I was honored, and frankly surprised, to be accepted as a member of the 2020 RSS Pioneers cohort. This is an annual workshop held during the Robotics Science and Systems (RSS) conference intended to bring together promising robotics researchers early in their career. I applied feeling confident I would not even be up for consideration, and imagine my surprise when I was informed I was accepted! Perhaps I am just imposter syndrome incarnate, but in any event, it was truly an honor to be involved and I am grateful for the opportunity.
We were in the height of the COVID pandemic during the workshop, so it was all remote over Zoom. I was not too pleased about that as I enjoy traveling and attending conferences, and the Zoom experience was sometimes too awkward for me to put up with – there was a mass Zoom social hour at the end, too much for this introvert to be party to. But it was great seeing everyone’s presentations, and I especially enjoyed the keynote speakers providing their perspective on a career in robotics.
I will leave this link to my submitted paper where you can read the highlights of the research agenda I had proposed, one I still feel strongly about as a path forward to some truly impressive robots. You can view the presentation I recorded for the workshop in the YouTube video at the top of this page.
