Women Writing About Robots
The Women in Robotics ’50 women in robotics you need to know about’ list always features someone who is creative with robots, an artist, author or creator and this year not only do we have an award winning poet and author, but half a dozen other women who expand our knowledge of robots and robotics through the power of the word.
Dr Jane Yolen is the author of ‘The Last Robot’ the titular poem from her 2021 chapbook (short book) of science fiction poetry, which won the Elgin Award in 2023. Some of the poetry speaks to the impact of light polluted skies on our dreams of other worlds, or Titan’s lakes or an Ode to Cassini or the Curiosity Rover. The Robot Suite ends with The Last Robot, a haunting zeitgeist.
“Some creatures are a mystery,
some a misery, but robots
were the perfect immigrants,
ready to work for nothing
but a bit of borrowed energy,”
An excerpt from The Last Robot by Jane Yolen
Yolen has published more than 400 books (The Last Robot is her 399th), winning two Nebula Awards, a Caldecott Medal, two Christopher Medals, three World Fantasy Awards, three Mythopoeic Fantasy Awards, two Golden Kite Awards, the World Fantasy Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award, the Science Fiction Writers of America’s Grand Master Award, the Sydney Taylor Body of Work Award, and the Science Fiction Poetry Associations Grand Master Award, and plenty more.
Then there is Living With Robots: What every anxious human needs to know by Ruth Aylett and Patricia A. Vargas from MIT Press, “two experts looking beyond the hype, offering a lively and accessible guide to what robots can (and can’t) do”. Ruth Aylett and Patricia A. Vargas are both professors of robotics and computer science at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh.
Dr Ruth Aylett is a senior Professor of Computer Science at Heriot-Watt University and part of the Edinburgh Center for Robotics. A robotics researcher for thirty years, she is also the author of Robots: Bringing Intelligent Machines to Life. She has researched robotics since 1990 and played a leading role in a number of large international research projects such as the EU-funded LIREC project (2007-12) on robot companions and EMOTE (2012-16) on developing an empathic robot tutor. Aylett is currently leading a UK funded project examining how to use a robot to train high-functioning adults with autism to improve their social interaction.
Dr Patricia A. Vargas is Founder–Director of the Robotics Laboratory at Heriot-Watt University, where she is Associate Professor/Reader in Computer Science and Robotics. She is coeditor of The Horizons of Evolutionary Robotics (MIT Press) and an executive associate of the Edinburgh Centre for Robotics. Vargas received her PhD. on Computer Engineering from the University of Campinas, Unicamp (Brazil) in 2005. She was a post-doc at the Centre for Computational Neuroscience and Robotics, University of Sussex (England, UK) for 3 years. Her research interests include but are not restricted to Evolutionary and Bio-inspired Robotics, Swarm Robotics, Computational Neuroscience, Machine Learning, Human–Robot Interaction, Rehabilitation Robotics and Neurorobotics.
Aleena Johny is the CEO and Co-Founder of Runtime Robotics in Kerala, India. Runtime Robotics is a ROS solution provider with expertize in ROS1, ROS2, Navigation, Manipulation, Perception and ROS 1 & 2 Training. Johny earned a B. Tech and M. Tech in Computer Science at Rajagiri School of Engineering and Technology before becoming an Assistant Professor at KMM College, then transitioned to working as a Robotics Software Engineer at Qbotics Labs creating robotics applications using ROS, OpenCV, PCL.
Johny is the co-author of Robot Operating System (ROS) for Absolute Beginners (2022) with Joseph Lentin, a guide to creating robot projects with ROS, Python, Linux and C++.
Vanessa Loiola is the Founder of Valoy Automation in Ireland and the Number One robotics content creator on Linked In. She has more than 72,000 Linked In followers and 13 million impressions. Her foundation in Automation Engineering and passion for optimizing processes has led her to providing expert programming solutions for a wide range of robotics applications, from industrial robots to collaborative robots (cobots) and everything in between.
Tabitha Goldstaub is a British tech entrepreneur who specialises in communicating the impact of artificial intelligence. She is the creator of How to Talk to Robots: A Girls’ Guide to a Future Dominated by AI (2020), a book that “broke down the tech-bro barriers to offer a straightforward introduction to Artificial Intelligence and make clear the enormous benefits of understanding it”.
Goldstaub took her first company, Rightster (now Bright Bison), public in 2011, and has proceeded to create and advise companies at the nexus of AI and communications, alongside public benefit organizations. She was co-founder of CognitionX, a market intelligence platform for AI and the former chair of the AI Council for the UK government’s Office for AI. She has been an Advisor to the Alan Turing Institute, the Raspberry Pi Foundation and Executive Director of Innovate Cambridge, an initiative supporting the ecosystem to write an inclusive and sustainable innovation strategy for The Greater Cambridge Region.
Did we miss someone you think we should feature? Artists and creatives previously featured in the Women in Robotics “50 women in robotics you need to know about” lists include:
- Dancer/Professor Amy LaViers (2023)
- Technology Journalist Karen Hao (2022)
- Robot Choreographer Catie Cuan (2021)
- Science Fiction Author Linda Nagata (2020)
- Designer Madeline Gannon (2019)
- Interdisciplinary Artist Sougwen Chung (2018)
- Youtuber Simone Giertz (2017)
- Battlebot Champion Lisa Winter (2016)
- Technology Journalist Noriko Takiguchi (2015)
- Interdisciplinary Artist Mari Velonaki (2014)
- Marilyn Monrobot Heather Knight (2013)
