From left to proper, Tom Ryden, Joyce Sidopoulos, Maja Matarić, Tania Morimoto, Daniela Rus, and Tye Brady on the 2025 Girls in Robotics Gala. | Supply: MassRobotics
Late final yr, Dr. Maja Matarić and Dr. Tania Morimoto had been named MassRobotics’ Robotics Medal and Rising Star winners. Now, throughout Girls’s Historical past Month, The Robotic Report spoke with each girls about their present work and how you can advance girls in robotics.
In her virtually 30 years engaged on robotics in academia, Matarić has pioneered the sphere of socially assistive robotics (SARs) and performed foundational work in multi-robot coordination and human-robot interplay. She earned the Robotics Medal for her work with SARs and for making developments to the sphere of distributed robots and studying in human-robot techniques.
Matarić is at present the Chaired and Distinguished Professor of Laptop Science within the Viterbi College of Engineering on the College of Southern California (USC).
Moritomo is an affiliate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering on the College of California, San Diego. She earned MassRobotics‘ Rising Star in Robotics Medal for her contributions to novel delicate and versatile medical robots and human-machine interfaces designed to enhance entry to high-quality care.
What’s Matarić engaged on now?
Each Matarić and Moritomo lead robotics labs at their respective universities. Matarić mentioned analysis at USC’s Interplay Lab is usually pushed by her college students’ intereests. “Folks carry their very own lived experiences and drivers and passions to the lab, and that’s all the time been what’s pushed my lab,” she instructed The Robotic Report.
“We’re really very honored and challenged that we’ve an NIH grant to do a randomized medical trial,” famous Matarić. “This can be a actual medical trial with USC college students, principally on how we would use a socially assistive robotic that we developed.”
Her lab has developed a social robotic that may act as a companion for college kids and information them via cognitive conduct remedy (CBT) workout routines at dwelling. The robotic doesn’t act as a therapist, Matarić mentioned. As an alternative, it helps college students in practising the talents of CBT.
“We’re speaking about issues like, in case you are on the autism spectrum and have a really atypical eye gaze sample, and you already know that that you must apply extra socially acceptable patterns, or turn-taking patterns, or social referencing, [the robot] creates that social, motivating, partaking atmosphere so that you can apply,” Matarić defined.
Proper now, the lab is working to deploy robots in dorms, at scale, to see how college students react or profit from them.
“It feels to me like we’ve one thing between a village and a military of people that actually care about this, and it takes that and probably extra to tug it off,” Matarić mentioned. “It doesn’t matter what insights we get when it comes to AI and robotics and socially assistive robotics, I actually, actually hope that we really assist some college students as properly.”
Moritomo’s lab has three essential focuses
The Moritomo Lab at UC San Diego has three essential analysis focuses in the intervening time, she mentioned. The primary space is delicate, versatile, snake-like robotic techniques, additionally known as continuum robots.
“[The robots] are lengthy and versatile, so their facet ratio is impressed by biology, like snakes, elephant trunks, or octopus tentacles,” Moritomo mentioned. “These might be fairly helpful for issues like minimally invasive surgical procedure, the place you might wish to have one thing that’s softer, extra compliant, and has minimal interplay forces with the physique. You possibly can journey these lengthy lengths to entry locations which are deep contained in the physique, which are at present onerous to succeed in.”
The second space is haptic interfaces, which might be immediately utilized to the continuum robots. This could embody haptic interfaces for the robots it develops, and softer, wearable haptic interfaces, which tie into the lab’s third analysis focus: delicate, wearable robots that may very well be used for rehabilitation.
“For instance, after a neurological damage, like a stroke, there’s a whole lot of bodily remedy that individuals sometimes should do,” Moritomo mentioned. “We’ve been all for making delicate robots that may very well be worn extra like clothes that individuals may doubtlessly, ultimately, take dwelling and use outdoors of the clinic.”
Moritomo has been at UCSD since 2017, and in that point, she has labored with quite a few Ph.D. college students, post-doc college students, and graduate college students.
“We consider our analysis as being a extremely essential output from the lab, however, for me, the scholars are simply as essential when it comes to the product and the output that our lab produces,” Moritomo mentioned. “These college students are going to actually be the subsequent era of engineers and roboticists who I feel are going to steer technological growth within the coming a long time.”
How can we get extra girls in robotics?
Girls have been traditionally underrepresented in STEM fields. In the present day, girls make up solely 16% of engineers. That is even though girls make up over 40% of the worldwide workforce. Matarić mentioned in her time working her lab, her college students have continued to shock and push her to rethink how she thinks.
“There was a time, perhaps 12 years in the past, once I had one lady pupil, Elaine Brief, who’s now a professor at Tufts. When she got here in, she mentioned, ‘This has to vary.’ And inside her 5 years, she’s modified it,” Matarić mentioned. “We’ve had college students who come from very unrepresented socioeconomic backgrounds, and their view of the world is completely different. I’ve needed to recalibrate.”
Moritomo has seen an identical drive in her college students. Her group does outreach with highschool and even center college college students to carry them into robotics early.
“It’s actually led and run by these wonderful feminine Ph.D. college students within the division, and I’m simply the school mentor who helps with logistics and issues like that,” she mentioned. “These kind of teams the place they’re lively in neighborhood constructing and serving to the subsequent era, I feel that’s essential.”
Moritomo added that ladies ought to have girls to look as much as within the business.
“I had an incredible Ph.D. advisor, Allison Okamura, and I feel it’s individuals like her, individuals like Marcia O’Malley, like Maja Matarić, it’s these people who find themselves actually paving the way in which. They’re doing it, they’re main by instance, they usually’re doing wonderful analysis,” she mentioned. “They’re serving to mentor everybody within the subsequent era, and I feel that’s what actually makes a giant distinction.”
The submit Robotics Medal and Rising Star winners replicate on their work, advancing girls in robotics appeared first on The Robotic Report.
