From Baie de Somme to Taipei

Recently, I attended two conferences in the field of mechanisms and robotics. Their nature was virtually opposite. The first one was the French National Robotics Research Days, held in beautiful, remotely located Baie de Somme. This meeting was all in French, except my talk that opened the first day. Luckily I had picked up some technical French from patents. The second was the IFToMM World Congress that is held every four years, on alternating continents, this time in a four-millionpeople Taiwanese metropolis, Taipei. Both have their charms, and both are important in their own right.