Vivian Chu
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Vivian Chu (born c. 1987) is an American
roboticist Robotics is the interdisciplinary study and practice of the design, construction, operation, and use of robots. Within mechanical engineering, robotics is the design and construction of the physical structures of robots, while in computer s ...
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. Growing up, she lived with her parents, who were both software engineers, and her grandparents. She received her bachelor's degree in electrical engineering and computer science from the
University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...
in 2009. 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, where her research centered on
natural language processing Natural language processing (NLP) is a subfield of computer science and especially artificial intelligence. It is primarily concerned with providing computers with the ability to process data encoded in natural language and is thus closely related ...
and intelligent information integration. In 2011, Chu left IBM Almaden to pursue a master's degree at the
University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (Penn or UPenn) is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. One of nine colonial colleges, it was chartered in 1755 through the efforts of f ...
. At Penn, she worked under the mentorship of Katherine Kuchenbecker in the Haptics Research Group as a part of the GRASP Lab. She focused on
haptic technology Haptic technology (also kinaesthetic communication or 3D touch) is technology that can create an experience of touch by applying forces, vibrations, or motions to the user. These technologies can be used to create virtual objects in a computer s ...
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. 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. 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. 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.  This work were reported in Chu's first author paper in 2013, which was awarded Best Paper in Cognitive Robotics at the
IEEE The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is an American 501(c)(3) organization, 501(c)(3) public charity professional organization for electrical engineering, electronics engineering, and other related disciplines. The IEEE ...
International Conference on Robotics. After completing her Master's in 2013, Chu had a summer internship at Honda Research Institute and continued graduate training at
Georgia Tech The Georgia Institute of Technology (commonly referred to as Georgia Tech, GT, and simply Tech or the Institute) is a public research university and institute of technology in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. Established in 1885, it has the lar ...
. 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. Her work focused on building algorithms that enable robots to reason about action effects and interact with their environments in an adaptable way. Chu was inspired by a talk in developmental psychology discussing how children learn to interact with their environments. 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. Chu based her design on applying human-guided robot self-exploration to learn
affordance In psychology, affordance is what the environment offers the individual. In design, affordance has a narrower meaning; it refers to possible actions that an actor can readily perceive. American psychologist James J. Gibson coined the term ...
s. 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. Chu and Thomaz filed a patent in 2017 for this technology, which is also when she completed her PhD.


Career and research

In 2015, Chu spent a summer as an intern at Google under the mentorship of Leila Takayama. 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. In 2017, they co-founded Diligent Robotics. After graduating from her PhD in 2018, she became the full-time Chief Technology Officer at the firm. 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.


Diligent Robotics

Diligent Robotics' first clinical assistant was Poli, a one-arm robot that was able to pre-fetch supply kits to allow nursing staff to spend more time with patients. Poli was piloted at
Seton Medical Center Seton Medical Center (originally Mary's Help Hospital) is a 398-bed hospital owned by AHMC Healthcare. Founded in San Francisco, the current facility is located in Daly City, California, United States.
at the
University of Texas in Austin The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas, United States. Founded in 1883, it is the flagship institution of the University of Texas System. With 53,082 students as of fall 202 ...
. The firm's second healthcare support robot, Moxi, is a refurbished and updated version of Poli. It possesses more human-like features including a face that can visually communicate social cues and a head and torso. 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 Tiger Global Management, LLC (often referred to as Tiger Global and formerly known as Tiger Technology) is an American investment firm founded by Chase Coleman III, a former Tiger Management employee under Julian Robertson, in March 2001. It ma ...
, for a total of nearly $50 million since founding. It has won accolades including being named as
Time Time is the continuous progression of existence that occurs in an apparently irreversible process, irreversible succession from the past, through the present, and into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequ ...
's 100 Best Inventions (2019),
World Economic Forum The World Economic Forum (WEF) is an international non-governmental organization, international advocacy non-governmental organization and think tank, based in Cologny, Canton of Geneva, Switzerland. It was founded on 24 January 1971 by German ...
Technology Pioneer (2021), and Newsweek America's Greatest Disruptors (2021).


Awards and honors

* 2013 Best paper in cognitive robotics IEEE International Conference on Robotics * 2014 Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship * 2016 Paper on Human-Guided Robot Self-Exploration nominated for Best Technical Advance in Human-Robot Interaction * 2019 MIT Technology Review 35 Innovators Under 35 *2021
Fast Company ''Fast Company'' is an American business magazine published monthly in print and online, focusing on technology, business, and design. It releases six print issues annually. History ''Fast Company'' was founded in November 1995 by Alan Webb ...
Queer 50 *2022
Fast Company ''Fast Company'' is an American business magazine published monthly in print and online, focusing on technology, business, and design. It releases six print issues annually. History ''Fast Company'' was founded in November 1995 by Alan Webb ...
Queer 50 *2022
Fortune Magazine ''Fortune'' (stylized in all caps) is an American global business magazine headquartered in New York City. It is published by Fortune Media Group Holdings, a global business media company. The publication was founded by Henry Luce in 1929. T ...
40 under 40


Depiction in media

* 2020: ''The Future of Science is Female'' by Zara Stone


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. * 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. * 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 * 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 * 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. * Vivian Chu, Baris Akgun, Andrea L. Thomaz, "Learning Haptic Affordances from Demonstration and Human-Guided Exploration", IEEE Haptics Symposium (HAPTICS), 2016. * Vivian Chu, Andrea L. Thomaz. "Analyzing Differences between Teachers when Learning Object Affordances via Guided-Exploration," International Journal of Robotics Research (IJRR), 2017.


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Chu, Vivian Living people People from San Jose, California Date of birth missing (living people) American roboticists Women roboticists 1987 births American chief technology officers Women chief technology officers American women company founders American company founders UC Berkeley College of Engineering alumni University of Pennsylvania alumni IBM employees Georgia Tech alumni American women computer scientists 21st-century American women scientists 21st-century American scientists