so if we could start with your name and
where you where and when you were born
yeah richard clafter i don't know what
he wanted the middle name but richard
clafter
uh i was born in new york city you want
the date
if you you're willing to provide sure
august 5th 1936
you know when a lot of my problems is
that i'm old
i don't feel old but that's anyway
yeah and could you tell us a little bit
about your
early education um sure
um i was educated in uh in new york city
i went to uh
public schools uh my
elementary school was ps public school
117
i my high school was forest hills high
school which is a
really good school and then i got my
undergraduate degree
at mit and i got two degrees
graduate degrees from columbia and i got
my phd
from the city university of new york
what what did you major in they were all
electrical engineering
with with uh emphasis in my phd in
automatic control and then
so for your master's degrees who did you
work with and what were your
well it was no theater there were no at
columbia there was no thesis
you just took courses and i took
32 semester hours
in one year i looked back i don't know
how i did it
but i didn't and then i decided
i really didn't want to go in i always
viewed myself as going into industry
and never imagined an academic career
and i decided well
i didn't really want to go out and work
and columbia offered
as a few other schools in the united
states do a
degree between masters and phd
called a in this case it was the engine
well it's the engineer's degree in
my case electrical engineers degree so i
got an ee
degree which was 30 more credits
and at that point i was
i was married we had a child and i
uh i had to make some money
so what i did was i i started tutoring
at columbia and i found i really enjoyed
it
i really enjoyed teaching and um
so i i remember it's like yesterday
um i was so naive i
i decided you know i would like to try
my hand at teaching
at a university so i marched myself on
this over the summer
i marched myself up to the up to city
college
that was part of the city university and
i said i walked in i said i want to
teach
you just don't do those kinds of things
but i did
it turned out one of their faculty
members had had a heart attack
that week and they needed it was close
to the beginning of the semester
and they needed somebody so they hired
me and
i had never really taught courses before
and i found i really enjoyed it and i
thought i was pretty good at it the
students seemed to take to me
and it was and 42 and a half years later
okay i taught for a total of 42 and a
half years at three different
universities
the city university of new york drexel
drexel university and temple university
i finished up at temple university
i did 17 at drexel and 17 and a half at
temple and for the most part i truly
enjoyed teaching
i enjoyed it i enjoyed interacting with
students
that was the fun part and um
i uh it's when the administrative parts
started to get in the way that
it really started to sour me on it also
the students changed
students changed i found they were
only interested in getting the degree
and getting out they weren't interested
in learning
and that kind of hurt so
and it came time to i had to
face the reality and i said you know
i don't want to do this anymore as a
matter of fact i can remember
i was teaching a class it was my last
class of the day
i came back to my office and i sat
behind my desk
and i said you know i don't want to do
this anymore
it was an epiphany and i retired at the
end of that semester
and i've never looked back i enjoy what
i do now
which is not not scholarly but i feel
i'm making a difference
do you want me to describe any of that
uh any of the teaching no what you're
doing
i volunteer for a group called
recordings for the blind and dyslexic
except it's now called reading a
learning ally
they changed the name and what we do
our group is they're all over the
country they have
studios all over the country and
they they
in our in our group we read mostly
textbooks
and i've had an opportunity to read some
of the books i used in class
the problem is that there aren't too
many engineers in our group
and they think anybody who's an engineer
can do anything
well it just isn't so one of the
problems is with engineering
or technical books there are figures and
you have to describe the figures
uh on you you don't have a script
you do it ad hoc and it can be
really a problem when you don't have the
language
and there are some things i just want to
i won't do for example
organic chemistry i don't know organic
chemistry it's silly for me to try
and but i've been reading recently
a book on materials engineering and i
don't have the language there
and when they come to some of it is
i feel like i'm hanging on by my
fingernails so it's interesting
but i really i met i've uh
interacted with some people who use the
service the students who use the service
and it it makes a tremendous difference
in their lives these are people
for the most part they're not blind they
are they're dyslexic
and uh it they're able to
to excel because of this what what they
do is they have the book in front of
them
and when they listen to the text they
can follow along
and it helps them learn and i've read
things that they've written
and it really impacts on them
tremendously so
it's been it's been great i've enjoyed
that so uh to go back to your phd
so what was your research project my
research project was
uh was optimal control and
if you if you think i remember what the
name of the the
thesis was i don't but it was very
mathematical
and uh i used functional analysis
in this thing to analyze uh certain
aspects of
optimal control and
it was uh i didn't like my thesis
advisor
he was not a very nice person and maybe
i shouldn't say that
although he's probably dead now and
but um i i learned
to how to write from him that's one
thing i did
and whenever i wrote papers people
always commented
they they complimented me on the writing
so
i got that from him for sure but i
remember
one of the things that really turned me
