Reflections on ICRA 2022 [President's Message]

Abstract

Having witnessed the nearly five thousand participants gathered in Philadelphia for the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2022, I think it’s safe to say that in-person meetings are emphatically back. It’s true that the coronavirus continues to evolve and still stubbornly refuses to go away, and many travel restrictions across borders remain in place. Still, after more than two years of meeting remotely, the chance to have informal conversations in the hallway with speakers, to connect with both old and new friends outside meetings, and to disconnect from the distractions of daily life and rituals were, especially for me, too much to pass up. To the organizers and volunteers who organized such a tremendously successful event through the uncertainty and challenges of the pandemic, let me express my deep gratitude on behalf of the entire robotics community.