robotics

Robots aren’t just in our living rooms vacuuming rugs or in warehouses moving boxes. They’re everywhere: connecting pipes on offshore oil rigs, harvesting marijuana in Colorado and replacing batteries outside the International Space Station. They're even helping rescue refugees who are trying to cross the Mediterranean.

A robot named da Vinci was born a decade and a half ago. And since then, doctors have used the system to perform more than a million surgeries worldwide. It has revolutionized the way surgeons remove tumors. The next big leap? Da Vinci’s cousins nipping out those tumors before they become a problem.

The Aspen Ideas Festival in Colorado just wrapped up its opening week devoted to health issues. What were some the top takeaways? Here’s three: robotics, aging and making vegetables sexy.

Getting kids interested in science, technology, engineering and math can be a challenge for teachers. It can be even more challenging if the students are girls. That’s just one of the many topics that came up during a discussion about tomorrow’s workforce at Texas Tribune’s Symposium on STEM Education on Monday.