A structured reference to the individuals shaping artificial intelligence across research, industry, governance, ethics, and public discourse. Curated as a resource for professionals navigating the AI landscape. For more see the full list at AI People.

Robotics and Embodied Intelligence

Rodney Brooks | Embodied AI, Behaviour-Based Robotics | United States Challenged classical AI with behaviour-based robotics, arguing that intelligence emerges from interaction with the physical world rather than abstract reasoning. Founded iRobot (Roomba) and Rethink Robotics. His critiques of AI hype remain sharp and relevant. Key works: "Intelligence Without Representation" (1991), subsumption architecture

Sebastian Thrun | Autonomous Vehicles, AI Education | United States Led Stanford's winning team in the DARPA Grand Challenge, catalysing autonomous vehicle development. Founded Google X, Udacity, and Waymo. Co-authored "Probabilistic Robotics," the definitive textbook on robot perception under uncertainty. Key works: "Probabilistic Robotics" (2005), Stanley autonomous vehicle

Marc Raibert | Legged Locomotion | United States Founded Boston Dynamics and pioneered dynamic legged robots that can run, jump, and perform backflips. His work demonstrated that robots could achieve animal-like agility, moving beyond the stiff, slow machines of industrial robotics. Key works: Boston Dynamics robots (BigDog, Spot, Atlas)

Daniela Rus | Distributed Robotics, Soft Robotics | United States Directs MIT's Computer Science and AI Laboratory (CSAIL) and pioneered self-reconfiguring robots and soft robotics. Her vision of ubiquitous, safe robots that can work alongside humans shapes research directions across the field. Key works: Soft robotics, self-reconfiguring robots

Cynthia Breazeal | Social Robotics | United States Created Kismet and Jibo, pioneering robots designed for social interaction with humans. Her work on emotional expression and social cues in robots established human-robot interaction as a serious research discipline. Key works: Kismet, Jibo, social robotics research

Takeo Kanade | Robot Vision | United States Made foundational contributions to computer vision that enabled robots to perceive and navigate the world. His work spans face recognition, motion analysis, and autonomous driving perception systems. Key works: Lucas-Kanade algorithm, face recognition, autonomous driving

How to Use This Directory

For research: Each entry includes key works and affiliations for deeper investigation.

For event planning: Filter by geographic base, domain, or public engagement experience.

For understanding the field: The categorisation reveals how different communities, from technical researchers, ethicists, policymakers, industry leaders all shape AI development.

For identifying perspectives: Note whose voices are included and whose might be missing from any particular AI conversation.

This directory is maintained as a resource for the AI age. Last updated: 2026.

Curated by Rahim Hirji for thesuperskills.com.

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