Dynamic Robots Today and Tomorrow
Marc Raibert (The AI Institute)
Distinguished Lecture Series
Thursday, November 21, 2024, 3:30 pm
Abstract
Robots are getting better and better all the time. Their bodies and physical skills are advancing by leaps and bounds while their ability to perceive the world around them is improving almost daily. But robots are still pretty stupid and lack cognitive intelligence that would make them easier to use, increase their dexterity, safer to operate with people, and more productive. In this talk Raibert will show some of the recent progress in the development of robots at Boston Dynamics, then talk about using AI to make them smarter so they can eventually live up to our dreams.
Bio
Marc Raibert is the Executive Director of The AI Institute and founder of Boston Dynamics. He is a life-long roboticist, starting his robotics career over 50 years ago as a graduate student at MIT, where he wrote software that learned the dynamics of a robot manipulator. He spent 18 years as an academic researcher and tenured faculty at Carnegie Mellon University and MIT. He founded the Leg Laboratory, a lab that helped establish the scientific basis for highly dynamic robots and that set the stage for his team’s work on dynamic robots. He spent 30 years leading Boston Dynamics, which produced robots such as BigDog, Petman, and Atlas, and that now delivers Spot and Stretch robots to users around the world. In 2022 Raibert founded The AI Institute, a research institute focused on combining cognitive function with athletic function in robots, with the goal of creating future generations of intelligent and dexterous robots.
Raibert is a Founding Fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, was inducted into the US National Academy of Engineering in 2008, was named Pioneer in Robotics by IEEE in 2022, received the Engelberger Award in Technology in 2022, was in Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in AI in 2023, and is receiving the IEEE Robotics and Automation Award in 2025. Raibert is highly visible in the robotics and AI community, having given numerous keynote lectures and interviews, including TED, 60 Minutes, Turing Institute, ICRA, IROS, WebSummit, WRC, Wired 25, MARS, REMARS, and others. Two of Raibert’s robots were inducted into the Robot Hall of Fame in 2008 and 2012.
This lecture will NOT be streamed live or recorded.