“ The Woman who changed the world ’’

Written by Anushka Singh

Women’s day is all about sharing the spirithood of being women, acknowledging, celebrating, and accepting ourselves. Following this pursuit, we celebrate the journey of one of the most powerful females in the history of Technology.

It takes determination, perseverance, and strength to find your way. Daniela L.Rus is one such entity who has made her own path in the field that is of the highest demand ‘Artificial intelligence’. Born in 1963 in Romania, her academic career began when she got her Ph.D. in Computer Science from Cornell University. Then she began working as an Assistant, Associate, and finally a professor in the department of computer science at the prestigious Dartmouth College before giving her contribution to MIT.

Her achievements vary from being a member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE), AAAI, ACM, and IEEE. She currently works as the director of MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) which continues its legacy as one of the most prestigious AI labs in the world.

What makes her most distinctive is that she’s the first female head of MIT. She has given her important contributions in the fields of Robotics, mobile computing, wireless networks, and data science.

Projects involvement: Some of her projects include:

• Soft robots: Our new soft robots include a soft robot fish, a soft arm capable of manipulation in planar environments, and a soft dynamic arm capable of dynamic manipulation in three-dimensional environments.
• Mobility on Demand with Self-Driving Cars: The objective of this project is to develop data-driven customized transportation Mobility on demand aims to transform transportation into a utility, to be available to anybody, anytime.
• Robot Compiler: The current solution to the robot compiler is a data-driven approach to design. Existing robot designs and supporting control algorithms that sit in a database are segmented and composed to create new robots. The user imagines a machine, say a duck robot or an ant robot, and defines its behaviors (say a robot should pick up a piece and move it), assemble mechanisms into an integrated design, and rapidly fabricate the device and its programming and control substrate.
• The creation of Distributed Robot Garden would play a big role in providing a platform for understanding computer science concepts and motivating students to pursue programming and robotics.

Looking at her projects, we can see that the focus of her work is developing the science and engineering of autonomy, toward the long-term objective of enabling a future with machines pervasively integrated into the fabric of life, supporting people with physical tasks. Her research addresses some of the gaps between where robots are today and the promise of pervasive robots: increasing the ability of machines to reason, learn, and adapt to complex tasks in human-centered environments, developing intuitive interfaces between robots and people, and creating the tools for designing and fabricating new robots quickly and efficiently. The applications of this work are broad and include transportation, manufacturing, agriculture, construction, monitoring the environment, underwater exploration, smart cities, medicine, and in-home tasks such as cooking.

Inspiration

Daniela L. Rus has set up a bar. A bar for herself, for us, and for the future. The upcoming field of artificial intelligence is in good hands and they expect the same from us.

She inspires all of us with her views on the future of technology

“I imagine a future where robots are so integrated in the fabric of human life that they become as common as smart phones are today. The field of robotics has the potential to greatly improve the quality of our lives at work, at home, and at play.”