Bhagya Samarakoon, a research student in the Intelligent Service Robotics Group, Department of Electrical Engineering was awarded the Nanjing City prize for the research paper entitled "Replicating Natural Approaching behavior of Humans for Improving Robot's Approach toward Two persons During a Conversation" published in 27th IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN) held from Aug 27-31. The city of Nanjing has offered 10 "Robotics Innovation Awards" to encourage innovation and advances in Science and robotics in particular by sponsoring each of the awardees with a value of 10000 Yuans (US$1500). The award winners were chosen on the basis of originality, usefulness and scientific and technical soundness of the contribution. The manuscript was authored by Bhagya Samarakoon and Dr. Viraj Muthugala under the supervision of Dr. Buddhika Jayasekara.
