IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - December 2018 - 104

Figure 3. The Industrial Activities Executive Committee: (from left) Tamas Haidegger,
Craig Schlenoff, Dominik Bösl, and Sebastian Bedacht.

the basis of the feedback from our first
two workshops at ICRA and IROS 2018,
we have instantiated a Senior Advisory

Women in Engineering

(continued from page 101)

ways in which we create security for
all people (not just the privileged class),
and then, suddenly, a much more di-
verse population can take risks. My hus-
band, who went to MIT [Massachusetts
Institute of Technology] with me for
graduate school in computer science, is
now an elected public official in the city
of Cambridge, and I hope that together
we will be able to create an overall better
environment for diversity to prosper.
Howard: People need to believe in
the mission first and then advertise
broadly. Be open to training, and hire
based on talent versus a traditional path
of experiences. Any working/start-up
environment should feel inclusive and
welcoming of ideas from individuals of
all experiences. This involves active
mentoring, providing positive reinforce-
ment, recruiting for talent (whether raw
or experienced), and being open to
communication. This also means being
adamant and stepping in if others don't
share these same values.
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IEEE ROBOTICS & AUTOMATION MAGAZINE

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Committee, currently involving Oussa-
ma Khatib, Henrik Christensen, Wol-
fram Burgard, Raja Chatila, Dong-Soo

Kwon, and Satoshi Todokoro. To learn
more about our initiative, please refer to
the Global Delphi Study and support us
by contributing to further workshops
and filling in the questionnaire circulat-
ed at a later point in time.
In a nutshell, I am looking forward
to an exciting two years serving you and
our Society as vice president of IAB. I
encourage you to contribute to our
efforts or even to the IAB itself-our
meetings are always open, and we wel-
come any contribution! If you want
to learn more or provide input, feed-
back, or criticism, feel free to reach
out to Sebastian, Tamas, Craig, Edson,
and myself (Figure 3) at any time via
ras-iab@ieee.org.

RAM: What kinds of activities have
help e d en hance te amwork and
collaboration?
Hsiao, Osentoski, and Lee: At May-
field, we get together as an entire team
twice a week to have lunch and talk about
what we are working on. During our
Thursday team lunch, we have a show-
and-tell where members of the team
share an update on what they are working
on. Bringing everyone together on a reg-
ular basis promotes team building and
encourages people to talk to other mem-
bers of the team they may not work with
on a day-to-day basis. With a team of
incredibly bright people, there are endless
opportunities for us to learn from each
other. We believe our diverse team brings
out the best in everything we do.
RAM: How important is diversity in
robotics?
Nagpal: Robotics takes a different
flavor in different places. For example,
most of the work on swarm robotics

december 2018

happened in Europe, and it was the
place to be to do cutting-edge bio-
inspired algorithms; I have been so
inspired by many, many colleagues in
Switzerland, Belgium, the United King-
dom, and so on. Then you go to Japan,
and there's a very different flavor, with
robots viewed in a caring way as care-
givers and companions and not neces-
sarily as competitors. In the United
States, robotics takes on a flavor of
industrial progress and efficiency, and
also capitalism. The truth is that all
these views are true and important.
Without diversity, we get stuck in just
one way of thinking. And I am hopeful
that we can get even more participation
in robotics worldwide through educa-
tion and early exposure with educa-
tional robots like Root. Robots naturally
appeal to kids, and each kid can put his
or her own image of what he or she
thinks robots should do in the future.
IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - December 2018

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