Ruzena Bajcsy is among the founders of the fashionable subject of robotics. With an schooling in electrical engineering in Slovakia, adopted by a Ph.D. at Stanford, Bajcsy was the primary lady to affix the engineering school on the College of Pennsylvania. She was the primary, she says, as a result of “in these days, good ladies didn’t fiddle with screwdrivers.” Bajcsy, now 91, spoke with IEEE Spectrumon the fortieth anniversary celebration of the IEEE Worldwide Convention on Robotics and Automation, in Rotterdam, Netherlands.
Ruzena Bajcsy
Ruzena Bajcsy’s 50-plus years in robotics spanned time at Stanford, the College of Pennsylvania, the Nationwide Science Basis, and the College of California, Berkeley. Bajcsy retired in 2021.
What was the robotics subject like on the time of the primary ICRA convention in 1984?
Ruzena Bajcsy: There was quite a lot of enthusiasm at the moment—it was like a dream; we felt like we may do one thing dramatic. However that is typical, and if you transfer into a brand new space and also you begin to construct there, you discover that the issue is more durable than you thought.
What makes robotics exhausting?
Bajcsy: Robotics was maybe the primary topic which actually required an interdisciplinary strategy. To start with of the twentieth century, there was physics and chemistry and arithmetic and biology and psychology, all with brick partitions between them. The physicists have been rather more centered on measurement, and understanding how issues interacted with one another. Through the battle, there was a choose group of males who didn’t suppose that mortal individuals may do that. They have been so stuffed with themselves. I don’t know in the event you noticed the Oppenheimer film, however I knew a few of these males—my husband was a type of physicists!
And the way are roboticists completely different?
Bajcsy: We’re engineers. For physicists, it’s the matter of discovery, finished. We, alternatively, so as to perceive issues, we’ve to construct them. It takes effort and time, and incessantly we’re inhibited—once I began, there have been no digital cameras, so I needed to construct one. I constructed a number of different issues like that in my profession, not as a discovery, however as a necessity.
How can robotics be useful?
Bajcsy: As an aged individual, I take advantage of this cane. However once I’m with my kids, I maintain their arms and it helps tremendously. So as to hold your stability, you’re taking all of the vectors of your torso and your legs so that you’re steady. You and I collectively can create a configuration of our legs and physique in order that the sum is steady.
One quite simple helpful system for an older individual could be to have a cane with a number of joints that may modify relying on the way in which I transfer, to compensate for my motion. Individuals are making progress on this space, as a result of many individuals reside longer than earlier than. There are all types of different locations the place the expertise derived from robotics will help like this.
What are you most pleased with?
Bajcsy: At this stage of my life, persons are asking, and I’m asking, what’s my legacy? And I let you know, my legacy is my college students. They labored exhausting, however they felt they have been appreciated, and there was a way of camaraderie and assist for one another. I didn’t do it consciously, however I assume it got here from my motherly instincts. And I’m nonetheless involved with a lot of them—I fear about their kids, the standard grandma!
This text seems within the December 2024 concern as “5 Questions for Ruzena Bajcsy.”
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