Robotics Medal and Rising Star winners reflect on their work, advancing women in robotics

Late last year, Dr. Maja Matarić and Dr. Tania Morimoto were named MassRobotics’ Robotics Medal and Rising Star winners. Now, during Women’s History Month, The Robot Report spoke with both women about their current work and how to advance women in robotics.

In her almost 30 years working on robotics in academia, Matarić has pioneered the field of socially assistive robotics (SARs) and conducted foundational work in multi-robot coordination and human-robot interaction. She earned the Robotics Medal for her work with SARs and for making advancements to the field of distributed robots and learning in human-robot systems.

Matarić is currently the Chaired and Distinguished Professor of Computer Science in the Viterbi School of Engineering at the University of Southern California (USC).

Moritomo is an associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the University of California, San Diego. She earned MassRobotics‘ Rising Star in Robotics Medal for her contributions to novel soft and flexible medical robots and human-machine interfaces designed to improve access to high-quality care.

What is Matarić working on now?

Both Matarić and Moritomo lead robotics labs at their respective universities. Matarić said research at USC’s Interaction Lab is typically driven by her students’ intereests. “People bring their own lived experiences and drivers and passions to the lab, and that’s always been what’s driven my lab,” she told The Robot Report.

“We’re actually very honored and challenged that we have an NIH grant to do a randomized clinical trial,” noted Matarić. “This is a real clinical trial with USC students, basically on how we might use a socially assistive robot that we developed.”

Her lab has developed a social robot that can act as a companion for students and guide them through cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) exercises at home. The robot doesn’t act as a therapist, Matarić said. Instead, it supports students in practicing the skills of CBT.

“We’re talking about things like, if you are on the autism spectrum and have a very atypical eye gaze pattern, and you know that you need to practice more socially acceptable patterns, or turn-taking patterns, or social referencing, [the robot] creates that social, motivating, engaging environment for you to practice,” Matarić explained. 

Right now, the lab is working to deploy robots in dorms, at scale, to see how students react or benefit from them.

“It feels to me like we have something between a village and an army of people who really care about this, and it takes that and possibly more to pull it off,” Matarić said. “No matter what insights we get in terms of AI and robotics and socially assistive robotics, I really, really hope that we actually help some students as well.”

Moritomo’s lab has three main focuses

The Moritomo Lab at UC San Diego has three main research focuses at the moment, she said. The first area is soft, flexible, snake-like robotic systems, also called continuum robots.

“[The robots] are long and flexible, so their aspect ratio is inspired by biology, like snakes, elephant trunks, or octopus tentacles,” Moritomo said. “These can be quite useful for things like minimally invasive surgery, where you may want to have something that is softer, more compliant, and has minimal interaction forces with the body. You can travel these long lengths to access places that are deep inside the body, that are currently hard to reach.”

The second area is haptic interfaces, which can be directly applied to the continuum robots. This can include haptic interfaces for the robots it develops, and softer, wearable haptic interfaces, which tie into the lab’s third research focus: soft, wearable robots that could be used for rehabilitation.

“For example, after a neurological injury, like a stroke, there’s a lot of physical therapy that people typically have to do,” Moritomo said. “We’ve been interested in making soft robots that could be worn more like clothing that people could potentially, eventually, take home and use outside of the clinic.”

Moritomo has been at UCSD since 2017, and in that time, she has worked with numerous Ph.D. students, post-doc students, and graduate students.

“We think of our research as being a really important output from the lab, but, for me, the students are just as important in terms of the product and the output that our lab produces,” Moritomo said. “These students are going to really be the next generation of engineers and roboticists who I think are going to lead technological development in the coming decades.” 

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How do we get more women in robotics?

Women have been historically underrepresented in STEM fields. Today, women make up only 16% of engineers. This is despite the fact that women make up over 40% of the global workforce. Matarić said in her time running her lab, her students have continued to surprise and push her to reconsider how she thinks.

“There was a time, maybe 12 years ago, when I had one woman student, Elaine Short, who’s now a professor at Tufts. When she came in, she said, ‘This has to change.’ And within her five years, she’s changed it,” Matarić said. “We’ve had students who come from very unrepresented socioeconomic backgrounds, and their view of the world is different. I’ve had to recalibrate.” 

Moritomo has seen a similar drive in her students. Her group does outreach with high school and even middle school students to bring them into robotics early.

“It’s really led and run by these amazing female Ph.D. students in the department, and I’m just the faculty mentor who helps with logistics and things like that,” she said. “These types of groups where they’re active in community building and helping the next generation, I think that’s important.”

Moritomo added that girls should have women to look up to in the industry.

“I had an amazing Ph.D. advisor, Allison Okamura, and I think it’s people like her, people like Marcia O’Malley, like Maja Matarić, it’s these people who are really paving the way. They’re doing it, they’re leading by example, and they’re doing amazing research,” she said. “They’re helping mentor everyone in the next generation, and I think that’s what really makes a big difference.”

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