off to him
was i
presented to him the major
major contribution of the
thesis i didn't know it was the major
contribution on the elevator going
between the sixth floor and the first
floor i mean that was
how it went he said oh yeah write it up
then when he read it oh yeah that's
really really good you know
that was uh i mean that's not the way
things should be done you should be
really working with and i i
i learned how not to be from him
and when i dealt with my own students i
tried to be more empathetic
and to work with them closely and that's
what i really enjoyed
so that was my that was my uh my phd and
who's this your phd advisor if we may
ask
the name george krantz
polish but he was an older man not that
old but
from my perspective at the time he was
old
um oh he would be dead by now i'm sure
um yeah the the
the thing that happened with me is i
started
on a um i started really did almost
two phds two theses
the first one i started working on
and i was cranking out the results it
was and it was
i really enjoyed it and what i was doing
was trying to develop a
uh the equivalent of a laplace transform
for discrete uh
difference equations discrete time
systems
and i was cranking out the results and
it was it was
it was great i really enjoyed doing this
as any graduate student you send away
you read papers you send away for papers
and one day showing up in the mail was
my thesis
so i had to drop it and i thought the
world had come to an
end well it turns out that field
disappeared and i got into
automatic control and
you know i it was the greatest thing
possibly could have happened to me so i
really really enjoyed it
and i felt uh i enjoyed teaching it
i enjoyed doing research in it and then
it led to robotics
because it was it was kind of a natural
thing
and you're going to ask me how i got
into robots
robotics i was even going to ask you how
you got into automatic control
well i i basically i needed support
and this guy had some support
and uh i got this project from him and
but i had to i had to learn it almost
all from the beginning
and because i didn't didn't have any
background in it at all
so it was stressful especially since now
we had two children
and it was
we had very little money and it it
was very very stressful
excuse me
speaking about children if i look at my
phone at some point i have a
four month old that is gonna be hungry
around six
so if i look at my phone it's because
i'm seeing if my
husband is it's feeding calling me
how did you get into robotics okay well
um in the philadelphia area there was a
computer users group had nothing to do
with ieee or
anything of that sort and i went to
a number of their meetings and one day
they had a guest speaker
and this guy was the uh
he was one of the founders of a robot
company
us robots and
mitch watt mitchell weiss and
he was a good speaker he was a young guy
good speaker
very passionate about it and he really
turned me on
and um i started that's
that's where it came from i got really
interested in doing this
and then um i i started reading about it
there wasn't very
you know when you go back to the
i forget when it is in the the the early
early 80s i think um
there were there weren't a lot of
textbooks
written there were papers but most of it
was
industrial robots and it was seed of the
pans it was proprietary
and anyway um
my department chairman said uh
i want you to write a book in on
robotics
he first wanted me to teach it i had to
learn something to teach it
and then he said i want you to write a
book on robotics
and um so i
decided to do that and i got
two colleagues and we put the book
together after a long time it was
it's difficult to work with people who
don't live up to their
side of the bargain and that's what
happened
one of them was great the other one was
not so
they shall go he shall go nameless
the guy who held us back but um
turned out the book was really the first
comprehensive
textbook in the area of robotics and
it was called robotics an integrated
approach and um
so it's uh
it didn't sell a lot of copies i mean it
wasn't it's not a big field
and um but i still there people still
use parts of it today and because i know
because i get i get royalties you know
that when they xerox apart the book is
out of print
but when they when they uh xerox it they
still have to
they still pay so i i get enough for a
dinner
who was the chairman who suggested you
write it
it was uh the former president of the
ieee he became
actually bruce eisenstein you know the
name
okay now we do though okay
what was the integrated part of the
integrated approach
good question at this point i don't
think i can tell you that it was a
catchy title
okay i think that was more like more of
it
and uh we uh you know
we put a lot of stuff in and people have
asked to use we've had a lot of pro
problems that students could use
and um so it was uh and i get
people used to call call and say can
they use
the problems and work that they're doing
and of course
you know it's it's it's nice when when
people
say they want to use your work that was
a fun thing to do
so that's how i got into the area of
robotics
and i yeah go ahead oh i was just gonna
ask i mean robotics was still
kind of a new field in a sense so how
would you go about
coming up with the textbook for the
field that's a good question
well we knew it had to have control so i
wrote the chapter on control
and um it had to have some it had to
have computer stuff in it
and one of the colleagues wrote the
stuff on computer it had to have vision
the vision was starting to become
important and
we also the first chapter of the book
was
was kind of a description of the of
industrial robots and classification of
industrial robots and stuff like that
sort of i borrowed heavily from joe
joseph engelberg
berger's uh book and
that was one of the influences also
and i i used to the thing that also
influenced me was going to these robot
shows
even though they were in industry
oriented it was really fascinating stuff
and um i
i i truly enjoyed this and
it was it was to me
