What Is the Robotics and Automation Society?

The Robotics and Automation Society (RAS) is a professional technical society of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) dedicated to advancing science and technology in robotics and automation. Its stated mission is to foster the development and facilitate the exchange of scientific and technological knowledge in these fields for the benefit of members, the profession, and humanity. RAS describes itself as the leading organization in research and technological developments in robotics and automation worldwide, with thousands of members across numerous countries.

The society originated as the IEEE Robotics and Automation Council, founded on 13 December 1983 and operational from 1984, under the leadership of George Saridis as its first president. In 1987 the council was elevated to society status. Its scope spans the full research-to-application pipeline, from theoretical foundations of motion planning and control to industrial deployment of robotic systems and automation equipment.

Mission and Technical Scope

The IEEE Robotics and Automation Society articulates its purpose as advancing robotics and automation in ways that benefit peaceful civilian applications and promote ecological sustainability. The society organizes its technical activities through 45 technical committees covering sub-areas including robot mechanisms and design, autonomous ground vehicles, human-robot interaction, medical robotics, soft robotics, and robot learning. Each committee organizes workshops, coordinates standards activities, and provides a forum for researchers in a particular sub-area to collaborate across institutional boundaries.

The standing committee on standards works with IEEE standards bodies to develop specifications covering robot safety, performance measurement, and component interfaces. This standards activity provides a bridge between academic research and industrial deployment, giving manufacturers and integrators common benchmarks against which to evaluate robotic systems.

Publications and Conferences

RAS maintains one of the broadest publication portfolios of any IEEE technical society. Peer-reviewed transactions cover robotics, automation science and engineering, haptics, field robotics, medical robotics and bionics, robot learning, and soft robotics. The IEEE Transactions on Robotics is the society's flagship archival journal, publishing research on kinematics, dynamics, control, planning, and sensing for robotic systems. IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L) publishes shorter contributions with rapid review timelines and offers authors the option to present accepted papers at the society's flagship conferences.

Three conferences anchor the society's annual calendar: the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS, cosponsored with RSJ and IEEE SMC), and the IEEE International Conference on Automation Science and Engineering (CASE). ICRA and IROS are among the largest and most competitive venues in robotics, each receiving several thousand submissions per year.

Educational and Community Programs

RAS supports student chapters and regional chapters that organize local seminars, competitions, and networking events. The society runs a distinguished lecturer program that deploys leading researchers to university and industry audiences worldwide. It also funds student paper awards, travel grants for early-career researchers, and summer schools that provide intensive training in specialized sub-areas such as aerial robotics or soft robotics. These programs reflect the society's commitment to building the next generation of robotics researchers and practitioners across a globally distributed community.

Applications

The Robotics and Automation Society's work has applications in a wide range of fields, including:

• Industrial automation and manufacturing, through standards and research on robot performance
• Medical technology, through the IEEE Transactions on Medical Robotics and Bionics
• Field robotics, through research on agricultural, mining, and disaster-response systems
• Human-centered systems, through technical committees on human-robot interaction and social robotics
• Emerging domains, including soft robotics and robot learning research communities