Georges Giralt PhD Award 2022

euRobotics opens its Call for the 2022 Georges Giralt PhD Award

The "Georges Giralt Ph.D. Award" is intended to showcase PhD theses defended during 2021 in European Universities from all areas of robotics. Outstanding theses with strong theoretical contributions, a focus on professional applications or technology transfer, with a high degree of multidisciplinarity, or showing how robotics technologies can be applied to new domains, are eligible for the award.

The award consists in a plaque and the publication of the thesis by Springer in the STAR series. It will be given to the winner(s) on the occasion of the next European Robotics Forum in Rotterdam, Netherlands, from June 28 to 30, 2022.

Please notice:

The award covers the solar year but the submission deadline is November, the 30th, 2021. The candidates whose defense is planned in December need to submit as well with an integration of information after the defense.
The selection of the finalists will be announced mid-to end-of-February 2022, and these finalists are expected to give a 20 minutes presentation of their research at the European Robotics Forum, since part of the award evaluation will be done on the basis of that oral presentation.
The oral presentation is, by default, in person. Exceptions will be handled on a case by case by informing the board.
The official date is the viva-voce defense. The finalists will be requested to prove it with a copy of the committee report or a mail from the tutor.
The eligible countries corresponds to geographical Europe + associated countries in Horizon Europe funding program. This is the current list of associated countries: https://ec.europa.eu/info/funding-tenders/opportunities/docs/2021-2027/common/guidance/list-3rd-country-participation_horizon-euratom_en.pdf.
Self-candidatures only are accepted.
Submissions are done by sending an email to the George Giralt Award Committee phd.award(AT)eu-robotics.net after filling this form.
The pdf thesis file should remain unchanged from the file submitted to the committee.
Each finalist will receive financial support for the travel of 500€ + Free ticket to ERF + free ticket to the dinner.

The jury for the Georges Giralt Ph.D. Award consists of members of the euRobotics academic community, their names and former award winners can be found below.

GEORGES GIRALT PHD AWARD

The Georges Giralt PhD Award is a European scientific prize for extraordinary contributions in robotics. It is yearly awarded at the European Robotics Forum by euRobotics AISBL, a non-profit organisation based in Brussels with the objective to turn robotics beneficial for Europe’s economy and society.

Georges Giralt received his PhD in 1958, from the Paul Sabatier University, in the domain of electrical machines, and soon afterwards became a pioneer in robotics, in Europe and worldwide. He was especially instrumental in bringing in scientific foundations and methodology when the domain was still young, and a loose coupling of mechanical and electrical engineering, adopting the early results of automatic control.

The high reputation of the Georges Giralt PhD Award is based on the prominent role of the awarding institution euRobotics. With more than 250 member organisations, euRobotics represents the academic and industrial robotics community in Europe. Moreover, it provides the European robotics community with a legal entity to engage in a public/private partnership with the European Commission.

Entitled for participation for the Georges Giralt PhD Award are all robotics-related dissertations which have been successfully defended at a European university.

The US-American counterpart is the Dick Volz Award.

Award Winners

2021

Giuseppe Averta - "Human-aware robotics: modeling human motor skills for the design, planning and control of a new generation of robotic devices"
Bernd Henze - "Whole-body control for multi-contact balancing of humanoid robots - design and experiments"

2020

Cosimo Della Santina - "Natural principles for the design and control of soft robots"

2019

Grazioso Stanislao - "Geometric soft robotics: a finite element approach"
Teodor Tomic - "Model-Based Control of Flying Robots for Robust Interaction under Wind Influence"

2018

Frank Bonnet - "Shoaling with fish: using miniature robotic agents to close the interaction loop with groups of zebrafish Danior rerio"
Daniel Leidner - "Cognitive Reasoning for Compliant Robot Manipulation"

2017

Johannes Englsberger - "Combining reduced dynamics models and whole-body control for agile humanoid locomotion"

2016

Alexander Dietrich - "Whole-Body Impedance Control of Wheeled Humanoid Robots"
Mark Müller - "Increased autonomy for quadrocopter systems: trajectory generation, fail-safe strategies, and state estimation"

2015

Jörg Stückler

2014

Manuel Catalano
Fabien Expert
Rainer Jaekel

2013

Jens Kober

2012

Sami Haddadin

2011

Mario Pratts - "Robot Physical Interaction through the combination of Vision, Tactile and Force Feedback”

2010

Ludovic Righetti - "Control of locomotion using dynamical systems: design methods and adaptive frequency oscillators"

2009

Alejandro-Dizan Vasquez-Govea - "Incremental Learning for Motion Prediction of Pedestrians and Vehicles"

2008

Eduardo Rocón - "Active reduction of pathological tremor of superior limbs by means of robotic exoskeletons"
Cyrill Stachniss - "Exploration and Mapping with Mobile Robots"

2007

Pierre Lamon - "3D position tracking for all-terrain robots"

2006

Martijn Wisse - "Essentials of dynamic walking: Analysis and design of two-legged robots"

2005

Juan Andrade Cetto - "Environment Learning for Indoors Mobile Robots"

2004

Gilles Duchemin - "Control and programming of a robotic assistant device to the medical gesture for contact task on deformable tissues"

2003

Ralf Koeppe - "Robot Compliant Motion based on Human Skills"

2002

Gianluca Antonelli - "Motion and force control of underwater vehicle-manipulator systems", Jens-Steffen Gutmann - "Robust Navigation for Autonomous Mobile Robots"

Current Jury Members