There are an increasing number of women in the robotics industry, there is nothing like equal representation

The women in the robotics industry are at the forefront of the latest technology, making contributions in AI, robotics, machine learning, and more. They have dedicated their careers to furthering the industry with their extensive research, innovations, testing, and applications.

 Most of these women featured have earned numerous awards, are entrepreneurs, CEOs, or engineers in their respective fields, hold PhDs, are professors, have gathered millions in funding, or have started non-profits.

Fei-Fei Ling:

She is the woman in the robotics industry as Chief Scientist of Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning at Google Cloud, Fei-Fei Li has a mission to democratize AI. She believes that “we all have a responsibility to make sure everyone–including companies, governments, and researchers–develop AI with diversity in mind.”

Li is the leading expert in AI machine learning, having published over 150 scientific papers on the topic. She also built ImageNet–a 15 million image dataset that focuses on the latest developments in visual object recognition software research. She created AI4ALL, a group that supports AI education programs for underrepresented groups attending grade school through high school.

Cynthia Breazeal:

As the founder & Chief Scientist at Jibo (a personal robotics company with over $85 million in funding), Cynthia Breazeal’s focus is on intelligent personal robots that interact with people to help them succeed in their personal goals and add to their quality of life.

She sees social robots helping families with things that matter, like education, health, eldercare, entertainment, and companionship.

Considered the “world’s first family robot,” Jibo helps busy families coordinate and connect easier. Jibo is powered by voice recognition as a woman in the robotics industry technology so that it can remember which family members are speaking so it can better assist in their daily needs. The robot also has educational programs that teach kids how to code.

Helen Greiner:

Co-founder of iRobot, the company that created the vacuum robot Roomba. Currently, Greiner is the founder and CTO of CyPhy Works, which makes advanced drones for retail, commercial and military use. CyPhy also works with the UPS Foundation and the American Red Cross to test the use of drones in disaster relief efforts.

Ayah Bdeir:

Her company LittleBits Electronics teaches us how to build our robots. She has raised $60 million for her award-winning kits of pre-assembled electronics components that are incredibly fun and easy to make.

The robot kits are color-coded and snap together with tiny magnets. The kits are used by everyone from teachers to companies prototyping new products.

Tessa Lau:

Former CTO and Chief Robot Whisperer are the women in the robotics industry at the company Savioke — best known for making the first autonomous delivery robot for homes and the service industry – Tessa Lau led the early software team to develop the first-generation Relay system. This included designing many of Relay’s behavior such as the delivery flow and elevator interactions.

She also ran a field operations group from the ground up, to scale robot installation, service, and support. She often found herself managing the operations of more than 75 robots in the field including at hotels. Lau’s expertise is in interfaces that combine artificial intelligence and human-computer interaction.

Jade Le Maitre:

Jade Le Maitre, 30, is CTO and co-founder of Hease Robotics, a startup that develops autonomous customer service robots for shops, airports, museums, and offices. The entrepreneur has raised millions since starting the business in 2016, and her droids have been deployed by the likes of Total oil and gas, construction group Vinci, supermarket chain Leclerc and France’s state-own rail service SNCF. Le Maitre says her mission is to put robots in public where they can solve everyday problems and inspire everyday people.

Audrey Roberts:

Sophomore studying Mechanical Engineering at the University of Southern California. At USC, Audrey does robotics research in Professor Maja Matarić’s Interaction Lab. Currently, she is excited to be working under Ph.D. student Lauren Klein, exploring the ability of socially assistive women in the robotics industry to increase exploratory motor movement. This research is aimed in particular at infants at risk for developmental delay.

Nicole Mirnig:

Researcher in social robots and human-robot interaction. She finished her Ph.D. on essentials of robot feedback and her research focus lies in human-robot cooperation, taking into account different factors that foster a positive user experience. Her latest work is dedicated to systematically researching erroneous robot behavior. She aims at making robots understand that they made a mistake and react accordingly.

Dr. Laurel Riek:

Dr. Riek directs the Healthcare Robotics Lab at the University of California and leads research in human-robot teaming, computer vision, and healthcare engineering, with a focus on autonomous robots that work proximately with people. Riek’s current research interests include long-term learning, robot perception, and personalization, with applications in critical care, neurorehabilitation, and manufacturing.

Melonee Wise:

CEO of Fetch Robotics, which is delivering on-demand automation solutions for the logistics industry. She was the second employee at Willow Garage, a research and development laboratory extremely influential in the advancement of robotics. She led a team of engineers developing next-generation robot hardware and software, including ROS, the PR2, and TurtleBot.