Experts Warn of Technology Drain; seek federal intervention
Washington, May 21, 2009 Robotics have the potential within the next decade to become as prevalent as computers in daily American life, but the country lags behind others worldwide in recognizing the importance of this technology.
In a report released today, titled National Robotics Technology Roadmap, (link forthcoming) a group of 140 experts from industry, federal laboratories, and leading academic institutions assert the United States lags behind other countries in its ability to compete economically unless more investment is made in this technology.
To address this issue, the Roadmap urges Congress to increase spending in the FY 2010 budget and calls on the Obama administration to establish a high profile position at the White House to coordinate and integrate robotics policy throughout government.
Unfortunately, the United States lags behind other countries in recognizing the importance of robotics technology. While the European Union, Japan, Korea and the rest of the world have made significant R&D investments in robotics technology, the U.S. investment, outside unmanned systems for defense purposes, remains practically non-existent. Unless this situation can be addressed in the near future, the United States runs the risk of relinquishing its ability to globally compete in these emerging markets putting the nation at risk of having to rely on the rest of the world to provide a critical technology that our population will become increasingly dependent upon.
Robotics technology holds the potential to transform the future of the country. The next generation robotech industry will affect the lives of every American and have an enormous economic, social and political impact on our future. Human-robot interaction is central to many of the most exciting application of robots, including the use of medical robots, assistive robotics, prosthetics, rehabilitation, transportation, human augmentation, entertainment and education. Other applications on the horizon include factory and military robots, domestic service robots, a team of search and rescue robots and exoskeleton man-amplifiers the report explained.
The National Robotics Technology Roadmap was the result of an unprecedented level of cooperation among members of the business community and academia. This effort was led by the Computing Community Consortium and sponsored by the Computing Research Association via a grant from the National Science Foundation.
The Computing Research Association is an association of more than 200 North American academic departments of computer science, computer engineering, and related fields; laboratories and centers in industry, government, and academia engaging in basic computing research; and affiliated professional societies. For more information, visit www.cra.org.
The Computing Community Consortium is an activity of CRA that supports the computing research community in creating compelling research visions and the mechanisms to realize these visions. For more, visit www.cra.org/ccc
Two events this week on Capitol Hill that CRA will be involved in. First, there will be a Congressional STEM Education Caucus and Congressional Black Caucus briefing on CS education called Bringing Innovative Computing Curriculum across the Digital Divide that CRA is co-sponsoring with ACM, CSTA, NCWIT, SWE, IEEE-USA, and Microsoft. The briefing will cover the current state of CS education at the K-12 level and discuss new curriculum and teacher preparation developed by NSF and Microsoft. The briefing will take place on Wednesday, May 20 at noon in B339 Rayburn.
The second event will unveil the first CCC funded initiative in robotics this Thursday, May 21. The Congressional Robotics Caucus is hosting this briefing to showcase the Robotics Roadmap and the potential for growth and roadblocks for the use of robotics in various industries. Speakers at the briefing will include Henrik Christensen who led the CCC robotics effort, Rodney Brooks of Heartland Robotics, Dan Jones of Intuitive Surgical, Eric Close of RedZone Robotics, and Jared Cohen of Carnegie Mellon University. The briefing will take place beginning at 11:45 at the Capitol Visitor Center HVC 201 A-B. Lunch will be served and it will be a widely attended event. RSVP to Patti Rote at pattir at techcollaborative.org.
The House of Representatives passed H.R. 2020, the Networking and Information Technology Research and Development Act of 2009, a bill that we have mentioned here previously. In support of the NITRD Act, CRA wrote a letter to Congressmen Bart Gordon (D-TN) and Ralph Hall (R-TX), the chair and ranking member of the House Committee on Science and Technology:
May 11, 2009
The Honorable Bart Gordon
Chairman
House Committee on Science and Technology
2318 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
The Honorable Ralph Hall
Ranking Member
House Committee on Science and Technology
394 Ford House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
Chairman Gordon and Ranking Member Hall:
As an organization representing 240 industry and academic institutions involved in computing research and six affiliated professional societies, the Computing Research Association is pleased to support your efforts to bolster federal information technology research through H.R. 2020, the Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) Act of 2009.
As you are aware, advances in information technology are transforming all aspects of our lives. Virtually every human endeavor today has been touched by information technology, including commerce, education, employment, health care, energy, manufacturing, governance, national security, communications the environment, entertainment, science and engineering. The profound reach of information technologies is enabled in large part by the innovations that spawn from the IT research ecosystem — an incredibly productive, yet complex interplay of industry, universities and the federal government. Indeed, nearly every sub-sector of the IT economy today bears the stamp of federal support. The program responsible for overseeing this crucial federal investment is the Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) program.
We believe the NITRD Act makes the NITRD program stronger by enacting several of the recommendations of the Presidents Council of Advisors for Science and Technology (PCAST) review of the NITRD program in 2007. In particular, we are pleased the NITRD Act includes a requirement that the NITRD program undergo periodic review and assessment of the program contents and funding, as well as develop and periodically update a strategic plan — both key recommendations of PCAST and necessary in helping ensure the significant federal investment in IT R&D is used as effectively as possible.
Key to this review and assessment will be an independent advisory committee composed of experts from academia, industry and government. We hope that this advisory committee, though co-chaired by PCAST members, will be independent and that you will work to ensure that the Administration names a strong panel reporting to the Office of Science and Technology Policy and the Presidents Science Advisor with high-level, expert guidance on the structure and priorities of the program.
We thank you for your work on the legislation and for your long-standing support of the federal investment in IT research. We look forward to working with you and your colleagues as you endeavor to move this legislation forward this session.
Sincerely,
Daniel A. Reed
Chair
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