Macau

The 2019 IROS conference was in Macau this November (the International Conference on Robots and Systems). As robotics continues to grow in relevance and impact, so too does the size of the conferences and the quality of the work being presented.

A highlight of the meeting for me personally was a workshop on data sampling, titled “Informed Scientific Sampling in Large-scale Outdoor Environments”. It was organized by Johanna Hansen, Sandeep Manjanna, Oscar Pizarro, Victor Zykov, and myself. The workshop featured a range of interesting and provocative talks. Stefan Williams gave a great overview of his portfolio of work in marine data collection and robotics. I
The talk by Ágata Alveirinho Dias Called “Diving into the unknown: robotics as tools to study the deep-sea” was refreshing, since it addressed challenges from the geology community.

Macao itself is a truly strange place. The tourist-oriented parts are like Las Vegas on steroids. There is a multi-colour Eiffel Tower, an indoor recreation of Venice including gondola rides, and more casino gambling that I could bear.