Zourir Mammeri and Richard Zurawski, ETFA 2011 General Co-Chairs, Report on a Successful Conference

The 16^th IEEE Inter. Conference on Emerging Technologies and Factory Automation (ETFA2011) was held on September 5 to 9, 2011, in Toulouse, France, sponsored by the University of Toulouse 3, also known as  Paul Sabatier University, and Industrial Electronics Society. The conference was attended by over 350 enthusiastic attendees.

Toulouse is one of the most important centers of the European aerospace industry, with the headquarters of Airbus, Galileo positioning system, the SPOT satellite system, and CNES's Toulouse Space Centre (CST), the largest space centre in Europe. Toulouse is also the hometown of Thales Alenia Space, Europe's largest satellite manufacturer, and Astrium Satellites. EADS's satellite system subsidiary also has a significant presence in Toulouse. Toulouse has a world renowned university, one of the oldest in Europe (founded in 1229), with more than 100,000 students, making it the third largest in France.

The conference was preceded on September 5 by the Industry Day.  The focus was on two key standards for factory automation: IEC 61131-3, which defines programming languages for Programmable Logic Controllers; and IEC 61499, which defines a generic architecture for the use of function blocks in distributed industrial process measurement and control systems.  Speakers represented PLCopen and Oooneida industrial associations involved in the conception and evolution of the two standards. The focus of the 14 presentations and a panel discussion was on recent developments, further extensions, and a potential for convergence of the two standards.  It is hoped that this event generated ample feedback to influence the evolution of the two standards, and a potential for a convergence. On the same day attendees had an opportunity to participate in the Workshop on Service Oriented Architectures in Converging Networked Environments (SOCNE). Workshops were also held on September 9 to include the 1^st Workshop on Industrial Automation Tool Integration for Engineering Project Automation (iATPA 2011), and 2nd 4DIAC User’s Workshop (4DIAC), all together 14 presentations from industry and academia. The Industry Day and the workshops presentation can be found on the web pages of the IES Technical Committee on Factory Automation – http://iestcfa.org

The ETFA 2011 featured three keynote presentation delivered by hi-tech industry leaders:  Andre Bottaro, Orange Labs, France - Open the Box! Challenges in the Smart Home; Josef Noebauer, Continental AG, Germany - Is Ethernet the Rising Star for In-vehicle Networks?; and Stefan Svensson, ABB Corporate Research, Sweden - Challenges of Wireless Communication in Industrial Systems.

The ETFA 2011 banquet dinner was a venue for the presentation of the 2011 ABB Lifetime Contribution to Factory Automation Award. The award was received by Prof. Jean-Marie Proth of INRIA-Lorraine, France, from hands of Stefan Svensson of the ABB Corporate Research, Sweden.

The Fumio Harashima Best Paper Award for Emerging Technology went to paper Stepwise Identification of Automated Discrete Manufacturing Systems, by Ana Paula Estrada-Vargas, Ernesto Lopez-Mellado and Jean-Jacques Lesage. The James Hung Best Paper for Factory Automation was awarded to paper Bandwidth-Efficient Burst Error Tolerance in TDMA-based CAN Networks, by Michael Short, Imran Sheikh and Syed Aley Imran Rizvi.

The 161 papers were presented in 38 regular and special sessions; 103 work-in-progress papers were presented in 7 sessions which included oral and poster presentations.

ETFA 2011 attendees were received at the city hall by the deputy mayor who welcome them and underlined the importance of ETFA topics for Toulouse city, which is very involved in embedded, space and aeronautic systems.

The attendees had an option to participate in tours of the Airbus manufacturing site, and the Space City (Cité de l'Espace), which includes, among other attractions, astonishing replicas on display of the Mir Space Station and Ariane 5 space rocket.  The conference was concluded with a tour of the famous historic town of Carcassonne.

In conclusion, ETFA2011 was very successful.  It was well organized by a dedicated team under the leadership of Prof. Zoubir Mammeri, well planned, well executed, and well attended.

ETFA 2011 Organizers (left to right): Antoni Grau (Program Chair), Zoubir Mammeri (General Co-Chair), Guy Juanole (Honorary Chair)

Prof. Zoubir Mammeri, ETFA 2011 General Co-Chair, addresses audience at the City Hall; next to him is Deputy City Mayor

ETFA 2011 attendees at the Toulouse City Hall

From Left to fight: Thilo Sauter (WIP Co-Chair), Jean-Marie Proth (ABB Award receipient). On the right: Antoni Grau (Program Chair)

more photos are on http://www.etfa-2011.org/