This workshop is under the sponsorship of the Technical Committee on Intelligent Control in Agricultural Automation of the International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC). The first international workshop on bio-robotics was held in Gandia, Spain, in September 1997. Its aim was to promote exchange on studies on the use of robotics and automated machinery in bioproduction systems around the world. This announcement is for the second workshop, which is intended to develop and expand the domain of bio-robotic research toward a unified system of information-oriented agriculture/horticulture in the 21st century.
The purpose of the "BIO-ROBOTICS II" workshop is to provide a forum for the presentation of new approaches and results in the study of bioproduction robots, including automated and autonomous machine systems with or without manipulators, information-oriented technology to deal with variability, and intelligence technology for bioproduction systems. The discussions in this workshop are expected to lead to the development of new automated bioproduction systems and to the commercialization of various robots. To realize automated bioproduction systems, such as cultivating a field, many kinds of sensing system are obviously required to describe or recognize complex objects, and similar applications are needed in many areas of bio-robotics research. Precision farming and greenhouse technology are new integrated applications that use a systems approach to manage the spatial and temporal variability that is inherent in bioproduction systems.
On behalf of IPC, I would like to invite you to attend this exciting workshop on Bio-Robotics, Information Technology and Intelligent Control for Bioproduction Systems and to visit Sakai City, one of historical cities in Japan.