ETFA2009 Final Report

By Antoni Grau and James C. Hung, Conference General Chairmen.

The IEEE 2009 Conference on Emerging Technologies and Factory Automation, ETFA2009, was held on September 22 to 26, 2009, in Palma de Mallorca, Spain, organized by the Technical University of Catalonia (UPC) and the University of Balearic Islands (UIB) together with the Industrial Electronics Society (IES). The conference was attended by 330 enthusiastic participants coming from 39 different countries.

The first day of the conference was the Energy Day, held at TIRME the largest company in Mallorca in waste treatment and waste-to-energy production. This was the first meeting about energy generation and distribution held in ETFA series. Under the title of «Distributed Generation - Towards a new Energy Paradigm», 10 invited speakers presented research works about different energy issues from a technological point of view. Two of these speakers were with ENDESA and Red Eléctrica de España (REE), the largest companies in Spain in generation and distribution of energy. A total of 60 attendees came to TIRME to participate, who were very impressed by the presentations. Enthusiastic discussions were involved. At the end of the Day, a visit to TIRME´s energy co-generation plant was arranged by the organizers.

The next 3 days are for paper sessions and Keynote speeches. Four keynote speakers were invited: Christoffer Apneseth (ABB, Norway), Tei-Wei Kuo (National Taiwan Univ.), Manuel Silva (Univ of Zaragoza, Spain) and Michel Parent (INRIA, France), giving excellent and memorable talks to the audience.

The Regular papers sessions were organized in 7 technical tracks and 9 special sessions. A total of 42 sessions were held during the conference, in which 276 papers were presented. The number of submissions were 386, representing of acceptance rate of about 71.5%. Each paper was reviewed by three reviewers at least, with more than 1160 reviews involved in the regular papers. Technical Program Committee selected recipients for two best paper awards. One is the Fumio Harashima Best Paper Award for Emerging Technology, and the other is the James C. Hung Best Paper for Factory Automation. Both awards were presented at the ETFA2009 Banquet.

There were 6 Work-in-Progress (WIP) sessions. Each WIP paper was orally summarized by its author in 5 minutes in the session room. The full content of each WIP paper was posted on boards in the the hall outside the session rooms. Many detailed and lengthy discussions occurred there. There were 116 submissions and 85 accepted papers, with an acceptance rate of 73%. More than 280 reviews were done for WIP.

A total of 427 reviewers have participated in the review process of ETFA2009.

A technical visit was help to the urban recycling plant of the TIRME facilities that matched very well with the conference main theme.

All participants were invited to a Reception at the Palma de Mallorca City Hall, hosted by the City of Palma de Mallorca. The reception provided an excellent atmosphere for meeting old acquaintances and making new friends.

At the conference banquet, exciting banquet activities took place in addition to the meal. The 2009 ABB Lifetime Contribution to Factory Automation Award was bestowed to Professsor Paul Drews. Other awards included two scholarship awards, and two best paper awards. Recognition certificates were also given out. An invitation to the ETFA2010, to be held in Bilbao, Spain, was presented by Professor Marga Marcos of the University of Basque Country.

The last full day was for a workshop on “Specialized Communication Networks: Applications in Industrial Automation, Automotive Systems, and Building Automation and Control”. Seven presentations of 75 minutes each were given. More than 30 attendees participated.

All activities were actively engaged and enthusiastically participated by attendants, contributing to a very rewarding and successful conferences.