Mission

The mission of CLAWAR Association is:

The provision and facilitation of Education & Training and promotion of state of the art Research and Development in the area of mobile robotics with associated applications, for the benefit of the global Robotics Community and Society.

The CLAWAR Association is a non-profit Membership based organization and it shall not engage in any activity which would be inconsistent with the status of an educational and non-profit making organization.

CLAWAR Association is registered in the UK with Companies House as a Company Limited by Guarantee (Registration No. 5730036) and is currently in the process of seeking charitable status from the Charities Commission in the UK.

Purpose

• The purpose of the Association is to support the widespread development of robotic systems and associated technologies to create a sustainable service robotics community.
• The Association has been established as a spin-off non-profit making organisation of the Climbing and Walking Robots (CLAWAR) Network of Excellence (funded by the EC under European Framework programme over 01 April 1997 to 31 October 2005), and thus shall advance and extend the aims of the CLAWAR Network into the future.
• The Association shall create and sustain an international scientific society that is responsive to the needs of scientists, engineers, educationalists and industrialists in all countries whose primary interests are in the field of robotics and associated technologies.
• The Association shall cooperate with scientific societies in all countries with the aim of increasing information exchange in robotics, fostering the well-being of scientists and engineers interested in robotics, and reducing any unnecessary duplication of effort through the encouragement of modularisation and standardisation activities.
• The Association shall provide mechanisms and channels of communication to increase the flow of information on robotics to Members through sponsoring, co-sponsoring or supporting seminars, workshops, symposia, congresses or conferences, through publishing or supporting journals or other publications and encouraging other activities for the general good of scientists and engineers in all countries.
• The CLAWAR Association is a non-profit membership based organization and it shall not engage in any activity which would be inconsistent with the status of an educational and non-profit making organization.

Structure

Become a CLAWAR member

Select normal or student membership:

Member : 75.00 GBP - yearly Student member : 35.00 GBP - yearly

For alternative methods of payment and corporate memberships please follow this link

CLAWAR'11 Best Technical Paper Awards

Terms of reference

The papers are assessed on their technical novelty and innovation presented in a specific area. The Award is made by CLAWAR Association to promote the highest standards in research spanning fundamental scientific theory and how this can be applied to make good advances in the area of robotics. The process adopted for determining the best technical papers is the following:

1. An average of the review scores obtained for the papers are used to rank them.
2. The top papers are then assessed for their overall technical excellence by individual experts within CLAWAR Association.
3. A CLAWAR Association panel then discusses the individual recommendations and finalises the winners.

Prizes

• Winner: 100€, subscription to CLAWAR Association for 1 year and certificates to authors
• Runner up: 50€ and subscription to CLAWAR Association for 1 year and certificates to authors
• Highly commended papers: certificates to authors

All the above winning authors are also invited to submit an extended version of their paper for publication in the CLAWAR e-Journal.

CLAWAR'11 Best Technical Paper Award Winner

Paper ID: 116
Authors: A. W. Long, R. D. Gregg and K. M. Lynch
Paper title: The Simplest Parkour Model: Experimental Validation and Stability Analysis
Authors' affiliation: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208, USA.
Email: awlong@u.northwestern.edu

Runner ups

Runner up 1: ID 94
Authors: K. Walas
Paper title: Obtaining Geometry of Stairs Using Monocular Vision System
Author's affiliation: Institute of Control and Information Eng, Poznan University of Technology, Poznan, Poland
Email: krzysztof.walas@put.poznan.pl

Runner up 2: ID 107
Authors: L. Pfotzer, S. Bohn, C. Birkenhofer, R. Dillmann
Paper title: Biologically-inspired locomotion with the multi-segmented inspection robot Kairo-II
Authors' affiliation: Forschungszentrum Informatik an der Universitat Karlsruhe (FZI), Karlsruhe, Germany
Email: lars@lpfotzer.de

Highly commended papers

Highly commended paper 1: ID 15
Authors: Marco Hutter, C. David Remy, Mark A. Hoepflinger and Roland Siegwart
Paper title: High compliant series elastic actuation for the robotic leg SCARLETH
Authors' affiliation: Autonomous Systems Lab, Institute of Robotics and Intelligent Systems, Swiss Federal, Institute of Technology (ETHZ), Zurich, Switzerland
Email: mahutter@ethz.ch

Highly commended paper 2: ID 17
Authors: Ting Wang and Christine Chevallereau
Paper title: Steering Control for a 3D Biped Robot Considering Ground Contact and Stability
Authors' affiliation: L’Institut de Recherche en Communications et Cyberntique de Nantes (IRCCyN) CNRS, Ecole Centrale de Nantes, France
Email: wang@isir.upmc.fr

Highly commended paper 3: ID 28
Authors: Teruyoshi Ogawa, Masayuki Yamamoto and Taro Nakamura
Paper title: Proposed omnidirectional locomotion strategy for travelling-wave type mobile robot (TOROIII)
Authors' affiliation: Faculty of Science and Engineering, Department of Precision Mechanics, Chuo University, 1-13-27 Kasuga, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, Japan
Email: t_ogawa@bio.mech.chuo-u.ac.jp

Highly commended paper 4: ID 83
Authors: Taro Nakamura and Toru Hayakawa
Paper title: Development of an omnidirectional wall-climbing robot by using travelling wave propagation
Authors' affiliation: Faculty of Science and Engineering, Department of Precision Mechanics, Chuo University, 1-13-27 Kasuga, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, Japan
Email: nakamura@mech.chuo-u.ac.jp

Highly commended paper 5: ID 97
Authors: Mohammed Awad(a,b), Kian Sek Tee(a), Abbas Dehghani(a), David Moser(c) and Saeed Zahidi(c)
Paper title: Design of an efficient back drivable semi-active above knee prosthesis
Authors' affiliations:
(a) Institute of Engineering Systems and Design, School of Mechanical Engineering, University of Leeds, Leeds, LS2 9JT, UK
(b) Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt
(c) Chas A Blatchford & Sons Ltd, Lister Road, Basingstoke, Hants, UK
Email: m.ib.awad@gmail.com

Highly commended paper 6: ID 132
Authors: Brandon Rutter(a), Brian Taylor(a), Roger Quinn(a), William Lewinger(b), John Bender(c), Roy Ritzmann(c) and Marcus Blumel(d)
Paper title: Sensory coupled action switching modules (SCASM) for modelling and synthesis of biologically inspired coordination
Authors' affiliations:
(a) Biologically Inspired Robotics Laboratory, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Dept., Case Western Reserve University, 10900 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, OH 44106, USA
(b) Institute for Perception, Action and Behaviour, University of Edinburgh, EH8 9AB, UK
(c) Department of Biology, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH 44106, USA
(d) Department of Animal Physiology, Institute for Zoology, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany
Email: btaylor@case.edu