2004 Original Paper Award Ceremony and Technical Exchange Party of FANUC FA and Robot Foundation
Original Paper Award Ceremony
The FANUC FA and Robot Foundation was established in 1989 with its fund provided by FANUC, to help advance the FA and industrial robot technologies. The foundation's "Original Paper Award" recognizes creative research papers of industrial merits in the fields of the FA and industrial robot. This award is selected by the foundation's Paper Awards Screening Committee out of the research papers recommended by five academic societies related to FA and industrial robots.
The 3rd awarding ceremony and the technical exchange party took place on March 4, 2005 at the Hotel Okura in Tokyo.
At the foundation's Board of Directors and Councilors Meetings, which preceded the ceremony, Mr. Yoshinori Komiya, Director, Industrial Machinery Division, Manufacturing Industries Bureau of METI gave the greeting remarks.
The awarding ceremony was then opened by remarks of Dr. Masaru Sugiura, Chairman of the foundation, followed by greetings by Mr. Hiroyuki Ishige, Director-General, Manufacturing Industries Bureau of METI. Mr. Ishige pointed out that Japan has nothing but its technology to compete with the world. He also said that he expects much from the FANUC FA and Robot Foundation, which recognizes high-level research papers that build on the technological strength and will lead to the practical application.
Then, Prof. Fumio Harashima, Chief of the Paper Awards Screening Committee of the Foundation announced the winners of the awards. A total of six research papers received the Original Paper Awards, including two Special Awards. Dr. Sugiura presented each representative of the award winners with the certificate and the prize money, as FANUC's Honorary Chairman Dr. S. Inaba granted a silver medal inscribed with his words "There is a history of technology, but for engineers there is no past. There is only creation." and the names of the winners. Medals were also given to the co-authors of the papers from the foundation.
Chairman Dr. Sugiura
of the Foundation
Dr. S. Inaba presenting a medal
Mr. Hiroyuki Ishige of METI
Awarded Papers
| Special Awards | |
|---|---|
| TITLE / Published in: | AUTHORS (* Representative of authors) |
| An Integrated Conical Spring Linear Actuator Vol.69, No.3, pp438-pp442, 2003 "JSPE Journal" |
*Seiichi HATA, Tokyo Institute of Technology Tomokazu KATO, YAMAHA FINE TECHNOLOGIES CO., LTD. Takashi FUKUSHIGE, Tokyo Institute of Technology Akira SHIMOKOHBE, Tokyo Institute of Technology |
| Mode Shape Compensator for Improving Robustness of Manipulator Mounted on Flexible Base Vol.21,No.4, pp395-pp400, 2003 "Journal of the Robotics Society of Japan" |
*Jun UEDA, NARA INSTITUTE of SCIENCE and TECHNOLOGY Tsuneo YOSHIKAWA, Kyoto University |
| Original Paper Awards | |
| TITLE / Published in: | AUTHORS (* Representative of authors) |
| Precision nano-fabrication and evaluation of a large area sinusoidal grid surface for a surface encoder Vol. 27, No.3, pp289-pp298, 2003 "Precision Engineering" |
*Wei GAO, Tohoku University Takeshi ARAKI, Hitachi Displays, Ltd. Satoshi KIYONO, Tohoku University Yuichi OKAZAKI, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science Technology Masashi YAMANAKA, Tohoku University |
| Compensation of Gravity-Induced Errors on a Hexapod-Type Parallel Kinematic Machine Tool Vol.47, No.1, pp160-pp167, 2004 "JSME International Journal, Series C" |
*Soichi IBARAKI, Kyoto University Toshihiro OKUDA, Kyoto University Yoshiaki KAKINO, Kakino Research Institute Masao MAKAGAWA, Okuma Corporation Tetsuya MATSUSHITA, Okuma Corporation Tomoharu ANDO, Okuma Corporation |
| Cooperative Behavior Acquisition of Autonomous Arm Robots through Reinforcement Learning Vol.39, No.3, pp266-pp275, 2003 "Transaction of the Society of Instrument and Control Engineers (SICE)" |
*Kazuaki YAMADA, The University of Tokyo Kazuhiro OHKURA, Kobe University Kanji UEDA, The University of Tokyo |
| Position Control for Ultrasonic Motors Using Backstepping Control and Dead-Zone Compensation with Fuzzy Inference Vol.123, No.9, pp1004-pp1011, 2003 "Transactions of IEEJ, Society D, Industry Application Society" |
*Tomonobu SENJYU, University of the Ryukyus Tomohiro YOSHIDA, The Okinawa Electric Power Company Katsumi UEZATO, University of the Ryukyus Toshihisa FUNABASHI, Meidensha Corporation |
Technical Exchange Party
At Technical Exchange Party that followed, Prof. Dr. Tamio Arai, School of Engineering, the University of Tokyo proposed a toast and gave the following remarks.
Greetings by Prof. Dr. Tamio Arai
"Thank you very much for your kind introduction. As Mr. Hiroyuki Ishige of METI pointed out, we are keenly aware of the position of the today's manufacturing industry and the importance of technology in the circumstances. It is not enough, however, just to develop technologies. There must be a political measure to make the most of the technologies, and also a system that allows us to evaluate products and technologies, in order to realize sustainable progress. Fortunately, the METI has started The Robot Policy Study Group (provisional) at Mr. Ishige's bureau and MONODZUKURI Forum at Industrial Machinery Division headed by Director Mr. Yoshinori Komiya. I myself am a member of these two committees. I am glad that Japan is seeking to direct the manufacturing industry to the future.
On the other hand, the industry is also working hard. FANUC, especially, is making the most of its superb technologies to pursue "intelligent" assembly and machining. It is well known that this initiative is driving the development of the overall Japanese technologies, which also pleases me. If we take a close look at the technologies that are currently used in this process, they are the research results generated about 15 to 20 years ago from 1980 to 1990.
The FANUC FA and Robot Foundation is playing, thus, a valuable role by university professors and industry experts evaluating and identifying prospective research results, which will, then, further produce the next technologies. Under Prof. Fumio Harashima, I am, in fact, a member of the foundation's award screening committee. I am very pleased that the committee has identified two excellent papers for special awards this year. It is a happy event not only for the committee but also for the Japanese and the world industries. I am confident that we are running a healthy evaluation system that helps produce excellent papers, which will contribute to the wellbeing of the humankind in the future.
In this sense, I hope that all of us gathered here have the responsibility to remember these excellent research papers, communicate them to the world, and commercialize them in 5 to 10 years, so that these valuable technologies will be utilized fully to generate our wealth. In closing, I would like to propose a toast to the health and prosperity of the winners of the awards and also for all of us gathered here today, and for the continued prosperity of the FANUC FA and Robot Foundation."
(March 2005)
