2012Mechanisms & Robotics Committee Meeting Minutes

Date:Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Time:6:30 pm to 8:30 pm

Place: McCormick Place Conference Center #22C

This meeting is in conjunction with the 2012ASME Design Engineering Technical Conferences & Computer and Information in Engineering Conference.

  • Welcome

Brief introduction and welcome from Pierre Larochelle

Change of order –item from new business was promoted.

  • NEW BUSINESS
  • ASME Fellow Presentations (Larry Howell & Alex Slocum)

Larry Howell was the nominator and presenter for new ASME Fellow Gloria Wiens for her contributions to mechanical design, mechanisms & robotics and micro- and nano-systems.

Alex Slocum was nominator and presenter for Martin Culpepper for his contributions to mechanical design (especially kinematic design of machinery) and promoting interaction between academia and industry.

Venkat Krovi requested copies of the citations from the nominators for inclusion in the detailed minutes.

“Prof. Culpepper has an outstanding reputationas a scholar and teacher in academia and industry. He has served the professional engineering community via professional courses and exhibited excellence in teaching at MIT. MIT students routinely rate his machine design class as the ’best I’ve ever taken.’ He has supervised 46 undergraduates and 43 graduate students in their research. He has published over 110 peer reviewed papers. Martin is the recipient of an NSF Presidential Early Career Award (PECASE), two R&D 100 awards, a TR100 award, and an MIT Joel and Ruth Spira Teaching Award. He co-started the American International Conference on Micromanufacturing”

Back to the old business.

  • OLD BUSINESS
  • Approval of Minutes for August 30, 2011.

Copy of minutes circulated on the M&R website.

Request for approval by Pierre Larochelle and moved by Charles Wampler.

  1. 2012 MR Conference Report (Chair-J. Dai, Program Chair- C. Nelson)

A brief report was solicited from conference chair Jian Dai by Pierre Larochelle.

Highlights of MR2012: (i) Record number of submissions (217) and presentations (187) which also ended up beating 2010’s record (ii) More international than ever (53% from outside North America); (iii) Resurgence of kinematics within the various symposia; (iv) 8 Top Symposia had on average 23 papers each.

Carl Nelson thanked the Symposium Organizers (and the authors) for their significant contributions. Healso noted that the Symposium Topic Categories better reflected the natural divisions between the various theoretical areas and key-application areas (as reflected by the more even distribution of submissions to the various symposia). He expressed a hope that future MR organizers would continue to use this breakdown into constituent symposia.

Jian Dai gave the MR Committee an update on the ReMAR (REconfigurable Mechanisms and Robots) conference: (Jointly sponsored by ASME, IEEE and IFToMM; IFTOMM provided travel awards 78 papers accepted from 110 submissions in 7 major areas; High quality proceedings with 3 reviews per paper; Proceedings appeared in Springer; 49% submissions from China; July 9th opening; 9 Keynotes were combined with sessions: Ken Waldron, Hong-Sen Yan, Larry Howell, Brian Davies, Kaspar Althoefer, Tingli Yang, Darwin Caldwell, Nak Young Chong, Just Herder and Greg Chirikjian.

  1. 2012 IDETC Update (Chair- Mike Stanisic & Program Chair- Jim Schmiedeler)

(i) 1100 papers submitted; Rejection rate was 17% for the IDETC as a whole; (ii) MR accepted (slightly) more papers than the rest of the conferences;in comparison DTM only accepts 50%; (iii) MR2011 accepted 75% while MR2012 accepted closer to 86%; potentially a need to avoid fluctuations; (iv) very low number of no-shows across the board (message seems to have gotten out);

Other innovations in IDETC2012 (and feedback was solicited): (i) Deadlines were firmly enforced; (ii) Did away with MR Lunch and went in for a conference-wide lunch with separate MR Awards/Keynotes; (iii) also streamlined DED awards by separating from lunch;

  1. Treasurer's Report (Carl Nelson)

Highlights: (i) Accounts fairly strong; (ii) IFTOMM Delinquent dues in arrears and were paid; cost shared with the division (60%) and MR (40%); (iii) Around $5k expense annually (on award stipends, certificates/plaques) among about 14 award winners; (iv) GM acknowledged for the Freudenstein Young Investigator Award; (v) Dr. Midha for the Compliant Mechanisms Awards and a Symposium named after him; (vi) NSF supports travel grants for Student Mechanisms and Robotics Competition which takes a load off the MR committee; (vii) Prize Money for Student M&R Competition was paid last year (1st time) and again this year (viii) Revenue from the last MR2011 (from Pierre): $7302.98.

