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EDITOR’S CORNER •

What IsAutomation?Ken Goldberg, Editor-in-Chief, IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering

“

What is quality?” asked

the narrator in RobertPirsig’s classic Zen and 

the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. In a similar spirit, onemight ask, “What is automation?”This question is especially relevant to

those of us in the IEEE Robotics andAutomation Society (RAS) who areconsidering where to submit theirnext journal paper. Should it goto IEEE Transactions on Robotics(T-RO) or IEEE Transactions on

 Automation Science and Engineering (T-ASE )?

In 1984, a group of visionary researchers arranged the marriage of 

two subfields toform RAS. Twenty years later, theSociety bifurcatedits journal intotwo publications.As we approachthe Society’s 30-year anniversary,we might stepback to considerthe respective rolesand characteris-

tics of roboticsand automation.Let’s admit: robotics is sexier, more

esoteric, and more alluring. Automa-tion has always been viewed as theworkhorse, focused on manufactur-ing, less glamorous but with a largerimpact on the world economy. Onereason the term “science” was addedto T-ASE  was to emphasize the rigor-

ous and theoretical aspects of automa-tion. Despite their differences, themarriage has succeeded, and overtime, like most married couples, thepartners have acquired many mutualinterests.

Automation has expanded beyond

its roots in manufacturing to includeapplications in health care, security,transportation, agriculture, construc-tion, energy, and many other areas.Both robotics and automation explorethe frontiers of automated and semi-automated machines. Both fields areincreasingly concerned with the roleof humans and human interfaces andthe potential of Internet and Cloudcomputing.

So what’s the difference betweenrobotics and automation? There aremany possible distinctions that may be found in the summary from ourSociety’s field of interest statement:

. . . Robotics focuses on systemsincorporating sensors andactuators that operate autono-mously or semiautonomously in cooperation with humans.Robotics research emphasizesintelligence and adaptability to

cope with unstructured envi-ronments. Automation researchemphasizes efficiency, produc-tivity, quality, and reliability,focusing on systems that oper-ate autonomously, often instructured environments overextended periods, and on theexplicit structuring of suchenvironments.This statement emphasizes how 

automation emphasizes structured

 versus unstructured environments,reliability versus adaptability, and

efficiency versus exploratory opera-tions. These are valuable distinc-tions, and I’d like to propose anotherone.

In my view, research in roboticsemphasizes feasibility. Feasibility focuses on proof of concept, demon-

strating how a new functionality canbe achieved. Robotics papers usually demonstrate a new ability of a robot,for example, demonstrating how arobot can walk, drive, fly, or performa surgical subtask.

On the other hand, research inautomation emphasizes Quality. Iuse the uppercase to indicate Quality in the technical sense, as in Quality Control, which includes efficiency,productivity, and reliability, as statedin our field of interest statement.Quality can be improved with new techniques, analysis, models, and re-sults on robustness, stability, pro-ductivity, efficiency, completeness,optimality, convergence, perform-ance guarantees, time complexity,sensitivity, verification, and reliabil-ity. Of course, an automation papermay present a feasibility study for anentirely novel mechanism, model, or

theory for applications that involverepetitive operations, for example,in manufacturing or health care. Butan automation paper could alsofocus on making robots walk, drive,fly, or perform a surgical subtask more efficiently, reliably, or costeffectively.

Let’s dispel the myth of theexcluded middle: robotics and auto-mation are not disjoint. Feasibility and Quality are closely related. Many 

papers include aspects of both sub-fields but emphasize one or the other.

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MRA.2011.2181783

Date of publication: 26 March 2012

• One reason theterm

“science” wasadded

to T-ASE wasto

emphasize the

rigorousand

theoretical aspects

of automation.

•

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Viewed this way, many researchersstudy both robotics and automation.

I should clarify the distinctionbetween uppercase Quality and lower-case quality. Lowercase quality isrelated to value and, as Pirsig noted, isa subtle characteristic related to rigor

and originality. A paper that empha-sizes feasibility can be high quality and a paper emphasizing Quality canbe of low quality.

