Tightening the chord between academia and industry [President´s Message]

After a successful IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) that marked the silver anniversary of our flagship conference (from Atlanta in 1984 to Pasadena in 2008), I am writing this column while attending the IEEE/International Federation of Robotics (IFR) Joint Forum on Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Robotics and Automation (IERA) in Munich (see my message in the March issue), as part of Automatica 2008 (the largest biennial fair in robotics and automation in Europe), in parallel with two annual local events [the symposium of the German Association for Pattern Recognition, and Robotik organized by the German Society for Robotics (DGR)].