LOOKING BACK, MOVING FORWARD

Archivists in the Hunt Library, working with faculty in the Robotics Institute and across campus, are taking a thorough look at CMU’s remarkable history of robotics with The Robotics Project, a multi-phase, multi-year project that not only preserves CMU’s storied legacy in robotics, but also enhances our understanding of the people and technologies that helped create the scientific discipline, field of practice and cultural force that is robotics.

Occasionally, even as scientists, it can be helpful to look back at our accomplishments not only to give important milestones their proper recognition, but to give us perspective to continue our push forward to uncover what comes next. In this issue of The LINK, you will discover many instances where SCS students and faculty have reviewed past experiences—both recent and distant—in order to boldly step into the future.

Team Explorer, fresh off competing in the three-year DARPA Subterranean (SubT) Challenge, looks back on lessons learned during their admirable performance to push toward new technologies that were non-existent before the competition began, to bring them to market and to the world of robotic exploration for places where humans cannot or should not go.

Our Student Spotlight features Kayo Yin, a remarkable graduate student in the Language Technologies Institute, who has surveyed current areas of focus and sees the path forward to include American Sign Language as an important and (until now, neglected) field of study.

We recently celebrated the official opening of the JPMorgan Chase & Co. AI Maker Space. The first makers’ space of its kind that focuses on the creation of software, the new lab offers students from across campus access to necessary tools including robots, drones and smart devices so that they may collaborate on innovative AI agents.

A little more than 15 years ago, Matthew Johnson-Roberson, then an undergraduate student in the Robotics Institute, wanted to make his mark in the field. And that he did, most recently serving as an associate professor of engineering at University of Michigan’s Department of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering and the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, as well as the co-director of UM’s Ford Center for Autonomous Vehicles. I’m pleased that he’s returned to campus as the next director of our Robotics Institute, the sixth director in our history. We welcome him back to SCS as he’ll help shape next generations of CMU roboticists.

Our Institute for Software Research’s Kathleen Carley and her team are pouring over conspiracy theories perpetuated on social media to find the root sources of misinformation in order to help people think more critically in a digital world. This work parallels efforts from within the SCS community to study how AI can assist in large-scale problems such as global food security, health care, the future of transportation and consumer privacy in a networked world. As you will also read, these efforts have resulted in CMU being part of four National Science Foundation AI Institutes.

As global and complex challenges continue, our work emerges as key to finding solutions. We look back to the time when we were not able to gather, a time when the pandemic laid bare inequalities in our society. We do this to learn the lessons of our experiences, both individual and shared, and use them as inspiration to continue working toward a brighter future.