ICRA 2008 will feature the following conference awards. The ICRA 2008 awards chair is Prof. Nikolaos Papanikolopoulos. Each award is handled by a committee (the names of the committee members will be listed under each award at a later date).

For each award, finalists are being selected by the corresponding committee. As their names become known, they will be listed below. The finalists will be notified in March 2008. The final evaluation by the awards committees will take into account the presentations at ICRA 2008. The awards will be presented at the conference during the awards lunch ceremony. on Friday, May 23, 2008. Each award is worth $1000 (to be shared by the authors of the winning contribution in the case of most of the awards, except the best student award). Each author of a winning contribution will also get a certificate.

Best Conference Paper Finalists:
Employing Wave Variables for Coordinated Control of Robots with Distributed Control Architecture by Christian Ott and Yoshihiko Nakamura
Trajectory Generation for Dynamic Bipedal Walking through Qualitative Model Based Manifold Learning by Subramanian Ramamoorthy and Benjamin Kuipers
Consensus Learning for Distributed Coverage Control by Mac Schwager, Jean-Jacques E. Slotine and Daniela Rus
Planning in Information Space for a Quadrotor Helicopter in a GPS-Denied Environment by Ruijie He, Sam Prentice and Nicholas Roy

Best Student Paper Finalists (The name(s) of nominated student(s) are in bold font):
Hybrid Simulation of a Dual-Arm Space Robot Colliding with a Floating Object by Ryohei Takahashi, Hiroto Ise, Daisuke Sato, Atsushi Konno and Masaru Uchiyama
Partial barrier coverage: Using game theory to optimize probability of undetected intrusion in polygonal environments by Stephen Kloder and Seth Hutchinson
Decentralized Feedback Controllers for Multi-Agent Teams in Environments with Obstacles by Nora Ayanian and Vijay Kumar
Gecko-Inspired Climbing Behaviors on Vertical and Overhanging Surfaces by Daniel Santos, Barrett Heyneman, Sangbae Kim, Noe Esparza and Mark Cutkosky
High Quality 3D LIDAR from Low Cost 2D Ranging Under General Vehicle Motion by Alastair Harrison and Paul Newman

Best Automation Paper Finalists
Dynamic Analysis of a High-Bandwidth, Large-Strain, PZT Cellular Muscle Actuator with Layered Strain Amplification by Thomas Secord, Jun Ueda and Harry Asada
Event-Based Two Degree-Of-Freedom Control for Micro-/Nanoscale Systems Based on Differential Flatness by Ruoting Yang, T. J. Tarn and Mingjun Zhang
On the Design of Traps for Feeding 3D Parts on Vibratory Tracks by Onno Goemans and Frank van der Stappen
Fabrication of Functional Gel-Microbead for Local Environment Measurement in Microchip by Hisataka Maruyama, Fumihito Arai and Toshio Fukuda

Best Manipulation Paper (sponsored by Ben Wegbreit) Finalists:
Skilled-Motion Plannings of Multi-Body Systems Based upon Riemannian Distance by Masahiro Sekimoto, Suguru Arimoto, Ji-Hun Bae and Sadao Kawamura
Transportation of Hard Disk Media using Electrostatic Levitation and Tilt Control by Ewoud Frank van West, Akio Yamamoto and Toshiro Higuchi
Adaptive Grasping by Multi Fingered Hand with Tactile Sensor Based on Robust Force and Position Control by Taro Takahashi, Toshimitsu Tsuboi, Takeo Kishida, Yasunori Kawanami, Satoru Shimizu, Masatsugu Iribe, Tetsuharu Fukushima and Masahiro Fujita
Manipulating Articulated Objects With Interactive Perception by Dov Katz and Oliver Brock
Synergistic Design of a Humanoid Hand with Hybrid DC Motor - SMA Array Actuators Embedded in the Palm by Josiah Rosmarin and Harry Asada

Best Vision Paper (sponsored by Ben Wegbreit) Finalists
Accurate Calibration of Intrinsic Camera Parameters by Observing Parallel Light Pairs by Ryusuke Sagawa and Yasushi Yagi
Information-Optimal Selective Data Return for Autonomous Rover Traverse Science and Survey by David R. Thompson, Trey Smith and David Wettergreen
Image Moments-based Ultrasound Visual Servoing by Rafik Mebarki, Alexandre Krupa and Francois Chaumette
Robust and Efficient Stereo Feature Tracking for Visual Odometry by Andrew E. Johnson, Steven B. Goldberg, Yang Cheng and Larry H. Matthies
Accelerated Appearance-Only SLAM by Mark Cummins and Paul Newman

Best Video Finalists
Magmites - Wireless Resonant Magnetic Microrobots by Dominic R. Frutiger, Bradley Kratochvil, Karl Vollmers and Bradley J. Nelson
The OmniTread OT-4 Serpentine Robot by Johann Borenstein and Adam Borrell
Preliminary Report: Rescue Robot at Crandall Canyon, Utah, Mine Disaster by Robin R. Murphy, Jeffery Kravitz, Ken Peligren, James Milward and Jeff Stanway

KUKA Service Robotics Best Paper Finalists
Efficient Airport Snow Shoveling by Applying Autonomous Multi-Vehicle Formations by Martin Saska, Martin Hess and Klaus Schilling
Hybrid Laser and Vision Based Object Search and Localization by Dorian Galvez Lopez, Kristoffer Sjo, Chandana Paul and Patric Jensfelt
Towards a Personal Robotics Development Platform: Rationale and Design of an Intrinsically Safe Personal Robot by Keenan A. Wyrobek, Eric H. Berger, H.F. Machiel Van der Loos, and J. Kenneth Salisbury
VSA-II: A Novel Prototype of Variable Stiffness Actuator for Safe and Performing Robots Interacting with Humans by Riccardo Schiavi, Giorgio Grioli, Soumen Sen and Antonio Bicchi

In addition to the conference awards, a number of Robotics and Automation Society awards are presented annually at each ICRA. For further information on society awards (including nomination procedures and a list of previous winners) please see the awards page of the RAS website.