Industrial Robot Innovation Award" presented at CLAWAR 2004

Citation

(2005), "Industrial Robot Innovation Award" presented at CLAWAR 2004", Industrial Robot, Vol. 32 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/ir.2005.04932bab.002

"Industrial Robot Innovation Award" presented at CLAWAR 2004

“Industrial Robot Innovation Award” presented at CLAWAR 2004

Keywords: Robotics, Innovation, Conferences

The second “Industrial Robot Innovation Award” was recently presented to the RobTank Inpec project at the CLAWAR 2004 event in Madrid (22-24 September, 2004).

The idea for this award was born from the belief that while there is a lot of innovative work being done in the field of robotics, there is also a lot of duplication and repetition of research, and that many researchers struggle to solve problems for which solutions are already available.

The aim therefore was to encourage fresh thinking and to reward this with a high status award and honorarium. The award is open to both industrial and service sectors and to both academia and those working in industry.

This year's winner

We are delighted to announce that this years award goes to the RobTank Inspec project lead by Mario Ribeiro, Instituto de Solidadura e Qualidade, Oeiras, Portugal.

The RobTank Inspec project

Storage tank owners and users want to prevent any sort of leakage due to the high risks related to environment, safety and economic impacts. The inspection procedures in practice consider periodically external and internal inspections in order to assess the tank condition and establish adequate inspection periods. The purpose of the RobTank Inspec system is to make available a vehicle able to perform in- service inspection of storage tanks by using ultrasonic systems and avoiding the inconvenience of emptying the tanks. A paper describing the project is included in this issue.

The award comprises an engraved handmade glass bowl, a certificate and an honorarium of Euro 400 and one years free internet access to the Emerald engineering portfolio (valued at over Euro 3000), which includes “Industrial Robot” and sister journals “Sensor Review” and “Assembly Automation”. This was presented by Clive Loughlin – Editor for Industrial Robot (Plate 1).

Plate 1 Clive Loughlin presents the award to Mario Ribeiro at CLAWAR 2004

Nominations for the 2005 Award

Nominations for the award can be made by any independent individual or organisation and should be sent to the Editor, Dr Clive Loughlin (E-Mail: CliveLoughlin@engineeringfirst.com). Nominators should send the Editor a brief statement outlining why they think the nominee deserves the award and also include copies of the papers or other material that they would like the panel of judges to consider. A panel of four judges then separately appraise each nomination for both originality and practicality and decide on the winner.

Nominations for the 2005 “Industrial Robot” Innovation Award must be received no later than 1 June 2005.

A full report on the CLAW AR 2005 conference can be found in this issue of Industrial Robot.