“This is the flagship robotics conference,” said Seth Hutchinson, a former Georgia Tech professor who served as one of two general chairs for this year’s event. “Most of the robotics researchers you want to hear from or see will be at this conference.”

This includes faculty from Georgia Tech's colleges of Computing, Engineering, and Sciences, as well as the Georgia Tech Research Institute, the Institute for People and Technology, and the Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Machines.

ICRA will feature more than 2,000 presented research papers. Georgia Tech researchers authored or co-authored 57, including 18 written by faculty and students from the College of Computing.

In addition to the presented research, the conference will have demos, exhibitions, and robotics competitions throughout the week. The competitions include the Earth Rover Challenge for robot navigation over challenging terrain, the Quadruped Robot Challenges, and the Roboracer Autonomous Grand Prix.

More than 130 robotics companies and research institutes will showcase exhibitions. ICRA also hosts a career fair that Hutchinson said provides an excellent opportunity for Georgia Tech students interested in attending.

“We’re able to attract a lot of vendors. For researcher-oriented conferences, there’s no conference where you’ll see this many robotics companies showing up and showing off what they’re doing," he said.

"We have a massive career fair you don’t get at other conferences, so if you’re a student looking for work, this is a good place to be.”

Hutchinson, the former executive director of Tech’s Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Machines, said ICRA comes to Atlanta when worldwide interest in robotics is at an all-time high.

Read the full article posted at the College of Computing >>