Greetings From the New Student Activities Committee Executive Team [Student's Corner]

Abstract

Welcome again to the “Student’s Corner” column. This year brings to us a gradual transition between the online activities resulting from COVID-19 and in-person meetings. We finally had the ability to attend to the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) in person. It was an impressive conference, not only for the number of participants and the sponsors that the organizers were able to attract but also for the opportunities available to early researchers in the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (RAS). We broke several records at the conference, beginning with the sponsors, extending to the number of people attending (8,004, with 4,709 joining in person) and reaching a total of 1,458 papers that students and researchers were eager to present after three years of pandemic and online meetings. We, the RAS Student Activities Committee (SAC), are excited by the large presence of early career researchers: 48% of the in-person participants were students. From these numbers, it is clear that the Society is expanding and that there is increasing interest in the field from new generations.