Almost all papers include elementsof both feasibility and Quality, the dis-tinction will never be binary becauseit’s a matter of degree. Both publica-tions emphasize research over devel-opment. In my view, a paper withsignificant results that primarily emphasize feasibility (i.e., the focus is

on proof of concept) should be sub-mitted to T-RO. In contrast, a paperwith significant results that primarily emphasize Quality (i.e., the focus is onperformance) should be submitted toT-ASE . Of course, there will be many exceptions.

RAS is a successful marriage thathas grown stronger over time. Now is

a good time for the RAS community to take a fresh look at T-ASE  andexpand our definition of automationwhile also welcoming a new commu-nity of researchers who focus on auto-mation. As I have argued here, animportant part of this self-reflection is

to expand and clarify our definition of automation.

Please consider submitting apaper; visit our Web site for updates,links to the latest papers, informa-tion about past and upcoming spe-cial issues (for example, on greenmanufacturing), a list of our editorsand associate editors, and our new list of methodologies and applica-tions. Also, please consider submit-ting to our Annual IEEE Conference

on Automation Science and Engi-neering (IEEE-CASE).

I’m convinced that the RAScommunity will grow, thrive, andincrease our global impact by advancing both robotics and auto-mation. Maybe someone will evenfigure out a way for robots to main-tain motorcycles.

Postscript: A version of this essay appeared in the January 2012 issue of T-ASE . T-ASE  was astutely guidedduring its first three years by editor-in-chief (EIC) Peter Luh and thenext four yearsby EIC N Vishu

Viswanadham.My term as EICbegan in Sep-tember 2011. I’mindebted to theentire T-ASE Edi-torial Board andthe colleagues Iconsulted withon this essay,including Anto-nio Bicchi, Tim Bretl, Peter Corke,

Alessandro De Luca, Seth Hutchin-son, Vijay Kumar, Peter Luh, KevinLynch, Matt Mason, Bruno Siciliano,Frank van der Stappen, Dick Volz,and many others. Any blame for mis-takes and omissions should be attrib-uted to me.

•

•Apaper that

emphasizes feasibility

canbehighquality

and a paper 

emphasizingQuality

can beof lowquality.

•

•Student’s Corner  (continued from page 100)

This way of using already availabletools for uploading multimedia fileswill be of great help when dealing with the situations described before:the reviewer will become convincedthat the results are valid, and if theauthors fail to upload the system

working in these conditions, the re- viewer will have evidence that suggeststhat the results are not as described inthe paper.

Although using the available re-sources in such way would helpimprove the assessment of the resultsof a paper, the ideal way of evaluating whether an experiment is rigorous ornot would be participating in a muchmore direct way on its design andthen being present during its execu-

tion. Although this is not possible, we

propose to implement a bidirectionalcommunication channel among re-

 viewers and authors to recreate theideal scenario. Reviewers and authorsshould be able to dialogue, exchang-ing ideas and multimedia files. Thisbidirectional channel would allow the

reviewers to anonymously participateunder the supervision of the editor inthe design of new experiments tobackup the results of the paper, by asking the authors for graphic evi-dences of the results and sharing source codes.

Implementing such a tool is neithereasy nor cheap, but we believe thatincreasing the confidence in publica-tions and improving the certificationof the published results is a capital

matter for the future of scientific

publications. Furthermore, thesenew methodologies will save hugeamounts of time spent trying to repli-cate algorithms or methods that donot work as claimed, and finally willlead to a greater credibility of scien-tific publications.

Ignacio Galiana and Pablo Cerradaare part of SRP. For more informa-tion, visit the Web site at http://site-s.ieee.org/ras-srp. They would like tothank Ludo Visser for his valuablesuggestions about this article and hisefforts with the SRP.

Reference

[1] (2011, Mar. 10). Notes on a scandal. Nature

[Online]. 471, pp. 135 – 136. Available: http://

www.nature.com/nature/journal/v471/n7337/

full/471135b.html

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