Contributions to this post were provided by Computing Community Consortium (CCC) Council members Maja Matarić and Shwetak Patel.   Recently, we have been highlighting CCC’s role at the 2017 Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advance of Science (AAAS) and have posted blogs about Health in Your Pocket: Diagnosing and Treating Disease with Smartphones and What Happens When Everyday Objects Become Internet Devices: A Science Policy Agenda. The focus of this post is on the Technology of the Future flash talks that CCC Council members Maja Matarić and Shwetak Patel presented. In Matarić’s Socially Assistive Robotics: Creating Robots That (Provide) Care talk, she described work in the new field of socially assistive robotics, […]

Greg Hager, former Computing Community Consortium (CCC) chair and Mandell Bellmore Professor of Computer Science at The Johns Hopkins University, contributed to this post. Last week, the CRA Board of Directors announced that Tom Kalil was selected as the 2017 recipient of the CRA Distinguished Service Award for “his long history of leading national initiatives that have had a transformational impact on the computing research community and as an exemplary spokesperson, advocate, and collaborator for the computing research community.” According to Greg Hager, former CCC chair, “Tom has a unique ability to envision and articulate the impact of major science and technology initiatives and, even more importantly, to find mechanisms to bring them […]

The following is a guest blog post by CCC AI and Robotics Task Force Co-Chair Greg Hager from Johns Hopkins University.  Artificial intelligence (AI) has emerged into the public view as an important frontier of technological innovation with potential influences in many realms. Many recent symposia and workshops including AI for Social Good, Computing Research: Addressing National Priorities and Societal Needs, and Discovery and Innovation in Smart and Pervasive Health have highlighted both the progress and opportunities for AI and its potential to contribute to new products, services, and experiences. However, we should not lose sight of the fact that fielding real-world systems that realize these innovations will also drive significant advances […]

The following is a guest blog post from Computing Community Consortium (CCC) Council Member Maja J. Matarić from the University of Southern California and past CCC Chair Greg Hager from Johns Hopkins University.  The New York Times released How to Make America’s Robots Great Again, an article that focused on overlooked realities of manufacturing and robotics. American factories hit a manufacturing record in 2016; 85 percent more goods were made than 30 years ago, but this success is due to automation, resulting in one third fewer jobs. At the same time, China is aggressively automating its manufacturing, with massive infrastructure investments in robotics and no public dialog about job loss. […]

The following is a blog post by Computing Community Consortium (CCC) Council Member and contributor to the Robotics Roadmaps Maja Matarić.  In 2009, the CCC published a report, A Roadmap for US Robotics, From Internet to Robotics (a.k.a. the Robotics Roadmap), which explored the capacity of robotics to act as a key economic enabler, specifically in the areas of manufacturing, healthcare, and the service industry, 5, 10, and 15 years into the future. An updated version of the Robotics Roadmap was released in November 2016; it expands on the topics discussed in the 2009 roadmap and addresses the areas of public safety, earth science, and workforce development. It also emphasizes robotics […]

The Computing Community Consoritum (CCC) is co-sponsoring with the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) one of several symposia in the AAAI 2016 Fall Symposium series on November 17-19, 2016 in Arlington, Virginia.  The Symposium on Accelerating Science: A Grand Challenge for AI aims to bring together researchers in relevant areas of artificial intelligence (e.g., machine learning, causal inference, knowledge representation and inference, planning, decision making), high performance data and computing infrastructures and services, and selected application areas (e.g., life sciences, learning sciences, health sciences, social sciences, food energy and water nexus) to discuss progress on, and articulate a research agenda aimed at addressing, the AI grand challenge of accelerating science. Learn more and […]