Robotics + X Symposium

Robotics is entering a new transformative era (2023–) fueled by the convergence of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), advances in hardware accelerators, and the proliferation of pretrained foundation models trained on massive web-scale datasets. This era, widely considered the successor to the autonomous vehicle wave of the previous decade, is witnessing the global rise of humanoid robots and general-purpose embodied AI systems. As a result, the field of robotics is being redefined around the central theme of physical artificial intelligence—AI that is not only intelligent, but physically situated and capable of acting in the real world. Over the next ten years, physical AI is expected to reshape not only warehouses and factories, but society at its core.

At the University of Virginia (UVA), the School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS) is home to a vibrant robotics community anchored in the Link Lab, a nationally recognized research center for cyber-physical systems. Robotics research at SEAS spans multiple departments—including Computer Science (CS), Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), Mechanical Engineering (ME), and Systems Engineering (SIE)—and covers a broad spectrum of topics, such as ground and aerial robotics, marine robotics, medical robotics, human-robot interaction, multi-robot systems, and autonomous driving.

To think futuristically, however, we must think beyond factories and automation. The future of robotics lies in its ability to integrate with—and transform—diverse domains of science and society. To this end, we introduce the concept of Robotics + X, where “X” includes not only adjacent engineering and computer science disciplines (e.g., control theory, computer vision, natural language processing), but also traditionally distinct fields such as medicine, biology, chemistry, geology, and civil engineering. The fusion of robotics with these fields enables new research frontiers: robotic surgery and rehabilitation, autonomous environmental monitoring, adaptive infrastructure inspection, and more.

The Robotics + X Symposium aims to bring together UVA’s broader scientific community to explore how robotics can catalyze discovery across these domains. Through a one-day gathering featuring tutorials, research presentations, robot demonstrations, and open panel discussions, the symposium will foster new interdisciplinary collaborations, strengthen cross-departmental ties, and help position UVA SEAS as a national leader in embodied physical AI.