Ada Lovelace Day 2020 Women in Robotics Panel
Entrepreneur and robot lover with Google X experience moderates a Silicon Valley Robotics panel with Ayanna Howard, Carlotta Berry, Angelique Taylor, and Arielle Anders on inclusive robotics, research, education, and social impact.
In this talk
- 1:49
Robots that work for more people
Ayanna Howard describes her work on collaborative robots for children with autism and motor impairments, including cerebral palsy. She says off-the-shelf systems can fail with children and underrepresented groups, so her team studies age, racial, and gender bias in recognition and language, and ways to reduce overtrust in flawed systems.
- 9:13
Teaching robotics through hands-on teamwork
Carlotta Berry, an electrical and computer engineering professor at Rose-Hulman, explains how she brings robotics to undergraduates and outreach programs. She helped create the school’s multidisciplinary robotics minor, and uses Arduino projects and team robot competitions in her classes. She argues that fair task sharing and cooperative team design can make competitions work well for female students.
- 17:48
Perception and navigation for healthcare robots
Angelique Taylor presents research on robots that perceive groups and navigate busy environments. Her RoboGen systems detect and track groups from a mobile robot’s camera, while SafeDQN plans supply deliveries in emergency departments with patient acuity in mind. Interviews with six nurses also informed design ideas such as code response guidance, error alerts, and bedside team positioning.
- 27:59
Planning reliable robots and building a broader field
Arielle Anders traces her path from computer engineering at UC Santa Cruz to robotics research at MIT and work at Robust AI. Her PhD research combined planning, simulation, and machine learning to let a PR2 manipulate blocks with limited sensing; 24 of 25 physical trials succeeded. She calls robotics an interdisciplinary team effort and urges the field to include people with varied backgrounds.
- 43:44
Access, support, and social impact
In the panel discussion, participants recommend making robotics easier to try, introducing children to technology, and supporting groups such as Black in Robotics. They encourage newcomers to build with Arduino or Raspberry Pi, attend workshops, and connect with practitioners. Howard says lived experience can help engineers notice whose needs a design overlooks, while the host emphasizes mentoring youth and creating opportunities.
Briefs summarise talks and interviews; timestamps open the video at that moment. Claims in a talk are the speaker's own.