Latest News On the ETFA 2006 Conference report Vladimir Marik and Richard Zurawski, the Conference General Chairmen. The 11th ETFA Conference was held in Prague, Czech Republic, on September 20-22, 2006. The event was cosponsored by the Czech Technical University in Prague and the Industrial Electronics Society. The conference was attended by over 230 delegates representing authors, guests, industry representative, and attendees. Over 210 papers were presented at the conference in forty six sessions. The conference featured four keynote presentations to include: Technology Trends In Industrial Automation presented by Dr. Kenwood Hall, Vice President, Rockwell Automation, USA; Reinforcement Learning in Multi-Agent Systems, presented by Professor Robert Babuska, TU Delfth, The Netherlands; Standard Solutions for Redundancy in Industrial Ethernet presented by Professor Dr. Hubert Kirrmann, Corporate Research, ABB, Switzerland; and Component-Based Design of Industrial Control Systems presented by Professor Hermann Kopetz, Vienna University of Technology, Vienna, Austria. The ETFA 2006 Technical Program also featured two plenary panel discussions organized and moderated by Professor Vladimir Marik, and Professor Martin Wollschlaeger of TU Dresden. The first panel, which had a focus on current issues in manufacturing featured presentations by Dr. Ronald Schoop of Schneider Electric, Germany; Dr. Philipp Orth of ABB, Germany; Prof. Vladimir Kucera, Czech Technical University in Prague; Professor Vladimir Havlena, Czech Technical University in Prague;  and Professor Hermann Kopetz of TU Vienna. The second panel had a focus on the integrative role of the automation networks, and was staffed by Prof. Max Felser of Berne University of Technology, Switzerland; Kenwood H Hall of Rockwell Automation, USA; Prof. Hubert Kirrmann, ABB Schweiz AG, Switzerland; and Dr. Vladimir Kulla of Siemens, Czech Republic.   One of the highlights of the conference was the presentation of the Lifetime Contribution to Factory Automation Award to Professor James C. Hung, Professor Emeritus, University of Tennessee, in grateful recognition of his lifetime contribution to the factory and industrial automation field; for meritorious technical contribution and technical leadership. The Award was founded and is sponsored by the IES Technical Committee on Factory Automation.   Two best paper awards were presented at the welcome reception; The Fumio Harashima Best Paper Award for Emerging Technologies went to the paper Response-Time Analysis of Tasks with Offsets authored by: Karim Traoré, Emmanuel Grolleau, Ahmed Rahni, Michaël Richard, of France. The James C. Hung Best Paper Award for Factory Automaton went to the paper An Initial Task Assignment Method for Autonomous Distributed Vehicle Systems with Finite Buffer Capacity authored by: Yusuke Morihiro, Toshiyuki Miyamoto, Sadatoshi Kumagai, of Japan. To appreciate better the beautiful city of Prague, the attendees had a chance to participate in the Prague walking tourheld a day before the conference. Certainly the place is most beautiful. The conference was a must to attend! Plan for the ETFA 2007 conference in Patras, Greece, on September 25-28 2007. Vladimir Marik and Richard Zurawski ETFA 2006 General Chairs   Some of the photos from the conference: Professor James C. Hung receives the Lifetime Contribution to Factory Automation Award   Vladimir Marik James C. Hung   Richard Zurawski and Vladimir Marik - ETFA 2006 General Chairs   James C. Hung and Dave Irwin participating in the walking tour of Prague   Enjoying beautiful Prague