Vijay Kumar raised a question about the continued involvement with IFTOMM: Discussion within the DED Executive centered around the fact that MR was probably the most vested (and only stakeholder?) in IFTOMM and hence should pay all of it; Jeff Ge responded (as IFTOMM Liaison). Venkat Krovi added that people from VIB and MSNDC (such as Drs. Shabana and Anderson) also go to IFTOMM events; Jeff added that PTG was also probably vested;

Pierre added that Buddy Clark and he identified 4 TCs participating and hence there was justification for looking at it from a DED perspective. Pierre suggested that 60-40 split with DED was a compromise solution after explaining the IFTOMM funding model and how the US pays $3600 annuallyas a first-world nation. Pierre also listed a set of member benefits and noted that Jeff Ge will now serve to represent DED/MR better as the IFTOMM Liaison and as a Voting Member of IFTOMM Executive. Jian Dai added that IFTOMM provided 2 travel fellowships for ReMAR (as an ASME/IFTOMM jointly sponsored conference). Alex Slocum noted that the MR Committee needs to better understand how to extract the maximum value for its participation in the IFTOMM Committee and how to communicate these opportunities to its membership (perhaps via its IFTOMM Liaison)

  1. Honors and Awards Subcommittee Report (Stephen Canfield)

Steve noted that: (i) New award format seemed to work out well (from logistics perspective and was also well attended); listed the major awards and the winners and thanked the sponsors (GM, ATYang, Midha); noted the challenge with respect to the named (but unfunded) MSC Simulation Award.(ii) Thanked the Honors and Awards Subcommittees – the PaperAward Subcommittee (Rafaelle, Chintien and Haijun) and the MR Award Subcommittee (Kazem, Clement, Jian); (iii) Need to be nominating more people for awards, for ASME Fellow etc.; nominations will be carried over for 3 years.

Pierre thanked Steve for his years of service as Honors and Awards Chair and asked the community for volunteers for the new Chair position.

  1. Student Mechanism and Robot Design Competition (David Cappelleri & Brian Trease)

Dave noted that they had an extraordinary year for the competition; 47 LOIs turned into 30 final submissions (14 from US and 16 non-US); Graduate Mechanisms (10 out of 10 LOIs); Graduate Robotics (10 out of 12 LOIs); Undergraduate Mechanisms (5 out of 14 LOIs); Undergraduate Robotics (5 out of 10 LOIs);

Peer review process was used to eliminate low-quality teams; invited 0 UG Mechanisms teams; 5 Grad Mechanisms teams, 2 UG Robotics and 4 Grad Robotics Teams; finally had 3 competition sessions (1 Mechanisms and 2 Robotics) and a poster session.

Sponsorships: Mathworks sponsored in-kind (Gift Bags, MATLAB Student Software, T-shirts); MR Committee gave the cash prizes;

Travel Support: Previous 3 year 45K NSF Grant for sponsored student travel from US based institutions; Awarded renewal 15K/yr grant for next 3 years.

Recognized fellow organizers Brian Trease and Jonathan Hopkins and noted the website ( which has presentations and videos.

Proposed some innovations for future (interactive sessions) and solicited inputs from the MR committee members; Pierre added that competition sessions were fantastic and solicited better attendance from committee members; Venkat noted that organizers could use help with the review process; Travel Support for International Teams was also noted as an important issue.

Jeff noted that competition sessions should be treated at par with other sessions (and care taken to prevent conflicts to maximize attendance); better location of the sessions would also facilitate more interactions and attendance. Venkat noted that Dave as MR2013 Program Chair will probably be more sensitized to competition-related issues; Venkat also noted that the AV content from the student competitions could be better archived and serve as a living advertisement for the MR Committee’s outreach efforts.

  1. 2013MR ConferenceUpdate(Chair-Tom Sugar, Program Chair- Dave Cappelleri)

Tom Sugar proposed a set of initiatives to focus on within MR2013: retain most of the existing Symposia breakdown; also wanted to get more of an international representation within MR2013; better recruitment of international symposium organizers; create more funding-agency workshops (e.g. DARPA, NSF); get more interactions with MNS and other TCs; requested the support of the committee to volunteer often and early (with submitting papers and with session- and symposium-organization).