the field was fun and if it isn't fun
why do it what were some of the robot
shows you went to and the kinds of
things you saw
oh well they had the um
or the the ones in detroit or or
at cobalt hall it was uh
terrible i don't remember the name of
the the show
but uh it was the big industrial robots
show where
all the at that time there were a lot of
manufacturers in the united states
and in in europe and
they would bring their robots and the
thing was loaded with robots all doing
these amazing things
and it was colorful that's the other
thing
the colors of these things i mean it was
it was uh it had to and
enjoy your attention you know it was it
was just marvelous
to go there and uh i enjoyed uh enjoyed
it immensely i went to some of the you
know the talks
but they weren't as especially technical
um but um anyway it was uh
it was a they were they were interesting
uh shows to go to not like the icra
but uh not saying that icra isn't
interesting sorry that was
i misspoke there um yeah i mean
it's a different type this is an
industrial and they were
they were for the most part uh
industrial
robots they were interested in grippers
and um and picking up
lots of heavy things some of them so
yeah it was uh it was a fun fun thing to
go to and
and i've i've always enjoyed um
being associated with uh with people in
the
in the robot field so it was it was it
was good
i what was the first uh actual robotic
system that you worked on
well actually i consulted for u.s robots
so i had an opportunity to really
apply some of my diagnostic skills they
were having problems
and i learned learned some interesting
things
about when you go and you buy parts
they used um i don't remember the name
of the component but
um and most robot companies use the
component
to to it's it's not a gear
but it's sort of like a gear and
um it was uh it's used by it was used
and probably still
is used by most of the most of the the
robot industrial
robot companies and um they were having
problems because there were vibration
problems
in certain the robot with the arm would
go and then it would shake
in a certain section and it was
repeatable and so we
i instrumented it up and we took a look
at the current
and we could see what was happening that
the the current was actually really
going high and there was
something going on well it turned out
that one company made
this particular component only one in
the united states a german company
and it was it derived from
garden the garden implements
to it was a way to multiply torque
and um what happened was
they adapted it for robots and so
when they put this thing in the robot
these are the kinds of problems
they had problems it turned out
that the machine that uh the the
numerical control machine that was
actually making these
for one of anything another name i'll
call it a gear
this gear was actually machining them
was defective
and they were producing defective
components nobody nobody knew this
and we finally called it to their
attention and they had to they had to
change the machine to do it but it was a
very interesting thing and i learned
i learned a great deal about the
practicality
of engineering you know i here i was
professor of
engineering never having practiced
engineering
and i always after after i did
consulting i realized how can you
call yourself an engineering professor
when you don't
practice engineering and so this gave me
an opportunity
to practice in the field of robots and i
worked for them for
i consulted for a number of years
unfortunately they went out of business
not because of me but
and uh but the field became it became
very difficult
and uh it was uh it was i think a mini
recession or something like that
and people weren't buying people were
not buying
robots and so companies couldn't survive
and today i don't know i think there are
only a couple
of industrial robot companies in the
united states now they're made in other
countries
but in the united states it went from a
whole
very large number to only a few
so did the mini recession happen
in the 80s late 80s and
it was it was a shame that that that
took place
and the united states lost its
um the edge that it had in robots
and the other company other countries of
course
didn't suffer as much today it would be
probably a different story
but um the economic pressures in other
countries are not the same as they are
in the united states the companies
here they gotta make a profit people
don't buy they don't make a profit
and that's what was happening so it was
interesting that that took place and and
sad
it was it was really sad because uh we
did lose the edge
i feel but um
the advances that have been made in
other part
of the field parts of robotics
have been amazing and i think that the
robotics and automation society
is is in large part responsible for it
even though it's more of an academic
kind of organization
i mean it it's still has contributed
to the uh advancement of the field
greatly contributed and i like to think
that in part i had
something to do with that i was involved
with the
you were going to ask me how i saw a
kind of a natural way to lead
the
i was um
let's see i'm trying to try to
think i was involved with um
control and somehow i was i was thinking
back
trying to prepare a little bit for this
trying to find out
how i got involved with the committee
that formed the robotics and automation
society
society actually at that time was a
council the first one was a council
and that's that's ieee
speak so to speak anyway
um the
robot this this committee forming
committee
got together a group of us and
one thing led to another and the over a
period of some time
and all of a sudden we petitioned the
ieee
to have a council the robotics and
automation
council and um
so we had this small group of people
and we found that there were lots of
people out there who were interested in
this
and i was associated with the
with the um
robotics and automation council and then
the
robotics and automation society
continuously
until after i became i ended my
presidency
which i found out was in 1995.
