Robin Murphy

Murphy’s primary research is in artificial intelligence for mobile robots as applied to disaster robotics. Her team has participated in disasters or incidents spanning urban search and rescue, structural inspection, hurricanes, flooding, mudslides, mine disasters, radiological events, and wilderness search and rescue. She is available to discuss how robots could be used to mitigate the COVID-19 pandemic. An IEEE Fellow, Murphy received a B.M.E. in mechanical engineering, a M.S. and Ph.D. in computer science in 1980, 1989, and 1992, respectively, from Georgia Tech, where she was a Rockwell International Doctoral Fellow. She is the Raytheon Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at Texas A&M and directs the Center for Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue and an IEEE Fellow. Her research interests are artificial intelligence, human-robot interaction, and heterogeneous teams of robots and she has over 100 publications including the best selling textbook, Introduction to AI Robotics (MIT Press 2000). She is a founder of the fields of rescue robots and human-robot interaction. In 2008, she was awarded the Al Aube Outstanding Contributor award by the AUVSI Foundation, for her insertion of ground, air, and sea robots for urban search and rescue (US&R) at 11 disasters, including the 9/11 World Trade Center disaster, Hurricanes Katrina and Charley, and the Crandall Canyon Utah mine collapse. Since arriving at Texas A&M in 2008, she has been leading an initiative in emergency informatics, which stems in part from witnessing valuable data from robots not reaching the right decision maker. Dr. Murphy is active in the community, having served on the IEEE Robotics and Automation executive committees, numerous National Academies and defense boards, including the Defense Science Board.