Vivian Chu
Bornc. 1987 (age 36–37)
California
NationalityAmerican
Alma materUniversity of Pennsylvania
University of California, Berkeley
Georgia Tech
Known forCo-founder of Diligent Robotics, designing AI software for service robots
Awards2022 Fortune 40 under 40, 2021 and 2022 Fast Company Queer 50, 2019 MIT Technology Review 35 Innovators Under 35
Scientific career
FieldsRobotics
InstitutionsDiligent Robotics

Vivian Chu (born c. 1987) is an American roboticist and entrepreneur, specializing in the field of human-robot interaction. She is Chief Technology Officer at Diligent Robotics, a company she co-founded in 2017 for creating autonomous, mobile, socially intelligent robots.

Early life and education

Chu was born in San Jose, California.[1] Growing up, she lived with her parents, who were both software engineers, and her grandparents.[2]

She received her bachelor's degree in electrical engineering and computer science from the University of California, Berkeley in 2009.[3] During her time at Berkeley, she worked as a research assistant in the lab of Dennis K. Lieu, where she worked on integrated flywheels in triple hybrid drive trains. Upon graduation, she worked for IBM Almaden Research, an innovation lab for disruptive technology,[4] where her research centered on natural language processing and intelligent information integration.[3]

In 2011, Chu left IBM Almaden to pursue a master's degree at the University of Pennsylvania.[1] At Penn, she worked under the mentorship of Katherine Kuchenbecker in the Haptics Research Group as a part of the GRASP Lab.[5] She focused on haptic technology to enable robots to both interact with their environment and understand the abstract terms that humans would use to describe the feeling of that interaction.[6] For example, a human may say a carpet is fuzzy, but Chu's algorithms would enable a robot to sense the rug, perform a computation, and also associate that “feeling” with the adjective or descriptor of fuzzy.[6] Chu and her colleagues were able to train PR2 robots equipped with haptic sensors to touch objects and relate the information from the sensor with the human-provided adjective for the haptic quality of the object.[6] The robot was able to learn these associations and then later generalize its learning to objects it had not yet touched and provide an adjective descriptor similar to one a human might use.[6]  This work were reported in Chu's first author paper in 2013, which was awarded Best Paper in Cognitive Robotics at the IEEE International Conference on Robotics.[7]

After completing her Master's in 2013, Chu had a summer internship at Honda Research Institute and continued graduate training at Georgia Tech.[3] She worked towards a PhD in Robotics under the mentorship of Andrea L. Thomaz in the Socially Intelligent Machines Lab and under the mentorship of Sonia Chernova in the Robot Autonomy and Interactive Learning Lab.[8] Her work focused on building algorithms that enable robots to reason about action effects and interact with their environments in an adaptable way.[8] Chu was inspired by a talk in developmental psychology discussing how children learn to interact with their environments.[9] She figured that she could approach robot learning in this way as well, giving robots the basic building blocks of cognition so that they could play with objects in the environment and learn the appropriate ways to interact with them.[9] Chu based her design on applying human-guided robot self-exploration to learn affordances. She built algorithms that enabled robots with both self guided and supervised learning of the affordances of objects in the environment, and showed that the combination of both self and supervised learning allows for the best robot performance.[10] Chu and Thomaz filed a patent in 2017 for this technology, which is also when she completed her PhD.[3]

Career and research

In 2015, Chu spent a summer as an intern at Google[x] under the mentorship of Leila Takayama.[11] She then began working alongside Andrea Thomaz to create a company to build socially intelligent robots that can assist people with chores at work and home.[12] In 2017, they co-founded Diligent Robotics.[12] After graduating from her PhD in 2018, she became the full-time Chief Technology Officer at the firm.[13] She leads a diverse team of roboticists who build robots that feature autonomous mobile manipulation, social intelligence, and human-guided learning abilities, inspired by Chu's graduate discoveries.[13]

Diligent Robotics

Diligent Robotics' first clinical assistant was Poli,[14] a one-arm robot that was able to pre-fetch supply kits to allow nursing staff to spend more time with patients.[15] Poli was piloted at Seton Medical Center at the University of Texas in Austin.[14] The firm's second healthcare support robot, Moxi,[16] is a refurbished and updated version of Poli.[17][18] It possesses more human-like features including a face that can visually communicate social cues and a head and torso.[17]

In 2020, Diligent Robotics raised a $10 million Series A. In 2022, the company raised more than $30 million for their Series B, led by Tiger Global, for a total of nearly $50 million since founding.[19] It has won accolades including being named as Time's 100 Best Inventions (2019),[20] World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer (2021),[21] and Newsweek America's Greatest Disruptors (2021).[22]

Awards and honors

Depiction in media

  • 2020: The Future of Science is Female by Zara Stone[29]

Select publications

  • Bin Liu, Laura Chiticariu, Vivian Chu, H. V. Jagadish, and Frederick R. Reiss, "Refining Information Extraction Rules Using Data Provenance", IEEE Data Engineering Bulletin, 2010.[30]
  • Vivian Chu, Ian McMahon, Lorenzo Riano, Craig G. McDonald, Qin He, Jorge M. Perez-Tejada, Michael Arrigo, Naomi Fitter, John C. Nappo, Trevor Darrell, Katherine J. Kuchenbecker. "Using Robotic Exploratory Procedures to Learn the Meaning of Haptic Adjectives", IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2013.[30]
  • Vivian Chu, Kalesha Bullard, Andrea L. Thomaz, "Multimodal Real-time Contingency Detection for HRI", IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2014[30]
  • Vivian Chu, Ian McMahon, Lorenzo Riano, Craig G. McDonald, Qin He, Jorge M. Perez-Tejada, Michael Arrigo, Trevor Darrell, Katherine J. Kuchenbecker, "Robotic Learning of Haptic Adjectives Through Physical Interaction," Robotics and Autonomous Systems (RAS), 2015[30]
  • Vivian Chu, Tesca Fitzgerald, Andrea L. Thomaz, "Learning Object Affordances by Leveraging the Combination of Human-Guidance and Self-Exploration", IEEE/ACM International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), 2016.[30]
  • Vivian Chu, Baris Akgun, Andrea L. Thomaz, "Learning Haptic Affordances from Demonstration and Human-Guided Exploration", IEEE Haptics Symposium (HAPTICS), 2016.[30]
  • Vivian Chu, Andrea L. Thomaz. "Analyzing Differences between Teachers when Learning Object Affordances via Guided-Exploration," International Journal of Robotics Research (IJRR), 2017.[30]

