ICARA 2009 New Zealand - BITS Pilani Prof RK Mittal Keynote Address on Nanorobots.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
(Free-Press-Release.com) February 19, 2009 -- The 4th International Conference on Autonomous Robots and Agents – ICARA 2009 organized by the School of Engineering and Advanced Technology (SEAT), Massey University New Zealand took place at James Cook Hotel Grand Chancellor, Wellington during 10-12 February 2009.

ICARA 2009 aimed to provide a common forum for researchers, scientists, engineers and practitioners throughout the world to present their latest research findings, ideas, developments and applications in the area of autonomous robotics and agents. The conference also included keynote addresses by eminent scientists as well as special, regular and poster sessions.

The conference had various sessions which included Autonomous Robots and Agents; Biorobotics and Biomechatronics; Multi-Agent Systems; Computational Intelligence: Algorithms and Applications; image processing for robotics; embodied artificial intelligence; unmanned vehicle and vehicle tracking; vision applications in robotics; humanoid robots; intelligent data processing for autonomous applications; smart robots; sensors in robotic applications; etc.

The conference had participation of subject experts from USA, Australia, Japan, Korea, Germany, Taiwan, Malaysia, Italy, Canada, Singapore, Iran, China, Israel, Brazil, Poland Spain, Austria and India.

Keeping the Indian flag flying high, in his keynote address on Powering Nanorobots: An Engineering Challenge, Prof RK Mittal from Birla Institute of Technology and Science – BITS Pilani pointed out that Nanorobotics is a fast emerging field of engineering concerned with creating miniaturized robots of the size of few hundred nanometers and below consisting of components of nanoscale or molecular size and with functionalities of their macro-counterparts.

Considering that mechanical motions, chemical transformations etc require energy, Prof Mittal highlighted how the propulsion and energetics aspects represent a serious limitation in nanorobot design and pointed out that while Biologicals in nano-domains can obtain the continuous power supply from surrounding medium, the challenge ahead is to develop a transducer to convert environmental Brownian motion into mechanical energy for internal storage or immediate utilization.

Dr R.K.Mittal is Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Computer Science Deputy Director (Administration) and at one among the top ranking universities in India today BITS Pilani which has recently been reaccredited by NAAC with a CGPA of 3.71 out of 4. His teaching and research experience at BITS spans over three decades.

He is the founding member of the Centre for Robotics and Intelligent Systems (CRIS) created from scratch in 1992 and was its Coordinator until 2000. A team of students under his guidance developed the first humanoid in India, named AcYut, which participated in World RoboGames 2008 held at San Francisco, USA. He was instrumental in establishing BITS Alumni Association (BITSAA) in 1989 and is the current President of BITSAA.

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