This post is written by Katie, about her experience at IROS 2015.

I traveled to Hamburg to attend IROS 2015.  I was able to see some of Hamburg during the conference, but I was mainly focused on networking, getting enough rest, and practicing my slides for both talks I had to give (one Wednesday and one Friday).

My Wednesday talk was actually really important because this paper was a finalist (one of three) for the RoboCup best paper award.  Hence, I wanted this talk to be perfect (thanks to Carrie for recording!).  I think the talk went about as well as it could have gone, but our paper did not end up winning.  It was disappointing, but it is still a great honor for our paper to have been nominated.

IROS had social events almost every night of the conference with plenty of free/included German beer.  I did not know many people at the conference, so I spent a lot of time with the two people I did know: Carrie from Oregon State and Tim from B-Human (also my co-author on the paper nominated for the RoboCup best paper award).  Matteo, a post-doc in my research group, as well as Chui, a previous post-doc in my research group, arrived for the last day of workshops.  I met many new people at the conference, most notably the group from Southern Germany who I sat with at the Wednesday night ‘Oktoberfest’ banquet. Being from Southern Germany, they had much to say about how this was not a real Oktoberfest party.

Overall, I saw a lot of interesting research, met a lot of new people, and generally had a good experience at IROS.