Funding, News and Announcements

Dear Canadian Robotics Stakeholders,

On behalf of the event organizing committee, I am pleased to invite you to join us as a participant/advisor in a two-day event “Towards a National Robotics Strategy for Canada” that will take place this Thursday September 28th and Friday September 29th in Vancouver.

The purpose of this 2-day event is to gather robotics stakeholders from across Canada to initiate the development of a national robotics strategy that builds on our strengths and capacities in robotics, and is uniquely tailored to address Canada’s economic needs and social values. This event has been sponsored by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and is supported in kind by the 2017 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2017) as an official Workshop of the conference. The first of two days coincides with IROS 2017 - one of the premiere robotics conferences globally - in order to leverage from the experience of international robotics experts as we explore Canada’s need for a national robotics strategy here at home.

DAY ONE : “Best practices in designing effective roadmaps for robotics innovation”
== Hosted as an IROS Workshop ==
Thursday September 28, 2017 | 8:30am - 5:00pm | Vancouver Convention Centre
Evening Social (6:30 - 8pm) sponsored by Clearpath Robotics

DAY TWO : “Towards a national robotics strategy for Canada”
== NSERC-Sponsored Canadian Robotics Stakeholder Meeting ==
Friday September 29, 2017 | 8:30am - 8:00pm | University of British Columbia (UBC)
Dinner Reception (6:30 - 8pm) sponsored by NSERC

We’ve attached an official invitation letter that provides more details about the two-day program and how to register for each day of the event (note that registration for each day is done separately). We hope you can attend.

You can learn more about the other invited speakers and participants on the event website.

If you wish to join us, please register as soon as possible to reserve your spot: We still have a handful of NSERC-funded hotel rooms on September 28th for out-of-town academics - but these MUST be reserved by August 27th.
· Register for Day One (IROS Workshop) here
· Register for Day Two (Stakeholder Meeting at UBC) here

If you cannot attend but still wish to be involved in or be kept informed about a national robotics initiative for Canada, please register your interest here

Thanks, and we look forward to seeing you in September!

Respectfully Yours,

Hallie Siegel - General Chair
Communications Consultant, Former Managing Editor @Robohub
hallie.k.siegel@gmail.com

Dr. AJung Moon - General Co-Chair
Co-Founder & Director, Open Roboethics Institute
ajung@openroboethics.org