Life & Robotics: Live Streamed Panel Discussion

Bruno Siciliano received his Doctorate degree in Electronic Engineering from the University of Naples, Italy, in 1987. His research focuses on force and visual control, cooperative robots, human–robot interaction, aerial and surgical robotics. He is a Fellow of IEEE, ASME and IFAC. He is Co-Editor of the "Springer Handbook of Robotics", which received the PROSE Award for Excellence in Physical Sciences & Mathematics and was also the winner in the category Engineering & Technology. Bruno Siciliano is the Past-President of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (RAS) and is currently a Board Director of the European Robotics Association. He has been the recipient of several awards, including the IEEE RAS George Saridis Leadership Award in Robotics and Automation and the IEEE RAS Distinguished Service Award.

Oussama Khatib received his Doctorate degree in Electrical Engineering from Sup’Aero, Toulouse, France, in 1980. His research focuses on human-centered robotics including humanoid control architectures, human motion synthesis, interactive dynamic simulation, haptics, and human-friendly robot design. He is a Fellow of IEEE. He is Co-Editor of the "Springer Handbook of Robotics", which received the PROSE Award for Excellence in Physical Sciences & Mathematics and was also the winner in the category Engineering & Technology. Oussama Khatib is the President of the International Foundation of Robotics Research. He has been the recipient of several awards, including the IEEE Robotics & Automation Technical Field Award, the IEEE RAS Pioneer Award in Robotics and Automation, the IEEE RAS George Saridis Leadership Award in Robotics and Automation, the IEEE RAS Distinguished Service Award, and the Japan Robot Association (JARA) Award in Research and Development.

Torsten Kröger was previously a roboticist at Google and continues to be visiting researcher at Stanford University. He received his Doctorate degree from the  Robotics Research Institute at TU Braunschweig, Computer Science in 2009. In 2010, he joined the Stanford AI Laboratory, where he worked on instantaneous trajectory generation, autonomous hybrid switched-control of robots, and distributed real-time hard- and software systems. He was the founder of Reflexxes GmbH, a spin-off of TU Braunschweig working on the development of deterministic real-time-motion generation algorithms. In 2014, Reflexxes joined Google. Torsten Kröger is editor and associate editor of multiple IEEE conference proceedings, books, and book series. He received the IEEE RAS Early Career Award, the Heinrich Büssing Award, the GFFT Award, two fellowships of the German Research Association, and he was a finalist of the IEEE/IFR IERA Award and the euRobotics TechTransfer Award.

Prior to joining Berkeley, she headed the Computer and Information Science and Engineering Directorate at the National Science Foundation. Dr. Bajcsy is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Science Institute of Medicine as well as a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and the American Association for Artificial Intelligence. In 2001, she received the ACM/Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence Allen Newell Award, and was named as one of the 50 most important women in science in the November 2002 issue of Discover Magazine. She is the recipient of the Benjamin Franklin Medal for Computer and Cognitive Sciences (2009) and the IEEE Robotics and Automation Award (2013) for her contributions in the field of robotics and automation.

Dr. Bischoff is Head of KUKA’s Corporate Research department responsible for research and technology development preceding product development. Dr. Bischoff received his “Doktor- Ingenieur“ degree from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology for his contributions towards the development of personal robots. He serves as Vice-President Industry of euRobotics AISBL – the European Robotics Association, he helped to create to unite European roboticists and to engage in a public-private partnership with the European Commission. In 2006, Dr. Bischoff received the IEEE/IFR Invention and Entrepreneurship Award for a flexible and scalable collision avoidance system for industrial robots. For leadership and outstanding contributions to the cooperation of academia and industry, and for managing and promoting significant technology transfer in the area of industrial and service robotics he was granted the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Early Career Award in 2012. In 2015, he received the IROS Toshio Fukuda Young Professional Award for his technical contributions to the personal robotic assistant HERMES and his effort in uniting the European Robotics Community. Dr. Bischoff has authored over 100 papers, receiving three best paper awards.

Ken Goldberg is an artist, inventor, and UC Berkeley Professor. He is Chair of the Industrial Engineering and Operations Research Department, with secondary appointments in EECS, Art Practice, the School of Information, and Radiation Oncology at the UCSF Medical School. Ken is Director of the CITRIS "People and Robots" Initiative and the UC Berkeley AUTOLAB where he and his students pursue research in geometric algorithms and machine learning for robotics and automation in surgery, manufacturing, and other applications. Ken developed the first provably complete algorithms for part feeding and part fixturing and the first robot on the Internet. Despite agonizingly slow progress, Ken persists in trying to make robots less clumsy. He has over 250 peer-reviewed publications and 8 U.S. Patents. He co-founded and served as Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering. Ken's artwork has appeared in 70 exhibits including the Whitney Biennial and films he has co-written have been selected for Sundance and nominated for an Emmy Award. Ken was awarded the NSF PECASE (Presidential Faculty Fellowship) from President Bill Clinton in 1995, elected IEEE Fellow in 2005 and selected by the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society for the George Saridis Leadership Award in 2016.

Aude’s research interests span the control and design of robotic systems meant to interact with humans. To this goal, she pursues research in three complementary areas: a) the development of control systems for teaching robots through human demonstration; b) the study of the neural and cognitive processes underpinning imitation learning in humans; c) the design of user-friendly human-computer interfaces to facilitate human-robot interaction. Additionally, she conducts research on societal aspects of the use of robotics with application to diagnosis and therapy of children with autism. Her competences are in robot control, signal processing and machine learning.

Humanoid robotics, cognitive robotics, neuro musculoskeletal human modeling, biomedical systems, and their computational algorithms are Yoshihiko Nakamura's current fields of research. He is a Fellow of the Japanese Society of Mechanical Engineers, Fellow of Robotics Society of Japan, Fellow of IEEE, and Fellow of World Academy of Arts and Science. Currently, Dr. Nakamura (2012-2015) serves as President of International Federation for the Promotion of Mechanism and Machine Science (IFToMM). Dr. Nakamura is Foreign Member of Academy of Engineering Science of Serbia and Montenegro, and TUM Distinguished Affiliated Professor of Technische Universität München.

Graduated with a B.Sc. in Biology from University of Sussex, M.Sc. in Environmental Technology (Ecological Management) from Imperial College, London, and Ph.D. in Ethnobiology from University of Kent. Jonathan works on measuring and monitoring the state of global biological and cultural diversity and develop quantitative indicators of their trends. He also works as a consultant for international conservation organizations such as the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre (WCMC), the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF), and the Zoological Society of London (ZSL).