Dr. Paul Oh, professor and associate department head of the Mechanical Engineering and Mechanics Department, will explain how today's unprecedented convergence of technologies makes the near-term outlook very promising. Driverless vehicles and robotic factory co-workers, eldercare co-helpers that were "dreams" yesterday, are commercially available today. The lecture will include a personal reflection of Oh’s experiences with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), humanoids and the DARPA Robotics Challenge. Such reflection serves to articulate this "tipping point" phenomena and how they factor into transformative research.