ABOUT ICAR IN RETROSPECT**

The late Professor Hanafusa and Professor Umetani (both in Japan) were not fully happy with the Robotic Conferences existing in the early 1980s because each conference dealt only with industrial applications. Both professors realized the significance of industrial applications, but their vision foreseen a much wider and research oriented future of robotics, looking for *advances in robotics.* They organized, therefore, the first INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON ADVANCED ROBOTICS (ICAR) in Tokyo in early summer of 1983. The success of the first ICAR motivated them to organize the second ICAR two years later in Tokyo again, and assumed that it will generate sufficient enthusiasm to be continued biyearly on a “free lance” base, since it was not planned that ICAR should be “owned” by any country or society. Looking at the list of the past fourteen ICAR, the plan and assumption of the two professors worked very well. It is worth noting that the existence of the very first *INTERNATIONAL* *CONFERENCE OF ROBOTICS AND AUTOMATION (ICRA) *of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society in 1984 in Atlanta, GA was highly motivated by the first ICAR in 1983 in Tokyo. (I happened to be technically involved in both “first” conferences.)

With the above retrospect, my best wishes to the 15-th ICAR in 2011, in Tallinn, Estonia.

Tony Bejczy

NASA-JPL Senior Scientist (retired)