White House Google+ Hangout to highlight robots this Friday

According to a post on its official blog, the next entry in the White House “We the Geeks” series of Google+ Hangouts will be all about robots.

Phil Larson, the space and aeronautics policy adviser who posted the blog entry, said that as the Curiosity rover celebrates one year on Mars, the White House wanted to provide an update on the state of American robotics. The event will take place Friday at 2 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time on the White House Google+ page.

It will be moderated by two members of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy: Vijay Kumar, assistant director for robotics and cyberphysical systems, and Tom Kalil, deputy director for technology and innovation. Their panel of experts is scheduled to include:

• Rodney Brooks, president of Rethink Robotics
• Daniela Rus, director of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT
• Matthew Mason, director of the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University
• Robin Murphy, director of the Center for Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue at Texas A&M University
• Allison Okamura, principal investigator at the Collaborative Haptics and Robotics in Medicine Lab at Stanford University

During the event, viewers can share questions via Twitter and Google+ using the hashtag #WeTheGeeks.

“We the Geeks” is a series of Google+ Hangouts designed to highlight the future of science, technology and innovation in the United States. Recent topics have included innovation for global good, building a 21st century resume and asteroids. The most recent Hangout was a Comic-Con-themed edition called “The Stuff Superheroes Are Made Of,” which featured discussions of real but fantastical-sounding innovations including an invisibility cloak, self-healing synthetic skin and liquid armor. If you missed that one, past events are archived at whitehouse.gov/we-the-geeks.

[ photo courtesy of the National Park Service ]