Moving Forward

Artificial Intelligence, with roots going back the beginning of the computer age, is having accelerating impact throughout industry and society.

With computational power and analysis methods reaching critical levels of capability, we are beginning to see the fruits of our long efforts moving into every-day life. Robotics was there as a far-off dream at the start of the computer age, and is now presenting as key to progress in meeting current and anticipated challenges in areas such as exploration, medical care (including support for the elderly and infirm), operation in harsh environments and for disaster recovery, logistics and material handling (exemplified by the currently termed great resignation where, increasingly, people are showing less interest in accepting a life of dispiriting manual labor), and hybrid manufacturing where humans may guide -- through their instantaneous problem solving -- while robot partners handle the physical burden while ensuring safety and task continuity.  Advances in sensing and control have kept pace with the increases in computational power and, together, these have been crucial to the rapid expansion of robot deployment throughout industry and into everyday life.

The Robotics Center addresses the technical, economic, and societal challenges that will continue to confront us as we work for each of us to have to have the opportunity for a healthier, richer, and more self-fulfilling life. This will involve a major transformation in the scope and dimension of automation in labor, and the Stanford Robotics Center intends to be at the leading edge of this movement.