Lathrop Library, Classroom 282
518 Memorial Way, Stanford, CA 94305
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Event Details:
Steve B Cousins, PhD & Michelle Q. Wang Baldonado, PhD
Executive Director of the Stanford Robotics Center & Research Engineer at the Stanford Robotics Center
Abstract: "Human beings are remarkable for the many ways we can impact the world. We move through and interact with the world directly, or with the help of tools, using our brains and our muscles to control those tools. Robots can be thought of as tools, often with computers instead of brains, and motors instead of muscles. Robots were invented to serve humanity and can be great assistive technologies. They can augment and extend our capabilities, whether to replace functions we no longer have (or never had), or to give us new powers. Additionally, they can support healthy behaviors that contribute to longevity, from physical activity to social connection. In this talk, we'll give examples of how robots can and do help people, from the Robots for Humanity project and other work at Stanford and beyond, in order to explore what makes robots different from other assistive technologies. We'll also present the new SOAR (Stanford Older Adult Robotics) project that we're launching at the Stanford Robotics Center."
Biosketch: Steve B. Cousins is the Executive Director of the Stanford Robotics Center. He founded Relay Robotics, formerly Savioke, serving as CTO and CEO, where he led the development and deployment of Relay - an autonomous delivery robot that works in human environments to help people. Steve was previously President and CEO of Willow Garage, and is a founding board member of the Open Source Robotics Foundation. Steve received the IEEE / IFR Award for Invention and Entrepreneurship in Robotics and Automation in 2017.
Steve earned his PhD in Computer Science at Stanford University under the direction of Terry Winograd, and also holds BS and MS computer science degrees from Washington University.
Biosketch: Michelle Baldonado is a Research Engineer at the Stanford Robotics Center. She leads the Stanford Older Adults Robotics (SOAR) project at the SRC. Michelle earned her PhD in Computer Science at Stanford University under the direction of Terry Winograd. She also earned an MPhil in Computer Speech and Language Processing from Cambridge University and an AB in Computer Science (joint with Linguistics) from Harvard University.