Chaired by Prof. Yan Jin and Prof. Jian S. Dai, the World Parallel 2020 conference was co-organised by Queen’s University Belfast (QUB) and King’s College London between the 9th and the 11th September 2020.This successful international event took place virtually with over 100 participants logging on from across the world. This is the Fourth International Conference on Parallel Mechanisms and Parallel Kinematic Machines (PKMs) which is held every six years. 

Five inspiring keynote speeches were given by world renowned experts in PKM technology. Future challenges, opportunities and directions were hotly discussed in the Panel Forum with eight international experts including: Prof. Sunil K. Agrawal (Columbia University, USA), Prof. Dragos Axinte (The University of Nottingham, UK), Prof. Clément Gosselin (Laval University, Canada), Prof. Tian Huang (Tianjin University, China), Prof. Andres Kecskemethy (University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany), Prof. Michael McCarthy (University of California, Irvine, USA), Mr. Kalle Neumann (CEO of Exechon Enterprises LLC, UAE), and Prof. Yukio Takeda (Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan)

A total of 41 papers were accepted for presentation at the conference where experts exchanged their latest research and developments through single track presentations. The conference was well received by the international audience and the IFToMM president Prof. Andres Kecskemethy commented “this is a great contribution, so that the world continues although Covid-19 braces us to stay at home. Without this continuation of talk and cooperation between researchers, I think it will be very difficult to continue on research. I really want to thank you and congratulate you for putting together this conference.”

The conference was sponsored by IFToMM, Visit Belfast, NITC and iAMS at Queen’s.