Henrik Christensen, the KUKA Chair of Robotics at GA Tech and Chairman of the Roadmap project, Rodney Brooks, CEO of Rethink Robotics, Pete Wurman, CTO of Kiva Systems, and Russ Angold, CTO of Ekso Bionics all presented the new Roadmap to a packed gallery of the Robotics Caucus of the US Congress.
From left: Pete Wurman, Rodney Brooks, Russ Angold and Henrik Christensen |
The Roadmap pdf is a must read and can be downloaded here.
While some critical capabilities and underlying technologies are domain-specific, a number are common across all six areas of robotics and include robust 3-D perception, planning and navigation, human-like dexterous manipulation, intuitive human-robot interaction, and safe robot behavior. These challenges are where the Roadmap suggests that the government stimulate development by investing in the core sciences from which the solutions will emerge.
Henrik also said about the presentation:
Robotics is one of a few technologies capable of building new companies, creating new jobs and addressing a number of issues of national importance. We hope this report will help foster the discussion on how we can build partnerships and allocate resources to move the robotics industry forward.
We had multiple members from NSF at the briefing. In DC, the program managers that work in areas related to robotics now meet regularly to discuss programs and potential future opportunities, so we are seeing a growing interest and a stronger representation in Congress and the DC community.
Good work Henrik and Bravo! for getting on so well in the Halls of Congress.