Dr. Daniela Rus

2017 Engelberger Robotics Award for Education

Dr. Daniela Rus is recognized for her leadership as a researcher, innovator and educator in the field of robotics. Her research group, the Distributed Robotics Lab, has developed modular and self-reconfiguring robots, systems of self-organizing robots, networks of robots and sensors for first-responders, mobile sensor networks, techniques for cooperative underwater robotics and new technology for desktop robotics. They have built robots that can tend a garden, bake cookies from scratch, cut a birthday cake, fly in swarms without human aid to perform surveillance functions and dance with humans. The lab has also worked on self-driving golf carts, wheel chairs, scooters, and city cars with the objective of reducing traffic fatalities and providing technologies for personal mobility for the elderly population. Companies such as iRobot and Boeing have commercialized innovations drawn from Dr. Rus' research. She is the first woman to serve as director of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and its predecessors the AI Lab and the Lab for Computer Science.

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Joseph F. Engelberger - Robotics Online (press release)