Philadelphia, November 18, 2024 — For their astounding vision, both theoretical and practical, that has revolutionized the science of robotics while dramatically improving the quality of human life in the process, three world leaders in robotics research will share the coveted 2024 John Scott Award.

The Scott Awards, presented annually in Philadelphia to honor the scientific legacy of Benjamin Franklin, will this year recognize Dr. Daniela Rus, Director of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT; Dr. Takeo Kanade, Founders University Professor of Computer Science and Robotics at Carnegie Mellon University; and Dr. Vijay Kumar, Nemirovsky Family Dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Pennsylvania.

The Awards, which include the Scott Medal and a cash prize of $10,000 for each of the winners, will be presented at the American Philosophical Society — founded by Benjamin Franklin — at 5:30 p.m. on Wednesday, November 20, 2024. The Award ceremony is hosted by the Board of Directors of City Trusts, which administers the John Scott trust in addition to 118 other public charitable trusts on behalf of the City of Philadelphia.

“Benjamin Franklin said that ‘An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest,’ and the Scott Awards were endowed more than 200 years ago with that lesson in mind,” said Bernard W. Smalley, President of the Board of Directors of City Trusts. “We congratulate this year’s three Awardees for their amazing achievements, and we are delighted to honor them in Dr. Franklin’s memory.”

Endowed in 1815 by Scottish chemist and pharmacist John Scott, the Scott Award is presented annually in honor of Ben Franklin to “ingenious men or women who make useful inventions” that have contributed to the “comfort, welfare and happiness of mankind.” Over the years, the Scott Award has become one of the most prestigious honors in science. Among the previous awardees are 20 winners of the Nobel Prize, including Marie Curie, Guglielmo Marconi, R. Buckminster Fuller, Baruch Blumberg, Kary Mullis, K. Barry Sharpless, and most recently, 2023 Nobel laureates Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman, whose breakthrough mRNA research led to the development of vaccines to fight COVID-19 and other viruses.

The 2024 Scott Award winners share a common research specialty — the science of robotics — though each brings a different focus and approach to this work. For Dr. Kanade, considered by many to be the world’s foremost expert in computer vision, it has been to provide robots and other machines with “the function of human eyesight” through advanced mathematical algorithms that mimic the processes underlying human vision. For Professor Rus, it’s a focus on the use of artificial intelligence to equip robots to address real problems, in real time, in the real world. And for Dean Kumar, it is creating the next generation of flying robots with vastly expanded capability to cooperate with each other and make instantaneous decisions.

Their work has expanded the boundaries of engineering, computer vision, and data science, and each of the winners recognizes the contributions of the others.

“I am overwhelmed by the list of previous (Scott) awardees,” said Professor Rus. “But it is also a special honor to be named together with my friends Takeo Kanade and Vijay Kumar. Vijay and I have a long history of working together, and our work builds on Takeo’s research.”

“All of us have worked in the same areas,” said Dr. Kanade, “focusing on robotics – that is, how intelligent functions interact with the real physical world. Computer vision is about giving machines, robots, the function of seeing. Daniela Rus works on how AI can advance the ability of these machines to reason digitally. And Dr. Kumar’s work is advancing the capability of aerial robots to cooperate in high-level tasks based on enhanced onboard computation and processing.”

For Vijay Kumar, the Scott Award represents a special honor given its many connections to Benjamin Franklin. “We (at Penn) refer to him as America’s first engineer,” Kumar said. “His legacy is one of innovation and social impact, and in many ways that is the goal of our work, too.”

Takeo Kanade, considered by many as the world’s foremost authority in the field of computer vision, began his life’s work as an undergraduate student in Japan. “Engineering in those days, the late 1960s, was just starting to shift towards how computers could someday reason as well as – or better than – humans.

“I thought, ‘This is it!’ It really was the start of AI, but it was clear to me that one day, AI could be used to create machines that could greatly improve the quality of human life.”

Upon earning his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering at Kyoto University in 1973 for his work in creating the first facial recognition computer program, Dr. Kanade joined the faculty in the Department of Information Science, and it was there that he attended a lecture given by Dr. Allen Newell, the legendary American computer scientist considered one of the founders of AI.

“Imagine a future where this technology empowers blind individuals to navigate in the world with far greater freedom,” she said. “They can experience the world more fully and richly.

“After the lecture, we talked about our work and I asked him if I could visit Carnegie Mellon University. He said yes, and I came to the U.S. in 1978. The research environment was much better in America, and I stayed.” He was appointed to the faculty at Carnegie Mellon in 1980, and in 1992 he became the Director of the University’s Robotics Institute, serving until 2002. He also founded the Digital Human Research Center in Tokyo.

His work led to a wide range of advancements based on the use of computer vision, including early versions of “no hands” driving (featuring a demonstration drive from Pittsburgh to San Diego). And along the way, he found himself explaining one of his newest achievements to a worldwide audience during Super Bowl XXXV in January 2001.

“CBS invited me to develop a replay system that used 33 robotic cameras coordinated by computers to provide a 360-degree view of a play, like the movie ‘Matrix’– so, this is what the same play looks like from the quarterback’s point of view, or a defender, or a receiver.

