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 […]

The following is a guest blog by Greg Hager, Computing Community Consortium (CCC) Chair and Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Johns Hopkins University.  I recently had the opportunity to participate in a panel discussing the National Robotics Initiative (NRI). The NRI is in its 5th year, so we were asked to describe “the return on investment” of the program. Various panel members pointed out how focused and energized robotics is on high-value, relevant applications, and how it has created new startups, a new cohort of students who will power the next wave of R&D innovation, and, of course, a host of new research results. But what does this really […]

In celebration of the fifth anniversary of the National Robotics Initiative (NRI), the Congressional Robotics Caucus Advisory Committee including IEEE-USA, Computing Research Association, Carnegie Mellon University, and Georgia Tech with support from the National Science Foundation (NSF) held a Congressional Briefing with demonstrations and the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) released it’s report called Next Generation Robotics. The NRI was a direct result of a CCC roadmapping effort led by Henrik Christensen of Georgia Tech. It is based on a definitive report, A Roadmap for US Robotics — From Internet to Robotics, developed by more than 100 robotics experts from industry and academia who in 2008 attended four CCC workshops, one in each four topic areas of robotics: manufacturing and logistics, healthcare and medical robotics, service robotics, and emerging technologies. The goal of the NRI is to “accelerate […]

The National Institute of Health (NIH) has announced that it will fund the development of three co-robots, or robots that work cooperatively with people, as part of its fourth year of participation in the National Robotics Initiative (NRI). In addition to the NIH, the National Science Foundation, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the U.S. Department of Defense are supporting the development of co-robots. The three innovative co-robots being supported by NIH are: 1. A four-legged robotic smart-walker designed to help improve the mobility and quality of life of the elderly being developed by Dr. Xiangrong Shen at the University of Alabama. The robot has two […]