i couldn't remember what it was i still
continue to do some work for the
robotics and automation society but but
it was a good long period and
i saw the society grow tremendously
and it was uh for me it was a highlight
of my career
uh being associated with robotics and
automation society
not so much because of what we
accomplished that was important
but because of the people i worked with
the people in the society
were the greatest people i have ever had
still to this day
ever met they were unlike some
groups that i was associated with they
were
only interested in furthering the
society
they weren't interested there wasn't any
um
i'm important i'm important there was
none of that
the society is the important thing
whatever we do
we have to do it to make the society
improve
and succeed and that's the way it was
and
a good part of that came from
the founding president george cerritas
and he was a he was a really a major
force
and that that his legacy
persisted for the longest time and um
i don't know whether it's still that way
i suspect that it still is
uh to a large part and um
well anytime you deal with people you
have some personalities involved
i didn't find that there were
personalities um
so it was it was a it was
wonderful um
dealing with the people and interacting
with the people from
and i got a chance to meet people from
all over the country
all over the world and it was
as i said it was a highlight of my
career being associated with the society
and finishing up as president
and that was that was a marvelous
experience
who were some of the people that you've
worked with from the original council
they still exist today they're still
around t.j tarn
um
chris george cerritas dave oren
and and i go back a long time and
nick vols who was uh um did a marvelous
job with the
the uh the transactions um
george cerritas he did a uh no no
george becky sorry george becky
who did a he he really did a marvelous
job
on the transactions he was the one who
really
brought it up to a very high level
scholarly publication
and see who else
you know the problem is i don't want to
leave people's names out
it's i'm just trying to think
there were a number of other people but
those are the ones who come to mind
and just just now i'll probably think of
them after i finish with you and i'll
run back to you
you can always blame her editing on it
yeah they edited you out
yeah so um yeah it
um this is this group
is a is truly i think it's a rather
unique
group because of
what has happened over the years i don't
i haven't kept
up with the finances what's involved i
was involved with the finances i was
treasurer for a while and then vice
president for finance and then i became
president but um so we were very much
interested in running a balanced budget
and funny thing is i talked to
george becky today and he became
president
after i was president he said you left
me with a deficit
i had no idea i didn't realize that
so i apologized
but uh yeah we
we were trying to be fiscally
responsible
and so it was
this is a good group and it's a good
group of people
and as i say i think that
the society has truly furthered the
cause of robot
robotics in the world today
so what are some of the ways that you
think it's done that
well the transaction certainly was
important
then the development of the
international conference of
robotics and automation brought a lot of
people together
who could present results before they
were really
in a form that where they they could be
um
you know in a paper not paper form
and uh people could read this and build
on that
and i think that's what i think the the
conference helped
people to go beyond what the uh
what the transactions would do the um
the magazine the magazine was an
interesting development it wasn't a
magazine it was an
eight-page or a 16-page
paper thing with no no
no glossies no color all any pictures
with black and white
and it was it was a new really a news
letter that's what it was and
then we decided we looked at the other
some of the other societies who had
magazines and
there was a there was method to our
madness in
going over to a a magazine
the ieee has some strange rules
when when you pay your dues part of your
dues comes back to the society
and the percentage is based on the
number of pages that you publish
and things of that sort newsletters
don't count
magazines do and so there was more
income
that we could get from the ieee when we
had a magazine
looking at the magazine today it's
really slick
and a good part of that
the reason for that is ross snyder i
mean
she started when she she remembers when
it was
you know it was a newsletter so uh
she's been very instrumental in in doing
it
in improving things and that has helped
the society
i don't know what the finances of the
society are i wasn't privy to that
but uh after i left but uh i suspect
if they can afford to bring us back the
president's back and pay for us
which incidentally would never have
happened under george cerritos
i think he's turning over in his grave
about this but it's a very nice thing to
do
and and for me it's great i've gotten to
see
i was in the hotel lobby checking in and
all these people came by and i
you know people i knew very well and uh
it was uh it was great seeing them and i
hope to see even more
at the banquet tonight and and the
president's dinner tomorrow
so uh yeah it's uh
good good good organization i it also
gave me and when i was president one of
the things you get to do
is to go to
the technical technical activities the
ieee
overall technical activities
conference it's a meeting it's not a
conference a meeting
and a lot of that is it's a lot of
drudgery a lot
and and but you get to meet the other
presidents at that time
