Bram Vanderborght in robotics and automation magazine
During ICRA2017, my two-year-old daughter travelled with me to Singapore and attended the social events. She felt like Alice in Wonderland; I had a hard time keeping up with her while she was running in the crowd. We both particularly enjoyed the high-tech gardens by the bay. Sometimes I ask myself if and how she would be inspired as young researcher attending conferences and other robot-related events?
Although we are about to enter 2020, there are still occasions when only men are opening conferences and giving keynote talks. We have excellent female role models in the Robotics and Automation Society. Robohub has established an annual tradition of listing the “women in robotics you need to know about”. They feature inspiring #womeninrobotics because robotics is growing and there are many new stories to be told. In another anecdote, a male Italian professor I know travelled with his daughter to meet several famous female robotics researchers in the USA before she had to decide which university program to follow. We need to do more to give all young people access to such inspiration.
By now we are all familiar with the fact that the tech industry is largely dominated by men. However, women were among the first programmers in the early 20th century, and they contributed substantially to the industry. The tech industry's image is typically that of the “boy geniuses” like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Jack Ma of Alibaba, and Pony Ma of Tencent. All male. Despite the high job demand, computer sciences and engineering disciplines are not yet attracting enough women. And this is very bad for our field. Some studies show women tend to be more empathetic [1][2] or that they are more collaborative with other scientists [3] and more flexible socially. These capabilities are of extreme importance for our interdisciplinary research work in robotics. Robots are more and more entering our daily life. They are given human-like capabilities, and it is now time to talk about robot gender stereotypes. Scientists are starting to consider how gender biases materialize in physical robots. The danger is that robot makers, consciously or not, may reinforce gender stereotypes and inadvertently create even greater deterrents for young under-represented people interested in joining our field.
Marcie O’Malley (Rice University, USA) asked on Linkedin why the keynote speakers at Ubiquitous Robots 2020 are only male, and she specific suggestions on what we can do: “Ask conference organizers about the gender diversity of their invited speakers, suggest women you know, and make your participation contingent on inclusivity.” During her plenary talk at IROS2019, Katherine J. Kuchenbecker (Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, Germany) made a call for more diverse research teams. She then highlighted a Lean In talk “Creating a Level Playing Field” by Shelley Correll (Stanford University, USA) that lays out six strategies to reduce bias (Educate yourself and decision makers on bias, establish clear criteria in advance of making decisions, scrutinize the criteria being used, hold decision makers—and yourself—accountable, be transparent in progress toward goals, and vouch for the competence of all women). Maja Mataric (University of Southern California, USA) has put together a database of women in robotics (https://us-women-in-robotics-research.github.io). All of us who hold a leading position are shaping our future, our society, and our economy; we thus have the opportunity and the responsibility to show that women, men, and people with other gender identities should have equal ease of access to resources and opportunities. I hope that when my daughter grows up, the lines for the restrooms in conferences are equally long.
The March issue is also the time to present you the new associate editors. From the many candidates we selected Elena De Momi (Politecnico di Milano, Italy) and Yue “Sophie” Wang (Clemson University, USA) as new AEs. Congratulations on your new position! These additions to our team mean we have now a 50-50 gender balance in our board. I also want to express my gratitude and appreciation for the work of our outgoing associate editors Panagiotis Artemiadis (Arizona State University, USA) and Lorenzo Sabattini (University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy) for several years of effective service to the magazine. This special issue centers on wearable robotics, and I am highly grateful for the good work of its guest editors Domen Novak (University of Wyoming, USA), Carlos Rodriguez-Guerrero (Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium), and Jan Babic (Jozef Stefan Institute, Slovenia).
Enjoy the issue!
[1] Baron-Cohen, S., & Wheelwright, S. (2004). The empathy quotient: an investigation of adults with Asperger syndrome or high functioning autism, and normal sex differences. Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 34(2), 163-175.
[2] Rueckert, L., & Naybar, N. (2008). Gender differences in empathy: The role of the right hemisphere. Brain and cognition, 67(2), 162-167.
[3] AraĂşjo, E. B., AraĂşjo, N. A., Moreira, A. A., Herrmann, H. J., & Andrade Jr, J. S. (2017). Gender differences in scientific collaborations: Women are more egalitarian than men. PloS one, 12(5), e0176791.
AI for the common good
The VUB and the ULB want to jointly found a European artificial intelligence (AI) centre for the common good. The AI centre will focus on research, innovative applications, education and projects on the social impact of artificial intelligence in fields such as health and welfare, mobility, climate and sustainability, and media. The centre’s first component already exists: the AI Experience Center offers a high-tech testing, demonstration and meeting environment.
Through the AI Institute, the VUB and the ULB want to offer support and contribute to achieving the EU Digital Agenda. Both these Brussels-based universities will also call on their respective European university alliances, i.e., EUTOPIA and CIVIS, for this. The two universities have an eminent reputation in the world of AI thanks to their pioneering role in AI research, their strong, interdisciplinary tradition, their central location in Belgium and Europe and their close ties with global economic players.