References

  1. 1 2 "Grad Student Vivian Chu Named One of the "25 Women In Robotics You Need to Know About" in 2016 | College of Computing". www.cc.gatech.edu. Retrieved 2020-05-26.
  2. 1 2 "Vivian Chu". MIT Technology Review. Retrieved 2020-05-26.
  3. 1 2 3 4 "Vivian Chu – Rising Stars in EECS 2017". Retrieved 2020-05-26.
  4. ↑ "IBM Research - Almaden - Locations". www.research.ibm.com. Retrieved 2020-05-26.
  5. ↑ "Vivian Chu". Diligent Robotics. Retrieved 2020-05-26.
  6. 1 2 3 4 "Full Page Reload". IEEE Spectrum: Technology, Engineering, and Science News. 13 May 2013. Retrieved 2020-05-26.
  7. 1 2 "IEEE ICRA Best Paper Award in Cognitive Robotics (sponsored by KROS) - IEEE Robotics and Automation Society". www.ieee-ras.org. Retrieved 2020-05-26.
  8. 1 2 Buxton, Madeline. "The Top Women In Tech On The Women You Need To Know". www.refinery29.com. Retrieved 2020-05-26.
  9. 1 2 "Vivian Chu Working to Provide Robots Basic Building Blocks for Cognition | College of Computing". www.cc.gatech.edu. Retrieved 2020-05-26.
  10. ↑ Chu, Vivian; Fitzgerald, Tesca; Thomaz, Andrea L. (March 2016). "Learning object affordances by leveraging the combination of human-guidance and self-exploration". 2016 11th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI). pp. 221–228. doi:10.1109/HRI.2016.7451755. ISBN 978-1-4673-8370-7. S2CID 831517.
  11. ↑ "Diligent's Vivian Chu and Labrador's Mike Dooley will discuss assistive robotics at TC Sessions: Robotics+AI". TechCrunch. 20 January 2020. Retrieved 2020-05-26.
  12. 1 2 "When Nurses Are Busy, It's Moxi the Robot to the Rescue". PCMAG. Retrieved 2020-05-26.
  13. 1 2 "About". Diligent Robotics. Retrieved 2020-05-26.
  14. 1 2 "Full Page Reload". IEEE Spectrum: Technology, Engineering, and Science News. 30 January 2018. Retrieved 2020-05-26.
  15. ↑ Robotics, Diligent (2020-03-20). "Diligent Robotics Announces $10M Series A Funding". GlobeNewswire News Room (Press release). Retrieved 2020-05-26.
  16. ↑ Schwab, Katharine (2019-07-08). "A hospital introduced a robot to help nurses. They didn't expect it to be so popular". Fast Company. Retrieved 2020-05-26.
  17. 1 2 "Full Page Reload". IEEE Spectrum: Technology, Engineering, and Science News. 18 September 2018. Retrieved 2020-05-26.
  18. ↑ Kobie, Nicole. "The robots of the future are already among us". Wired UK. ISSN 1357-0978. Retrieved 2021-05-16.
  19. ↑ "Nurse-assisting robotics firm Diligent raises $30M". TechCrunch. 12 April 2022. Retrieved 2022-08-13.
  20. ↑ "Diligent Robotics Moxi: The 100 Best Inventions of 2019". Time. Retrieved 2022-08-13.
  21. ↑ "World Economic Forum | 404: Page cannot be found". widgets.weforum.org. Retrieved 2022-08-13.
  22. ↑ Newsweek Staff (2021-12-15). "America's greatest disruptors: medical marvels who are pushing the technological boundaries of healthcare". Newsweek. Retrieved 2022-08-13.
  23. ↑ "Meet the 2014 Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholars". Google Student Blog. Retrieved 2020-05-26.
  24. ↑ Chu, Vivian; Fitzgerald, Tesca; Thomaz, Andrea L. (March 2016). "Learning object affordances by leveraging the combination of human-guidance and self-exploration". 2016 11th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI). pp. 221–228. doi:10.1109/HRI.2016.7451755. ISBN 978-1-4673-8370-7. S2CID 831517.
  25. ↑ "Announcing Fast Company's second annual Queer 50 list". Fast Company. Retrieved 2021-06-03.
  26. ↑ "Vivian Chu is No. 49 on the 2022 Fast Company Queer 50 list". Fast Company. Retrieved 2022-06-19.
  27. ↑ "Vivian Chu | 2022 40 Under 40". Fortune. Retrieved 2022-11-14.
  28. ↑ "To prevent nurse burnout, a 35-year-old engineer built a helper robot now deployed at top hospitals". Fortune. Retrieved 2022-11-21.
  29. ↑ Stone, Zara (2020). The future of science is female : the brilliant minds shaping the 21st century. Coral Gables, FL. ISBN 978-1-64250-319-7. OCLC 1133126554.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  30. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 "Vivian Chu - Google Scholar Citations". scholar.google.com. Retrieved 2020-05-26.
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