Imagining Intelligent Machines

ACM Fellow Daniela Rus has been dreaming of robots since she was a child, imagining mechanical shoes to help her jump higher. As director of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Rus has done pioneering work in modular robots, soft robotics, novel neural networks, and more. Her talk on the future of robotics and AI was featured at a recent TED conference, and this year she released a pair of books for the general public, including The Mind's Mirror: Risk and Reward in the Age of AI. Throughout her career, Rus has maintained a dual focus on improving both the bodies and the brains of intelligent machines. This traces back to her Ph.D. thesis, when she discovered the algorithms she'd developed for dexterous manipulation were too advanced for the robotic hands of the day.