Pierre noted that the earlier timing of IDETC13 also pushed forward all the paper submission and review deadlines. Jim Schmiedeler noted that enforcement of deadlines was critical from an organizational perspective. However, multiple people noted the lack of will at the DED/CIE Executive Level to enforce deadlines (DED was amendable, CIE is very unhappy with strict deadlines; felt disproportionately penalized in terms of revenue); Jeff noted the long-term precedent for this all the way from way back in 2008; Alex Slocum noted that the extended time-span (8 months to put a PDF on a CD) between submission to publication was a challenge; Larry Howell joined in support of shortening this timespan.

Just Herder noted the inconvenience of timing of the IDETC conferences in early or mid-August but US researchers noted that post Labor Day/September was inconvenient for them).

There was a broad discussion about ASME Publications and Webtool and Pierre requested people bring forth their suggestions/comments which would be forwarded to the DED Executive Committee.

  1. 2014 IDETC Update (Chair- Venkat KroviProgram Chair- Tom Sugar)

Venkat noted that conference approval was being pursued with a couple of different venues: Niagara Falls (Canada) and Buffalo (US);both set of venues offer many family-friendly attractions; very strong Canadian University presence in the areas and looking forward to engage them;

  1. By Law changes voted on at our last meeting (2011) have been approved by the DED & have gone into effect.
  1. Naming of two M&R Symposia:
  2. The A.T. Yang Symposium in Theoretical Kinematics
  3. The A. Midha Symposium in Compliant Mechanisms

Need to honor some of the giants of the community;

  1. J. of Mechanisms & Robotics Update (Mike McCarthy) and 21st Century Kinematics Workshop

Received first listing of impact factor in past June: 1.06 (puts JMR in top 1/6th of all ASME Publications). Mike McCarthy thanked the loyal base and commitment of both submitting authors and readership for their support despite the very high selectivity (1/3); the lack of indexing (until very recent past) and the enormous volatility (in current times and days to come); noted the significant role of very detailed/thoughtful reviews provided by the reviewer communityin contributing to the outstanding intellectual discourse; ranked 37th out of 120 Mechanical Engineering Journals (3 or 4 slots behind MMT); 123 papers submitted last year and on track for 190 this year; JMR publishes about 60 papers a year and will go up from 600 pages/yr (2012-13) and 800 pages/yr (2013-14); many TCs/Groups interested in contributing papers: MNS, Vehicles, PTG and many special issue offers by other editors.

Mike noted that having served 5 years as JMD and 5 years as JMR Editor it was time to step down; an Editor-nominee has been recommended to DED Executive & Publications Committee; with further vetting will continue through November; Mike will continue to serve as Editor until the replacement has been formally confirmed.

21st Century Kinematics Workshop came as an outcome of a panel discussion in 2011; arose out of the need to find a unified foundation for the M&R theoretical knowledge base in kinematics (which was gradually being watered-down in application-oriented pursuits such as “Kinematics in X”); while workshop was a short series of 7 hour-long presentations, it laid out a very clear foundation of overlapping interests, applications and methods for applying fundamentals of geometryto tackle some very complicated problems. Next steps for continuing this process to help redefining and rejuvenating the CORE OF KINEMATICS are being planned; but needs a whole lot of commitment and engagement from various members of the MR community.

Comments from audience: Alex Slocum urged the need to better engage industry; Carl Nelson noted the usefulness of bringing together the knowledge within a book; Mike McCarthy noted presentations will be posted online; Challenged the community to point him towards the “Big Problems in Kinematics” to serve as grist for the next meeting.

  1. J. of Mechanical Design Update (Panos Papalambros)

Jim Schmiedeler presented on behalf of Panos: JMD will also have a new Editor (to be announced after the Publications Committee meets around November); M&R Associate Editors: James Schmiedeler (2013); Kwun-Lon Ting (2013); Hong-Sen Yan (2013); Oscar Altuzarra (2015); Feng Gao (2015); Chintien Huang (2015); ; Craig Lusk (2015); Alexander Slocum (2014). Lots of data: 28% acceptance rate; Pierre encouraged people to nominate themselves for Associate Editorships; will help people navigate the process.

