IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - September 2023 - 4

F ROM THE ED I T O R ' S D E S K
Responsible Roboticists
By Yi Guo
With summer upon us, for many of us
working in academia, this is the most
convenient time to travel and to attend
conferences. I packaged my luggage and
headed to the IEEE International Conference
on Robotics and Automation
(ICRA) in London, U.K. It was a rewarding
trip-not only did the largest ever
international robotics conference inspire
me with research ideas, but also the rich
history of the country fascinated me as a
first-time London visitor.
The field is expanding. ICRA London
had more than 6,000 participants
over the five conference days, which
raised a lot of challenges for conference
organizers, from choosing paper presentation
modes to organizing social
events. Regular Society events, such
as the IEEE Robotics and Automation
Society (RAS) Town Hall, Women in
Engineering Luncheon, and RAS Lunch
With Leaders, were held, and all were
well attended. RAS technical committees
(TCs) are more active than ever
before, with the TC Cluster Forum running
each of the three conference days.
Innovative programs, such as the hybrid
format with live streaming and satellite
conference centers in other countries,
served online attendees well. It is in
the minds of Society leaders and future
conference organizers to adapt to the
new reality of the expanding field and
to organize robotics conferences that
accommodate various needs to serve the
community better.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MRA.2023.3293336
Date of current version: 11 September 2023
4
There were many highlights
of the conference program.
For me, it was exciting
to watch on the stage of ICRA,
two Spot robots dancing the
tango, the Avator of Hiroshi
Ishiguro presenting on behalf
of its human owner using
human-like gestures, and
the humanoid robot Sofia interacting
with humans naturally. There is strong
evidence that roboticists are making
encouraging progress in both hardware
and software. As Marc Raibert from the
Boston Dynamics AI Institute stated in
his plenary talk at ICRA, hardware is as
important as software, and the goal is to
achieve both " athletic intelligence " (i.e.,
to advance robots' physical skills) and
" cognitive intelligence " (i.e., to make
robots smarter).
People asked many questions, big
and small. One big question that was
asked during ICRA is how to make better
robots for society. During the keynote
session, " Robots for Society, " one of the
panelists, Lynne Parker from the University
of Tennessee, proposed responsible
social robotics to help gain public
acceptance. She reminded us that " ethics
topics at AI conferences were largely
ignored until about five years ago, " and
argued that we can take a different path
and build trust for acceptance and societal
adoption before widespread technology
adoption is achieved. She noted
that this should be done, " if not for the
ethics of it, then simply because we want
our work to have an impact in the field. "
In Parker's talk, she gave examples of
IEEE ROBOTICS & AUTOMATION MAGAZINE SEPTEMBER 2023
social robotics research that
find promising applications in
elder care, education, autism
therapy,
rehabilitation, and
mental health support. She
suggested that, in addition to
answering how this can be
done, we should also address
the implications of technology
and respond to questions including
the following: Should it be done? What
might go wrong? How can we ensure
that bad things don't happen? We have
a long way to go, and being responsible
should be given adequate attention when
we bring robots into the human world.
At ICRA, the eighth IEEE Robotics
and Automation Magazine Best Paper
Award was announced. The award paper
is " Testing Gecko-Inspired Adhesives
With Astrobee Aboard the International
Space Station: Readying the Technology
for Space, " by Tony G. Chen, Abhishek
Cauligi, Srinivasan A. Suresh, Marco
Pavone, and Mark R. Cutkosky [1],
which was published in the September
2022 issue. We congratulate the authors
on this achievement. The article is made
open access on IEEE Xplore.
This September issue is a regular issue
that contains 10 feature articles presenting
a wide range of robotics research.
Enjoy reading the issue!
REFERENCE
[1] T. G. Chen, A. Cauligi, S. A. Suresh, M. Pavone,
and M. R. Cutkosky, " Testing gecko-inspired adhesives
with Astrobee aboard the International Space
Station: Readying the technology for space, " IEEE
Robot. Autom. Mag., vol. 29, no. 3, pp. 24-33,
Sep. 2022, doi: 10.1109/MRA.2022.3175597.
1070-9932/23©2023IEEE
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7158-351X
IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - September 2023

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