i think there was something like 45 or
50 presidents
and i interacted with presidents from
other societies
and there were some really good guys
and and lady there weren't too many
ladies who were president at that time
i suspect that's changed now but um
[Music]
it was a a good experience
and i can say that
tj tarn was very responsible
for raising our
understanding of how the ieee works with
respect to money
prior to tj i don't think we had a good
understanding
of what you had to do to
to get your share share of the pie you
really have to
go in there and it doesn't come
automatically
and you get some but you can get more if
you really
push and he understood that
and the thing about ieee there's no
manual that tells you how to be a
president
and uh so there may be one now but
in dealing with ieee there's certainly
no manual
you just have to learn and
so it was
a good experience there too so
going back to the foundation of the of
the arias yeah
was there something about that moment in
time or in history where it really felt
like
it was time for robotics to come
together as a discipline
it's a very kind of interdisciplinary or
cross-disciplinary pursuit
yes it is very why why did it come
together then
i i can't put my finger on it maybe it
was time
it was as you point out there were
there were
things that were pushing in that
direction and
i guess it was
there were people who who were
far-sighted enough to see that it was
time
that we had a robotics component of the
ieee
and the good thing about intro believe
is that they were open
to establishing a new uh a new society
like this and uh so
uh and of course the the founding people
were
basically uh spin-offs from the uh
control system society almost all of
them were controlled systems society
belonged to control systems sorry
everybody brought
the control system society and we saw
that there was
this need it was be it was grow it was
beginning to grow there was people were
starting to do a little research
in the field there of course was the
industrial robotics
and and of course the automation tag
came in because of the industrial
the industrial components and and that
of course has always been difficult
with respect to the conference and the
trade
the transactions on robotics and
automation
and at times it was difficult to get
papers
written on automation because the people
who might
write those papers or industrial people
and they don't get paid to write papers
so it it was a little difficult at times
but we we tried to
include that as much as possible um but
if everybody was from the control
society then
why did you particularly feel that what
was it that you couldn't get done in the
control society that
you know you felt a new group would help
you accomplish
that's a good question and i don't know
the answer to it i
really don't know the answer um
no i don't it's a good question and it's
funny that i never gave it any thought
but
it's an obvious question
i don't know yeah it could have easily
been included
uh as a technical activity within
uh the control system society for sure
i don't know whether it would have gone
as far uh the
the the whole field i don't know whether
this would have burgeoned
the way the way it did under the uh
control system under the robotics and
automation society as a separate entity
was there a sense amongst the people who
were came together to form robotics that
they were already
doing robotics prior to that and
identified themselves as philosophers
to some extent sure yeah people were
doing this
i don't know how much research was going
on at the time
you know it's the 80s there wasn't a
great deal of research there was
research
but um and and
the the research of course came from the
academic
side for the most part i mean industrial
in the industry couldn't afford to do a
lot of research they had to produce a
product and they could
make make a prompt make a profit
but so i it was the
the industrial people
who kind of uh uh
pushed and then the academics got
involved with the research aspects
one of the questions you i think you had
earlier was what
what you know what kind of projects did
i work on
um i i was involved with a uh
uh with more i got involved with uh
mobile robots i found these to be very
interesting and i had
group of students working on uh mobile
robots
um projects and
it was it was again it was a fun thing
to do
they enjoyed it tremendously and the
problem was it was difficult to get
funding at the time funding had kind of
dried up to some extent and
the mobile robots were not viewed at
that time the way they are today
they were more they were viewed more as
uh you know a practical kind of thing uh
industrial and so it was difficult to go
to
nsf or or darpa
and and get funding from them and so
i got some funding but uh
not a lot did you get industry funding
for your work
uh that was a it was a bad time to get
funding from industry right it was
difficult see the european
people didn't didn't have that problem
the japanese people certainly didn't
have that problem at the time
i mean i was amazed when i went to japan
and i found
that every faculty member got this
amount of money from
the government and this amount of money
from industry
and and it was almost automatic
and they were able to have lots of
students and big labs and they did great
stuff
and the japanese have done wonderful
stuff in the area of robotics
and in both both the
industrial as well as the
the non-industrial types of robots
and assist various types of assist
devices so it's
it's been unfortunately
we in this country we tend to be
short-sighted
and it bothers me but what are you going
to do
that's the way it is so it's hard to
change the system that's
that's the way it was what were some of
