Research and Development Colloquium

This is a seminar that students of the Master of Autonomous Systems program at Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg had to take in their fourth semester (after the completion of their R&D project and right before / in parallel with their master’s thesis). I taught this seminar jointly in the summer semester 2018 and then independently in the winter semester 2019/2020.

Description

The research and development colloquium has two main objectives: turning your R&D into a conference paper and presenting your paper just as you would at a scientific conference.

The structure of the colloquium is such that we will simulate an academic conference (ICRA / IROS style; in this case, the style of ICRA 2017 is concretely simulated). You thus have to write a paper based on your R&D project report; the paper will then be reviewed by your peers, after which you will have to correct your draft based on the reviewer comments (but there will be no paper rejections). You will then have to present the paper in front of your peers, which requires the creation of presentation materials (poster + slides).

Since we are simulating ICRA / IROS, paper presentations will consist of two parts:

• A 5-minute poster presentation in front of other MAS students, staff, and professors. During this presentation, you should introduce your topic and your contributions in a very brief manner (enough to pique the interest of the audience).
• After all 5-minute presentations are over, there is a 35-minute interactive presentation session, during which everyone goes to a different part of the conference room and is then approached by audience members who are interested in the topic. The interactive presentation is thus not a classical one-way presentation, but gives you an opportunity to interact with your peers directly.

Topics

1. Introduction to scientific writing
2. Structuring a paper; describing experiments and writing conclusions
3. Paper writing tips; writing the main part of a paper; paper reviews
4. Writing an abstract; introduction to public speaking
5. Preparing a presentation; creating a poster
6. Rehearsing and public speaking
7. Poster + interactive presentation to MAS community