The organization was established in 2003 by the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, as an acknowledgement of Pittsburgh's achievements in the field of robotics and with the aim of creating a broader awareness of the contributions of robotics in society.
[1] The voting process was altered significantly in 2012, with nominations instead being gathered from a survey of 107 authorities on robotics and divided into four categories: Education & Consumer, Entertainment, Industrial & Service, and Research.
[6] Through an online voting system, members of the public were allowed to vote for one nominee per category; only the top three nominees in each category, based on the results of the aforementioned robotics experts survey, were included on the ballot.
[7][8] Officials subsequently derived the final list of inductees from both the survey and the public vote.
As more students, workers and consumers become accustomed to robots, it seems like a natural step to give the public a voice in selecting inductees.