A new era for BARA as it moves to Warwick

Citation

(2000), "A new era for BARA as it moves to Warwick", Industrial Robot, Vol. 27 No. 5. https://doi.org/10.1108/ir.2000.04927eab.001

A new era for BARA as it moves to Warwick

A new era for BARA as it moves to Warwick

Keywords Robots, Robotics, Product development

The British Automation & Robotics Association (BARA), formerly the British Robot Association, has entered a new era of development following its move to the International Manufacturing Centre of the Warwick Manufacturing Group at the University of Warwick in Coventry. Its own office, previously on the Aston Science Park in Birmingham, has been vacated and the Association is now being administered at Warwick with Ken Young, head of the Warwick Manufacturing Group's automation section, elected as BARA Council Chairman and effectively its chief executive officer.

The decision to site BARA at one of Europe's leading robotics laboratories was taken by the Council in order to meet the interests of its members by giving them access to the demonstration and seminar facilities of the International Manufacturing Centre. At the same time the Association intends to exploit the World Wide Web better and to develop further the BARA Web site (www.bara.org.uk).

Ken Young says, "I want to establish links to other sites and particularly to member suppliers, so we need information from these companies on their activities plus their Web addresses. I also want to develop the educational aspect so that schools, for instance, can access information on automation".

While BARA is solvent, there is a desire to reduce costs – both financial and administrative. Hence, BARA will switch from paper-based dissemination to e-mail for day-to-day running. The days of "envelope stuffing" have gone and will be totally replaced by e-mail, and as an example Ken Young intends to publish the minutes of the AGM, held on 6 June, on the BARA Web site.

At an open meeting of the Association in late May, the future of BARA was discussed and proposals put forward to modify the structure of the organisation and to amend the membership categories and fees. It is proposed that users will be able to join BARA free of any membership fee. Only suppliers will pay, with the large companies paying a similar fee to that of the past and smaller suppliers, perhaps of ancillaries and automation components, paying a lower fixed fee. These proposals have to be verified by the Council.

Otherwise the structure will remain as present with a Council of Officers that currently includes the Chairman (Ken Young (see Plate 1)), the President and Company Secretary (Mike Wilson of Meta Technology, who is also Chairman of the International Federation of Robotics – IFR), and Treasurer (John D'Angelillo of Motoman Robotics). The special interest groups will also continue but their respective Chairmen will not necessarily be members of Council as in the previous arrangement. The idea is to minimise fragmentation of BARA into small groups that can become remote from the general membership.

Plate 1 Chairman of BARA, Ken Young

Education on the benefits of automation will be a strong feature of future BARA activities, programmes of which will be published on the Web site. Already the first "free of charge" seminar has been organised, "Why one fieldbus is not enough! – and was due to take place on 29 June at the International Manufacturing Centre with funding from the DTI as part of its Advanced Control Technology Transfer Programme. A regular series of seminars on applications is under discussion with the intention, and hope, that sponsorship can be found from supplier companies so that user members can attend with no charge.

Further details on BARA are available from Ken Young at k.w.young@warwick.ac.uk