Dynamical Systems: Assistive Robots and Autonomous Cars - eScholarship
Isabel Craig · Berkeley Scientific Journal · 2017
DYNAMICAL SYSTEMS: ASSISTIVE ROBOTS AND AUTONOMOUS CARS Interview with Professor Anca Dragan BY ISABEL CRAIG, NIKHIL CHARI, YANA PETRI, ELENA SLOBODYANYUK Dr. Anca Dragan is an Assistant Profes- sor in the Department of Electrical En- gineering and Computer Science at the University of California, Berkeley. Her lab focuses on developing human-robot interaction algorithms, which not only account for robot function, but also for robot interaction and collaboration with end-users. In this interview, we discuss human-robot collaboration in context of autonomous cars and other dynamical systems. Professor Anca Dragan [Source: https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu BSJ Electrical Engineering and Computer Sci- : How did you get involved in the field of ence? In middle school, I started really liking AD math and thought about its applications. I loved proving things, but also wanted to see the tangible effects of math on the world. Computer Science combined all of these things for me. Initial- ly, I thought I would do Programming or Software Engineering, but then in high school I came across a book on Artificial Intelligence by Stuart Russell. It was very interesting because you could follow Berkeley Scientific Journal | SPRING 2017 certain solvable problems and immediately see follow-ups. The notion of creating new algorithms that solve new problems instead of implementing existing algorithms seemed very exciting. I thought I should do research in that field, andI loved the idea of agents that make intelligent decisions on their own, and that’s how I got into AI. And then, at the time, I didn’t even imagine you could work on AI in industry: it’s about problems we have not yet figured out the answer to – that’s research! So, here I am. How did you get involved specifically in BSJ Robotics?