaka, Japan, November 8 and 9, 1996. The co-organizers are Professor Avi Kak of Purdue University and Professor Yoshiaki Shirai of Osaka University. An equal number of superior graduate students will be selected from the Japanese universities; participation of the Japanese students will be supported by separate funds raised in Japan. The specific aims of the Forum are to: (1) foster collaborative links between the promising graduate students -- the future leaders in research and development -- in robotics and automation in the two countries; (2) review the current state-of-the-art in robotics and automation; (3) discuss the disparities that exist between the experiments that can be carried out in the best university laboratories and the somewhat lagging state- of-the-art of the best robotic practices in industry in the two countries; (4) discuss future directions for research and development and how projects carried out jointly between the two countries can help with the realization of the future. ***
