Abstract :
Long-time participants in AAAI and IJCAI (International Joint Conference on AI) robotics competitions will surely remember Kate Murphy. Kate would accompany her mother, Robin, and help her demonstrate rescue robots in those events\´ early days. Declared the unofficial mascot of many teams, Kate also had an onstage role as the "rescue victim" in many of her mom\´s demos, something she wrote about in a short book chapter she published, at age 12, and which we reproduce here with the kind permission of Academic Press: a tribute in her own words to this delightful young woman who helped make the robotics competitions a success, in her own inimitable way. Kate passed away on 23 January 2005 from complications of a kidney defect, a tragic loss not just to her family and friends but to all of us who remember her backstage warmth, wit, and enthusiasm.
