Catie Cuan

I tend to describe it also through the lens of safety.

If you feel safer around these tools because you can anticipate and understand how they're going to move, then that's always an A+.

I do think it's possible that we see a world in which people like my dad, who's now in his mid-70s,

can live at home for longer with some assistance from technology that allows him to continue to be safe and independent.

A robot that's going to be inside of my dad's house might do a lot of simplistic things like remind him to drink a glass of water or to notify me if my dad has fallen or to remind him that the mail has arrived.

These are the kinds of tasks that a robot might do in an environment with my dad, and I want that robot to be safe, legible, clear, and empowering to him.

But even more than that, and this is where I like to nudge my fellow roboticists and my fellow engineers, I also like to think about it through the lens of fun.

I'm like, we get to choose the kind of world that we want to live in.

Is that future going to include robots that play beautiful music when they wander by us while they're wiping tables and sorting trash?

that makes you feel like your environment is fun and exciting?

Or are we going to choose robots that give you a sense of fear, confusion, and fatigue, right?

So it's very much for me, not only about the removing friction, making things safe, having more legible communication, but it's like,

We can also imbue character, artistry, creativity.

And that's, for me, taking a robot from simply being a utilitarian tool into an evocative social agent.