the industrial applications that mobile
robots were
being used for at the time um
i know one of them was uh in in
firefighting
um they had tried to adapt
a mobile robot on board ships to fight
fires or aircraft carriers
fires are a real problem the planes
crash and they got to put out fires and
the men
come out in their suits very dangerous
so they
they kind of envisioned having mobile
robots uh
do that um the um
there were
two um of course the things that are
used they're used today
um they use mobile robots to
go into structures where there might be
a bomb
and sniff out bombs defeat and
blow them up sacrifice the robot instead
of the man
and yeah it's uh
then two there were um
people have used the mobile robots and
research to
for artificial intelligence you know
trying
trying to get put learning into the
mobile robot and path planning very
important at the time
still is probably and um
it um
it was a an interesting area
and it can i suspect it continues to be
i'm not as up on the field as i used to
be
as i said i've gone into other areas and
uh so i uh
i i but every so often
i look at the tr i still get the
transactions and i
look at it and i'm amazed at the things
that go on
so it's it's
it's it's an interesting uh interesting
to see these
the developments in the in the field of
uh both
uh of our of uh mobile robots and robots
robotics in general what were some of
the mobile robotics projects that you
worked on uh
well let's see one of them was a
a window washing robot that climbed up
the
climbed up the uh the wall
i was involved with a company that that
did this
and we put it together
and it unfortunately
[Music]
the guy the principal the president died
suddenly
i still don't know under peculiar
circumstances
and so the company disappeared and
nobody really picked this
up i wasn't i wasn't totally convinced
that this was a viable application
and i'm worried about what happened is
you lowered this thing
down like you would lower a man on a on
a on a platform
but this thing came down the wall and
carried
the solution to wash the windows and it
crawled down
and had grippers the problem is that on
a tall building you have this strong
winds
and i worried about the thing breaking
loose and smashing through a window
and people getting hurt and i raised the
issue but they didn't want to hear
that but it never amounted to anything
so
that was one what was the name of the
company
gosh that's terrible i don't remember
oh my gosh it'll come back to me what i
don't remember
if it does you can just email it okay
we're just curious to know okay
yeah yeah yeah um
[Music]
the one of the projects that my students
worked on was a
something that could have been used in
space
um basically the robot had
um two
connectors one on each end and it was it
was um
i'm i'm looking around for the language
the language
as i said sometimes escapes me um
it was an articulated articulated
structure
that could plug one end into a
a a hole and then operate like an
a regular robot move to another
there was a grid of these and that's how
it moved around
i think i've seen this it's possible
it's possible
yeah and we worked on this and
so it was i had some good students
unfortunately
[Music]
the the the students
i don't know when they lost interest or
they graduated that was for sure
but what happened was the project
stopped
because i lost the students i've lost
them i didn't have the funding for them
and i thought it was a pretty good idea
and
it could certainly have been used in a
space application
so it was uh and we actually built a
small prototype and it
it kind of worked um
i had to teach these kids all about
about
control the how to use motors that's my
strong area
motor control and i
they they had even though they were
mechanical
it was a discipline a disa a
cross-disciplinary group
mechanical and electrical engineers but
they don't get that kind of thing
in uh in class and i had to teach them
these things and and
that was good they learned they
appreciated too
so yeah we had we had it
sort of working so who are some of your
students who have
kept uh had careers in robotics
i'm trying to think um
most of them did not continue in the
field
okay they did not go on uh which happens
i mean it does happen um i think the
training they got was
uh was good for what for their for what
they did
i haven't kept up with my many of my
students either
and that's a shame but that happens
sometimes
and i uh
one of my students was the one who uh
who co-authored
the book and so he he did he was
really good so what's his name tom
schmulewski
it's pronounced the way it's spelled
now he's he's really he's really good
he was always an excellent student i
guess he was my best student
and uh we we got along very well
and he held up his end of the bargain
completely
so and now i basically have told you
who the one who didn't because if you
look at the name there are three names
so by the process of elimination
who are some of the other people that
you've collaborated with over the years
on
research and other things
oh boy that one i didn't expect
i'm sure it will come to me but i can't
i cannot
really remember it's terrible
it bothers me it bothers me that that's
happening but
it happens it might be easier to think
of specific projects
and who you worked on a specific project
but maybe
what were some other robots after the
window washing machine
well it was this uh this uh uh
rectangular array uh thing that was a
that was a major one
um trying to think
it's difficult for me to remember i'm
sorry i told you this might happen and
it
and it is i'm amazed i'm able to dredge
up as much as i have
at this point what brought you to temple
after drexel
well one of my former students was a
