In the past decade, countries and regions around the globe have developed strategic roadmaps to guide investment and development of robotic technology. Roadmaps from the US, South Korea, Japan and EU have been in place for some years and have had time to mature and evolve. Meanwhile roadmaps from other countries such as Australia and Singapore are just now being developed and launched. How did these strategic initiatives come to be? What do they hope to achieve? Have they been successful, and how do you measure success?

Join us at the 2017 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2017) for a full day workshop that will bring together international stakeholders in robotics to examine best practices for accelerating robotics innovation through strategic policy frameworks. This is a unique opportunity to learn from people who have played a significant role in designing and implementing major strategic robotics initiatives around the globe. Objectives In the past decade, a number of governing bodies and industry consortia have developed strategic roadmaps to guide investment and development of robotic technology. With the roadmaps from the US, South Korea, Japan and EU etc. well underway, the time is right to take stock of these strategic robotics initiatives to see what is working, what is not, and what best practices in roadmap development might be broadly applied to other regions. The objective of this two-part workshop is to examine the process of how these policy frameworks came to be created in the first place, how they have been tailored to local capabilities and strengths, and what performance indicators are being used to measure their success -- so that participants may draw from international collective experience as they design and evaluate strategic robotics initiatives for their own regions.