The Future of Social Robotics

Social robotics, robots working together with humans and other robots, will become the new reality. Increased computing capacity and improved learning in artificial intelligence will pave the way for robots to enter almost all human domains, such as healthcare, factories, airports, warehouses, schools etc. 

For society and business to embrace and successfully adopt these robots,  it is necessary that these robots understand the way humans communicate, read their intentions and even form social relationships. The research of the TU/e Social Robotics Lab aims to create responsible and socially intelligent robots that can be adopted in a wide variety of human environments.

We invite you to The Future of Social Robotics and the opening of the Social Robotics Lab.

The Program:

• Welcome  (13.00 - 13.15)

• Opening (13.15 - 13.30)
  Emilia Barakova (TU/e) &  Raymond Cuijpers (TU/e)
   
• How will robotics shape your future? (13.30 - 14.00)
  Maarten Steinbuch (TU/e)
  
  We will increasingly be surrounded by intelligent technology. Cars will evolve into iPads on wheels and all kinds of robots will help do our job and take care for the ill and elderly. Every day the interaction between humans and technology will increase. It will change society and this revolution offers opportunities for solving social problems. For the high tech industries it means that technological changes will speed up. The systems thinking, integration and multi-disciplinary aspects will become key enablers for innovation.
   

• Social robots: from the quirky to the useful (14.00 - 14.45)
  Tony Belpaeme (Ghent University, Belgium and University of Plymouth, UK)

  Social robotics is moving from being an entertaining, but peculiar niche in robotics to taking up a central place in robotics research and applications. This talk will offer a whistle stop tour of how robots have moved from manipulating the physical world to manipulating the social world. While we still have formidable technical challenges to overcome, most related to social signal processing and the artificial intelligence supporting social interaction, social robots already are making a difference in a wide range of applications such as education to therapy.
   

• Design and Control of Robots for Real-World Environment (14.45 - 15.30)
  Jim Tørresen, University of Oslo, Norway
  
  Robots equipped with computational intelligence demonstrate to effectively contribute in an increasing number of different domains. At the University of Oslo, we work – supported by the Research Council of Norway – with foundational research on mechanical adaptive robots and more applied research on mobile robots looking after older people living at home. Introducing this ongoing work is the topic of this talk and will include how we address it both from a technical and human side.   

• Opening of the Social Robotics Lab (15.30 - 16.00)
  Tour of the labs
   
• Networking and drinks (16.00 - 17.00)