Winner of the Georges Giralt PhD Award 2011

The 2011 Georges Giralt PhD Award was won by Mario Prats from Robotic Intelligence Laboratory at Universitat Jaume I. , with a thesis entitled "Robot Physical Interaction through the combination of Vision, Tactile and Force Feedback. Applications to Assistive Robotics."
Dr. Prats is a robotics researcher at the Jaume-I Universit, Castellón, Spain. He received his Ph.D in Computer Science Engineering from the Jaume-I University in 2009. His research is to advance towards more autonomous, robust and versatile robotic manipulation. He received Robotdalen International Scientific Award Honorable Mention 2009 and was finalist of the CEA-GTRob award to the best PhD thesis on Robotics.
CONGRATULATIONS to the winner!

The other finalists were
Radu Bogdan Rusu, Willow Garage. His thesis is entitled "Semantic 3D Object Maps for Everyday Manipulation in Human Living Environments."
Dr. Rusu is a Research Scientist at Willow Garage. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Technische Universität München (TUM), Germany in 2009 with summa cum laude. He is currently the maintainer of PCL (Point Cloud Library), a project that aims at providing a comprehensive collection of point cloud/geometry processing algorithms.

Michaël Van Damme, Vrije Universiteit Brussel. His thesis is entitled "Towards Safe Control of a Compliant Manipulator Powered by Pneumatic Muscles."
Dr. van Damme is researcher and teaching assistant at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel since 2003. The focus of his research is the use of a robotic assistive device in direct contact with an operator.
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The Georges Giralt PhD Award is an annual award given by EURON for the best PhD thesis in Europe. The aim is to encourage high-quality work amongst young researchers in their first research period. The prize consists of a diploma and, in addition, the authors of all short-listed theses are offered an opportunity to publish their thesis as a monograph with Springer.

The 2010 Robotics Award Winners

Joseph F. Engelberger Award 

The 2010 Engelberger Robotics Award was presented to Heinz-Dieter Schunk, Schunk GmbH and Scott W. Deming Corning Inc. during the 41st International Symposium on Robotics held here in conjunction with AUTOMATICA. 

The Engelberger Robotics Award is the world's most prestigious robotics honor. The awards are presented to individuals for excellence in technology development, application, education, and leadership in the robotics industry.

IEEE RAS Award winners 2010 
Associate Professor Yu Sun, Advanced Micro and Nanosystems Lab, Dept. of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, University of Toronto, received the 2010 IEEE Robotics & Automation Society Early Career Award "for contributions to enabling microrobotic and MEMS technologies for automated cell manipulation and characterization in cell biology and clinical applications".

Dr. Leandro Barajas received the 2010 IEEE Robotics & Automation Society Early Career Award for "pioneering the use of diagnostics and prognostics research in large-scale industrial robotics and automation applications." Leandro G. Barajas is Staff Researcher, Advanced Robotics Group Manufacturing Systems Research Laboratory General Motors R&D Center. 

The 2010 Georges Giralt PhD Award
Ludovic Righetti from EPFL received the 2010 Georges Giralt PhD Award for his thesis entitled "Control of Legged Locomotion using Dynamical Systems: Design Methods and Adaptive Frequency Oscillators." 

Robot of the Year 2010 (Japan)

The METI Grand Prize Award 2010 for industrial robots was received by Toyota Motor Corporation, Ochiai Nekus Inc. Nagoya Institute of Technology and Tokyo Metropolitan University for its low power 80W energy-saving comfortable robot  installed at the Toyota car assembly plant working safely in cooperation with people.
More info.