AMERICAN SOCIETY OF MECHANICAL ENGINEERS Minutes Mechanisms Committee September 3, 2003

Venue The meeting was held from 7:30pm to 9:30pm, Wednesday, September 3, 2003, in Scottsdale Room of Downtown Marriott, Chicago, Illinois. This was in conjunction with the ASME Design Engineering Technical Conference. Call to Order Kazem Kazerounian, Mechanisms Committee Chairperson called the meeting to order. He then called a moment of silence for Lung-Wen Tsai, the former chairperson of the Committee. OLD BUSINESS Conferences: 1. Approval of the Minutes of the M&R Committee Meeting in Montreal, October 1, 2002 The minutes was approved with Vijay’s correction that he did not lose out on the bidding for 2006 DETC conference, he deferred to Clement and Larry in the end.

2. Report from 2003 Mechanisms and Robotics Program Chair (Mike Stanisic) 3. 2004 Mechanisms and Robotics Conference (Larry Howell, Sunil Agrawal) Larry mentioned that ASME provides a website for electronic submission and review of the papers with data base and automated email system. Hopefully, we will be able to use it for 2004 conference. Symposium chairs will be on the organization committee and will have access to the website. This would eliminate contradictories in the past. Larry said he would like to keep registration fee to under $500.

On the question of books of abstract, Larry said it will be provided online. He asked if we still need a book of abstract in hard copy, which costs $24 per copy. There were some discussions on this issue. Pierre Larochelle said last conference they were 50/50 to keep the book during the survey. Magdu said he used the book once to look for the paper that he wants. Pierre said it would be nice if conference program can be easily downloaded to PDA. Vijay Kumar said the shell life for the book of abstract is 3 days. He likes to use it during the conference but would not bring it back home. Charles Wampler said that alternative is to post the abstract outside the presentation room. Larry said that we will use the same structure as last conference with symposium chairs and keynote speakers. One issue is student contest that needs to be resolved. Jim has volunteered to that. Sunil mentioned that we should bring flyers to other conference to advertise it. Larry will prepare the brochure and he is excited about the opportunity to host the conference. Charles asked if we will do the interactive presentation. Larry responded that the consensus is that while attendees like them, presenters do not. We would not be able to accommodate more papers with interactive sessions than regular sessions. We will do interactive papers only with author’s consent or a particular symposium that is designated as interactive. Major complaints from the authors in last conference is that they did not have a say in the matter. This time we will give the authors a choice during submission. Hopefully ASME website provides a button for that. 4. 2006 IDETC conference (Vijay Kumar) In October 2002, Vijay was asked to chair the 2006 DETC conference. This was approved by ASME in March 2003. Vijay has considered several sites in Philadelphia. Hotel rate is $180 – $200 per room. Philadelphia is an active university community. There are also some industries such as Boeing, Nissan, Toyota, GM, big pharmaceuticals that use a lot of automation. He will try to setup plant tours. Philadelphia is well connected with airlines. There were some discussions regarding dates of the conference. As of now, Vijay will stick to September time frame for conference, probably 14-17 of September. But he indicated that if held in August, there will be significant cost savings. Two universities (Penn and Drexel) have enormous amount of space in August. He said he is aware that there some opposition to the August time frame and would like to know reasons why. Joe Davison said ASME staff fit religious holiday and spacing with other conferences. Sunil said mid August is perfect for him. Other say people with young children may have problems with August time frame. Kazem suggested to postpone this to next conference and will take polls regarding this. Larry said he is facing the same situation for Utah conference for 2004. Vijay welcome other people to get involved in 2006 conference.

