The Scope

In his 1988 book, Hans Moravec observed: “It is comparatively easy to make computers exhibit adult-level performance on intelligence tests or playing checkers, and difficult or impossible to give them the skills of a one-year-old when it comes to perception and mobility,” This puzzling insight – now known as Moravec’s paradox – reminds researchers that the prevailing paradigms of sensing and computational architecture may be fundamentally unsuited for performing physical tasks efficiently. 

To explore a radically different approach to perception, computation, control, and communication architectures for next-generation autonomy, we organize a workshop on “Emerging Architectures for Sensing, Computing, and Control.” Purdue University would host this 2.5-day event in July 2026, and possibly annually thereafter, bringing together approximately 20 invited speakers from within and outside the university. The speakers will represent a broad range of expertise, including neuroscience, neuromorphic computation, semiconductors, optics, information theory, and control engineering. 

The primary goal of the workshop is to create a shared forum for these diverse research communities that rarely interact within the current conference landscape. Through this community-building effort, the workshop will be a catalyst for launching large-scale, cross-disciplinary collaborative research in the coming decade. This will also be a great venue to attract researchers and stakeholders from different agencies and socialize the community's ideas.  

This year's program will feature invited speakers from a broad range of disciplines, including:  

• Neuromorphic computation

• Compute-in-physics hardware

• Optical computing

• Robot perception and embodiment

In addition, we plan to hold interactive/discussion sessions and social events.