Message from the
General Co-Chairs

Message from the General Co-Chairs

Dear Participants, dear Guests,

It is our pleasure to welcome all participants to the 13th IEEE International Conference on Emerging Technologies and Factory Automation at the Helmut-Schmidt University, Hamburg, Germany. The thirteenth edition of this event offers an opportunity for some reflection. The ETFA conference was held for the first time in 1992, in Melbourne, Australia. Over the part fifteen years, the event has evolved into one of the largest and most important IEEE conferences dedicated to industrial and factory automation, presenting new results and providing discussions. The ETFA conference series was fortunate to be hosted by the leading academic and research institutions. The technical success of the ETFA conference series also testifies to the rapid evolution of the area of industrial automation in the recent decade. The proceedings of the conference give a fairly accurate picture of the state of the art of the area. This year event is sponsored by the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society and the Helmut-Schmidt University, Hamburg, Germany. Substantial additional support comes from an industry sponsor, which is gratefully acknowledged. The conference will be held at the main campus of the "Helmut-Schmidt-Universitaet - Universitaet der Bundeswehr Hamburg" (Helmut Schmidt University - University of the Federal Armed Forces Hamburg). As the full name indicates, this university, founded in 1973, is dedicated to offer scientific study and academic education to armed forces' officers in order to increase the attractiveness of the profession. It stresses and develops the possibilities of multidisciplinarity in research and teaching between social, economical and engineering sciences, based on excellent laboratory and library facilities and scientific staff.

Hamburg is the second largest city in Germany with a population of 1.7 million. Hamburg is situated in the north of Germany, at where the small Alster river flows into the Elbe river. Although it is more than 80 km from the North Sea, it has always been Germany's "Tor zur Welt" ("Gate to the world"). Since the year 1189, Hamburg has had a tax-free harbor. The introduction of containers 40 years ago changed the harbor logistics completely. In the mid-1970s, Hamburg had the first terminal worldwide where the satellite-based container positioning method was introduced in practice. Today, 10 million containers are handled annually at the four container terminals. Besides trade, shipbuilding and aircraft construction have a long tradition in Hamburg. With the headquarter of Airbus Germany and the construction and assembly lines for various Airbus aircrafts, Hamburg is the third largest aircraft construction site in the world. Hamburg is also architecturally a vibrant city. Currently, the "HafenCity" is being built, Europe's largest inner city urban development project. Excursions will be offered to get an impression of these technical attractions of Hamburg.

The ETFA 2008 conference provides an excellent technical program, including plenary presentations delivered by some of the leading authorities in their field of scientific and technical endeavor. The quality of the technical program is a combination of high quality submissions and the diligent work of the International Program Committee. We would like to acknowledge the contribution of all Program Committee members and reviewers, who dedicated their time to the review of the submitted papers, and, in particular, Program Co-Chairs, Lucia Lo Bello of the University of Catania, Italy, and Francisco Vasques, University of Porto, Portugal, for their excellent organization of the scientific part of the conference. We are also fortunate to have three outstanding scholars to present keynote speeches: Fumio Harashima of Tokyo Denki, Japan, Rolf Ernst of Technical University of Braunschweig, Germany, and Jan-Erik Frey of ABB Corporate Research, Sweden.

The Industry Day, which precedes the main technical part of the conference, is focused on the facets and the impact of the IEC 61131-3 standard, which is one of the most important standard for manufacturing automation software, and especially on the considerable additions which have been developed by the IEC 61131-3 user group "PLCopen". Furthermore, the current activities around the IEC 61499 standard for decentralized automation and the future development of these standards will be discussed. Thus, the Industry Day is intended to stimulate interaction between industry and academia, giving an opportunity to inform about and discuss the current status of this standard and future prospects and research topics related to it.

An event of this size cannot be organized without the help of a large number of volunteers. We have already mentioned the International Program Committee and its Chairs. Our sincere gratitude also goes to Work-in-progress / Industry Practice Track Co-Chairs Athanasios Kalogeras of the Industrial Systems Institute, Patras, Greece, and Thilo Sauter of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Austria. We would also like to acknowledge the effort of the Special Sessions Co-Chairs John Gialelis of the University of Patras, Greece, and Luis Gomes of UNINOVA, Portugal, and all Special Session Chairs for organizing interesting Special Sessions. Last but not least, we would like to acknowledge the support of Milos Manic, University of Idaho, USA, for his support with the submission server, the effort of the Publication Chair, Mohammed Bani Younis, and the Local Organizing Committee chaired by Arno Rademer, for their efforts in making this conference possible. The technical and social success of any conference arises from the quality of the program and the interaction among authors and attendees. Everything is prepared for a stimulating event. Thank you for coming here, we hope you enjoy the conference and your stay in Hamburg.

Alexander Fay and James C. Hung

ETFA 2008 General Co-Chairs