The Contextual Robotics Institute held the 6th annual Forum on November 7, 2019.
Attendees connected with San Diego's top researchers, students and industry professionals working on cutting edge robotics.
The UC San Diego Contextual Robotics Institute held the 2019 San Diego Robotics Forum on Thursday, November 7. We brought together the broader robotics community in San Diego to continue to grow the regional ecosystem. The Forum showcased the breadth and depth of robotics work underway here.
The day-long program featured presentations, panel discussions, posters, demonstrations and networking.
JSOE News Block
Puppy Bots and Bot Tour Guides: Inside a Human-Robot Interaction Class at UC San Diego
August 6, 2026
A robot that dances on command. A robot that behaves like a puppy – sometimes happy, sometimes sad. A robot that guides visitors on one floor of an engineering building. These are some of the projects developed by students in a human-robot interaction class taught this spring by computer science professor Laurel Riek at the University of California San Diego. The class, CSE 190/276B, which is open to both graduate students and undergraduates, gives students an overview of the field. It culminates in a hands-on project where students work in groups to program a robot to interact with people in a setting of their choice. Full Story
Surgeons Use Teleoperated Humanoid Robots to Perform Live Surgery – a World First
July 8, 2026
For the first time, two teleoperated humanoid robots have been used to complete two surgeries during a preclinical trial, researchers report in the July 8 issue of the journal Nature. The work is the result of a collaboration between a team of engineers and a team of surgeons at the University of California San Diego. Full Story
Tania Morimoto Recognized with MassRobotics Rising Star in Robotics Medal
November 5, 2025
The 3rd Annual MassRobotics Robotics Medal award, sponsored by Amazon Robotics, is presented to Dr. Maja Matari?, Chaired and Distinguished Professor of Computer Science, Viterbi School of Engineering, University of Southern California, for her pioneering work in the field of socially assistive robots and for making significant advancements to the field of distributed robots and learning in human-robot systems. Dr. Tania Morimoto, Associate Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of California, San Diego, is awarded the MassRobotics Rising Star in Robotics Medal for her contributions to novel soft and flexible medical robots and human-machine interfaces designed to improve access to high-quality care. Full Story
This Robotic Skin Allows Tiny Robots to Navigate Complex, Fragile Environments
October 15, 2025
Researchers developed a soft robotic skin that enables vine robots that are just a few millimeters wide to navigate convoluted paths and fragile environments. To accomplish this, the researchers integrated a very thin layer of actuators made of liquid crystal elastomer at strategic locations in the soft skin. The robot is steered by controlling the pressure inside its body and temperature of the actuators. Full Story
The Jacobs School Represents at San Diego Comic-Con
August 25, 2025
From discussing the best invention to examining the way AI has been represented in movies, Jacobs School researchers took the stage at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con. Full Story