“It was the first time this type of replay, which is common today, was ever used during the game, and I appeared for about 25 seconds during the broadcast to explain how it worked.

“That earned me a special title: ‘The only professor ever to appear in the Super Bowl,’ he laughed. “But it demonstrated that computer vision was useful and fun, and that was very important.”

Later, Dr. Kanade’s work led to advancements in the field of computer assisted surgery featuring robotic cameras – “medical robots, really” – that navigate inside the human body to treat hip and knee injuries, heart problems, among others.

He believes that robotics holds nearly unlimited potential to help humans in their daily lives. “Robotics is where AI meets the real world,” Dr. Kanade said. “It’s where AI is tested to see if it is useful to improve human life.”

During his career, Dr. Kanade has been the principal investigator for multiple robotics projects at Carnegie Mellon. He holds nearly two dozen patents, and he is the author of more than 400 technical papers. In 2016, he was awarded the Kyoto Prize for Advanced Technology. Other awards include the Franklin Medal Bower Award, the ACM/AAAI Allen Newall Award, BBVA.

Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award, and the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Pioneer Award. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and he is a Fellow of the American Association of Artificial Intelligence, among others.

Daniela Rus specializes in developing the science and engineering of “autonomy,” which expands the ability of machines to reason and learn so that they can become “pervasive” in performing daily tasks that improve quality of life for people.

“AI is allowing us to develop intelligent machines that work for people and advance the frontiers of knowledge and learning,” she said, adding that the advent of “pervasive robots” is nothing to fear. “If the public understands the research, its goals, and the potential to solve problems and help people with cognitive and physical work, they won’t fear the future.”

To illustrate this point, Professor Rus imagines a world where cars are robots that drive themselves, shopping carts that autonomously follow shoppers, furniture that reconfigures itself to transform a dining room into a cozy living room, robot wheelchairs that streamline patient transport to and from physical therapy, drones that deliver fresh produce to the doorstep, garbage bins take themselves out and support recycling, or even help with a variety of physical tasks around the house.

“Imagine a future where this technology empowers blind individuals to navigate in the world with far greater freedom,” she said. “They can experience the world more fully and richly.

“It’s no exaggeration to say that this research will allow us to achieve feats once seen only in Superhero movies,” Rus said. “We can become our own Superheroes.”

Dr. Rus’ passion for computer science, mathematics and robotics came naturally to her. Her father, Teodor Rus, is an emeritus professor of mathematics at the University of Iowa.

Dr. Rus holds a BS in Computer Science and Mathematics from Iowa, and she earned her Master’s and Ph.D. in Computer Science from Cornell University. She began her career as a professor of computer science at Dartmouth College before joining the faculty at MIT in 2004, and she was named Director of MIT’s world-renowned Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) in 2012. She is widely recognized as one of the world’s leading researchers in the science and engineering of autonomy, and has authored scores of technical papers and books, including Computing the Future, The Heart and the Chip: Our Bright Future with Robots, and The Mind's Mirror: Risk and Reward in the Age of AI.

Dr. Rus served on GPAI (Global Partnerships in AI), the Defense Innovation Board, and the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. She is a 2002 MacArthur Fellow, a senior visiting Fellow at MITRE, a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and a member of the National Academy of Engineering, The National Academy of Science, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She was awarded The Engelberger prize for robotics, IEEE Robotics and

Automation Society Technical and Pioneer awards, and the IJCAI John McCarthy award. She is a co-founder of startups LiquidAI, Venti Technologies, ThemisAI, and The Routing Company.

It is fair to say that when Vijay Kumardescribes his passion for aerial robotics, he never drones on. As Dean of Penn Engineering, Dr. Kumar has built an international reputation in the field of cooperative and multi-agent robotics, with a special focus on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) – commonly known as drones – and developing their capability to cooperate in the execution of increasingly high-end tasks.

“The future of this research is very exciting,” he said. “We are at an inflection point where the (UAV) has the capability to make inferences and projections very quickly.”

Dean Kumar’s research has been used extensively for tasks like mapping, reconnaissance, and search and rescue operations in places where it is too dangerous for humans to operate. He envisions a world where drone “swarms” work cooperatively to improve the quality of human life on initiatives like increased crop production for farmers, or in certain aspects of commercial construction, or even to enter the human body to assist in certain medical treatments.

A native of India, Dean Kumar earned a Bachelor of Technology from the Indian Institute of Technology, and later his Ph.D. from Ohio State University. A member of the faculty in Engineering at Penn since 1987, Dean Kumar also has served as the Assistant Director of Robotics and Cyber Physical Systems for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Through his work with Pennovation, the University’s business incubator, laboratory, and collaborative hub for entrepreneurs, Dean Kumar’s lab has helped multiple robotics startup companies such as KMel Robotics, Exyn Technologies, Treeswift, and Vertiq. He is a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and the IEEE, a member of the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Inventors, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society.

Kumar echoed the sentiments of all three 2024 Scott Award winners when asked about the upcoming ceremony on November 20th.

“I never thought that I’d be considered alongside so many previous (Scott Award) winners, who include some of the greatest names in science,” he said. “But it’s especially exciting to share the platform with my friends Takeo Kanade and Daniela Rus, and to honor the legacy of Benjamin Franklin.”