Ruzena Bajcsy is likely one of the founders of the fashionable discipline of robotics. With an schooling in electrical engineering in Slovakia, adopted by a Ph.D. at Stanford, Bajcsy was the primary girl 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 discipline like on the time of the primary ICRA convention in 1984?
Ruzena Bajcsy: There was numerous enthusiasm at the moment—it was like a dream; we felt like we may do one thing dramatic. However that is typical, and while 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 onerous?
Bajcsy: Robotics was maybe the primary topic which actually required an interdisciplinary strategy. At first 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 far more targeted on measurement, and understanding how issues interacted with one another. Throughout the battle, there was a choose group of males who didn’t suppose that mortal folks may do that. They have been so filled with themselves. I don’t know for those who noticed the Oppenheimer film, however I knew a few of these males—my husband was a type of physicists!
And the way are roboticists totally different?
Bajcsy: We’re engineers. For physicists, it’s the matter of discovery, carried out. We, then again, as a way to perceive issues, we’ve got to construct them. It takes effort and time, and continuously we’re inhibited—once I began, there have been no digital cameras, so I needed to construct one. I constructed just a few different issues like that in my profession, not as a discovery, however as a necessity.
How can robotics be useful?
Bajcsy: As an aged particular person, I exploit this cane. However once I’m with my youngsters, I maintain their arms and it helps tremendously. With the intention to maintain your steadiness, you take all of the vectors of your torso and your legs so that you’re secure. You and I collectively can create a configuration of our legs and physique in order that the sum is secure.
One quite simple helpful system for an older particular person could be to have a cane with a number of joints that may alter relying on the best way I transfer, to compensate for my motion. Individuals are making progress on this space, as a result of many individuals live longer than earlier than. There are all types of different locations the place the know-how derived from robotics can assist like this.
What are you most happy with?
Bajcsy: At this stage of my life, persons are asking, and I’m asking, what’s my legacy? And I inform you, my legacy is my college students. They labored onerous, however they felt they have been appreciated, and there was a way of camaraderie and help for one another. I didn’t do it consciously, however I suppose it got here from my motherly instincts. And I’m nonetheless involved with lots of them—I fear about their youngsters, the same old grandma!
This text seems within the December 2024 concern as “5 Questions for Ruzena Bajcsy.”
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