faculty member there
a very good student and they
they were trying to expand at that point
they had
um what was called a engineering
technology electrical engineering
technology
and they were looking to expand to
engineering
and also to develop a graduate program
now i was
strongly involved in graduate programs
and so he asked me whether i wanted to
come
and i
i wasn't all that happy at that point at
drixel
and i was looking for a change i had
17 years a long time to be in one place
and um
so i i went
and uh it was it was a good time i
helped develop the graduate program
uh i think i made an impact there and
uh we uh we improved the curriculum
curriculum development and
the temple's still not a
major player but we produced some very
good students
excellent students so
that was the reason i went to temple i
should also say that
the uh the bump and salary didn't hurt
[Laughter]
but that wasn't the major reason but
didn't hurt
what was the name of the student that
was there oh uh
it was ryan butts b-u-t-z
what year was that that you lived
it let's see i was there
67
2000 working backs about a 1990 through
19 uh 87
88 something like that a6
so it was pretty early yeah oh yeah sure
84 maybe so the u-pin
robotics wasn't really up and running no
it wasn't no it wasn't
and uh it was it was a small small group
they were
they were uh more into biomedical
engineering at penn
and that was one of the things i did at
uh
at drexel actually i was involved with i
was in the
biomedical engineering department that
was part of electrical engineering
and i did some research in that area in
the area of cardiac pacemakers actually
i applied
i applied optimal control to the control
of cardiac pacemakers
and so and that when i got funded
by the nsf so it was good
what were some of the other sources of
funding that you had over the years
the the nasa
and did they fund the rectangular no
no they didn't they didn't it was kind
of in general
and um see
i actually had limited funding i didn't
have a great deal of funding
and that's because i think to some
extent it was because
i was very much interested in teaching
and as you probably know
if you do if you're interested in
teaching it's difficult to succeed
academically
i think i succeeded academically i think
i i graduated a lot of students and i
taught them well
and i think that they went out and they
did they did well
so i think i made an i had an impact in
the field
but i was i liked teaching and it was
only the last three years
that that i decided it wasn't
it wasn't going well and but
i really enjoyed teaching i enjoyed
working with students i never envisioned
myself retiring i thought
i'll go forever and but things change
and they changed and it wasn't and it
wasn't fun
anymore and if something isn't fun no i
do it
go on to do do something else and that's
what i do now
i enjoy what i do
what's your advice for young people who
are interested in pursuing a career in
the robotics
get yourself a good advisor and
work hard work very hard and um
get as much background as you possibly
can even though it doesn't appear
that it will be relevant to what you're
doing you
don't know that it won't be relevant in
the future and
this is uh these are things that i
learned and this is thing
you learn as you get older um you have a
very
narrow view as you as a young person of
what's relevant and what isn't
and so
a broad background is important
no question about it
also get involved with a group like
robotics and automation society it's
important you get to meet people
you get to exchange ideas and
that's how you learn and it piques
interest in a particular area that you
hadn't even considered
and that's that's what's really
important
and i think we've done that in this
society uh there are a lot of young
people i
i'm pleased to see that there were so
many young people
when i was president i tried to nurture
the younger people
get the younger people involved in the
society you know we had
a lot of the they weren't old but they
were the old-timers
okay who were associated with the with
the society
and i wanted to get younger people
involved
in the society i thought it was good for
them to to see how it was run
to make contributions to the society
that they could they
bring another perspective a younger
perspective to it
and and we we did we did do that
and of course with the with the uh the
prize
the competitions that are now being run
uh that are being sponsored by robotics
and automation site
this is one way to one way to do it and
of course now every every high school
kid every elementary school kid is
interested in robots
now they're not exactly the robots that
i i would say uh are
the kind of robots that i was involved
with but
still it's it's the interest in it and
it will
hopefully a small a subset of those kids
will go on and perhaps make
contributions to the overall field of
robotics
and automation so what's your advice to
young teachers and professors and future
advisors
well if you want to be successful
and advanced you have to you have to do
a lot of research
and work with students
that's the joy and i can tell you if you
don't work with students
you're missing out on an important part
of academics
it's a fun thing to do students really
get
get you going and that's what what it
was for me i
i just loved working with students
and you have to uh
well you have to learn to play the game
the funding game
and write lots of proposals
and that takes time and it's
but it's necessary that's the only way
to do it especially if funding is
is scarce so it's
you have to go out there and try
different sources it's difficult
i don't know what it's like with nasa
now nasa used to be a major
major source of funds now that nasa's
