Travel: Inclusion@RSS 2024

This project supports travel for United States students from traditionally underrepresented groups in robotics, and in early stages of their careers, to participate in the Robotics: Science and Systems (RSS) conference, along with its associated workshops taking place in Delft, Netherlands, Jul 15-19, 2024. The students will be mentored virtually by senior researchers to prepare them prior to the conference. They will also be paired with senior researchers attending the conference to receive one-on-one mentorship throughout the conference events. By exposing early career researchers from underrepresented groups in robotics to this type of intellectual environment, they will be better able to situate themselves in the field and gain better ideas for the type and quality of research required to have an impact in the field. This project supports travel for students in robotics. The recipients of these travel grants will complete post-conference surveys to assess the value of attending the conference. The responses will be analyzed to help shape future travel awards. The primary goal of the program is to increase the number of new conference participants from traditionally underrepresented groups in robotics in order to broaden the pool of future robotics researchers to a more diverse set of backgrounds than is currently typical among robotics researchers. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.