ICRA X – Public Forum

During ICRA 2016, the ICRA X Public Forum will take place on Friday 20th, 10:00-12:10 in Room C4, featuring two distinguished speakers. The audience will be invited high schools students from the local region. Note admission will be on confirmed invitations only due to space limitations.

Robots for Everyone

by Prof. Henrik I. Christensen, 10:00-11:00

Abstract: Robots are quickly entering most aspects of everyday life. More than 1.5 million industrial robots are used in manufacturing and services. More than 5 million vacuum cleaners have been sold. Close to 300,000 medical procedures are performed with robots and we have just started to see the launch of self-driving cars. The main applications for robots today are in manufacturing, logistics, services and simple home services. Over the next decade this is likely to change. We have access to cheap sensors, powerful computers fit in your pocket and we are getting access the new material for design of robots. In addition, the next generation of robots will have wireless access to the Internet and cloud based services. This enables design of a new generation of robots for home service, advanced manufacturing, and entertainment. In this presentation we will discuss the confluence of material, sensing, computing and communication as a basis for a quantum leap in deployment and use of robot technology.

Bio: Henrik I Christensen is the KUKA Chair of Robotics and a distinguished professor of computing at Georgia Tech. He is also the founding director of the Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Machines. Dr. Christensen does research on perception based robotics and cognitive systems. His main interest is on a systems approach to robotics. Dr. Christensen has published more than 300 contributions and serves on a number of editorial boards. Dr. Christensen was the main editor of the US National Robotics Roadmaps that was published 2009, 2013 and a new version is forthcoming. Dr. Christensen has won a number of awards including the Engelberger Award and the “Boeing Supplier of the Year”. He is a fellow of AAAS and IEEE.

Robots with their Heads in the Cloud

by Prof. Ken Goldberg; 11:10-12:10

Abstract: The next generation of robots will be more social than solitary. Rather than viewing every robot as an isolated system with limited computation and memory, roboticists are now exploring how robots and automation systems can actively exchange information and resources via networks. Google’s self-driving car exemplifies this trend. It uses networks to index maps, images, and data on prior driving trajectories, weather, and traffic to determine spatial localization and make decisions. Data from each car is shared via the network for statistical optimization and machine learning performed by grid computing in the Cloud.

Building on emerging advances in cloud computing, big data, machine learning, open-source, and the Internet of Things, this paradigm has potential to significantly increase the capabilities of robots and automation systems. This talk will describe the latest research, including superhuman surgery and cloud-based grasping, and present a short documentary film, Why We Love Robots.

Bio: Ken Goldberg is an artist and UC Berkeley professor. He and his students investigate robotics, automation, art, and social media. Ken is Director of the People and Robots Initiative (a CITRIS multicampus multidisciplinary research program established in April 2015) and UC Berkeley’s Automation Sciences Research Lab (since 1995). Ken earned dual degrees in Electrical Engineering and Economics from the University of Pennsylvania (1984) and MS and PhD degrees from Carnegie Mellon University (1990). He joined the UC Berkeley faculty in 1995 where he is Professor of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research (IEOR), with secondary appointments in Electrical Engineering/Computer Science (EECS), Art Practice, the School of Information, and in the Department of Radiation Oncology at the UCSF Medical School.

Ken has published over 200 peer-reviewed technical papers on algorithms for robotics, automation, and social information filtering; his inventions have been awarded eight US Patents. He is Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering (T-ASE), Co-Founder of the Berkeley Center for New Media (BCNM), the African Robotics Network (AFRON), the Center for Automation and Learning for Medical Robotics (CAL-MR), the CITRIS Data and Democracy Initiative (DDI), Hybrid Wisdom Labs, and Moxie Institute.