Carnegie Mellon to Celebrate 25th anniversary of Robotics Institute (fwd)

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Contact: Anne Watzman                                   For immediate release:
            412-268-3830                                August 24, 2004

Carnegie Mellon Prepares To Celebrate
25th Anniversary of its Robotics Institute

PITTSBURGH--Carnegie Mellon University will celebrate the 25th 
anniversary
of its world-famous Robotics Institute with an exciting, 
thought-provoking,
robotics extravaganza that will take place October 11-14, 2004. The
four-day event will include something for the research, educational and
business communities, as well as for all the people who find robots a
continuing source of fascination and entertainment.

The celebration, built around the theme "Robots and Thought," will begin
the evening of Oct. 11 with the second annual induction to Carnegie
Mellon's Robot Hall of Fame, where five outstanding robots and their
creators will be honored.

On Oct. 12, a series of seminars will focus on how robotics intersects 
with
and enhances business, education and arts. On Oct. 13, an international
symposium on the grand challenges facing the field of robotics will 
feature
a roster of experts from around the world. Oct. 14 will be filled with
tours and demonstrations of leading-edge robots developed by Carnegie
Mellon researchers, both at the institute on the Carnegie Mellon campus 
and
at the more application-focused National Robotics Engineering 
Consortium in
the Lawrenceville section of Pittsburgh. The celebration will culminate 
on
the evening of Oct. 14 with a concert by multimedia artist Laurie 
Anderson,
NASA?s first artist in residence who incorporates robotics and 
leading-edge
technology into her art and concerts.

"The Robotics Institute was founded 25 years ago on the vision of three
gifted men and a $3 million gift from Westinghouse Electric Corp.," 
noted
Carnegie Mellon University President Jared L. Cohon. "Today the 
institute
is a $50 million enterprise with some 300 faculty, students and staff
working on more than 100 projects. Robotics Institute research
breakthroughs are changing the fields of agriculture, medicine, mining,
transportation, space exploration and national security, to name just a
few. Our work has furthered the goals of government agencies, including
NASA, DARPA, the Department of Energy, the Department of Transportation 
and
the Environmental Protection Agency. Companies from around the world 
work
with us, learning how to use robotics to solve problems, develop new
products and open new fields of commercial endeavor. Companies, 
government
agencies and universities also come to recruit the outstanding potential
employees produced in our unique master's and doctoral programs in
robotics."

"During the past 25 years, robotics has changed the way we live, think 
and
work," added Matthew T. Mason, director of the Robotics Institute and a
28-year veteran in the field of robotics. "The growth of the field is
increasing automation on the factory floor, enhancing the safety of
vehicles on the highways, enabling unmanned space exploration and 
helping
to make surgical procedures more exact. Robotics has the potential to
rejuvenate science education by bringing hands-on excitement and 
teamwork
in solving problems to the K-12 classroom as well as on the university
level, and we're just at the beginning."

"The Robotics Institute 25th-anniversary celebration will lay out the
'grand challenges' that remain before us and refocus our attention on 
the
hurdles we must overcome to achieve our dream of a new age of thinking
robots to serve the needs of society," said David A. Bourne, Robotics
Institute principal systems scientist and chairman of the 
25th-anniversary
celebration. "It is unique because it will demand that every participant
also consider how the dawning age of robotics will impact humanity."

Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute is one of the largest facilities of
its kind in the world. Work at the institute focuses on nano-machines,
custom manufacturing, computer vision, autonomous mobile robots that
attempt to seek life in the desert, inspect abandoned coal mines, 
harvest
crops, defend our troops, find meteorites in Antarctica or race more 
than
100 miles across desolate terrain. Institute researchers have developed
learning robots that socialize with people and others that play soccer.
Researchers have made strides in medical robotics, design, intelligent
interfaces, planning, scheduling, rapid manufacturing and shape 
deposition,
all based on robotic technologies.

A division of Carnegie Mellon's School of Computer Science,
the institute was established in 1979 to conduct basic and applied 
research
in robotics technologies and transfer them to industry. Over time its
mission has broadened to include projects that benefit society at 
large. In
1994 Carnegie Mellon received a grant from NASA to establish the 
National
Robotics Engineering Consortium to commercialize mobile robot 
technologies
that NASA has developed by working directly with American industry.

As the field of robotics has expanded, so has the need for trained
scientists to advance and implement new robotics systems. The institute
created the world's first robotics doctoral program in 1989 and has 
offered
a master's program since 1998.

See www.ri25.org for more information on the Robotics Institute
25th-anniversary celebration. See www.ri.cmu.edu for more information on
the Robotics Institute.

See www.rec.ri.cmu.edu for more information on the Robotics Engineering
Consortium. See www.robothalloffame.org for more information on the 
Robot
Hall of Fame.
###

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