Zhengyou Zhang
Prof. Zhengyou Zhang is a Distinguished Scientist and the Director of Tencent AI Lab and Robotics X, Tencent China. His research interests include Artificial intelligence; Robotics; Computer vision; Speech recognition; Multimedia systems; Signal processing; Developmental learning.
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Jun Tani
Biography
Jun Tani received the D.Eng. degree from Sophia University, Tokyo in 1995. He started his research career with Sony Computer Science Lab in 1993. He became a Team Leader of the Laboratory for Behavior and Dynamic Cognition, RIKEN Brain Science Institute, Saitama, Japan in 2001. He became a Full Professor with the Electrical Engineering Department, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Daejeon, South Korea in 2012. He is currently a Full Professor with the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, Okinawa, Japan. His current research interests include cognitive neuroscience, developmental psychology, phenomenology, complex adaptive systems, and robotics. He is an author of “Exploring Robotic Minds: Actions, Symbols, and Consciousness as Self-Organizing Dynamic Phenomena." published from Oxford Univ. Press in 2016.
Talk: Exploring robotic minds using the concepts of predictive coding and active inference
The focus of my research has been to investigate how cognitive agents can acquire structural representation via iterative interaction with the world, exercising agency and learning from resultant perceptual experience. For this purpose, my team has investigated various models analogous to predictive coding and active inference frameworks. For the last two decades, we have applied these frameworks to develop cognitive constructs for robots. I willexplain how analysis of emergent phenomena observed in robotic experiments informs cognitive mechanisms for development of compositionality and hierarchy in generating goal-directed behaviors, primary intersubjectivity in social cognition, and phenomenological consciousness.
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Dana Kulić
Biography
Prof. Dana Kulić conducts research in robotics and human-robot interaction (HRI), and develops autonomous systems that can operate in concert with humans, using natural and intuitive interaction strategies while learning from user feedback to improve and individualize operation over long-term use. Dana Kulić received the combined B. A. Sc. and M. Eng. degree in electro-mechanical engineering, and the Ph. D. degree in mechanical engineering from the University of British Columbia, Canada, in 1998 and 2005, respectively. From 2006 to 2009, Dr. Kulić was a JSPS Post-doctoral Fellow and a Project Assistant Professor at the Nakamura-Yamane Laboratory at the University of Tokyo, Japan. In 2009, Dr. Kulić established the Adaptive System Laboratory at the University of Waterloo, Canada, conducting research in human robot interaction, human motion analysis for rehabilitation and humanoid robotics. Since 2019, Dr. Kulić is a professor and director of Monash Robotics at Monash University, Australia. Dr. Kulić holds an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship. Her research interests include robot learning and human-robot interaction.
Talk: Learning from Human-Robot Interaction
Robots working in human environments need to learn from and adapt to their users. In this talk, I will describe the challenges of robot learning during human-robot interaction: what should be learned? how can a user effectively provide feedback and input? I will illustrate the challenges with examples of robots in different roles and applications, including rehabilitation, collaboration in industrial and field settings, and in education and entertainment.
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Takayuki Nagai
Prof. Takayuki Nagai is with the Osaka University, Japan. His research interests include Developmental Robotics, Robot Learning, Cognitive Architectures, Machine Learning, Language and Robotics.
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Malinda Carpenter
Prof. Malinda Carpenter is with School of Psychology and Neuroscience, Univ. of St Andrews, UK. Her research areas include infants' and young children's participation in shared activities, their prosocial and affiliative behavior and their understanding of others' mental states. Moreover, she investigates the differences between ape and human social cognition.
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