As I write this editorial, it is the beginning of 2023. I would like to wish you and your loved ones a happy and healthy new year. We hope that 2023 will be a better year. Year 2022 was difficult for those in the war zone and those who struggled with policies on the COVID-19 pandemic. While the pandemic is at the back of most people’s minds in many countries, as China abruptly abandoned its zero-COVID policy, hospitals in China became overcrowded very quickly, and the health-care system has faced a major stress test since December 2022. Sadly, among the most vulnerable populations, older adults were hit badly and could not get needed help in time, which led to many deaths. We need to take care of the elderly and work on robotics innovations to assist them.

The international RoboCup competition has, in the past, been described as “a treasure trove of rich diversity for research issues and interdisciplinary connections” <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref1">[1]</xref>. This description is often credited to the facets of the federation itself, which hosts a variety of challenges for rescue robots, robots for service at home and in industrial environments, and, most prominently, robots that play soccer, in different sizes and formats, be they simulated, wheeled, or legged.

Robotic manipulation is fundamental to many realworld applications; however, it is an unsolved problem that remains a very active research area. New algorithms for robot perception and control are frequently proposed by the research community. These methods must be thoroughly evaluated in realistic conditions before they can be adopted by industry. This process can be extremely time consuming, mainly due to the complexity of integrating different hardware and software components.

Presents the President's message for this issue of the publication.

force and tactile) devices.

This article presents a novel Autonomous Surface Vessel (ASV) that was designed and manufactured specifically for the monitoring of water resources, resources that are not only constantly drained, but also face the growing threat of mass proliferation (bloom) of noxious cyanobacteria. On one hand, the distribution of these blooms in a given water body requires a surveillance of biological data at high spatial resolution, on both vertical and horizontal axes. On the other hand, the understanding of the temporal evolution of the cyanobacteria necessitates repeated sampling at the same location. Our ASV was therefore designed to combine the ability to take measurements within a range of depths, with its custom-made winch, and the accuracy of GPS localization, without the need for static installations. This paper first describes the ASV conception and then, results of extended field tests on the waypoint navigation mode are discussed. Finally, the first results of a sampling campaign for monitoring algal blooms in Lake Zurich are presented. This work constitutes advances in the deployment of mobile measurement platforms for environmental monitoring in lacustrine environments. Furthermore, it investigates the application of a single ASV in order to capture both spatial and temporal dynamics of harmful cyanobacterial blooms in lakes. Combining surface mobility with depth measurements within a single robot allows fast deployments in remote location, which is cost-efficient for lake sampling. This reduces the need for fixed installations, which can be impossible in recreational areas for example. The highresolution sampling of lakes will contribute to understand and predict the occurrence of harmful cyanobacterial blooms for a better management of water resources.