The 18th International Symposium on Robotics Research (ISRR ‘17) has released a call for papers. ISRR ‘17, will take place December 11-14 in Puerto Varas, Chile. The symposium is seeking papers that offer new ideas and directions for the field of robotics. The program will comprise a combination of invited talks and open submissions organized into interactive panels, keynotes, and debates. Accepted papers will be organized into topical panels, and the panel moderators will work with the authors of accepted papers to coordinate the presentations and maximize the interactivity of the session.   The papers and panel discussions will be edited into a proceedings volume after the workshop, and will […]

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, […]

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 AAAI 2017 Spring Symposium on AI for Social Good (AISOC) will be March 27-29, 2017 at Stanford University.  A rise in real-world applications of AI has stimulated significant interest from the public, media, and policy makers, including the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). Along with this increasing attention has come media-fueled concerns about purported negative consequences of AI, which often overlooks the societal benefits that AI is delivering and can deliver in the near future. This symposium will focus on the promise of AI across multiple sectors of society. The organizers are especially interested in addressing societal challenges, which have not yet received significant attention by the AI community […]

Imagine diagnosing a hospital patient with septicemia 25 hours before the onset of sepsis shock, dispatching the right police officer to de-escalate a situation, or increasing agricultural productivity based on weather knowledge where few weather stations exist. These scenarios are not simply dreams, but thanks to artificial intelligence (AI) research are actually happening in the world today and are having a positive impact on societies across the globe. Interest in artificial intelligence has been rapidly increasing in recent years, often with a focus on the flashy robot or computer that can speak responses, but the practical applications have a major societal impact and are often overlooked. AI has been successfully applied to societal […]