Along with Professor Yamakawa’s thank you message to our ISTVS 2024 conference attendees, let me convey greetings to all our colleagues as the new president of ISTVS.
Following the Society’s rotating presidency scheme, at the Yokohama conference I assumed the president’s role which I hope to hold for the next three years. At the Yokohama conference, outgoing president Professor Corina Sandu gave an overview of key ISTVS events during her term. We thank Corina immensely for guiding ISTVS through the difficult years of the pandemic and the post-pandemic recovery, the introduction of our new series of online events, and the return to in-person meetings starting with the 2022 ISTVS Americas Symposium in Montréal.
I would like to extend my heartfelt gratitude to Professor Yamakawa and his esteemed colleagues for their exceptional dedication and hard work which led to the remarkable success of the 2024 conference. On behalf of the Society, I express my sincere appreciation to the ISTVS 2024 Organizing Committee:
Junya Yamakawa | National Defense Academy, Japan :: General chair
Taizo Kobayashi | Ritsumeikan University, Japan :: General co-chair
Shingo Ozaki | Yokohama National University, Japan :: co-chair, Program Committee
Genya Ishigami | Keio University, Japan :: co-chair, Program Committee
Ryosuke Eto | National Defense Academy, Japan :: General secretary
Kojiro Iizuka | Shibaura Institute of Technology, Japan :: paper award selection
Shinichiro Miyai | Komatsu Ltd., Japan :: local arrangements
Takeshi Hashimoto | Public Works Research Institute, Japan :: local arrangements
In the closing session in Yokohama I gave a rundown of my thoughts on my upcoming term. I see the next few years as being very promising for our Society. Given my space robotics background, please allow me to be a bit subjective—I would like us to benefit from the surge of activities in lunar exploration we are witnessing from governmental and commercial actors. A steady cadence of uncrewed and then crewed landing missions to the Moon are in the works and with a wide array of ground vehicles. At the same time, mining of resources on the Moon will be attempted for the first time to allow lunar propellant production and other resources like metals, water, and oxygen, thereby lowering the cost of deep-space exploration.
All of these lunar activities involve terramechanics and terrain-vehicle systems. As a Society, we will endeavor to engage with many of the related actors, even more than we are already doing now.
As for non-space subjects, the ISTVS Board of Directors has developed an idea to again—as in our standards definition work for terramechanics—lead the way in a normative effort in the terrain-vehicles domain. We will initiate an R&D project on the study, modeling, and characterization of a reference terrain tire. Expect to hear more about this very soon.
We will seek to engage with industry and users in terrain-vehicle system domains including mining, defense, and agriculture. Just now we welcomes a new corporate member to ISTVS and we are confident to be growing more, both in terms of absolute membership numbers and in impact to the terrain-vehicle system discipline.
With this, I would like to close my welcome message. I am looking forward to interacting with you!
Be sure to make plans to attend our next in-person meeting in early October of next year in the beautiful New England!
Dr. Lutz Richter
ISTVS President