5. 2006 M&R Conference Chair Rastegar and Manoochehri submitted their intension for hosting M&R 2008. Harvey submitted one for Georgia Tech as well. 6. Mechanisms and Robotics Committee contribution to 2004 National Design Engineering Conference (NDEC)/National Manufacturing Week. Suresh Ananthasuresh will organize a technical session for the conference. Committee Affairs: 7. Honors and Awards Committee (Gordon Pennock) Gordon Pennock said that Mechanisms and Robotics award is elevated to design division award. Nominating form needs updating at the committee website. He said that we should pay for the travel of the recipient and treat him first class. He called for nomination for the award. He also mentioned about Proctor and Gamble award. Pierre asked if MDI will still sponsor awards for M&R committee since MDI is bought by MSC. Kazem said we have an action item with Gordon about the award. 8. Subcommittees and M&R conference When asked about the discrepancy between the symposium chairs and subcommittees, Larry said he is trying to match as much as he could. Vijay said the conference chair should have the discretion to pick his team and that otherwise it might lead to some inefficiency. Kazem said the subcommittee chairs are committee members who have the experience to handle the responsibility. Charles said the committee chair has the power to assign duty and that it is ultimately the committee chair’s responsibility. Rastegar and Larry added that ultimately it is the committee that runs the conference but the structure should be dynamic enough to deal with the issue related to conference. Rastegar expressed that he did not want to see the conference chair decide everything about the conference. Kazem posed the question that if the conference chair decides that no more planar mechanisms, should the conference chair has the authority to do so?. Kazem said that we have to have a structure that subcommittee chair be decided jointly by committee chair and conference chair and that the conference chair should be allowed to try out new areas. The structure will be ready for the new conference. Two new subcommittees were created after the suggestion from executive committee and consulted with members. Kazem and Larry will take a look at if the existing subcommittees need to be evaluated. Vijay said the new mechanisms conference chair should be included. Charles said no bylaw change is required. Bylaw only suggests the subcommittees. Larry said it is an appropriate check and balance to the have the structure. Kazem will formalize it and

circulated and approve. Vijay said in 2002 he and Larry made sure the existing members are involved in the conference. 9. Committee Web pages and Publicity (Hashem Ashrafiuon, Venkat Krovi, Just Herder) Hashem gives a preview of the unofficial new website for the committee. He suggested that relevant conferences be linked to the webpage. Charles said that we should have National Design conference linked since we have someone help organize the conference. Pierre said that ASME has a new logo and the same is true for MDI. Venkat suggested to include descriptions for award winners on the webpage. Charles said he can start with previous procedeedings with photos of award winners. It is also suggested that people may nominate their own website to be linked to committee website. Kazem said we can use a lot of help regarding this. Kazem said Hashen has designed the structure we need contents. Most contents were meticulaous prepared by Charles. Venkat will do a remembrance page. Kazem suggested each subcommittee chair write a page describing who the members are and what their subcommittee is for. Minutes and agenda will move under affairs page. Just Herder suggested a group picture on the webpage. He also suggested to include brief describptions of subcommittee and conference. 10. ASME Fellow award to Vijay Kumar (Larry Howell) Larry presented Vijay the ASME fellow Plaque. Vijay thanked his students for his success. He also thanked Larry, Venkat and Suresh for taking the initiative to make it happen (nomination). 11. Possibility of Odd-Year conference and Other Matters Sridha asked the number of sessions for 2004. Larry said we will discuss. Pierre added an item on discussing how to organize sessions if author has a choice for oral or interactive sessions. Larry and Sunil responded to that the organizer has the flexibility to deal with that. Vijay said that we are talking publicity etc. It is inconceivable that we only do it (ASME Mechanisms and Robotics conference) once every two years. Financial reason is additional. Rastegar, Sunil and Larry agreed. Larry said one issue to address is logistics. If the conference is held in odd years, then it will probably reduce the number of papers on even years. With an already larger odd-year conference, even-year attendance might be too low. Logistic issue might affect

the even years. It was pointed out that what is critical is number of paid attendees not the number of papers. The average cost per attendee would go up if number of attendees go down. Kazem said the Design division is putting a lot of pressure to make money on conference. If we lose money DED might do things that have negative impact on our committee. Vijay mentioned that we may have to change the bylaw in order to allow for the odd year conference. Kazem summarizes that he will put out a proposal regarding this and run it with executive committee to see if there is any thing unforeseen. Venkat said with absence of Sony’s conference, it will be good to have odd year conference. Vijay said regardless whether the proposal is approved, we need to consider the preparation of the odd year paper review. Charles asked who has the power to add a check box. Larry said that he is a bit upset that DAC decided which paper to accept in the end.