  • NEW BUSINESS
  • Comments on the Fast Forward & Interactive Session format used in the Compliant Mechanisms Symposium

At the 2011 M&R meeting a proposal was made to organize the Compliant Mechanisms Symposium in a Fast Forward & Interactive Session format. Just Herder and Charles Kim organized this effort and reported on it. The format used was a series of 3 minute talks (very strict with ½ minute warning); 12 sequential presentations made and focus shifted to the Interactive Session (1hr and 20 minutes); many positive comments and suggestions from the audience; explicitly surveyed and captured by Just and Charles in their documentation;

Good discussion around: how some symposia are better aligned with this presentation format, (e.g. Student Design Competitions); Logistics challenges of how to tackle more symposia transitioning to this format; Challenges with aligning this within the overall conference layout; Will the Mechanisms and Robotics Student Competitions pick up on this format next year?

  1. Information Item: 60th Anniversary of the M&R Conference

Pierre requested volunteers from the community to help highlight this special anniversary.

  1. Information Item: Freudenstein Distinguished Lecture Series (see below)
  • The Mechanical Engineering Department at Columbia University has recently established the Freudenstein Distinguished Lecture Series. URL:
  • The inaugural lecture was presented by Prof. Bernie Roth of Stanford University on March 30th and the topic was The Stanford "d.School": Educating for Creative Confidence and Innovation. Prof. Roth is a doctoral student of Prof. Freudenstein. This lecture series is made possible by the generous support of Dr. Hitoshi Tanaka; Senior Vice President of Designatronics, Inc. and also a doctoral student of Prof. Freudenstein. A recording of the lecture has been made available on youtube (
  • US Representative to IFToMM (see below)
  • The USA’s IFToMM dues are in arrears ($18k) (US dues are $3,600/year).
  • A new formal process for joint DED & M&R appointment of US Rep to IFToMM has been proposed by the M&R Committee to the DED. The DED has recently approved the M&R Committee’s proposal.
  • The Design Engineering Division will become current on dues payments to IFToMM ($14,400 for years 2008-2011 plus $3,600 for 2012 for a total of $18,000), to be shared between the Division (60%) and the Mechanisms & Robotics Technical Committee (40%). Future dues payments will be similarly shared between DED and M&R.
  • Furthermore, the US National Committee representative to IFToMM shall be appointed jointly by the Chair of the DED Executive Committee and the Chair of the Mechanisms & Robotics Committee. The representative will serve a nonrenewable term of four years. The responsibilities of the representative will include: (1) making arrangements for the annual IFToMM dues to be paid from DED and M&R funds, and, (2) serving as a liaison between the DED/M&R and IFToMM Communities as the Chair of the DED Standing USCToMM Committee.
  • Revising & Update of F2 Academic Tree Website
  • Pierre requested audience to submit updates to him – to be revised on a quarterly basis (URL:
  1. Members may propose other new business at this time

Venkat Krovi discussed the option of setting up and integrating a suite of web-based resources pertinent to the MR Community in a Wiki like format. The proposed resources include: (i) a self-subscribe MR mailing-list (via Google Groups) to circulate announcements; (ii) the MR You-Tube Channel; (iii) other multimedia material to help showcase the wonderful work of the community.

Worldwide IFTOMM mechanisms-design competition – point of contact: Jeff Ge

  • APPOINTMENT OF LEADERSHIP POSITIONS
  • US Representative to IFToMM: Jeff Ge (2012 – 2016)
  • 2014 MR Conference (Chair-Carl Nelson, Program Chair- Anurag Purwar)
  • ELECTIONS (Closed Session- M&R Ctte. Members Only))
  • Five members of the M&R Committee

5 members needed to serve on the Mechanisms and Robotics Committee for 6 year terms to replace 5 members whose terms expire on October 1st 2012: Rafaelle Di Grigorio, Dennis Hong, Chintien Huang, Peng Song and Gloria Wiens. (still voting members and can vote on their replacement).

Nominations included: Mary Frecker, Larry Howell, Mike McCarthy, Shorya Awtar, Jonathan Hopkins , Venkatesh Dubey, Andreas Muller, Chin-Hsing Kuo, James Joo, Girish Krishnan David Myzska, Feng Gao, Charles Wampler

Elected: Shorya Awtar, Andreas Muller, James Joo, Feng Gao, Charles Wampler

  1. One member of the Honors & Awards Subcommittee

Needed Awards Subcommittee Chair – Steve briefed audience on requirements and duties.