been cut
way back they probably don't fund as
much as they do
so yeah it's uh
um teaching at the university level
is a marvelous experience and
i would highly recommend it to anybody
who
feels that they can put up with some of
the
subsidiary kind of stuff that you have
to put up with
administration and
the chores that come along with being a
faculty member
but going into the classroom
working on research projects with
students more than more than makes up
for it
absolutely more than makes up for it and
so it's and of course it doesn't hurt if
you have a
if you have if you're at a school where
they nurtured the faculty member they
let the faculty member pretty much
do uh have a lot of autonomy
in what they do and there are lots of
schools that are like that
not all but many of them are
and so it's
it's it's a fun that it can be a great
great
source of pleasure and
so one thing you know if you're working
in a job that you don't like
you're always tired you can't wait for
the day to end
i never felt that way i've always
always enjoyed it at least until the
last three years
um and if you had to kind of define what
a robot is what would you
i'm sorry again what a robot is what
would you say it robot is
ah well it's
um
it's
it depends on the kind of robot an
industrial robot is there
to help the human being
achieve do things that human being
couldn't do
because of of strength limitations
danger and things of that sort um
[Music]
so that's certainly one one
definition an a a an assist for human
beings
so you were explaining the definition
definition i wouldn't give it a dev i
mean there are def
there are book definitions of what a
robot is
i'm we're just curious about you i mean
how would you you know since you've done
work in this area
how would you well um
i i think they think the definition is
has changed um the the
where people are using robots uh robotic
type device
they're using robotic type devices which
really
aren't robots they're more telekinetic
devices
which the the lay people think is a
robot but it really isn't but um
in the medical field and doing some
marvelous work with
with robotic surgery and
so again comes back to helping the human
being
because it certainly certainly does help
the human being
um surgeons are able to do the kind of
surgery
they do now that they couldn't
ordinarily do without without the use of
these
uh telekinetic
yeah telekinetic devices
and so it basically makes them not a
robot that they're not autonomous
they're not autonomous exactly now i
don't think it's
going to be a long time before a robot
does surgery on a human being
without the surgeon there i
i think that that would be i don't know
whether i would ever want that
whether we could trust the
robot things happen and
it yeah no
let's see what other areas um
certainly helping people the the idea
that
the robot the mobile robots can go into
a burning building
and examine they wrote they used mobile
robots
at chernobyl to see what was going on to
put a human being in there
would be essentially sacrificing the
human being
so the robot is really
something that can be used to help the
human being to assist
what the human being is is able to do
and to go beyond the capabilities of a
human being
and that's certainly i don't know
whether you would call that a definition
but um for me that's an important
aspect of robots
i remember i remember when we were first
when i was first involved with
industrial robots
one of the things that they they said
was that robots
could uh work in areas that human beings
couldn't work in because
they were dangerous and they cited
spring
spray painting in an automobile assembly
that these people would go in they'd
have their masks on and shields and
everything
and they'd be in there but still they
got sick
and also they didn't do a good
the best job the robot is immune to that
kind of stuff
and it can do a superior job to the
human being
it puts down an even coat of paint and
it's just the right thickness
and it does a marvelous job on the wheel
and you take a look at the
the finishes on automobiles today and
it's
they're they're really remarkable
compared to what they used to be
i i guess that's if i had to
put my finger on one thing i would say
the
the helping of helping human beings and
so uh
yeah is there anything we missed or
anything you'd like oh i'm sure you
missed but
uh anything that you'd like to add and
now i really really um i gave a little
thought to this
beforehand um but not a lot
and i probably should have done more but
i felt it would be more spontaneous
this is certainly spontaneous
i try not to i hope i don't have a lot
of uh uh's in it but
you know it's been a long time since i
gave a talk of any kind it
it is but i always enjoy giving talks so
but i would say that's that pretty much
sums it up
and you've asked good questions
they were really good questions and and
uh they they
pointed me in the right direction so i i
appreciate that
well thank you and you told us i think a
lot about
especially ras that we really did not
know oh you didn't know
good good i'm glad i could help yeah
yeah
and also understanding kind of the
camaraderie and the importance of it
absolutely on the camaraderie
camaraderie was
really has been a big thing and
still to to this day i suspect that it's
still the same
so i mean i don't know but i why would
it change that
because you grow up in a culture and
these people come through and that the
culture
is like that so you adopt that culture
as part of your own and so i would i
would think that
uh it probably is to a large part
to a large extent uh still
so i really appreciate you giving me a
time to uh
this time to speak well we appreciate
you
taking the time thank you