IEEE Spectrum - North American - March 2015 - 44

The Humanitarian
Inventor

of other machines. Veloso's
secret weapon was a vision
algorithm that used lines,
patterns, and color to help
each robot track the ball and
other bots.
In 2009, Veloso shared her
team's vision software with
other competitors, establishing an open-source approach
that both leveled the field and
raised the bar at RoboCup.

Ashok Gadgil's work on water
purification, cookstoves, and arsenic
removal has bettered the lives of tens
of millions of people worldwide

Robocup's official goal is
for a robot team to defeat the
human World Cup champions by 2050. Indeed, a highlight of the games is always
the final match, between the
top team of robots and some
talented amateurs.
But beating humans at the
sport is a means, not an end,
Veloso says matter-of-factly.
The real goal, she says, is to
hone both robots and roboticists. After all, robots that
serve an accurate pass could
also serve lunch. "The idea is
to push robots well beyond
the playing field and into
daily life," she says. She has
been instrumental in establishing the new RoboCup@
Home, RoboCupRescue, and
RoboCup@Work competitions, which test robots in
realistic domestic, disaster,
and industrial settings.
Just as she envisioned robot
soccer as a powerful vehicle
for inspiring a new generation of roboticists, Veloso
also sees the great potential
for CoBot and other thinking machines to one day help
humans at the office, on the
shop floor, and in the home.
It's a work in progress, says
Veloso. "The beautiful thing
about AI and robotics is that
you're never done."
-prachi patel
44

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MaR 2015

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nORTh aMERICan

No! No! No! I n
A shok Gad g i l's
cluttered office
at the Lawrence
Berkeley National
Laboratory, hidden a mong t he
stacks of books
and awards and
whiteboards and
ID badges from
humanitarian
organizations,
you'll spot tiny pictures of former U.S.
first lady Nancy
Reagan. "Just Say
No!" each picture
implores.
Gadgil has appropriated Reagan's antidrug slogan for his own ends. "I tend to
say yes too often," he laughs. "Saying no
is valuable, because I'm interested in lots
of stuff, but my time is full."
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SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG

Gadgil's career is a testament to being
interested in many things. Starting with
a Ph.D. in physics in 1979 from the University of California, Berkeley, he moved
from working on the general theory of
relativity, to applied math, to computational fluid dynamics, to mechanical
engineering. "Kind of a convoluted way
to get there," he admits. "But I wanted
to do something that was closer to having a societal impact."
For more than two decades, Gadgil
has focused his energy and expertise
on devising technologies that help the
poorest and the most vulnerable. Early
on, he realized that to provide the biggest benefit to the most people, he'd have
to be both disciplined and pragmatic in
selecting which projects to undertake.
His first foray into socially beneficial
technology was sparked by a 1993 cholera epidemic in south and southeast Asia,
which left thousands dead. Preventing
outbreaks of such waterborne diseases
could save millions of lives each year. So
Gadgil began investigating ways to use
ultraviolet light to disinfect water. By 1996
he had devised a 60-watt water treatment
unit (later reduced to 40 W) that's the size
of a microwave oven and runs on a car
battery or solar cell, sterilizing 15 liters
of water per minute with minimal oversight or maintenance. The lab patented
the system, called UV Waterworks, and
then licensed it to WaterHealth Inter-
http://SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG
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