2020 IEEE Robotics and Automation Technical Field Award recipient announced!

October 14th, 2019

Published by IEEE
 
Heartfelt congratulations to Vijay Kumar, selected recipient of the prestigious 2020 IEEE Robotics and Automation Technical Field Award for “Contributions to cooperative robotics; networked mobile manipulation systems, particularly unmanned aerial vehicles; and leadership in robotics research, policy, and education.” He will receive this award during the 2020 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) in Paris, France on 31 May-4 June 2020.
 
Considered one of the top roboticists of his generation, Vijay Kumar’s vision and technical accomplishments have shaped the fields of cooperative and networked robotics and autonomous micro aerial vehicles. He developed several novel capabilities for swarms of ground and aerial vehicles ranging in size from micro to macro that can move in formation, transport objects, and operate both indoors and outdoors. Central to his work is the synthesis of decentralized controllers that allow a group of robots to produce a desired global behavior by coordinating only with their immediate neighbors. Kumar has also served as an advisor in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, which was instrumental in increasing federal funding for robotics and cyber physical systems.
 
An IEEE Fellow and a member of the National Academy of Engineering, Kumar is the Nemirovsky Family Dean with the School of Engineering and Applied Science at University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA.
 
The IEEE Robotics and Automation Technical Field Award was established in 2002 by the IEEE Board of Directors, and is presented for contributions in the field of robotics and automation. It includes but is not limited to: manufacturing automation; robotics and automation in unstructured environments; sensor design; integration and fusion; robot design; modeling; planning and control; methodologies for robotics and automation, and the quality of the nomination. This Award is sponsored by the IEEE Robotics & Automation Society.