(Reprinted from the IEEE Robotics and Automation Website.)
The IEEE 2009 Technical Field Award in Robotics and Automation will be presented to Antal (Tony) Bejczy for leadership and sustained contributions to a broad set of innovative robotic and automation techniques applicable to space research and on Earth.
Bejczy will receive the award, which includes a $10,000 honorarium, at the awards ceremony to be held in May at the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation in Kobe, Japan.
Bejczy began his studies at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering of the Technical Universty of Budapest in his native Hungary until the anti-Soviet revolution of 1956. He fled to Norway where he completed the Ph.D. in Appied Physics in 1963. He worked in the area of space research under NATO and then moved to the United States and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. In 1969 he was appointed Head of the NASA Telerobotics Development Program.
He worked in the Telerobotics Program at JPL for over 20 years Among his projects there a robot arm force-torque sensor and control flight experiment on the Space Shuttle in 1994.
Bejczy is also a founding member of the Robotics and Automation Society and its predecessor, the IEEE Robotics and Automation Council. As president of the RA Council, he played a major role in the establishment of the Society and remains active in RAS Activities.
Bejczy has been retired from JPL for the past decade.