We humans have an innate brain function that enables us to recognise other humans. So very human-like robots – androids – can be ideal vehicles for human-computer interactions. Professor Hiroshi Ishiguro has developed various types of interactive robots and androids in order to study these technologies and understand human nature, and has contributed to establishing Human-Robot Interaction as an area of research. Recently he has been developing and studying autonomous conversational robots and androids, especially focussing on embodiment, emotion and intention/desire of robots and androids. In this webinar, he will discuss the society of the future, in which we will have an increased number of symbiotic relationships with robots.

Furthermore, Dr Oliver Brock will address the challenges and obstacles of AI/Robotics.

Date: Friday 6 November 2020

UK Time: 11:00am-12:00pm (GMT)
Germany Time: 12:00pm-1:00pm (GMT+1)
Japan Time: 8:00pm-9:00pm (GMT+9)

About the contributors

Professor Hiroshi Ishiguro is Director of the Intelligent Robotics Laboratory, part of the Department of Systems Innovation in the Graduate School of Engineering Science at Osaka University. Ishiguro focusses on making robots that are as similar as possible to human beings. He has made an android resembling himself, called Geminoid, which was among the robots featured by James May in his 2008 BBC documentary Man-Machine. He has also developed a telecommunications robot called Telenoid R1. Ishiguro uses androids to teach his classes at Osaka University and likes to scare his students by making Geminoid perform human-like movements such as blinking, “breathing” and fidgeting with its hands. Ishiguro was listed in 2011 as one of 15 Asian Scientists to Watch by Asian Scientist Magazine. In 2018, he was interviewed interacting with one of his robots for the documentary Do You Trust This Computer?. One of his most prominent publications includes How Human Is Human?: The View from Robotics Research, published in August 2020.

Professor Oliver Brock is the Alexander-von-Humboldt Professor of Robotics in the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Technische Universität Berlin in Germany. He received his Diploma in Computer Science in 1993 from the Technische Universität Berlin and his Master’s and Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University in 1994 and 2000, respectively. He also held post-doctoral positions at Rice University and Stanford University. Starting in 2002, he was an Assistant Professor and Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, before to moving back to the Technische Universität Berlin in 2009. The research of Brock’s lab, the Robotics and Biology Laboratory, focuses on mobile manipulation, interactive perception, grasping, manipulation, soft material robotics, interactive machine learning, deep learning, motion generation, and the application of algorithms and concepts from robotics to computational problems in structural molecular biology. He is the president of the Robotics: Science and Systems foundation.

BOOK YOUR PLACE