Case Summary:

As a senior software engineer in the field of robotics, our NIW (National Interest Waiver) client from China had a proposed endeavor to continue developing state-of-the-art robotic manipulation approaches that enable robots to manipulate objects autonomously in unstructured and unknown environments. It became abundantly clear to our team that his work is of great importance because it is advancing the field of robotics by endowing robots with ever more human-like intelligence capabilities. This thought also resonated in one of the client’s recommendation letters which said:

“Autonomous robotic operations are being used around the world in a wide variety of industries for a vast array of applications. The work of [the client], a skilled researcher in the field of robotics, is critical for the further development of artificial intelligence with human-like capabilities that paves the way for advancements in this important scientific field.”

On the other hand, our team was able to gather from his documents the following:

• That he has been invited to conduct at least 4 reviews to date.
• That his work in the field has resulted in 7 peer-reviewed conference papers (4 of them first-authored), 1 first-authored peer-reviewed journal article, and 1 first-authored book chapter.
• That these publications have been cited at least 36 times in the field by other academics from all over the world.
• That due to its clear national importance, his work has in fact been supported with funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD).

At the same time, he had been able to obtain 4 letters of recommendation supporting his claims to the NIW category. One of these had the following to say of his work:

“[Client’s] research is vital to the United States in a number of ways, including the advancement of intelligent manufacturing. [The client’s] work in robotics with industrial capabilities helps to address the labor shortage while increasing the utility of robots in manufacturing environments, permitting the automation of more tasks. Additionally, [his] research enables better performance in robotics-based systems, enhancing the capabilities of inspection and rescue robots for deployment in environments hazardous to human workers and increasing the effectiveness of robots utilized in national defense applications.”

Thus, our team was able to sufficiently prove that intelligent robots capable of “seeing” and “sensing” are vital to addressing labor shortages in an aging population and improving efficiency in areas such as e-commerce, supply chain management, and logistics. And our client was indeed the person to make this possible for the United States of America. We are glad of having the opportunity to represent him at the USCIS and we wish him the very best in life.