This proposal requests travel funds from NSF to assist 50 US students to participate in ICRA 2012, which will be held in St. Paul, MN, May 14-18, 2012. The purpose of this Group Travel Grant Proposal is to make it possible for US students and postdocs to attend the conference, present their work, and forge connections with colleagues from around the world.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of robotics. In addition to the regular conference, ICRA 2012 will feature interactive presentations, robot demonstrations, thematic plenary sessions on design, bio-robotics, and intelligent transportation, and special-topic symposia celebrating the conference theme of "Innovation for Tomorrow's Needs." As part of this award, students will also have the opportunity to participate in special events and learn more about the field of robotics. Travel funding will be in the form of partial airfare reimbursement and full reimbursement for student registration to approximately 50 U.S. students who plan to present at least one paper at the Conference.
Broader Impacts: Most major international robotics conferences were outside of North America this past year, so demand should be very high from American students and professors to attend this major robotics event. The benefit to student learning and mentorship by encouraging attendance of students by direct monetary means brings large dividends in student confidence, knowledge and expertise.
(ICRA), 2012 held in Saint Paul, MN. ICRA is the most important and largest robotics conference in the world and thus provides a wealth of professional development opportunities for students and researchers in this field. In particular, ICRA 2012 had a series of very interesting and informative plenary lectures, a number of tutorials and workshops covering the latest trends in robotics, and a host of interesting paper presentation sessions. The PI for this grant served as the Travel Award Chair for ICRA 2012. This grant allowed us to partially support the cost of attending ICRA 2012 (e.g., reimbursing air fare, conference registration fee, etc.) for 42 well-qualified students and thus enhanced student participation in the conference. These students could attend this important conference, got exposed to the recent developments in robotics and automation and could present their own papers because of the financial support provided by this grant. For some students, this was their first opportunity to attend a professional conference. The professional development opportunity afforded to these students by the grant will hopefully contribute towards scientific and technological development of robotics in the near future.
