Carnegie Mellon University is about to host the 25th anniversary celebration of its Robotics Institute. A four-day symposium will begin October 11 to discuss the grand challenges of robotics and the commercialization of robotics research. October 13’s lineup is particularly stellar:
Vernor Vinge, professor emeritus, University of California, Davis, known for his science fiction, including True Names and Marooned in Realtime, speaking on “Robotics and the Technical Singularity.”
Robin Murphy, professor, University of South Florida, an expert in search-and-rescue robotics, speaking on “Up from the Rubble.”
Bob Full, Chancellor’s Professor, University of California, Berkeley, speaking on “Bipedal Bugs, Galloping Ghosts and Gripping Geckos: BioInspiration in the Age of Integration.”
Mitsuo Kawato, director of the Computational Neuroscience Laboratories of the Advanced Telecommunications Research International, whose approach is that “we construct a brain in order to understand the brain.”
Marc Raibert, president, Boston Dynamics, speaking on “Twenty-five Years of Dynamic Legged Robots: What’s Changed and What Hasn’t?”
Takeo Kanade, U.A. and Helen Whitaker University Professor, Carnegie Mellon, speaking on “Computer Vision: AI Problem or non AI Problem.”
Ray Kurzweil: founder and CEO, Kurzweil Industries, speaking on “The Web Within Us, When Minds and Machines Become One.”
Robots have implications for everything from transportation to national security, but they’re a key factor in sending probes deeper and deeper into the interstellar void. The robotic systems we build in the next two decades will still be operational late in this century as the probes that house them study the outer Solar System and the Kuiper Belt. One day they’ll lead us to the Oort Cloud and beyond.
A complete schedule of events for the celebration at CMU can be found here. The Robotics Institute Web site is also worth a stop.
