She is revolutionizing the field of robotics, AI and autonomy: Daniela Rus, internationally renowned computer scientist and Director of the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), will give this year’s Gödel lecture on the latest developments in robotics and AI and their crucial impact on our society.

This year’s Vienna Gödel Lecture marks the highlight of our 20th Anniversary Celebration at TU Wien Informatics. Before the Vienna Gödel Lecture, we will celebrate the Faculty’s milestones with a talk by the renowned Austrian Computer Scientist Georg Gottlob and will look ahead at what’s to come next.

Program

16:30–16:45 Opening and Moderation

• Jens Schneider, Rector of TU Wien
• Gerti Kappel, Dean of TU Wien Informatics
• Stefan Szeider, Full Professor and Head of the Reaserach Unit Algorithms and Complexity, Co-Chair of the Vienna Center for Logic and Algorithms (VCLA)

16:45–18:00 Vienna Gödel Lecture

• Daniela Rus, Director of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) at MIT

18:00–19:30 Networking and Celebration

• Join us for drinks, refreshments, and celebration after the lecture.

Hybrid Event

Not in Vienna? No problem, we’ll live-stream the event via Zoom.

• Meeting ID: 687 8696 1528
• Passcode: Vj0er6kE

Talk

Physical AI: Promises and Challenges

The digitization of practically everything coupled with advances in AI and machine learning, the automation of knowledge work, and advanced robotics promises a future with democratized use of machines and wide-spread use of AI, robots and customization. While the last 60 years have defined the field of industrial robots, and empowered hard bodied robots to execute complex assembly tasks in constrained industrial settings, the next 60 years could be ushering in our time with intelligent machines that can help people with physical and cognitive work. These machines will come in a diversity of forms and materials. However, the pervasive use of machines remains a hard problem. How can we accelerate the creation of machine bodies and brains customized to specific tasks? Where are the gaps that we need to address in order to advance the bodies and brains of machines? How can we develop scalable, trustworthy, and deployable reasoning AI engines? In this talk I will discuss recent developments in machine learning and robotics, focusing on how machines think, how they are designed, and how they learn.

About Daniela Rus

“I imagine a future where robots are so integrated in the fabric of human life that they become as common as smartphones are today.”

Daniela Rus’s groundbreaking research is bridging the current capabilities of robots and their potential to become ubiquitous helpers. By enhancing machines’ reasoning, learning, and adaptability in human-centric environments, she is pushing the boundaries of what robots can achieve. She creates user-friendly interfaces that foster a natural and intuitive interaction between humans and robots. Furthermore, Rus is at the forefront of developing innovative tools for the rapid and efficient design and production of next-generation robots. The impact of her research is immense, spanning multiple sectors such as transportation, manufacturing, agriculture, construction, environmental monitoring, underwater exploration, smart cities, healthcare, and even domestic chores like cooking.

Daniela Rus is the Andrew (1956) and Erna Viterbi Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science; Director of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL); and Deputy Dean of Research for Schwarzman College of Computing at MIT. Rus serves as Director of the Toyota-CSAIL Joint Research Center, whose focus is advancing AI research and its applications to intelligent vehicles. She is an MITRE senior visiting fellow, serves as a USA expert member for GPAI (Global Partnerships in AI), a member of the board of advisers for Scientific American, a member of the Defense Innovation Board, and several other boards of technical companies.

Rus is a Class of 2002 MacArthur Fellow, a fellow of ACM, AAAI, and IEEE, and a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She received the 2017 Engelberger Robotics Award from the Robotics Industries Association. She earned her PhD in Computer Science from Cornell University.

About Vienna Gödel Lectures

Named after the famous Austrian-American logician, mathematician, and philosopher Kurt Gödel (1906-1978) and introduced in 2013, the annual Vienna Gödel Lectures bring world-class scientists to Vienna. The lecture series illustrates computer science’s fundamental and disruptive contribution to our information society, and it investigates how our discipline explains and shapes the world we live in—and thereby, our lives as such.

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