Daniela Rus Is Shaping the Future of Robotics

Her dual mission, she says, is to humanize technology and make the most of the opportunities afforded by life in the modern world. United States. These two goals fueled her journey from a childhood spent under the Romanian dictatorship to the forefront of global robotics research.

Rus, director WITH's Laboratory of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence (CSAIL), is this year's award winner IEEE Edison Medalwhich recognizes her for her “sustained leadership and pioneering contributions to modern robotics.”

As an IEEE Fellow, she describes this recognition as a responsibility to continue her work and mentor the next generation of roboticists entering the field.

The Edison Medal is the latest in a string of awards she has received. In 2017 she won Engelberger Prize in Robotics from Robotics Industry Association. The following year she was awarded Robotics and Automation Pioneer Award By IEEE Robotics and Automation Society. The society recognized her again in 2023 with its IEEE Robotics and Automation Engineering Award.

From Romania to Iowa

Rus was born in Cluj-Napoca, Romaniaduring the reign of a dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. Her early life was spent in a world with rationed food shortages, power outages, and limited ability to move around or leave the house. But amidst the stifling disadvantages, she recalls, she was surrounded by an insatiable warmth and intellectual curiosity—even when she was making locomotive propellers at a government plant as part of her school curriculum.

“Life was hard,” she says, “but we had great teachers and strong communities. As a child, you adapt to everything around you.”

Her father Theodorewas a computer scientist and professor, and her mother, Elena, was a physicist.

In 1982, when she was 19, Father Rus emigrated to the United States to join the faculty at University of Iowain Iowa City. It was an act of courage and conviction. A year later, Daniela and her mother joined him.

“He wanted the freedom to think, to publish, to explore ideas,” Rus says. “And I reaped the benefits of freedom from the restrictions of our homeland.”

America's open horizons were intoxicating, she said.

The lecture that changed everything

According to her, Rus decided to continue her studies at her father’s university, after which her life changed. One afternoon John Hopcroft-A Turing Award-victory Cornell computer scientist known for his work on algorithms and data structures – gave a talk on campus. His message was simple but exciting, says Rus: “Classical computer science has been solved.” The next frontier, Hopcroft said, is computing that interacts with the messy physical world.

For Rus, this idea was a revelation.

“It was like a door had opened,” she says. “I realized that the future of computing is not just about logic and code; it has to do with how machines can perceive, navigate, and assist us in the real world.”

After the lecture, she introduced herself to Hopcroft and said that she wanted to learn from him. Shortly after receiving a bachelor's degree in computer science and mathematics in 1985, she applied for a master's degree at Cornell, where Hopcroft became her thesis advisor. Rus developed algorithms there for deft robotic manipulation— training machines to accurately capture and move objects. She received a master's degree in computer science in 1990, then stayed at Cornell to earn her Ph.D.

“I like to think of robotics as a way to give people superpowers. Machines can help us achieve more, think faster and live fuller lives.”

In 1993, she received her Ph.D. in Computer Science, then took a position as Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Dartmouth Collegein Hanover, New Hampshire. She founded the college's robotics lab and expanded into distributed robotics. It developed teams of small robots that collaborated on tasks such as ensuring that products were correctly picked from warehouses to fulfill orders, packaged safely, and delivered efficiently to their respective destinations.

Despite the lack of traditional machine shops for manufacturing on the Hanover campus, Rus found a way. She was a pioneer in the use 3D printing for rapid prototyping and robot creation.

She left Dartmouth in 2003 to become a professor electrical engineering and computer science department in WITH.

The robotics lab she created at Dartmouth moved with her to WITH and became known as Distributed Robotics Laboratory (DRL). In 2012, she was appointed director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Laboratory of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligencethe school's largest interdisciplinary laboratory, home to 60 research groups, including DRL. She also continues to serve as DRL's chief investigator.

The Science of Physical Intelligence

Rus now leads pioneering research at the intersection of artificial intelligence and robotics, an area she calls physical intelligence. It is “a new form of intelligent machine that can understand dynamic environments, cope with unpredictability, and make decisions in real time.” she says.

Her lab is building soft-bodied robots inspired by nature which can sense, adapt and learn. These are AI-driven systems that passively handle tasks such as self-balancing and complex articulation similar to that performed by the human hand, as their shape and materials minimize the need for heavy handling.

According to her, such machines will one day be able to navigate in different environments, perform useful functions without external control, and even recover from route planning violations. Researchers are also studying ways to make them more energy efficient.

One prototype developed by Rus' team is designed to remove foreign objects from the body, including batteries swallowed by the children. The absorbable robots are artfully built, like origamitherefore they are small enough to be swallowed. Built-in magnetic materials allow doctors to control soft robots and control their shape. Once in the stomach, the soft bot can be programmed to wrap the foreign object and safely remove it from the patient's body.

CSAIL researchers are also working on small robots that can carry a drug and release it in a specific area of ​​the digestive tract, bypassing stomach acid, which is known to reduce the effectiveness of some drugs. Ingestible robots can also heal internal injuries or ulcers. And because they are made from easily digestible materials, such as sausage casings, and biocompatible materials. polymers“Robots can perform their assigned tasks and then be safely absorbed into the body,” she says.

Healthcare is not the only promising application of such technologies based on artificial intelligence. Robots with physical intelligence could help someday firefighters find people trapped in burning buildings, locate miners after a collapse, and provide valuable situational information to emergency response commands after natural disasters– says Rus.

“What excites me is the opportunity to empower people,” she says. “Machines that can safely think and move in the physical world will allow us to expand human capabilities—at work, at home, in medicine… everywhere.”

To bring this vision to life, she expanded her technical interests to include several complementary areas of research.

She's working on self-reconfiguration And modular robots such as MIT M-blocks and NASA Superbotswhich can attach, detach, and rearrange themselves to form shapes suitable for a variety of activities, such as gliding, climbing, and crawling.

WITH network robots– including those Amazon uses in its warehouses – thousands of machines can work as a large adaptive system. Machines constantly communicate to separate tasks, avoid conflicts, and optimize packet routing.

The Rus team is also achieving success in human-robot interactionsuch as reading brain wave activity and sign language translation via smart glove.

To realize her plan to put all the computerized intelligence needed by robots in their physical bodies rather than in the cloud, she helped found Liquid AI in 2023. The company, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, develops fluid neural networksinspired by simple brain wormswho can constantly learn and adapt. Word liquid in this case we are talking about the adaptability, flexibility and dynamism of the team model architecture. It can change shape and adapt to new inputs, and it also conforms to the limitations imposed by the hardware that contains it, she said.

IEEE Community Search

Rus joined IEEE at a robotics conference while she was a graduate student.

“I think I signed up just to get the student discount,” she laughs. “But IEEE happened to be where my community lived.”

She credits the organization's conferences, journals, and collaborative spirit with facilitating her professional growth.

“Exchanging ideas, being able to test your thinking against others is invaluable,” she says. “This is how our field moves forward.”

Rus continues to serve on IEEE commissions and committees, training the next generation of roboticists.

“IEEE gave me a platform,” Rus says. “He taught me how to communicate, how to lead, and how to dream big.”

Living the American Dream

Looking back, Rus sees his history as evidence of unforeseen possibilities.

“When I was growing up in Romania, I couldn’t even imagine living in America,” she says. “Now I'm here, working with brilliant students, creating robots that help people, and trying to make a difference. I feel like I'm living the American dream.”

In honor of the memorable song from the Broadway musical. HamiltonRus' echoes Alexander HamiltonDetermination to make the most of your opportunities, saying: “I never want to miss my chance.”